Page 3 of Evil at the Essex House (Pippa Darling Mysteries #5)

Chapter Three

“You really have no idea what the telegram was about?”

I shook my head and put the glass on the table. “None. As I told you, all I saw was the first word. And that didn’t appear like bad news, but she certainly behaved as if it was.”

“Well, it’s too late now to follow her,” Christopher said. “She’s long gone.”

I nodded. “None of our concern, either, really. Unless she asks for help, anyway.”

“Of course. But it’s interesting. It’s been an interesting day all around.”

I supposed it had. “It isn’t every day you meet a handsome young gentleman—and a Graf , no less—who remembers you from when you were small.”

“No, it isn’t.” He tilted his head. “Didn’t the Weimar Republic do away with the German noble titles a few years ago?”

“In 1919. Or they did away with their nobility, anyway. If you were the Graf von und zu Natterdorff before that, I believe you’re still the Graf von und zu Natterdorff now. It’s just that being the Graf von und zu Natterdorff doesn’t make you any better than anyone else.”

“Socialism,” Christopher scoffed, and shifted so he could fold the other leg over his other knee. “So riddle me this, Pippa: If there’s no nobility, but the Graf von und zu Natterdorff takes a wife, will she still be the Gr?fin von und zu Natterdorff? Or would she be just plain Frau Albrecht?”

“I have no idea,” I said, “and I don’t know that it’s an incentive either way. But good for you, knowing that the Graf’ s wife is the Gr?fin .”

He sniffed. “Of course, Philippa. I am the grandson of a duke, after all.”

“Of course you are.” I smiled at him fondly. “Did they teach you that at Eton?”

“I have no idea where I learned that,” Christopher said, dropping the affectation. “I imagine my mother probably told me at some point. Or my father. Or perhaps my grandfather. Noblesse oblige and all that.”

Yes, of course. “Well, everything you learned about Germany at your mother’s knee is defunct now. It’s not the same place it was when we were small.”

Christopher shook his head. “How are you really, Pippa? Coming face to face with your past like that?”

I sighed. I hadn’t wanted to think too deeply about it—hadn’t had the opportunity, either, honestly—but I supposed it was inevitable that I’d have to. “It was a shock. I didn’t expect to see anyone I knew back then ever again. Not with both my parents dead and me in an entirely different country with a new name, not to mention the war and international relations and everything else.”

“Do you remember him now?”

I shook my head. “But that’s all right. He clearly knew me.”

“What does he want, though?” Christopher wondered.

I peered at him. “What do you mean? He recognized me, and wanted to introduce himself.”

He nodded. “Of course. But beyond that. What was he doing at the Savoy? He wasn’t taking tea with anyone. I didn’t notice him in the tearoom when we came in, and believe me, Pippa, looking like that, I would have.”

I would have, too, most likely. The Graf was definitely eye-catching.

“Perhaps he saw us cross the lobby,” I suggested, “and thought I looked familiar. Perhaps he’s staying at the Savoy.”

“He has to stay somewhere,” Christopher agreed, “so perhaps he is. I wonder what he’s doing in England?”

“He has some sort of business here, I expect. We’re doing business with Germany again, aren’t we?”

“Germany’s in the League of Nations now,” Christopher nodded, “and there was the Locarno treaties last year. I think things are back to normal as far as that goes.”

Normal as in before the Great War, I supposed, when Germany was just one of many European countries and not a threat to world peace.

I had my doubts about it, honestly. About things going back to normal, I mean. That madman Herr Hitler was out of prison again now, after serving his sentence (or part of it) for planning the Beer Hall Putsch , and it had taken the German government just two years to lift the ban on his National Socialist party. He wasn’t the type to give up that easily. The manifesto he had penned while incarcerated had been chilling, to say the least, and I was certain we hadn’t heard the last from him.

Christopher nodded when I said as much. “Stay with us, Pippa, where it’s safe. Marry Crispin, or marry someone else, but stick with England.”

I fully intended to. However— “I need you to stop saying that, Christopher. Uncle Harold would sooner disinherit Crispin than allow him to marry someone like me, not to mention that I don’t like him that way. You—all of you—have to stop it. Even your mother asked me, last month, whether I was sure I couldn’t just marry Crispin and rid us of Lady Laetitia.”

Christopher’s lips twitched, and I added, severely, “He and I don’t get along, and he’s in love with someone else. Besides, I don’t think the rest of you would approve of it either, no matter what you all say.”

“If it was what you wanted,” Christopher said, “we’d all be delighted for you. We all want you to be happy. If marrying Crispin would make you happy?—”

“It wouldn’t.”

“—we’d all be happy for you.”

“Well, it’s moot,” I said. “I’ll marry you before I marry him.”

“Famous last words,” Christopher responded. “As for His Highness, five quid says we’ll hear from him tomorrow.”

His Highness? “Do you mean Crispin?”

“I mean the Graf . Although I wouldn’t be surprised if Crispin showed up tomorrow, too, just to remind you what he looks like.”

“He won’t have to show up for me to remember what he looks like,” I said. “He looks like you. And that’s too soon to hear from the Graf .” If we heard from him at all, that was.

“Five quid on tomorrow,” Christopher repeated.

I shook my head. “Don’t be vulgar, Christopher.”

“What’s vulgar about betting on when my flat-mate will hear from a bloke who took her fancy?” He grinned.

I rolled my eyes. “First, he didn’t take my fancy. He was pretty, yes, but otherwise, not my type. And secondly, that wasn’t the part I thought was vulgar.”

“Quid is Latin, darling.”

“And here I thought it came from the papermill at Quidhampton,” I said dryly. “Don’t call me darling, Christopher. You sound too much like your cousin when you do.”

“His has a capital D. Or so you always tell me.” He leaned forward to put his empty glass on the table. “I’m serious, Pippa. Five pounds sterling says he’ll be in touch tomorrow.”

I shook my head. “Thursday, at the earliest.”

“Shake on it?” He stuck his hand out across the table.

I took it. “You’re on.”

As it happened, we were both wrong about the time it would take Wolfgang, Graf Natterdorff, to get in touch with me. He must have gone directly home—or up to his room at the Savoy, or wherever else he was staying—and penned the note, because it arrived an hour later by messenger. Evans rang up from the lobby to let me know it was there while Christopher and I were in the middle of indulging in beans on toast, and I ran downstairs to pick it up, with Christopher’s laughter in my ears.

“What does he want?” he asked when I walked back into the sitting room, note in hand. And then his eyebrows rose when he noticed that the envelope was still sealed. “Don’t tell me you waited until now to open it?”

“I wanted to hold your hand,” I said. “What if it’s bad news?”

He rolled his eyes. “How can it be bad news? It’s a young, good-looking gentleman asking for some of your time. I wouldn’t turn him down, let me tell you, but you can always say no if you don’t want to meet him.”

“You’re certain that’s all it is?” I turned the envelope over in my hand.

Christopher nodded. “What else could it be? Just open it and get it over with, Pippa.”

Fine, then. I took a breath and tore the envelope open and pulled out the notecard with the Savoy’s insignia in the corner. The Graf ’s handwriting was sloped and elegant, flowing across the paper in tidy lines.

“What on earth?” Christopher said, staring at it, his eyes wide.

I glanced at him. “What?... Oh. It’s Kurrentschrift . A bit different from English cursive, isn’t it?”

He glanced back. “You can read it?”

“Of course I can. Can’t you?”

“That’s a lowercase F,” Christopher said, pointing to it, “but that’s also a lowercase F, and it looks different. And that, and that, and that—” he indicated, “are all capital letter Ls, and they’re all different.”

“That’s because that F,” I pointed to it, “is a lowercase H, and the three Ls are an L, a B, and a C, respectively. This F is actually a capital I.”

“That’s mad,” Christopher said. “But you understand what it says?”

“Yes, of course I do.” It was a bit more difficult to make out than it would have been a dozen years ago, admittedly. I hadn’t dealt with German Kurrentschrift since I left Germany. “He’s inviting me to have supper with him tomorrow. Seven o’clock in the Savoy’s dining room.”

“Oh, lovely,” Christopher said. “He didn’t waste any time, did he? You owe me five pounds.”

I sighed. “Of course.”

He made to push up. “Guess I’d better go ring up the Hall again.”

I put my hand on his arm. “Don’t be stupid, Christopher. I could understand it if you wanted to ring up Beckwith Place to let Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert know that a German count is sniffing around me. That’s something your parents might actually want to know. But Crispin won’t care.”

“Shows what you know,” Christopher said. “Although you’re right. I should ring up Beckwith Place and let Mum and Dad know.”

“Not until afterwards, Christopher. Please. It’s dinner with a gentleman I barely know in a public setting. Nothing to worry your parents about.”

“He’s German,” Christopher said.

I refrained from reminding him that so was I.

“That will only upset Francis,” I said instead. “There is no need to let them know. Not now. Please, Christopher.”

My cousin stuck his lower lip out and folded his arms across his chest, mutinously. “Fine. But if he asks you out again, I’m phoning home. And you will absolutely tell me everything that happens tomorrow. Every word, every gesture, every look.”

I promised I would, since I didn’t expect there to be anything very exciting to report. As I had pointed out, it was supper in the Savoy’s dining room, in full view of everyone there, with someone I had no recollection of meeting before. It was hardly an intimate occasion.

“And I’ll help you decide what to wear,” Christopher added. “And do your face.”

“I can do my own face, Christopher.”

“Not as well as I can,” Christopher said, which was true. “I won’t have anything to do tomorrow anyway. Not unless Tom makes it back from Sussex or Surrey or wherever it was he went. The least you can do is distract me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Very well, then. You can do my makeup. And pick out my frock. And make sure I look presentable for the Graf .”

“Thank you, Pippa.” He rubbed his hands together gleefully. “This will be fun.”

It wasn’t, of course. It was an hour of agony, sitting in front of my mirror while Christopher painted my face and fluffed and curled my hair and made sure every aspect of my appearance was as perfect as it could be. He picked out my frock—green silk with diamante accents, the same frock his deviousness, the Viscount St George, had once informed me made me look like a Bramley. A frock I could not now wear without hearing his voice in my head.

Christopher shook his head, as he leaned into me with an eyebrow pencil in his hand and the tip of his tongue sticking out as he concentrated. “You look nothing like a Bramley, Pippa. Besides, what Crispin said, at least according to Constance, was that you looked edible. Crisp and tart and good enough to eat, wasn’t it? Which is?—”

“Rude,” I said. “Completely improper. Indecent, even.” Lewd, to make a rhyme of it.

The corner of his mouth turned up in a smirk worthy of his cousin even as his eyes stayed on my eyebrows. “Oh, certainly. But it’s a compliment, isn’t it? ‘You look like a Bramley’ is no compliment. But saying that you look good enough to eat means that he’s not opposed to a taste?—”

“Ewww!” I made such a face that Christopher had to stop drawing and lift the pencil away from my skin. I flapped my hands at him. “That’s vile, Christopher. Disgusting. Horrid! As if I’d want St George’s mouth anywhere near my person. God only knows where it’s been!”

He sniggered. “God and Crispin, I assume.”

If the latter remembered everything he’d done with that mouth, and I doubted it. “I can’t believe you’d say something like that to me,” I said. “That’s repulsive, Christopher. How can you suggest such a thing?”

“I wasn’t the one who suggested it. He did.”

He leaned in with the pencil again and motioned to me to shut my eyes.

“He absolutely did not.” But I closed my eyes obediently. “That may have been what he said, but it wasn’t what he meant.”

“It was one hundred percent what he meant,” Christopher said, the strokes of the pencil light against my skin.

I wanted to shake my head, but refrained, since I didn’t want to end up with a streak of black across my forehead. “He can’t be that stupid.”

He let out a puff of laughter. It was warm against my face and smelled of cloves. “Oh, of course not. He knew you’d respond the way you did. But it was absolutely what he meant.”

“So why say it?”

“Because he knew it would get under your skin,” Christopher said. When I slitted my eyes he was peering intently at my eyebrows. I closed my eyes again, but not before I had seen the corner of his mouth tilt up. “Just look at you. It’s three months later, and you’re still thinking about it. He got what he wanted.”

“To ruin my enjoyment of my new dress?”

“For you to think about him every time you put it on,” Christopher said. “Or at least every time someone pays you a compliment when you’re wearing it.”

I shook my head, and he hissed in annoyance. “Do that again, and you’ll end up with stripes.”

“Sorry. But you know St George doesn’t care about my opinion of him.”

“Sometimes, Pippa,” Christopher told me with a sigh, “for being such a smart woman, you can be very thick.”

“Excuse me?”

“Dense, darling.”

“I told you?—”

“You’re being stupid,” Christopher said bluntly. “And what’s more, I suspect you’re being stupid on purpose.”

I opened my mouth, and then closed it again when he went on. “Of course Crispin cares about your opinion. We all care about your opinion. Although that’s not at all what this is about.”

“What is it about, then?”

“The fact that my cousin would dearly love for you to spend twenty-four hours every single day thinking about him. He would like nothing better.”

He took a step back and eyed me critically.

“I knew it,” I said. “He’s trying to ruin my life.”

Christopher sighed. “Yes, Pippa. That’s what he’s trying to do. Ruin your life.”

He gestured. “Up you go. You’re as lovely as I can make you.”

I got to my feet and peered at myself in the mirror. “Well done, Christopher. You made me quite lovely indeed.”

“I had a good canvas to work on,” Christopher said as he started to put away the various pots and brushes he had used. “So you won’t go anywhere with him after supper. You’ll let one of the doormen at the Savoy put you into a Hackney, and you’ll come home alone.”

I nodded. “As discussed.”

Call me paranoidal—call both of us paranoidal—but neither of us knew the Graf well, and we had no idea what his motives were for wanting to spend time with me. Hopefully they were innocent, and I would simply have a nice meal with someone who remembered me from my previous life and perhaps wanted to get to know me better, but Christopher had been adamant that I be careful.

In fact, he had threatened to lurk in the lobby of the Savoy all evening, to make sure nothing untoward happened to me. I had told him that that was unnecessary—nothing was likely to happen during supper at the Savoy, of all places—but he was still worried.

“And you’ll be careful about what you eat and drink,” he told me, not for the first time. “Don’t leave your glass unattended so he can put anything in it.”

I shook my head. “I think we’ve both learned that lesson.”

Back in May, Christopher had unintentionally imbibed a glass full of Veronal that someone had hoped would kill me, and he hadn’t woken up for days. It was lucky he had several stone on me, since I probably wouldn’t have woken up at all, had I been the one to drink it.

“Say it,” he told me sternly.

I sighed. “I promise. I’ll keep an eye on my glass at all times, and I won’t let anyone but the waiter put anything into it. The food from the kitchen should be safe, don’t you think?”

“It should be,” Christopher said grudgingly. “Look out for needles—don’t let him jab you with anything?—”

“Of course not.”

“And don’t let him share your cab. If he offers to, say no. I don’t care if he’s offended.”

I didn’t care, either. If it’s between offending someone, especially someone I didn’t yet care about, and being safe, I’ll choose safe every time.

Not that we had any reason to think Graf Wolfgang wasn’t exactly what he purported to be. I would probably be perfectly safe, because the idea of putting something in my food or drink or jabbing me with a syringe wasn’t likely to have crossed his mind at all.

“And come straight home,” Christopher admonished. “Don’t dilly-dally. If the Graf offers to canoodle?—”

“I’ll turn him down, never fear.”

“I was going to suggest that you canoodle in a corner of the lobby, where there are other people,” Christopher said with a grin, and I made a face.

“He won’t want to canoodle, Christopher. He was as stiff as a board yesterday, and I don’t intend to give him any encouragement. Not on a first date.”

He nodded. “Then tell him goodnight and let the doorman send you home in a Hackney by yourself. Any problems, make a scene.”

“Of course. Do you still insist on seeing me there?”

“What kind of best friend would I be if I didn’t?” Christopher wanted to know, and I rolled my eyes.

“You’re just hoping for another glimpse of the Graf .”

He grinned. “How can you blame me? He’s about the most decorative specimen I’ve seen in my entire life. Not that there aren’t plenty of attractive blokes in London. But it isn’t every day I get the chance to ogle someone like that.”

I shook my head. “Please don’t ogle him. In fact, I would prefer it if he didn’t notice you at all. I don’t want him to feel as if he has to include you in the dinner invitation. No offense.”

“None taken,” Christopher said blithely. “If he were my dinner date, I wouldn’t want to share him, either.”

“That’s not why, and you know it. But if he has something he wants to say to me privately, he won’t say it if you’re there.”

“That’s true,” Christopher agreed, and offered me his arm for the walk to the lift. “Do you suppose there is anything like that? Does he have something to say he doesn’t want me to hear?”

“I have no idea,” I said, tucking my hand through his elbow, “but he did invite me to supper. He might have something to say.”

Christopher nodded and pushed the button to call the lift. “I’ll take you to the Savoy and hand you over. And then you’ll tell me everything when you come home.”

“Of course I will,” I assured him, and let him hand me into the lift.