“He doesn’t always think straight, you know?”
Clearly. Especially not under the current circumstances. “Could he have killed Montrose, if he thought Montrose was going to expose Rivers and perhaps get him arrested?”
Hutchison’s face closed up. “You’d have to ask him,” he said again.
I waited, and after a moment, he added, seemingly reluctantly, “He’s not much of a fighter. That’s why he likes to escape.”
I nodded encouragingly, showing him that I could certainly relate to that.
Not personally, of course. I have no problem being combative. Some people—whose names might be Crispin Astley—would say I’m too combative for my own good.
Or rather, it’s probably Christopher who would say it. Crispin doesn’t seem to mind my antagonistic attitude, or at least he gives as good as he gets. And Christopher, for all that he’s much less aggressive than I am, has no escapist streak, either. It’s Crispin who likes to drown his sorrows in women, alcohol, and fast motorcars.
“Difficult home life?” I suggested.
That’s Crispin’s problem, after all. If his family—or his father—would just let him do as he wants, and would let him marry the woman he thinks would make him happy, even if she isn’t a suitable wife for the future Duke of Sutherland, he’d have no need to escape.
Perhaps the same was true for Ronald Blanton.
Hutchison eyed me narrowly. “What do you know about it?”
“Not much,” I admitted readily. “My parents are dead. But I have a few people in my life who have a habit of escaping into things that aren’t necessarily good for them, and in at least one case, it’s a parental problem.”
While in Francis’s situation, of course, it went back to the war.
Which put Blanton’s and Crispin’s indulgences in perspective, when I thought about it. What, after all, did they have to escape from, compared to the memories of death and destruction that keeps Francis up at night?
“Ronnie’s father is an arse,” Hutchison said. “If he wasn’t such a tosser, Ronnie wouldn’t be the way he is.”
That might very well be true. If Uncle Harold wasn’t the way he is, chances are that Crispin would be different, as well.
Then again, Crispin is responsible for his own actions, and the choices that lead to them. And so was Ronald Blanton. His father surely wouldn’t actually want Ronnie to be sniffing cocaine at every opportunity. Ronnie himself had made that choice. In exactly the same way that Uncle Harold didn’t want Crispin to carry on the way he did. Crispin chose to do it. Quite possibly in order to punish or otherwise simply annoy his father, but it was nonetheless his own doing, and not Uncle Harold’s.
“We’ll just carry on,” Christopher said into the silence, “and let you do the same. Miss Long lives in Ellery Mews, you said?”
Hutchison nodded. “Number 13. With a green door.”
We thanked him for the help, even though it was information we already had, and took our leave, while Hutchison went off to prepare himself to rescue Ronnie Blanton.
“What do you think?”I asked Christopher when we were back on the ground level and on our way back towards the Knightsbridge tube station. “Would Hutchison’s need to take care of Blanton extend to committing murder for him?”
Christopher glanced over at me. “I shouldn’t wonder. He seemed quite protective of Blanton. And quite upset about his father.”
I nodded. “He showed no sign of knowing that anything had happened to Gladys, though.”
Christopher shook his head. “But he could just be a good liar. He was alone in the flat. That means he could have left and gone to Belgravia and come back without anyone knowing. Ogilvie was gone, and he said there was a back entrance he could have used so the doorman wouldn’t have seen him.”
“It was interesting that he denied dropping Gladys off at our flat this morning. She said he had.”
“One of them was lying,” Christopher agreed. “But it might have been Gladys. If she wanted Crispin to give her a lift back.”
“There was no need to mention Hutchison if it wasn’t true, though. She might have simply said, ‘I came here on my own.’ It would have accomplished the same thing.”
“That’s true.”
“So why would Hutchison lie about it? And if he didn’t want to admit to having done it, why not make sure to tell her not to mention it?”
“No idea,” Christopher said. “I’m not sure why it would even matter. Although, if he did kill Gladys, he might not want to admit to having left the Albert Hall Mansions. If he didn’t leave, he couldn’t have done it, after all.”
