Secrets at Sutherland Hall by Jenna Bennett

Author:Jenna Bennett [Bennett, Jenna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-14T18:30:00+00:00

TWELVE

By supper, Doctor Curtis had withdrawn from Sutherland Hall with both bodies. The local mortuary had sent two motorcars for their conveyance, and Doctor Curtis had gone along, presumably to do the autopsy on the late duke. I imagined no autopsy would be necessary for Grimsby, as it was hardly a secret how he had died. A gunshot wound at close range straight into the heart tends to be immediately fatal, and surely no autopsy was required to confirm it.

Inside the Hall, Scotland Yard had taken over the breakfast room as their domain, but only Chief Inspector Pendennis had spent much time there. After the interviews, both Finchley and Tom Gardiner had gone to work plying their trades throughout the house. The duke’s bedchamber was photographed and dusted for fingerprints on every available surface, and so was the gun room as well as the late duke’s study, presumably to see who might have accessed the drawer where the keys to the gun cabinets were kept.

I hadn’t been in the duke’s study and hadn’t touched the keys, so I wasn’t worried—not on my own behalf, at least—but on the other hand, it’s extremely difficult to prove a negative, and I could have easily accessed the study and opened the drawer with my traveling gloves still on, and nobody would have been any the wiser.

As a result of everything, we all became quite jumpy as the evening wore on. The police took their cold supper in the breakfast room—cold, because things were topsy-turvy below-stairs as well as above. Aunt Charlotte, in a fit of socialism, had invited the detectives to sup with the rest of us, but Pendennis had declined, either out of finer feelings or because he didn’t want his underlings to mingle too comfortably with the suspects.

He must have known of Thomas Gardiner’s relationship to the younger Astleys. Francis wasn’t known for being reticent, and I assumed he had greeted Tom with all due excitement upon his arrival. Nor was it likely, really, that Tom would have kept the information from his superior.

It occurred to me—quite belatedly, and I felt stupid for not realizing it sooner—that when Pendennis had left Tom in the dining room with the rest of us, it might not have been because he thought Tom would put us at ease, but rather because he thought that some of us might feel so comfortable with Tom that we’d speak about things in front of him that we would not have brought up in front of Finchley or Pendennis himself.

And Tom would, of course, share those things with his colleagues. Because, as Christopher had so eloquently pointed out, he and Tom weren’t friends. They had seen each other a handful of times over the past ten years, and Tom owed Christopher very little. He certainly didn’t owe him loyalty over and above the loyalty to his job and his superior.

At any rate, they supped alone. And so did we. And it was grim, and silent, and featured occasional bursts of awkward conversation that had no bearing on what was going on across the hall.

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