Page 18 of Peril in Piccadilly (Pippa Darling Mysteries #7)

Chapter Eighteen

Wolfgang had arrived before me, and was already in the restaurant when I stepped up to the ma?tre d’s podium. The gentleman—different from the other day—escorted me to the table, where Wolfgang jumped up from his chair to pull out mine. The ma?tre d’ withdrew and Wolfgang sat back down.

“New chap today,” I commented, with a glance at the retreating back of the ma?tre d’. Wolfgang, too, shot a look in that direction and made a vague sort of noise. “Something wrong?” I added.

He shook his head and turned his attention back to me. “Not at all. I can’t say that I noticed.”

“That the ma?tre d’ is someone different from last time? They look totally different from one another.”

“Two men with black hair in evening kit?” Wolfgang said, so at least he had noticed that much.

“This one is ten years older, and several inches taller, and swarthier, and has bigger ears. The other chap had a noticeable overbite.”

He stared at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t help it that I’m observant.”

He nodded, but his eyes on me were concerned. “Is everything all right, mein Schatz ?”

“No,” I said, getting right to it. “Christopher didn’t come home last night, and I’m worried.”

There was no reason to hold back, after all. The sooner I could get it out in the open, the sooner I would see his reaction, and if he wasn’t involved, well… it was topmost of mind and if he had been anyone else, it would still have been the first thing I would have wanted to talk about.

“Dear me,” Wolfgang said. His lips gave a twitch, which might have been a sign of guilt, if he knew more than I did and he thought my reaction was funny. Or it might simply be that I was behaving like a madwoman and he didn’t want to express what had originally occurred to him. I probably didn’t sound like someone who wanted to listen to reason.

“He escorted me to Sweetings,” I added. “I walked inside to meet you, and he went off on his own. And now he hasn’t been home in more than twenty-four hours. I don’t know what to do.”

My voice was becoming increasingly uneven. The waiter, who had been on his way towards our table, veered off in the other direction at the sound of it, and who could blame him? He probably assumed I was about to break down in tears at any moment.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Wolfgang said. “I like your cousin.”

“So do I.” He used present tense, and I wondered whether that meant anything. It might, if he knew something I didn’t. Then again, it might not.

“But he’s a man grown, Philippa,” Wolfgang added. “Are you certain he didn’t simply meet a friend and go home with him?”

He said ‘him,’ which might indicate that he knew in which direction Christopher’s interests lay. If he had seen Christopher dressed up as Kitty yesterday, he might have drawn that conclusion from it. Then again, I didn’t think it proved anything. I might have said something about Christopher’s proclivities at some point. It isn’t something I tend to blab indiscriminately about, but Wolfgang had been around both of us for long enough that I might have let something slip.

“That’s what I thought when he didn’t come home last night,” I said, without commenting on the pronoun. It might simply have meant a friend of the same gender and platonic variety, after all. “But he wouldn’t have stayed out all night without letting me know where he was. And he certainly would have been home this morning.”

“Perhaps the police…?”

The waiter made his approach again, and Wolfgang waved him off.

I snorted. Not in response to the waiter veering off for the second time, but to the idea that the police—the regular police, not Tom—might be of any use in this situation. And not only because they’d be honor-bound to arrest Christopher if they found him wandering around London in my skirt and high heels.

“Do you suppose the police would take me seriously if I told them that my flat-mate—my twenty-three year old, male flat-mate, who is cousin to the notorious playboy Crispin St George—didn’t come home last night?”

Wolfgang didn’t answer, and I continued, “In the best case scenario, they would laugh me out the door. In the worst, they would think it was entirely deserved and that he brought it on himself. Either way, they would do nothing to look for him.”

At this point, the waiter was back, and was hovering anxiously. Wolfgang beckoned him closer. We ordered a drink and an appetizer, and the waiter withdrew.

“So you haven’t involved the police,” Wolfgang said.

It sounded more like a statement than a question, but I shook my head anyway. It probably wasn’t indicative of anything at all that he seemingly wanted to make sure of this point. “No.”

“Not even your friend, Detective Sergeant Gardiner?”

“I contacted Tom last night,” I said, “to see whether he knew where Christopher was. He didn’t.”

“And he’s not investigating?”

“He’s a homicide detective with Scotland Yard. Until Christopher turns up dead—” I grimaced, “—it’s not his job.”

“So it’s just you looking for him, then?”

“I talked his parents into staying in Wiltshire another day,” I said. “I had to tell them what had happened, of course. Just in case he had phoned them or they had heard something I hadn’t.”

“But they hadn’t?”

I shook my head. “I tried to make it sound less serious than it is, because I didn’t want them to worry.”

He nodded, sympathetically.

“And I won’t say that I’m looking, precisely. I wouldn’t know where to start. But yes, it’s just me.”

I had already disavowed Tom, and there was no reason, none at all, to mention Crispin.

“I’ll take care of you, mein Schatz ,” Wolfgang said, and reached out to cover my hand with his. It was much larger than mine, and swallowed it completely. I tried not to feel suffocated. “I’ll help you,” he added. “And if the worst comes to the worst?—”

I winced, since the worst would definitely be Christopher not coming home, and I didn’t want to imagine that. Wolfgang, however, seemed to have something else in mind.

“—and your family turns their backs on you, you will always have a home with me.”

I opened my mouth to say that Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert would never turn their backs on me, any more than Cousin Francis and Constance would do, but then I imagined how Christopher might not come back, and I saw my aunt’s tearful look of blame because I was older than Christopher and should have kept him safe, and I shouldn’t have let him go off on his own to be kidnapped or murdered or God knows what else. And suddenly I couldn’t force the words out. Laetitia would keep Crispin away from me, and Uncle Harold already hated me, and while Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert loved me, I wasn’t their daughter, not the way that Christopher was their son, and if it came down to a choice between us—if it came down to me having facilitated Christopher’s death, because I hadn’t taken seriously enough the responsibility they implicitly gave me when I moved to London with him—my aunt and uncle might well turn their backs on me in their grief over losing yet another son. Robbie was a decade gone, lost in the war, and if they lost Christopher too, I wasn’t sure how they would survive.

So instead of telling Wolfgang that my family would never cast me off, and would hold on to me all the harder for having lost Christopher—because I simply couldn’t be certain that they would do—I swallowed the words, and blinked back the tears, and faced him across the table.

“Thank you.”

He patted my hand. “Of course, my dear.” And then the waiter approached with our cocktails, and Wolfgang withdrew his hand to his own side of the table.

“Tell me about your grandfather,” I said when the waiter had retreated again and it was just the two of us once more. I couldn’t talk about Christopher anymore, and I needed something to distract myself from the thought that my family—the only family I had left—might disown me if he didn’t return.

Wolfgang looked non-plussed. “My grandfather?”

“You mentioned once that he is still alive. We are both orphans, but you told me that your grandfather is living.”

He nodded. “So he is.”

“Is that your Natterdorff grandfather, or your mother’s father?”

Of course I already knew the answer to that, but Wolfgang didn’t know that I knew, and just in case this came up again at a later date, I wanted him to have told me the information himself.

“It’s the Graf von und zu Natterdorff,” Wolfgang said. “My father’s father.”

“I thought you were the Graf von und zu Natterdorff. That’s what you said when we first met you.”

“We are both Grafen ,” Wolfgang said. “He is the Graf . My father was the Erbgraf until his death, and now I am the Erbgraf .”

So the same thing Crispin had explained to me and Tom.

“That sounds confusing,” I said. “Before the old Duke of Sutherland died in April, Uncle Harold was the Viscount St George, and Crispin was the Honorable Crispin Astley. Now Uncle Harold is the duke, and Crispin is the viscount. It’s easier when they all have different titles.”

Wolfgang nodded, but he also asked, “And your cousin Christopher? He is also the grandson of the former duke, yes?”

“He is. But his father, my Uncle Herbert—Lord Herbert—was Duke Henry’s younger son. Uncle Harold is older. So Harold gets the title, and his son becomes the Viscount St George. Uncle Herbert is a Lord, but his children don’t have titles.”

Wolfgang nodded. “And if something happens to the current duke?”

“Crispin gets the title,” I said, “and his son, if he ever has one, grows up as the Viscount St George. But Uncle Harold isn’t sixty yet. And he’s too ornery to die young.”

The late Duke Henry had been almost ninety when he passed, and it hadn’t been from natural causes. He might have gone on for another decade if not for that.

“Did your grandfather only have the one son?” I asked, and watched Wolfgang hesitate. “In this country, an heir and a spare is the general rule.”

With an occasional girl when the genetic lottery doesn’t turn out in the parents’ favor. Really, it’s as if they don’t realize that for the succession to continue to the next generation, they need an equal number of women.

Wolfgang nodded. “In Germany, too.”

“It doesn’t always work out, of course. Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert had three boys, and I’m sure they probably hoped that Christopher would be a girl?—”

Wolfgang’s lips twitched, but he didn’t say anything. And because he might have found the idea funny even without the knowledge that Christopher has a penchant for pretty gowns and makeup, I couldn’t even draw the conclusion that he knew more about Christopher’s disappearance than he let on. It was frustrating.

I ignored it and continued, “—but then they got me, of course, and I suppose I filled that spot. Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Harold only had Crispin.”

“If anything happens to him?” Wolfgang asked.

“If Crispin dies without issue, Uncle Herbert is next in line for the title. Then his eldest son, who is Francis. And after that it’s Francis’s eldest son, if he has one.”

Which he probably would have. Constance was the maternal type, and only twenty-three, so there was plenty of time for her to pop out an heir and a spare, along with a girl or two for good measure.

“My grandfather had another son,” Wolfgang said, somewhat reluctantly. “But he’s dead now, too, along with my father and mother.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” I said politely.

Wolfgang inclined his head. “There has been a lot of death in the past decade.”

Yes, there had been. Between the war and the influenza epidemic, I had lost my father, my mother, and Cousin Robbie, and Wolfgang’s story was likely similar. “Your uncle died without issue?”

“He was disowned and removed from the succession,” Wolfgang said, which didn’t answer the question, but which clarified enough of what had happened.

My lips twitched. “Did he fall in love with the wrong girl?”

“Eventually,” Wolfgang said darkly, “but before that he read Karl Marx and threw off the fetters of the aristocracy in favor of living in communistic squalor and working with his hands.”

He sounded as if such was a fate worse than death. “My father worked with his hands,” I reminded him gently, “and I’ve read Marx. There’s nothing wrong with either of those things.”

He seemed to regain himself. “Of course not.” He managed a smile, although it was a bit stiff. “And it’s all water under the bridge, isn’t it? He died during the war. There’s only Opa and I left. When he passes, I will become the Graf von und zu Natterdorff in truth, not just in title, and my son will become the Erbgraf .”

His son? “Do you have one of those?”

“No,” Wolfgang said. “But I have hope for one in the future.”

He smiled at me in a way that told me that he still hoped I would be the one to fulfill that wish. And although he didn’t say so, I was certain that in addition to the son and heir, he’d most likely also want the requisite spare, and perhaps a daughter or two to boot, as well.

Unlike Francis’s fiancée, I’m not particularly maternal. Or not yet, at any rate. Marriage and children at twenty-three might be all right for Constance and her ilk, but I wanted no part of it. And I certainly don’t want to be responsible for the next generation of an aristocratic dynasty.

But I was at this table for a reason, and part of that reason was to make certain that Wolfgang was happy and didn’t suspect that Tom and Crispin were standing by to follow him home after our meal. So I smiled back, and tried to make it look doting, as if raising his children was at the top of my list for how I wanted to spend the next twenty-five years.

We got through the rest of supper in the same manner. I simpered, and Wolfgang seemed to believe that I meant it. We spoke mostly of innocuous things. He asked me to tell him about growing up with Christopher, perhaps because he could sense that I had a hard time thinking of anything else, and although it was the last thing I wanted to talk about—what if I never saw Christopher again? Dwelling on what I had lost wasn’t going to make me feel any better—I obliged. If nothing else, it was something safe to talk about, and assurance that I wouldn’t let slip anything about any suspicions I might have had towards Wolfgang himself.

He certainly didn’t behave suspiciously. Nothing he said threw up any red flags in my mind, and his eyes were warm as he watched me expound on my close friendship with my cousin. He nodded sympathetically from time to time—especially when I lamented over how awful Crispin had been as a child, because I could hardly talk about growing up with Christopher without mentioning the best friend I had replaced in his affections.

The only thing I might say about it that wasn’t complimentary to Wolfgang, was that he had asked me to talk about Christopher at all. Anyone else who cared for me would have tried to take my mind off my missing cousin and my worry for him by talking about other things. But we’re all different, and perhaps talking his problems to death was how Wolfgang coped with them, and so he thought the same would be true for me. He might have been trying to do me a favor.

At any rate, we made it through supper and onto coffee and pudding without me having given anything away and without incident of any kind. And that was when things went sideways.

I suppose it was a case of various bits and pieces of information turning themselves over in the back of my head while I was talking about other things, such as the time when Crispin left me in the middle of the Sutherland Hall hedge maze at eleven, and Christopher had had to rescue me. The following year, I mapped out the maze with paper and pencil, so it wouldn’t happen again, or so, if it did, I could rescue myself, and I suppose I was doing something of the same thing now, only subconsciously, while I was talking. Mapping out twists and turns and connections.

However it happened, a few disparate pieces of information seemed to bump into one another in the back of my head, with a noise like a click, and then, like magnets, they stuck together.

“My father—” I said, and it must have been enough of a departure from the conversation that Wolfgang looked surprised, or perhaps discomfited, for a moment.

It was only for a moment, though, and then he smiled. “What about your father, Liebling ?”

I ignored the blandishment, even though it was more familiar than what he usually called me. “You said you knew my parents. The first time we met, in the tearoom, you recognized me.”

“You were only five or six years old the last time I saw you,” Wolfgang agreed, “but I would know you anywhere. You look like your mother, but with your father’s eyes.”

Yes, I did. And as Christopher and I had decided at the time—because Germans didn’t appear out of nowhere to claim kinship every day—he must have been telling the truth, because only people who knew my family would know which of my features I had inherited from which parent.

“We’re related, you said.”

He nodded, and this time I was fairly certain that I saw a flash of discomfort, or something very like it, in his eyes.

“Was my father your uncle, the brother who was disinherited?”

Wolfgang hesitated. I kept my eyes on him, and I suppose he came to realize that not saying anything was, for all intents and purposes, the same as saying yes. Only a resounding denial would have worked in this scenario, and for one reason or another, he was unwilling, or perhaps unable, to lie.

“He was,” I said, “wasn’t he?” It explained the Mensur scar—not because commoners had them too, as Christopher had postulated, but because my father hadn’t actually been a commoner—and it also explained why my German, what little I could remember of it, had always been on the formal side. “Does that mean that I’m a Gr?fin ?”

“Your father was disowned,” Wolfgang said stiffly.

Yes, of course he had been. I had grown up in a small flat, not a castle, and I had no memory of having met anyone in my father’s family. Including Wolfgang himself, on that occasion he had told me about.

“Did we actually meet?” I asked. “You told me we had done, but I don’t remember it.”

“As a matter of fact,” Wolfgang said, “we didn’t. My father and mother were forbidden from associating with yours. I recognized you from having you pointed out to me on the street in Heidelberg when I was small, but not from spending time with you. I wasn’t allowed.”

“And all because my father wanted to make furniture?”

“That,” Wolfgang said, “and because he didn’t believe in the class distinctions that existed thirty years ago. Class distinctions are important to my—to our—Opa.”

“Do they not exist anymore? The class distinctions?”

“The Weimar Republic abolished the class system,” Wolfgang said, “and the aristocracy.”

“But you’re still a Graf .” And so was his—or our—grandfather.

He nodded. “But being a Graf doesn’t mean much in Germany anymore. Not like it does in England. Everyone in Germany is poor these days.”

Oh, really? “That’s not much incentive to get me to marry you, you know,” I pointed out, only half-jokingly, and he chuckled.

“Don’t worry, mein Schatz . Grandfather has plenty of money. We won’t starve.”

No? “That presumes that your grandfather—or my grandfather too, I suppose—would accept me as your future wife. And if my father was disowned, I don’t see him approving. Do you?”

There was a beat, and then— “Opa wants me to be happy,” Wolfgang said.

That was nice. Whether he would allow that to happen with the daughter of a man he had disinherited, remained to be seen.

“Is it even legal for first cousins to marry in Germany? When you proposed, I had no idea we were so closely related.” It didn’t bode well for the next generation, I’d have to say. One does want ones children to grow up without hereditary issues, ideally.

“Of course,” Wolfgang said. “It is legal here, as well, is it not?”

It was, actually. Not that I would ever consider it. When I had joked about marrying Christopher, if we were both single at thirty, having children of our own had not been part of that plan. The fact that we are first cousins by blood was only a small part of the problem, of course. The fact that we’re closer to siblings emotionally was a big one, and so was the fact that Christopher doesn’t like girls.

And after finding out that Wolfgang and I were more closely related than I had realized, there was no way that I would ever seriously consider marrying him, either. So at this point, I might as well move forward with my other questions.

“You’ve moved out of the Savoy,” I said, “haven’t you?”

This time something definitely flashed in his eyes, although it might have been simple surprise at the abrupt non sequitur . “How do you know that?”

“I came back here the other day,” I said. “After we had had tea in the tearoom. After you received the note and after you loaded me into the Hackney and sent me home. I wondered why you seemed so determined to get rid of me, so I came back. And the doorman told me that you’re no longer a guest here.”

“That,” Wolfgang said, “is not a crime.”

No, of course it wasn’t. A bit underhanded, with the secrecy and all, but hardly a criminal offense. “You’ve been trying to make me believe that you’re still living here, though. Haven’t you? You’re still writing to me on Savoy notepaper.”

“I didn’t want you to think badly of me.” He gave me a soulful look. “If you thought me poor, you might not afford me your hand in marriage, and I wanted to marry you. I know I should have told you, but I was…” He dropped his gaze, “—ashamed.”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes across the table, but kept his own down.

“I know all about being a poor relation,” I told him. “I know it better than you, I daresay.”

In fact, it was only because of Uncle Herbert’s generosity and Christopher’s love that I lived as well as I did. But that didn’t excuse him having strung me along for weeks, if not months.

“Just out of curiosity,” I said, “where do you live these days?”

He did look thoroughly ashamed, I have to say, when he told me that he had taken rooms in a house in Shoreditch, of all places.

I picked up my cup of coffee and drank what was left in it. “I think it’s time I go home.”

“Please allow me to explain,” Wolfgang said.

I threw my hands up. “Explain what? What is there to say? You lied to me, Wolfgang. Not just once, but over and over. Every time we’ve met in the past month and a half, you’ve lied.”

“By omission,” Wolfgang said. “Not because I wanted to deceive you.”

What poppycock. It had been precisely because he had wanted to deceive me.

And he wasn’t the only one. Everyone had been deceptive, by omission if not directly. Crispin had lied to my face for years. And yes, I probably wouldn’t have handled it very well if he had told me the truth, but that was no excuse for his cowardice. And everyone else had known how Crispin felt, and no one had said anything about it. They had just watched me wander along, secure in my dislike of him and in my belief that he disliked me back, and no one had said a word to set me straight.

And now Christopher was gone, and might never come back. The Astleys might reject me. I might lose everyone I knew or loved, in addition to the lifestyle I had become used to. And of course it wasn’t about the lifestyle; I’m not as mercenary as all that. But my whole life had been turned upside down over the course of a few days. My eyes were burning, and so was my chest, and I probably shouldn’t have gulped that last half a cup of coffee the way I had done. Unless I was simply hyperventilating because my emotions were too much to handle, of course, and that was quite likely.

I pushed my chair back from the table and tried to force additional air into my lungs.

“What’s wrong, my dear?” Wolfgang asked, from what sounded like a long way away. “Do you not feel well?”

I didn’t, now that he mentioned it. The restaurant was doing a slow spin, and my fingers and toes were tingling. I blinked hard and managed to focus on Wolfgang. He was halfway up out of his seat, and he looked concerned. “Philippa? Are you all right, Liebchen ?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. There was one of him, and then two of him, and then they blended together into one again. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, with some difficulty.

“Oh, dear.” He pulled money out of his pocket to cover the bill before coming around the table. “Lean on me. I’ll take care of you.”

“St George—” I managed, my voice garbled and full of gravel. “Tom?—”

They were both here somewhere, and I could count on either one of them to take me home.

“Not to worry, mein Schatz. Up you come.”

He hauled me to my feet. The room did another slow spin, and my knees buckled, and that was the last thing I remembered for a while.