“That’s her,”Christopher said half a minute later, and I swallowed and nodded.
“Yes. That’s Gladys Long. Or at least it’s the girl who was introduced to us as Gladys Long at Rectors nightclub last night.”
The same girl whom Crispin had introduced to his father as Gladys Long this morning. The same girl he had walked out of our flat with, and gotten into the Hispano-Suiza with, and driven away with.
“I think we can take it as established, then,” Tom said, “that this is Gladys Long.”
We probably could. Or at least that it had been Gladys Long. Now, the girl was just an empty husk on the bedroom floor.
Approximately a month ago, at the Dower House in Dorset, Christopher and I had walked into a different bedroom and found a different young woman dead.
Johanna de Vos, she of the pale blue dress.
She had been strangled, and had put up a fight before she succumbed. Her face had been bruised and dark, and her tongue had been sticking out, while her pretty blue dress had been tangled around her limbs from her struggle to overcome her assailant.
When Tom had brought us into the bedroom here, I had been worried that we’d be faced with the same sort of situation.
But this scene was nothing like that one. Gladys was still fully dressed, in the smart summer frock from earlier, with her silk stockings in place and her dainty shoes buckled. If there had been any kind of hanky-panky going on between her and Crispin, she had dressed and reapplied her lipstick afterwards. It was red and shiny, a bright gash across her pale face.
She was lying on her stomach on the floor next to the bed, with her head turned towards the single window. It looked out onto the back of the mews, where a few straggly weeds were clinging to life. Her eyes were wide open and vaguely startled under plucked, arched brows. If it hadn’t been for the pallor of her skin and the messy wound on the back of her head, she might simply have surprised herself by stumbling.
“She’s been dead less than an hour,” Tom said.
“An hour ago we were on our way to Blanton’s flat. Do you suppose, if we’d been quicker…?”
I swallowed back the wave of guilt that the question posed, and tried to be reasonable about the whole thing. “If he would have told us exactly where to go, maybe. It wasn’t our fault that we had to hunt for the place.”
I glanced at Gladys again. “Whoever did it must have been waiting for her to come home. It’s a good thing St George resisted the urge to come upstairs.”
“How do you know he did?” Tom wanted to know, and I turned to him.
“Resist, do you mean? He must have. Otherwise he’d be lying here himself, with his head bashed in, don’t you think?”
His expression didn’t change, and I added, “Surely you don’t believe?—?”
“Don’t be silly, Pippa,” Christopher said. “Crispin would never…”
He trailed off when he noticed the look on Tom’s face. “You can’t seriously think that my cousin had anything to do with this?”
“Of course not, Kit.” Tom sounded impatient. “For one thing, you both claim that he was with you last night when Montrose got it.”
“He was absolutely with us when Montrose got it,” I said firmly. “And I’m not sure I appreciate the implication.”
He didn’t say anything, and I added, “But yes. All three of us were together in Blanton’s sitting room. Crispin could not possibly have hit Montrose, nor would he have had any reason to do so. Even if Montrose planned to do an exposé on Lady Austin and the drag balls, Crispin wouldn’t have been implicated in that. Everyone knows his reputation with women.”
“He might have done it for someone else,” Tom said, and he rather ostentatiously avoided looking at Christopher as he did it.
The latter took offense anyway. “If you think I would rather someone die than have it exposed that I go to drag balls…”
“Of course you wouldn’t, Kit. But St George may not have known that.”
“Of course he knows that,” I said crossly. “He’s not stupid. And if you knew how much it annoys me to have to admit that, you wouldn’t make me do it. Besides, he would never cosh an old schoolmate over the head simply to spare Christopher embarrassment.”
“Although that’s all completely beside the point,” Christopher added, “because he was in the sitting room with us when Montrose was killed. Nor would he do…” he pointed at Gladys, “this. He may have his faults, I’m not saying he doesn’t, but he’s not the kind of man who hits women.”
“And for your information,” I said, hands on my hips and a scowl on my face, “the reason I said that he hadn’t come upstairs with her, is that her clothes are on and her lipstick intact. He must have dropped her off outside the door, or outside the mews altogether, if he couldn’t get the Hispano-Suiza to the door, and she walked the rest of the way on her own.”
“If her job was to get him here for Hutchison or Ogilvie or Rivers to talk to,” Tom said, “would she agree to that?”
