“I’m looking for Constance,” I added. “Miss Peckham. And Mr. Francis Astley.”
“Outside on the terrasse,” Dawson told me. “Miss Constance mentioned a desire for fresh air.”
Yes, with her mother dead, Johanna dead, and her brother on the run, presumably for having killed them both, not to mention the police crawling all over the Dower House, I’d be looking for a spot of fresh air, too. Or an excuse for getting out of the house, on a day when the terrasse was as far as she could reasonably move without setting off suspicions that she was making a bunk, as well.
I thanked Dawson and headed for the parlor, where I found Finchley on his knees in front of the bar cart. He was in the process of dusting fingerprint powder all over the bottles. Not that I think any of us were in any doubt that it was Gilbert Peckham who had mixed the almost-fatal drink. Laetitia had handed him the powder, and he had handed me the drink, so there wasn’t much of a question about it. But I’m sure Scotland Yard, being Scotland Yard, had to eliminate even the unlikely possibilities.
Finchley nodded to me, and I nodded back, and then I vanished through the doors on the other side of the room onto the terrasse, and drew in a deep breath of fresh air.
It was the start of a lovely day, in spite of everything. The sun was just peeping over the horizon, painting the sky in shades of peach and gold against pale blue, and Constance and Francis were sitting side by side on the balustrade with no room between them. Like me, they had changed out of their nightwear into morning clothes. Constance was wearing a pleated skirt with a fluffy blouse, while Francis was in plus fours and argyle and a knitted jumper that matched the socks. His hair was slicked straight back from his face, and his eyes were the clear blue of the sky, awake and alert with no signs of dissipation or overindulgence in anything.
Constance had her eyes fastened on the flagstones and her mouth was moving, but when they heard my footsteps, they both lifted their faces to look at me.
“Pippa,” Constance said. It wasn’t a greeting, nor a question or an exclamation of surprise. More than anything, it was simply an acknowledgement that I was there. We were all a little goofy after the night we’d had.
I nodded. “Constance. Francis.”
“Kit all right?”
“I left him with St George,” I said. “If he hadn’t been, Crispin would have let me know. He thinks—Crispin does—that it might take some time—maybe even days—but that Christopher will wake on his own when the sleeping draught wears off, and he won’t be any the worse for it.”
Neither of them said anything, and I added, “I hope he’s right.”
“There have been times,” Francis said reluctantly, without looking at me or for that matter at Constance, “when I’ve taken enough Veronal to sleep around the clock. And I had a friend who once took enough to sleep for several days. He woke up again eventually, although I’m not entirely certain that it was intentional.”
I had my mouth open to ask whether it was the overdose that had been unintentional, or if the friend simply hadn’t planned to wake up after taking it, but in the end I decided against asking, and closed my mouth again. I might not like the answer, I realized. The past tense verb hadn’t escaped me—he’d had a friend—and I didn’t want to dredge up bad memories.
“I’m sure Tom will have the doctor look at him as soon as it’s late enough,” I said instead. “And he doesn’t seem to be suffering. He’s breathing, and his heart is beating, and St George doesn’t seem as worried anymore as he was in the beginning.”
Francis nodded. “I imagine Cousin Crispin’s had some experience of his own with dope. I’m sure he’s seen worse than this.”
No doubt. Crispin’s set of Bright Young People dabble in quite a lot of things they shouldn’t be dabbling in, and he had probably come up against much worse than Veronal in his time.
“He’s quite angry,” I said. “Well, you heard how he talked to Lady Laetitia earlier. That ship has sailed, I’m afraid.”
I made no particular effort to sound like I felt bad about it, and they both looked at me. I added, “Well?”
“You don’t have to sound so pleased about it,” Francis said. “Or do you?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He snorted, and I added, “Fine. She tried to drug me. I don’t want her in the family.”
“There was never any danger of that,” Francis said.
“You don’t think so?”
He shook his head. “He’s not stupid, contrary to what you might think. Contrary to his own usual behavior, too. He may act like an idiot a lot of the time, but he knows what he wants. Or who. He just can’t have her. But he’s not going to settle for Laetitia Marsden in the meantime. Not for anything more permanent than a roll between the sheets, at any rate.”
“Do you know who—?” I began, because to be perfectly honest, until quite recently I had never considered the possibility that Crispin was capable of falling in love. I would have put money against it, as a matter of fact. But no one else seemed to doubt that he fancied someone, and I’ll admit that I was curious. She had to be quite something, if she had managed to impress him where Lady Laetitia Marsden and Johanna de Vos and all the others from Grimsby’s dossier hadn’t.
“It was Gilbert,” Constance said.
I blinked. “Pardon me?”
This was clearly not the answer to the question I hadn’t got around to asking, but at the same time, I wanted to know what she was talking about, especially since it sounded as if she was accusing her brother of…
“It had to be,” Constance said with a nod. “I’m almost certain of it.”
