Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
The chap on the floor of the bandstand was my age, dressed in tweeds, and had a square jaw and brown hair under the Baker Boy cap that had taken the brunt of the blow to the back of his head.
He was, in short, the same chap I had run into—or who had run into me—on Grosvenor Street yesterday morning.
“You’re certain?” Tom asked from where he was kneeling next to the body, in the light of a torch Crispin had fetched from the boot of the Hispano-Suiza.
I nodded. “I’m hardly likely to be mistaken, am I? I looked right into his face less than twenty-four hours ago.”
“You must have seen a lot of faces in the past twenty-four hours.”
Of course I had. But— “It was a special occasion. I noticed him, in a way that I didn’t notice many of the other people who passed by.”
Tom nodded. “Well, he’s dead.”
Yes, of course he was. And no surprise there.
He must be involved in Laetitia’s kidnapping.
Not only because he had followed us to the stationers this morning, but because he was here, at the ransom drop.
Whoever he was working with must have deemed him a liability of some sort, for some reason, and decided to get rid of him.
“Have either of you seen this bloke before?” Tom inquired of Christopher and Crispin, who both shook their heads. “Are you certain? Look closely.”
Crispin made a face, but stepped closer. The torch wavered a little as he directed the beam into the young man’s face. The light reflected in his wide-open eyes.
Christopher stayed where he was. “I’m certain,” he said firmly. “I have never encountered him in my life. I would remember.”
Tom eyed him. “How so?”
Christopher smirked. “Well, he’s good-looking, isn’t he? I would remember a good-looking bloke.”
Tom gave the dead man another look, and then a shrug. “If you say so.”
“You don’t think he’s good-looking?” I inquired.
Crispin turned to me, eyebrow arched. “Do you?”
“Not particularly. He isn’t my type.” Although he might be Tom’s. If Tom had a type, and it was male. Which was really what I was trying to ascertain, I suppose.
Crispin snorted. “No, we all know who your type is, don’t we?”
Did we? “I’m not sure what you mean by that,” I told him, “but I don’t think you do.”
I didn’t have a type, as far as I knew. I had never been in love.
I could see beauty when I encountered it, of course, female and male both.
Laetitia was stunningly good-looking, and several other women of Crispin’s acquaintance ran the gamut from quietly lovely to breathtakingly beautiful, as well.
Geoffrey was exceptionally handsome, if an awful cad, and so had Dominic Rivers been. And so had Wolfgang, for that matter.
And perhaps he was who Crispin was referring to.
If so, he was not only wrong, but abysmally far off the mark.
Not only had Wolfgang been German, which was a strike against him in most people’s minds, but he had tried to kill me on several occasions, as well as had abducted me and planned to marry me against my will.
And I hadn’t been in love with him before he did those things, either.
He’d been handsome, yes. But he was my cousin, and I don’t find my cousins attractive on principle. Nothing good can come of that.
Crispin shrugged as if it didn’t matter. Perhaps it didn’t. “No,” he told Tom, “I’ve never seen him.”
Tom nodded. “Well, there’s nothing I can do for him. Once Finch gets here, I’ll set up a perimeter and start investigating the crime scene. You three can go home and get some rest.”
There was a beat while none of us moved. Christopher looked truculent, and I could tell that he wouldn’t be budged until Finch had arrived and Tom wasn’t alone.
“What about this?” I asked, hefting the bag of money I was still clutching.
I hadn’t wanted to leave it unattended in the Hispano-Suiza—even if that had, perhaps, been the kidnapper’s plan—so I had brought it back up to the bandstand with me after I fetched Tom.
If the kidnapper had hoped that the presence of the dead body would leave us too discombobulated to keep track of the ransom, he could think again.
Tom glanced over at the bag. “Take it with you.”
Crispin made a sharp movement, as if to object, but he stopped before following through with it. “Is that wise?” he asked instead, more calmly than I would have expected.
Tom glanced around at the interior of the bandstand. “No one will come up here to pick it up while we’re working the crime scene. You might as well go home and wait for another note.”
Crispin shifted his weight from one leg to the other. The torch beam wavered. “Do you think there will be one?”
“I imagine so,” Tom said, sounding surprised. “They didn’t get what they wanted.”
I glanced at Crispin, who was biting his bottom lip as if there was something he wanted to say, but he couldn’t get it out, before I turned back to Tom. “What are the chances that this bloke was the kidnapper, and Laetitia managed to get the best of him? If so, there won’t be another note.”
“If that’s the case,” Tom said cheerfully, “I suppose all you do is wait for Lady Laetitia herself to arrive, while you prepare the welcoming feast.”
The welcoming feast. Of course.
“We’ll wait for Detective-Sergeant Finchley,” I said, “before we go anywhere. The last thing I want to do is leave you here alone.”
He looked surprised that I’d mentioned it. “I’m an official of Scotland Yard, Philippa. Not to mention a veteran of the war. I can take care of myself.”
“That doesn’t matter if someone sneaks up behind you and cracks you over the head like they did this chap.” I pointed a toe at the dead man, but without making contact with the body. Tom frowned anyway. “I don’t suppose he’s carrying anything in his pocket,” I added, “is he?”
“Anything like identification?” Tom shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Pippa. Finch will have to take his fingerprints to see whether he turns up in our books as a criminal or a radical, and if not, we’ll put his face in the papers and see whether we can identify him that way.”
“Someone could go door to door with his photograph in this area?” Christopher suggested. “He looks like he might be Russian or Hungarian or something of that nature. Those cheekbones.”
It wasn’t easy to tell when one of the man’s cheeks was against the floor of the bandstand and I didn’t want to get on my knees to look at him, but yes.
From what I had seen, and remembered from earlier, he did have that sort of flat face and broad Slavic cheekbones that often accompany those from Russia and points east. And as Crispin had mentioned, this area had a sizeable population of such. Going door to door wasn’t a bad idea.
“We’ll figure it out,” Tom said, and I don’t think I imagined the warning in his voice. When he continued sternly, it became abundantly clear that I hadn’t. “Don’t get involved, Kit. His Grace is right: this isn’t an area where you’d be welcome. Any of you.”
The glance took in Crispin and myself as well as Christopher.
The latter raised his hands. “I don’t have a picture of the chap, so there’s nothing I can do. Nor was I planning to do anything. Although you’ll let us know if there’s anything we can do, won’t you?”
“And keep us updated on progress,” I added.
Tom nodded. “Of course. I’ll be in touch in the morning. I’ll need to know whether Lady Laetitia herself has turned up, or another note has, or if anything else has happened. You’ll be at Sutherland House? Or the flat?”
Christopher and Crispin communicated wordlessly for a second, across the body, before Christopher said, “Sutherland House. We brought a change of clothes earlier, and if Laetitia turns up—or another note does—it’ll be there and not the Essex House Mansions.”
Tom nodded. “Get some rest if you can. Here’s Finch now. Off you go.”
Tom must have picked up the sound of regulation boots ascending the staircase to the bandstand before any of us did, because another few seconds passed before Ian Finchley made his way up to the top step, followed by a constable in uniform. We met them halfway to the stairs going the other way.
“Leaving so soon?” Finch asked, with a glance at the carpet bag. “Wait. Isn’t that—?”
I nodded. “Change of plans. There’s a dead body in the pavilion. We’ve been sent home to await another advance from the kidnappers.”
“Or kidnapper,” Christopher added morosely, “as there might only be one left.”
Finch’s pale blue eyes flickered toward the bandstand once, and then away again. “A falling out, was it?”
He didn’t wait for either of us to answer—and just as well, since we had no idea what was going on; although we could speculate as well as anyone, I supposed—before he added, “Off with you, then. We’ll take care of this.”
He nodded to the constable, who murmured something polite as he brushed past us on his way to assist Tom.
Finch walked us down the twenty-two steps, and we parted ways with a polite nod and a friendly reminder to be careful on our way home and not let anyone relieve us of the bag.
We motored off in the Hispano-Suiza while Finch was still getting his fingerprinting kit—and Tom’s Leica—out of the police issue Crossley Tender.
“I’m not certain whether this is good or bad news,” I commented when we were away from Arnold Circus and on our way back to our own part of London. I was in the back seat with the carpet bag while Crispin and Christopher occupied the front seat as usual.
The latter glanced at me over his shoulder. “I can’t imagine it being good news, Pippa. Someone’s dead.”
“Yes, of course. But if Laetitia was the one who killed him, and she got away…”
Then it might be good news. I didn’t actually want her dead, in spite of Christopher’s and my discussion on the subject. Now that she might really be in danger, I felt rather bad about it, and not only because it appeared to have made me a suspect in her disappearance.