Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
My jaw dropped. “My… what?”
She tittered. “Your cousin. You got engaged, didn’t you?”
I glanced at Christopher, who was the only cousin I had at present. He looked as shocked and offended as I did. “We certainly did not.”
“Not you,” Violet giggled, with a pat of her gloved hand on his arm. “The other cousin. The German one. Did you not get engaged at the end of that weekend at Marsden Manor?”
She exchanged another look with Crispin. This one was conspiratorial, or perhaps simply knowing. Perhaps everyone in the Bright Young Set knew how he felt about me, and they all commiserated.
Or not, as the case may be.
“We did not,” I said steadily, “at least if you’re referring to Wolfgang’s proposal in the foyer after Geoffrey was arrested. I didn’t say yes, although it’s understandable that you wouldn’t know that. You were upstairs, unconscious, when it happened, weren’t you?”
She nodded. “No one told me that you didn’t accept. My apologies.”
“No matter,” I said. “It would be like marrying Christopher.”
We all looked at him. He smirked. “Not exactly like marrying Christopher, surely.”
Well, no. Wolfgang had, at least, not been queer. Then again, if I had to marry a cousin, perhaps it would be preferable if he were.
But all of this was neither here nor there. I turned back to Lady Violet. “What do you mean, am I looking for Wolfgang? Of course I’m not. He’s dead.” Or perhaps in Germany, but most likely dead.
Violet’s expression melted into sympathy. “I’m so sorry. That must have been so sudden.”
I suppose it had been. I certainly hadn’t woken up that day—in the morning, I mean—expecting to be doped and kidnapped, put on a freighter bound for Germany, and then rescued, but having to watch my cousin jump overboard to avoid being arrested.
“That’s very kind of you,” I said, “but under the circumstances, it was no loss.” And she oughtn’t to feel as if it was one, either. He had been the one who had broken into her family’s house and stolen their jewels, after all.
“I’ve had time to process what happened,” I added.
“You must process quickly,” Violet said, and sounded resentful.
I blinked. “I wouldn’t say that. It’s been two months, and quite a lot has happened since then.”
She looked nonplussed. “Two months?”
“Wolfgang drowned in October.”
“If he did,” Violet said, “he has a very convincing doppelganger.”
There was a moment’s silence, enough for my stomach to drop to a level that was, frankly, alarming.
“What do you mean?” I managed, although I sounded choked even in my own ears.
Christopher and Crispin both gave me concerned looks, and Christopher took a step closer to me.
I suppose I must have swayed, and he thought I might need support.
Violet, too, looked at me with consternation. “I saw him here a few days ago. One of the chaps helping with the instructions.”
She flapped a hand at the ski slope. We all three turned to look at it. The man there now certainly wasn’t Wolfgang, although I suppose there was a resemblance in the height and the build.
“He isn’t Swiss,” I said stupidly, as if that objection was in any way relevant. Crispin and Christopher glanced at me again, and then at each other, but neither of them said anything. Not to me.
“Did you speak to him?” Crispin asked Violet. I wouldn’t say that his voice was sharp, exactly, but it had an edge to it. I wasn’t sure whether it was fear, or anger, or something else.
She nodded. “He told me I was mistaken, that we’d never met before. But I’m not usually wrong about a face. Especially not one that looks like that.”
She giggled.
“When did this happen?” Christopher wanted to know, and Violet thought about it for a moment before she said that it would have been last weekend.
“Have you been here since then?” Crispin wanted to know, and Violet admitted that she had been here more than once. It sounded as if she had stopped by Harrods every day lately. The Swiss Army instructors must be a powerful draw.
“But you haven’t seen him again? The chap who looked like Philippa’s fiancé?”
Violet shook her head. “Not since the first time.”
“Thank you.” Crispin turned to Christopher and me. “Have you seen enough, Kit?”
Christopher nodded. He was still standing close enough to me that I could feel him along my right side every time I breathed in, or every time he did. “Come along, Pippa.”
He put a hand on my back and nudged me away from the slope.
“Someone should inquire—” I began, and Crispin nodded.
“I intend to. Go with Kit.”
“But shouldn’t we find Tom and ask him to do it?” He was the detective, not us.
“He’s busy,” Crispin said. “And we’re here. We may as well ascertain whether Violet saw who she thought she saw or she saw someone else before we go off half-cocked. Most likely it was just a chance resemblance.”
“She can’t have seen who she thought she saw,” I said, in spite of the fact that I was weak in the knees at the possibility of it. “Wolfgang’s dead.”
“He might have survived.”
“He fell into the North Sea in late October.” And people don’t generally survive that. Not unless they’re fished out immediately, and he hadn’t been.
“It wasn’t quite the North Sea,” Christopher said pedantically. “More like the English Channel.”
I shook my head. “Definitely not. The channel is farther south. Past Dover. This was east past Margate in the direction of Holland.”
“The Southern Bight, then. Not as if he fell overboard halfway between Scotland and the coast of Norway. That would be immediately fatal, I imagine. Or if not immediately, then in fairly short order.”
Yes, indeed. However— “I can’t imagine that the— what did you call it?
…the Southern Bight is much less fatal, you know.
The water would be as cold. And I don’t think he could have swum to shore.
He would have caught hypothermia and drowned before he got halfway.
If he’s alive at all, he must have made it back onto the freighter and managed to avoid being spotted by Tom and Finch somehow.
And then he came back to London at some later point. ”
Talking about it, or reasoning it out, helped.
Or perhaps it was arguing about it that got my blood flowing and made the lightheadedness abate.
I do like to argue. But either way I felt calmer, and my voice shook less.
Crispin had taken the opportunity while Christopher and I were bickering to make himself scarce, so it was just my cousin and I standing there, beside a mannequin sporting jodhpurs, paddock boots, and a tailored shirt, talking.
“I wasn’t there,” Christopher said, which was true. He’d been locked up in a house in Thornton Heath with a dead body when Wolfgang kidnapped me. “How likely would you say it is that he might have survived?”
“It’s not as if we haven’t discussed it since,” I answered, since, at least at first, we had discussed it almost non-stop for days.
And we had always come to the same conclusion, which was that Wolfgang was most likely dead.
“The water was cold, and there were police and lifeboat crew all around the freighter. It was unlikely that he’d survived.
Then again, they never found a body, either. ”
“He might not have floated to England,” Christopher said. “He might have ended up in France or Holland.”
“Tom would have heard, don’t you think? He would have kept an ear out, surely.”
Christopher shrugged. “I don’t know that we can assume anything. How likely that Violet was wrong, do you suppose?”
“She seemed fairly certain,” I said. “And she had seen him up close. Had spoken to him, most likely. They probably even danced, that first night.”
“Then again, it was only one night, and then she was poisoned the following day. After that, she was unconscious for days, if not weeks. Her mind could be playing tricks on her.”
I suppose it could be. “I don’t know how we’re going to know for certain.”
“Not unless we see him ourselves,” Christopher agreed. “Violet might be wrong, but we wouldn’t be.”
No, we wouldn’t. Then again— “If he is back, he’d stay well clear of us, I would think. Not only would we recognize him instantly, but we have every reason to want him arrested and jailed.”
“He could be biding his time,” Christopher suggested, and then grunted when an elbow made contact with his ribs.
“Enough, Kit,” Crispin said. “Can’t you see that you’re scaring her?”
Christopher turned to look at me, at the same time as he rubbed his side. “Are you afraid, Pippa?”
“I’m not entirely easy in my mind,” I admitted. “If he made it to Germany and safety, but he came back to England, it can’t be for any good purpose. We did rather spike his guns when we caught on to what he was doing and I refused to marry him. I wouldn’t blame him for wanting revenge.”
“I’m sure it’s not even him,” Christopher said and dropped his hand. “Is it, Crispin?”
“It’s a chap named Utz,” Crispin answered, “and that’s all the bloke on the skis knows. His name is Hansueli, and he’s here from Bonn. He’s never met Utz before.”
“Utz is not a Swiss Army skiing instructor, then?”
Crispin shook his head. “He’s some chap from somewhere in the southern part of Germany, or so Hansueli believes, based on the chap’s dialect.
I asked for a description, and the way he described the bloke did sound like he was describing Wolfie.
Tall, blond hair, blue eyes, handsome face, pity about the scar. ”
I felt a shiver go down my back. “Pity,” I managed, although my lips were stiff.