“It swung open when Montrose fell against it, and Hutchison saw Gladys through it. He thought she had seen him, too, so he decided he had to get rid of her.”
“Cold-blooded bastard,” Crispin grumbled, and Tom nodded.
“Just wait. You haven’t heard the half of it yet.”
“Go on, then.”
“Blanton stumbled into the butler’s pantry, and saw Montrose dead and Hutchison holding the rolling pin. But Hutchison held it out to him, and Blanton grabbed it by the other handle while Hutchison pulled Montrose’s body away from the kitchen door.”
“He remembers this now? Ronnie?”
“He remembers some of it,” Tom said. “Some, Hutchison admitted, and some of it Graham Ogilvie imparted. He came in at this point, and saw Ronnie Blanton holding the murder weapon and, as he assumed, Nigel Hutchison checking whether Freddie Montrose was still alive. It’s pretty obvious where he got the idea that Blanton killed Montrose.”
Yes, it was. “Hutchison might not even have had to say straight out that Blanton did it. But I don’t suppose he did anything whatsoever to disabuse Ogilvie of the notion.”
“Not at all,” Tom confirmed. “They sent the three of you off with the body. Dominic Rivers high-tailed it out of there, and took Gladys Long with him, and Hutchison and Ogilvie put Ronnie Blanton to bed before they cleaned up Blanton’s flat. Hutchison cleaned his own fingerprints off the rolling pin along with Blanton’s.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course he did.”
“Ogilvie spent what was left of the night with Blanton, and Hutchison took the Morris Oxford to drive home. We don’t know exactly what happened after that?—”
“Hutchison isn’t talking?”
Tom shook his head, “But we know that Hutchison showed up at Blanton’s flat around noon—looking like death, is how Ogilvie put it—saying that Ogilvie had to come with him. Blanton confirms.”
“And the two of them took off in Blanton’s Morris Oxford?” The Morris Oxford Crispin had seen parked on Eccleston Street?
“So it seems,” Tom nodded. “By the time you and Kit made it to Blanton’s flat, the other two were long gone.”
He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know how much Gladys Long saw or didn’t see of what happened in the butler’s pantry on Sunday morning. Hutchison seems convinced that she saw him, but if she did, she didn’t mention anything to anyone about it at any point.”
“So she might have been killed for no reason at all?” Crispin looked sick.
“No reason other than that Nigel Hutchison wanted to cover his tracks,” Tom said. “He convinced Graham Ogilvie that Ronnie Blanton would be safer with Gladys Long dead, and after Ogilvie dropped Hutchison off at the Albert Hall Mansions, Ogilvie took the Morris Oxford to the Ellery Mews and waited for Gladys to come back. When you asked him later, Hutchison denied having been outside at all.”
“And did they plan to frame Crispin,” Christopher wanted to know, with a glance at his cousin, “or was that just luck, or unluck, that he was there and went inside with Gladys?”
“I didn’t get the impression that they cared much one way or the other about the extra smoke,” Tom said dryly, “although it didn’t seem to be a deliberate frame, at any rate. They were happy to have someone there, to bleed off some suspicion, but I didn’t get the feeling that it was on purpose.”
“That’s one thing to be grateful for, anyway,” I told Crispin, who looked at me down the length of his nose.
“Not sure I care at this point, Darling. Between them, they murdered two people I knew. The fact that they didn’t deliberately frame me for either murder is minor by comparison.”
And so it was. I turned back to Tom. “Did Hutchison say why he did it? Killed Montrose, I mean? In the first place?”
“I imagine it was for several reasons,” Tom said, putting his teacup on the table and folding his hands. “Freddie Montrose was a journalistic hack, who had recently written a nasty exposé on Ronald Blanton—I looked it up, you know, and it was nasty—and he was in Blanton’s flat, taking advantage of Blanton’s hospitality, to spy on Dominic Rivers. If Montrose did anything to expose Rivers, and Rivers got arrested, Blanton would be, as they say, up a creek without his dope. I’m sure Hutchison knew exactly what that would do to Blanton, and as you said the other day—” he nodded to Crispin, “—they do seem to be close.”
After a second he added, pensively, “Or they were, before all this happened and Hutchison decided to blame Blanton for a murder he himself committed.”
Yes, I could see how that wouldn’t be conducive to further friendship.
“But in addition to that,” Tom said, “there’s the matter of Clara Hutchison.”
It took a second, and then— “Nigel’s sister? The one who went to Newnham?”
Tom nodded. “Something happened to her the day of the vote. I’m not sure what. Nigel Hutchison wouldn’t say, or perhaps he doesn’t know the details. But she’s disturbed in her mind, and came down from Cambridge without finishing her schools.”
He hesitated. “We were in the same year, you know, although I was older. But I remember her. She was clever, and quick, and opinionated. I don’t think she would have thought to stay away from the King’s Parade that day. She would have thought she could handle it, whatever it was. But something happened to her, something bad enough to change her into a different person. Someone afraid, who has spent her life since then hiding in Shropshire.”
