Wardrop inclined his head slightly and went out. David Alden watched him go as if it really mattered to him. Then he shook his head slightly and turned his attention back to Gregor.
“Excuse me. My head is full of wool. We were in the same room for a while, you know, the night Tony was killed.”
“I think I was in the room with half of social Philadelphia.”
“Oh, no. It only felt like that. Most people weren’t even close to arriving. People are like that. They like to be late. I’ve never understood it. Tony didn’t either, but then, when the person waiting for you is the king of Saudi Arabia, being late is not an option, even if you’re Tony Ross. You keep company with one of the Hannaford girls, don’t you?”
“Ah,” Gregor said, thinking that Bennis would climb the walls to hear herself described that way. Or maybe she wouldn’t. He had to wonder why Ben-nis herself didn’t make him nervous the way the people in this house did. “Yes,” he said finally.
“Maybe I should say the last of the Hannaford girls. God, that was an awful thing. I’m sorry. I’m dancing around the subject. You came here to talk about Charlotte. Can you have a drink? Or is it true that policemen aren’t allowed to drink on duty?”
“I’m not a policeman,” Gregor said.
“No, of course not. You’re a—consultant. I never know what that word means, even in business.”
“In this case, it means you don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to,” Gregor said. “Most of the consulting I do does not concern talking with witnesses, although I like to be able to do it when I’m able. Usually I stick to patterns of criminality and the structure of investigations. If you’d prefer not to, though, nobody can compel you.”
“Hardly. I’d much rather talk to you than to them. Most of us would. You are keeping company with one of the Hannaford girls. We won’t seem like alien life-forms to you. With them it’s like talking to zookeepers, sometimes.”
Gregor decided to say nothing at all about his recent reverie on the alien-ness of people like David Alden and houses like this one. “You’ll have to talk to them eventually. They’ve got things to do at the moment, but they will insist. And anything you say to me here, I will report.”
“Yes, of course.” David waved it away. “I know that. I don’t object to talking, although my lawyer will probably have a fit when he hears I have. They don’t like you to talk to anybody, no matter how innocent a bystander you might be. The point is one of approach, and of understanding. It’s very easy to fall under suspicion for behaving in an unorthodox way when there’s nothing unorthodox in the way you’re behaving. It’s just a different set of customs, and expectations.”
“Fair enough,” Gregor agreed. “I don’t really know that I understand the customs and expectations any better than you do, though. I came in because I’ve been thinking about a piece of information I received from someone a little while ago. She said that all of you, all the people connected to the ball last week, I suppose—I should have pinned it down, but at the time, it didn’t seem important—that all of you belong to some kind of shooting club—”
“Oh, not all of us,” David Alden said quickly, “but quite a few, yes. Marksmanship practice. That kind of thing. A lot of us took it up as a sport when we were children.”
“Children with rifles?”
“Supervised, yes, of course, why not? It was offered as a team sport when I was in school, starting in about third form—fifth grade, I think. When we were ten years old.”
“And you did this?” Gregor said. “You belonged to a marksmanship team when you were ten?”
“Absolutely. It was that or baseball in the spring, and I’ve never been able to stand baseball.”
“Did your family insist you play sports?”
“My family?” David looked blank. “Oh, no, although it’s expected of everybody, even now, that you’ll participate in athletics in some way. Squash. Handball. It keeps you in shape. It was the school that insisted, though, of course. There were two hours at the end of every day and everybody had to take part in sports. I don’t suppose it was the most comfortable thing for people who weren’t good at it.”
Gregor thought it sounded like hell on earth. “So you learned to shoot early. Did you learn to shoot well?”
“Very well,” David said drily. “I was champion of my prep school and my college teams.”
“Are you still that good? Have you kept up with it?”