I nodded agreement, even as I objected, verbally, to his statement. “Unless we packed our things and left last night, I don’t think there has been a time this morning when we’ve actually had the chance to go.”
“Perhaps not,” Christopher agreed, “but I can’t help but wish we were miles and miles away from here.”
He wasn’t alone in that. In the background, Francis took a loud swallow of scotch, and I’m sure he felt the same. Outside the window, the doors to the car opened. From the passenger seat, a stocky man in a bowler hat, past the first glow of youth, emerged, and looked up to assess the Hall with sharp eyes in a stubborn, bulldog-like face. The driver was a younger man, perhaps a bit shy of thirty, weedy and fair, with a prominent nose and a rabbity look about him. From the back alighted a stocky brunet in tweed on one side, while from the other stepped an elderly gentleman in a black suit holding a doctor’s bag.
I blinked. “Isn’t that…?”
Christopher stared at the car, and at me, and at the car again. “Tom,” he said eventually.
Over at the table, Francis raised his bloodshot eyes. “Garner?”
“Gardiner,” Christopher corrected, which might in fairness have been what Francis was trying to say.
Francis nodded. “Works for Scotland Yard, does he?”
“So it appears,” I told him. “Friend of yours?”
“Chap I knew at Eton,” Francis said and drained the glass. “Guess I’d better go say hello.”
He sat the glass on the table with a little more force than strictly necessary, and pushed to his feet. We both watched as he headed for the door, not quite as steady as maybe he should have been. He made it across the floor and through to the foyer in a mostly straight line, though, and without bumping into the door jamb, and that was really all we could hope for at this juncture, I thought.
I glanced at Christopher. “Do you want to go say hello, too?”
He shook his head. “I’d rather put it off as long as possible, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind at all,” I told him, even though I was honestly quite interested in meeting—formally—the man who had taken the trouble to rescue Christopher from being arrested two nights ago. “I’m sure I’ll get my chance to meet him later.”
“I have no doubt whatsoever that you will,” Christopher said resignedly.
NINE
The new arrivalssplit up before they even made it into the house.
Christopher’s friend went with Francis and the old gent around the house and into the garden maze—a camera and the doctor’s bag went with them—while the rabbit and the bulldog were admitted to the house by Francis, before Tidwell could even make it to the front door. His demeanor—Tidwell’s—was noticeably put out by this, although it lessened when Francis left with the doctor and photographer to help them navigate the maze, thus leaving the inspector and, I assumed, another detective for Tidwell to manage.
He showed them into the drawing room. Christopher and I exchanged a look. “What do you want to do?” he asked. “Stay here? Go introduce ourselves? Listen at the door?”
“I think there’s been enough listening at doors for the moment,” I told him, “don’t you? Besides, they’re not likely to say anything interesting, are they? It’s probably just introductions and getting the lay of the land.”
Christopher shrugged. Now that he had left the window, he was pacing nervously back and forth in front of the fireplace, his face pale.
“You seem worried,” I said, pointing out the obvious.
He glanced at me, but didn’t stop the pacing. “Wouldn’t you be?”
I took a seat on the arm of one of the chairs and put my hands together in my lap while he continued. “I was alone in the garden at the time when we heard the shot. If that was the shot that killed Grimsby—and while it might not have been, it was the only shot I heard...”
I nodded.
“I’d left you behind in the conservatory, but you couldn’t see me. I could have run into the garden maze and shot him, and run back in time to find you in the conservatory.”
Yes. There had been enough time for that.
“In that case I don’t have an alibi either,” I told him. “I could have run from the conservatory through the house and out the drawing room doors, into the maze, and back. The timing would have been tight, but I think I could have done it.”
Christopher squinted at me. “You had no reason to kill Grimsby.”
No. Not personally. But— “Maybe I killed him for you,” I said.
