Crispin shook his head, but then seemed to think better of it. “There was a red Morris Bullnose parked down the street. Ronnie Blanton drives one.”
“What do Nigel Hutchison and Graham Ogilvie drive? And Dominic Rivers?”
Crispin thought about it. “I have no idea how Dom gets around. He shows up out of a bottle, like a genie. When I see Hutchison and Gram, they’re usually with Ronnie in his motorcar.”
“You and Nigel Hutchison were at Cambridge together.”
Tom slid smoothly into the next line of questioning, as if it were merely small-talk. To further the impression, he stopped looming and took a seat on the chair on the other side of the table. Now that things had calmed down a little, Christopher took me by the arm and pulled me over to the Chesterfield, where we sat down side by side.
Crispin watched for a moment before he turned back to Tom. “That’s correct.”
“What about Ronald Blanton and Graham Ogilvie?”
“Gram went to university somewhere in Scotland,” Crispin said. “Aberdeen, Glasgow, maybe even Edinburgh.”
“And Blanton?”
“He might have been at Cambridge, but if he was, I don’t remember him. I wasn’t close to Hutch either, if it comes to that, but at least I remember him. But it’s a big place, isn’t it? I didn’t know everyone, not even the ones in my own form. Do you remember Ronnie Blanton?”
“I was a few years ahead of you,” Tom said mildly, “but no, I don’t. I barely remember you, and it was only because I already knew you. I don’t remember Nigel Hutchison at all, and for all I know, both Blanton and Ogilvie could have been there.”
“Montrose was,” I interjected. “A year or two ahead of Crispin. Do you remember him?”
Tom shot me a look. “Now that you mention it, no. But those of us who were older and had been through the war tended to keep to ourselves.”
And small wonder. The idea of Tom getting up to the kinds of immature antics that Crispin had undoubtedly done, was laughable.
“Did Gladys attend university?” Tom wanted to know, and Crispin looked at him for a moment in silence. I could practically see the wheels inside his head turn. One of the more attractive things about Crispin, if I were to admit that such things exist, was the way his mind worked. He’s remarkably quick to catch on to things, whether said or merely implied. Or even jealously guarded.
“She didn’t attend Cambridge, if that’s what you mean. But no, I don’t think she did.”
“Do you remember the storming of the gates?”
Crispin made a face. “That awful event at Newnham College after the vote in -21? Of course I do.”
“Were you there?”
He turned to look at me, and it took a second for him to respond. “At Newnham College that evening? No, Darling. I don’t terrorize women in their beds.”
I rolled my eyes, and a corner of his mouth turned up. After a second, he added, a bit reluctantly, “I was part of the crowd in King’s Parade when Reverend Hart said to ‘go tell Newnham and Girton.’ But I didn’t fancy being sent down, so I went up to my rooms instead of to Newnham with the others.”
“Did any of the others go?” Tom wanted to know, and Crispin turned back to him.
“Any of the crowd we’ve been talking about? Not Hutchison, certainly. He had a sister at Newnham, if memory serves. But Freddie Montrose did, although I’m sure it was more for the news value than because he cared about the verdict. He wrote for The Granta. I remember he got in a bit of trouble for an editorial later that month.”
“One of the editorials trying to justify the whole thing as a prank?” I asked, outraged, and he shot me a look.
“Yes. One of those.”
And here I had rather enjoyed Montrose’s company for the few hours that I had known him. I made a face. “I hope he got sent down.”
“Now that you mention it,” Crispin said, “I think he probably was.”
He turned back to Tom. “Why all the questions? I assumed Monty was killed because he was spying on Dominic Rivers.”
“Doesn’t everyone in your set know that Rivers is a dope dealer?”
“Of course they do,” Crispin said. “But that doesn’t mean that people like Ronnie Blanton or Gladys want him to be arrested. Or that they want to be featured in the press as addicts themselves. They’re—” he made a face, “theywere, I guess, in Gladys’s case—dependent on family money and parental good-will to stay in Town and live in the manner to which they are accustomed.”
