“The plan was to dump it outside Rectors,” I told him, “although we had to kibosh that plan when we saw what was going on there.”
He shot me a look in the mirror. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“She isn’t,” Christopher said. “But it’s not what it sounds like, I swear.”
“It had better not be,” Tom muttered, and turned to Crispin. “Take a left up here. Find somewhere where we can stop and discuss what’s going on.”
“What does that mean?” Crispin wanted to know. “We can go to Sutherland House or Kit’s flat, if you’d like. Or a car park?”
“Not a car park. Nowhere where anyone can get a look into the backseat. And not a place where anyone is likely to recognize us.”
“There aren’t a lot of those in London,” Crispin said dryly. “I’m fairly well known, and so is the car. How about Limehouse?”
“Not Limehouse,” Tom said. “We’d stand out like the foreigners we are in Limehouse. Hyde Park will do.”
Crispin nodded and turned in the direction of Hyde Park.
CHAPTERSEVEN
We were mostlysilent on the drive. Crispin slowed down enough that we weren’t in danger of being stopped for reckless driving, and he kept his mouth shut, too. Christopher and Tom exchanged a couple of murmurs, but they were too soft for me to make out. And Freddie Montrose was, by necessity, quiet.
When I first had him dropped in my lap, his body had still been warm, and I had been able to tell myself that he was just asleep, the way Christopher had been back in May, after an overdose of sleeping medication someone had intended for me. He had slept through the entire trip from Dorset back to Sutherland Hall in Wiltshire, and had stayed asleep for another twenty-four hours past that. And that was in addition to the more than twenty-four hours he had already slept by then.
I’m not sure who had been more worried about him, Crispin or myself. We had both been assured, by Francis and by the doctor Tom had called in, that Christopher would wake on his own once the sleeping draught was out of his system, and that he would be none the worse for the experience. And I think we had both mostly believed it. But there had also been, in both of us, the fear that Francis and the doctor were wrong, that Christopher wouldn’t wake up, or that when he did, he wouldn’t be the same. There was no reason to think so, but I know I hadn’t been able to shake the fear, and I didn’t think Crispin had breathed easily, either, until Christopher opened his eyes and spoke, and he could tell for himself that all was well.
It had made me regard him—St George, I mean—more kindly than I had been up to that point.
At any rate, at first, I had been able to tell myself that Montrose’s situation was like that. He was asleep, not dead, and eventually all would be well.
By now, however, he was cool to the touch, and the comforting lie I had been telling myself no longer held up. I was holding a dead man in my lap, the head someone had crushed in with… well, I still didn’t know what weapon had killed Montrose, but his crushed head was cradled in my lap, and a Scotland Yard detective was sitting in the front seat conversing softly with Christopher while Crispin drove us along the winding roads of Hyde Park during the darkest part of the night.
“Pull up ahead,” Tom instructed, and Crispin brought the H6 to a stop under a tree whose low-hanging branches partly shielded us from view. When the motor was off, he added, “Tell me everything from the beginning.”
We told him everything. Or rather, Christopher did. He did a thorough job, so there was no need for Crispin or me to contribute anything. We lit a cigarette each—or he lit mine and handed it to me—and then we listened along with Tom.
“So these are friends of yours,” Tom said to Crispin after Christopher had finished his recitation and was lighting a cigarette of his own.
Crispin shrugged. “I wouldn’t go that far. My real friends wouldn’t force me to drive a dead man all over London because they couldn’t call the police.”
“But they’re part of the set you spend your time with,” Tom said. “The Society of Bright Young Persons.”
His tone was deeply ironic. For once, Crispin didn’t seem to mind.
“Peripherally,” he allowed. “Although I think you overestimate the amount of time I spend with anyone except my father. Three weekends out of four, I’m locked away in Wiltshire, like Rapunzel in her tower.”
I snorted. Tom didn’t say anything, and Crispin continued, “Montrose was not part of that crowd. He was doing his own thing. Hunting for a story for his paper, most likely. And he wasn’t at Rectors because he usually spends time with Kit’s crowd, either. But Nigel Hutchison, Ronald Blanton, Graham Ogilvie, and Gladys Long are part of, as you say, the Society of Bright Young People.”
“But not Dominic Rivers?”
Crispin shook his head. “Rivers is a dope dealer. Blanton and Gladys use dope…”
“And you don’t?”
Crispin looked at him for a moment before he said, “I’m not going to claim I’ve never indulged. But as a general rule, no. Alcohol is legal, and isn’t likely to kill me.”
I muttered something, and he tilted his head my way. “I’m sorry, Darling. I didn’t catch that?”
“I was making a comment about the Ballot,” I said. “I’m sure I don’t need to repeat it.”
