And if he wasn’t quiet, he’d wake up Uncle Harold, and then the fat would truly be in the fire. And at that point we could probably forget about spending the night, too.
Tom muttered something—it was probably, “Did, too!”—and Christopher shot him an hostile look before turning back to Crispin, with a calming hand on the latter’s arm. “She’s right, old bean. None of us think you did it.”
“Hedoes!” Crispin snarled, pointing at Tom.
“I promise you he doesn’t. Not really.” I shot Tom a look that told him he had better not disagree with me, or something painful would happen to him. “He just wanted to see your reaction. He knows better than to think you would kill someone.”
“I would killhim,” Crispin said viciously, “with pleasure right now!”
“Not something you want to say to a policeman,” Tom told him blandly, while I tried to implement what I thought were calming strokes on Crispin’s back. He twitched irritably.
“But fine,” Tom added. “Convince me you didn’t do it.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Crispin threw his hands up in the air and dislodged my arm while he was at it. “And stop patting me, for heaven’s sake, Darling; I’m not five years old with a splinter!”
I huffed. “Fine.” To hell with him. “I was only trying to help.”
“Next time—” Crispin began, looking at me down the length of his nose, which was quite the feat when he was sitting on the chair and I was on the arm of it. But then he seemed to think better of what he had been planning to say, and added, “Never mind.”
Christopher muttered something, and Crispin shot him a sour look.
“Yes,” he told Tom, “I was there. Of course I was there. Kit and Darling both saw me leave with her. I suppose I could lie and say I dropped her off at the entrance to the mews—she lives in a mews flat, down in Belgravia…”
Tom nodded. “I wouldn’t advise you to lie about it. You were seen going into her place?—”
“Had to be convinced to go upstairs, the neighbor said,” I added, and Tom shot me a look.
“—and then you were seen coming out ten minutes later. Looking like you couldn’t get away fast enough, was the expression, I believe.”
He flicked me a look, and I made a face. That had indeed been the way the neighbor had described it. And it painted quite an ugly picture.
“I feel like I’m back in Dorset,” Crispin muttered. “Last month I was supposed to have strangled Johanna de Vos in the five minutes between the time I came in from the garden and the time I entered the room I shared with Kit. At least you’re giving me twice as much time to get the job done this time.”
“She wasn’t—” I began, and subsided when Tom glanced at me.
Crispin shot me a look too, but when I didn’t say anything else, he went on. “She wanted me to stay and… uh… make her feel better.”
Tom’s lips twitched. “Petting, dope, or both?”
Crispin flushed a deep pink that was frankly laughable considering his reputation. “For God’s sake, Gardiner—” He shot me an agonized look.
“She knows what you get up to,” Tom told him, while Christopher added, “She’s under no illusions about you, I’m afraid, Crispin.”
“Figures,” Crispin muttered with a scowl. “Fine. If I have to talk about it, then… both, I suppose. The dope was a given. The rest was implied, but I didn’t stay to find out the details.”
“And she was alive and well when you left?”
“Of course she was alive and well! If I went around murdering all the women who make indecent propositions to me, England would be littered with corpses.”
“Excuse you,” I muttered, and he arched a brow my way.
“I thought you were under no illusions?”
“I’m not. But there’s no need for you to flaunt it, is there?”
“The nice policeman asked, Darling.” He smirked. The chance to bicker seemed to have restored some of his self-possession.
“Stop flirting,” Tom ordered irritably, and I turned a look of outrage on him. Next to me, Crispin did the same. We both had our mouths open to explain, hotly, that we were certainly not doing anything remotely like flirting when Tom went on. “So you left. Did you see anyone you knew on your way out of the mews?”
