“But we got his direction,” Christopher added, “so we can ring him up and try to arrange a meeting. And then nab him when he turns up. And put the thumbscrews to him.” He grinned.
“Bloodthirsty,” I muttered and he slanted me a look.
So did Tom. “It would be well deserved,” he said. “People die from cocaine use, you know. There was Billie Carleton at the end of the war—the actress; you might remember her, or were you too young?—and you heard of Billy Chang and the situation with Freda Kempton a few years back, didn’t you?”
I had, indeed, heard of that situation. So had all of London, and all of England for that matter, as it had been front page news everywhere.
Freda Kempton, a dance instructress at a London club, had died from an overdose of cocaine in—if memory served—1922. Billy—Brilliant—Chang was a Chinese dope merchant from Limehouse who was suspected of having supplied her with the drugs. He had something of a harem of young women he both gave dope to and dallied with, it seemed.
He hadn’t been found guilty of her death—she had taken the overdose herself, perhaps by accident or perhaps on purpose—but a couple of years later, the police had arrested Chang for dope dealing. He had served his sentence in Wormwood Scrubs, and then been deported. There were rumors that he had set up shop on the French Riviera, although he might equally well be in Hong Kong, or even back in Limehouse by now. It was said that when the boat carrying Billy sailed away from the Royal Albert Docks, a young woman left behind called after it, “Come back soon, Chang!”
“You shouldn’t feel sorry for Rivers, Pippa,” Christopher told me now. “Even if he didn’t have anything to do with killing Montrose last night—and we don’t know that he didn’t—you saw how Blanton was today. That’s Rivers’s doing, too.”
Of course it was. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “And it’s not that I’m feeling sorry for him. If he killed Montrose, he deserves prison. If he’s dealing dope?—”
Christopher opened his mouth, and I went on, “—and there doesn’t seem to be any question about it, then he deserves prison for that, too. I just object to the thumbscrews.”
“We don’t torture suspects anymore,” Tom said blandly. “Nor would we have to. There’s plenty of evidence against Rivers for dope dealing, even if most of it is circumstantial.”
He glanced at Christopher. “Do you have any reason to think he’s the one who coshed Frederick Montrose?”
“Not except for the fact that he was there when it happened and had a motive,” Christopher said. “If Montrose planned to write about him in The Daily Yell, he would have had every reason to want to silence him.”
Tom nodded. Christopher continued, “But Montrose died in the butler’s pantry, and if Rivers and Gladys were meeting in the kitchen, that makes it more likely that it was one of the others. Someone who saw him spying on them and decided he shouldn’t be allowed to.”
“So Blanton, Hutchison, or Ogilvie.”
Christopher nodded. “Although if Rivers and Gladys met in the butler’s pantry and not the kitchen, and Montrose walked in on them, it could have been either of them, too. Do you have any idea what he was hit with?”
“Do you?” Tom retorted. “You were the one who was there.”
“I didn’t see the body before it was moved,” Christopher said. “Or his head while he was in the car with us.”
“Doctor Curtis looked at him this morning and said it was something heavy and smooth with a round edge.”
“So a champagne bottle,” I said. “Or a rolling pin.”
Tom shot a quick look into the back seat where I was sitting. “Is there a reason you’re mentioning those two things?”
“Only because we were drinking champagne last night, and a rolling pin is something one might easily find in a butler’s pantry. But it was something like that?”
“Something very like that. A bottle of champagne might have shattered on impact, and there were no glass shards in the wound or liquid on the clothes, so the rolling pin is perhaps more likely. But from what we know, I think it might be either.”
“It’s a shame you can’t just go up there with a search warrant and look around,” Christopher said, and Tom nodded.
“But that would give away that we know one of them did it. And it would also give away that the three of you told us. So we’ll hold off on that for a little while longer.”
He turned the corner from Grosvenor Place onto Ebury Street, and continued, “Right now, we’re interviewing everyone we pulled in from the raid last night. The minute a single one of them puts Montrose together with Blanton, Hutchison, and Ogilvie, or Rivers and Gladys Long, or even the three of you, I shall be all over Blanton’s flat with a search warrant. But for now, I’m waiting for an excuse.”
“And if you don’t get one?” I asked.
He shot me a look in the mirror. “Then, tomorrow morning, we lie. We can’t afford to let it rest any longer than that. One of them might get restless and decide to leave.”
“If anyone leaves,” Christopher said, “won’t it be whoever did it? And then you can just nab him?”
After a second he added, “Or her?”
“We can’t rule out Gladys Long,” Tom agreed, turning yet another corner. “Montrose wasn’t a particularly tall man, but Curtis said he was most likely bending down when he was hit. The blow came from above. None of you are tall enough to manage that without standing on something, I assume? And I assume he’s likely to have noticed someone climbing up on a crate behind him and waving a champagne bottle around?”
