Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
“Detective-Sergeant Finchley is somewhere about too,” I asked Tom as my eyes roved over the area in front of the motorcar, “isn’t he?”
Tom was looking out the window in the back of the Hispano-Suiza, eyes scanning the street as well. “I expect so. He said he would be.”
“Do you see him?” A bloke in tweeds with a baker boy cap pulled down over his forehead came down the street toward us, and I stared at him as he came closer.
Was he the same chap I had run into on Grosvenor Street?
He was wearing the same sort of clothing, and that would prove, fairly conclusively, that my running into him—or him running into me—hadn’t been a coincidence.
But no, this chap had a narrower face, and while he was staring at the motorcar, I was pretty certain it was with admiration for the machine itself, and not some sort of ulterior motive.
Nonetheless, I told Tom, “Keep an eye on the chap passing us. He stared at the motorcar the whole way down the block.”
The leather squeaked as Tom shifted his weight on the seat. “The bloke in the tweed?”
I confirmed it. “I thought at first he might be the chap from earlier. Same outfit. But he’s not.”
“I don’t think he’s who we’re looking for,” Tom said. “He came close to walking into a light post because he was so busy admiring His Grace’s motorcar. I suspect he’s just envious.”
No doubt. We’re all envious of the Hispano-Suiza, and for that matter Uncle Harold’s—now Crispin’s—Rolls Royce.
Not that I wanted a motorcar, particularly.
Everything I had told Crispin earlier about them was true.
Life in London is much easier without having to pay parking fees for a vehicle.
(It’s fine for him; he has Sutherland House and doesn’t have to worry about it.) But that doesn’t mean that I can’t appreciate the wind in my hair and the lines of a powerful automobile when I see one.
As could the chap who had just passed us, apparently.
Especially as he was not the same bloke who had accosted me earlier.
“Across the street,” Tom said. “The chap in the greatcoat and topper…”
I turned my attention from our own pavement to the one on the other side of The Strand. “What about him?”
I could see the chap he was referring to, or at least I could see a chap in a top hat and black greatcoat, with a silver-topped cane.
And that was all I could see, since his back was to me and he was moving away.
His hair might have been fair, but then again it was difficult to see at a distance and in the dark.
It might simply have been shorn very short.
The back of the man’s neck was pale, at any rate, so the rest of him probably was, as well.
He was tall, with broad shoulders, but that was all I could see from this vantage.
“Never mind,” Tom said. “Here they come.”
I turned my attention back to the front entrance of the bank, in time to see the manager unlock the door to let Crispin and Christopher out.
My weekender bag, which I had donated to the cause—and which Crispin had assured me he’d replace—was clutched in his hand.
It had been empty and deflated when they’d walked inside the bank, but now it was filled to bursting.
Ten thousand pounds in small bills takes up quite a bit of space, it seems. In appearance, it wasn’t unlike the duffel bag Hiram Schlomsky had once left in a ruined church in Southwark to ransom his daughter Florence, although I had only seen that from a distance and from above, when I was lurking in the belltower keeping watch.
The kidnapper came and fetched it before I could get a closer look.
That wasn’t a problem this time. Christopher and Crispin crossed the pavement and pulled open the doors to the Hispano-Suiza, and the next moment, the driver’s seat moved forward, and the carpet bag landed in my lap.
“Ooof!” I grunted. Ten thousand pounds in cash weighs a bit, too, as it turns out. You don’t think about paper weighing much, but when there’s a lot of it, it adds up.
Crispin didn’t answer, just yanked the seat back into position and got into it. “Sorry, Darling,” he told me when he was seated and the motor was running, “but we don’t want to give anyone who might be watching the idea that the back seat isn’t empty.”
“No, of course not. I’m sure knocking the breath out of me with ten thousand pounds in cash was necessary.”
He sniggered. “I thought you might want a look.”
I did want a look, and had one. Bundles of currency were stacked neatly inside the bag where my blouses and skirts usually resided.
“I assume you got it all?”
“Don’t want to take any chances,” Crispin said, eyes on the street as he rolled away from the curb.
“That’s a yes, then?”
“Yes, Darling. It’s a yes.”
After a second he added, “If Laetitia doesn’t come back, nobody can say it was because I didn’t do everything I could.”
No, of course not. Quite a few people knew that he didn’t love his wife-to-be. If he didn’t go above and beyond, and Laetitia wasn’t returned, the blame could easily fall on him. No one wanted that.
I passed the bag from my lap onto Tom’s. He glanced at the money inside it before snapping it shut. “Well done, you two.”
“Thank you, Detective-Sergeant.” The sarcasm was evident if you knew how to listen for it. “But I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even count it. Just took the bank manager’s word for it that it was all there.”
Tom nodded. I was the one who asked, “And you trust him?”
He flicked a glance at me in the mirror. “He won’t want to be responsible for it if Laetitia doesn’t come back either, Darling.”
No, of course he wouldn’t. Her family probably banked at Coutts, as well.
“All we have to do now is wait, then.” I settled back into the seat. The chap in the greatcoat had vanished into the rearview mirror while I’d been busy looking at the money, and without me getting a look at his face.
“And go over the plans for later,” Tom reminded me. “Plus wait and see whether Finch caught anyone following us.”
“Supper,” Christopher added. “I suppose Cook will oblige, Crispin?”
“No doubt.” Crispin turned the corner of Haymarket and headed north toward Regents Street. “Not only am I in London, so they’ll be cooking for that reason, but you’re always welcome. You know that.”
“I don’t want to presume,” Christopher said, and Crispin flicked him a look.
“Presume away. You’re an Astley and therefore a Sutherland.
You have every right to use Sutherland House as you see fit.
In fact, now that Father’s gone and the servants answer to me, if you don’t want to continue to pay for the flat, you may feel free to take up residence at Sutherland House instead. ”
That was an idea. The reason we hadn’t done it a year ago was primarily—as Crispin had implied—the fact that the servants would have reported everything we said or did to His Grace, who at that point was Christopher’s grandfather.
The late Duke Henry would not have appreciated hearing about Christopher’s shenanigans in Town.
Crossdressing and drag balls and evenings consorting with others of his ilk in illicit nightclubs, flaunting himself and flouting the buggery laws.
Word would have gotten back to Uncle Herbert, who would have been forced by his father to cut us off from the family coffers, and we would have had to slink back to Beckwith Place with our tails between our legs, disgraced and destitute.
The same applied to the last seven months during which Uncle Harold had been Duke of Sutherland. The servants tattled to him when they could no longer tattle to Duke Henry, and like his father, he would have been certain to complain to Uncle Herbert about Christopher’s doings.
As if it made an iota of difference to him what Christopher gets up to in his spare time.
But that was all in the past now. It was Crispin’s turn to rule, and there was no one above him to tattle to. He already knew what Christopher spent his time doing—nothing too different from what he himself had frequently done—and he didn’t mind.
That was unless the servants planned to involve Uncle Herbert, of course.
He was biologically the head of the family.
I wasn’t certain what would happen in a confrontation between him and Crispin, but I couldn’t imagine it would be pretty.
“I’m your father,” would come up against, “I’m the duke,” with perhaps a little, “You lost the right to claim that when you didn’t claim me twenty-four years ago. ”
No, it wouldn’t be pretty at all.
Not that I expected either of them to invite the other to a showdown.
I wasn’t even sure they had spoken since Uncle Harold died.
First, there had been the mess with the murders to deal with, and then Crispin was whisked off for Duke of Sutherland duties almost immediately.
And it likely wasn’t a conversation they wanted to have in the midst of a house full of guests and police officers, anyway.
Christopher slanted me a look. “I’ll have to discuss it with Pippa.”
“Discuss away,” Crispin said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Do as you please. I don’t know yet where I’ll be living. Knowing Laetitia, she’ll prefer to spend her time in Town, but the estate isn’t going to run itself, either.”
“How about we try to get through tonight,” I suggested, “before we worry about any of that. It’s possible that the situation might change, after all.”
With any luck, perhaps Laetitia wouldn’t come back in time for the wedding, or for that matter at all.
Or—for a slightly more charitable spin, since I didn’t really wish anyone dead—perhaps she’d come back from the ordeal with a new appreciation for life and the resolution that she didn’t want to spend the rest of it with a man who didn’t love her, no matter how titled and wealthy he was.
No one said anything for a moment. The silence was, not to put too fine a point on it, heavy.