Chapter 4
Chapter Four
It was dark by the time we made it back to London.
That doesn’t mean it was all that late, of course, just that it was almost mid-December and the days were short.
We had stopped for tea on the way back, halfway between Shere and London, so by the time Crispin pulled the Hispano-Suiza to a stop outside the Essex House Mansions, we’d been gone most of the day.
“Will you come up for supper or a nightcap?” Christopher asked his cousin—or brother, more accurately, although I wasn’t at a point of remembering that all the time yet.
The ‘cousin’ part was fairly ingrained. “You’re welcome to spend the night again, too, if you’d like. Pippa doesn’t mind, do you, Pippa?”
I shook my head. I could cope with another night on the Chesterfield if I had to.
“I’d be delighted,” Crispin said, “but I think I’d better get back to Sutherland House and see if Laetitia has turned up.
We’re supposed to go to the stationers together tomorrow—thank you notes for the wedding gifts, you know, shared monogram and all—and I’m sure she won’t be pleased to get there and find me absent. ”
No, I’m sure she wouldn’t be.
“Have a good time making amends with your fiancée, St George. Let’s go, Christopher.”
“Yes, Pippa. I shall see you later, Crispin.” He removed himself from the motorcar, tilted the passenger seat forward to give me room, and extended a hand.
I placed the picnic basket in it and made my own way out.
Then I shoved the seat back with, perhaps, just a little too much force, and gave Crispin a clipped, “Good night, St George,” before I slammed the door.
I didn’t give him time to respond. And he must have decided that silence was the best part of valor, because he turned the H6 towards the street without making any further effort to speak to either of us.
“You know, Pippa,” Christopher said, swinging the empty picnic basket as we crossed the threshold into the lobby, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were jealous.”
I slanted him a glare. “It’s a good thing you know better, isn’t it?”
“Even so, are you certain that’s the impression you want to give?”
It was absolutely not the impression I wanted to give, but before I could say so, Evans had risen from his seat behind the counter. “Mr. Astley. Miss Darling.”
“Evans,” I said, while Christopher added a more polite, “Good evening. I hope you’re well?”
“Spiffing, Mr. Astley. I hope you had a good day?”
He looked us over, from rain-spattered stockings to the muddy pair of galoshes I carried in my hand.
“Marvelous, Evans,” I said, through gritted teeth. “Any mail?”
“No, Miss Darling.”
“Any sign of Lady Laetitia Marsden?” I wouldn’t put it past her to show up here if Crispin hadn’t been where she’d wanted him to be.
“No,” Evans said, “Miss Darling.”
“Then, if you’d excuse us?”
“Of course, Miss Darling. Mr. Astley…” He turned to Christopher. “Detective-Sergeant Gardiner came to see you.”
Christopher flushed prettily. He almost always does, when Tom’s name is mentioned. “Did he say why?”
“Not to me, Mr. Astley. I escorted him upstairs and left him there.”
Of course he had done. I wanted to roll my eyes, but I refrained, albeit not without some effort.
I can’t tell you how many times I have told Evans not to let people up to the flat when we aren’t at home, but at different times he has admitted Uncle Harold (once), Tom (multiple times), and Crispin (most of all).
It wasn’t likely to make any difference if I reiterated the warning again.
“He’s up there now?” Christopher shot a look at the lift at the end of the lobby.
“Did he say anything, Evans?” I wanted to know as Christopher started to drift in that direction. “Or give you the impression that something’s wrong?”
“He asked after His Grace,” Evans said—meaning Crispin, I supposed. “After he inquired about you and Mr. Astley.”
Christopher had reached the lift now, and was pressing the button to summon the box.
“And you told him…?”
“That His Grace spent the night in the flat, and that the three of you left this morning for a picnic.”
I nodded. “Thank you, Evans.”
At the end of the lobby, the lift doors opened, and Christopher started to pull back the grille.
He would have no compunctions about leaving me behind in the lobby to get upstairs to Tom sooner, so I hustled that way myself, in time to make it into the box just as Christopher had pulled the grille all the way back.
“Thank you, Christopher.”
“Don’t mention it,” my cousin said, and stepped in beside me. As we ascended two stories, I slanted Christopher a look.
“Is something wrong, do you think?”
We had several hostages to fortune even after the death of Uncle Harold.
There were Christopher’s parents, my Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert, and of course there was my cousin Francis—Christopher’s brother—and his fiancée Constance Peckham, my old friend from the Godolphin School for Girls in Salisbury.
And if you wanted to be technical about it, I suppose there was my own grandfather in Germany, although he was surely dead by now—last we’d heard, he’d been on his death bed, although it was possible that Tom had had news and was coming to make it official, or alternatively, to tell me the chap was still alive and kicking.
And then there was my cousin Wolfgang, who may or may not be dead, also.
I was fairly certain he had perished somewhere in the English Channel—or perhaps the North Sea—after his attempt to abduct me back to Germany a few months ago, but who knew?
Perhaps he’d been a strong enough swimmer to survive his dive into the water, and perhaps he had managed to drag himself back onto the boat without being discovered.
Or perhaps his body had finally washed ashore, and that was a fait accompli now, too, that Tom had come to inform me about.
Or it might be a social visit. Christopher and Tom did occasionally see one another even when there wasn’t murder afoot.
He had never struck me as particularly queer—Tom, I mean.
He certainly didn’t frequent the sort of parties that Christopher did, unless it was for the explicit purpose of removing Christopher from them before a raid, but who knew?
When something is illegal, and one can lose one’s livelihood over it, not to mention go to prison, people tend to get pretty good at hiding what they’re doing.
The lift jolted to a stop on the second floor, and Christopher hauled the grille back. It folded itself neatly into a solid metal rectangle on one end of the lift opening, and the door slid after it.
“After you,” Christopher told me politely, which was restrained of him, I thought. I would have expected him to leave me in the dust so he could get to Tom first.
But I’m not the type to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I stepped out of the lift and headed down the hall to our door.
“Give me the basket,” I told Christopher as we walked, “and I’ll take it to the kitchen and empty it. You see what Tom wants.”
I held my hand out, but Christopher didn’t hand over the basket. “We can both see what Tom wants,” he informed me. “The basket can wait.”
I supposed it could, at that. There was nothing perishable left in it, just dirty dishes and silverware and napkins and the like. I had meant to tacitly offer him a couple of minutes to greet Tom without me staring at the two of them, but if he didn’t care, then I certainly didn’t.
So I dropped the muddy galoshes on the parquet floor in the foyer and walked into the sitting room pulling my gloves off. “Good evening, Tom. To what do we owe the pleasure?”
The detective-sergeant was sitting in one of the armchairs, and unlike Crispin yesterday, had not made himself comfortable enough to remove his shoes and put his stocking feet on the table.
The privilege of being the Duke of Sutherland, I suppose, and the de facto head of the family, which was ludicrous when he was the youngest of all of us.
Tom had removed his jacket and loosened his tie, and had also availed himself of the bar cart. Quite like Crispin, he was holding a half-full glass of brandy. “Pippa. Kit.”
His eyes—hazel—lingered on Christopher for a second, unless that was just my imagination.
He lifted the glass. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not,” I said, and dropped my gloves in the middle of the coffee table. “Make yourself at home.”
Christopher took the picnic basket through to the kitchenette and left it there, before making his own way to the bar cart. “Pippa?”
“Whatever you’re having.”
Christopher nodded and began to mix two cocktails. I turned back to Tom. “It’s good to see you. What are you doing here?”
Tom’s lips twitched. He’s a good-looking chap, if you like the type. Twenty-seven or -eight, with curly, brown hair, a stocky build, and a handsome, open face, which probably serves him well in his chosen profession. “Straight to the point as usual, Pippa.”
“I did say it was good to see you,” I protested. “And it’s not as if we’re not happy to have you stop by. It’s always a pleasure to have you visit. It’s just that you usually don’t do it unless something’s wrong.”
Tom made a face. “Right you are. I see His Grace didn’t come upstairs with you.”
“St George, do you mean?”
“Crispin,” Christopher said, as he approached the table and put a drink in my hand before lowering himself languidly onto the sofa. “No, he went off to Sutherland House. Something about Laetitia and supper and stationery.”
Tom nodded. “Where have the three of you been? Evans didn’t know. Or if he did, he wouldn’t tell me.”
“Surrey,” I told him, as I lowered myself into the other corner of the Chesterfield. Not languidly. Just the way a normal person does it. “Newlands Corner, more specifically. The Silent Pool. Shere.”
“Let me guess. You thought you’d discover something the police hadn’t noticed.”