Page 15 of Peril in Piccadilly (Pippa Darling Mysteries #7)

Chapter Fifteen

I won’t bore you with a recounting of the time that Crispin and I spent sitting in the waiting area at Scotland Yard while Tom was in his office on the telephone. It was utterly stultifying, of course, and at the same time nail-biting, sitting here waiting for news, and we spent the time sniping at one another in the way we usually do when we’re together. The higher the tension, the more tense the sniping became. It was familiar enough that I was able to forget, for long seconds of time, that apparently he was in love with me. There was no sign of it, or no more sign than there had ever been. He entered into his usual cutting sarcasm with gusto, and even if I caught the occasional double entendre that I would have normally let pass without notice, bickering with him felt no different now than it had ever done. And it gave both of us something to focus on other than Christopher’s disappearance and what Tom might be digging up.

Some people gave us curious looks as they went in and out, and a few even addressed us. Or addressed Crispin, more specifically. By name, or rather by title, but either way they clearly knew who he was.

“What was that about?” I inquired after one of them, a strapping young specimen in mufti, had walked past and out the door. “Do you have a police record that I don’t know about?”

He shook his head. “Grimsby dug up whatever there was to know, Darling. If you read his dossier, you know it all.”

Not all, clearly. His feelings for me had not been in the dossier.

“I don’t recall there being much in it about you being arrested,” I said.

“That’s because I can usually talk my way out of being arrested,” Crispin answered. “Or bribe my way out of it, if all else fails.”

I blinked. “Does Tom know that his colleagues are open to bribery?”

“I have no idea what Gardiner knows or doesn’t know,” Crispin said. “And perhaps ‘bribe’ is too strong a word. Let’s just say that some people are amenable to looking the other way given the right incentive.”

Just as he said it, the door to the street opened, and a WPC walked in. Crispin gave her an appreciative up-and-down look, and when she gave him a stern one in return, he winked at her. I waited for a verbal slap to come his way, but instead she smirked and kept going. I waited until she had disappeared through the door on the other side of the lobby before I said, “You found your female constable, St George? It’s just a few months since you were excited to learn that they existed. Did you deliberately go look for one?”

He arched a brow. “Did that look deliberate to you, Darling? I’m just sitting here. I can’t control who comes and goes.”

“You mean you didn’t know her?”

It had certainly looked like a meeting between chums, or at least between two people who had made each other’s acquaintance before now.

“I’ve never seen her until this moment,” Crispin said. “I’m irresistible, Darling, and the sooner you learn that, the better.”

“I’ve never had a problem resisting you,” I pointed out, and he snorted.

“That’s because I’ve never subjected you to the full force of my charm. If I had done, you would have folded like a cheap suit.”

“Would not.”

“Would, too.”

“I think it’s much more likely,” I said, before he could prove his assertion, or try to, “that it’s simply a matter of whether someone knows you or not. I know very well what a bastard you are?—”

“Don’t let my father hear you say that, Darling. Or my fiancée, either.”

I ignored him, since that wasn’t the sort of bastard I was accusing him of being, “—so you don’t impress me. But someone who doesn’t know anything about you, other than that you’re sitting here looking like a good time?—”

“You think I look like a good time?” He sounded delighted at the admission.

“Less now than when you’re all dolled up in evening kit with a glass of champagne in your hand,” I said, “but yes, of course you do. This can’t possibly be news to you.”

His mouth curved. “It’s news that you think so.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t let it go to your head, St George.”

The curve turned into a smirk. “Too late, Darling. It’s already there.”

Of course it was. “That aside,” I said, “I’ve always found you imminently resistible. Because I know you, your abhorrent personality makes up for any bit of outward appeal that you may have.”

The smirk broadened into a grin. “You say the sweetest things to me, Darling. Outward appeal, is it?”

“You’re pretty,” I said, “and you know it. Sometimes I think you know it all too well.”

Such as now, when he was fluttering his eyelashes at me like a flirtatious girl.

“Stop it,” I told him sternly. “I’m not falling for it.”

“Darling…”

“No. You’re not supposed to call me that, remember?” And certainly not in that tone.

He smirked. “Philippa…”

“Not that, either. You know I don’t like it.”

“What do you like?”

“Not you,” I said, and that was when the door to the interior of Scotland Yard opened and Tom stepped through. I breathed a sigh of relief and straightened on my chair. “Tom. What news?”

Beside me, Crispin did the same thing. “You look glum, Gardiner. It isn’t bad news, is it?”

“It’s no news,” Tom said, and I breathed out, relieved, even as I was still worried.

“Nothing at all?”

Tom shook his head. “He wasn’t arrested, as himself or as Kitty.”

I didn’t think it likely that he had been—he would have rung me up had that happened, or so I assumed—but I supposed there had been a chance that he’d been arrested and simply not offered a chance to phone anyone. Now that chance was out the window, it seemed.

“You checked the morgue,” Crispin said, his voice carefully controlled, “I presume?”

Tom made a face. “Much as I hated to do it, yes. No one matching Kit’s description was brought in last night. Not to the morgue, nor to any of the London hospitals.”

The only option left was the dank cellar, then. Or something like it. A bedroom in a cottage in Thornton Heath, like the one where Flossie Schlomsky had been kept.

Something popped into my mind, and then exited, just as quickly, when Tom said, “I also took the time to ring up Germany.”

Ring up— “Why?”

“Better get with the program, Darling,” Crispin advised. “He wanted to make sure that Wolfie is really Wolfie, I imagine. Is that right, Gardiner?”

Tom nodded. “Got it in one, St George.”

“And is he?” I wanted to know.

“He’s Wolfgang Ulrich Albrecht von und zu Natterdorff,” Tom said, “or so it seems. I phoned the local constabulary in Natterdorff—that’s a hamlet in the vicinity of where the castle is located?—”

I nodded, since Wolfgang had told me as much. Crispin did as well, although this was most likely the first he had heard of it.

“And I described the chap we know. The local bobby recognized him. He’s the grandson of the old count, it seems.”

“I could have told you that,” I said. “He’s an orphan, like me, but his grandfather is still living.”

Crispin looked at me, brow elevated. “If his grandfather is living, he can’t be the Graf von und zu Natterdorff, Darling.”

“Of course he can,” I said. “You have two grandfathers, don’t you?” Or did, until Duke Henry died? “Just because he has a grandfather, doesn’t mean that that grandfather is the Graf . He could have been Wolfgang’s mother’s father.”

Crispin looked as if he had bit into something foul. He doesn’t like being wrong. “But he’s not,” he asked Tom, “is he? The old man, I mean?”

Tom shook his head. “He’s the Graf von und zu Natterdorff, and Wolfgang’s paternal grandfather.”

“So if the grandfather is the Graf ,” I asked, “what does that make Wolfgang?”

“Apparently he’s the Graf von und zu Natterdorff, as well. Don’t ask me how it works—” this came with a warning look at Crispin, “—but that’s what the bloke at the constabulary called him. The young Graf .”

“Maybe they call them all Grafs , then? The one with the title as well as the one coming into it?”

“Who knows,” Tom said. “The important bit seems to be that he is who he says he is. More or less.”

There was a moment of silence. “Let me clear it up for you,” Crispin offered. When I shot him a look, he added, down the length of his nose, “I was bred for this, you know. Up until the Great War, German nobility was just like any other European nobility: something I was expected to know about and possibly marry into. I spent hours memorizing lines of succession, and woe betide me if I got any of it wrong.”

“I’m glad to hear that you were well educated in useless information,” I sniped, even as the last part of the sentence imparted a measure of worry. Uncle Harold has never been easy on his son and heir, and I didn’t like the idea of what corporal punishment he might have meted out for Crispin not being up to snuff in memorizing foreign noble titles. “Go on.”

He held up a finger. “The old Graf is the Graf .” Another. “His wife is the Gr?fin .” A third. “Their eldest son and heir would have been the Erbgraf . Younger sons are called Junker s. A grandson would also be called a Graf , although with his father out of the way, I suppose Wolfie is technically the Erbgraf now?—”

“But the bottom line,” Tom said, “is that he is not calling himself by a title he doesn’t own?”

Crispin shook his head. “He’s likely not the Graf von und zu Natterdorff—that would be his grandfather—but he’s a Graf in the Albrecht family, heir to the Natterdorff title.”

“Like you,” I said, and Crispin gave me a disgruntled look.

“Not at all like me, Darling.”

“Philippa. And how on earth is it not like you? You’ll be inheriting the title from your father and not your grandfather, but other than that…”

Tom waved the budding disagreement aside. “Bicker on your own time. We have more important things to worry about.”

Since he was right about that, I dropped my hands off my hips and turned my attention away from Crispin as Tom continued, “The local bobby didn’t know what Natterdorff might be doing in London, or so he said. The Natterdorffs are still wealthy, it seems, albeit not as wealthy as they were before the war?—”

“Nobody’s as wealthy as they were before the war,” Crispin muttered.

I shot him a look before asking Tom, “Then it’s possible that Wolfgang wouldn’t be able to afford the Savoy long term?”

And perhaps even possible that he might have taken up jewelry theft as a sideline?

“Anything’s possible,” Tom said. “The chap I talked to had no idea how to get in touch with him. He said he would inquire of the staff at the castle—apparently the old Graf is infirm and can’t be bothered with questions—but there’s no reason to think he’ll go out of his way to fetch that information for me.”

“Why would he?” Crispin agreed. “You’re a Brit. You won the war. He didn’t. And not only that, but you’re asking questions about one of his own. He has no reason to do anything for you.”

“Precisely. But at least we know that the chap we know is who he says he is, more or less, and that he’s not some charlatan trying to get close to the Sutherland family through Pippa.”

I sniffed, offended. “He has shown no interest in the Sutherlands, I’ll have you know. I don’t think he’s ever exchanged a single word with Uncle Harold, and as for Crispin, they despise one another about equally, I would say.”

“I’m quite certain I despise him more,” Crispin said. And added, “He doesn’t have to be a charlatan to want to get close to us, you know. If the family is in reduced circumstances, he could be the heir to the Natterdorffs and still want to augment the coffers with Sutherland money.”

I snorted. “If so, he really doesn’t understand the family dynamic. There’s no way marriage to me would get him close to any of the Sutherland money. Your father hates me. He wouldn’t gift me so much as a fish spade for my nuptials, let alone a shilling of real cash.”

“He might pay Wolfie to take you off his hands,” Crispin said, which was so blatantly offensive that I quite lost my breath. “Don’t look at me like that, Darling. You know very well that my father would do whatever he had to, to see the back of you.”

Yes, of course he would do. Crispin’s mother had tried to shoot me. His father would certainly not be above bribery—or above paying someone to get me away from his son. I should be glad it would only be to Germany and not out of existence altogether.

“He really hasn’t asked any questions about St George or his father?” Tom wanted to know.

I shook my head. “Not beyond the things everyone asks.”

The silence was expectant, and I added, reluctantly, “Like everyone else, he has suggested that I might fancy St George. Or that St George might fancy me. Or that we fancy one another and are simply trying to hide it. The usual claptrap, in other words. I can’t imagine why everyone thinks the animosity is a cover for liking one another, or why we would bother to hide it if we did.”

There was a pause. A very short one, barely a breath. Under other circumstances—pre two days ago—I probably wouldn’t have noticed it. Now I did, but I’ll hand it to Crispin, he recovered quickly, and sounded perfectly like himself when he told me, “ You may not have any reason to pretend, Darling. After all, I’m a catch, aren’t I? Anyone would be lucky to have me.”

I rolled my eyes. “If you say so. And I suppose I’m not?”

He smirked. “I didn’t say that. But Father would certainly have something to say about it if I expressed any kind of fondness for you.”

Well, yes. Bad enough that he felt the feelings. Acting on them in any way, even just verbally, would no doubt be anathema to His Grace.

“I imagine he would do,” I said. “Something like ‘common as dirt and a foreigner to boot,’ no doubt.”

Crispin’s brows drew down as if the words were familiar, and of course they would be; I had lifted them more or less directly from Uncle Harold’s diatribe back in April.

“Never mind,” I added, before he could place the quote. “It’s not important. What do we do now?”

We had no way to contact Wolfgang. And if he was who he said he was, and if he was still wealthy, there was no reason to think that he would have done any harm to Christopher even if he had discovered him tagging along behind him yesterday. If Wolfgang had nothing to hide, it would simply be humorous to him, I thought.

“I hope you’re right,” Tom said when I expressed as much. “I imagine our next step is to go back to Sweetings, to visit the other establishments in the area, and ask whether anyone noticed Kit yesterday. Someone might have seen what happened.”

Someone might have done, and perhaps I should have thought to do that yesterday afternoon, when it was still light out and when someone might have remembered something. But at that point I hadn’t known that Christopher was missing—I had thought he was just tucked away in another doorway or storefront, waiting for Wolfgang to leave so he could follow—and by now, it was all water under the bridge. Second-guessing something I hadn’t even known at the time was futile, albeit tempting. I pushed it aside and followed the two men out of the lobby into the courtyard.

“Is it all right if we take your motorcar?” Tom inquired of Crispin. “That way, the Tender will be available to the rest of the team, should they need it.”

“Of course.” Crispin opened the door and shooed me into the backseat again.

“Is it acceptable for you to simply go off on your own today,” I asked Tom, as I smoothed my skirt over my knees, “on something that isn’t even officially a case yet?”

“It’s a case,” Tom answered, as he made himself comfortable in the passenger seat while Crispin fired up the motor. “I know Kit, and he wouldn’t stay out all night without letting you know where he was. Especially not with what has been going on lately.”

“You don’t think it’s likely that he met someone he knew, and went somewhere with him?”

“No,” Tom said. “If he went anywhere with anyone and didn’t come home, something is wrong and we’re right to worry. A few hours would have been sufficient for that sort of thing.”

His tone indicated clearly how little he liked this idea, and Crispin slanted him a smirk. “How is it that you know what’s a sufficient amount of time for that kind of activity, Gardiner?”

Tom slanted a look back, this one a lot less amused. “Do I look like an innocent to you, St George? Besides, you’ve brought women home before. Plenty of them, from what I hear. Do you usually spend more than a few hours with them?”

“Not if I can help it,” Crispin said, with no attempt to make himself sound like a gentleman. “I’m usually gone as soon as I can fasten my flies. But it’s not the same thing, is it?”

“It’s exactly the same thing. And I would thank you to refrain from trying to make me compromise myself.”

Crispin sniggered, but he took one hand from the wheel to perform a locking motion on his lips.

“I don’t think he would have gone home with anyone for that purpose,” I said. “He had a reason for being there. He was excited about it. And he knew that I counted on him. He wouldn’t have wanted to disappoint me.”

And that was aside from the fact that he was in love with Tom, and wasn’t likely to have accepted anyone else’s invitation to engage in that kind of activity.

“The question, then,” Tom said, “is whether whoever took him, or talked him into going with them, knew that they were getting Kit, or whether they wanted Kitty.”

“I don’t think that should be the question,” Crispin protested. “I mean, yes. He does look like a pretty girl when he’s all dressed up. But if someone wanted a pretty girl and then they got Kit instead… well, they certainly wouldn’t keep him, would they?”

Likely not. They would either toss him back where they found him—in which case he would have made his way home by now—or they would have killed him so he couldn’t identify them.

I shook off that idea with a shudder. “What should the question be, then, if not that?”

Crispin flicked a look at me in the mirror. “Whether Wolfie is involved or not.”

“I thought we agreed that Wolfgang has no reason to wish Christopher harm.”

“ You may have decided that, Darling. I’m quite certain I didn’t.”

“You just don’t like Wolfgang, St George. But?—”

“You’re damn right I don’t, Darling.”

“—we already talked about it and decided that he’s not doing anything wrong?—”

“ I decided no such thing.”

“—and if he has nothing to hide, why on earth would he?—”

“He most certainly has something to hide.”

I scowled at the back of his head. “And what is that, pray tell?”

“He left the Savoy and is still pretending that he’s staying there,” Crispin said. Which, I admit, shut me up. For a moment, at least.

“Fine,” I said grudgingly. “He did do that.”

“And it’s suspicious.” He appealed to Tom. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s certainly interesting,” Tom agreed. “Although there could be good reasons for it. Or at least reasons.”

“Which would be?”

“He doesn’t want Pippa to think badly of him,” Tom said with a glance at me, “so he’s hiding the fact that he’s had to move to cheaper accommodations.”

“Lying by omission.” Crispin’s tone dripped with satisfaction.

“You’re a fine one to talk,” I told him, and he shot me a look in the mirror.

“What was that, Darling?”

“Never mind,” I said sullenly. But five years of silence, really? And he had the nerve to criticize other people for keeping things to themselves?

Now was not the time for that conversation, however. “Yes,” I said. “Fine. Wolfgang is hiding something from me. Which is the entire reason we are in this situation to begin with, if you’ll recall. Let’s just focus on Christopher. You and I can have things out later.”

“If you say so, Darling.” He gave me another dubious look in the mirror, but focused his attention forward again as we followed Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill past Saint Paul’s to Cannon. The dome of the great cathedral faded into the heavy grayish background of the sky.

“Looks like snow,” Tom commented.

I turned to him, appalled. “Surely not.”

It was cold enough for it, certainly, but we were hardly even halfway through October yet.

He shrugged. “Looks like it.”

Hmph. I leaned back against the seat and folded my arms across my chest.

It was a few minutes later that Crispin had parked the motorcar in the small stub of Queen Street, and we were standing where Christopher and I had stood yesterday, with the somber facade of St Mary Aldermary looming across the street and the cheerful windows of Sweetings up ahead.

“There’s the doorway.” I pointed to it. “The last time I saw Christopher, he went into it while I continued up the street and into Sweetings.”

It was a wide doorway, filled with heavy, double, wooden doors. It looked like the entrance to a fortress.

Tom eyed it, his head tilted to one side. “Interesting. I didn’t realize what this was.”

I flicked a glance at Crispin, who looked as non-plussed as I felt. I turned back to Tom. “You didn’t realize… what? I’m sorry?”

“This is the Albert Building,” Tom explained. He tore his eyes away from the forbidding entrance for a moment to glance up at the four levels of windows above our heads, before turning back to it again. “I thought they would be flats, so I planned to take you both inside so we could all knock on doors. But I don’t think that the incumbent government would be happy about that.”

“The… what?”

“This is the incumbent government’s office building,” Tom said. “I doubt they would appreciate the two of you wandering around inside.”

“I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t appreciate that at all,” I agreed. “Can you go inside yourself, and look around? You work for the government, or some periphery of it.”

“I work for the Metropolitan Police Department,” Tom corrected, “but yes, I could probably go inside. More easily than the two of you could, anyway. Although it’s not likely that anyone up there has Kit stashed away in a closet.”

No, it wasn’t. “Will you do it anyway? Just to make certain?”

“Of course I will.” Tom squared his shoulders under the tweed. “Who knows? Perhaps someone up there deals with German relations, and it turns out that Natterdorff chose this restaurant for a reason.”

“He did say that he had business in the area,” I said. It wasn’t impossible that that business had had something to do with British-German relations. He had implied as much, in fact, even if he had denied that it was in any official capacity.

“What will you two do while I canvass the Albert Building?”

“I want to visit the church,” I said, gesturing across the street at it, “and we can also stop into all the retail establishments we can see, and ask whether any of them noticed Christopher. It should keep us busy for a while.”

I glanced at Crispin, who nodded.

“Very well,” Tom said. “Shall we meet at the motorcar after we’re done?”

We agreed to do so, and then we watched as he rang the buzzer next to the formidable wooden door, gave his name and occupation to the disembodied voice that answered, and pulled the door open. He gave us one last look before stepping across the threshold. The door shut behind him with the approximate sound of a crypt door. I shuddered.

“None of that, Darling.” Crispin put a hand on the small of my back and turned me away. “He’ll be all right. And so will we. Shall we visit the church or the tobacconist first?”

I ran my gaze from the line of shops on the first floor of the Albert Building and then across the street and up the wall and the clock tower of the church opposite. If Tom had vanished inside the equivalent of a vault to search for Christopher, how could I do any less?

“Church,” I said firmly.