“Pardon me?”
“Get in the car,” Tom reiterated.
“Why? Where are you taking us?”
“To Wiltshire,” Tom said. “You’re both standing here worrying, and I must speak to St George anyway. He was the last person seen leaving Gladys Long’s home this afternoon, and as such?—”
As such, he was a suspect. He had to be.
“Surely you don’t think—” I began, dismayed, but desisted when Christopher nudged me.
“Just climb into the back of the motorcar, Pippa. If he’s willing to take us with him, don’t you think we ought to go?”
Perhaps we ought. Or rather, we certainly ought to go. If I had had a motorcar of my own, I would have been halfway to Wiltshire in it myself by now.
“It’ll be quite late by the time we arrive…” I demurred.
“So we’ll prevail on Mrs. Mason to put us up for the night,” Christopher said. “It’s not as if Sutherland Hall doesn’t have plenty of empty bedrooms. Although if she refuses—or if Uncle Harold does—we’ll drive to Beckwith Place and have Mother do it. She won’t mind.”
If we turned up at the doors to Beckwith Place past midnight, begging for shelter because Uncle Harold had turned us away, I didn’t imagine Aunt Roz would be exactly pleased—neither with the late hour of our arrival or with Uncle Harold—but yes, Christopher was most likely right: she would take us in and prepare rooms for us. And Beckwith Place wasn’tthatfar from Sutherland Hall.
“Fine,” I said, and crawled into the backseat of the Crossley after which Christopher climbed into the front seat next to Tom. “But only because I really am worried.”
“We both are,” Christopher told me and shut the door before nodding to Tom.
Three quarters of an hour later,we had put London behind us for the upper parts of Surrey, and Tom had updated us on the investigation as it stood.
“There was nothing in Miss Long’s flat to point to any culprit other than St George. The?—”
“What do you mean,” Christopher interrupted, “other thanCrispin? Surely you don’t think that Crispin?—”
“He was there,” Tom said. “He was seen leaving the premises at around the time that Miss Long died. And he seems to have vanished. That’s a sign of guilt, if ever there was one.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told him. “You know as well as I do that he’d never do something like that. If he was going to kill someone, it would be me, not Gladys Long.”
Christopher opened his mouth, presumably to protest, and I carried on as if I hadn’t noticed. “And he wouldn’t bash her over the head. It would be so very easy for someone who knew her to make Gladys Long’s death look like an accident. All anyone would have to do, would be to give her an overdose of something.”
I waited politely, but when neither of them spoke up, I added, “All her friends surely knew that she took dope. Everyone in Blanton’s flat last night knew it. Crispin certainly knew, probably before last night. He spoke of it as if it was commonly known. If he had wanted her dead, he could have joined her in a spot of cocaine, made sure she got more than was good for her, and left her there, with the dope. And voila, accidental overdose. Or even suicide, if someone wanted to pin Montrose’s murder on her.”
Tom still didn’t protest, so I went on, “As we saw yesterday, she was certainly amenable to taking dope from Dominic Rivers. She might have been equally amenable to taking it from someone else. Certainly from St George; she was cuddling up to him all last night, and she did her best to cut Flossie Schlomsky dead this morning. If he offered her cocaine, she would have trusted him and taken it. And he’s not stupid, so he’d know all this. If for some reason he wanted Gladys dead, he would have done it in a way where he didn’t look guilty. He would certainly have made sure that no one saw him coming or going from her place.”
“That’s if it was premeditated,” Tom said. “If it wasn’t…”
“If it wasn’t, things must have gone from laughing and joking to murderous in a hurry. You heard what your new friend said. They looked happy when they went into the flat.”
“So what’s your explanation, then?” Tom wanted to know.
“I think it’s pretty obvious, don’t you? One of the four men in the flat last night—the four who were there in addition to Christopher and Crispin, and of course Montrose—took her home this morning. Both Blanton and Hutchison gave us her address, or at least directions for how to find her, and if Hutchison knew where she lived, Ogilvie would have done, as well. And if Rivers doesn’t allow people to come to him, but he comes to them, then he probably knew, too.”
“I’ll accept that Ronald Blanton, Nigel Hutchison, Graham Ogilvie, and Dominic Rivers all knew where Miss Long lived,” Tom said.
“One of them killed Montrose, and Gladys Long might have known who.”
Tom nodded. “Seeing as she’s now dead, and not by her own hand, it isn’t likely that she was the one who killed Montrose, I suppose.”
No, it really wasn’t. Christopher was shaking his head, too.
“She was a dope addict,” I said, “which made her perhaps less than stable. She might have gotten jittery and wanted to confess. She went to see St George this morning, perhaps of her own volition. She told him that Hutchison had dropped her off, but Hutchison denied it. If he, or one of the others, thought that she was waffling and might give them away, that would be a reason to get rid of her.”
