Conspiracy Theory(128)

“No, there’s no way to know that. If the secret service had already arrived in force, we’d be in better shape, but as it is we have to rely on Tony Ross’s security, which was goodish but not really what I’d call professional. Also, it wasn’t blanket, and wouldn’t be until the federal officers got there. That means that the shooting happened and there was a window of about three minutes when all kinds of things could have happened.”

“Three minutes isn’t very much time.”

“It is if you just want to step back across a gate you’re not very far from, especially if the guard was distracted.”

“Was he?”

“Well,” Gregor said, “according to Margiotti, he wasn’t. The guard says he wasn’t. Which is what the guard is going to say. And I haven’t talked to him myself. However, I do have something else here—the times people say they came in.”

“And that would be accurate?”

“No,” Gregor said drily, “that would indicate that there was, at the time of the shooting, a fairly heavy load of traffic coming through that gate. I thought rich people were supposed to be fashionably late.”

“Really rich people are never late,” Bennis said. “Punctuality is the courtesy of kings.” She picked up the list. “All these people were there? Why didn’t I see them?”

“They weren’t there, as in at the party,” Gregor said. “They’d either just come in at the gate or were on their way down the drive. That’s my point. If you were really going to control who came in and who came out of that place on the night in question, you didn’t need a guard on the gate. You needed six, and you needed a couple of backup people to police the perimeter.”

“Oh, Gregor, for God’s sake. They’ve got one of those fancy Victorian gates out there, wrought iron with the arrow spikes on the top for decoration. There’s no way to climb them except maybe to throw a mountain-climbing rig over the top horizontal bars and pull yourself up, but if you tried it you’d probably pull the gate over. It wasn’t meant—”

“To protect against serious danger, I know,” Gregor said. “You still would have needed some people policing the perimeter, because you have no idea the kinds of things people can think up to get around security.”

“Well, did anybody think of anything this time?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. You forget, the problem isn’t just with the murderer. Lots of other people might have had reason not to want to be at that place in the middle of a police investigation, or what was going to become a police investigation. Even perfectly innocent people are often very anxious to stay out of the way of the police or to make sure their names aren’t connected with a scandal or a crime, even as innocent bystanders.”

“Does it matter that somebody might have got in or out of the gates?”

“It depends on how the prosecutor presents the case in court,” Gregor said. “A rich man with a rich man’s lawyer might be able to argue that the place was a sieve and for all we know the real murderer could have been climbing over the gate and on his way to Canada while the Lower Merion police were annoying his client. Which, of course, was the reason for all this incredible nonsense. I should have realized that the times didn’t match up.”

“What times?”

“Let me ask you something,” Gregor said. “Look at this list. Is there anybody on it you don’t know?”

Gregor sat back as Bennis took the paper back again, and frowned.

“Well,” she said. “It all depends on what you mean by ‘know.’ I mean, there’s you and me. Obviously, I know us. And there’s Charlotte and Tony. And I know them. Knew them. Ryall Wyndham. I know him slightly. Margaret and Hamilton Cadwallader. Lee and George Foldenveldt. Alison and William Pomfret. Virginia Mace Whitlock. David Alden. Martin Cameron. Where were all these people? I don’t remember any of them at the time Tony died, and as for later—”

“As for later, there were a lot of people milling around and you weren’t paying too much attention,” Gregor said. “Most of the people on that list had just come through the gates and were headed down the drive to the party. Do you know them?”

“Slightly,” Bennis said. “You know what I mean. I’ve been to parties where they’ve been to parties. I ran across most of them while I was growing up. God, the Main Line doesn’t change much, does it? I never did understand how all those people could stand it to see nobody else but each other. I mean, you’d think you’d get bored seeing the same faces day after day without a break for fifty years.”