“Getting along well,” I said sourly, “were they?”
“They certainly looked like they did.” She eyed me for a second before she turned her attention back to Tom. “If he did something to her, he went from happy and laughing to murderous in very few minutes.”
“It happens,” Tom said, although he must have felt both Christopher and me staring daggers at him, because he added, “yes, yes. I know. He wouldn’t have.”
“No,” Christopher said tightly, “he wouldn’t.”
“And you didn’t see anyone else approach the place?”
The young woman shook her head. “But as I said, I wasn’t keeping watch, and most of the morning, I was on the other side. Someone could easily have come and gone, and I wouldn’t have noticed.”
Tom nodded. “Thank you for your time.”
He turned to walk away, but halted when she said, “Is this… Was she… Do I have to worry about…?”
Someone attacking her, she meant. If someone had attacked Gladys, were the other young women in the area likely to get attacked, too?
I shook my head. “Not at all,” Tom confirmed. “It was personal, and related to something that happened last night. Nothing to do with you or anyone else. You don’t have to worry.”
She looked relieved.
“If you remember anything else, or you happen to notice someone coming around after we’re finished here today, I would appreciate if you’d let me know.” He pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to her.
She looked at it. “Detective Sergeant Gardiner?”
Tom nodded.
“A pleasure to meet you.” She dimpled at him under the cloche, and next to me, Christopher’s eyes narrowed. “Are you headed out? I’ll walk with you, if you don’t mind.” She turned towards the entrance to the mews, and Tom did the same. As we fell in behind them, I reached down and took Christopher’s hand. It was stiff in mine for the first second, and then he relaxed.
“It’s going to be all right,” I told him.
He glanced down at me, a flash of blue. “I feel like I should be the one telling you that, Pippa. You seem to be more worried about Crispin than I am.”
That hadn’t been what I was referring to—I was talking about Tom, currently striding along ahead of us, in pleasant conversation with a woman he’d just met—but now that he mentioned it…
“Aren’t you worried?”
He shrugged. “I suppose I am. A little. Although unlike you, I know that he wouldn’t do something like this.”
“I know that, too, Christopher!”
“Do you?” He eyed me. “Because it’s just over a month since you were convinced, and tried to convince me, that he had murdered not just Grimsby, but Grandfather.”
“That was different,” I said crossly. “It made sense. I made a very good case for why he might have done that. There were motives and means and opportunities and everything. There’s no reason at all why he would have done this.”
“If she came on to him and wouldn’t let go…?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Christopher,” I said. “She wasn’t a succubus. It’s not as if he doesn’t know how to extricate himself from women when he’s done with them, you know. I heard him let Laetitia Marsden down at the Dower House last month. She kept pushing him to marry her, and he made it very clear that he wouldn’t.”
“I didn’t hear that,” Christopher said, his tone interested.
“You were asleep,” I answered. “Or unconscious. Whichever that overlarge dose of Veronal did to you. I was upstairs on the landing, and he was talking to Lady Laetitia in your room. Besides, you know what happened with Johanna before she died. He turned her down flat, too. If Gladys did anything he didn’t like, he would have dealt with it, and her, and not by killing her.”
Christopher nodded, and I added, “And unlike Tom, who wasn’t there, you and I know perfectly well that he had nothing to do with what happened to Freddie Montrose. He was with us, and neither of us killed Montrose. It makes sense that whoever did that, did this.”
“Because Gladys knew what happened,” Christopher said.
I nodded. “I’m not concerned that Tom is going to lose his mind and arrest St George. I am—or at least I was, before we ran into Tom’s new best friend?—”
