Page 16 of Evil at the Essex House (Pippa Darling Mysteries #5)

Chapter Sixteen

The door was just as old and wooden as the rest of the house, and didn’t fit into the frame any too well. Christopher reached for the handle, but stopped halfway there. “Better not. There may be fingerprints.”

“Use your handkerchief on the knob before you turn it,” I suggested. “At least your fingerprints won’t be on it that way, even if you smudge whatever is already there.”

Christopher glanced around—there was no one in sight but the three of us; in fact, this end of the street appeared abandoned—before he lifted a foot and kicked the door just beside the handle.

“That’s one way to do it,” Crispin muttered.

Christopher must have expected more resistance than he got, however, because the door swung in with no problem—it must have been unlatched as well as unlocked—and he stumbled over the threshold and into a dark hallway.

We all froze while we waited to see what would happen: Christopher inside the house, and Crispin and I on the stoop. When a few seconds had passed without anyone appearing to ask us what on earth we thought we were doing, Christopher beckoned. “Come along, then, if you’re coming inside.”

I cast one last look up and down the narrow street—empty—before following. Crispin did the same, except he shot an apologetic look at his motorcar before he shut the door behind us, plunging us yet again into stygian blackness. There was a click , and then Christopher moved the torch slowly from side to side.

Crispin wrinkled his nose. “It smells in here.”

It did, a mixture of sweat and rancid food and refuse and a few other things. Eau de Southwark, I supposed.

“Leave the door open a sliver,” Christopher said. “It’s not as if it was locked when we came.”

Crispin cracked the door. “Best be quick about it. I don’t fancy leaving the H6 out there any longer than I have to.”

No, that was probably for the best.

Taking stock of our surroundings in the beam from the torch, we were standing in a hallway that ended in a door and, beside it, in a set of rickety steps going up. The door was the only one on this level, and it stood halfway open. We all exchanged a look, and then moved towards it in unison. It opened with a creak when Christopher put his elbow to it and pushed. “Hello?” he called. “Anyone here?”

No one answered. Nothing else happened, either. There wasn’t even the scurry of small paws across the floor, and I would have expected that in a building like this.

“Florence?” I tried. “Are you here?”

“Let’s just take a quick look around,” Christopher said, “it doesn’t seem very big.”

He pushed into the flat—if one could call it that—torch first.

He was right: it wasn’t big at all. From what I could gather in the torchlight beam, there were only two rooms: this one, with a shuttered window onto the street, and another behind it, with shutters that probably opened into some sort of courtyard in the back. There was no lavatory, and also no cooking facilities, so whoever had lived here—no one did now; there wasn’t a stick of furniture left—must have done their necessary business elsewhere. The courtyard might boast shared facilities, or perhaps some of the odor we had noticed was the lingering scent of a chamber pot.

“Let’s go up,” Christopher said after we had ascertained that we were alone in the ground floor hovel and that Flossie was not hiding, bound and gagged, in any of the corners.

“Take care on the staircase,” I told him. “It doesn’t look safe.”

He nodded. “I’ll go first. If it’s safe for me, it’s safe for you and Crispin.”

“Test each step before you put weight on it,” Crispin advised. “The last thing we need is for you to step through something and contract a fatal case of lockjaw.”

“I’ll be careful. Just be ready to catch me should I pitch over.”

Off we went, with Christopher in the lead. He did tread very carefully on the makeshift stairs, and while the rough planks groaned under his feet, they did bear his weight. We made it to the top without stepping on anything worse than what had the consistency (and smell) of the contents of someone’s slop jar—“Ewww!” Christopher moaned, dancing out of the way, “that explains the smell; stay to the side, Pippa!”—before we found ourselves in the equivalent hallway to the one downstairs, with the exception that this one ended in a door but not in a set of steps.

The door was shut, and Christopher took a deep breath before he nudged it with his elbow. When it didn’t swing open, Crispin handed him the elegant silk square from his breast pocket—as if Christopher didn’t have one of his own he could use—and Christopher draped it over his hand before trying the doorknob.

It turned, and the door opened. With a squeal of hinges, of course. It was that sort of place.

“Hello?” Christopher called again, into what was surely the matching room configuration to downstairs. “Anyone here?”

There was no answer, although this level, unlike the ground floor, had a strange sense of expectancy. Downstairs had been empty, and had felt like it. This set of rooms gave the impression that it was waiting.

I pushed the feeling aside and started forward. Only to stop, perforce, when Christopher didn’t move out of my way.

I glanced up at his face, close enough to me to make out even in the semi-darkness. “What is it, Christopher?”

“Something doesn’t feel right,” Christopher said.

I nodded, since I felt that way too. Not something a staid Englishman, or Englishwoman, should admit to—sensations of woowoo—but there was definitely something in the air up here.

Before I could verbalize my agreement, however, Crispin had spoken up. “Are you sure that isn’t just the contents of the slop jar on your shoes, Kit?”

Christopher shook his head. “It’s not the slop jar. It feels ominous.”

“I agree,” I said. “Although the smell in here doesn’t help, I’ll admit. Slop combined with rot combined with… what’s that sweet smell?”

“Opium,” Crispin said.

I eyed him. “Are you serious?” He certainly sounded knowledgeable, but… “How do you know?”

“I’ve smelled it before,” Crispin said.

“I didn’t know you frequented the Limehouse dens, St George,” Christopher sniggered.

“I don’t,” Crispin told him. “But the Bright Young Set will try anything once. Babe Bendir and Lizzie Ponsonby organized an opium party last year sometime. It was a far cry from Limehouse, but I’m sure the opium smelled the same.”

No doubt. “Is this an opium den, then? Should we expect dope addicts to attack us?”

“Opium smokers are generally too mellow to attack anyone,” Crispin said, “and I don’t think anyone’s smoking right now. It smells more like someone has smoked opium here for so long that it has permeated the wood in the walls, and now it’s residual. I don’t notice any actual smoke.”

I didn’t either, now that he mentioned it. Just the lingering smell of it. “It’s probably safe to proceed, then.”

“After you, Darling.” He nodded to the door.

“You’re the one with the weapon,” I pointed out.

“Kit’s the one with the torch.”

Yes, he was, and now he used it to nudge the door to the flat open and walk in. Crispin and I followed, him with the tire iron held aloft as we peered around the room. The torch lit up bare walls and a shuttered window and dusty floors. No furniture, but a lot of?—

“Footprints,” I said, pointing to them. Coming and going, from the entrance to the door of the other room and back. “Men’s heavy boots. Textured soles.”

“And two pairs of women’s shoes,” Christopher added. “One bigger than the other. Both with Cuban heels.”

“Flossie and someone else?” Ruth, perchance.

“Might be,” Christopher nodded, turning the torch from the impressions in the dust to the door. “Better give the pathway a wide berth. Detectives are very much into footprints, aren’t they, Pippa?”

“I’d expect you to know more about that than me,” I said. “I’m not the one seeing a Scotland Yard detective on the sly.”

He probably flushed, although I couldn’t see it in the darkness. “I’m not seeing Tom. I just… see him occasionally.”

Crispin sniggered.

“Meanwhile, you’re the one cutting your teeth on Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers. You can’t tell me footprints don’t feature prominently in those stories.”

No, I couldn’t. Footsteps are always important clues. I gave in, and told him, “You’re right. We should walk around them, so that, if Tom wants to, he can take photographs and perhaps match the footprints to the suspects’ shoes if he finds them.”

“May we just get this over with?” Crispin interrupted irritably. “The longer we stand here, the longer my motorcar is sitting unprotected on the street outside. There won’t be anything left by the time we get out of here.”

“We’ll just poke into this last room,” Christopher said, “to make sure Florence isn’t there. Although with the way we’ve been carrying on, I’m sure she would have said something by now.”

“Or kicked the wall or something if she’s bound and gagged and can’t speak,” I added. “But St George is right. This is eerie. Let’s just get this done so we can go home. It’s been a long day and I’m tired.”

I headed for the door to the other room, circumventing the footprints in the dust as I moved.

“I’m sure you simply cannot wait to get home to your bed so you can dream about His Highness and the way he wields a steak knife,” Crispin said disagreeably as I reached for the knob.

I smiled sweetly. “Quite right. Come here, if you will, and protect me with the tire iron. Just in the event someone dangerous is behind the door.”

“You want me to go first?”

“You’re the one with the weapon,” I repeated, “although if you would like to hand it to me, I’d be happy to precede you into the room. I had no idea you were such a coward, St George.”

“Not a coward,” Crispin protested. “Just cautious. I don’t see any reason to let anyone destroy my face unless I have to.”

“That’s probably for the best. You have so few qualities to recommend you, and your face definitely helps. Wouldn’t want to harm it. Half of London, the female half?—”

“And a fair few of the lads,” Christopher said, getting into position with the torch while I prepared to open the door.

I eyed him. “Really?”

“He’s quite pretty, isn’t he? Even without the makeup and wig.”

I snorted. Christopher smirked. Crispin rolled his eyes. “Can we get on with it?”

“Ready to break a few kneecaps?”

“No,” Crispin said, hefting the tire iron, “but I’m ready for you to open the door. Stop dilly-dallying. We’ve been in here long enough.”

We had, in fact. The opium smell had probably permeated both my lovely new frock and my hair by now, and it would be difficult to get it out. For that reason alone, I turned the knob and pushed the door open. Christopher turned the beam into the room, and Crispin took a step forward.

Only to stop with a rock-back on his heels, as if he had run into an invisible wall.

Christopher’s hand jerked, and he whispered an obscenity, but not before I had gotten a glimpse of a figure in a pink frock, sprawled on a dirty mattress up against the opposite wall.

I recognized the frock. There was no way anyone would recognize anything else. Where the face should have been, there was nothing but blood. Blood and torn flesh and broken bones poking through the skin in jagged ivory shards.

My stomach roiled, and I turned and buried my face in Christopher’s shoulder. He put an arm around me. It shook. So did I.

I took a step back, pulling him with me. He pushed Crispin backwards out of the way. Neither of us spoke until we had shut the door on the monstrosity beyond, and were standing in the middle of the floor with no care whatsoever for any footprints or evidence we were trampling underfoot.

“Was that…?” My voice gave out, and I had to clear my throat.

“Who could tell?” Crispin answered. He might have meant it to sound nonchalant, but his voice was shaking, too, and so was the tire iron in his hand.

I eyed it, and he told me, “Don’t be ridiculous, Darling. I’ve been with you, remember?”

Of course he had. I took a breath. And another one. “Should we perhaps check and see whether…?”

“There’s nothing we can do for her,” Christopher said firmly. “No one could survive that and still be breathing.”

“Sometimes amazing things happen. We might just look…?”

“Be my guest, Darling,” Crispin said and headed for the door. Not the one that led to the—for lack of a better word—bedroom. The other one, to the hallway and the stairs and the outside. Christopher’s torch beam followed him. “I’m going for the police.”

That was probably a good idea, actually. “Leave the tire iron,” I said.

He shook his head at me over his shoulder. “Better not, Darling. Safer if it’s in the back of the motorcar when the police get here. That way they won’t get any ideas.”

“Unless you’ve used it on someone at some point—” I began, and then gagged when I got a visual reminder of what exactly ‘using it on someone’ would look like. “Yes, good idea. Hurry.”

Crispin nodded. “If anyone attacks you, Kit can hit them with the torch. But hopefully that won’t happen. I won’t be long.”

No, I imagined he would put all his skills to use to get to where he was going as quickly as was humanly possible. “Be careful,” I told him. “You won’t be doing anyone any favors if you motor straight into a wall between here and Scotland Yard.”

“How lovely to know you care, Darling.” He pulled the door to the hallway open. “I’ll?—”

… be back as soon as I can , I assumed. He didn’t say it. Instead, the sentence turned into a high-pitched squeak of surprise as a dark figure materialized in the doorway.

The tire iron rose—I would have done the same thing, admittedly—and Christopher threw himself forward and yanked Crispin back before the weapon could do anything but fall in a whistling arc through the air, narrowly missing the nose of the person standing there.

They both stumbled back a few steps, knocking into me, and for a second or two we huddled in the middle of the room facing the doorway, before?—

“What in tarnation is going on here?” Hiram Schlomsky roared.