Page 1 of Peril in Piccadilly (Pippa Darling Mysteries #7)
Chapter One
The first time I almost died, I was a few years old, and stumbled into the Neckar River on a walk through Heidelberg with my mother. A good Samaritan fished me out and handed me back to her, dripping wet and hiccoughing for breath, and I was exposed to several hours of rough toweling and tears, until it all mostly faded into memory. I was more startled than afraid, I think, and while my mother undoubtedly had the shock of her life, nothing terrible happened.
The second time I almost died, I was eleven, and abandoned in the center of the garden maze at Sutherland Hall in Wiltshire by the not-so-Honorable Crispin Astley, also eleven. By then, the Great War had broken out, and my mother had sent me to her sister in England for my safety. I had been folded into the Astley family, and Crispin had taken against me because I had supplanted him as our shared cousin Christopher’s best friend. Just as the first time, the experience was traumatic, and much longer-lived, but ultimately no more fatal. Christopher rescued me long before I could starve to death, and Crispin got a talking-to by my aunt, as well as a spanking by his father, which went a long way towards making me feel better (at the time, anyway; even if it makes me feel rather worse about the whole thing now).
After that, there was the time I tried to climb out a second story window at the Godolphin School in Salisbury, which I attended from thirteen to eighteen, while Christopher and Crispin were away at Eton, and while my elder cousins Robert and Francis were in the trenches in France. The ivy wasn’t strong enough to hold me, and I dangled for a few seconds before a couple of the other girls hauled me back to safety. The less said about that, the better. That wasn’t fatal, either, and probably wouldn’t have been even if I had fallen.
After that, a few years passed. The war ended. Francis came home, but Robert didn’t. Christopher and Crispin left Eton and went to Oxford and Cambridge, respectively. I went with Christopher, while Crispin, for some reason known only unto himself, seemed to want to get away from us. Eventually, Christopher and I ended up in London. Then came the bullet that grazed my arm during a visit to Sutherland Hall in late April, and a few weeks later, the poisoned cocktail I was served at the Dower House in Dorset. The shot went wide, and Christopher took the cocktail out of my hand and tossed it back himself when he saw that I didn’t like the taste. There was enough Veronal in it to put me to sleep permanently, but Christopher—a bit taller and heavier, and with a faster metabolism—merely slept the sleep of the dead for a few days before waking up, none the worse for wear.
That takes us to September, and the second bullet, the one that passed within a foot or so of my head, and that of Francis. We chalked that one up to either a case of mistaken identity—I looked a bit like the Honorable Cecily Fletcher, who was even then fighting for her life upstairs in Marsden Manor—or simply a stray shot from the shooting party in the nearby woods. None of the hunters admitted to firing it, but that was to be expected, really, when it almost killed someone. There was no harm done, so we were all (mostly) happy to relegate it to the past, where it belonged.
And that brings us up to the present day, October 1926, and what I like to refer to, in retrospect, as The Peril in Piccadilly.
Yes, the capital letters are intentional.
I was having a late supper with Wolfgang Ulrich Albrecht, the Graf von und zu Natterdorff, a distant cousin and also my sort-of fiancé. We were sharing a table in the Criterion Restaurant, after attending The Scarlet Lady —the new comedy featuring Miss Marie Tempest and Mr. Ernest Thesiger—next door at the Piccadilly Jewel Box.
Wolfgang and I (and Christopher) had met a couple of months earlier, in the tearoom at the Savoy Hotel. He claimed to have recognized me from a visit when I was a wee imp in Heidelberg, and I had no reason to doubt him. In the time since, we’d been getting to know one another better. Christopher approves—Wolfgang is quite handsome, as well as a Graf —while Crispin and Francis both vehemently disapprove. Francis because he fought the Germans in France, and Crispin for reasons known only unto himself. He wasn’t old enough to serve in the Great War (nor was Wolfgang, for that matter), so it can’t have been that. But whatever the reason, he despises Wolfgang, a feeling which is decidedly mutual, since Crispin has let no opportunity go by to make himself disagreeable.
I’m still not entirely certain how we ended up engaged, other than that when Wolfgang proposed, I didn’t say no. I don’t think I said yes, either—my response was something more like, “Thank you, but…” But by the time I got that last part out, Christopher was shrieking, my Aunt Roslyn was whooping, Lady Laetitia Marsden—Crispin’s intended—was watching with barely concealed glee, and Crispin himself was scowling. Wolfgang had moved to embrace me, and I couldn’t really say that I hadn’t meant it, not when everyone was so clearly elated.
In that spirit, I accepted the congratulations—Lady Laetitia practically cried tears of joy, while Crispin’s jaw was clenched so tight when he extended his hand to Wolfgang that I feared for the health of his molars—and then I returned to London and went about my business as if nothing had changed.
And nothing much had. Wolfgang seemed satisfied with the semi-positive response to his offer—less than enthusiastic though it was—because he didn’t push for anything more definite, and he also didn’t bring it up again over the next few weeks. Perhaps he realized that I hadn’t said “yes,” so much as “I need some time to think about it,” and he decided to give it to me. Perhaps he was afraid that if he pushed, “Thank you, but—” might turn into a flat “No.”
The thing was, I wasn’t in love with him. I wasn’t in love with anyone else, either, so it wasn’t as if my heart was engaged elsewhere. And I liked Wolfgang; it wasn’t that I didn’t. But marriage to him came with certain disadvantages. He was a German nobleman, with a title, a Schloss , and presumably a fortune to go along with it. All well and good, even if the Weimar Republic had done away with the German nobility in 1919, so the title, at least, was mostly only worth the paper it was written on. The Schloss and money were more solid, or so I assumed.
But be that as it may, Germany after the war wasn’t a place I wanted to be. Yes, I had been born there. But that was a long time ago now, and I had no fond feelings for the place. My father and mother were both gone; the former in the War and the latter in the influenza epidemic that followed. I had had no contact with any of my German relatives in the past twelve years (or even before that, for that matter). The incident that Wolfgang recalled, was not something I remembered. I felt thoroughly English now, and there was no part of me that wanted to return to post-War Germany, Schloss or no Schloss .
And so we limped along for a few weeks, taking tea and supper together in London, spending time together but without touching on any difficult subjects, or for that matter touching much in general.
Until that particular evening in October, at the Criterion Restaurant. The waiter had just served the cheese course when the door to the street opened, and in swept the Viscount St George, resplendent in black tie, with his fiancée hanging on his arm.
Lady Laetitia Marsden is quite possibly the best-looking woman I have ever set eyes on. Or perhaps not: the now-dead Johanna de Vos was also stunningly lovely. But she certainly puts me, and most everyone else, to shame. Tall and willowy, she carries the current tubular fashions off to perfection, while her face is the exact proportion of curves to angles, with big, long-lashed eyes under curved brows, high cheekbones, and full lips.
Just like every other time I have seen her—more frequently than I would wish—she was wearing black: a slinky gown with a plunging V-neck and diamanté embroidery under a black velvet cloak decorated with fur around the neck and wrists. The ostentatious Sutherland engagement ring weighed down her left hand, and the matching diamonds sparkled in her ears.
They stopped just inside the door while Crispin handed off his topper, gloves, and walking stick to the hat check girl, and while Laetitia surveyed the restaurant for, I assumed, familiar faces.
For the record, I would have been quite happy to ignore their presence entirely, and so, I thought, would Crispin be happy to ignore ours.
He saw us, of course. He met my eyes for a moment before he turned his attention to the back of Wolfgang’s head—his lip curled—and then he looked away. It was Laetitia who looped her hand through his elbow and towed him across the floor to our table.
“Miss Darling.” She gave me the most condescending smile you could imagine, only made more so by the fact that she was standing and I was sitting, and she could quite literally look down her nose at me. Wolfgang, of course, had gotten to his feet, as any gentleman would when presented with a woman of breeding next to his table. “ Graf von Natterdorff.” She fluttered her lashes up at him. He’s tall, several inches taller than Crispin, who surely felt like just as much of a child as I did.
Wolfgang bowed over Laetitia’s hand, while I managed a smile, or rather a grimace I hoped might pass as one. “Lady Laetitia.” I flicked a look at her fiancé. “St George.”
He nodded. “Philippa.”
My brows arched. I can count the times he has called me by my given name on the fingers of one hand, or at least the times it has happened in the past few years. When we were children, yes. But he stopped sometime around the time he left Eton and went up to Cambridge. Since then, it’s been a sneered—or occasionally smirked—“Darling,” the way one would address the maid.
“Really,” I intoned, “Crispin?”
His given name didn’t feel any more comfortable in my mouth than mine did in his. And it must have been obvious, because I saw the corner of his mouth twitch. He didn’t comment, however.
“It has been brought to my attention that I’ve been improper,” he said instead, blandly.
“Of course you’ve been,” I agreed, since I had pointed it out to him myself on more than one occasion. “Although that has never stopped you before, has it?”
“I know better now.”
I nodded sympathetically. “Of course you do. Someone told you to stop, I imagine.”
And not because his addressing me as Darling was discourteous to me, but because his new fiancée wouldn’t want him to call someone else something that sounded like an endearment.
“Be that as it may,” Crispin said airily, without confirming or denying, “from now on, I will have to address you by your given name, I’m afraid.”
“Of course. Am I expected to do the same?”
It only seemed fair, didn’t it?
And no, I didn’t want to do it. I would much rather have him continue to address me by my last name so I could address him by his title—this given name business was more familiar than I was comfortable with—but I was damned if I would let Laetitia get away with telling him how he could speak to me. If she wanted to stop him from addressing me too informally, she could damn well put up with me returning the sentiment.
Crispin opened his mouth, and then closed it again. Laetitia scowled at him, but there was nothing he could say, after all. We were cousins, or the next thing to it, so if he addressed me by my given name, it only made sense that I would address him by his.
Wolfgang cleared his throat and Laetitia turned to him. “My apologies, Graf von Natterdorff.”
“No matter,” Wolfgang said politely, although he was looking from me to Crispin and back, not at Laetitia.
“We’ve just come from the theatre,” I informed them both. “You never did have anything to do with Marie Tempest, did you, Crispin?”
He stared at me, appalled. “I hope you’re joking, Darling.”
Laetitia cleared her throat, and he made a face. “Philippa. I hope you’re joking?”
“I wasn’t,” I said. “Why would you hope that, precisely?”
“Marie Tempest is older than my mother, Dar… Philippa. Older than yours, too. Older than Father. No, I’ve never had anything to do with Marie Tempest. How dare you?”
“I must be thinking of someone else,” I said blandly. “Someone whose name and occupation is similar, perhaps.”
Someone like Miss Millicent Tremayne—another actress, but a much younger and much less accomplished one—with whom Crispin had had a fling sometime within the past year or two.
Laetitia’s lips flattened into a thin line at the reminder. Crispin looked resigned. “I’m not even going to ask how you know about that.”
“The same way I know about all of them,” I said. “Grimsby the valet’s blackmail dossier.”
He nodded. “You memorized it, I assume.”
“I didn’t have to. Your misdeeds are heroic enough that no active memorization was necessary. I was appalled, frankly. So many women, so many drunken nights, so much— mmph!”
“Yes, Darling. Thank you. Ow.” He removed the hand that had covered my mouth and examined it ruefully. “Did you have to bite?”
“It seemed appropriate.” I pursed my lips and sputtered a few times. “Really, St George. Crispin. Did you have to manhandle me?”
“Of course I didn’t have to, Dar… Philippa. But as you said, it seemed appropriate.”
“When is it appropriate to put your hand over a young woman’s mouth to stop her from speaking?”
“When she’s about to share your innermost secrets with everyone in the Criterion Restaurant?” Crispin suggested, which I suppose was fair.
“Well, I wish you wouldn’t do it. It’s not as if your misdeeds aren’t already known far and wide. Nor will they go away simply because I don’t articulate them.”
“Of course not, Dar… Philippa. But if you have any love for me at all, I beg you to refrain from rubbing them in my face at every opportunity.”
“You know very well that I don’t. But since you ask so nicely…”
“Thank you, Darling.”
“Philippa,” I said.
He nodded. “Of course. And on that note…” He offered his elbow to his fiancée, who latched on with a simper, “we shall let you get back to your supper.”
Wolfgang clicked his heels together and inclined his head. “Viscount St George. Lady Laetitia.”
“ Graf von Natterdorff.” Crispin smirked, and didn’t bother with either the heels or the mock bow. “Darling. Tell Kit I said hello.”
“I shall,” I promised.
And then Laetitia towed him away, and Wolfgang pushed my chair under me so I was seated, before he walked around the table to seat himself. And there we were, in the same places we had been before the door opened, except now the atmosphere had changed.
“I hate her,” I said.
Wolfgang looked at me.
“How dare she tell him that he can’t call me what he’s been calling me for the past ten years?” Or eight years, or perhaps only six years. But no matter: how dare she tell him that he couldn’t call me whatever he wanted? It was none of her concern.
Except of course it was. She was engaged to him, and she didn’t want her fiancé to call another woman darling, whether it was her name or not. Had I been engaged to Crispin—God forbid—I would probably feel the same way.
Wolfgang didn’t say anything, and I added, “She’s going to make him unhappy, the horrible cow.”
Wolfgang cast a glance in their direction. They were behind me, so I didn’t.
“He doesn’t appear unhappy,” he said.
“You don’t know him as well as I do.” Of course he was unhappy. Or if he wasn’t yet, he would be. That’s what happens when you propose to one person when you know full well you’re in love with another.
Wolfgang made a dissenting noise. “She’s a lovely woman. He has no reason to be unhappy.”
“Surely happiness requires something more than just a lovely woman?”
He didn’t answer, so perhaps he didn’t think so. And that didn’t bode well for the possibility of our union, did it? I wanted a husband who wanted me , after all, not someone who thought that I was interchangeable with just anyone else, lovely or not.
He must have discerned the direction of my thoughts, because he glanced behind me one more time before he asked, a bit stiffly, “Is he the reason, then?”
“Is he the reason for what?”
“The reason you won’t say yes,” Wolfgang said. He dug into his pocket and pulled out something small and glittery that he placed carefully in the middle of the tablecloth, equidistant from both of us. I stared at it the way I would have done a snake that had materialized in the middle of the table.
When I didn’t speak, Wolfgang added, “I’m aware that you didn’t accept my proposal of marriage, Philippa. I surprised you, and you didn’t know what to say. We were in front of your friends and family, and I imagined you didn’t want to cause a scene. I behaved as though you had said yes, but I knew very well that you hadn’t.”
I ducked my head. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate it…”
“Of course not.” He flicked another glance over my shoulder. “So it is he?”
“No. Not at all.” I had no idea why so many of my nearest and dearest seemed convinced that there was something going on between me and Crispin. “I abhor St George. Not only is he a horrible cad, but he’s a horrible human being in general. I wouldn’t marry him if he were the last man on earth.”
Nor did my affections, such as they were, belong with anyone else. Except Christopher, I suppose, but that was entirely platonic. Not only do his feelings not swing my way, but we’re first cousins, so any relationship between us would be ill-advised from the start.
“Then why—” Wolfgang began, and I cut him off.
“I like you, Wolfgang. It isn’t that I don’t. We could probably rub along together very well.”
He nodded, so apparently he felt the same way. There was no declaration of love from him either, you’ll notice, glittery ring notwithstanding.
“I’m just not certain that I want to go back to Germany.”
He blinked.
“I have lived in England for twelve years now. I feel English, not German. I have no family left in Germany…”
“You have me,” Wolfgang said, which only served to illustrate that he didn’t understand what I was talking about.
I nodded. “Of course. But?—”
But I would have to leave Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert, and Francis and Constance, and most importantly, Christopher. And—yes—Crispin. Whom I would probably miss, too, if I never saw him again. I had a family and a life here in England, that had taken the place of the one I had had in Heidelberg. There was nothing left of that one, and much as I liked Wolfgang—and I did; I liked him very well indeed—he couldn’t make up for everything else I would be losing. It would have been different had I been madly in love with him, but I wasn’t.
He looked a bit as if he had bitten into a lemon, and it only got worse when I reached across the table and picked up the ring he had placed there and held it out to him. “I’m sorry I can’t accept it. I should have explained up front. It’s not you; please believe me when I say that. You’re a wonderful man, and a great catch, and I enjoy spending time with you…”
He forced a smile, and I trailed off because he looked pained. When he didn’t say anything, I did the only thing I could do, and pushed my chair back. “I think I should go home now.”
“Philippa…”
I shook my head. “Thank you for supper, Wolfgang, and for the theatre. It was a wonderful evening. You know where to find me if you want to see me again.”
He opened his mouth, and I added, before he could say anything, “I understand if you don’t. But I would hate for this to be it. I have enjoyed getting to know you. And I’m not saying I couldn’t learn to love you, or perhaps come around to your way of thinking. I don’t know how much longer you’re planning to stay in London…”
I trailed off for a second to give him the chance to jump in with an answer. When he didn’t, I continued, “—but for as long as you’re here, I would enjoy continuing to spend time with you. We’re family, aren’t we?”
It was a rhetorical question, of course—because yes, we were; at least according to Wolfgang—but he nodded, so I nodded back. “Good. Then don’t be a stranger. You know where to find me. I’ll see you again soon.”
I didn’t wait for him to speak, or to help me into my coat, I simply snagged it from the back of the chair beside me and threw it over my arm while I hustled for the street. The doorman swung the door open for me, and I burst into Piccadilly Circus in my evening dress with my coat flying like a flag behind me. My heels clicked rapid fire across the cobbles as I skirted the construction zone that would become the updated Piccadilly Circus tube stop, and headed across the street for the entrance to the current underground, dodging motorcars and pedestrians.
I don’t normally travel by tube late at night. Christopher would no doubt get on me about it once he found out that I hadn’t taken the time to flag down a Hackney for the ride home. But I felt pursued, for some reason. Not physically—there was no reason for Wolfgang to follow me, not after how we had left it in the restaurant, and it was even less likely that Crispin would abandon Laetitia at the supper table to trail me out of the Criterion—but I couldn’t shake the need to get out of sight as quickly as possible. And it wasn’t as if the underground was deserted at this time of night. Piccadilly Circus is one of the most traveled tube stations in all of London, hence the need for the upgrade.
When I ducked into the entrance and headed down the first flight of stairs towards the bottom, I was surrounded by people. Other women and men in evening kit, domestics making their way home at the end of the day, shopgirls and clerks, we all crowded each other down the stairs and into the curved, tiled tunnel with its white and green stripes.
To the lifts , a sign said, with an arrow pointing the way, and some of my fellow travelers veered off in that direction. I didn’t; I continued along the tunnel towards the next flight of stairs. There was still the need to keep moving, the knowledge—or fear—that if I stopped to wait for a lift, someone—I had no idea who; perhaps just the marriage I didn’t want—would catch up to me.
It was ridiculous, and I was well aware of it. No one was chasing me. And if I were wrong, and Wolfgang was behind me, the worst thing that would happen was that I would have to talk to him again. And since I had left the door open to do that at some point anyway, it wasn’t as if it would be a problem. But part of me was in flight mode, and I wanted to get out of the West End as quickly as possible. To put some distance between myself and the awkward conversation I had just had—in front of Laetitia and Crispin, no less; had they heard me, from where they were sitting?—and to get back to Christopher and safety and home. My heart was drumming in my chest as I turned onto the second staircase, with its arrow saying To the trains .
There was a smartly dressed young woman in front of me, in a brown cloche hat and a matching jacket. Beside me was a man in tweed and a Homburg. In front of the young lady was another man, this one in a black coat and bowler hat, and in front of him again was a young couple of the Bright variety: he in evening kit and she in a fur-trimmed coat similar to the one Laetitia had worn.
When something hit me in the middle back on the third step down, I took out the girl in the cloche hat. She took out the gentleman in the bowler, and he took out both parts of the young couple. And so it went, until we were all piled in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, groaning and whimpering about skinned knees and broken bones.