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

Chapter Seven

The same doorman was still on the door when I got back to Savoy Court, and he arched his brows when he saw me. “Back already, Miss Darling?”

“I’m afraid so,” I said. “I realized I left my gloves inside the tearoom.”

The lie came more glibly this time, having already been told once. He might even have believed me.

There were no gloves, of course. I hadn’t wanted to aggravate the plasters any more than I had to, so I had done without them today, in contravention of the usual, but I went to the door of the tearoom anyway, to keep up appearances. The ma?tre d’ was away from his podium, but one of the waiters took pity on me. He went so far as to go back into the tearoom and peer under the tables we had sat at—both of them—and came back to inform me that no, no pair of gloves had been found. I thanked him and turned to contemplate the lobby.

There was no sign of Wolfgang, nor of anyone else I recognized. If the correspondent had been out here when the note was delivered, he or she must have gone somewhere else by now. Or the note may have specified a different meeting place, and Wolfgang had hied himself there as soon as I was out of sight.

After making sure that I was out of sight, in fact, by putting me in a Hackney and paying the fare and telling the driver where to take me, so as to make certain that I wouldn’t be here to see what was going on.

Unless I was being unduly distrustful, of course, and Wolfgang had simply been behaving like a proper gentleman. It was possible, even if his behavior had sent up a red flag for me.

“So suspicious, Darling,” Crispin’s voice murmured in my head. “Always sticking your nose into other people’s affairs.”

And while I didn’t appreciate his voice being where it didn’t belong, I could hardly quibble with what it had said. I’m curious by nature, and I don’t like secrets. I wanted to figure this one out.

An assignation might be exactly what it was, of course. The Crispin in my head hadn’t been talking about that sort of affair, but it seemed like a distinct possibility. Wolfgang was young and healthy and wealthy and handsome, and I knew for a fact that he was attractive to women. He might be upstairs in his suite right now, going at it—as Christopher had so charmingly put it—like a rabbit.

If Wolfgang were involved with someone else, though, why would he propose to me? And once he had proposed to me, oughtn’t he to have stopped the correspondence—and the rabbiting—with anyone else?

Or the note might have been something else entirely. Wolfgang had called it a business matter, and that might be all it was. A summons to the German embassy, or the bank, or—who knew—the front desk of the Savoy. It could be anything at all.

I shook my head. This had been an ill-advised impulse on my part. There was nothing for me here. I likely wouldn’t recognize the note-writer even if he or she were standing right in front of me—and he or she might be; there were plenty of people in the lobby at this time of day—and the last thing I wanted, was for Wolfgang to come out of whatever hole he had tucked himself away in, and find me standing here. The best thing I could do, was remove myself from the Savoy before he could come back downstairs and realize that I was back, and more importantly, the reason why.

I headed for the front door for the second time in ten minutes, and let the doorman open it for me. “No luck?” he inquired, when he noticed that my hands were still bare.

I shook my head. “It’s not important. I have other gloves.”

That didn’t explain why I would have bothered to come back for this pair, of course, but the doorman was kind enough not to point out the discrepancy. Perhaps he had already realized that I was lying through my teeth.

“Is the Graf von Natterdorff still inside,” I added, “or did he leave, too?”

“The Graf von Natterdorff has not left through this door,” the doorman informed me, “although there are many ways into and out of the Savoy.”

Yes, of course there were. The hotel is quite large with plenty of exits and entrances.

“Does the Graf …” I hesitated, considering how to express what I wanted to ask, and came up with, “—receive a lot of visitors?”

“Not aside from yourself,” the doorman said with a little bow. “Although the Graf von Natterdorff is no longer a guest at the Savoy, of course.”

“No longer…?” I blinked, while the thoughts reordered themselves in my head. “How long… I mean, when… where did he go?”

“I was not informed of the gentleman’s current whereabouts,” the doorman said.

“When did he leave?”

He thought back. “The gentleman stayed with us for approximately two weeks before he left again. That was at the end of August.”

Was it, really?

I had met Wolfgang a week or two into August, while having tea with Christopher at the Savoy. He had recognized me across the lobby and half the tearoom, not to mention across the best part of two decades, and had stopped by our table to introduce himself. And I had run into him again by coincidence a week or so later, so he must still have been staying at the Savoy then, or he wouldn’t have had a reason to loiter in the lobby. But the times we had seen one another since then, he had lived elsewhere, it seemed.

During the engagement party in Dorset last month, he had lived elsewhere.

When he proposed to me in the Great Hall at Marsden Manor, he had lived elsewhere.

Last night, during supper at the Criterion, he had lived elsewhere.

At no point had he said anything about it.

And that wasn’t all: this morning, when the note had arrived inviting me to tea, it had had the Savoy logo in the corner.

“He must have taken a supply of stationary with him when he left,” Christopher said an hour later, when I was back home and was sitting on the edge of my bed, watching him put on his face in my toilet table mirror.

“That’s obvious,” I answered. How he had come to have the stationary wasn’t the concern here. The fact that he had been using it was. Or the fact that he had taken it with him with malice aforethought, perhaps. Part of a plan to do… something.

“Why wouldn’t he tell me that he had moved somewhere else?” I continued. “Why make it look like he was still staying at the Savoy?”

“Perhaps he was ashamed,” Christopher said. He leaned forward to perfect the curve of his right eyebrow. His eyes met mine in the mirror. “Perhaps he couldn’t afford the Savoy any longer, and he didn’t want you to know about it.”

“That’s silly,” I said. “He’s the Graf von Natterdorff. Of course he can afford it.”

Christopher arched his drawn-on brows. “How do you know this? Have you contacted Germany and inquired about the state of the Natterdorff holdings? Things are tough in Germany these days, you know.”

Of course I knew that, and no, I hadn’t inquired. Christopher continued, triumphantly, “You don’t even know that there is a Natterdorff estate!”

“Wolfgang told me—” I began, and then stopped when Christopher quirked another brow. “Why would he lie to me, Christopher?”

“Why would he move out of the Savoy and not tell you?”

There was nothing I could say to that, of course, since it was the crux of the problem. Christopher waved an expansive hand, the one with the eyebrow-pencil in it. “I don’t know why he’d lie, Pippa. Perhaps he didn’t do. Perhaps the Natterdorff estate is doing very well indeed, but he simply didn’t want to live in a hotel forever. Perhaps it wasn’t about cost but about comfort.”

“But the Savoy Hotel is comfortable, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m sure it is,” Christopher said. “The Schlomskys certainly had a very nice suite. So perhaps it wasn’t about cost or comfort, but about privacy. Perhaps he simply wanted a space of his own.”

Perhaps so. There’s not much privacy in a hotel, with maids coming and going at all times of the day and night. Then again, that describes every noble house in England, and probably in Germany too, so he ought to be used to it.

“What do you suppose he’s doing, for which he requires privacy?”

“The same thing every young man does,” Christopher sighed, “I presume.”

“Carousing? Women, wine, and song?”

“I suppose,” Christopher said, and then seemed to think better of it. “No, wait. He proposed to you. There wouldn’t be any of that. Or oughtn’t to be, at any rate.”

Certainly not. However?—

“He received a note while we were sitting down to tea. The ma?tre d’ delivered it to the table.”

“Perfumed?”

I wrinkled my brows. “Not so as I noticed.”

The envelope hadn’t reeked of anything, I did know that much. But I may have missed a subtler scent in the other odors of the tearoom.

“Did you get a look at it?” Christopher wanted to know. He had put down the eyebrow-pencil now, and had picked up his lipstick instead. Christopher au naturel has soft coloring: pale skin, sunny blond hair, light eyelashes and brows. His alter ego, Kitty Dupree, looks quite a lot like Laetitia Marsden, with her glossy, black Dutch Boy bob—which in Christopher’s case is a wig, of course. He darkens his brows and lashes to match, and he also uses strong color on his lips. Tonight’s lipstick was blood red.

I shook my head. “He opened it at the table, but didn’t say a word about what was in it, other than that it was to do with a business matter. He lasted another five or ten minutes before I suggested that we should call it a night.”

“You suggested it? He didn’t?”

I confirmed that I had done, not Wolfgang. “He fidgeted a bit,” I added, “so I thought he would welcome the chance to leave. And he didn’t try to get me to stay longer. In fact, when we walked out, he put me into a Hackney and paid the fare.”

“As if he wanted to be certain you left,” Christopher said.

He’s quick on the uptake, my cousin.

“Precisely. By the time I made it back?—”

He grinned. “Of course you went back.”

“Of course I did. It took a few minutes. I couldn’t get the cabbie to set me down until we got to Charing Cross. By the time I got back to the Savoy, Wolfgang was nowhere to be seen. I thought he might have gone up to his room, so I asked, and that was when the doorman told me that the Graf von Natterdorff isn’t a guest of the Savoy any longer.”

“So he wouldn’t have a room to go to,” Christopher nodded. “Although I suppose he might have gone up to someone else’s room.”

He might have done, at that. “I thought about sticking around the lobby for a bit, just in case he came back, but I didn’t want to risk him seeing me there and thinking I was spying on him.”

“Probably a good decision,” Christopher agreed. “If he’s up to something, he wouldn’t want you to find out what it is. If it was something he had wanted you to know, he would have told you.”

So one would think. “Speaking of…” I said, “you didn’t stop by the Savoy at any point this afternoon, did you?”

“I would have told you if I had done,” Christopher answered, turning back to the mirror for the final adjustments to his—or Kitty’s—face. “And also I would have waited, to take you home. Why do you ask?”

“Wolfgang thought he had seen you. Or perhaps Crispin. But he must be in Dorset by now, surely.”

“Hours ago, I’m quite certain,” Christopher agreed, pushing his chair back. “It wasn’t me, and I can’t imagine that it was him, either. He has a distraught fiancée to make feel better, and an engagement ring to replace.”

I made a face but didn’t comment, since I didn’t want to prolong the conversation about that particular subject. Instead, I watched as Christopher headed for my wardrobe, his size forty-two T-strap shoes clicking against the floor.

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from Tom? News about the investigation?”

“Nothing so far,” Christopher said, pulling open the wardrobe. “There was no murder, so they aren’t likely to be working around the clock.”

I supposed not. “Do you expect to see him later?”

He shook his head. “Not tonight. That would mean another raid, and I can’t very well hope for that, can I?”

“You could do. Or you could phone in an anonymous tip yourself, on the way there.”

If the Metropolitan Police received a tip-off about the drag ball, Tom would most likely be there in advance of any raid to drag Christopher to safety before anything could happen to him.

He shook his head. “I’d never. I don’t want to put any of my friends in danger of being arrested.”

“Of course not. You just like it when Tom rushes to the rescue.”

He didn’t say anything to that, although his cheeks turned pink under the blusher. I added, “Have you ever considered that perhaps you ought to give the man a break and not put yourself in harm’s way simply so he has to save you?”

“It isn’t harm’s way,” Christopher protested, turning from the wardrobe with a petal pink, tasseled gown in his hands. “I’m perfectly safe.”

“As long as Tom gets to you before the other police can,” I said.

“Yes, of course. But what are the chances that they’ll raid us again?”

“I’d say they’re pretty good, actually. Tom yanked you out of harm’s way in April. There was no ball in May, because they were regrouping, but then there was another raid in June, that you only missed by the skin of your teeth, and only because Crispin and I interfered. Tom was there looking for you during that one, too.”

Christopher made a face, but insisted, “There won’t be a raid tonight.”

“How can you possibly know that? Did Tom tell you?”

He didn’t answer, and I asked, “Would you like me to come with you?”

“Under no circumstances,” Christopher said and tugged the pink frock over his head. When his head came out of the other side, he added, as he shimmied the gown down the rest of the way, “Mum and Dad would kill me if they knew that I had taken you to a drag ball. They wouldn’t be happy about me going, either?—”

Certainly not.

“—but they’d be even less happy about my debauching you.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s hardly debauching, Christopher. I went to the ball at Rectors in June, remember? If just being there is enough to debauch one, I’m debauched already. And don’t forget that I’m older than you, too.”

“Only by four months or so,” Christopher said. “Not enough to matter.”

Perhaps not. The fact that I was a young woman and not a man weighed heavier than that I was older in this case.

“At any rate,” Christopher said, smoothing the dress over his (non-existent) hips before walking to the toilet table and the wig waiting there. I watched as he dropped it on top of his head and adjusted it.

“At any rate, what?”

He met my eyes in the mirror. “If there is another raid, and if Tom isn’t there to rescue me, and I do get arrested, I need someone here I can ring up to bail me out. I can’t involve Tom, not at that point—if he came to bail me out, his career would be over—and I don’t want them to phone Beckwith Place, or, God forbid, Sutherland House.”

I shuddered delicately at the thought. “Decidedly not. We don’t want your parents to know anything about it, and if the police rang up Sutherland House, even if it were to talk to Crispin, it would get back to His Grace, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m afraid it would,” Christopher said, leaning into the mirror and doing the final adjustments to his face and hair. “That’s why I need you to stay here. If I get arrested, I’ll have them notify Evans, and then Evans will knock you up, and you’ll come to the police station with enough cash to take me home. And Mum and Dad and Uncle Harold need never know that anything happened.”

That all made sense. However— “Wouldn’t it be simpler if you just stayed home? There’d be no danger of being arrested then.”

“It would,” Christopher said with a grin, “but it’s been some time since I had fun, Pippa, and I’m looking forward to it.”

“Well, thank you very much for that,” I sniffed, faux offended. “Am I no fun, then?”

“You’re plenty of fun, my darling.” He dropped a kiss on my cheek before snagging his evening cloak from the wardrobe and wrapping it around himself. “But you know what I mean. Now, how do I look?”

He struck a pose.

“Too much like Laetitia for comfort,” I said sourly.

“Other than that?”

“You’re stunning. As you well know.” And so was she, not that that needed mentioning. “Are you certain you won’t tell me where you’re going to be?”

“Not a chance,” Christopher said, and click-clacked his way through the door and down the hall and across the foyer. “Be good, Pippa. Don’t wait up.”

I hadn’t planned to. If he got himself arrested, Evans buzzing from downstairs would wake me, and I would deal with it then. And that was if Tom didn’t already have any raid well in hand. I certainly wasn’t going to lose sleep over it.

So I waved Christopher off, and locked the door behind him, and went about changing out of the afternoon frock I had worn to tea with Wolfgang, and into pyjamas. It was still early, of course, but I had no plans to go out again, and I was alone in the flat—not that Christopher’s presence prevented me from lounging about in my sleepwear. But no one else was here, nor did I expect anyone to turn up, so I might as well make myself comfortable for the rest of the evening.

I curled up on the Chesterfield with a book, enjoying the peace and quiet. Tea with Wolfgang had taken care of my hunger pangs for the time being, so it was several hours later that I meandered into the kitchen and put together a supper of toast and paté and cucumbers. That done, I headed back to the Chesterfield, but before I got there, the buzzer in the foyer rang.

I headed for it, with my heart knocking against my ribs. It seemed a bit early for a raid—barely gone eight—but stranger things have happened. “Yes, Evans?”

“Visitor for Mr. Astley, Miss Darling.”

“Mr. Astley isn’t here,” I said, and thought better of it. “Who is it, Evans?”

If it was Crispin, perhaps Wolfgang had been right and he truly had seen him in the Savoy lobby earlier.

“Mr. Gardiner, Miss Darling,” Evans said.

Uh-oh . Tom wouldn’t be happy when he got up here and I told him where Christopher had gone—or rather, when I told him that Christopher had departed to another drag ball, since I didn’t actually know his precise whereabouts.

On the other hand, he wouldn’t be happy about my sending him away without seeing him, either, now that he knew I was at home.

I sighed. “Send him up, Evans.”

“Yes, Miss Darling.”

Evans disappeared, and I put down the food so I could unlock the door and wait for Tom.

“Drink?” I inquired when he appeared a minute later. “Tea? Toast?”

“No, thank you, Pippa.” He gave me a distracted sort of look that didn’t seem to take in the fact that I was standing in front of him in my jim-jams. Instead, he scanned the sitting room and its total lack of Christopher. “Kit not here?”

“He’s gone out.”

I said it very blandly, with no inflection whatsoever. His eyes narrowed anyway. “Don’t tell me he went to a ball?”

“Why ask if you already know?”

He muttered something. It was undoubtedly a bad word, so I didn’t ask him to repeat it. “Where?” he asked.

“I have no idea. He doesn’t tell me these things, you know. Afraid I’m going to follow him there, no doubt.”

Tom didn’t answer, and I added, “You would know if there was going to be another raid tonight, wouldn’t you?”

“I do try to keep up. Although I’ve been busy today.”

He hesitated a moment before he added, “I thought Kit had stopped frequenting those.”

“Not at all,” I said. “He missed September’s ball because we were at Marsden Manor that weekend, but other than that, I don’t think he has ever made a decision that he wasn’t going to go back.”

Tom muttered something else, his jaw—very nice and strong—tight.

“Have a seat,” I added, when he kept standing in front of the Chesterfield. “Are you certain I can’t get you anything to drink?”

“No, thank you, Pippa.” Although he did sit down, and put the Homburg on the small table next to him.

"You’re not on duty, are you?”

He shook his head. “Just not hungry. I grabbed a bite with Finch before we parted ways for the night.”

“At least you don’t have to work through the night on this one.”

He leaned back. “No, this is one of the cases we work between the urgent ones. Until someone dies in a more sinister manner than Lady Latimer’s butler, anyway.”

“Do you think that’s going to happen?”

“That depends,” Tom said, making himself comfortable. “Sooner or later, he’s going to burgle a house where someone is awake and sees him?—”

“Someone was awake and saw him at Marsden House,” I pointed out.

“Someone who doesn’t hide under the blankets and hope he goes away. Someone who goes after him instead.”

He sighed. “I thought better of Lady Laetitia, to be honest. I thought she would have been the type to shriek and send him packing.”

I would have thought the same. There’s one thing to see a burglar and actively attack him. I don’t know if I would expect any woman to do that, although had it been my bedchamber he had invaded, I would certainly have been tempted. But it’s quite another to hide under the blankets and hope the danger goes away. Laetitia wasn’t a shrinking violet in any other aspect of her life, and I was surprised that she hadn’t shown more gumption on this occasion.

“She’s lucky he was more interested in getting away than in her,” Tom added ominously, and I shivered.

“Indeed.”

“But sooner or later, someone will see him who won’t pull the counterpane up over their head. And at that point, depending on the situation, the only way he can get away might be to attack first. And if he does…”

I nodded. If he did, it could very easily turn fatal. A pistol, a knife, or even just a push from the top of a staircase if the burglar didn’t carry a weapon. Any and all of those could result in someone’s death.

“Is there any way to determine who might be targeted next, and warn them?”

“It’s high society,” Tom said. “The Bright Young Set and their families. So no, no real reason to suspect that anyone in particular is next. I’m sure word is getting around by now, but other than that, there’s not much we can do to put anyone on alert.”

“Laetitia and Lady Violet Cummings were both at Marsden Manor last month,” I said.

Tom nodded. “But Lady Latimer was not, nor were the Wickstroms. Or the Harrimans.”

No, they hadn’t been. I wasn’t sure I even knew the Wickstroms or Harrimans, and while I had come face to face with the elderly Lady Latimer at some point, it hadn’t been at Marsden Manor.

“Besides,” Tom added, “surely you’re not suggesting that this character was present in Dorset for Lord St George’s engagement party? That would make him one of the aristocracy.”

A gentleman thief. That creature of myth and bad penny dreadfuls. Popular in fiction but not in real life, where gentlemen generally have means of support other than stealing.

“Of course not,” I said. “If Dominic Rivers had still been alive, perhaps I would have considered him. He was dealing dope, so he might not have been above a bit of thievery, too. But he’s dead, so it’s a moot point. Almost everyone else at the Manor that weekend was a friend or a relative of mine. Christopher, Francis, Crispin… even Geoffrey, I suppose. He’ll become a family member once St George and Laetitia tie the knot.”

Tom nodded. “But Lord Geoffrey Marsden has been waiting for trial since then, so it couldn’t have been him last night.”

No, it couldn’t have been. “The only ones of the gentlemen I didn’t know before I got there, were Bilge Fortescue and Reginald Fish. I’m sure Lady Serena alibies Bilge…”

“I haven’t looked into Bilge Fortescue,” Tom said, “but yes, if there was a question about that, I’m sure she would do.”

Precisely.

“Not that I think Bilge had anything to do with it. I knew the bloke at Eton, and if there’s anyone who lacks the personality to be a gentleman thief, it’s Bilge Fortescue.”

No doubt. “The Honorable Reggie didn’t strike me as being the type, either,” I agreed. “So the whole thing is most likely just a coincidence, and Marsden Manor has nothing to do with it.”

Tom nodded. “Likely not.”

“Do you have any idea…?”

He shook his head. “London is a big place, and so far, he hasn’t left us much to go on.”

“No fingerprints? You’re checking the pawn brokers, I assume?”

“Yes, Pippa.” His lips twitched. “I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job.”

“Of course not. I was merely curious. Do you have no idea who might be behind it? Is there only one person, do you think, or several? A gang?”

“So far,” Tom said, “there seems to be just one. But unless he has a different existence during daylight hours, and runs his own jewelry store, he has to take the spoils to someone to deal with for him. So far, we haven’t been able to identify that person, or persons, either.”

“I don’t suppose it’s likely that he just wants to keep what he steals so he can gloat over it?”

Tom smirked. “No, Pippa, I don’t imagine so. There’s quite a bit of risk involved in this, as I’m sure you’ve realized. He’ll go to prison for a long time when he’s caught. The people he has stolen from are well-connected and powerful, and they will want to see justice served. I don’t think it’s something someone would do without a hefty payday.”

“He must be selling the jewelry to benefit from stealing it, then.”

“Maybe so,” Tom said. “But there are other ways to benefit. Selling the jewelry as is could be difficult. There are some well-known pieces in the spoils, things that someone might recognize?—”

Like the Sutherland parure, or the parts of it that had gotten away.

“I wouldn’t put it past Uncle Harold,” I said. “I’m frankly surprised that he agreed to part with the earrings before the wedding ceremony. Everything except the ring is usually kept as a carrot to make certain the bride makes it to the altar for the nuptials.”

Tom lifted a shoulder and reached for his hat. “I should go. Before it gets too late.”

“I don’t mind the company,” I told him. “Although…” I tilted my head to contemplate him, “perhaps you plan to go in search of Christopher?”

“I plan to find out whether any raids are scheduled for tonight that may affect Kit,” Tom said, which sounded like the same thing.

“And if you find out that a raid is scheduled?”

“Then I’ll go there and find Kit and bring him to you before anything can happen to him.”

His jaw looked quite heroic.

“That’s lovely,” I said. “Would you mind if I accompanied you?”

He squinted at me, and I added, “You’re off the clock, aren’t you? Doing this on your own time? Just two friends looking for a mutual friend who went out to a party? And I would be with you, so it’s not likely that I would run into any trouble.”

He sighed. “I suppose I can’t stop you. Although if Kit has a hissy fit when he sees you, don’t blame it on me.”

As if I would. “Five minutes,” I told him, as I pushed to my feet and headed for the hallway and the door to my room.