Hutchison eyed us both for a moment in silence. “Wouldn’t you rather not know?”
“I would rather it hadn’t happened at all,” I said honestly. “I feel terrible about it.”
He sighed. “Believe me, so do I. I had nothing against Freddie Montrose. We went to school together. We were friends, of a sort.”
After a moment, he added, “Of course, the fact that he—an Honorable, of all things—chose to go to work for that awful tabloid and dig up dirt on all his friends… well, it was difficult to reconcile that with friendship. But I certainly didn’t want him dead.”
“Who did?”
He glanced at me. “I don’t know.”
It was impossible to say whether he was telling the truth or not. He looked and sounded like he was telling the truth, but if he had killed Montrose, he had every incentive for not admitting it.
“How can you not know?” Christopher asked. “You were there.”
“So were you. And you don’t know.”
“We got there after it happened,” I said. “We were still in the sitting room when Montrose was hit.”
He eyed me. “Well, so was I. By the time I got to the butler’s pantry, he was on the floor, bleeding.”
Again, it was impossible to tell whether it was true or not. It might have been. Or he might have been shielding whoever had killed Montrose. There was just no way to know.
“What happened after we left last night? Or this morning?”
“We cleaned up,” Hutchison said. “Wiped the blood off the floor, cleaned the rolling pin in the sink—couldn’t get rid of that; Dobbins would notice—but we took the dirty towels with us when we left.”
“And did what with them?”
“Left them in a rubbish bin halfway between here and Mayfair,” Hutchison said. “We put Ronnie to bed—he had crashed by then—while Rivers took Gladys home. And Gram and I came back here.”
And went to bed, I assumed. I hoped they’d spent a restless night, although to look at Nigel Hutchison now, with his rosy cheeks and bright eyes, that didn’t seem likely.
“And you really don’t know where Ogilvie went this morning?” Christopher asked, and Hutchison turned to him.
“You would have to ask him.”
“He didn’t tell you where he was going?” Or did Hutchison just not want to tell us?
“We don’t live in each other’s pockets,” Hutchison said. “He said, ‘I’m going out for a while, Hutch,’ and he left. I was still in bed.”
“So he left early?”
“Early enough, considering how late we got in. Why so many questions?”
Wasn’t it obvious? I was attempting to determine who had had the opportunity to kill Gladys Long.
But because we hadn’t mentioned Gladys’s death, or the fact that we knew about it, I was severely limited in what I could do.
“Just curious,” I said, and Hutchison nodded. “So you’ve been home alone.”
“Most of the day, yes. I was thinking I might go by Ronnie’s place and see how he’s holding up. You said you saw him earlier. How was he?”
“Rough,” Christopher said. “It’s been a while since he’s had a fix, and it shows.”
Hutchison rolled his eyes. “What happened yesterday probably scared Dom off, and now he won’t come back. I guess I’ll have to go and deal with it.”
“Is there a reason Blanton can’t deal with it himself?” fell out of my mouth, and Hutchison glanced at me.
