Page 15 of Evil at the Essex House (Pippa Darling Mysteries #5)

Chapter Fifteen

Hiram Schlomsky’s cab rattled up in front of the church tower at eleven on the nose. I could hear church bells tolling from all over London as the Hackney turned the corner from the bridge. The racket was loud enough to drown out the sound of the tires on the cobblestones, and practically everything else, as well. We did hear the door of the cab open and then Hiram’s voice—with his very American accent—tell the driver to wait.

I leaned out and peered over the parapet far enough to see that Hiram had left the Hackney door open while he ducked into the church, valise in hand. It was a smart move, at least if he were afraid that the cab would leave without him. The driver would have to take the time to close the door before he could take off, and that would give Hiram time to come out of the tower again before the cab vanished.

Not that it tried. There was the sound of the door opening downstairs, a few scuffing steps across the stone, and then something soft hitting the floor. A moment’s silence, possibly Hiram sending a prayer aloft that he would get his daughter back in one piece, and then he withdrew, back out the door, which he closed carefully behind him—and no wonder, if close to fifty thousand American dollars in cash was sitting below—and into the waiting cab. The Hackney’s door slammed shut behind him, and they were off, across the cobbles and under the bridge.

I turned to the other corner, where I knew Crispin was. “There’s fifty thousand dollars in a valise below our feet.”

“I have fifty thousand dollars of my own,” Crispin retorted, “and no desire to spend the next ten to fifteen years in Wormwood Scrubs.”

Well, when he put it that way…

“What do we do now?”

“I suppose we wait for someone to come and pick it up?” Crispin said. “It shouldn’t take long, I don’t think.”

Probably not. If I had fifty thousand dollars waiting for me, especially in a place where anyone could wander in and pick it up, I wouldn’t tarry, either.

Nor did the kidnappers. They must have been waiting and watching, because no sooner had the Hackney disappeared—no more than two or three minutes; just long enough for someone to get down here from on top of the bridge, say—another motorcar approached, this one from the direction of the bridge.

It was another Hackney, or looked like one. Another Austin Heavy Twelve-Four, anyway, and these days, those aren’t used for much beyond cars for hire.

The headlamps lit up the area inside the clocktower again as the car came around the bend—lit up Crispin in his corner, so his hair shone like moonlight against the shadowy brick and his shirt-breast gleamed a bright white—before it passed out of sight below the tower.

“It stopped,” Crispin murmured.

I nodded, although I didn’t think he could actually see me. Below, there were sounds to indicate that someone had opened the car door, and then there were quick steps across the cobblestones and the door opening again. A movement towards where the valise was waiting, and then the retreat. The door shut downstairs in the tower, and almost simultaneously, the Austin’s door did, as well. Crispin darted forwards, and so did I. We met at the parapet, in time to lean out and watch the top of the motorcar move away down the street towards Emblem House. As it disappeared out of sight, the nose of the Hispano-Suiza emerged from behind Denmark House, headlamps dark, and took off in pursuit.

“We might have almost made it,” Crispin muttered, watching it go and clearly wishing he was inside it along with Christopher.

“Not without being seen bursting through the door downstairs,” I told him. “Hopefully he won’t be long.”

“What if they’re driving to Surrey or Kent? We didn’t discuss what we’d do if they keep going for a while.”

No, we hadn’t. “If Christopher isn’t back in a timely manner, I suppose we could walk to the train station and take the train back across the river and go home and wait for him.”

“Not that Kit can’t think for himself,” Crispin said, “because of course he can. But if they do keep going for miles and miles, will he keep going too, or will he think of us and come back?”

I had no idea. “I don’t know that I’d want him to stop and come back for us, to be honest. It’s more important for him to figure out where the kidnappers are holed up than to rescue us, don’t you agree? We’re perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves, and while it would be uncomfortable to spend the night here, I don’t think we’d be in any danger. We can hear anyone coming up the stairs, and honestly, who would bother?”

“I usually attempt a better showing than this,” Crispin said, looking around, “when I spend the night with a girl.”

I rolled my eyes. “Let’s just sit down and wait. If he’s not back in thirty minutes, we can reassess the situation and decide whether to head to the train station. Cigarette?”

“Of course, Darling.” He fished his case out of his pocket and opened it. “Shall we perch on the balustrade on the romantic side of the tower?”

“We might as well,” I told him, as I picked a cigarette out of the case and waited for him to light it for me.

It was less than thirty minutes, but not by much, by the time we heard a motorcar pull up to the bottom of the tower again. By then, we had smoked a number of cigarettes, bickered a lot, watched the moonlight on the water, bickered and smoked some more, and checked Crispin’s pocket watch roughly every five minutes. It was almost time to do it again when the car arrived. Crispin looked at me as I looked at him.

“Kit?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Kidnappers? Hiram Schlomsky? Scotland Yard?”

“Scotland Yard?”

“Didn’t I mention that?” I blinked innocently. “Christopher and I got the distinct impression that the Schlomskys suspected us of something earlier this evening. Probably of being complicit somehow in Flossie’s kidnapping.”

“And you think they sent Scotland Yard after you?”

“Not really likely,” I admitted, “when they were adamantly opposed to involving the police in the first place. But if they happened to notice us standing up here when they came by to drop off the ransom, and they recognized me and thought you were Christopher, I wouldn’t put it past them.”

He stubbed out his fag against the balustrade. His movements were languid, in contrast to the snappy irritation in his tone. “You didn’t think it might have been courteous of you to tell me this sooner?”

“Would it have made you stay away if I had?” I followed suit, scraped the lit end of my cigarette against the stone and flipped what was left out the opening. He hadn’t said anything by the time all that was done, so I twitched a brow at him. “Shall we?”

“I suppose we’d better. Do you need a hand on the stairs?”

“I’ll hug the wall,” I told him. “Just don’t run into me from behind.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Darling.” Something about the remark must have amused him, because I could hear the smirk in his voice. “At least not without getting your permission first.”

“Well, you don’t have it. So stay back a step or two, if you would.”

I headed into the gaping maw of the staircase, trailing one hand along the stone wall on my left. The ambient light from above made it possible to see the first couple of steps, but after that it was basically the equivalent of descending into the pits of hell, except without any flames to light the way. Behind me, I could hear Crispin enter the staircase and start down, the smooth soles of his polished shoes whispering across the stone. “Twenty-six steps,” he told me. “I counted, going up.”

That had been smart of him. I hadn’t. It galled me to have to do it, but— “Thank you. That’s helpful.”

“I aim to please,” Crispin said blandly. I would have snorted, but all my attention was fixed on the impenetrable darkness in front of me, and it was hard to catch my breath enough to snort. It’s not that I’m afraid of the dark, exactly. But all the same, it was quite unnerving to head down into the stygian blackness of it with my eyes wide open and yet seeing nothing of what was in front of me.

And then the door opened and a lighter square of dark widened into a view of Tooley Street. A dark figure stood in the aperture, and I would have worried had I not recognized the voice that told us, “Get a move on, will you? I’ve been waiting forever.”

Crispin snorted behind me. “We heard you drive up, Kit. It’s been two minutes, no more.”

“Well, that’s in addition to the ten minutes it took me to get here,” Christopher said. “Anything at all might have happened while I’ve been gone.”

“They arrived somewhere?” I moved past him into the street, and started to breathe easier as soon as I could see the familiar sights of ground and sky and air around me.

“Of course they arrived somewhere,” Christopher said, turning to watch me. “Are you all right, Pippa?”

“Just glad to be somewhere where I can see my surroundings again.” I took another deep breath while Crispin came out of the tower behind me and shut the door on his way out. “We thought there was a chance that they might just keep going, and so you’d be going, too.”

“We thought you might end up in Kent,” Crispin added. “We were making plans for the night in case you didn’t come back.”

Christopher snorted. “I bet you did.” He headed for the passenger side of the Hispano-Suiza. “I assume you’d like to do the motoring, now that I’m back?”

“It’s my motorcar,” Crispin confirmed and headed for the driver’s side. “Darling?”

He opened the door and gestured for me to crawl into the back.

“Why is it that no one asks me if I want to do the motoring?” I grumbled, but I went. Crispin slid behind the wheel and Christopher made himself comfortable in the front passenger seat.

“We know what you’re like on the road,” he told me over his shoulder.

I sniffed, offended. “I’m no worse than St George.”

“Not much better, either,” Christopher said.

“I resent that,” Crispin told him, as the motor roared to life underneath us. “I’m a very capable driver, I’ll have you know.”

“So am I,” I said.

He flicked me a look, but didn’t comment, just continued, “It’s the only reason I can drive the way I do. If I were less capable, I’d be dead.”

“Tell that to the light pole you had your encounter with last year,” I informed him. “I think it would beg to differ.”

He shot me another look. “I walked away, didn’t I?”

“The Ballot didn’t.” The motorcar before the Hispano-Suiza. Dead and buried now.

He huffed. “That’s the point, Darling. I’m a good enough driver to wrap my motorcar around a light pole and walk away without a scratch.”

“Not quite without a scratch.” He had a scar above his left eye from the encounter. Really, the hypocrisy of him commenting on Wolfgang’s Schmisse was astounding.

“Besides,” I added crushingly, “that’s hardly due to your prowess, is it? A capable driver would have avoided the accident. You only walked away because you got lucky.”

Crispin sniffed in offense, but didn’t continue the conversation. Instead he turned to Christopher. “A bit of direction might be nice.”

“Of course.” Christopher looked from him to me and back. “Just go that way—” He indicated the direction in which we had seen the two motorcars disappear earlier, “and I’ll tell you where to turn.”

Crispin let the clutch out and we rolled off.

“Tell us what you saw,” I told Christopher as we proceeded down Tooley Street into Bermondsey. “We couldn’t see much at all from where we were standing.”

He nodded. “I didn’t see much more from where I was sitting. There was a Hackney cab that passed twice, and then it either came back with Mr. Schlomsky, or a different Hackney did do.”

“We noticed that, as well,” I nodded. “The first taxi could have been the kidnappers looking the place over, or it could have been Hiram getting the lay of the land before coming back to actually place the money. Unless you could see who was inside?”

Christopher said he hadn’t been able to. “Eventually one of the Hackneys stopped, and I saw Hiram duck out and into the tower with the valise. It only took a few seconds for him to drop it, and then he was back in the cab and off they went.”

“And then a few minutes later the other Hackney came,” I said.

Christopher nodded. “Or the same one. There was no way to tell them apart, really. Especially in the dark. Turn right here, Crispin.”

Crispin turned right, and asked, “Am I understanding you right, Kit, that it could all have been the same motorcar?”

“Who can tell?” Christopher said with a shrug. After a moment he added, philosophically, “It’s dark, and all black cars look the same.”

I snorted. “But you saw Hiram drop the valise, and then the Austin he was in drive away. And a few minutes later another Austin drove up, or the same one, and someone else went inside the tower and picked up the valise.”

“A young man in a tweed suit,” Christopher nodded. “Definitely not Hiram.”

“No sign of Flossie, I suppose?”

“Not that I saw,” Christopher said. “She might have been inside the motorcar, or Hiram might have been, but if so, I didn’t see her. Or them. Only the chap driving. Left here, Crispin.”

“Did you recognize him?” I asked. “The bloke who picked up the valise?”

He shot me a look over his shoulder. “How would I recognize him, Pippa? There are almost eight million people in London!”

“I thought perhaps he was someone you had seen before,” I said.

“Because I regularly spend time around kidnappers?” He shook his head. “No. I’ve never seen him before. Not to my knowledge.”

“Can you describe him, at least?”

“Young,” Christopher said. “Over twenty-five, under thirty. He was wearing a cap and he kept his head down, so I didn’t get a good look at his face. I think his hair was dark. Slow down, Crispin. The streets are getting rough.”

“I can see that,” Crispin muttered. “I’m frankly surprised you and my car made it out of here alive.”

I looked around and realized he was right. While I had been busy interrogating Christopher, we had entered a part of Southwark that wasn’t for the faint of heart. A far cry from either Sutherland House in Mayfair, or the Essex House Mansions, with its slightly less upscale but nonetheless very reputable address. Here, dilapidated tenement buildings rubbed elbows with pockmarked walls and peeling paint. Rubbish clogged the sides of the streets where nobody cared enough to pick it up, and the few people we saw kept their shoulders up and their heads down, even when they cast furtive glances at the H6.

“How much farther?” Crispin wanted to know. His hands were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. “I don’t like the way people are looking at us.”

I didn’t either, but I wasn’t about to admit it in front of him. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid, St George?”

He flicked me a look in the mirror. “Cautious, Darling. As you should be. This isn’t the sort of neighborhood where we’re welcome.”

No, it clearly wasn’t.

“I don’t know what we’ll do with the motorcar when we stop,” Christopher commented. “Up here on the right, Crispin. See the row of clapboard houses? The second one.”

Crispin eyed it. “That’s awful.”

I nodded. “There’s no Austin Twelve outside.”

“If it was a Hackney, there wouldn’t be,” Christopher pointed out. “But that was where it stopped. The man in the cap got out and went into the second clapboard house.”

We eyed it in silence from across the street. “No lights in the windows,” Crispin said.

I glanced at him. “They’re shuttered, can’t you see?”

He glanced back. “I can see the shutters, Darling. But no light coming through the slats.”

No, there wasn’t. “They may not have electric lights down here,” I said, looking around. Everything was quite dark, and lit only by the faint light of the moon, which had a difficult time penetrating the narrow street and gloom to reach us.

“I wouldn’t bother to electrify that,” Crispin said, eyeing the row of clapboard shacks. “It’s a slum.”

“People in slums deserve lights and heat, too.”

He glanced at me. “I didn’t say they didn’t, Darling. Just that I understand why no one’s bothered.”

We sat in silence a moment.

“I’m going in,” Christopher said and reached for his door.

I grabbed him by the back of his collar. “Not alone you’re not.”

He glanced at me over his shoulder. “I’m not taking you inside there, Pippa.”

“I’m not letting you go alone,” I retorted.

“I’ll take Crispin.”

We both turned to look at him. He shook his head. “That would mean leaving Philippa alone in the motorcar, and I don’t think that’s safe. She’s better off going inside with us.”

“That means leaving the motorcar alone,” Christopher pointed out. “By the time we come back out, there’s likely to be nothing left but the chassis.”

“Do we have to go inside at all?” Crispin wanted to know. “Can we not notify the police—or tell the elder Schlomskys—where the kidnappers went, and have them deal with it from here? It isn’t our jobs to track down kidnappers.”

Christopher looked at me and I looked at him. It was a reasonable suggestion, well-suited for a man who didn’t want to leave his luxury motorcar in a slum to be picked over by vultures. I thought about accusing Crispin of being cowardly again, but truthfully, I understood where he was coming from. There was no part of me that wanted to sit here, on this awful street, with an expensive motorcar, while the two of them went into the building without me.

On the other hand, there wasn’t really any part of me that wanted to go inside the building, either. Even the air smelled rank here, rancid and leathery from the tanneries, and the boarded-up windows gave the place an unfriendly air.

“We’re here,” Christopher said. “We should at least take a look before we tell Scotland Yard what we know. Maybe the kidnappers brought a note to the Savoy to let the Schlomskys know where Flossie is, and she’s sitting inside, bound and gagged, waiting to be rescued.”

It was possible. And he was right: we were here. It seemed a shame to leave without doing at least a little bit of investigating. If Flossie was inside, and we left without looking for her, I would have a hard time forgiving myself.

“We go together, then,” Crispin said. “We don’t know how many kidnappers there are, and if they’re inside, you two may be outnumbered.”

“You’re prepared to put our safety above that of your girlfriend, then?”

“My…?” He watched me pet the top of the seat, and his face cleared. “Oh. Yes, I am. The car can be replaced. You cannot.”

“Dear me,” I said. “I’m glad to know I rank above the vehicle in your estimation, at least.”

“I was referring to Kit,” Crispin said coolly, “but I suppose I might miss you too, if something happened to you.”

“Like a prickly rash, no doubt. Let’s go, then.” I gave his shoulder a nudge. “Out.”

“Grab the tire iron,” Crispin said as he reached for the door handle. “It’s on the floor by your foot.”

I reached down and scrabbled along the floor, and yes, there it was. “Taking a leaf out of Wilkins’s book?”

“It’s a tire iron, Darling,” Crispin said, and extended his hand to help me out of the car, “not a trench club. A tire iron is a perfectly natural thing to keep in a motorcar. The fact that it makes a handy weapon is secondary.”

“It’ll be nice to have, anyway,” Christopher said. He was standing beside the door on the other side of the car, watching the house across the way. “There’s no telling what we’ll find inside.”

“Do we trust Philippa with the only weapon we’ve got between us, or should one of us take it?”

“I need protection more than you do,” I said. It was a galling thing to have to point out, but a fact nonetheless. They are both more capable of defending themselves with their fists than I am. Not that either of them, to my knowledge, has ever been in the habit of getting into fist fights. But as Christopher had pointed out, we had no idea what we’d be walking into, or who may be waiting inside the clapboard house.

“I can swing harder than you,” Crispin retorted, “if it comes to that.”

That was true. If someone had to swing the tire iron at someone else’s head, it might be better to have it in the hands of the one of us who was the most capable of cracking a skull.

Or one of the two: Christopher would be no less capable, I thought, at least physically, but he eyed the tire iron with revulsion, so the idea of having to use it clearly didn’t appeal to him the way it did to Crispin.

“There’s a torch in the glove box,” Crispin told him. “You’d better have that, Kit. And give the tire iron here, Darling.”

I handed it to him while Christopher fished the torch out of the glove compartment. He flicked it on to make sure it worked, before hefting it in one hand and swinging it through the air.

“That’ll do to crack a kneecap or two, if need be. Let’s go.”

He started across the narrow street without waiting for an answer. Crispin and I exchanged a look and followed.