Page 98 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place

He added, “I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t see any of us committing murder, but I also don’t see how it could have been anyone else.”

“It’ll be all right,” I told him. “I have an idea.”

“Will you tell me?”

“Not now. I’d better not keep Sammy waiting. Let’s not give him the idea that I’m reluctant to talk to him.”

Christopher nodded. “Come find me when you’re done.”

I promised I would, and he gave my hand a final squeeze for luck. Then I pushed open the door into the back of the house and stopped in front of my uncle’s study and applied my knuckles to the wood.

CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE

“Come in, Miss Darling.”

I took a deep breath before I pushed open the door with a smile. “You were asking for me?”

Uncle Herbert’s study is a lovely, masculine little room with dark wainscoting and heavy wood furniture, that smells of leather and smoke. Sammy had positioned himself in my uncle’s chair behind the desk, I saw to my displeasure, and was lounging there like he owned it. Tom, meanwhile, was sitting in one of the chairs in front of the desk, the one usually occupied by Christopher when he and I had been called on the carpet in front of Uncle Herbert as children. I headed for my own usual chair before Sammy could even gesture to it.

“Yes,” he said drolly, “have a seat.”

“I assumed you weren’t going to make me stand.” I sat and folded my hands demurely in my lap before I added, “Not even my uncle did that.”

Not usually anyway. Not unless we’d committed some particularly heinous crime, like the time I had locked St George in the cellar and left him there. It had been in retaliation for a spider down the back or something like that, no doubt. That time, I got my dressing-down on my feet, while Crispin sat in the chair. His face had been blotchy and his eyes red, and I had felt quite good about the whole thing, even in the face of his tears.

At least until Uncle Herbert informed me of my punishment, which had been to spend the next day in my room instead of accompanying the others on a trip to Salisbury. I quite liked Salisbury, it usually had things like ice cream and tea cakes, and now I’d be stuck at Beckwith Place instead, all by myself. Crispin had smirked then, and I had stuck my tongue out at him, and then…

Tom cleared his throat, and I came back to myself with a flush. “Apologies.”

Sammy smirked. “Something you’d like to share?”

“Just a memory of being in here with my uncle and Lord St George, getting dressed down for locking him in the cellar for the best part of an afternoon. We were eleven.”

Sammy looked nonplussed, but Tom chuckled. “There never was much love lost between the two of you, was there?”

“He used to take me into the garden maze at Sutherland Hall and leave me there. I was just getting some of my own back.”

He nodded, and I added, “But no. We got on the wrong side of each other almost immediately. He was such a horribly mean little boy.”

“Mean enough to commit murder?” Sammy wanted to know.

I gave him the sort of look I frequently bestow upon St George, as if he were something that had crawled out from beneath a flat rock. “No. Or not this murder, at any rate.”

“If I were to tell you that I have proof that Lord St George killed the girl?—”

My stomach did a sort of swoop, but I shook my head. “I wouldn’t believe you.”

Tom arched a brow. Sammy said, “Why?”

“First of all, he spent the night with Christopher. Christopher would have woken up if Crispin tried to leave the room. He’s a light sleeper.”

“Perhaps he woke up and is lying about it.”

“Christopher’s not a liar,” I said. “And Crispin had no motive.”

“If the baby was his…”

“It wasn’t. And aside from that, he wouldn’t hit a young woman over the head with a truncheon. He might have abandoned me in the garden maze when we were eleven, but he never hit me.”