Page 16 of Peril in Piccadilly (Pippa Darling Mysteries #7)

Chapter Sixteen

St Mary Aldermary looked gray and tired from the outside, the way that most of London does, especially under a heavy October sky. Inside, however, it was bright white, with tall, ornately carved ceilings, and lots of dark wood.

“Geoffrey Chaucer’s father was buried here,” I told Crispin as we made our way up the middle aisle, glancing into each pew as we passed to make sure Christopher wasn’t curled up on top of or underneath one. “Or so the story goes, anyway. I don’t think there’s any evidence of it anymore. If there was ever a crypt in this spot, I don’t think it exists anymore.”

“Good,” Crispin said.

Yes, indeed. There was no part of me that wanted to descend into the cold and damp of a crypt to look for Christopher’s potentially dead body. I fought back a shiver and added, “In a much happier event—or so I assume—John Milton married his second, or perhaps his third, wife in this church, as well.”

He nodded. “Lovely place for it.”

“Yes, it is. Or it might have been. It was the church before this one. I have no idea what it looked like.” I gazed up at the soaring arches of the ceiling, and added, “Probably not like this.”

Crispin grunted and turned his head to peer down the next pew.

“How does it feel?” I asked him.

He flicked me a distracted glance. “How does what feel?”

I gestured in a circular motion. “The church experience. It’s just about two months, isn’t it, until it’s your turn?”

He made a face. “Don’t remind me.”

I smirked. “Second thoughts, St George?”

“It wouldn’t matter if I did, would it now, Darling?”

No, of course it wouldn’t. Laetitia’s regrets might make a difference, but his wouldn’t. He’d only be able to escape the marriage if she let him escape.

I twisted the knife another quarter turn. “How is the wedding planning coming?”

“I leave that to Laetitia and her mother,” Crispin said.

“You’ll just show up when and where they tell you to, and wear what you’re told?”

“I’ll be wearing a morning suit, Darling, as is appropriate for a daytime wedding.” He sent me another look. “You’ve received an invitation, haven’t you?”

I snorted. “Of course I haven’t. Neither Laetitia nor her mother is likely to want me there. Nor your father, for that matter.”

“But you’ll be Christopher’s escort, won’t you?”

“I have no idea,” I said, and mentioned nothing about the fact that for all we knew, Christopher might not be with us two months from now. Christopher might not be with us tomorrow. It was much better, more calming, not to consider that as a possibility. “It depends on whether he asks me, and also whether Wolfgang is going. I don’t think Christopher’s received an invitation either. He hasn’t said anything about it.”

And we did get our post from the same place, namely Evans.

Crispin scowled. “They’d better not try to keep my cousin from attending my wedding.”

“I’m sure they won’t,” I said. “It would look very bad if they excluded your closest family. Besides, if I’m not invited to the reception, the church is open to everyone. I remember the notice in the Times said so. I’ll cheer you on from the spectator section.”

“Thanks ever so,” Crispin said and came to a stop in front of the altar. “I didn’t see anything, did you?”

I had seen plenty of things, but no Christopher. “I’ll go left and check the area around the organ and the west gallery,” I said. “Will you check the chancel and then go up the right gallery, and we’ll meet in the back?”

Crispin nodded and stepped forward. I made a ninety degree turn into the west gallery and over to the pipe organ.

There was no Christopher tucked behind the instrument, of course, nor was there anyone curled up anywhere in the west gallery. I checked the pews again from this angle, just in case I had missed something earlier, and wound up back in the narthex with nothing to show for it. Crispin arrived a few seconds later, hands in his pockets, and shook his head.

“We had to try,” I told him as I headed for the door to the outside with him right behind.

“Of course we did. And now we get to try elsewhere.”

He opened the door for me and held it while I passed through. I walked into what appeared to be a small squall of icy needles that had blown up while we had been inside. “Brrr!”

“I hope he’s somewhere warm and dry,” Crispin agreed. “The tobacconist next. Come along.”

I latched onto his arm for the walk back across the street.

An hour later, when Tom finally emerged from behind the double doors of number 49, we had inquired of clerks in every shopfront up and down the block, from Sweetings to the tube entrance, whether any of them had seen Christopher—or Kitty—the day before. And a few had done, but not in a way that had helped. No one had noticed him leave, or the matter of his leaving. He had been there, and the next time they looked through the window, he’d been gone. In some cases, that had been because he had moved positions: circled the small block or gone into one of the other shopfronts where someone else had seen him. Eventually, no one had seen him anymore, and that was that.

“Seemed a shame,” the chap at the confectionary store said. “Pretty girl like that, made to wait around for some bloke who couldn’t bother to be on time. If I’d been off the clock, now…”

He shook his head sadly. We smiled and thanked him, and said nothing about the fact that the pretty girl had been a young man, and that the bloke he’d been waiting for had been inside Sweetings lunching with me.

But eventually we ran out of shopfronts and clerks, and we retreated around the corner to Crispin’s Hispano-Suiza. And shortly after that, Tom made his way around the corner towards us, as well.

“What news?” I asked him when he had climbed into the passenger seat and had sat back with a heartfelt sigh.

He shook his head without raising it from the headrest.

“Nothing?”

“Not a thing.” He turned his head to glance at Crispin. “You?”

“Nothing, either,” the latter said. “The church was empty.”

“Several of the shop clerks noticed him,” I added. “A few even said something to him—greetings mostly, I think—but no one saw him leave. He was there, and then he was gone.”

“Same with the upstairs,” Tom said. “It took a bit of time to talk my way past security, and then more time to talk to everyone. A few people noticed him outside—they thought he was a woman—but for the most part they were all in their offices during the timeframe. A handful left for lunch or came back during the time Kit was outside, and remembered seeing him. No one saw him with anyone else except for one of the secretaries?—”

I caught my breath quickly.

“—who saw him with you.”

I sank back against the seat and avoided Crispin’s sympathetic look in the mirror.

“What about Wolfie?” he asked. “Did anyone remember seeing him?”

Tom shook his head. “One man in a dark suit is much like another. Not like an eye-catching young woman—or a young man in drag—in a cloche hat with violets on it.”

“Even though Wolfgang is exceptionally handsome?” I inquired. “Nobody noticed him?”

“If anyone notices him,” Crispin said, “it would probably be because of the scar. He’s not that handsome.”

He certainly was. Not that I was about to get into an argument about it. I had better things to do than try to convince Crispin that Wolfgang was good-looking, especially when I knew that Crispin had every reason to reject the premise.

“Was there a German specialist inside?” I asked instead, and Tom nodded. Instead of commenting on it, though, he said, “Get going, St George, if you please. There’s no point in us sitting here.”

“I’d be happy to,” Crispin said, “if you’ll tell me where you want me to go.”

“Back to Scotland Yard, I suppose. Perhaps one or more of my inquiries were answered while we were out.”

Crispin shrugged and started the motorcar. Tom turned his attention back to me and my question. “Yes, indeed, there was a German liaison upstairs. He didn’t know who Natterdorff was, but he was interested in hearing about him.”

“Surely they keep track of the foreigners who come here,” Crispin said as he maneuvered the motorcar carefully back onto Queen Victoria Street in the direction of the Embankment and Scotland Yard.

“Yes and no,” Tom said. “The chap upstairs looked him up at my request, and Natterdorff had the appropriate papers when he arrived here in late July. He also had enough money to support himself, and didn’t need to apply for an employment permit from the Labor Secretary.”

“Whatever business he’s doing doesn’t involve a job, then.”

Tom shook his head. “Or not a legal one, at any rate. He listed the Savoy as his permanent address on the paperwork, and after someone made certain that he had actually checked into a room there, nothing else happened. He wasn’t of particular interest to anyone. Too young to have fought in the war, not on any of the lists of communists that rioted in Hamburg in 1923…”

“And a Graf ,” Crispin supplied dryly from behind the wheel. “That sort of thing matters here, even if the Weimar Republic did away with it half a dozen years ago.”

“So we know nothing more than we did this morning,” I said.

Tom shook his head. “I’m sorry, Pippa. We know that Wolfgang’s business wasn’t at the Albert Building. That’s one thing. And we know that nobody saw Kit disappear. We can widen the net, I suppose—ask further afield. I can dispatch a constable or two to do that. You don’t have a photograph of him, do you?”

“Not as Kitty,” I said. “That’s not something we want sitting around the flat in case the wrong people notice it. And a photograph of Christopher as himself wouldn’t help, I expect.”

Tom shook his head. “The constables will have to make do with a description, then. Tell me exactly what he was wearing, if you please?”

I described my clothing and Christopher’s hat in detail while Tom took the information down in his little notebook. “The German attaché provided me with a photograph from Natterdorff’s file,” he added as he slipped the notebook and pencil back into his pocket, “and I suppose it can’t hurt to flash that around too, and ask whether anyone saw them together.”

“You do suspect Wolfie, then,” Crispin commented, and Tom flicked him a look.

“I don’t. No more than I suspect the public in general. But it was Natterdorff that Kit was going to follow yesterday, and we do know that if nothing else, there’s something a bit dodgy about his living situation. That doesn’t seem as if it would be enough motive for kidnapping or, God forbid, something worse, but it has to be considered.”

“What do you want us to do?” I asked after a moment, and he turned his attention to me.

“Go home and think, I suppose. Wait for Kit to contact you if he truly is just out there somewhere of his own free will. Perhaps Natterdorff went off to Calais overnight, and Kit went with him.”

“Not without his passport,” Crispin said.

“Somewhere domestic, then. Cardiff or Edinburgh. Stowe. Somewhere where the telephone exchange is unreliable.”

I supposed it was possible. Not likely, perhaps, but possible.

Indeed, if Wolfgang was the jewel thief, perhaps he had decided to pay the Fletcher family a visit. Their ancestral home was somewhere near the Scottish border, according to Crispin. Northumberland or North Yorkshire or some such place. If Christopher had followed him there, it might be days before he came back.

“You’ll let us know if you learn anything new?” I asked when Crispin had pulled the Hispano-Suiza into the courtyard at Scotland Yard and Tom was on his way out of the vehicle.

“You’ll be the first,” he assured me. “And you’ll do the same?”

I promised that we would do, and then Tom went into the building and Crispin put the H6 back into gear, and we rolled off towards home.

“There’s nowhere else you want to go?” he asked. “Can I interest you in a spot of tea somewhere?”

“There’s tea at home,” I answered, “and I’d rather like to know whether there’s any post. I also have to ring up Beckwith Place and update them on what’s going on. Or rather, on what isn’t.”

“I had hoped we would be farther along by now,” Crispin admitted. “That we’d have made some sort of progress, you know? But instead there’s nothing.”

“I wouldn’t say nothing.” It was mostly negative knowledge, admittedly, but it was something. “We know that he wasn’t dragged, kicking and screaming, into a Hackney and spirited away. If he had been, someone would have reported it. That isn’t the kind of thing that goes unnoticed, especially not on Queen Victoria Street in the middle of the day.”

“Especially not with the government offices right there,” Crispin agreed.

“And we know that he isn’t in jail, or in hospital, or the morgue.”

“I suppose that’s something. Although at this point, I would almost rather have had him in hospital or jail.”

I looked at him—I had moved into Tom’s seat now, instead of staying in the back of the motorcar—and he added, “Not the morgue. Obviously not. But at least then we would know something. It’s the not knowing that’s difficult.”

“It’s all difficult,” I said. “I’m glad he isn’t hurt, or hasn’t been arrested. But yes, it would be good to know something for certain. I don’t know what I’m going to tell Aunt Roz.”

“The truth,” Crispin said, as he navigated Trafalgar Square and headed north on Charing Cross Road. “Scotland Yard is working on it, and at least he isn’t dead, in hospital, or in jail.”

He wasn’t in jail or hospital, no. But he might still be dead, and we simply hadn’t found the body yet. But when I opened my mouth to say so, no words came out.

Crispin glanced over at me and shook his head. “He’s not dead, Philippa.”

I cleared my throat. “How can you be certain?”

“Because I refuse to believe differently until there’s no other choice,” Crispin said. After a moment, he sighed. “I suppose I ought to ring up Marsden Manor and let Laetitia know where I am.”

“And how is Laetitia going to feel when she hears that you’re in London with me?”

I wanted to bite my tongue as soon as the words came out, since they skirted a bit too close to things I wasn’t supposed to know, let alone talk about. He didn’t seem to think anything of it, though, so perhaps I regularly said things without realizing how they sounded. “She’ll have a conniption, most likely. A rather good thing she’s in Dorset and I’m in London.”

“Or you could simply not tell her,” I suggested. “It’s not as if something’s going on that she needs to know about.” Or anything that she would object to, really, if she did know.

He sent me a dubious look. “If I don’t tell her and she finds out, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“What’s the worst she can do? Break the engagement? You can’t tell me that wouldn’t be a relief.”

He couldn’t, it seemed, or at least he didn’t. “I did propose of my own free will, you know,” he said instead. “I’m sure you would rather die than tie yourself to Laetitia Marsden for the rest of your life—not that you could do—but it probably won’t be so bad.”

“How can you say that?” I tried, but he wasn’t even listening to me.

“She’s beautiful, and blue-blooded, and she loves me, and I like her well enough?—”

Hard to imagine how anyone could. However— “You don’t love her, though!”

He shot me a look. “I don’t have to love her, Darling. I never expected to marry for love. My parents certainly didn’t, and I assumed that I would end up hitched to someone they decided on sooner or later.”

“That’s fine if there’s no one else you want to marry,” I said, “but?—”

“But the girl I want doesn’t want me, and isn’t likely to ever want me. So I might as well settle for someone I can have.”

There wasn’t much I could say to that. I certainly couldn’t tell him that he was wrong, not when I knew very well—now—who he was talking about, and when there was no part of me that wanted to marry him.

“And as I’ve told you before,” Crispin added, “Father would never approve. We’d have to run away and live in squalor on the Continent?—”

“Some women would be happy to live in squalor on the Continent.”

He looked pensive. “Laetitia might actually do it, if I asked. She seems inclined to give me whatever else I ask for…”

“Ugh,” I said. “That’s vile, St George.”

“I don’t see why.” He grinned. “But if it offends you, perhaps we should discuss something else.”

Perhaps we should. Although, if nothing else, this topic had taken my mind off Christopher and his plight for a minute or three.

“Do you plan to ring up Laetitia, then?” I asked.

“Perhaps not,” Crispin answered. “You’re right. With luck, perhaps we’ll find Kit before the end of the day, and then I can go back home without anyone being the wiser. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, etcetera.”

“If you say so. I still have to ring up Beckwith Place and give Aunt Roz an update. She’ll worry more if she doesn’t hear from me than if I ring her up and tell her that we know nothing.”

“Not nothing,” Crispin reminded me. “He’s not in hospital, he’s not in jail, and he’s not in the morgue. That’s not nothing. And be certain to mention that Sutherland House stands ready to accept them should they decide to motor up to Town for a few days. We can phone from there if you’d like.”

“There’s a call box just down the street from the flat,” I said. “It seems easier.”

He nodded. “I’ll take you there, then.”

“After you take me home. I want to check with Evans that there’s no news before I phone anyone.”

“As you wish.” We reached Shaftesbury Avenue and veered right towards Bloomsbury.

“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?”

“German Kurrentschrift ,” 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.