Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

“Kit?”

Crispin’s voice was tinny through the earpiece of the telephone. “What’s wrong? Is the bloody bastard back again?”

“Hullo, St George,” I said smoothly, and had the pleasure of hearing what I was fairly certain was a snap of teeth from the other end of the line when he closed his mouth. “What a pleasure to hear your dulcet tones. To which bloody bastard are you referring?”

“Darling.” His voice was flat. “I was unaware you were listening. Tidwell informed me Kit was on the telephone.”

“Oh, he’s here, too.” I smiled at him. “And I’m sure he’d be just as interested as I am to know who the bloody bastard is, if you’d just refrain from changing the subject.”

“Never mind that,” Crispin said. “Kit already knows what I’m on about. Are you there, old bean?”

“Right here,” Christopher assured him. “You’ll have to excuse Pippa. I’m sure she suspects you of referring to the illustrious Graf von und zu Natterdorff.”

Crispin scoffed. “As if I would spend any of my precious time thinking about him.”

I rolled my eyes. “Naturally. I doubt you ever spare a thought for anyone but yourself.”

He didn’t respond, and I added, “For your information, you seem to have successfully scared him off. I haven’t seen or heard from him since you took me away from him two evenings ago.”

“What a shame.” His voice was perfectly flat, and it was impossible to guess whether he was pleased by that bit of information or not. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”

“A situation has arisen,” Christopher said, “that we thought might be of interest to you.”

“Let me guess. Another drag ball?”

I snorted, and Christopher made a face. “I’m afraid not. Since the raids in April and June, Lady Austin has lain low. I have hopes for September.”

Crispin hummed. “If not that, then what?”

“Flossie’s missing,” I said.

There was a beat of silence that vibrated loudly down the line. Then— “Pardon me? Did you just say that Florence Schlomsky is missing? And you think I have her?”

I scoffed. Christopher didn’t, because he’s much nicer than me. “Of course not, Crispin. Not unless your father’s keeping you so short you have to resort to kidnapping and extortion for pocket change.”

“Kidnapping?”

“No one’s seen her since you dropped her off on the Strand two nights ago,” I told him bluntly. “This morning, her parents received a ransom note demanding fifty thousand American dollars for her safe return.”

“And naturally you thought of me.”

His tone was as dry as the Sahara.

“Pippa thought you might like to know,” Christopher told him, and it was Crispin’s turn to snort.

“Oh, I’m certain Philippa was acting purely out of the goodness of her heart. Weren’t you, Darling?”

“Don’t be absurd, St George,” I told him severely. “Of course I don’t suspect you of having had anything to do with it.”

He made a disbelieving sort of noise, and I added, “Back when we thought there was a chance she might have eloped or simply decided to waste her time in someone’s bed for a few days, yes. You were high on the list then. Naturally.”

“Naturally,” Crispin echoed.

“But neither of us thinks you’d commit abduction for money. Whatever else is wrong with you, you’re too much of a gentleman for that.”

“Charmed,” Crispin said, sounding anything but.

“Knock it off, Crispin,” Christopher told him. He must have gotten tired of the bickering. “This is a serious matter. They want fifty thousand dollars by eleven o’clock tomorrow night, or they’ll kill her.”

“That is serious.” Crispin waited a moment and then he added, “What do you expect me to do about it?”

“Nothing at all,” I told him. “There’s nothing any of us can do. Just…”

“Yes?”

“You were telling the truth, weren’t you? When you said you dropped her off on the Strand?”

“Yes, Darling. I was. The last time I saw her she was standing on the corner waiting to cross the street. Besides, you were in my motorcar after that. You’d know if I hadn’t left her off. Unless you think I somehow managed to stuff her in the boot in the middle of the Strand?”

I sniffed. “Of course not. That would be impossible.”

“Quite.”

“Although we don’t know that she didn’t go into Charing Cross and meet you in Salisbury later that night.”

“If she had done,” Crispin said coolly, “she wouldn’t have ended up in Salisbury. I would have taken her to Waterloo instead. The Charing Cross trains run on the South Eastern line. Salisbury is on the South Western.”

Of course. I knew that. I just hadn’t been thinking straight.

“But if you’d like,” Crispin continued, “I’d be happy to put Tidwell or Mrs. Mason on the telephone, and they can assure you that she isn’t here. Or my father, if you prefer.”

“No, thank you,” I said with a grimace. “Nothing against Tidwell or Mrs. Mason, of course. Under no circumstances do I wish to talk to your father.”

I’m sure Uncle Harold has his own reasons for disliking me. I’m half German, I’m poor, his brother has had to take care of me since I was eleven years old because my own parents are dead and unable to do so; I honestly don’t know what Uncle Harold’s reasons may be, because he’s never admitted that he feels that way, not out loud. But as for me, I dislike him because he’s a right bastard to his son much of the time, and I don’t appreciate it. I’ve earned the right to torment Crispin. He has tormented me enough to deserve retaliation. But Uncle Harold has no business meting out punishment. Crispin is his son and heir and should be treated with love and care by his father.

The scion of the Sutherlands sighed. “Then what would you have me do, Darling?”

“Nothing,” Christopher said firmly. “It’s nothing to do with you, Crispin. We both know that you don’t have Flossie stashed away in your bed chamber at home.”

Christopher glared at me over the mouthpiece, expectantly. I made a face but said obediently, “Yes, St George. We know that.”

The latter huffed. “What do you want, then?”

“We don’t want anything,” Christopher told him. “Really, Crispin. Pippa asked if I thought we ought to tell you, and I said yes. You know Flossie, and you deserve to know what has happened to her. We didn’t ring up because we suspect you of having had anything to do with it, or because we think there’s anything you can do. It’s truly just because we thought you should know. Flossie is… the two of you… well, she isn’t?—”

“Don’t you dare, Kit.”

“Right,” Christopher said, biting back whatever words he had foolishly thought of saying. “Flossie’s gone, kidnapped and held for ransom. You know Flossie, so we thought you would want to know. That’s all.”

There was silence on the line. “Fifty thousand American dollars?” Crispin asked.

“Her father can spare it,” I told him. “Florence has told me he’s a millionaire.”

The Sutherland money was unnecessary, if that was what Crispin was thinking. Not that I imagined that Uncle Harold would be willing to part with any of it, for Florence Schlomsky.

“Of course he is,” Crispin said. “And is he going to pay the ransom?”

“They’ve spent the day collecting it,” Christopher confirmed, “we think. We haven’t spoken to them since this morning. They went to Grosvenor Square, we assume to talk to the American ambassador, but we don’t know how else they may have been spending their time. Mr. Schlomsky was adamant about not involving the police, though.”

“So naturally the two of you went directly to Thomas Gardiner.” It wasn’t a question, or didn’t sound like one.

“We tried,” I said. “He’s away on a case. We left a note.”

There was a moment of silence.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing, Crispin,” Christopher said again, and I added, “We meant it, St George. We really just wanted you to know. Because… Well, it seemed as if you should have the information, that’s all.”

He hummed. “Thank you, I suppose. When and where does the transfer of money take place?”

“Tomorrow evening at eleven,” Christopher said, “just across the Thames in Southwark.”

“It would be Southwark.” I could hear the eyeroll all the way from Wiltshire. “You’re planning to go, I assume?”

“We thought we might,” Christopher said.

“I’ll see if I can get away.”

I made a face. “That’s really not necessary, St George.”

“I don’t doubt that you would much rather have His Grace, the Graf von Natterdorff, by your side, Darling. But as you said, Flossie and I were…” He paused for a second, “close.”

My eyes narrowed. “I had no intention of inviting Wolfgang, you prat. I won’t need protection, and if I do, I trust Christopher to provide it.”

“As you should.” His voice was smooth and colorless. “Nonetheless, I’ll do my best to be there. Thank you for letting me know.”

He disconnected before either Christopher or I had the time to come up with anything to say.

“You upset him,” Christopher told me as he replaced the earpiece on the telephone.

I resisted the temptation to roll my eyes, because if I had, they would have rolled so hard that they might disappear into the back of my head. “I did not. I said nothing to upset him. And I think you overestimate how easy he is to upset, anyway.”

“You don’t think finding out that a girl he has dallied with has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom might be upsetting?”

“He never dallied with her,” I protested. “She kissed him a few times when she was able to corner him in the lift, that’s all. Hardly a dalliance. Not considering the way he has of carrying on with other women. All those girls he brought back to Sutherland House for the night, not to mention Lady Laetitia Marsden…”

“So you don’t think he was upset?”

I scowled. “He might have been upset. But if he was, he hid it well.”

“Not well enough for me,” Christopher said. “I do wish you wouldn’t go out of your way to be disagreeable, Pippa.”

“I don’t go out of my way to be disagreeable,” I said—disagreeably—as we headed down the Strand. “He just brings out the worst in me.”

“And you in him.”

There was no arguing with that, so I didn’t try. Instead, I asked, “What now?”

He slanted me a look, but accepted the change of topic. “What do you suggest?”

“I’m not sure what else we can do,” I admitted. “We’ve tried the Schlomskys, and they’re gone. Tom’s gone. Flossie’s gone, obviously. We looked at the church, or what’s left of it. Nobody can have noticed anything amiss on Wednesday night, or I’m sure we or the Schlomskys would have already heard about it. There would have been a notice in the newspaper, if nothing else, about a woman being forced into a motorcar on the Strand.”

“Unless she went willingly.”

Yes, unless that. “I suppose we could take another look at Flossie’s flat, if Evans will let us in. Just in case she did go willingly and there’s a clue there.”

“Or just in case her parents killed her,” Christopher agreed, ignoring the startled look he received from a woman passing by in the other direction, who caught what he was saying, “and there’s a clue about that.”

I nodded. “Certainly. We can’t discount infanticide.”

He flicked me a look. “She’s hardly a baby.”

“Of course she isn’t. But there’s no word for killing your adult child, is there? There’s matricide, when you kill your mother, and patricide, when you kill your father.” I held up two fingers. “Sororicide and fratricide when you kill your siblings.” Two more. “Infanticide when you kill your child who is a child.” The whole hand. “But no word for killing your child who is an adult.”

“Homicide?” Christopher suggested, only half in jest.

I rolled my eyes and dropped my hand again. “I know that , Christopher. Also murder and manslaughter and a few others. But no specific word for killing your own child once they’ve reached maturity.”

“You think the Schlomskys may have done that, then?”

“I should certainly hate to think so,” I told him, “and they did seem quite frantic this morning, about the kidnapping and ransom. You saw them. Did they appear to be hiding guilt?”

Christopher shook his head. “That’s assuming they’d feel guilty about it, of course, and not everyone would. But no, I didn’t get the impression that they were trying to cover up a murder. Then again, we don’t know them well enough to know what they’re usually like, do we?”

I supposed we didn’t. If it came down to it, we didn’t even know that they were the Schlomskys. No one had asked them to prove it. Not that I really thought they weren’t, of course. They had known where to find Flossie, so really, they had to be her parents, didn’t they? No one else would know that, in this teeming metropolis of Englishmen.

“Let’s see if we can’t talk Evans into letting us into Flossie’s flat,” I said. “There’s likely to be nothing there, but I wouldn’t mind another look around.”

“I wouldn’t mind a first look,” Christopher said, “Especially at that closet. How do you suppose we convince Evans?”

“We lie,” I told him.

Evans required very little in the way of convincing when it came right down to it. All I had to do was tell him that Mrs. Schlomsky had wanted me to retrieve the pair of gloves she had left behind in Flossie’s flat yesterday, and bring them to her—and by the way, here was the ten shillings she had given me to pass on to Evans for his trouble—before he gave me the key and told me I had five minutes to bring it back downstairs. Whereupon Christopher and I opened Flossie’s flat, retrieved a pair of likely-looking gloves from Flossie’s ostentatious second bedroom/closet, and then I took care that Evans should see them when I brought the key back. “Thank you, Evans. I’ll bring them to her in the morning. I’ll be sure to mention how helpful you were.”

Evans nodded and tucked the key away tidily. “Note for you, Miss Darling.” He lifted it out of the cubby and held it out. I took it between two fingers and peered at the envelope. It had the Savoy Hotel logo—a circle with the letters S and H inside—in the corner.

“Why didn’t you give this to me earlier?”

“It just now arrived,” Evans said blandly, which may or may not have been the truth.

There was nothing I could say, though—not when I didn’t know any better, and besides, I wanted to stay on the right side of Evans. So I simply thanked him and took my letter and buzzed off towards the lift, heart knocking excitedly. The German Kurrentschrift was easily recognizable, and when I ripped the envelope open, the note invited me to have supper with Graf Wolfgang again, tomorrow night, back at the Savoy.

“What have you got there?” Christopher asked when the door was shut behind me and it was just the two of us in Flossie’s flat. “Another note from the Schlomskys?”

I shook my head. “Wolfgang.”

“The Graf ?” He held out a hand, and it didn’t even occur to me not to hand over the envelope. Christopher fished out the note, perused it, and sniffed.

“The nerve.”

I slanted a look at him. “Whatever do you mean?”

He handed the envelope back. “It’s a bit petulant, isn’t it? If you ‘can spare the time’ he would like to treat you to supper and try to make a better impression than last time. Crispin must have given his amour propre a knock.” He grinned.

I tucked the envelope into my reticule. “St George does have a way of doing that, although I won’t say that Wolfgang seemed particularly wounded at the time. I don’t think it was his self-esteem that took the knock so much as his vanity.”

“One and the same for some people,” Christopher said. “Do you want to go?”

“Of course I want to go. But whether I’m able to depends on how early you want to get to Southwark tomorrow evening, doesn’t it? I wouldn’t want it to interfere with our looking for kidnappers.”

One must have one’s priorities in order, after all.

“We’d have to be there at least an hour ahead of time,” Christopher said, “don’t you think? Just in case they’ve had the same idea and are there early to keep an eye on things.”

I thought about it. “If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better if we’re late? If two people go into the tower at ten, and they still haven’t come out by eleven, surely that’s somewhat suspicious?”

“For that location,” Christopher agreed, “perhaps.”

“It’s something we can discuss later.” I glanced around Flossie’s foyer. “We shouldn’t waste the time we have here on things that we can talk about in our own flat.”

Christopher nodded. “I took a closer look while you were downstairs, and as you said, that’s quite an ostentatious wardrobe.”

“Isn’t it? I can’t imagine that much of it has been worn more than once or maybe twice. And some of the frocks are so much alike it’s hard to imagine why she wouldn’t just wear the same one instead of buying another.”

“Hiram Schlomsky can afford it,” Christopher said, which was certainly true, but no excuse for being a wastrel. He looked around vaguely. “Any idea what we’re looking for? Other than accessories?”

“I think we’ll probably know it when we see it, don’t you?” I looked around, too, with no idea where to start the search for something we didn’t even know what was. “Anything that doesn’t belong, I suppose. Anything that strikes you as being strange or out of place. Anything dodgy?”

“Not sure what you’d consider dodgy,” Christopher said, “but I suppose we’ll just take a look around and see what we can see. Chances are there’s nothing here, anyway.”

Chances were that he was right. But we were here now, with an opportunity to explore, and I’m nothing if not inquisitive, so I wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass.

“You can start in the closet,” I told him, magnanimously, “if you would like. Admire the frocks while you check pockets and inside handbags.”

He gave me a dubious sort of look. “I’ll do my best, I suppose.”

“I’ll start with the other bedroom,” I told him, “the one she actually seems to sleep in, and we’ll meet in the sitting room?”

Christopher nodded, and headed for the closet. I left him there, standing in the middle of the floor with his hands on his hips, looking around at the plethora of pockets and bags and toes of shoes with a calculating expression on his face, before I headed down the hallway towards the back of the flat.

While I had told him I would start with Flossie’s bedroom, I made a detour into the lavatory on my way past.

It looked precisely like the one in our flat, all white tiles with black trim, a toilet, a sink, and a claw-footed tub. Flossie’s towels were pink—I don’t know why I was surprised by that, although I’ve never used anything but a white towel myself—and the medicine cabinet held a toothbrush, toothpaste, a twist of headache powder, some plasters, eyewash… all the usual things. No prescriptions, so at least we didn’t have to worry about Flossie succumbing to illness while in captivity, due to lack of access to her medicine.

The toilet tank was mounted at the top of the wall, so there was no way to hide anything inside it, and I wasn’t about to climb on top of the toilet and risk having the water pour all over me if I made a mistake in trying to open it up. So I considered the job well done, and moved on.

Flossie’s bedroom was next. There was another closet here, chock full of… night clothes, as it happened. Gowns, and negligees, and pyjamas in silky colors. Some of them—most of them—were in shades of pink, from shell to raspberry, but a few were green and blue and lilac, as well.

One set was black, and put me in mind of Laetitia Marsden, who had worn the same sort of slinky see-through thing at the Dower House back in May. It wasn’t the type of nightclothes that you sleep in; it was the type you’d wear to impel susceptible people of the opposite gender to notice you. Laetitia had worn hers for Crispin’s benefit. I wondered who Flossie wore hers for.

After that, I moved on to the night table. There was only one, from which I deduced that Flossie slept alone, at least most of the time, fancy nightclothes notwithstanding.

Of course, I had already known that she lived alone. In the time we had lived here at the Essex House Mansions, I had never seen Florence with a man other than Crispin, and to my knowledge, she had never managed to finagle him into her flat, let alone into her bed. She might be misbehaving in other people’s bedrooms—there was always that possibility, in which case she would have had to travel with her negligees—but she had never, to my knowledge, brought a young man, or for that matter a young woman, back here. At least not that I had noticed.

The night table yielded a water glass—half full or half empty, depending on your definition; I sniffed it, and it seemed to be simple water—along with a notepad and a pencil, an alarm clock—silent and stopped at 11:37, since Florence hadn’t been here to wind it for a few days—a handkerchief (good quality cotton, embroidered with roses but no monogram), and a copy of the Daily Yell with Crispin on the cover, from the week back in April when Duke Henry, Lady Charlotte, and Grimsby the valet had died. There was no image of Simon Grimsby, of course, but there were photos of everyone else: the late Duke Henry, the new Duke Harold, the new Viscount St George, and the lady responsible for it all. I flipped through the pages to see whether anything was hidden inside, or whether Flossie had made any notations anywhere, but there was nothing. Not even the crossword was filled out. She must have kept the paper for Crispin’s picture and no other reason.

The night table drawer contained a small stack of airmail letters, all of them sporting American stamps and the same handwriting that had appeared on the note Evans had handed me this morning. They started with Dearest Florence , and ended with Your Loving Mama . News from home, I assumed, and since it felt a bit intrusive to start reading them, I left them on top of the counterpane and moved on. They weren’t likely to shine any light whatsoever on what was going on right now, unless Mama Schlomsky was indeed a rabid murderess who had killed her only child, and the letters indicated it.

The makeup table looked like mine, and Christopher’s.

When Christopher puts on his alter-ego Kitty Dupree, he does it in my room. Kitty’s evening gowns hang in my wardrobe and Kitty’s black wig sits on my dressing table. If someone were to look closely, he or she would see that a few of the gowns are not in my size nor in my best colors, but my wardrobe is a better place for them than Christopher’s. In mine, they can mostly be overlooked, and we’re still not clear on what the current duke might do if he realizes that his youngest nephew goes to drag balls and cavorts with men. Nor do we know how Uncle Herbert and Aunt Roz might react, really. They have a better idea of how Christopher’s feelings run than his uncle does, and so far they seem mostly all right with it, but they don’t know about the drag balls.

At any rate, I was going through Flossie’s makeup table. It was full of tubes and pots and brushes, expensive creams and cosmetics. There was nothing there that shouldn’t be there, as far as I could tell. A small, white card was stuck behind the edge of the mirror, but when I lifted it down, it was just a ticket stub for a West End musical that was taking London by storm this season. The date matched the day last month when I had first laid eyes on the Girl with the Baby, so Flossie must have been on her way to the Prince of Wales theatre when we took the lift down to the lobby together that evening. She must have been attending the performance with the friend who had met her in the lobby: the plain-looking girl in the too-fancy outfit of chiffon and polka dots.

The ticket stub held no secrets other than simply being there, so I left it alone and turned at Christopher’s approach.

He stopped inside the door and looked around. “Nothing?”

“Nothing worth mentioning. You?”

He shook his head, and his eyes landed on the small stack of letters on the bed.

“Letters from America,” I told him. “I haven’t read them yet. Not sure that I should, honestly. They’re private, and it’s not as if we’ll learn anything about Flossie’s disappearance from what her mother writes.”

“We might learn something about her mother, though.” He headed towards the bed with a glance at me out of the corner of his eye. “I know that it isn’t likely to be Mr. and Mrs. Schlomsky behind Flossie’s kidnapping, but I don’t think we ought to disregard them entirely, either. She was so close to the Savoy when Crispin set her down, and it’s so unlikely that anyone could have taken her against her will on the Strand between Charing Cross and the hotel, that I think we need to consider that she might have made it there.”

“Perhaps we should have inquired of the concierge this morning,” I said.

“That would have been rather a dead giveaway of our suspicions,” Christopher answered, picking the top letter off the stack with delicate fingertips, “but perhaps we ought to have done.”

“The Schlomskys have enough money to pay for silence, though.” I watched as he extracted the flimsy airmail paper from the equally flimsy airmail envelope.

He nodded. “Indeed they do. Cheap at twice the price, if she did arrive at the Savoy and they did something to her.”

He unfolded the letter and cleared his throat. “ Dearest Florence. Thank you for your letter dated May 2 nd … ”