No doubt. “So about Montrose…”
“Monty isn’t our problem,” Crispin said. “In my opinion we ought to get out of here before something goes wrong and we get caught up in it.”
“And leave Montrose to his own devices?”
He looked at me, very intently. “Listen to me, Darling. Freddie Montrose is not our responsibility. He’s an adult who came here on his own to—I assume—get dirt for an exposé for his tabloid. We’re not responsible for what happens to him.”
“So you do think something is likely to happen to him. And you’re sitting here instead of getting involved?”
“What am I going to do?” Crispin wanted to know, gesturing to his tasseled gown and strap shoes. “I’m not exactly dressed for a scrap, am I?
Well, no. Nor was Christopher. Nor was either of them, to my knowledge, particularly scrappy by nature. If Crispin got into fist fights, Grimsby’s dossier of a month ago hadn’t dug it up.
“We can’t just—” I began, planning to end with a statement to the effect that we couldn’t just leave Freddie Montrose to fend for himself if the others all fell on him. He’d be beaten to a pulp before being tossed out on his ear, and if we could spare him the beating and instead just remove him before any damage was done, didn’t we owe it to him—and to our own consciences—to do so?
But that was as far as I got before a shrill scream cut through the interior of the flat, and we all jumped to our feet and ran for the door to the hallway to deal with whatever it was.
CHAPTERFIVE
The screamer was Gladys,which I had expected based on the shrillness and pitch of the sound. She was standing in the middle of the hallway with both hands pressed to her mouth and her eyes wide as saucers above them. Her pupils were as wildly dilated as Ronald Blanton’s had been just a few minutes ago, her irises just the same thin rims around a large expanse of black, and her screams kept leaking out around her fingers.
The other four men were crowded around the open door to a room, all of them peering around the jamb at what lay inside.
And by four, I mean Ronnie himself, Hutchison, Ogilvie, and of course Dominic Rivers. Freddie Montrose was nowhere to be seen.
As we approached—but while we were still too far away to do anything to stop it—Rivers pivoted from the door jamb and swung out with one hand. It landed across Gladys’s cheek with enough force to whip her head around, and the crack of it echoed up and down the hallway. I let out an enraged screech of my own.
He glanced in my direction, but didn’t pay me any attention whatsoever. Instead, he grabbed Gladys by the shoulders and shook her. “Shut up, you stupid cow, or you’ll wake Dobbins, and then hell really will break loose!”
“You bastard—!” I shrieked, surging forward, but Christopher and Crispin grabbed me by the arms, one on each side, and kept me from charging up to Rivers and giving him a piece of my… no, not my mind, but the flat of my hand. If he was of a mind to hit women, I had no objection to returning the favor.
However, they clearly weren’t about to let me, and besides, I will say for Rivers that the treatment was effective. Gladys still sniffled wetly, cradling her no doubt stinging cheek, but she had stopped wailing. Rivers let her go and turned back to the open doorway, and to Blanton, who was clinging to the jamb with both hands, all his earlier excitement gone. He was pale and trembling. “Go and make sure she didn’t wake Dobbins, and if she did, find some way to put him off. The last thing we need is Dobbins seeing this.”
Blanton scurried off without a word. That left an opening in the doorway, but before I could take advantage of it, Crispin let go of my arm. “Hold on to her,” he told Christopher, “and don’t let go.”
Christopher nodded, and shifted his grasp to my elbow instead. “Stay here, Pippa.”
“I want to see what’s happened,” I protested, but Crispin was already on his way towards the door, the heels of his—Christopher’s—strap shoes clicking against the parquet floors.
Christopher shook his head. “You already know what happened. There’s no need for you to look at it.”
“I don’t—” I began, but of course, once I thought about it, I knew exactly what had happened. I had been afraid of it as soon as Frederick Montrose left the sitting room. It didn’t come as a surprise to see all the color drain out of Crispin’s cheeks when he peered through the open door. When he glanced over his shoulder at us, there was a horrified look on his face.
“Let me go,” I told Christopher and twitched my arm to get it out of his grip. “They’re all just standing around gaping instead of doing something. Nobody’s trying to help him.”
“If there was anything that could be done, I’m sure someone would do it,” Christopher said, and held on. “Look. Crispin’s going in.”
He was. As we watched, the back of the pink frock disappeared through the doorway.
“If there’s anything that can be done,” Christopher told me, “Crispin will do it.”
“Somebody should do something about Gladys. Get her a glass of brandy or water, at least.”
You’ll notice that I didn’t suggest thatIshould do it. Not only do I not have a lot of patience with the vapors, but I didn’t think any ministrations on my behalf would be well received. She was slumped against the wall of the hallway, pale as a ghost except for the one pink cheek that still bore the imprint of Dominic Rivers’s fingers. She wasn’t having hysterics anymore, so I guess we ought to be grateful for that, but she had tears running down her face, and she kept swiping one hand under her nose, as if that, too, was dripping.
Inside the room everyone was crowded around, there was the sound of a faucet turning on and off. Then a second passed, and Crispin came back out into the hallway shaking water from his hands. Christopher winced, but didn’t say anything about the way the droplets were likely to stain the shantung silk of the dress.
“What happened?” I asked. I mean, I knew, but I wanted to hear someone say it, and none of the others seemed likely to put it into words.
