“She may not have had a choice,” Christopher answered. “Crispin is nothing if not stubborn. And he has good reasons for not wanting to toy with loads of women at the moment.”
I snorted, because it seemed to me that he toyed with plenty of them. However— “The girl he wants to marry? I suppose so. Although it didn’t stop him from flirting with Gladys last night.”
“There’s a big step from flirtation to what you’re suggesting,” Tom said. “Fine. I shall take your word for it that he had no opportunity to attack Montrose last night, and therefore no motive to attack Gladys Long today. But I will have to track him down to talk to him.”
I couldn’t imagine Christopher having a problem with that. I certainly didn’t. In fact, if I could have snapped my fingers and had Crispin materialize in front of me right now, I would have done it. While I believed what I had told Tom—if St George had come upstairs with Gladys with the idea that they would share her bed, chances are she would have been more disheveled than she appeared—it was not impossible that he had come upstairs with her for another reason, and the other reason was the person who had killed her. If she had told him that Dominic Rivers was waiting, for example, Crispin might have decided to take the opportunity to talk to Rivers to find out what the other man knew about Montrose’s death.
And then there was the possibility that not just Rivers, but Hutchison and/or Ogilvie had been here, and between them, they had killed Gladys and overpowered Crispin, and then taken him with them when they left.
Did I think that that had happened? Perhaps not. It was much more likely that he had simply dropped Gladys off at the door and gone on his way. But it wasn’t impossible that something had gone wrong. So if I could have waved my magic wand and conjured him in front of us at that moment, I would have done it, if only so we could all be assured that he was in one piece.
“I shall have to make inquiries,” Tom said thoughtfully, “after I call in the Yard. I’ll have to go up and down the mews and knock on doors, I suppose. See what, if anything, anyone might have seen.”
He turned to me and Christopher with sudden purpose. “You two had better make yourselves scarce. I’ll walk you to the entrance to the mews and see if I can flag down a constable, while you go on home. There’s no need for you to stick around, and much better if you don’t.”
Christopher opened his mouth, presumably to argue, and I took his arm. “Of course.”
Tom gestured to the door, and I headed that way, towing Christopher behind me. Downstairs, Tom secured the front door as best he could without the key, before he led the way up the mews in the direction we had come.
We hadn’t gone more than a few steps before a door opened on the other side of the narrow roadway, and a young woman a few years older than the two of us—around Tom’s age, give or take a year—appeared.
She was dressed in the current fashion, a drop-waist dress and strap shoes, with a cloche hat pulled down over black curls. A pair of dark eyes surveyed us from under the brim.
“Good afternoon,” Tom said, nudging the brim of his hat. “Have you seen the young woman who lives across the mews today? Miss Long?”
The neighbor peered past him to the house, and then looked at Christopher and me. “Heought to be able to tell you that,” she said, nodding at him. “Dropped her off about an hour ago, didn’t he?”
“Did he?” Tom shot a glance over his shoulder, a warning to us—or to Christopher, specifically, I suppose—not to speak. “An hour ago, you said?”
“About that.” She put her hands on her hips and eyed him. “What’s this about, then? Who are you?”
Tom told her who he was, complete with a flashing of credentials. “We’re actually trying to find the young man you saw. He didn’t come back after taking her home.”
The young lady gave Christopher another look. “Twins, are they?” She didn’t wait long enough for any of us to give her an answer, which was just as well, since they’re not. “He didn’t stay long. Walked her to the door, had to be convinced to come upstairs, it looked like, and then came back out a few minutes later, looking like he couldn’t get away fast enough.”
I wanted to look at Christopher, but decided it would probably be best if I didn’t.
Of course, just because he’d been in a hurry didn’t mean he’d killed her and was running away from the crime scene. She might have thrown herself at him, and he had wanted to get away from her before she gave pursuit.
That would not be quite in character, admittedly—I had yet to see St George run away from any woman, dead or alive—but if he was serious about this girl he claimed to be in love with, maybe it had taken effort to resist Gladys’s attempts at seduction.
Or he might have watched someone else bash Gladys over the head when she walked through the door, and he’d run away before he could get bashed, too.
Tom must have followed that same train of thought, because by the time I came back to the conversation, he had inquired whether the young woman had seen anyone else go into Gladys’s place today, with her or alone.
“She was brought to her door by a young man early this morning,” the neighbor said, and went on to describe a man in evening dress who might have been Dominic Rivers, Nigel Hutchison, or Graham Ogilvie. Blanton’s hair was too light to be called dark, even in the twilight before dawn, and of course both Crispin and Christopher are fair-haired. Not that either of them had brought Gladys home this morning. “He waited for the light to go on upstairs, and then he went back up the mews. Parked his car at the entrance, no doubt.”
Tom nodded. “And you haven’t seen anyone else come or go?”
“I saw her leave,” the young woman said. “Just before eleven, that was. She walked out by herself. When she came back, she was with the young man.” She shot a look at Christopher. “The twin.”
“And nobody came by while she was out?”
“Nobody I saw,” the neighbor told him. “But I wasn’t keeping an eye on the door. I hear it bang sometimes, and if I’m near the window, I’ll look out. But if I’m at the back of the house, then I won’t hear it and won’t look out.” She stuck her hands on her hips. “Are you going to tell me what’s happened?”
Tom hesitated, but considering that there would soon be other detectives, not to mention a mortuary car, showing up across the way, I assume he figured there was no reason to keep mum. “She’s dead. We’re trying to figure out how many people had access to her flat this morning.”
“I only saw the one.” She glanced at Christopher, and then at me. And she must have seen something in one or both of our faces, because she added, “But I was in the kitchen most of the morning. Any number of people could have come and gone through the front door if they were quiet about it. I only heard the young lady and gentleman—your brother,” she nodded at Christopher, “because they were laughing.”
