“It’s not my baby.” He shot me a look. “She looks just like me?—”
“Not just you. Christopher and Crispin, too.”
He nodded. “But I swear, Pippa, she isn’t mine. I had a few bad years right after the war—you missed the worst of them, you and Kit, being away at Oxford—but by last spring, I wasn’t doing badly. I still did a lot of things I shouldn’t have done, drinking and doping and the like, but I wasn’t walking around in the kind of stupor where I’d black out and not know what had happened. If I’d taken this girl to bed last year, I would remember.”
“I believe you,” I said. “Just out of curiosity, have you ever been to the Hammersmith Palais?”
He looked at me with an almost comical look of disbelief on his face, mixed with a healthy dose of amusement. It was nice to see, after the conversation we’d had. “A dance hall? No, Pippa. Whenever I’d go up to London, that wasn’t the kind of place we’d visit. We’d have darker haunts than that.”
Like the opium dens in Limehouse and someone’s flat where they could enjoy getting doped up on cocaine without worrying about being caught, I assumed.
“We found a note in her bag that indicated that she had met whoever he was at the Hammersmith Palais. Constance didn’t mention it?”
“We haven’t really had a chance to talk,” Francis said. “I was thoroughly foxed last night, and this morning you woke us up with the news that the girl was dead. We haven’t had the opportunity for a private chat since then.”
And yesterday afternoon, he was already gone by the time we’d found the tote with the list in it. “Well, perhaps you ought to tell her.”
“It wouldn’t matter anyway,” Francis said. “I’m marrying Constance. Even if the baby had been mine, they couldn’t have forced me to marry her.”
No, they couldn’t have. “I still think you ought to tell her. Find a few minutes for a private conversation. She might be worried about it.”
He didn’t move. The cigarette was long gone, and must have done the trick in calming his nerves, because he didn’t reach for another one. But he didn’t get up, either. “What about you, Pippa? Are you worried?”
“I’m not sure what you think I’d be worried about,” I said. “I know you didn’t do it. I know Christopher didn’t. And Crispin was with him, so I know he couldn’t have. Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert had no reason to want Abigail Dole dead. Not that I think either of them would be capable of that kind of thing. And Constance is surely too small to deliver such a blow. Everyone I care about is in the clear, it seems.”
Francis nodded. “And yourself?”
I shot him a look. “Why would I kill her? I’m sorry to have to put it so bluntly, but she and her child were nothing to me. If one of you were responsible, I would have wanted you to step up and take responsibility, but it certainly wasn’t important enough for me to kill anyone over.”
He hummed. “Do you suppose Sammy sees it that way?”
“I can’t imagine that he’d see it otherwise,” I said. “You’re engaged to Constance, Christopher’s queer, and St George… well, if I wanted St George I wouldn’t just have to kill Abigail, I’d have to kill Laetitia, too. And probably a dozen other women who are ready to step up as soon as Laetitia’s out of the way.”
“But the murder weapon?—”
“I have no idea how that got into my room,” I said. “It wasn’t last night, after I whacked her over the head with it, I can tell you that much.”
Francis shook his head.
“I haven’t been up to my room in hours, so anyone could have put it there.”
“But between that and the fact that you slept alone, you’re not worried that Sammy’s going to think you’re a viable suspect?”
“I’m not.” I was fairly certain that Sammy had no plans to try to pin the murder on me. He was probably trying to prove that Francis owned the trench club and had hid it in my room sometime between dawn and now. “Just out of curiosity, have you been alone at any time this morning?”
Francis shook his head. “I went upstairs with Kit, and came downstairs with Kit, and I’ve been with the rest of you since. Kit would have noticed if I’d had a trench club hidden down my trouser leg when we climbed the stairs.”
Of course he would have. “There’s no way Sammy can say that you were the one who put it in my room, then. You couldn’t have done while I was sleeping—I would have woken up if you’d started lifting my mattress—and you couldn’t have done it since.”
Francis looked relieved.
“Although,” I added, “I would feel better if I had some idea of who might actually be guilty. It’s one thing to know that I’m not, and that you’re not, and that Christopher isn’t.”
Francis nodded.
“But someone killed her. And not just that, but someone’s the father of that baby. And if we don’t figure out who, all of you are going to go through life being suspected of it.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know how to help you, Pippa. I just know it wasn’t me.”
