The community conversationdidn’t last long after that. Nobody wanted to admit to their various sins, small or large, in mixed company, and Pendennis was forced to take us, one at a time, out of the drawing room and into the breakfast room for a private conversation. He took Finchley with him, presumably for note-taking, and left Tom Gardiner with us, presumably to do the same thing. Although with the situation what it was, there wasn’t a lot of notation taking place. As soon as the door closed behind Finchley and Aunt Charlotte, Pendennis’s first solo victim, Francis grinned. “So this is what you do all day, is it, Gardiner?”
The hour or two that had passed since the incident in the study had sobered him enough that Tom’s name came out mostly unmangled. The latter also didn’t seem to mind the familiarity, because he grinned back. “It’s a lot of what I end up doing, yes. I follow Inspector Pendennis around, and take photographs and notes of what he thinks will be important.”
“Enjoy it, do you?” Crispin wanted to know, and his query didn’t sound quite as friendly. In fact, it had more than a hint of that patented St George condescension I was so used to hearing.
I had known both Crispin and Christopher during the time they went to Eton, of course. Christopher a bit better than Crispin, since I lived with Christopher and Crispin stayed with his parents at Sutherland Hall. But they had attended Eton from thirteen to eighteen, the same years I had been a student at the Godolphin School for Girls in Salisbury. (Which happened to have taught Dorothy L. Sayers,as well—“That Sayers woman,” of Christopher’s earlier mention—although sadly our years there hadn’t overlapped. By the time I came along, she had moved on to Somerville College in Oxford. And at that time I’d also had no idea who she was, of course.)
At any rate, I didn’t recall either Crispin or Christopher mentioning Thomas Gardiner during the time they’d been at Eton (and home for holidays), and now that I was able to see him more clearly than I had in London two nights ago, I put his age at around twenty-seven or so. Which would have meant his time there would have overlapped Francis’s by a couple of years on one end, and Crispin’s and Christopher’s by a year at most on the other end. He would be closest in age to Robert, a fact which was borne out by the next thing he said, to Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert. “I was so sorry to hear about Robbie. We weren’t together in France, so I only learned of it afterwards.”
“Thank you,” Aunt Roz said, and even so many years later—almost a decade now—her voice turned froggy at the mention of her lost son.
“You served?” Francis asked.
“For a short while.” Gardiner’s face was sober. “By the time I made it to France, I only had to survive a couple of months before the armistice.”
After a second he flashed another grin, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Admittedly, there were times during those couple of months I didn’t think I would. But I got lucky.”
There were a few seconds’ silence. Then Aunt Roz cleared her throat. “We were lucky, too. While we lost Robert, Francis survived. And Christopher was too young to serve. Had the war gone on longer…”
She trailed off, and then added, more strongly, “But as it were, Francis came back, and we didn’t have to risk Christopher.”
“Or Crispin,” Uncle Herbert said.
His nephew looked up at him, and for a second there was a strange expression on his face. Surprise, that his uncle would have been concerned for his wellbeing? Or… it looked almost like anger, but why on earth would Crispin be angry that Uncle Herbert was happy he hadn’t been old enough to die in the war?
I shook my head, because that didn’t make any sense, and the movement caused Crispin to turn his attention to me instead. And yes, that was clearly anger I was looking at in his eyes; they were bright and hard, like silver. Perhaps he was offended that Uncle Herbert had lumped him in with Christopher. Perhaps he would prefer that his aunt and uncle didn’t feel any care or concern towards him.
And then Tom Gardiner turned back to him to answer the question Crispin had asked before the exchange about the war made its mark on the conversation. “I do enjoy it. Killing people on the battlefield is one thing, and bad enough. Murdering them in peacetime is another.”
He glanced around the table before he added, “No one had the right to point a gun at Simon Grimsby’s chest and end his life. I don’t care what he did or who he did it to. There’s no excuse for that. And I want the person who shot him to pay.”
Well, that was straight, anyway.
“Was that what happened?” Aunt Roz asked, with a swallow. “Someone shot him?”
Gardiner nodded. “We found the gun in the hedge maze. Whoever used it must have dropped it, or tossed it aside, after shooting Grimsby. But it was there. A Webley .455 Mk VI. The same type of pistol I used in France.”
“Me, as well,” Francis said. He looked a bit pale. Perhaps it was the memory of holding that pistol—or one like it—in his hand and pointing it at someone.
Not Grimsby, of course. Not last night, in the hedge maze. Ten years ago in France.
“Have you checked my father’s collection?” Uncle Harold wanted to know. He’d been remarkably quiet until now, and I’d almost forgotten he was there, next to Uncle Herbert. “The gun room is down the hall in the west wing. Tidwell can show you.”
Gardiner scratched something on his notepad. “We haven’t done anything except process the crime scene yet. Finchley checked the pistol for fingerprints, of course.”
“And?” Uncle Harold said.
“So far, we haven’t taken anyone’s prints, so we have nothing to compare them to.”
There was a strange, humming, little moment of silence following his words.
“Dear me,” Aunt Roz said, contemplating her fingertips as if she could already see the ink. “Fingerprints. How ignominious.”
Gardiner’s lips quirked. “Don’t worry, Lady Herbert. Nobody thinks you had anything to do with it.”
That was very nice and reassuring of him, although I wouldn’t be too sure. Grimsby had been threatening one of her children, and if Aunt Roz knew that he had been trying to blackmail Christopher, I wouldn’t have put it past her to shoot him stone dead.
Not that I thought she had. As far as I knew, Christopher hadn’t brought the subject up to her. And if she hadn’t known, she wouldn’t have had a reason to do anything about it.
