My stomach lurched, and I turned back to Tom. “Do you want the towel? You’re going to have to investigate this case somehow, aren’t you?”
“If we’d simply found him here,” Tom said, his eyes on Crispin and Christopher as they arranged Montrose’s body against the tree trunk, “dressed the way he is, we would assume he had something to do with the raid at Rectors nightclub. We’d talk to the men we arrested and see whether any of them had seen him at Rectors tonight, and who he might have been talking to or sitting with. Through that, we’d likely get a few names we could pursue. Like Kit’s and possibly St George’s. Kit’s known there?—”
I opened my mouth, and then closed it again when he added, pensively, “—albeit perhaps not under his own name. But Lord St George is known all over London.”
“So you’re going to make this difficult for Crispin,” I said, pleased.
Tom looked at me for a moment, but didn’t comment. “In a normal investigation, we’d likely find a few people who recognized Montrose and who recognized Kit and St George. Someone might have heard one of them introduce the other as his cousin. I assume that happened at some point?”
I nodded. It certainly had. Crispin had introduced both Christopher and myself as his cousins, both to Montrose and to the group of Bright Young Things. The people in the surrounding booths may very well have heard him do so.
“So we’d come knocking on your door, and the door at Sutherland House,” Tom said, “and tomorrow morning, that’s exactly what shall happen. Take Lord St George with you and keep him there. After what has happened, he might like the company anyway. And tomorrow morning, I’ll come talk to you about it, and you’ll tell me everything you’ve already told me tonight, on the record.”
I nodded. That was clear enough.
“And at that point,” Tom said, “we’ll decide where to go from here. But for now?—”
He flapped his hands at the motorcar, “—shoo, all three of you. I’ll stop by the flat tomorrow morning. I know where it is.”
Of course he did. The first time I had seen him had been in the Essex House mansion flat, whisper-yelling at Christopher after yanking him out of April’s nightclub raid before he could be arrested, before bringing him home and reading him the riot act.
“We’ll be there,” I said as I climbed back into the Hispano-Suiza. “You’d better come with us, St George. You can have my bed for the night.”
“Dear me,” Crispin drawled as he fitted himself behind the wheel, “will you be in it, Darling?”
“I will not,” I told him, as Christopher got into the passenger side seat with a snigger. “I thought you’d be more comfortable there than on the Chesterfield, but if you’re going to give me trouble about it, I’ll leave you to curl up in the sitting room for what’s left of the night.”
“No, no, Darling.” He started the car. “I’d be delighted to kip in your bed, with or without you. You keep the Chesterfield.”
I had thought I might creep in with Christopher, actually, but I wasn’t going to say so in front of Tom. And besides, it might be better if I didn’t. Creep in, I mean. Neither one of us was likely to get a good night’s sleep tonight, and trying to do it together would surely only aggravate the problem.
So I nodded and said to Tom, “We’ll see you later, then?”
“As soon as I get this business with the body sorted,” Tom said. “Don’t go anywhere. With luck, it’ll take St George’s friends some time to track you down, but if they turn up before we’ve had a chance to talk again, don’t say anything other than what we’ve agreed to.”
“Rectors was under siege,” I recited, “so we left him under a tree in Hyde Park. And left the towel with him. So sorry. That’s all we know.”
I tapped Crispin on the shoulder. “Go, St George.”
“See you later, Tom,” Christopher said, and then we rolled away from the curb and out of the shadow of the tree, and along the tree-lined roads of Hyde Park towards home.
CHAPTEREIGHT
By the timewe got to bed, the sun was rising over the Tower of London and Tower Bridge.
Admittedly, it was June, so very close to midsummer—otherwise it might not have been. In the middle of winter, we would have had several hours to go before sunrise, most likely.
Nevertheless, when there was a knock on the door at around eleven the next morning, it startled me out of deep sleep and I had to scramble off the Chesterfield in the sitting room in my pyjamas, and stagger out into the foyer and over to the door.
It didn’t occur to me not to open it. Evans wouldn’t let just anyone upstairs without advanced notice—I had cured him of that when he let Crispin up unannounced the first time—so there would either be Flossie Schlomsky outside the door, I figured, or else Tom Gardiner.
As a result, when I found myself face to face with an elegant gentleman in tweed and a houndstooth cap—a gentleman who wasn’t Tom—I fell back a step.
“Oh.” Good Lord. “Uncle Harold.”
My courtesy-uncle by marriage looked down his nose at me.
He’s the tallest of the Astleys, at least an inch or two taller than his son, and like his brother and nephews, he has the fair Sutherland hair and the blue Astley eyes. Crispin inherited his platinum hair and gray eyes from Aunt Charlotte, but all the other men in the family tend more toward the warmer end of the spectrum.
