“I could use a drink,” I said and turned towards the bar cart.
“Allow me.” Peckham got there first. Perhaps he needed one, as well. “Another Last Word?”
“I honestly don’t care, as long as it’s alcohol. I’d take straight gin at this point.”
“I feel the same way,” Peckham confided as he filled two glasses, one for himself and one for me. Not with straight gin, of course. He created some kind of concoction with a half dozen ingredients, of which gin was just one of many. I honestly didn’t pay too much attention, since by now Lady Laetitia had moved from merely clutching Crispin’s hand to holding it against her cheek, and I was watching him squirm uncomfortably. Gilbert finished my glass with two olives on a stick and handed it to me. “There you are.”
“Thank you.” I picked it up and sipped. It was sour and not really to my taste, but I didn’t feel like I could say that, not to my host and the man of the house, so I just smiled. “Delicious. Thank you.”
“Bottoms up,” Gilbert said and raised his glass, but of course cocktails aren’t meant to be tossed back, so I let him take a gulp of his own drink and limited myself to another exceedingly small sip of my own. “That was quite the show earlier.”
I nodded. “Good to know your mother is happy and at peace.”
I had meant it sarcastically, and Christopher would have caught on—so would Crispin and for that matter Francis—but Gilbert looked touched. Maybe this hadn’t been his first—or even his second—glass of brandy this evening. “It was nice of the old girl to stop by.”
This, too, sounded like a joke, but must have been meant sincerely. “I lost my mother when I was sixteen,” I said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” He gulped another mouthful of brandy. “Do you suppose it was really her?”
Of course it hadn’t been her. I wasn’t sure who—or what—it had been, but I don’t believe the spirits of the dead communicate with us through smudged cocktail glasses and circles drawn on paper. But it seemed like he wanted to believe that his mother had got in touch to tell him that everything was love and light, so I said, “I don’t see who else it could have been, do you? I mean…” I grinned at him, “You didn’t push the glass, did you?”
He looked some variety of deeply offended and horrified that I’d ask. “Of course not.”
“Then I don’t see who else would have. Do you?”
He shook his head, although he gave me another one of those looks. “I’m glad she told us it was an accident. I can’t imagine who would have wanted to hurt my mother, so I thought it had to be. But it’s good to know for certain.”
“Of course,” I nodded, while I wondered whether he really was gullible enough to believe that anything had been settled by that ‘conversation.’
“Here, let me refresh that for you.”
He took the glass out of my hand and turned back to the bar cart. I hadn’t taken more than a couple of small sips—the drink really wasn’t to my liking—but he’d tossed back rather a lot more than that, and if he was going to refresh his own glass, I guess courtesy dictated that he do mine at the same time, whether it needed it or not.
I let him get on with it while I scanned the room. Christopher was still gone, off somewhere with Tom. Francis was murmuring sweet nothings to Constance, and Marsden was now eyeing his sister and Crispin from over by the window. She had practically crawled into his lap and he looked uncomfortable. When he caught my eye across the room, I arched my brows at him and made him grimace in return.
“Something going on with you and St George?” Gilbert wanted to know as he handed me the refreshed glass. It had more gin in it now, but otherwise it tasted the same. Just stronger. I took a polite sip and shook my head.
“Nothing at all. Do you think I’d let him carry on like that, with both Lady Laetitia and Johanna, if there was something going on between us?”
Gilbert had no answer to that, so I added, “Just out of curiosity, how did your mother and Johanna get along?”
He blinked, and I added, “For the few days that I knew them, I thought your mother seemed very fond of Johanna. And Johanna seemed to return the sentiment.”
Gilbert nodded.
“Johanna wouldn’t have had any reason to want your mother dead, would she?”
He opened his mouth, and then closed it again, as if this was something that hadn’t crossed his mind at all. It had just now crossed mine, to wonder whether it was possible that the same person hadn’t killed both victims.
And yes, Lady Peckham’s death might still—as the séance had tried to convince us—have been an accident. But if not, was it possible that Johanna had doctored her medicine, and then someone else had killed Johanna in retaliation?
It would almost have to be Gilbert, in that case. Constance had had her own reasons for wanting them both dead—or had at least had her own reasons for disliking them both—but if she had found out that Johanna had killed Lady Marsden, Constance’s first instinct would have been to have Johanna arrested, I thought, not to kill her.
But Gilbert, if he had loved his mother and had come to find out—how?—that Johanna had taken steps to kill her, was it possible that he might have strangled Johanna for it?
Unlikely, I thought. He would have had to have come to that realization last night, before Lady Peckham died, and if he had learned of it then, he would have rung up Sutherland Hall, surely, and tried to prevent his mother from drinking any of the doctored medicine. If he’d cared enough about her demise to kill Johanna because of it, he would have cared enough to try to stop it, if he could have.
“No,” Gilbert said finally. “My mother loved Johanna, and Johanna loved Mother. I can’t think of any reason why Johanna would have wanted to kill her.”
