Page 12 of Peril in Piccadilly (Pippa Darling Mysteries #7)

Chapter Twelve

I expected the meal to be somewhat awkward, and I wasn’t surprised.

“I wasn’t certain you would want to join me,” were the first words out of Wolfgang’s mouth after the obligatory greetings. He pulled out the chair of a table by the window overlooking Queen Street and waited for me to sit before he pushed it in behind me.

“Whyever would you think that?” I inquired as he took the couple of steps around the small table and seated himself with his back to the view.

“The last few times I have seen you haven’t exactly gone my way.” He gave me a rueful smile.

“Nonsense,” I said briskly. “We had a nice time at tea the other day. I’m just sorry you had to leave early.”

He didn’t say anything, and I added, “I hope everything progressed all right with your business matter?”

“Of course. Merely a bagatelle.” He waved it away.

“I don’t think I’ve ever asked,” I said. “What is your business here?”

“Top secret,” Wolfgang said. I stared at him—truly?—and after a moment, he looked up and winked. “Diplomatic relations, mein Schatz . I go around London and make myself agreeable.”

“Do you really?”

“Of course.” He grinned. “I’m agreeable to you, am I not? And to your cousin? And his friend, the policeman? And Lord St George and his fiancée?”

Well, yes. Of course he was. With the exception of Crispin, of course, who didn’t find him agreeable at all. Or vice versa.

“The diplomatic corps?” I said uncertainly, and he chuckled.

“Nothing so exalted, I’m afraid. I’m just here as my lowly self, making connections with the British. To do my little bit to mend relations after the war.”

I nodded, even though his explanation explained very little. Then again, he was the Graf von Natterdorff, so it wasn’t as if he had to have a job. The rest of us didn’t, either. I had tried for a while, right after we landed in London, but finding a position hadn’t been easy, and I had given up fairly quickly. Christopher had worked hard to talk me out of it—he’d rather have me at home where he could natter at me and I could take care of him, and if he had to support me financially to achieve that, then he was happy to do it—and I hadn’t had the heart to keep insisting.

On the other hand, it didn’t really explain what sort of business associate had communicated with Wolfgang the other day. If he had no official business interests, why would he have a business associate?

But before I could circle back to the question—or even ponder it further inside my own head—the waiter had arrived at the table, and it was time to order food. I ended up with an order of crab bisque followed by a prawn cocktail, while Wolfgang ordered a cup of soup of his own and then the wild turbot with mustard sauce. It was the most expensive item on the menu, and he didn’t even blink. Clearly money was no object, whether he was gainfully employed or not.

The waiter withdrew along with the menu cards, and Wolfgang smiled at me. “Where were we?”

I smiled back. “Regent Street, I suppose. Was that where your note took you after tea yesterday?”

Something flickered in his eyes, as if he didn’t like my harping on the note, but his voice was still pleasant when he told me, “Not at all. I was simply on my way out to dinner. I assume you and your friends were doing the same?”

“We were actually headed home,” I said, since that had been after Tom and I had extricated Christopher—or Kitty—from the Cave of the Golden Calf.

“And where was the Viscount St George? I don’t think you said.”

I hadn’t, in fact. I had said that he was coming, and so was Christopher, and then we had left without waiting for them. I wondered whether Wolfgang had looked back and noticed, or whether he was simply responding to my awkwardness about the whole thing.

When I didn’t answer, he added, “I didn’t think his fiancée went anywhere without him.”

“That—” It was on the tip of my tongue to blurt out that she didn’t, and that it hadn’t been Laetitia in the backseat of the Tender, but I bit back the impulse. “That’s mostly true, actually. She had mislaid him, and required our help to find him again. That’s why Tom and I were in our day-clothes and she was dressed for the evening.”

“Dear me,” Wolfgang said, “no one had taken him, I hope?”

“The way they took Flossie Schlomsky, do you mean? No, not at all. He had merely taken himself off to a place where she wouldn’t be welcome.”

He smirked. “A house of ill repute?”

I snorted. “Some people would say so, certainly. But it was simply an old nightclub down at the end of Heddon Street, and a private party. Christopher fetched him.”

“Your cousin? I didn’t see him there.”

“If you had stayed around another few minutes, you would have seen them both.”

He nodded, quite as if he believed it, although there was something in his tone, or perhaps his eyes, that indicated that he might not. He turned his spoon over in his hands for a moment, eyeing it, before he looked up at me. “May I be honest, Philippa?”

“Of course,” I said, even as my heart started to beat faster. It’s rarely good news when someone leads off with a question like that.

“For as long as I have known you, I have had the impression that your emotions have been engaged elsewhere.”

My… what?

“Until he got engaged, I assumed it was the young popinjay?—”

“Crispin and I are not involved,” I said automatically.

Wolfgang nodded. “Of course not. If that had been the case, I presume he wouldn’t have proposed to someone else.”

Yes, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?

“I thought it was possible that you still harbored feelings for him,” Wolfgang continued, and I endeavored not to gag.

“I assure you, I don’t.” Or no romantic feelings, anyway. Feelings of wanting to wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze, certainly.

“Is it the young policeman, then?” Wolfgang inquired. “Detective Sergeant Gardiner? Or perhaps your cousin?”

“My…” There were so many things wrong with both of those questions that they quite took my breath away. There was, however, no question about where to start.

“Christopher? You think I’m in love with Christopher ?”

My voice had risen into a range only discernable by bats and dogs. Wolfgang sat back in shock, but I think it was simply the level of noise coming out of my mouth that affected him, and not what I was saying. He looked nonplussed at my reaction, as if he couldn’t fathom why such an idea would be off-putting.

“Christopher,” I said, doing my level best to sound calm, “is my best friend. He’s the next thing to my brother. We grew up together. His parents consider me the daughter they never had. While other people may suspect that we live in sin,” the Earl and Countess Marsden came to mind, which was funny, actually, since at least Laetitia’s mother also suspected that I had been trying to deprive her daughter of her rightful claim to Crispin before the engagement, “I can assure you that I do not feel that way about Christopher, nor does he feel that way about me.”

Or about any girl, but there was no need to share that, not even to prove to him how appallingly far off the target his suggestion had been.

I took a breath and began again. “As for Tom?—”

“Who?”

“Detective Sergeant Gardiner. I assume he is who you’re talking about, and not, for instance, his colleague, Detective Sergeant Finchley?”

Wolfgang nodded, looking reluctantly fascinated in spite of himself, and I continued, “Just as you suspect that my emotions are engaged elsewhere, I’m fairly certain Tom’s fond of someone. Someone who isn’t me, although that hardly needs saying.”

He looked intrigued, and I added, “I’m not going to go into details about that. I don’t know whether he has even admitted it to himself. And I could be wrong about those feelings, anyway.”

Tom might simply be fond of Christopher because the latter was Robbie’s little brother and Cousin Robbie had been Tom’s best friend. Tom’s feelings for Christopher might not be romantic at all. But however it all played out, it was no one else’s business but theirs, and certainly none of Wolfgang’s.

“All you need to know,” I told him, “is that there’s nothing going on between me and anyone else. I abhor Crispin. Christopher is my brother. And Tom is a friend. And that’s all.”

Wolfgang nodded, although his lips twitched. “I don’t suppose there are any news about the burglary?”

“I haven’t spoken to Tom since that night,” I said, as the waiter stopped by to place our drinks on the table. When he had withdrawn, I added, “He didn’t know much then, although I suppose he might have discovered something in the couple of days since.”

“But you haven’t heard about it if he has done?”

I shook my head. “Is there a particular reason you’re interested?”

“Not aside from the fact that it concerns someone you care about,” Wolfgang said smoothly.

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t care about Lady Laetitia (nor about Lady Violet, nor for that matter about the aged Lady Latimer), but I suppose it also concerned Crispin, and I suppose I did care (marginally) about the Sutherland diamonds. They were ugly, of course, but they were still Sutherland property, and no one had the right to steal them. So instead of protesting, I merely made a sort of acquiescent noise and said, “No, I haven’t heard anything new. It’s a shame about the Sutherland ring and earrings, of course. They’re ostentatious and gaudy, and I wouldn’t have them as a gift?—”

“There’s no chance of that now, surely.”

“None at all,” I agreed. Nor had there ever been, but there was less of one now, when they were in someone else’s hands and not Crispin’s. “But it’s a shame that the parure is no longer complete. There’s a great, big, monstrous tiara in addition to the ring and earrings, and a necklace and a couple of bracelets, I think. I’m not certain I’ve ever seen the whole thing in use. My late aunt was a dainty woman, and the stones dwarfed her. She didn’t wear them much.”

Wolfgang made a humming noise.

“Such wouldn’t be the case with Laetitia,” I said, “of course, but if I remember correctly, the betrothed gets the ring upon the acceptance of the proposal, and it looks like Crispin threw in the earrings, too, but she won’t get the rest of the parure until after the wedding. In case she needs incentive to go through with it, I suppose…”

I would have needed incentive to get through a wedding to Crispin, although the parure wouldn’t have done it for me. Laetitia probably didn’t need any incentive, since she wanted to marry him.

“The ring you showed me,” I said to Wolfgang. He met my eyes across the table, startled. “Was that a Natterdorff heirloom?”

He smirked. “No, mein Schatz . I didn’t come to London thinking I would find a bride, so the Natterdorff engagement ring is still in Germany.”

“There’s no one there who could have mailed it to you?”

He tilted his head to contemplate me. “Would it have made a difference if I had offered you the Natterdorff engagement ring?”

“Not at all,” I said. “My answer would have been the same no matter what. I wouldn’t accept or deny a man because of a ring.”

He nodded. “To answer your question, there’s my grandfather. But he would hardly risk sending one of our heirlooms in an envelope across half of Europe and the English channel when I could just go to Hatton Garden and look for something there.”

Of course. “I just wondered if it was an heirloom,” I explained, “because I have nothing from my father’s side of the family. Aunt Roz has everything from her family, or if my mother had anything, it’s gone now. But I don’t think, in 1914, when my parents sent me to England for my safety, that they thought it would be the last time they saw me, or I them.”

Wolfgang reached out and placed a hand over mine on the table. “Likely not. I’m sorry, my dear.”

“Me, too,” I said with a sniff. “I don’t think about it most of the time. But I know next to nothing about my father. In fact, it was just the other day that I was talking to Christopher, and he reminded me that my father had a Mensur scar on his cheek?—”

My eyes lingered on the one across the table from me, and a muscle in Wolfgang’s jaw jumped. I looked away. “—and I wondered how that came about.”

He didn’t speak, and I added, “I always thought Mensur duels was something the students did at university. But my father was a craftsman. He made furniture. He wasn’t likely to have attended university. So how did he get it?”

“There are other ways to get a facial scar than fencing for sport,” Wolfgang said.

“Yes, of course there are. Perhaps he grew up in rough circumstances, and someone brought a knife to a fistfight at some point, or perhaps one of his tools slipped while he was working, and he cut himself…”

“Perhaps,” Wolfgang agreed.

“But it seemed like something I ought to know about my own father. Do you know, I don’t even have a photograph of him? There’s a portrait of my mother at Beckwith Place, from when she and Aunt Roz were young, but every day—or every year, at least—I’m less and less able to bring my father’s face to mind.”

They were more just flickers of memories now, of sitting on my father’s lap while he read to me, of holding my mother’s hand while we walked, of talking at the table in our flat while eating Sourbraten and Sp?tzle with butter and herbs. My father’s hands, full of cuts and scrapes from the shop, holding a knife and fork, while my mother’s upper-crust British voice asked how work had been…

But as for bringing his face to mind, no. I couldn’t do it.

Wolfgang nodded sympathetically. “For what it’s worth, and from what I remember, you look like your mother but with your father’s eyes.”

Indeed I did. My mother at fourteen or so, in the portrait at Beckwith Place, looked very much like I had done at that age, except for the eyes and a few other small differences. It was difficult to say what, if anything, other than my green eyes, I had inherited from my father’s side of the family.

The waiter rescued us from becoming too maudlin. As he appeared beside the table with two cups of crab bisque, Wolfgang withdrew his hand, and I did the same. And if I had to surreptitiously touch the napkin to my eyes, it’s no one’s business but my own. The cups descended and the waiter stepped back, waiting for approval.

“It looks lovely,” I told him, a bit stuffily, “thank you.”

He clicked his heels and withdrew. I picked up my spoon and dipped it into the bisque.

The soup was excellent, and so was the prawn cocktail. So was Wolfgang’s turbot. When he offered me a bite, I took it off the end of his fork and tried not to wince at the gesture.

It’s not that I hadn't taken bites of food off the tines of Christopher’s fork before, because of course I had done. But that was different. This felt… overly familiar. Something one might do with a romantic interest, such as a fiancé or husband—or, of course, a cousin and brother. I could imagine Laetitia opening her mouth, birdlike, so Crispin could deposit a tempting morsel therein. Or perhaps the opposite would be more likely to happen. Laetitia waving a piece of food in his face, wanting him to be sweet and romantic. He’d probably feel about it the way I did. I could practically see his sneer in my head as he’d fight back whatever sarcastic remark came to mind.

But never mind all that. I took the piece of turbot between my teeth and pulled it off the fork without actually touching the silver. “Delicious,” I told him once I had munched it down, and if my smile was a touch strained, it was the best I could do.

He smiled, pleased, and went back to his fish. I picked up another prawn and bit into it with a snap.

We ended the meal with a joint serving of spotted dick—it came with two spoons, so there was no need to share any more flatware—and then Wolfgang pulled out my chair and helped me into my coat before he placed his hand on the small of my back for the trip across the floor.

“Let me get you a Hackney,” he told me as we stepped outside on Queen Victoria Street. As he looked around for a vacant cab, I did the same in an effort to spot Christopher. There was no sign of him, although I couldn’t see into the alcove he had tucked himself into earlier, so he might still be there and watching.

“Don’t be silly,” I answered. “It’s broad daylight, and ten minutes on the underground. Just walk me to the entrance. Unless you’re taking the tube back to the Savoy, too?”

It was a perfect opportunity for him to tell me that he was no longer living at the hotel, and I held my breath—hopefully not too conspicuously—while I waited to see what he would say.

“I have some business to take care of in the area,” he told me, neatly sidestepping both the bait and the opportunity to tell me something more. Not a direct admittance that he was no longer at the Savoy, but also nothing that directly said that he was.

I filed the omission away in the back of my head and smiled. “Would you like some company?”

The alcove where Christopher had taken refuge earlier was empty. I flicked a glance into it, and then around to see whether I could spot him anywhere else. When I couldn’t, I turned my attention back to Wolfgang, who seemed to be contemplating my offer with all the seriousness it deserved.

I admit it, I was interested to hear what he decided. If he was telling the truth about having business in the area, it might be interesting to see where he was going. And if he had lied… well, it would be good to know that, as well.

Eventually, he shook his head. “That won’t be necessary. I’m sure you have better things to do with your afternoon.”

I didn’t, actually. I was just going to go home and wait there for Christopher to turn up. But I didn’t want to push too hard and give Wolfgang the idea that I suspected something. So I smiled graciously and let it go. “Nothing much. Although I’m certain Christopher and I can find something to occupy our time.”

“Give your cousin my best,” Wolfgang said and steered me towards the stairs to the underground. The tunnel gaped like an open maw, and I fought back a shiver. Between the memory of tumbling headfirst down the stairs the other night, and Wolfgang’s hand on the small of my back, all it would take was one push and I’d pitch forward…

“Cold?” He rubbed gently, circularly, and I pulled in a breath.

“A little. It got cold quickly. The weather was so nice just a few days ago…”

“Time to dig the winter wardrobe out of mothballs,” Wolfgang said cheerfully and dropped his hand. “Be careful going home, Philippa. Perhaps we can see one another again tomorrow?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said. “Just send me a note, unless you want to arrange something now?”

“I shall send you a note with particulars for supper. Would seven o’clock suit?”

I told him it would suit admirably, and he told me to expect a missive with the name of a restaurant and that he’d look forward to seeing me. And then I watched him walk away—at least for a few feet—before I turned and descended the stairs into the underground.