My jaw dropped. He only calls me by my first name on exceedingly rare occasions, when things are either extremely tense or else extremely important, and if this was one of them, perhaps he was right and I ought to listen.
He waited, and when I—for once in my life—didn’t attempt to interject, he went on, his voice low and vibrating with something that might have been anger, but might equally well have been fear. “Someone in this flat is a murderer.”
I snorted—that was rather obvious, wasn’t it?—and he continued, “At this point, it doesn’t even matter who. They all agree on what to do next. They want to get that body as far away from themselves as they can. And if we get in their way, I don’t think they would think twice about killing us, too.”
“You wouldn’t let that happen,” I told him. “You and Christopher wouldn’t let anything happen to each other, or to me.”
“There are more of them than there are of us, Pippa,” Christopher said, alternating between watching us and keeping an eye on the hallway. “I’m with Crispin on this. We go along with whatever they say—even if that is taking Montrose’s body downstairs and leaving it in the alley—and then we get ourselves out of here. And deal with the rest later.”
He exchanged a tense glance with Crispin, who nodded and turned back to me. “Montrose is already dead, Darling. It doesn’t matter what happens to his body.”
I opened my mouth, but closed it again without speaking.
He continued, persuasively, “What matters is what they do tous. And they have very little to lose right now. Let’s not make it easier for them.”
Christopher nodded. They both looked at me, waiting for me to do the same.
As usual, my first instinct was to argue. I argue with whatever Crispin wants as a matter of course. And I disagreed vehemently that it didn’t matter what happened to Montrose’s body. It absolutely mattered, albeit perhaps not to Montrose. But I wasn’t going to debate the point. They had made their case, and it made sense, and I did want to get out of Blanton’s flat with my life. If their way was the way to do it, then I’d go along. Even if it was Crispin’s idea.
“All right, Pippa?” Christopher prompted.
I nodded.
“Good.” They both turned to the doorway, just in time for Ronnie Blanton to appear.
He glanced around, at Crispin and me still face to face in the middle of the floor, and Christopher a couple of steps away. “Everything all right in here?”
“Delightful,” Crispin said, stepping back. If he had been wearing a suit, he would have shot his cuffs. I could see the movement start, and then stop when he realized he was in a gown and elbow length gloves. The frustration on his face would have been funny under other circumstances.
“Darling needed a little convincing,” he flicked me a glance, “but we’re all on board with doing what’s necessary.”
Ronnie nodded. His eyes were still bright, but a bit less dilated than earlier. He must have come down off the initial euphoric transport. I wondered whether it always happened that quickly, or whether the current events had had something to do with it. “Dom said to get you.”
Crispin looked apologetic. “Are you sure you want to do that, old man? We were in here when whatever happened out there. The less we know about it, the better it might be for everyone.”
Ronnie chewed on that for a moment. It looked like it took effort, but at least he was thinking. I allowed myself a moment to hope that he might be reasonable, but then he simply said it again. “Dom said to get you.”
The impression he gave was that whatever Dominic Rivers said, Ronald Blanton did. And if Dominic Rivers said it, it was to be done, whether it made sense or not.
“Yes,” Crispin said, “but right now we’re not actually involved. Don’t you think you might want to keep it that way?”
Ronnie eyed him. “You’re the ones who brought Montrose here,” he pointed out. “That makes you part of this.”
I winced. Surely that wasn’t true. We were the ones who had motored Freddie Montrose to Mayfair, yes, but he had wanted to go. He was the one who had invited himself to Blanton’s flat. Surely it wasn’t our fault that he was dead?
Crispin, however, nodded resignedly. And when Blanton said, “Let’s go,” Christopher headed through the door first, and then Crispin nudged me along ahead of him. In the hallway, they flanked me, one on each side.
Outside the door to the butler’s pantry, nothing much had changed. Gladys was still crying, but very quietly now. It was as if she wasn’t even aware of the streaks of black makeup trickling down her cheeks. Ogilvie leaned against the wall next to the open door picking at his nails, while Rivers and Hutchison were discussing next steps.
“—wrap his head with something,” Rivers said, “since we don’t want a trail of blood all the way downstairs…”
Hutchison nodded. “A towel ought to take care of it. And another to mop the blood off the floor. One of the girls can do that while we move the body down to the motorcar.”
He flicked a glance at me and Gladys, or perhaps it was at Crispin and Christopher. I opened my mouth—I certainly wasn’t going to wipe Montrose’s blood off the tiles; that would amount to destroying evidence—and Crispin dug his elbow into my ribs. In its current condition, bare of jacket, shirt, or anything else, it was sharp and pointy, and I closed my mouth again.
“Motorcar?” he repeated. “Would that bemymotorcar, by chance? I brought Montrose here in the H6, so now I’m responsible for taking him away again?”
“As you say,” Hutchison said courteously, “you do have a motorcar.”
