If anyone had told me two months ago that I would be concerned about Crispin St George’s wellbeing, I would have laughed.
Unpleasantly.
I would have assured whoever it was that Crispin could drop dead for all I cared. And I would have meant it (with, of course, the requisite nod to the fact that Christopher was likely to be devastated, and I didn’t want anything to devastate Christopher). But as for me and the bane of my existence, my own personal nemesis… why would I care whether he lived or died?
That was before the events at Sutherland Hall in April, of course, and before the events at the Dower House in May. Before the death of his mother, and before I realized that his relationship with his father was less than stellar. Before I knew that he was in love with a girl he couldn’t have, and that the fast living and all the other women and the excesses and the death-defying stunts were intended to keep his mind off what he couldn’t have.
Before all of that, I would have been happy—or at least not sad—to see the back of him. Now it was two months later, and it turned out that I cared. At least enough that the idea that we might have sent him off with Gladys only so something terrible could happen to him, gnawed at my insides.
Tom was right: someone in Ronnie Blanton’s flat last night had killed Montrose. The rest of the group might know who, or they might not. Gladys, specifically, might know who, or she might not. But whoever it was, might have decided that he or they would be safer with Crispin out of the way. And once they had disposed of him, they might decide to come after Christopher and me.
So I sat in the back seat of the Tender and chewed on my cuticles and tried not to think about the trip through London in the back of the H6 in the wee hours of last night, with Montrose’s dead body on the seat next to me, and his head in my lap… and I tried not to imagine that it was Crispin’s head that was cracked like a nut, and his blood that soaked into my—into Christopher’s—trousers as we traversed the streets?—
“Here we are,” Tom said, his voice cutting through my imaginings like a knife through butter. “Better if I stay with the motorcar, I think. We don’t want them to realize that you’re talking to Scotland Yard until it’s absolutely necessary. Are you all right, Miss… Pippa?”
I opened my eyes, to see that Tom had pulled to the curb down the street from Blanton’s mansion block, far enough away that nobody was likely to notice him, or to notice whose car Christopher and I had arrived in. Christopher had already exited the Crossley, and was waiting for me to do the same. They were both eyeing me with concern.
I nodded. “Fine, thank you.”
“You’re a little pale,” Christopher said, looking anxious. “Did it make you feel unwell, to ride in the back? You can have the front seat on the way back, if you’d like. I didn’t think you suffered from travel sickness.”
“I don’t usually. And it isn’t that. I feel fine. I’m just worried.”
“About Crispin?”
I nodded. “What if we get up there, and he’s on the floor with his head bashed in, and?—”
“Pippa.” He took me by the shoulders and peered down at me, blue eyes intent. “Listen to me. Nothing has happened to Crispin. They wouldn’t hurt Crispin, all right? He’s their friend. They just wanted to know what happened last night. That’s all.”
“You don’t know that,” I said, even as I recognized that what he said made sense. “What if we get up there, and?—”
“Miss Darling.” Tom nudged Christopher out of the way and put his own hands on my shoulders. “Pippa. Kit’s right. I shouldn’t have worried you the way I did. It’s not at all likely that anyone has done anything to St George.”
“Then what are we doing here?” I exclaimed, my voice shrill, and a passerby, a man in a top hat and frock coat, shot me a look.
Christopher waved him on, and after a look at Tom, and at the car, with its official MP logo, the gentleman hurried past.
“Pippa,” Tom said again, looking deeply into my eyes. His were hazel, clear and kind. “I’ll be very surprised if anything has happened to Lord St George. Kit’s right. It’s much more likely that they simply wanted to know what happened last night. As long as he sticks to the story we concocted, he has nothing to fear. He’s as involved as they are, after all. He was the one who disposed of the body.”
I had no answer to that, and he added, “We don’t even know that Miss Long brought him here.”
“They might be in her flat,” Christopher shot in, “doing unmentionable things to one another.”
My face twisted, and Tom let go of my shoulders, but not without a quickly suppressed chuckle. “There you are. You and Kit go knock on Blanton’s door and ask for Gladys’s direction, and when we get there, we shall find St George doing up his buttons.”
“If we do,” I said viciously, “I’ll kill him myself, for scaring us this way.”
Christopher took my arm and pulled me into motion down the pavement, away from Tom and the official Crossley. “He’s probably halfway to Wiltshire by now, Pippa,” he told me as we walked. “Taking out his frustrations on driving too fast and scaring the sheep.”
“Frustrations?” I echoed. “What doeshehave to be frustrated about?”
It was a rhetorical question, so I wasn’t surprised when Christopher didn’t answer it except with a cryptic, “Let me count the ways.”
“Yes?”
But he didn’t, because by then we had reached the steps up to Blanton’s mansion block, and the commissionaire, a different one than last night, opened the door for us. His gaze moved over me without recognition or interest, but he did a double-take when he got to Christopher. “Lord St George. Here to see Mr. Blanton, sir?”
Christopher opened his mouth, and then closed it again.
