Chapter 13 #2
They didn’t look close to penury, I had to say.
Lady Euphemia’s evening frock was the latest fashion, black georgette, probably French, and the stones in her ears were diamonds, judging from the sparkle.
Lord Maury’s stickpin boasted a ruby the size of my thumbprint, and they had traveled here in their Daimler, which isn’t anything like an economy vehicle.
Geoffrey, of course, was gorgeously decked out, as always.
He’s a very handsome man; probably the most handsome I’ve ever seen, with the possible exception of my German cousin Wolfgang.
Where Wolfgang had been fair-haired, Geoffrey shared his shiny black hair with his sister and his mother—who had wings of white at each temple now—as well as his limpid blue eyes.
He was impossibly gorgeous, really, although as the saying goes, handsome is as handsome does, and the first time I had had occasion to spend time with him, he had crowded me into a corner of the sofa and proceeded to stick his hand up my skirt, and that sort of thing doesn’t endear a chap to me, pretty face or not.
But all that aside, Geoffrey had run wild for a few years now, seducing any woman he could lay hands on.
Marsden Manor couldn’t keep maids for longer than a month or two with the way Geoffrey went through them.
The fact that poor Cecily was the only person who had ended up in the family way—or the only person we knew of, at any rate—was by all considerations a miracle.
The arrest and trial had dragged the family name through the mud.
Perhaps Maury and Effie had cut Geoffrey off, or at least reduced his prospects by enough that he was feeling the sting, and that was why he had cast such an avid glance upon the carpet bag?
While I had some difficulty picturing the doting mother and father creating a plot whereby their beloved daughter went missing a week before her wedding, I could more easily imagine it of Geoffrey.
Not only was he a cold-blooded bloke—you have to be, to talk your current mistress into poisoning your former mistress in order to get rid of your own unborn child—but he and his sister had always seemed close.
I could imagine, only too well, how Geoffrey might have talked Laetitia into pretending to be missing for a few days, so he could get his hands on some of the Sutherland money, and she could determine just how far Crispin’s devotion extended.
Christopher nodded when I whispered as much. And shushed me again. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right. But we can’t talk about it here. What if they hear us?”
“They’re all the way on the other side of the room,” I pointed out—the Sutherland House withdrawing room is large—but Christopher shook his head.
“Better not. We can discuss it when they’re gone.”
“By then it might be too late.” The ransom might have been dropped, and Laetitia would either be back with us or she wouldn’t.
“Better than them thinking we’re talking about them,” Christopher said, and that was that.
Tom came back into the room a few minutes later, and the bridge game paused while the players turned to watch him. So, of course, did Christopher and I.
“What news?” the countess inquired.
“Nothing of any import,” Tom admitted. “Detective-Sergeant Finchley was outside the bank before we arrived and stayed after we left. He said no one followed our motorcar here. Several people walked by as we were waiting—”
He caught my eye, and I nodded. We had noticed and discussed them.
“—but no one that appeared particularly suspicious.”
No, to me neither. The chap in the tweed hadn’t been the same chap I had encountered earlier, and the bloke in the greatcoat could have been anyone.
London is full of greatcoats two weeks before Christmas, and full of top hats every evening throughout the year.
The gentleman had probably been on his way to supper at the Savoy, further down The Strand.
The thought of supper at the Savoy put me in mind of Wolfgang and his betrayal, and I grimaced and forced my mind back to the conversation.
“What now?” Lady Euphemia inquired.
“Now we wait,” Tom said. “Finch went to fetch a team of constables to Battersea Park—”
“Now?” It was barely nine o’clock.
Tom nodded in response to my interjection. “Yes, now. We don’t know what will happen, or when anyone might do a reconnoiter past the War Memorial, so it’s better if we’re too early than too late. Chances are no one will turn up before midnight, but better safe than sorry.”
Yes, of course. “And they’ll stay there for the rest of the evening? Your team?”
“Until the ransom is picked up,” Tom confirmed.
“Then Finch will follow the motorcar, or one of the constables will follow on foot, in the event the ransom is fetched by someone walking. Either way, we hope the chap—or lady—will lead us to where they’re holding Lady Laetitia, or at the very least, to whoever is responsible for kidnapping her. ”
I glanced at Geoffrey, to see whether he evinced any signs of discomfort at this idea, but his handsome face bore the same expression of bovine goodwill as always.
“A lady?” the Earl of Marsden echoed, and Tom turned to him.
“Ladies do occasionally break the law. The last time I dealt with a kidnapping—or the time before, I suppose, if we keep what happened to Pippa and Kit out of it—the mastermind of the plot was a woman, and so was one of her co-conspirators. They had a man on the team, as well, but that was mostly so he could deal with the physical parts of the operation. The brain behind it was female.”
“And what happened?” Lady Euphemia wanted to know.
Tom opened his mouth and then closed it again. The disappearance of Flossie Schlomsky hadn’t ended well, after all. For anyone involved.
“They’re in prison,” I said. “All three of them.”
The countess nodded. “And the victim?”
Tom cleared his throat. “We found her. Just as we found Pippa and Kit before anything could happen to them.”
He glanced at me. I nodded. So did Christopher.
The truth was that when we’d found Flossie Schlomsky, she’d been dead, but there was absolutely no reason to tell the Marsdens that. The situation was entirely different, after all.
As for Christopher and myself, and our abductions in October, he had already rescued himself by the time Crispin and I figured out where he was, while I was wandering around the deck of the German freighter, looking for a way off without having to jump into the water, when Tom and the chaps from the Royal Lifeboat crew caught up with us.
It had all ended quite well for everyone concerned.
Even Wolfgang had managed to evade arrest—by jumping overboard into the North Sea—although the chances were good that he had perished in the attempt.
But he might have preferred that to dancing at the end of a rope in the courtyard at Pentonville penitentiary anyway. It’s hard to say, really.
As the conversation went on around me, I pushed aside any thoughts of my cousin and his likely demise and tuned back into what was happening.
“When shall we be leaving?” the countess wanted to know.
“I’ll be accompanying the money,” Tom said, “and His Grace.” He put heavy emphasis on the pronoun. And then he did it again. “You will be staying here. The fewer people who are involved in this endeavor, the better. Less chance the kidnappers will notice one of us.”
That was true, of course. However—
“I hope you don’t expect me to sit here and twiddle my thumbs,” I said. “I’ll stay in the motorcar, but I absolutely insist on coming along.”
Christopher nodded, and appealed to his cousin. “Crispin—”
“I don’t imagine it’s up to me,” the latter said calmly, “but I’ll admit I’d feel better with some moral support. It isn’t every day a chap has to ransom his bride-to-be.”
Christopher and I both turned to Tom.
“Take Geoffrey,” the Earl of Marsden said. “He’ll be morally supportive.”
He probably didn’t realize how it sounded, or at least I had to hope that he didn’t.
Geoffrey winced, and so did I. Crispin’s lips twitched for a moment before he pressed them together in a straight line.
He caught my eye for a second, and I knew what he was thinking as clearly as if he had said it out loud.
If there was one thing Geoffrey wasn’t good at, it was anything to do with morals.
“There’s not enough room in the motorcar,” I said instead, since it was absolutely certain that either Christopher or Tom would insist on sitting up front beside Crispin, and that would leave me in the back seat, squeezed between Geoffrey and whoever the loser in the front-seat-sweepstakes was.
And while I didn’t necessarily mind being plastered up against Christopher, or to a lesser degree Tom, I drew the line at Lord Geoffrey.
He leered at me for a moment, having perhaps made the same calculations, but then he seemed to recall himself. The lecherous expression disappeared off his face and he nodded. “I don’t mind. I don’t want to do anything that might stop us from finding Letty.”
Very noble of him. Or at least he made it sound good, if he’d had something to do with it.
It was even possible that he didn’t want to go on the trip with us because he had to be there to fetch the ransom. Although now that he knew that the police would have the war memorial in Battersea Park surrounded, surely he wouldn’t take such a risk.
“We could motor in our own car,” the countess suggested, and Tom shook his head, kindly but firmly.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist that you stay here, Lady Euphemia. Any additional motorcars would attract attention.”
The countess wound her hands together in her lap. I could see the knuckles whiten, so if nothing else, she did seem genuinely distraught. Then again, anyone can wind their hands together tightly.
“But my daughter—”
“Isn’t likely to be in Battersea Park.”
She turned to look at me, and I added, “There are probably more than one kidnapper involved in this. One to pick up the bag and one to stay with Laetitia. It makes sense: unless it’s someone she knows, they had to snatch her forcibly from her motorcar, and it would have taken more than one person to do that. ”
Lady Euphemia nodded, if reluctantly. I thought the reluctance was more due to the fact that I was the one saying it than any disagreement with what I said.
“But if not,” I added, “if it’s just one bloke, he won’t bring your daughter with him to the park.
He’ll leave her wherever he’s been keeping her while he goes to fetch the money.
She would only slow him down, and there’s the possibility that she might escape if he takes her out of the house. It’s much safer to keep her locked up.”
There was a beat while I considered how that statement sounded, before I added, “Safer for him, I mean. From his perspective.”
And if we were lucky, or at least if Laetitia was, he’d release her once he had the money.
“It’s better for everyone if you wait for word,” I concluded.
The countess eyed me suspiciously. So did her husband. “You seem to know a lot about it, Miss Darling,” he said.
“I was kidnapped two months ago,” I explained. “So was Christopher. And in August, the young woman who lived down the hall from us was taken. Her parents came all the way from America to pay the ransom.”
“An American.” Lady Euphemia wrinkled her aristocratic nose. “Why am I not surprised?”
It was clearly a rhetorical question, but I couldn’t resist answering. “I have no idea. It could happen to anyone, after all. Including your daughter.”
She didn’t respond to that, and I added, “At least he had the money to ransom his daughter.” While Crispin was footing the bill for Laetitia.
The countess bristled. “What is that supposed to mean? If you’re insinuating something—”
“I’m insinuating nothing,” I said. “The ransom demand was sent to Crispin. It stands to reason that he’ll be the one paying it. She’s his intended, after all.”
Euphemia nodded. “Exactly.”
There didn’t seem to be much else to say after that, so I turned back to Tom. “So Finch is there with a team. I suppose you’ll be accompanying the carpet bag?”
Tom confirmed that that was the plan.
“I think I’ll go and change into something more comfortable,” I said. “It won’t do to go chasing kidnappers in chiffon and diamanté accents, will it? I wouldn’t want to catch anyone’s attention by sparkling at the wrong moment.”
Lady Euphemia muttered something. It was most likely derogatory. Crispin coughed, and I don’t doubt at all that it was in lieu of laughing, either at me or at his future mother-in-law. The look he directed my way was amused.
Christopher pushed to his feet and held out a hand to me. “I’ll join you,” he said. “Black tie isn’t quite the thing either.”
It wasn’t. We’d both be more comfortable in the clothes we had donned this morning, a lifetime ago, to accompany Crispin around town in the Hispano-Suiza: tweed and brogues and warm jumpers.
I took the hand and let him pull me to my feet. “Don’t go anywhere without us.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Crispin said blithely, while Tom followed us toward the door. “I’ll just come upstairs with you, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” I told him, even as I bit back an ill-advised comment about his just wanting to help Christopher with his toilette.
It might be untrue, after all. He might suspect us of something, such as colluding in having kidnapped Laetitia and wanting privacy to make plans for retrieving her and the ransom.
I have no idea whether he thought we’d left her alone for the past two days now, to die of thirst and dehydration in whatever hole he assumed we kept her in—because he would have known full well that we hadn’t had the opportunity to go and check on her for the past two days—but either way, it wasn’t worth causing a fuss about.
We had nothing to hide, and I didn’t imagine for a moment that Christopher minded Tom coming along with us.
We passed through the door and into the foyer in silence, with Tom’s footsteps doggedly right behind.