Page 14 of Peril in Piccadilly (Pippa Darling Mysteries #7)

Chapter Fourteen

I didn’t sleep well, of course. Not only because I was on the Chesterfield, for the second time in a week—I didn’t want to be too far from the front door in case someone/Christopher arrived in the middle of the night—but also because I kept being visited by bad dreams. I was running through the fog—it’s always foggy in such dreams, and Britain is so often foggy in life, too—and I could see Christopher ahead of me, but I couldn’t catch up to him. Or I caught up and reached out, but the blond that I had thought was my cousin turned out to be Crispin or Wolfgang instead. Or someone else, someone entirely unrelated to the current situation. Once, he was Ronnie Blanton, a blond chap whom Crispin knew, whom I hadn’t seen since early June. Once, ‘he’ was even Lady Violet Cummings, wearing her mother’s sapphire and emerald peacock brooch.

But the point is that I didn’t sleep well. I kept starting awake every hour or so. By the time the knock on the door finally came, in the wee hours of the morning just before dawn, I dragged myself off the sofa and staggered, half-awake, across the foyer, where I fumbled the locks open and pulled on the door. Outside stood a familiar figure in tweed, blond hair gleaming under the electric lights in the hallway, and I pulled him inside the flat with a sob and flung myself into his arms.

It was only once I was there, rubbing my cheek against itchy tweed—tweed that was slowly turning moist from the tears leaking out of my eyes—that I realized I had made a mistake. Christopher had left the house wearing my clothes yesterday afternoon; he wouldn’t return in a well-cut tweed suit that looked like it had been made for him. He owned a tweed suit that had been made for him, but it was still hanging in the wardrobe in his room. And aside from that, Christopher doesn’t smell like fresh starch and expensive tobacco and petrol. His scent is lighter and fruitier, especially when he’s dressed as Kitty.

By then, a pair of arms had gone around me too, and I was being held tightly against a lean body. Tightly enough that he had no problem feeling my reaction once I caught on to the fact that this wasn’t Christopher’s shoulder I was sobbing on.

A second passed while his grip tightened, and then he dropped his arms and stepped back. “Good morning, Darling.”

I did the same, flushing to the tips of my ears. “St George. I’m sorry, I was half asleep and I thought?—”

“I know what you thought. No reason to spell it out.” He glanced around. “He isn’t home, then?”

I shook my head. “Come in. Close the door behind you. Did you drive all night to get here?”

“Only half of it.” He shut the door behind him and followed me into the sitting room. “There are very few cars on the road at night, so I don’t have to worry about the speed limit.”

“How many times were you stopped and ticketed?” I wanted to know as I gathered my blanket and pillow from the sofa.

His lips curved. “None. But I did have to outrun a copper somewhere near Basingstoke.”

“Of course you did. And purely for the sport of it, too, I’m sure. He probably knew it was you, you know. Getting away from him won’t change that.”

Every copper in every town between here and Little Sutherland was familiar with Crispin’s Hispano-Suiza, not to mention Crispin’s penchant for taking his life in his hands.

“He’ll have to prove it was me to give me a fine,” Crispin said with a shrug and turned his attention from the sofa to me. “What are you doing, lounging around in your pyjamas? Why aren’t you ready to go?”

Go where? And aside from that— “Has it escaped your attention that it’s five o’clock in the morning, and that I didn’t know you were going to be here?”

“Oh, so when you rang me up last night, it wasn’t a cry for help?” He smirked, as if he knew the answer to that question already.

“Of course not,” I said steadily. “I merely wanted to know if Christopher had contacted you. I didn’t think you would spend half the night getting here so you could help me look for him.”

“Well, I had to wait for Father to fall asleep before I could get away. He would have told me not to bother.”

Yes, most likely he would have done.

“Well, it’s too early to do much,” I said, “and too dark to see anything, as well. Everyone else is asleep. Why don’t you get a couple of hours’ sleep yourself, and then we can get started. Perhaps we can catch Tom at home before he heads out for the day.”

“Knock me up at seven, then.” He headed for the Chesterfield, snagging the pillow out of my arms on his way past, before dropping down on the leather.

“You can nap in Christopher’s room,” I said, turning on the spot to follow his progress. “It doesn’t have to be in the middle of the flat.”

“I don’t want to get too comfortable,” Crispin answered, untying his shoes and shrugging out of his jacket and waistcoat before tugging off his tie. “This way, I won’t bother you while you get ready.”

He wouldn’t bother me if he were in Christopher’s room either, preferably with the door shut, but as I had chosen to spend my own night on the sofa instead of tucked up in bed, I had no room to tell him to do otherwise. Instead, I just waited until he had made himself comfortable, curled up on his side on the Chesterfield with one hand tucked under my bed pillow, before I shook out the blanket I was holding and draped it over him.

“Thank you, Darling,” came from underneath the folds. I could see the tip of his nose and his eyes, and they didn’t open.

“No problem at all,” I told him, and then I turned out the light and left him there in favor of scurrying into the hallway and my own room.

I had no pillow and blanket, of course, without which there was no point in trying to go back to bed. I was awake now anyway, so I changed into a skirt and jumper, as it had been cold yesterday, and I didn’t imagine that it would be any better today, especially if we were to spend most of the day tooling around in Crispin’s motorcar. I brushed my teeth, fluffed my hair, put on makeup, and finally, with nothing else to do but with another hour to go before I could wake Crispin, I wandered into Christopher’s room and sank down on the edge of the bed and folded my hands in my lap.

I don’t know what I thought I was doing. The only time we were able to do mind-reading, was when we were in the same room, partaking in the same conversation, and someone said something that we both thought was funny or interesting. At that point our eyes would meet, and I’d know that Christopher was thinking what I was thinking. But the rest of the time, no. He’s the closest thing I have to a soulmate, and I love him to pieces, but I could not reach out mentally and get any kind of response back. Nor would I have expected to, had I been reasonable about it, because that sort of thing just doesn’t happen in the real world. But I was worried, and short on sleep, and a bit taken aback that Crispin had motored here in the middle of the night from Wiltshire and was currently snuggled up on my couch… and I suppose I wasn’t thinking clearly. So I spent a few minutes reaching out, trying to find Christopher, and of course I had nothing to show for it. I couldn’t tell whether he was happy or sad, comfortable or suffering some great fate. I couldn’t even tell whether he was alive. I would like to think that if he were dead, I would know it, but I certainly couldn’t feel it that morning. Although that meant that I could tell myself that he was alive, of course, so that’s what I did. With gusto.

Because there was no real reason to believe he wasn’t. The most likely explanation for his absence was that he had gone off somewhere willingly, with someone he knew, and had either forgotten to let me know, or the message had gone astray on its way to me.

The second most likely explanation was that something had happened to him—he had been hit by a motorcar, for instance—and was currently in a hospital bed somewhere, unconscious, unable to let me know what had transpired.

Down the list from that, was that someone had taken him against his will, and was keeping him hostage. But who would want Christopher? He’s from a wealthy family, yes, but Crispin is worth quite a lot more. And while they do look alike, there was no way that anyone would look at Kitty and think that she—that he?—was Crispin. It wasn’t even likely that anyone would look at Kitty and think that she was Christopher, not unless they had come across him—as her—before.

So no, Christopher was alive somewhere, where he had gone hopefully of his own free will, and once Crispin was awake, we would get started on looking for him.

With a few minutes to spare, I wandered past the Chesterfield into the kitchenette and started boiling water for coffee. I’m normally a tea drinker, but after the night I had had—after the night we had both had—I figured the extra dose of caffeine would help us both to wake up.

Crispin was out for the count, eyelashes fluttering and lids twitching as he dreamt. He didn’t even stir when I brushed past him on my way to take a seat on the coffee table with a cup of coffee in each hand. “Rise and shine, Goldilocks.”

He muttered something indistinguishable at that, but didn’t open his eyes. Not until I put one cup down and poked him in the cheek. “Up and at’em, St George. It’s just gone seven and there’s coffee.”

His nose twitched at that, and his eyes fluttered open. For a moment or two they were cloudy and confused, and then they fastened on me and cleared. “Darling.” His cheekbones darkened, and he cleared his throat and sat up, dropping his gaze from my face to the cup in my hands. “Did you say coffee?”

I shoved it at him and lifted the other cup from the table for myself. “I normally take it light and sweet, but black as tar seems indicated today. The better to wake us up.”

“Indeed.” He took a sip and winced. “You weren’t joking, were you?”

Not at all. “Neither of us got much sleep. I thought it might help.”

“I won’t need it.” Crispin smirked. “You always keep me on my toes.”

And there it was, another of those comments that, before this weekend, I would have taken at face value—a joke about our usual animosity and constant bickering—but which I now heard as yet one more misdirection.

When I didn’t say anything, just stared at him, he flushed. “What now?”

I looked away. “Nothing. Never mind.”

“Are you certain?”

“Positive,” I nodded. There was no need for us to talk about this. He hadn’t brought it up in the past five years, and nothing had changed since the last time I saw him. Nothing aside from the fact that now I knew how he felt—or ostensibly felt.

But he was still engaged to Laetitia, and I was still not interested in any kind of relationship with him—not that we could have had one at this point, considering Laetitia. So what this really came down to, was me wanting to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, and shriek, “What were you thinking? You can’t be in love with me!” But since nothing good would come of that, especially on a day when we would be spending hours and hours together, it was just as well if I didn’t make the situation any more awkward than it already was. No matter how curious and/or appalled I was.

He pushed to his feet, and then shoved the coffee cup into my hand. “Let me visit the loo, and then we can head out.”

“There’s no rush,” I began, although of course there was. Not enough of a rush that we had to leave right this minute, though. “You can take the time to finish the coffee.”

“That’s all right, Darling.” He shot me a smirk over his shoulder on his way to the hall doorway. “As I said, your presence is abrasive enough to keep me alert.”

“Ditto,” I told him, as I picked myself up and headed for the kitchenette with the two cups.

Five minutes later we were in the Hispano-Suiza, making our way along the still-dark streets towards Chelsea. Christopher and I had left a message at Tom’s flat once, and I was able to direct Crispin to it. By the time we pulled up across the street, the sun had risen east of London, and the street lamps were off. Tom’s building, all four stories of it, sat silent.

“There’s no doorman,” I told Crispin. “We can ring the bell and see if he’s at home. If not, I suppose we can leave another message.”

“You left one at Scotland Yard last night?”

“When I rang up,” I confirmed, “yes.”

“Let’s go, then.” He pushed his door open. I did the same, and hurried around the motorcar. He was eyeing the building. “Which flat is his, do you know?”

“I’ve never been inside,” I said, “so I’m afraid I have no idea. The only reason I know where it is at all, is that Christopher took me here once. But we only left a note.”

He nodded. “No time like the present.”

He presented his elbow and I hooked on for the trip across the street.

We found Tom’s card—Thomas Gardiner, 3C—beside one of the buzzers, and Crispin put his finger on it. The buzzer, I mean; not the card. Nothing happened—there was no sound—but 3C was probably far enough away that even if it rang inside Tom’s flat, we wouldn’t hear it. A minute passed—Crispin pressed the buzzer again twice—and then an irate voice called down from above. “What the bloody hell is going on?”

We stepped back out of the doorway and peered up. A window two floors above had opened, and Tom was peering out, his hair in disarray and his face flushed.

“Oh,” he said when he saw us, “it’s you two. What’s wrong?”

And then he must have noticed the Hispano-Suiza parked on the opposite side of the street—it’s difficult not to, when the motorcar is bright blue—and some of the angry color faded from his face in favor of a more subdued pallor. One might even say that he paled. “St George?”

“In the flesh,” Crispin confirmed. I supposed that, up until then, Tom must have assumed I was with Christopher. It’s an easy mistake to make, even for someone who hadn’t just been ripped from sound sleep. Crispin was with me, where Christopher was likely to be. It was still a bit dark down here on the street, so visibility was somewhat compromised, and Crispin was wearing a hat, so Tom couldn’t see that his hair is a shade lighter and cooler in color than Christopher’s. From up above, he might not even be able to see Crispin’s face well enough to tell the difference.

It also answered the question of whether Christopher had spent the night with Tom, of course. And obviously he hadn’t, if Tom was asking about him.

“Where’s Kit?”

“That’s what we want to talk to you about,” I said, and watched the rest of the color fade from Tom’s face.

“Two minutes.” He withdrew from the window, and the sash slammed down. We migrated back to the front door—I assumed he would unlock it from upstairs so we could go in and up—but instead a minute passed, and then another, and then Tom appeared in the lobby.

He had clearly dressed in a hurry, because his collar was askew and he was still tying his tie as he came across the floor towards us. After he had pulled the door open and joined us on the top step, he began buttoning up his jacket.

“What happened?” he wanted to know, between one button and the next.

“Christopher didn’t come home last night,” I explained, “so I rang up Sutherland Hall to ask whether St George had heard from him. I rang up Scotland Yard and Beckwith Place, as well; there will be a message for you when you go in. And then St George drove up to Town?—”

Tom shook his head. “Never mind that. What do you mean, Kit didn’t come home last night? Where is he?”

“If we knew that, we wouldn’t be here,” Crispin told him. “He and Philippa went out together in the middle of the day yesterday. He escorted her to Sweetings on Queen Victoria Street, where she was meeting Wolfie?—”

“That’s not important right now, either,” I interrupted. “At least I don’t think so. I left Christopher on Queen Victoria Street at one o’clock. I haven’t seen him since.”

“Where was he going from there?” Tom asked.

“That’s the thing,” I answered, and I’ll admit that I squirmed somewhat guiltily as I said it, “he wasn’t going anywhere. Or nowhere I know. He planned to stick around and then follow Wolfgang home after he and I parted ways.”

Tom’s eyebrows rose. “And why would he do that?”

I explained again about Wolfgang and the Savoy, and ended with, “We were curious, that’s all.”

“Of course you were.” The tone indicated a distinct lack of sympathy with our curiosity.

“Don’t you find it curious?” Crispin wanted to know. When Tom didn’t answer, he continued, “There can only be one logical reason why the man would leave the Savoy but continue to use Savoy letterhead in his correspondence with Philippa, and that’s to make her believe he was still staying there.”

“Perhaps he’s merely being frugal,” Tom suggested, a bit dryly, “and he didn’t want to spend the money on extra notepaper if he didn’t have to?”

Crispin scowled at him. “When was the last time you left a hotel after a stay and took their stationary with you so you could continue to use it after you left?”

“Never,” Tom admitted cheerfully. “Simmer down, St George. Just because it’s unusual doesn’t mean it’s criminal.”

“We didn’t say it was criminal,” I pointed out. “Just that it seemed a funny thing to do. And can you think of any reason anyone would do it, other than to give the impression that he’s still a guest?”

“I can think of a few fraudulent ways that it could be used,” Tom said, “although there have been no reports of anything like that from the Savoy.”

”That reminds me,” I said. “I wanted to ask you—or rather, I think Christopher did—whether there had been any reports of thefts at the Savoy during the last few months.”

“Thefts?” Tom repeated. “I’m sure there must have been a few, although I can’t think of an instance off the top of my head. But those things do happen, especially to tourists. And of course the Schlomskys stayed at the Savoy while they were in London. That was kidnapping for profit, not theft, but it was a criminal act even so.”

“I’m not worried about that.” I waved it off. “Wolfgang had nothing to do with that.”

Tom’s brows rose, and so did Crispin’s. “Did you just accuse Wolfie of theft, Darling?”

“No,” I said crossly. “As I said, this was Christopher’s idea.”

“Christopher accused Wolfie of theft?” Crispin echoed, at the same time as Tom asked, “That the Graf von Natterdorff has something to do with the jewelry thefts we’ve been investigating?”

“I think,” I said, “that he just thought it was interesting that Wolfgang had moved out but without telling me where he had gone, and that he knew, or at least had met, several of the victims. Lady Violet Cummings was at that weekend party at Marsden Manor a few weeks ago, remember?—”

“I’m hardly likely to forget that she was almost murdered right in front of me,” Tom nodded.

“And the night that Laetitia’s engagement ring was stolen, Wolfgang and I had seen her and St George at the Criterion Restaurant. She was wearing the ring as well as the earrings, and the missing pearl necklace, as well.”

“So Natterdorff knew that Lady Laetitia was in London that night, and that the jewelry was with her, and that she was likely to be busy with other things.”

“I suppose so,” I said, with a glance at Crispin, whose cheekbones were pink along with the tips of his ears.

“I’m not certain I appreciate your insinuation, Gardiner,” he muttered.

“I’m quite certain you don’t,” Tom answered blandly, “but that doesn’t change the fact that it was a logical assumption. I don’t think anyone thinks that the two of you aren’t enjoying your marital privileges ahead of time.”

“As it happens?—”

Tom raised a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. Let’s get back to the important bits.”

Crispin scowled, but seemed to agree that his relations with Laetitia—whether they were of a carnal nature or not, and it sounded as if he had been trying to claim that they were not, hard as that was to believe—were less important than trying to figure out where Christopher was. “By all means.”

Tom turned back to me. “So Kit was supposed to follow Natterdorff when the two of you parted ways.”

I nodded. “I didn’t see him at that point, however, so he might have been gone already. Or he had simply moved out of the doorway where I left him, and into a shop, or into the church across the street, or for that matter into a Hackney cab.”

“But you didn’t see him after you came out of the restaurant after lunch?”

I shook my head. “The last time I saw him was at one o’clock precisely, just down Queen Victoria Street from Sweetings. He went into a doorway about halfway between the tube station and the door to the restaurant. The doorway was empty when we came back out. Wolfgang walked me past it to the stairs to the underground.”

“And you haven’t heard from him since?”

“I haven’t heard from either of them. And it isn’t like Christopher, Tom. If he could have contacted someone, he would have done. Maybe not me—he might have rung up Sutherland Hall or Beckwith Place, or even Scotland Yard, if he was trying to get a message to someone and wasn’t terribly picky about who it was—but he wouldn’t have vanished without a trace. Not of his own free will.”

Tom nodded. “Not of his own free will, then. What have you done so far?”

I told him what I had done, which in retrospect wasn’t much. I had mostly spent the time since lunch yesterday waiting and wringing my hands.

“And now you’re here,” Tom turned to Crispin.

The latter nodded. “Philippa rang me up last night. I motored up from Wiltshire and got to London early this morning.”

“Too early to do much,” I added. “I put him to bed for a few hours—he’d motored through the night—and then we came here.”

“And no one has heard from Kit?”

“I haven’t,” I said, and Crispin shook his head. “He didn’t contact Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert. I assume he didn’t contact you?”

Tom shook his head.

“Then no. He either went off somewhere with someone he knew—like the bloke he was dancing with the other night; you recall, I’m sure?—”

Tom’s expression said as clearly as words that yes, he recalled.

“—or something bad has happened to him.”

Tom nodded. “Anything else you haven’t told me?”

I grimaced. “He was dressed as Kitty. He thought—we thought—that it was less likely that Wolfgang would recognize him that way.”

“He didn’t seem to do so the other night,” Tom agreed, and I shook my head.

“But that was at night, in the back of the Tender. In broad daylight, it might be different.”

He didn’t say anything, and I added, a bit diffidently, “Have you… um… spoken to Christopher in the past few days? Since that night?”

Tom shook his head, clearly expecting the worst.

“Do you remember when you dropped us off outside the Essex House Mansions?”

“Of course I remember,” Tom said. “It was only a few days ago. Hardly something I’d forget, is it?”

“Do you remember that we waited for you to motor away before we crossed the street?”

He nodded.

“By the time we reached the other side, there was another motorcar coming down the street towards us. A black one. It looked like a Hackney.”

“Yes?” Tom said.

I made a face. “It jumped up on the pavement and came within a few inches of hitting us both.”

They both stared at me.

“I don’t know whether it was an accident,” I said, “or if it wasn’t, whether it was me or Christopher it was after?—”

“Or Laetitia,” Tom said. When Crispin arched an incredulous brow, he added, “Come now, St George. You know as well as I do that Kit looks quite a lot like your fiancée when he’s dressed as Kitty. It’s the black wig more than anything, I suppose…”

“I’m still not sure I like what you’re insinuating,” Crispin said stiffly and Tom smirked.

“I’m not insinuating anything, St George. It’s not as if you’re attracted to Kitty, are you?”

“Are you?” Crispin shot back, and then shuddered. “Lord, no. Not that she—that he—isn’t quite lovely like that. But unlike some people, I recognize my cousin. Even in drag.”

Tom nodded. “I wish you two would have told me this before now, Pippa.”

“There was nothing you could have done,” I said. “A black Hackney. There are thousands of them in London. And we don’t know that it wasn’t an accident, anyway.”

“It does put a different complexion on this thing, though. If Christopher was the target, and now he’s missing.”

Yes, of course it did. But I had been the one pushed down the stairs to the underground. And Laetitia was the one who had seen the jewelry thief. It had seemed more likely that either of us two was the target of the person in the Hackney rather than Christopher.

Of course, Christopher was now the one missing, so there was that.

“Let’s go,” Tom said and nodded towards the Hispano-Suiza. “You drive, St George.”

“Are you certain you trust him to do that?” I asked, at the same time as Crispin inquired, “Where to?”

“Scotland Yard,” Tom said, with barely a flicker of a glance at me, while Crispin shot me a scowl. “From there I can at least make sure that he wasn’t picked up for public indecency and hasn’t spent yesterday afternoon and last night in a jail cell. After that, we’ll start ringing up hospitals.”

“After you, Darling.” Crispin opened the car door for me to crawl into the backseat. He flipped the seat back and situated himself behind the wheel. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Tom said, and shut his own door. The Hispano-Suiza started up with a roar, and we took off down the quiet street like a bullet from a gun.