Chapter 18 #3
I sniffed. “It wasn’t premeditated. I was trying to get away from him. I wasn’t trying to kill him.”
“I’m sure you weren’t,” Tom agreed. “As I said, we’re not charging you with anything.
But it does rather put a cap on things, doesn’t it?
There’s no need for an autopsy. We know what killed him.
We know how it happened, and that there was no crime involved, so there’s nothing more we can do about it.
Were he alive, we’d arrest him for kidnapping and blackmail, as well as for murder and attempted murder from the events in October… ”
But those, too, would go unpunished now. Unless you consider death a suitable punishment for kidnapping, blackmail, and murder, and if so, I suppose justice had been served.
“I’d rather he rot in prison,” I muttered, and Tom looked at me.
“He’d be dead no matter what, Pippa. If not now, then later. Two murders, several attempted murders, and two cases of kidnapping, not to mention the blackmail? And he a German? It’s been eight years since the armistice, but people’s memories are longer than that.”
Yes, of course they were. In my opinion, Wolfgang’s nationality oughtn’t to apply to his crimes—his actions had been damning enough without adding that particular offense—but I understood why Tom had said that it would.
The English still had strong feelings about the Great War, and a healthy dislike of the people who had started it.
There was no way it wouldn’t have been an issue.
“He wouldn’t have a hope of coming out of a trial without being sentenced to death,” Tom added. “You did him a favor. The way he went was a lot quicker and cleaner than what he had to look forward to.”
Perhaps. Being hanged until dead is notoriously painful, at least if you strangle slowly instead of getting a nice, clean snap of the neck when the trap door drops. Nonetheless, I heard the sizzle of the electrical rail and smelled the odor of burning hair in my head, and shuddered.
“Did he not give Harrods an address when he signed on to work there?” Crispin wanted to know. He might simply have been trying to change the topic—he had pushed his shoulder against mine for a second when I shuddered—but it was also a valid question.
“He did,” Tom confirmed. “But it was a poste restante at the King Edward Building in City.”
“The main post office?”
He nodded. “Sir Richard said that Ulrich explained that he lived in rooms, and that his landlord wasn’t keen on his getting post there. Sir Richard said he was quick to respond when they sent word that he was hired.”
“He must have checked with the post office at least once a day, then, if not more often. I suppose you went there?”
“Yes, Pippa,” Tom said patiently. “I don’t need you to tell me how to do my job.”
“Well, what did they say?”
“That he came in once a day and asked if there was mail. Usually in the afternoon. The young lady at the counter described him, so there’s no question that it was him. He used all three names, incidentally. Ulrich Albrecht and Wolfgang Natterdorff, as well as the whole string.”
“For how long had he used the post office for his letters?”
When he’d been in London the first time, from August to October, he had used the Savoy Hotel as his mail drop.
It was possible that he had used the post office too, of course, but whenever I had answered one of his summonses, I had sent my reply to the Savoy.
And because he had at one point lived there, for a week or so, the Savoy staff must have been happy to keep passing on the post.
“Only for a few weeks,” Tom said. “Finch and I surmised that that must have been when he made it back to London. Less than a month ago.”
“And did he receive anything interesting by poste restante?”
“That depends on what you’d consider interesting,” Tom said.
“A few foreign letters: the young lady behind the counter didn’t pay attention to where they came from, but she recalled the colorful stamps, and assumed he was getting post from home.
She also remembered the letter from Harrods—she spoke to him about it, and he told her he was taking up a position there for the holidays. ”
All as expected, then. The letters from Germany might have had to do with our shared grandfather and the Natterdorff estates, or alternatively, Wolfgang might still have had friends over there. And we already knew about the post at Harrods.
“However,” Tom added, “she also mentioned that he’d received several letters in what she called a feminine hand.”
His tone put quotation marks around the words.
“It wasn’t me,” I said. “I wrote to him at the Savoy in September and October, but I had no idea he was back, and I certainly wouldn’t have known to address the post to poste restante at the main post office.”
“No one thinks you did, Pippa,” Christopher assured me. “We all thought he was dead. For myself, I thanked the Lord daily that he turned out to be a cheat and a scoundrel, and that we found out before you went to Germany with him. I probably never would have seen you again.”
“I would have come back to visit,” I assured him, not that there had been any danger at all of me going to Germany with Wolfgang. Not under my own steam, at any rate.
“He would have killed you as soon as he got his hands on your inheritance,” Crispin said darkly, “and none of us would even have known it happened.”
There was a pause after that. I hadn’t considered that possible scenario before, nor had anyone else ever brought it up to me, but now that it was on the table, twitching like a landed trout, it had a certain inevitability to it.
Once again, I was grateful to have made it off the freighter alive. And out of the tunnel, as well.
This was all quite depressing, though, so in an effort to lighten the mood, I addressed Tom. “I don’t suppose there’s any news about Agatha Christie?”
His lips twitched. “I’m afraid not, Pippa.”
“It’s been more than a week now, hasn’t it?”
He nodded. “There are standing orders to keep an eye out, but no more searches or dredging of ponds planned.”
There was a beat before he added, “I imagine we’ll learn more when we find the body.”
All three of us sat up straighter. “You believe there’s a body?” Crispin asked.
Tom nodded. “Don’t you?”
Christopher glanced at me. “Pippa thinks she planned it all herself, to ruin her husband’s happiness with the mistress.”
“It makes sense,” I said. “She’s made a career out of plotting crimes. I think she was clever enough to plot this one.” And certainly clever enough to avoid being murdered.
“Where is she, then?”
“Lying low somewhere,” I said, “watching everyone go mad looking for her. She wouldn’t even have to be nearby. There are articles in the major newspapers every single day. With photographs, sometimes. She could easily keep up that way, from anywhere in the country.”
After a second I added, with a smirk, “Archie looked positively haunted the last time I saw his picture.”
And I could well imagine Agatha sitting at a table somewhere, enjoying a cuppa and a kipper with her morning paper, looking at her husband’s increasingly haggard image and smiling.
Tom’s lips twitched. “The situation does seem to be wearing on him. He’s been interviewed multiple times by now, and from what I understand, the public hasn’t been kind.”
“The police think he did it, then?”
“He’s the obvious suspect,” Tom confirmed. “The husband or wife always is. And that level of suspicion can be a drain, even on someone innocent.”
I could well imagine it.
“And then, of course, there’s the fact that most normal people can’t commit murder without showing some signs of guilt or fear in the aftermath. Especially in so public a case as this one.”
“Is it your personal opinion, then, that Archie did it?”
“All I have is my personal opinion,” Tom said. “I’m not involved in the case. I have my own missing person to worry about. But yes, I suspect he did do. And that the body will turn up eventually. Until then, there’s nothing we can do. We can’t charge a chap with murder when there’s no body.”
No, I supposed not. If there was no body, there was always the possibility that the deceased would turn back up like a bad penny. Just look at Wolfgang.