Page 21 of Peril in Piccadilly (Pippa Darling Mysteries #7)

Chapter Twenty-One

“There it is,” I said, some two-and-a-half hours later.

The sun was up by then, but of course we had been headed west, so it had been at our backs the entire way. And Crispin was right: he had been just fine. His eyes were a bit red, but there had been no sign of drooping eyelids, nor even a yawn, and I had had no excuse for pinching him.

Not that I felt particularly like pinching him at the moment. He had been rather wonderful, both yesterday and so far today. More so than I would have expected, given the source. We were back to bickering, of course, just as he had predicted, but he hadn’t been unkind, and also hadn’t twitted me too terribly about being taken in by a murderer, or at least by a kidnapper, since there was no reason to think that Wolfgang had murdered anyone. He had perhaps tried to murder me, but then again, perhaps not. The shot at Marsden Manor might not have been intended to hit anyone, and the fall down the stairs to the tube wasn’t likely to have been fatal. And the Hackney that had come so close to clipping Christopher and myself in the street the other night… well, it hadn’t actually hit us, had it? Nor had there been actual poison in my coffee last night, so perhaps there hadn’t been anything worse than sleeping draught in the tea the other day, either. And the dose in the coffee had been small enough to allow me to wake up after just a few hours, so it clearly hadn’t been an attempt on my life. Perhaps not even on my virtue.

And I absolutely refused to believe that Wolfgang had murdered Christopher. There was no reason for him to do so, not even if Christopher had discovered that Wolfgang lived in rented rooms in Shoreditch. That was not a killing matter. And the idea that we might get to the cottage in Thornton Heath and find Christopher dead was one I would not countenance. So no, Wolfgang was not a murderer. Call him a kidnapper and leave it at that.

At any rate, the drive had not been unpleasant. We had discussed our hopes of finding Christopher alive and well. I had regaled him with a description of what had transpired during my last visit to Thornton Heath, since Crispin hadn’t been there for that. We had talked about the likelihood (or lack thereof) that Tom and Finchley and the lifeboat crew would find Wolfgang alive—poor in Crispin’s opinion, a bit more hopeful in mine—and whether it was possible that he might have made it back onto the freighter after the lifeboat navigated away with us onboard.

The possibility that Wolfgang had survived the water and was on his way to Germany even as we spoke was a bit of all right with me, I’ll admit. I didn’t much like the idea of his being dead, but having him out of the country—and out of my life—was better than the possibility that he had made it back to shore and that I would see him again.

“You’re too soft,” Crispin complained when I said as much.

I scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. No one knows better than you how well I hold a grudge.”

He slanted me a sideways look. “I’m not seeing a grudge in this case.”

“It’s only because it’s a choice between this and death,” I said. “I’d rather have him be alive than dead. I don’t wish death on anyone. And I’d rather he be alive in Germany than in England, so I don’t have to deal with him.”

“I’d rather him be alive in prison,” Crispin grumbled, and I supposed I had to give him that. Besides, if anyone in the family was better at holding a grudge than me, it was him.

At any rate, the sun was up and warming our backs when we drove into Thornton Heath and began to look for the rental cottage. I could no longer remember the address, although I did recall that the cottage was termed Ivy Cottage, and of course I knew I would recognize it when I saw it. But that was different from knowing where to go to find it. We ended up spending fifteen minutes just driving around peering at houses, in the hopes that I would see something I recognized, until that actually happened.

“Right there,” I said, and he peered out the windshield.

“Where?”

“At the corner. Turn. There!”

“Oh.” He turned the corner, a bit too abruptly. “I thought you meant?—”

“I know what you thought. But this is the road. At the end of it, there’s a cottage on the right that sits a bit apart from the others. The drive is on the right before the house itself.”

Crispin nodded. “Just point to it when we get closer.”

By then I was on the edge of my seat, with both hands braced on the console, trying to make the H6 move faster. Not that it couldn’t move faster than it did—a Hispano-Suiza H6 had set the Brooklands record in 1924—but it wasn’t wise to employ those kinds of speeds in the middle of Thornton Heath.

“There! There!”

I pointed. Crispin followed the direction of my finger, and wrinkled his nose. “Not very picturesque, is it?”

It wasn’t. I had noticed the same thing the last time I was here, as a matter of fact. You would expect a house with a name such as Ivy Cottage to be a lovely, rambling sort of place, covered with greenery and climbing roses. Here, there was a squat brick house—and not attractive brick, either—behind a sagging gate, with a barren front yard and a pockmarked drive that led back to a dilapidated garage. The last time we had been here, the garage had held a black Hackney, and the occupants of Ivy Cottage had been frantically packing their belongings preparatory to making their getaway. This time, the garage doors stood open and the space inside was empty but for some debris and empty petrol cans.

“I suppose the police probably took the motorcar,” I said as Crispin brought the Hispano-Suiza to a stop beside the back stoop.

He shot me a look. “What’s that?”

“There was a motorcar here back in August. A black Hackney. I suppose the police must have taken it.”

“Or Wolfie did,” Crispin said, which made sense now that I thought about it. He would have needed a way to get back and forth to London, and it explained the black Hackney that had come so close to running Christopher and myself down the other night. “It’s parked at Ramsgate, as it happens. It was the vehicle he used to get you there.”

“Was it really? And nobody thought anything of it?”

“I don’t know what Gardiner and Finchley thought,” Crispin said as he turned off the motor. “They were in the police issue Tender. I was alone in the H6. And I had no idea that there had been, or ought to be, a black Hackney here.”

I glanced at him. “I do appreciate you coming after me, you know. In case I didn’t say it already. You didn’t have to do that.”

He glanced back. “Yes, Darling, I did. Kit would kill me if I hadn’t done whatever I could do to get you back in one piece.”

“Christopher wasn’t there,” I pointed out. What I didn’t say, was that he might not be there again.

“He’ll hear about it. And he’d have had something to say about it if I hadn’t stepped up.”

He pushed his door open before he added, “Besides, I’m not going to let you be doped and abducted and not do something to stop it. You’re part of the family, Darling, whether I like it or not.”

He slammed his door shut as a sort of final word on the sentiment.

“How extremely gracious of you,” I muttered, but I opened my door and stepped out onto the drive to stand beside him and contemplate the house without saying anything else about it. Instead, I pointed to the upstairs corner window in the back. “See that? Boards nailed across the window.”

He nodded. “That’s where they kept her?”

“So we assumed. She wasn’t here anymore at that point.” She had been in the morgue, after having been murdered the previous night.

Crispin looked around. “It looks deserted.”

Yes, it did. “I could be wrong, and there’s nothing here. It simply struck me as enough of a possibility that we ought to?—”

“Yes, Darling. Of course we ought.”

He eyed the house for a second, with all of the enthusiasm of a man presented with a dead fish.

“I’ll do it,” I said, and stepped forward.

The last time I had been here, the backdoor had been locked and we had had to pick the lock to get inside. Or rather, Wolfgang had done, using two of my Kirbigrips, and I don’t know why his ability to do that hadn’t presented itself as more sinister at the time. It ought to have done. But back then, I had simply been grateful that one of us had had the ability to get the rest of us inside.

This time, the handle moved under my hand, and the door opened smoothly. That didn’t make it any more likely that anyone was kept hostage here, of course, but neither of us mentioned it.

We stepped into the same ugly kitchen as last time, only more dusty and depressing now. Dead flies littered the windowsill and mouse pellets decorated the corners of the floor. There was also a horrible stench in the air, one that made Crispin’s nostrils flare.

“Struth,” he complained, “didn’t anyone think to take out the rubbish before they left?”

“That’s not the smell of rubbish,” I told him tightly. “Not even rubbish that’s festered for two months.”

He glanced at me. “No?”

I shook my head. “Let’s hope it’s a rat and not something worse.”

He turned pale—paler—and for a second, it appeared as if he were thinking of running ahead of me. I wrapped my fingers around his wrist and kept him where he was. His skin was warm under my hand, and I could feel his pulse jumping.

“Are you certain?” he asked. As if he wasn’t perfectly capable of recognizing the odor of decomposing flesh for himself.

“Positive,” I said. “Come on.”

I took a step towards the door to the dining room, tugging him behind me.

He resisted the pull. “Hold on, Darling. Shouldn’t we contact the local constabulary and let them deal with it?”

I eyed him. “It’s going to take them at least twenty minutes to sort themselves out to come here. Perhaps longer. Do you really want to stand outside—” because there was no way I’d breathe this air for any longer than I had to, “—and wait? Without knowing who or what is dead?”

He didn’t answer, and I added, “We’re here. Let’s just keep going and hope for the best.”

If the worst had happened, and Christopher was here, dead, I’d rather know it now than later.

Crispin hesitated, but eventually he gave a tight nod and followed me into the dining room.

“This was where we fought the kidnappers,” I told him, softly, as we crossed the room on our way to the front door and the staircase to the first floor. The furniture was still suffering from the altercation two months later, with overturned chairs and drops of blood here and there on the rug. “Hiram Schlomsky had a sword stick, did I tell you? And he went absolutely mad and swung it at anyone who came within range.”

“And Wolfie had to save your life,” Crispin said disagreeably.

I shot him a look. “Is that what Christopher told you? It wasn’t quite like that. It was a bit of a brawl, with a lot of fists and hair pulling and the like. And while I’m certain that fake Flossie would have liked to murder me, Mrs. Schlomsky was equally determined to murder her. I was never in any real danger. Besides, then Tom and Christopher showed up, and it all turned out quite all right in the end.”

“Kit made it sound like Wolfie swooped in like a knight on a white horse and swept you out of danger,” Crispin said with a grumble, and I giggled.

“Hardly. I mean, I’m happy he was there. The Schlomskys and I were no match for Sid and the two women. Without Wolfgang, they may have overpowered us. They had nothing to lose at that point, after all. They had already murdered the real Flossie. So I’m grateful that he was there to help us. But I wouldn’t have said that he saved my life. I’m not sure my life was ever in any real danger, and besides, as I said, it was only a few minutes before Tom and Christopher turned up.”

Crispin nodded and took a look around the sitting room. “This is depressing.”

It was. The furniture was old and worn, and here, too, everything was covered with dust and dead flies and mouse droppings. There were dead plants on the windowsill, and that permeating odor of sweet rot.

“The stairs,” I pointed. The corpse—rat or otherwise—must be up there, because it wasn’t down here. This was a small house, just the three rooms downstairs and, I assumed, two bedrooms and lavatory on the first floor.

We stopped at the bottom of the staircase and peered up. It was narrow, and would allow only one of us to ascend at a time.

“I’ll go first,” Crispin said.

“I’m older,” I countered.

“I’m the man.”

“I’m older.”

“I don’t want you to see this, if—” He stopped before saying it.

“I don’t want to see it, either,” I said, “but there’s simply no way, if Christopher is up there, that I’m not going to look at him. I’ll be one step behind you. But if you insist, you can go first.”

He nodded tightly and turned to contemplate the staircase again. After a moment, he squared his shoulders and started up. I followed.

The stench got worse and worse as we got closer to the top of the stairs. I stopped breathing through my nose as soon as we got halfway up, and began to draw air through my mouth instead. The idea of that was unpleasant, of course, but it made the smell a little easier to take.

Crispin reached the top of the stairs and stepped aside to give me room. We stood side by side on the landing, looking at three closed doors.

“That’s most likely the lavatory,” I said nasally, pointing to the one in the middle. “We know that that one—” on our right, “—is the back bedroom. That’s the one with the boarded-up window. The one on the left must be the front bedroom.”

Crispin nodded.

“Bathroom first,” I said.

He shot me a look. “Do you have to vomit?”

I did, of course, or it felt as if I could easily do, but I shook my head. “Least likely place for a body. Let’s eliminate it.”

“Be my guest.” He gestured to the door.

“So much for being the man,” I told him, as I pushed past him and took hold of the handle. There was a moment of squaring of shoulders, and then I pushed the door open.

The lavatory was small and dinky and dirty, with a pedestal sink and toilet, but it was corpse free. I breathed out and pulled the door shut again.

We locked eyes for a second across the small landing, and then we both turned to the door to the back bedroom. If Christopher was anywhere in this house, it was likely that he was there.

“I’ll do it this time.” Crispin crossed to the door and wrapped his hand around the handle. I put a hand against his back—for support—and peered over his shoulder as he pushed the door open.

And gagged as he slammed it shut again. “Oh, God.” The toilet was right there, of course, but I swallowed hard, and did it again, and kept myself from sicking up.

“Could be worse,” Crispin managed. He was pale and looked clammy, but he wasn’t vomiting either.

“How?”

“It wasn’t Kit.”

No, it hadn’t been. It had been a man in a dark suit, not someone wearing my serge skirt and high heels.

“Did you look at the rest of the room?”

“I mostly just slammed the door shut as soon as I could,” Crispin admitted.

It had been an understandable reaction, of course. It’s instinctive, to put a barrier between ourselves and something unpleasant. But we needed to know that Christopher wasn’t in there, too.

I put out a hand. “Lend me your handkerchief, if you don’t mind.”

“Are you going in there?” But he handed me the silk square.

“I have to,” I said, accepting it. “We have to make absolutely sure that there’s nothing we can do.”

“He was dead, Philippa. There was absolutely no question about that.”

No, there hadn’t been. “Just let me look,” I said and turned to the door. “You can open the other door if you’d like. If the body is behind this one, it’s not likely that there’s anything unpleasant in the other room.”

He gave me a look and a mutter, but he stalked across the landing to the other door and pushed it open. I took the opportunity to do the same while his back was turned.

The bedroom in the back was small and dark. As it would be, when there were wooden boards nailed up across the window. I squinted into the darkness, but saw no sign of anything other than the very obvious body on the floor. There was a bed up against the wall—it must have been where Flossie had slept while she’d been kept here—and a wardrobe and a few other odds and ends, but no other sign of life. The bed had a few drops of blood on the pillow, I noticed when I inched closer. Nothing at all like the puddle that covered the floorboards under the corpse, though; just a few drops, as if someone had had a tiny scratch or puncture. The blood was dry, of course, as it would be, if it had been here since before Flossie died.

From this angle, I got a slightly better look at the dead gentleman, and caught my breath quickly.

“What?” Crispin wanted to know. He had returned from the other bedroom and was loitering in the doorway.

I eyed him. He didn’t have the look of a man who had come across anything else unpleasant. “Nothing?”

He shook his head. “Do you recognize him?”

“It’s hard to be sure, with him on his front like that.” And when all the blood in his body—the part of it that wasn’t in the dried puddle on the floor—had migrated to the lowest point and had turned his face purple. “But he looks like the ma?tre d’ from the Savoy.”

“Not the chap from last night?”

“The chap from three or four days ago. The one who brought the note to the table after Wolfgang had dosed my tea.”

“Ah.” Crispin took another look at him. “Yes, I can see that. He saw what Wolfie did, and tried to extort money. And when Wolfie couldn’t pay, he—Wolfie—killed the bloke instead.”

I nodded. It was as good an explanation as any. “There’s no sign of Christopher in here.”

“Nor in the other room. There’s a suggestion that someone has been using it—more recently than two months ago—but it’s more likely to have been Wolfie, I’d say.”

“No rented rooms in Shoreditch, then?”

“Why pay for lodging if he could stay here for free?” Crispin said savagely. “Let’s go.”

He turned towards the staircase.

“We have to tell someone about the body.” I glanced at it on my way past.

“Gardiner,” Crispin said over his shoulder. “Best not to involve the local constabulary when it’s Scotland Yard’s case. Or when we don’t want to be detained.”

“So we just leave him there?” I shut the door behind me, but I couldn’t help one last look over my shoulder at the dead man.

“I’m not picking him up and taking him with us,” Crispin said. After a moment, he added, “He’s been there for several days already. A few more hours won’t matter to him.”

He started down the staircase.

It seemed like something we ought to take care of sooner rather than later, but perhaps he was right and it would be better to pass the responsibility on to Tom and Scotland Yard instead of involving the local Thornton Heath chaps.

“Wait for me,” I told his back and scurried to the top of the stairs and down on his heels.