Page 75 of Peril in Piccadilly

“No, Miss Darling,”Evans said ten minutes later. “Mr. Astley is not back, and there’s no message from him.”

“That’s a shame.”

Evans nodded. “There is, however, this note for you.”

He handed it to me. Crispin craned his neck over my shoulder. “Is that what I think it is?”

“GermanKurrentschrift,” I nodded. “A note from Wolfgang. I forgot that we planned to have supper together tonight. I don’t know how I’ll let him know that I can’t meet him…”

“Stand him up,” Crispin said callously, “and he’ll get the picture.”

He watched as I opened the envelope and removed the single sheet of notepaper from within. I didn’t even get to look at the words—very few of them—that were scribbled across the paper before his finger landed on the Savoy Hotel logo in the corner of the sheet.

“Yes,” I said impatiently, “I told you that he does that.”

“It’s different to see it for myself. You’re certain he’s not staying there?”

“The doorman said he wasn’t. Although I suppose he might be mistaken. Perhaps he was thinking of someone else.”

“Perhaps I’ll swing by and ask,” Crispin said.

“It would be easier for me to ring up and ask to leave a message, surely? I have the perfect excuse, after all.”

He looked at me, gray eyes serious. “I think you should go.”

“To supper tonight? I hardly think I’d be good company, St George.”

“If he loves you,” Crispin said stubbornly, “he’ll want to be with you even when you’re not good company. And if he is involved, he’ll want to see how you’re holding up.”

“That’s disturbing.”

He shrugged. “Think of it this way: if he had something to do with it, he might let something slip. And Gardiner and I can follow him home after the meal. Even if Kit isn’t there, at least we’ll know where he lives now.”

That was a point in favor of putting myself out there. Honestly, sitting across from Wolfgang and making polite conversation when I was afraid of what might have happened to Christopher sounded agonizing, to be honest. Worse than agonizing if I suspected that he had had something to do with it.

I wasn’t sure whether I believed it or not. Crispin wanted to believe the worst of Wolfgang, naturally. But he was biased. I wanted to believe the best, or at least I didn’t want to believe that someone I knew, someone who claimed to want to marry me, would kidnap and perhaps hurt my best friend.

Especially when there was nothing—or nothing aside from a strange but minor anomaly of stationary—to suggest why he would bother.

But all that aside, I did see Crispin’s point, and why it made sense for me to put my feelings aside and go to the Savoy tonight. If Wolfgang wasn’t involved, it would exonerate him. If he was involved, at least we’d know. And either way, it would give me something to focus on for an hour or two, that wasn’t Christopher and where he was and what he might be going through.

“Very well,” I said.

ChapterSeventeen

Aunt Roz must have been sittingbeside the telephone, because it was answered almost as soon as it rang.

“Kit?”

“I’m afraid not,” I said apologetically.

She breathed out. “Pippa? What news?”

“Very little, I’m afraid. He still isn’t home. But we’ve brought Tom in, and here’s what we know so far.” I listed all the places that Christopher was not, and could hear her tension dissipate at the same time as it ratcheted up. It was a very strange, if understandable, phenomenon.

“Let me get this straight,” she said when I had finished. “So far as we know, he isn’t dead, he isn’t hurt, and he hasn’t been arrested.”

“That’s correct.”