Chapter 14 #2
I squinted at him. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
Tom shook his head. “I’m certain there’s nothing to worry about. He’ll be back inside the car in a minute—Kit, as well—and they’ll both be safe and sound.”
I nodded. It was all very logical and reassuring, and Tom didn’t sound worried.
That didn’t stop my heart from beating harder as the young Duke of Sutherland crossed the grass toward the memorial.
Christopher, too, stood rigidly. I couldn’t see much of him through the small side window of the H6, but his hands, held stiffly at his sides, were curled into tight fists.
Tom’s exhales, on the other hand, were even. He seemed alert, but not tense.
Nothing stirred as Crispin ducked out of sight behind the plinth. I pictured him putting the bag down, perhaps whispering a few words of good luck or prayer, and imagined him straightening. He came back around the memorial just a second or two after I expected him to.
But something wasn’t right, and it took me a moment to realize what it was. That moment was enough for Tom to say, “He didn’t leave the bag.”
No, he hadn’t done. It was still in his hand.
And in his other hand was something small and white.
“Crispin!” Christopher hissed. “The money!”
He gestured to the bag. Crispin shook his head. “Change of plans.”
Yes, of course. It was obvious now that I thought about it. This wasn’t at all a good place for a ransom drop. Too public, too open. Too many places for the chaps from Scotland Yard to hide.
Had the kidnapper spotted them, and that was the reason for the change, or had this always been the plan?
It was clever, I had to admit. None of us had expected it.
Or perhaps Tom had done, and that was why he was inside the motorcar with us, and not outside it with Finch and the rest.
“Get in,” Crispin told Christopher, as he strode around the front of the Hispano-Suiza. Christopher scrambled back to his side of the car, as Crispin opened his door and more or less flung the bag into the back seat at me.
After a moment, he seemed to realize what he had done, and added, “Sorry, Darling.”
His voice was tight.
“Don’t mention it,” I said. “Is that a note in your hand?”
He nodded. I waited while he got himself situated behind the wheel before I added, “What does it say?”
“Not much,” Crispin said tightly. “Just an order to bring the money to an address in the East End.”
“Where in the East End?”
Not that I was particularly familiar with that part of London, honestly. We tended to stay in the West End ourselves.
“Arnold Circus. In the pavilion.” He started the motorcar.
“I’m not familiar,” I said.
“I am,” Tom said grimly. “Is there a time limit? May I see?” He held out a hand.
Christopher took the note off Crispin’s lap and handed it into the back seat. Tom and I bent our heads over it.
It was the same notepaper as the previous note, and the same spiky, black handwriting. No envelope this time, just the notepaper itself.
Bring the money to the pavilion in the middle of Arnold Circus. Don’t dawdle.
“That doesn’t sound good,” I said, indicating the last two words.
Tom shook his head. “Chop-chop, Your Grace.”
“I hope you’re joking,” Crispin told him over his shoulder. From the tightness of his voice I imagined that his jaw might be clenched. “How many citations for speeding have I gotten over the last few years? You hardly need tell me to hurry.”
No, indeed. We left Battersea Park at a much faster clip than we’d entered it.
Until Tom said, “Stop!” and Crispin stomped on the brake.
We were all thrown forward and then back again. “What?” Crispin asked impatiently.
“Just a moment.”
Tom indicated a figure that was jogging toward us across one of the lawns. As it came closer, I recognized Ian Finchley. “What’s going on?” he wanted to know, barely out of breath from the run. “You didn’t leave the money at the memorial.”
He looked from Crispin to Christopher and back again.
“Change of plans,” Tom told him from the back seat. “There was a note telling us to bring it to Shoreditch.”
Shoreditch? Was that where Arnold Circus was located? A bell rang, very faintly, in the back of my head, but I forgot about it again when Tom continued, “Did you not see anyone leave it?”
“We didn’t,” Finch confirmed. “No one’s come near the memorial since we arrived. It must have been left earlier in the day.”
It must have been. Unless Crispin had had it in his pocket, but that wasn’t an explanation I wanted to entertain.
“They must have seen you,” he said, “or guessed you’d be here, and so they made other plans.”
“It’s been very quiet,” Finch said. “Not a lot of people at all in the time we’ve been waiting. No one’s been behind the memorial that I recall.”
Tom nodded. “Likely this was always the plan. Especially if the note was left before our boys even entered the scene.”
Well, yes. The kidnapper, or kidnappers, might have reasoned that either Crispin or Laetitia’s family would involve the police—the original note hadn’t said not to, unlike the one that had been left for Flossie Schlomsky’s parents—and if so, having us all run around town on a wild chase made sense.
There wouldn’t be time to get Finch and his team to Arnold Circus before us.
“We’d better go,” Tom said, and Finch nodded.
“Would you like me to follow? I can dismiss the others and come after you?”
“It couldn’t hurt,” Tom said. “We’re going to Arnold Circus. Are you familiar with it?”
“In the Old Nichol slum? Who isn’t?”
I wasn’t, although from the way he straightened up in his seat, it seemed as if Christopher was. He didn’t say anything, however. Finch added, “I’ll pick one or two of the chaps and send the rest to their beds. We’ll catch up in a few minutes.”
More than a few, if my knowledge of Crispin’s prowess behind the wheel proved accurate, but I didn’t bother to say so. He was already tapping the accelerator impatiently, and the Hispano-Suiza was making small growling noises, as if it couldn’t wait to go.
Finch took a step back. “We’ll see you there.”
“The drop point is the bandstand in the middle of the circus,” Tom said, but by then Crispin had trod on the accelerator and we were already moving away, and I’m not certain that Finch heard him.
The road to Arnold Circus, or at least the way Crispin took us, lay through South London.
Instead of crossing Chelsea Bridge and traveling around Westminster and Holborn on the north side of the Thames, he took us along Nine Elms Lane past the old Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens to Newington and the old Elephant and Castle.
“The pub’s been there since at least 1765,” Christopher announced as we roared past. And qualified it with a, “Well, at least a pub by that name has been here since before 1765. It’s been rebuilt a few times since then.”
From there, the trip took us across the river on London Bridge, where I peered out to see whether I could see the bell tower of St Olave’s Church on Tooley Street below, where we had waited for the kidnappers to pick up the ransom for Flossie Schlomsky back in August. The borough of Southwark had been in the middle of demolishing the old church then—the bell tower had been the only thing standing; quite a shame, since it dated from the siege of London in 1014—and I couldn’t see it now, so perhaps they had finished the job.
From there we traveled north past Leadenhall Market onto Bishopsgate and on to Spitalfields and Shoreditch.
There was something about the idea of Shoreditch that was niggling at me, but I couldn’t remember what it was.
Someone had mentioned it at some point, I thought.
It might even have been Laetitia, although I didn’t think so.
There was no reason why she would have done, and her doing so would have been strange enough that I would have likely remembered.
Southwark, of course, was where Flossie’s kidnappers had picked up their ransom, and it was also where Crispin had asserted that Dominic Rivers had originated, even though the dope peddler to the Bright Young Set had pretended to be of much higher birth.
But Dom was dead now, so Laetitia couldn’t be with him, and besides, Southwark was on the other side of the river from here, and had nothing to do with anything, other than that it was another London neighborhood whose name started with an S.
Spitalfields, too, was familiar, but I thought I could place that reference in my head.
Crispin had mentioned it once, in connection with illicit nightclubs and watering holes of the sort that required specialized knowledge, even sometimes a secret password, to access.
One of them was located in Spitalfields, he had told me, but at the moment I couldn’t recall whether it was the one where you had to use the words ‘hair of the dog’ to gain admittance, or whether you were supposed to say you were there to get lucky to be let in.
Crispin would know, but it didn’t seem like the right time to ask. His hands were wrapped tight around the wheel, and his jawline was even sharper than usual.
“Is there a nightclub in Shoreditch?” I asked.
No one answered for a moment—Crispin didn’t even take his eyes off the roadway—but when no one else responded, he said, “Not of the sort where you’d be welcome, Darling.”
I tilted my head. “Somewhere where Kitty would be welcome, perhaps?”
Kitty Dupree is Christopher’s alter ego for the times when he dons makeup and a glittery evening frock to go dancing.
The fact that the grandson—and then the nephew, and now the cousin (or brother)—of the Duke of Sutherland likes to kick up his heels at drag balls wasn’t something we wanted to get back to His Grace back when he would have objected, so Christopher has always been very careful to stay incognito.
People know him as Kitty, not as Christopher Astley, and he looks nothing like himself—or like Crispin—when he’s in drag, so there’s no chance that anyone would guess who’s behind the makeup.