Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Ten minutes later, we were standing in the shadow of London Bridge looking at St Olave’s Church across the street. Or rather, we were looking at what was left of St Olave’s Church, which wasn’t much. Just the transept and a rather squat and square bell tower. Everything else was a mound of dirt with the occasional block of dressed stone that whoever had demolished the thing had left behind.

I opened my mouth and closed it again.

“Well, that’s rather a shame,” Christopher said distantly, “isn’t it?” After a second or two he added, “John Deval built this church, you know.”

I squinted at the mess on the other side of the street, and then back at him. “Should that mean something to me?”

He glanced down at me. Not very far down; he’s only a few inches taller than me. “He was the King’s mason a few hundred years ago, and so was his son. Same name for both of them. This chap built Newgate Prison and several of the London hospitals. His son built Argyll House and King’s Bench Prison.”

All rather lovely buildings, if antiquated. Still— “Talented family. Although we didn’t all study history at Oxford, you know.” Some of us studied literature, as it happened.

“This church is mentioned in the Domesday Book,” Christopher said with chagrin. “It’s been here—or a St Olave’s Church has been here—for more than a thousand years.”

“Has it really?”

He nodded. “Since just after the sieges of London in 1014 and 1016.”

“That’s a long time.” Even in England, a country with quite a long history.

Christopher nodded. “Olave was a prince of Norway, who helped ?thelred rout the Danes in 1014. The story goes that when the Danes were crossing London Bridge, Olave tied his longboats to the piers and pulled the bridge down into the Thames.”

“And ?thelred won?”

“Then,” Christopher said, “although it didn’t last long. Two years later, Prince Cnut of Denmark came back and took London.”

“And the church?”

“Belonged to the Earl of Wessex,” Christopher said. “Since 1018.”

“And he’s the one who named it? The Earl of Wessex?”

“Godwin,” Christopher nodded.

“Do you suppose he might have known Olave? The Norwegian prince?” If the church had been built only four years after the incident with the bridge and the longboats.

“Probably did do,” Christopher confirmed. “Contemporaries, weren’t they? It was nice of him to name his private chapel after a bloke he knew in the war.”

We eyed the church, or what was left of it, in silence.

“I wonder what happened to make them decide to tear it down,” I said. “Or do you suppose it happened on its own?”

“I would guess one of two things happened,” Christopher said, with a wrinkle of his nose. “Either it was built too close to the river, and was damaged in some of the floods?—”

The river did have a fairly ripe odor, and yes, the water was quite close by. “Or?”

He glanced around. “This area is more industrial than it used to be. Less need for a church in a location where so few people live.”

Indubitably. Which made for a good drop location for the ransom, I assumed. Fewer people around to see what was going on. Safer that way, for the kidnappers.

“Shall we take a closer look?” Christopher suggested.

“There’s not much left to look at, but I suppose we might as well. We’re here. And I can’t see a sign telling us to stay out.”

“Out of where, precisely?” He headed across the cobblestones at a diagonal, and I followed. “It’s all very accessible, isn’t it?”

“Out of what’s left, I assume. The tower.”

Christopher shook his head. “No, no sign, and no notice on the door. Of course, it might be locked.”

He put both hands to the old wood and pushed. The door moved sluggishly and with a groan of hinges.

“Not locked,” Christopher said, a bit breathlessly, and slipped through.

“Nothing to protect inside,” I added, as I followed, “I would guess. Anything valuable that was here, must have been removed before they tore the nave down.”

I looked around at four unadorned stone walls and a staircase winding upwards to the tower.

“After you,” Christopher said, and gestured to it.

I shot him a look over my shoulder even as I started up. “Are you quite certain you don’t want to go first in case something jumps out at me?”

“That’s precisely why I’m behind you,” Christopher said, following, “so I can catch you if you fall.”

I sniffed, but continued to climb. “You just don’t want to face whatever it is first.”

“That’s true,” Christopher agreed, “but I would also do a better job of catching you than you would of catching me if I fell.”

Since that was also true, I didn’t say any more about it, just kept climbing until I reached the top of the bell tower. The bell itself was gone, to scrap I assumed, but we could see where it had hung, and we could also see out across the roofs of Southwark, and—from the opening on the other side of the tower—across the Thames to the steeple of St Magnus the Martyr, the fish market, and in the distance, the top of the Tower of London as well as the bulk of Tower Bridge.

“Nice view from up here,” Christopher commented. He was staring out the south-facing window at the brick of London Bridge and below, Tooley Street.

“Nicer from this side, I’d say.”

He glanced at me across the tower, and beyond me to what lay on the other side of the river, before he nodded. “Of course. Scenically speaking. But I meant that this would be a good place for someone to stand and watch fifty thousand American dollars arrive. Nice and private.”

I tore myself from the ripples of the river and the buildings beyond to arrive next to him on the other side of the tower, where I peered down as he had done. “You’re right.”

“I’m usually right,” Christopher said.

“If it were me, though, I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a tower with only one ingress and egress. If the Schlomskys do end up informing the police, and they do surround the place, this would be the last place I’d want to be. Stuck up here with no way out.”

Christopher nodded. “I wasn’t thinking of them. I was thinking of us. I’m sure, if the kidnappers are planning to keep watch—and if it were me, I would…”

I nodded.

“—they’ll be doing it from somewhere on the ground, and possibly from inside a motorcar, for a quick getaway. I meant for us.”

“You want us to hide here tomorrow night?”

He glanced at me. “Do you have a better idea? You did want to be present for the ransom drop, I assumed.”

Of course I did, but I hadn’t thought about the details beyond that. “What if the kidnappers really are stupid and they do decide to hide up here? And we walk in on them?” Or they on us.

“We’ll pretend to be idiot Bright Young People on a scavenger hunt,” Christopher said. Clearly he had already thought of a solution to that hypothetical issue. “This is the type of place for it. Or we’ll be a couple of lovebirds looking for somewhere private to snog each other stupid, or something like that.”

I shot him a look. “If you think I’m going to kiss you, Christopher, you’d better think again.”

“I don’t,” Christopher said, “thank you very much. I don’t want to kiss you, either. I’ll phone Crispin, and you can kiss him instead.”

Ewww . “Don’t you dare. There’s absolutely no reason to drag him all the way up here from Wiltshire for this.”

“You know he’d want to be around for the excitement,” Christopher said. “Especially if there’s snogging.”

“There will not,” I told him severely, “be any snogging. Even if we pretend to be a stupid couple looking for somewhere to snog—and I’m talking about you and me, Christopher, not Crispin—even then, we won’t have to prove it by kissing in front of them. They’ll have to take our word for it.”

His lips twitched. “If you say so.”

“I do say so. And I am not letting you involve St George. I’ll kiss you before I kiss him.”

“He’d be devastated to hear it,” Christopher said.

I snorted. “He would not. He’s well aware of how I feel about him, thank you very much. Besides, he gets more than enough kisses from other people.”

“More than enough, is it?” He smirked.

I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. If I had a pound for every time?—”

And then a mental image dropped, of St George in a corner of the lift at the Essex House, lipstick on his face and Flossie in front of him with a palm against his chest and a look of triumph on her face. All the laughter fled my soul and I winced. “Oh, God. You don’t think they’re going to kill her, do you, Christopher?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Christopher said, and added, pensively, “I don’t see why they would, really, if they get their money. And the Schlomskys seemed to lean in that direction, didn’t they?”

They had. “I guess, if you’re an American millionaire, fifty thousand dollars more or less won’t make a difference to you.”

“I’m sure Mother and Father would gladly pay that for either of us,” Christopher agreed, and took my elbow to tug me away from the window towards the stairs. “You or me or Francis, or Crispin or Constance, for that matter. Anyone in the family. If they could pay fifty thousand dollars and get Robbie back, I know neither of them would hesitate. I’ll go first.”

He headed down the stairs.

“Should we tell him, do you suppose?” I asked when we had reached the bottom and were back outside on Tooley Street, in the sweltering shade of the London Bridge.

Christopher glanced at me. “Tell who what?”

“St George. Tell him about Flossie.”

He gave me another look, longer and more intent this time. “I thought you said we shouldn’t involve him.”

“I said we shouldn’t drag him here from Wiltshire just so he can look for kidnappers with us.” Or, God forbid, pretend to kiss me.

He took my elbow and started moving in the direction of the train station. I fell into step beside him. “But he and Florence are… well, they’ve been…”

He arched his brows at me. “I hope you’re not suggesting that there are any finer feelings on Crispin’s part for Flossie Schlomsky.”

I shuddered. “Of course not. But they have been… close.”

“By which you mean she has kissed him.”

“I suppose,” I said grudgingly.

“You suppose?”

I made a face. “Yes, that’s what I meant. They’ve been… not intimate, but close enough to it that perhaps he ought to be told what’s going on. I mean, surely he can’t be entirely indifferent to a woman he has kissed?”

“I don’t imagine he is entirely indifferent,” Christopher said as we approached the station doors. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there are any romantic feelings there at all. With the way he carries on, how could there be? And that’s aside from?—”

“The girl he says he’s in love with.” I grimaced. “Whom one would think would be enough to stop him from seducing anything that walks, but what do I know?”

Christopher muttered something, but didn’t elucidate. I didn’t ask him to. Instead, I pushed the issue with a bit of plain speaking. “Do you think he would want to know? Are we doing him a disservice by not letting him know what has happened to Flossie?”

“I imagine he’ll use it as a handy excuse for a trip to Town if we do tell him,” Christopher said and headed for the ticket window, “but you make a point. If we don’t tell him, he might be upset when he finds out later. If he does.”

He approached the ticket window to ask for two tickets back to Charing Cross and pushed the coins across the counter.

“We could run the idea by Tom,” I suggested, “and see what he thinks about it.”

Christopher accepted the tickets with a nod of thanks and turned away from the window to hand me one of them. “Fine by me. Let’s go see Scotland Yard.”

Behind him, the ticket clerk’s eyes widened.

Seeing Scotland Yard was easier said than done, however. Or rather, of course we could see Scotland Yard. It’s quite visible, right there on Whitehall, just a few minutes’ walk from Charing Cross. The problem was seeing Tom. In that we couldn’t.

“Chief Inspector Pendennis and his team are off-site,” the guard at the gate informed us.

“Where did they go?”

He shot me a look. “I’m not at liberty to say, miss.”

“Bristol?”

His eyes sharpened, but the answer didn’t change. “I’m not at liberty to say, miss.”

I made a face. Christopher’s lips twitched. “Any idea when they’ll be back?”

The guard eyed him up and down. “No, sir.”

“We’ll leave a note for Tom at home.” Christopher turned me towards Chelsea. “Come on, Pippa.”

“Are you certain? If we leave the note here, he might get it sooner.”

He waited until we were safely away from the gatehouse before he answered. “If we’re trying to keep the Schlomskys’ confidence, I don’t think we ought leave a note detailing a kidnapping and ransom at the gate at Scotland Yard, do you? Even if it’s a private note. I wouldn’t put it past someone to read it.”

“Surely it’s illegal to read someone else’s post?”

“Perhaps not if you’re the police,” Christopher said, tugging on my arm. “Come along. It isn’t far.”

It was far enough that the distance required another train journey, this time on the Underground. By the time it was all said and done, with a note tucked safely into Tom’s postbox asking him to please stop by our flat at his earliest convenience, we had whiled away half the day in chasing after things that had ended in nothing useful, and it was well past time for luncheon and close to time for tea.

“Back to the Savoy?” Christopher suggested. “Perhaps there is news.”

I supposed it was possible. Flossie had escaped kidnappers once already; perhaps she had been able to do it again, and had turned up, healthy and hale, at her parents’ hotel.

So back we went, to Charing Cross via Tube this time, and along the Strand to the Savoy. But this time, when we asked at the front desk about Mr. and Mrs. Schlomsky, the concierge informed us that the American couple had gone out.

“Would you have any idea where?”

“Mr. Schlomsky inquired after a car to take him and the missus to Grosvenor Square,” the concierge said, “but that was hours ago.”

“What about the Graf von Natterdorff? Is he in this afternoon?”

The look I got this time was blank. “Who?”

“The Graf von…”

Christopher’s hand on my sleeve made me stop talking. “Don’t get distracted, Pippa.”

“I’m not distracted,” I grumbled. “I’m simply inquiring.”

“Later. One thing at a time. So the Schlomskys left this morning and haven’t been back?”

The concierge nodded, looking from one to the other of us.

“We could leave another note,” I suggested, but Christopher shook his head.

“We don’t know any more now than we did when we left them earlier. We’ll just come back later. Or tomorrow morning.”

He nodded to the concierge and tugged me behind him across the lobby.

“I don’t see why I can’t ask a simple question about Wolfgang,” I grumbled, dragging my feet on purpose. “He still hasn’t contacted me after St George showed up the other evening, you know.”

Christopher flicked me a look as he chivvied me across the lobby. “There might be a note from him at home. Although we have more important things to worry about right now than your love life, Pippa. For instance, since we’re on the subject of Crispin, we still haven’t rung him up, remember?”

“Why are we on the subject of St George? If it was the mention of my love life, I’ll have you know?—”

“It wasn’t. You brought him up by name.” He huffed and pushed me through the revolving doors and back out onto the Strand.

“What do you suppose the Schlomskys are doing at Grosvenor Square?” I inquired as we made our way back up towards Charing Cross for the second time that day.

I’ve been there, naturally. To Grosvenor Square, I mean. It’s quite a prestigious address, and a pretty place, with trees and buildings, most of them residential, and people and motorcars. All the usual aspects of London. But unless someone’s specifically interested in Oscar Wilde, or perhaps in racecar driving, it isn’t a tourist spot.

“I imagine they’ve gone to confer with the American ambassador,” Christopher said.

“He lives at Grosvenor Square?”

Christopher nodded. “Has done since shortly after the American War of Independence.”

“Well, we can’t go to him. He’s not going to tell us anything.” And he wasn’t likely to be involved in the kidnapping in any other way.

“Wouldn’t if he could,” Christopher agreed, “and I doubt he can anyway, since all he’d know is what the Schlomskys told him, and we’ve already spoken with them.”

“And if they did anything to Flossie, they aren’t any more likely to admit it to him than they were to us.”

“No.” Christopher tucked his hand through my elbow. “Let’s find a telephone box and contact Crispin, and then I wouldn’t say no to a spot of tea.”

I wouldn’t, either. We had missed luncheon in our dash to and from St Olave’s and then to Scotland Yard and Chelsea and back to the Savoy. “There’s a Lyons a block down.”

“That’ll suit me fine,” Christopher said.

Me, as well. “St George can wait until we’ve had our fill of tea and buns.”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Christopher agreed, and led the way.

We found a table by the window and ordered tea and cream cakes. And then, looking out at the hustle and bustle of the Strand, we settled in to have a serious conversation about what we had discovered in our wanderings.

“Whoever took Flossie,” I said, “do you suppose they live in Southwark, if they know about the church?”

“I know about it,” Christopher answered, “and I don’t live in Southwark.”

“You only know about it because you studied history at Oxford. It’s not likely that whoever snatched Flossie did that.”

Individuals with university degrees from Oxford don’t have to kidnap young American women for money, one would assume.

Christopher shrugged elegantly. “It’s hard to say. But it’s easy to speculate that they do. Know about it because they’re familiar with that area, I mean. While I’ve heard of it, I hadn’t seen it before today. Now that I know it isn’t there anymore, I wish I had gone sooner.”

“At least you got to see the tower,” I said unsympathetically. “Fewer people live in Southwark than used to, I suppose.”

Christopher nodded. “It was all residential at one time. Now it’s turning more industrial every day. Which makes it a good place to keep someone you’ve kidnapped, I suppose. Fewer people around to notice what you’re doing.”

Of course. “And they do have to keep her somewhere, don’t they?”

It wasn’t really a question, but Christopher answered it anyway. “Unless they have already disposed of her.”

“Killed her, do you mean?” I made a face. “You don’t think they have done, do you?”

“It’s not for me to say,” Christopher said, “but let’s hope not.”

Definitely let’s hope so.

“As long as they’ve kept their faces covered, she wouldn’t know who they are. And if she can’t identify them, there would be no reason to kill her.”

“One would think,” Christopher said and took a sip of tea.

I peered out the window at the hustle and bustle of the Strand. Pedestrians flowed past the Lyons at a steady clip, while motorcars rolled by beyond them. Just a few evenings ago, Flossie might have passed this window on her way to the Savoy. “It’s quite an easy trip from here to Southwark. Just five minutes, and one could be on the other side of the river. Although I still find it hard to believe that they managed to snatch a fully grown woman off the street in view of everyone.”

“You and me both,” Christopher agreed. “But as we discussed, she might have gone with them willingly, if they were people she knew. I don’t know how they could have managed it otherwise.”

We sat in silence a moment while the cream cakes arrived. When the Nippy walked away, black skirt swinging around her calves, we got back to it.

“I don’t suppose a door-to-door search of all of Southwark is in the cards.”

“It isn’t somewhere where I’d be comfortable going door to door,” Christopher admitted. “The police could do it, of course, but if the Schlomskys don’t want to involve them…”

“Do you suppose the American ambassador will insist?”

“I don’t see how he can. She’s the Schlomskys’ daughter. It’s their decision, surely?”

“Then…” I hesitated. “If it’s their decision, are we wrong to involve Tom?”

“Not if it helps us—or them—get Flossie back in one piece,” Christopher said firmly.

“And if we don’t?”

He eyed me. “Then I think I would rather have tried and failed than not have tried at all.”

“Even if it’s our trying that pushes the thing over and makes it fail?”

He didn’t answer, and we finished our cream cakes and tea in silence.