Tom didn’t bother to tell him he was right. “Just out of curiosity, can the three of you prove you didn’t kill him yourselves?”
There was a pause. “Not if you won’t take our word for it,” I said eventually. “We were together when he died, in a different room than where it happened. I couldn’t even tell you what he was hit with. I haven’t seen his head. They’d wrapped the towel around him by the time they brought him downstairs.”
“How do you know it’s Montrose?”
“Dress and shoes,” I said. “And I think St George looked at him. Didn’t you?”
He nodded. His face was pale in the darkness under the tree, but I think he might have turned a shade paler. “He was on the floor in the butler’s pantry?—”
“So he didn’t go to the lavatory?”
He shook his head. “That was just something he said so he could leave the sitting room, Darling. Rivers and Gladys must have been in the kitchen, and he was on the floor of the butler’s pantry. I don’t know what was used to hit him. There were several things sitting around that may have been heavy enough. Cast iron pans, a marble rolling pin…” He trailed off.
“Nothing with blood on it?”
“Not that I noticed.” I could see his throat move when he swallowed.
“He was wearing a wig,” I said. “Thick and brown. It might have absorbed the blow and some of the blood.”
“You’re sure he’s dead?” Tom glanced over the back of the seat onto the towel in my lap.
“He’s turning cold,” I said. “And he isn’t breathing. I made sure of it when they loaded him into the car. He’s dead, and was dead before we left with him. If he’d still been breathing when we got him in the car, we would have taken him to hospital, and to hell with what they wanted.”
But I cast a guilty glance out the back of the Hispano-Suiza, just in case they—Rivers, or perhaps the combination of Blanton, Hutchison, and Ogilvie—were somewhere back there watching.
“Is he still wearing the wig?” Tom wanted to know.
“I’ll let you determine that,” I told him. “I have no need to look.”
“He’s not,” Crispin said. “Or he wasn’t when I saw him on the floor in Blanton’s flat.”
“We’ll have to go through the trash for it, I suppose.” Tom looked back down at his notes. “So you three were in the sitting room. Rivers and Miss Long were in the kitchen, or so we assume. Blanton, Hutchison, and Ogilvie followed Montrose. Which of them killed him?”
“I have no idea,” Crispin said. “If Rivers and Gladys were in the kitchen, it can’t have been one of them?—”
“But we don’t know if they were in the kitchen,” I said. “Maybe they were actually in the butler’s pantry, and when Montrose walked in, because he thought they were in the kitchen, one of them picked up the weapon and hit him with it.”
“He was hit on the back of the head,” Crispin said, “so whoever did it, came at him from behind. Not in front.”
“Fine. Rivers left Gladys in the kitchen and walked out into the hallway and from there into the butler’s pantry and hit Montrose. Or one of the others did it while Rivers and Gladys were both in the kitchen.”
I turned to Tom. “We have no idea. Because nobody told us anything. But one of them did it. Probably not Dobbins. So?—”
“Dobbins? Who’s Dobbins? You didn’t mention anyone called Dobbins.”
“Blanton’s man-servant,” Christopher said. “Blanton sent him to bed when we arrived. I assume he was still there when we left. Rivers told Blanton to go make sure that Dobbins wasn’t going to suddenly turn up and discover the body. So I think we can write off Dobbins.”
Tom nodded. “That leaves us with the three of you, the innocent bystanders; Rivers, the dope dealer; Blanton and Miss Long, the addicts; and Hutchison and Ogilvie, the concerned friends. Any bad blood between Montrose and any of them?”
“He writes about some of us from time to time,” Crispin said, “although it’s usually more me than anyone else. He and Hutchison didn’t seem terribly pleased to see one another at first, or at least Hutchison didn’t seem pleased to see Montrose, but surely it’s more likely that Montrose was killed because someone didn’t want to appear in print in The Daily Yell tomorrow. Or later today, I suppose I should say.”
“That may be what we’re supposed to think,” Tom said. “What was the nature of the disagreement between Hutchison and Montrose?”
“Lord, I don’t know!” Crispin shook his head. “I haven’t seen Montrose in months. He writes about me, but I don’t see him. And I don’t spend all that much time with Hutchison and his set, either. If they’d had a disagreement, I don’t know what’s behind it.”
“We’ll figure that out later, then.” Tom shut his notebook and tucked it away. “For now, I guess we should decide what to do with your body.”
“It’s hardly ours—” I began, and then abandoned the futility of that particular argument in favor of one more pertinent. “What do you mean, do with it? Leaving him in the alley beside Rectors is right out, with the raid going on. And I don’t feel good about tossing him in the Thames…”
