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

Chapter Five

Christopher was sitting on the Chesterfield with a cocktail when I walked into the flat.

He was also sitting with Tom Gardiner, who was ensconced in an armchair with a drink of his own. It looked like straight bourbon or brandy, unlike Christopher’s sparkling concoction. When I showed up in the doorway to the foyer, they both looked up at me. Christopher had a slight flush across his cheekbones that might be guilt because of Crispin, or embarrassment because I had interrupted something, while Tom gave me a bland smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Philippa,” he said. “You look lovely.”

I looked down at myself. “You don’t think I look like a Bramley?”

Christopher sighed. “Let it go, Pippa.” To Tom he added, “Crispin once told her the dress made her look tart and crisp and edible. She took it as a slight and has been telling me he compared her to an apple ever since.”

Tom’s lips curved. “No, Philippa. You look nothing like a Bramley, and I doubt Lord St George was telling you that you did.”

“Speaking of Crispin—” I said, and turned to Christopher.

The flush went immediately more guilty, although he tried to hide it behind an insouciant front. “He found you, then?”

“I wasn’t exactly hard to find,” I said. “All he had to do was loiter outside the Savoy and wait for me to come out. And then he had the nerve to almost take me out at the knees when he swept up behind me. I think the H6 missed me by two or three inches, no more.”

“That was careless of him,” Tom commented. “I would have expected better.”

I huffed. “I wouldn’t. It’s exactly the kind of thing he would do. I’m just surprised I’m not limping.”

I turned back to Christopher. “Why on earth would you drag him all the way up here from Wiltshire, Christopher? If you wanted someone to spy on me, couldn’t you have done it yourself?”

“You told me not to,” Christopher said.

“That was because I didn’t want anyone to! It certainly wasn’t a suggestion that you should induce St George to make the drive to London so that he could do it instead!”

“I didn’t,” Christopher protested. “I simply phoned him and let him know about the invitation to supper. I didn’t know that he was going to drive to London until I came back home after dropping you off and he was waiting outside.”

“You didn’t have to tell him where I was! Why didn’t you tell him not to bother?”

“Have you ever told Crispin not to bother when there’s something he wants to do, Pippa?” He gave me a look. “He’s spoilt, which you very well know. And he doesn’t like to be told what to do or not to do. In fact, if you tell him what to do, he frequently does the opposite, just to spite you. If he wanted a look at the Graf , I certainly wasn’t going to be able to stop him.”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, he got one. After he nearly broke both of my legs, he tried to insult Wolfgang and was insulted in turn. And then he drove me home and went off to see Laetitia Marsden.”

“Laetitia Marsden?” Christopher shook his head. “She’s not?—”

I cut him off. “Never mind Laetitia Marsden, Christopher. Although— no, never mind. He knows how I feel about that whole situation, and so do you. He can do whatever he wants.”

As Christopher had so eloquently pointed out, Crispin was spoilt and prone to not taking advice. Perhaps I would just stop telling him to stay away from Lady Laetitia and hope that a spot of reverse psychology would do the trick.

“Dinner was lovely, thank you for asking,” I said instead.

Tom’s lips twitched. “You’ve met someone, I hear.”

“If you want to put it like that.” I crossed the floor and sat down next to Christopher on the Chesterfield, crossing my legs. “His name is Wolfgang Albrecht, and he’s the Graf von und zu Natterdorff.”

Tom nodded. “So Kit told me. He knew you when you were a girl, Kit said?”

“That’s what he told us. I still can’t remember him, but he knew my parents’ names and where we lived and that I look like my mother but with my father’s eyes. It would seem that he’s at least seen us all—or them, at least—at some point.”

“Is there a reason you’re suspicious?” Tom wanted to know.

“I don’t know that I am,” I told him. “Not specifically. But I can’t remember him, and he’s German. And while that’s probably hypocritical of me—” since I was half-German too, “it’s too soon after the war to feel completely comfortable with that, I think.”

“But he hasn’t said or done anything that sounds out of character?”

“I have no idea what would be in or out of character for a German Graf . My parents weren’t wealthy, you know. Apparently it was a scandal when my mother left England and married a commoner in Germany. I have no idea why we would have hob-nobbed with a Graf in the first place. But no, I wouldn’t say so. Nothing he said today contradicted anything he said yesterday.”

“No reason to think he isn’t who and what he says he is?”

“None I can think of,” I said. “Why would he bother to approach me saying he’s the Graf von Natterdorff if he isn’t? I’m nobody!”

“You’re one step removed from the Sutherlands,” Tom said, with a glance at Christopher, who sipped his cocktail calmly. “You’re living with the Duke of Sutherland’s nephew, you were more or less adopted by the Duke’s younger brother, and you’re involved with the Duke’s son and heir.”

“I’m not involved with St George.”

Christopher chuckled.

“Not romantically, perhaps,” Tom allowed. “But you’re friends, or something like it.”

I opened my mouth to protest—I’m certainly not friends with St George, and besides, what did he mean, perhaps ?—and he waved me down. “You’re an access point to the Sutherlands, Pippa. You’re also an access point to Francis.”

I closed my mouth again. “Why Francis?”

“Francis was in the trenches during the War,” Tom said. “Aside from you, he’s the only one in the family with a bona fide connection to Germany.”

That was true. And it was only too easy to come up with reasons why someone might want a go at Francis, from the far-fetched to the blatantly obvious. Something had happened during the war, he had seen something or heard something, or he had killed someone or maimed someone or simply taken part in the fighting.

“Do you have any reason to think that he doesn’t simply want to get to know me better?” I asked.

Tom shook his head. “None at all,” he said cheerfully. “It’s just part of the job, you know. We’re deeply suspicious bastards in the CID.”

Of course. “Well, if you want to look into him, be my guest. But do it quietly, please. If he truly is who he says he is, I don’t want to upset him. Even though I don’t remember him, it’s nice to have a connection to my former life.”

Tom nodded.

“I see you made it back from Sussex,” I added. “Or was it Surrey?”

“It was Bristol,” Tom said, “actually.”

“Bristol?” That’s nowhere near Sussex or Surrey, nor does it sound like it. “County or city?”

“Both,” Tom said. “Second time in a month, too.”

“What were you doing in Bristol a month ago?”

“Dropping off Baby Bess with the Doles,” Tom said.

Baby Bess—or Elizabeth Anne—was a roughly six-month-old baby girl we had thought might belong to Crispin, or if not, perhaps to Francis. She hadn’t turned out to belong to either of them, and when her mother died, Tom had driven the baby to her grandparents in Bristol. I hadn’t inquired into the specifics at the time. I’d honestly just been relieved to know that none of my nearest and dearest was responsible for the baby, or for her mother’s demise.

“Is something wrong?” I asked now.

Aunt Roz had impressed upon Tom that if Baby Bess wasn’t going to be happy with the Doles, or if the Doles weren’t nice people who would take good care of the tyke, Tom was to bring her back to Beckwith Place post haste, and Aunt Roz would flout convention and take her in herself, be damned to anyone’s prurient thoughts on the subject.

“Not with the baby,” Tom said. “Or I assume not. That wasn’t part of this.”

“What was?”

He exchanged a glance with Christopher, who lifted a shoulder. Tom turned back to me. “I got a summons from the Bristol police. One of their dead was in possession of one of my calling cards and they wanted to know why.”

“One of their?—?”

“Dead,” Tom nodded. “A woman was killed in an alley in Bristol three nights ago, and my card was in her reticule. The Bristol police wanted to know why.”

“Why would someone kill someone in an alley and leave her reticule? Was she—?” I stopped and swallowed.

“No,” Tom said, his own voice tight. “She was not harmed in any way.”

“Other than being dead?”

He nodded. “And you’re right, it’s strange that someone would have accosted her in an alley and then left her purse with her money behind. Usually when people are accosted in alleys, it’s for their money.”

Precisely. “So who was she? Why did she have your card?”

And then something occurred, and I added, my face pale, “Oh, God. It wasn’t Abigail Dole’s mother, was it? Her father has certainly been through enough.”

“Undoubtedly,” Tom nodded, while Christopher winced, “but no, it wasn’t her. It was Margaret Hughes.”

“Margaret who?”

“Aunt Charlotte’s lady’s maid,” Christopher said. “Remember? She went with Tom and the baby last month.”

Of course. After Aunt Charlotte’s death, Uncle Harold had sacked her maid, or perhaps it was that Hughes had decided to leave on her own when there was no work for her to do. Neither Uncle Harold nor Crispin were in need of a lady’s maid.

However it had come about, she had ended up at Beckwith Place the same weekend as Abigail Dole and her baby. There, she had proceeded to blackmail my Uncle Herbert for a thousand pounds, before going off with Tom and little Bess and a hefty cheque. I found it difficult to muster up much sorrow that she had come to a bad end.

“What about the money?” I asked.

“The money?”

“The thousand pounds from Uncle Herbert. We talked about this.”

“ We didn’t talk about this,” Christopher said, looking from me to Tom and back.

It was my turn to wince. “You had just found out that you had a half-brother and then he was dead. It didn’t seem necessary to tell you that Hughes had blackmailed your father with that information.”

Not to mention with the information that not only had Uncle Herbert sired a son with one of the maids before he had married Aunt Roz, but apparently he’d done it again at some later point, after Francis and my late cousin Robbie had been born, and while Christopher was either a gleam in his mother’s eye, or perhaps not yet conceived.

He scowled. “What’s the big idea, not telling me something like that?”

“You seemed upset enough when we found you outside the study window,” I said, “and then there was the whole business with the gunshot. I suppose it slipped my mind for a while, and then I didn’t see the point in bringing it up. It doesn’t actually matter to anything. Except perhaps to her death.”

I turned back to Tom. “Had she cashed the cheque?”

“That all happened last month,” Tom said. “Of course she had. And opened herself a nice, fat account with a local bank for the money. It was still there. Or most of it was.”

“So if it wasn’t for the money, and it wasn’t for…” I hesitated, “amorous purposes, why kill her?”

“Who knows?” Tom said. “It’s the Bristol PD’s problem, not mine. They didn’t want my help with the case, just with information. When they found my card, the local constables rang up the Yard and I went down to Bristol to give them what information I could. Which was precious little, other than how she came by my card.”

“Did you happen to mention…?” I trailed off delicately.

“They assumed the money had been severance,” Tom said evenly, “or perhaps a settlement in Lady Charlotte’s will, and as her possession of it didn’t seem germane to her death, no, I didn’t see the need to bring it up.”

There was a moment’s pause before he added, “I stopped at Beckwith Place on my way back to Town. Your mother put me up for the night.”

It took a second, but then Christopher flushed up. “Checking my father’s alibi? Really, Tom?”

“Not just his,” Tom said coolly. “But you don’t have to worry, Kit. They were all home together on the night in question. Your father, your mother, Francis, and Constance.”

Christopher eyed him like this wasn’t really the point, and of course it wasn’t. Or it was only part of it: the other part was that Tom had dared to suspect them in the first place.

“Well, of course they were,” I said. “Uncle Herbert would never kill anyone, and besides, he probably didn’t even know where Hughes had ended up. He and Francis had already left for Southampton when you and Hughes took the baby to Bristol.”

Tom nodded.

“That still doesn’t mean I appreciate it,” Christopher declared with a scowl.

Tom sighed. “I’m a detective, Kit. It’s what I do. Margaret Hughes blackmailed your father out of a thousand pounds. It would be a motive for murder for anyone. If she did it once, she could do it again. Anyone would want to avoid that, and some people would kill to do so.”

Christopher couldn’t dispute that, of course, since it was obviously true, but he still stuck his bottom lip out in a pout.

“At this point,” I said, “what Hughes was holding over Uncle Herbert is pretty well out in the open anyway. We all know about the affair with Maisie Moran and what came of it, and as for the other thing, Uncle Herbert assured me that Aunt Roz already knew and that there were extenuating circumstances…”

Christopher and Tom exchanged a look.

“Yes,” Tom agreed after a moment. “I suppose that’s true. Your uncle isn’t the one who has the most to lose there, in any case. Nor is your aunt.”

Perhaps not. I wasn’t up on the details of that particular issue, since Uncle Herbert hadn’t seen fit to confide the details to me. I looked from one to the other of them—Tom certainly knew, and I suspected that Christopher knew more than I did, too—but now didn’t seem like the best time to bring it up for clarification, so I didn’t.

“I don’t think I care who killed Hughes as long as it wasn’t someone we care about,” I said instead. And then I realized how cold that sounded, so I added, “I mean, I don’t wish murder on anyone, of course, but?—”

“I get it,” Tom nodded. “The Bristol police are working the case. I told them what I could—it wasn’t much—and left them to it. It’ll probably turn out to be quite simple. People kill for a lot less than we think sometimes. She might have had ten pounds in her reticule, and for some people, that’s enough to justify murder.”

We sat in silence a moment.

“Was everything all right at Beckwith Place?” I asked.

“Everything was perfect,” Tom answered. “I stayed for dinner and spent the night. Francis looks healthier than I’ve seen him since the war, and Constance was glowing.”

“Well, I’m sorry to have interrupted your discussion.” I pushed to my feet. “Carry on with what you were doing before I came in. I’m going to go to my room and change.”

“I was just updating Kit on what had happened in Bristol,” Tom said. “Feel free to come back and sit with us. I’d like to hear more about your evening.”

Christopher nodded. “Yes, please, Pippa. Every word.”

“Of course.” I headed into the hallway towards my room and left them alone.

Wolfgang did not send a note that night. He didn’t send one the following morning, either. I tried not to think unkind thoughts about Crispin, whose fault it surely had to be—I had been a delight, hadn’t I? We’d had a perfectly lovely time all through dinner, and it wasn’t until St George showed up outside the Savoy and started to throw his weight around that things had taken a turn for the sour, wasn’t that so?—but as the hours passed with nothing, I started to second-guess my own appeal, too. Perhaps I hadn’t been fawning enough? Perhaps Wolfgang was used to women who succumbed to his charms in short order, and the fact that I had gone off with another man at the end of the meal instead of upstairs with him, had grated?

Christopher told me I was being ridiculous, that Wolfgang would be contacting me again, I just had to be patient. It wasn’t as if he’d want to look too eager, was it, when I had left him to stand there outside the Savoy whilst I left with another man, which made perfect sense. I kicked myself again, mentally, and did the same to Crispin. What was his problem, anyway? It wasn’t any of his affair if I had dinner with a handsome gentleman who evinced interest in me. He had his hands full with Laetitia Marsden, not to mention all the other women who buzzed around him like bees around a flower, and he had no business whatsoever to meddle in my affairs.

The next time I saw him, I was definitely going to tell him so.

I did a bit of marketing in the middle of the day—visits to Fortnum I didn’t need the next sentence.

“My name is Hiram Schlomsky, and this is my wife Sarah. We’re looking for our daughter Florence.”