“What about Hutchison and Ogilvie?” Christopher asked. “Where can we find them? And Rivers?”
Blanton peered at him. “Are you trying to find them before they go to Wiltshire, too?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Christopher said irritably. “If I can’t find my cousin at Gladys’s, I’ll have to search for him elsewhere. And it’s possible she took him to see Hutchison or Rivers.” Since there weren’t here.
Blanton shook his head. “Nobody goes to see Dom. Dom’s on the telephone. If you want to see Dom, you ring him up, and he comes and finds you.”
Just as Crispin had said, as a matter of fact.
“His direction, then. I’ll try to phone him.”
Blanton blinked for a second before raising his voice. “Dobbins? Where are you, Dobbins?”
There was no answer, and after a moment Blanton giggled. “I forgot. I sent Dobbins out for cigarettes.”
“Can you find it yourself?” I wanted to know, and Blanton rattled it off. From memory. I assume he must have rung it up enough that it had imprinted itself on his brain, and so he could recall it, even in his current condition. He was twitching and jumpy and clearly unable to hold a single thought in his head for more than a second or two, but he had Dominic Rivers’s direction at the top of his mind.
“Where do Hutchison and Ogilvie live?” Christopher asked.
“They share a bachelor pad in Kensington,” Blanton answered. “At the top of one of the mansion blocks. The big ones across from the Royal Albert Hall.”
“Albert Hall Mansions?” The blocks around the Royal Albert Hall make the Essex House Mansions look positively anemic. They’re enormous, with six or seven floors, taking up large sections of each city block. “Do you know which building? The number of the flat? The floor they’re on?”
“The attic,” Blanton said. “The bachelors are at the top of the world.”
He giggled again.
“But you haven’t seen them today?” Christopher prodded.
Blanton shook his head. “I haven’t been out, have I, and no one’s come to see me. I’m not feeling so good, you know.”
“No,” I agreed, “I imagine you’re not. We’re not, either. Murder has a way of doing that.”
Blanton blinked at me. “Murder?”
“Frederick Montrose,” I said. “He died last night, don’t you remember? Right there?”
I pointed to the door to the butler’s pantry. Ronald turned to stare at it with an expression that was caught somewhere between disbelief and shock.
“That was real?”
Christopher and I exchanged a glance. “Yes,” Christopher said, “it was.”
“Did you think it wasn’t?” I added.
Ronnie attacked one of his fingernails, his eyes wide and unblinking above his hand. “I thought it couldn’t be, you know? People don’t die here.”
He was lucky he wasn’t dead himself, in my opinion, if he was so far gone that he couldn’t tell a dead body in his own flat from a hallucination.
“Freddie Montrose did,” I said. “Someone hit him over the head and left him on your pantry floor. Was it you?”
Ronnie shook his head. And kept shaking it long after he should have stopped.
“Do you know who?” Christopher asked.
Ronnie kept shaking his head, but said, “No,” as if he didn’t realize he was doing it.
“You left the parlor first. After Montrose asked for directions to the lav, you know.”
