Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

I am glad you are enjoying London and making new friends. Ruth tells me that everything is more expensive there, so we have increased your monthly allowance by one hundred pounds, and are giving Ruth another hundred for household expenses, as well. Here in Toledo, everything is well. Your father…

Christopher’s voice trailed off as he skimmed the rest of the letter before folding it and sliding it back into the envelope again. “Nothing else of interest there. Just how things are at home and how so-and-so sends their regards.”

I nodded. “It makes sense that London would be more expensive than Toledo, but two hundred extra pounds a month? What on earth did she do with it all?”

“Frocks?” Christopher suggested with a grimace. “I don’t know, Pippa. It’s a lot of money, even for someone with no self-control.”

It was. “How much do you suppose St George goes through a month? Just for comparison?”

“Less than that,” Christopher said, “but then he spends most of his time in the country. If he lived in Town, I suppose he might fritter away that much on frivolities, although for all his fun and games, he’s never been a spendthrift. But no matter. I’m more interested in the other hundred to Ruth for household expenses. Ruth is the maid, I assume? The one you said they sent over with Flossie?”

“That’s what Mrs. Schlomsky called her,” I nodded. I could still hear her voice in my head. Ruth, Hiram! Where is Ruth? “She was adamant that Ruth had to be around. And if they’ve been sending her money for household expenses, it makes sense that she would be.”

“But she’s not. I’ve never seen her.”

I hadn’t, either. “Perhaps she made it to England and then left Flossie’s employ?”

“If so, why would Sarah Schlomsky continue to send her money?”

She wouldn’t, of course. Not unless Flossie had kept Ruth’s defection silent. “Perhaps Flossie let her go, because she didn’t want Ruth to report on her to her parents, and the money is hush-money so Ruth won’t spill the beans.”

Christopher thought about it. “That makes more sense than a lot of other things.”

It did. Although it didn’t explain the kidnapping.

“No,” Christopher agreed when I said as much. “If it was a matter of fooling the elder Schlomskys, all Ruth would have to do was come back for a week while Hiram and Sarah are in London, and pretend to be working here, and then leave again once they’re gone.”

Yes, it would. They would have to clear out Flossie’s ‘closet’ and make it look like a proper bedroom for Ruth, but they had had enough time to do that, had they wanted to. So why hadn’t they?

“For the money Flossie’s paying her,” I said, “an extra hundred pounds per month, on top of how much to begin with, I wonder?—it would certainly have been worth it to her.”

Christopher nodded. “So why not simply do that? It would be in Ruth’s best interest to keep the charade up and the money coming.”

“And in Flossie’s best interest to convince her parents that everything was copacetic and Ruth was still on the job,” I agreed. “She left the Essex House just after the telegram arrived that night. You saw her leave. That might have been to contact Ruth and tell her what was going on.”

Christopher nodded. “Ruth never came back, though. And it’s hard to imagine why she wouldn’t.”

Yes, it was. “Should we take the letters with us and read the rest of them?”

“I can’t imagine what else we might learn,” Christopher said with a glance at the stack. “The one I read was mostly just updates on what was going on in Toledo and greetings from people I assume Flossie must have known. If they thought Ruth was still here as late as three months ago, I don’t see what the earlier letters might tell us that’s different. That was the most recent one, I assume?”

“It was the one on top of the stack, but I suppose I can check.” I did so, and nodded. “Yes. Five letters, the first postmarked November last year, the last postmarked early June. No mention of a trip to visit England in the part you didn’t read out loud, I assume?”

Christopher shook his head. “So if we estimate two weeks for a letter to travel from England to the US, and then a few days to write a response, and another two weeks for the response to travel from the US back to England… I would assume Flossie posted a response sometime in mid-to-late-June, which arrived in Toledo around the first week of July, and the Schlomskys sent a response in mid-July, which would have gotten here early this month… except perhaps not, if they were planning a surprise trip and didn’t want to give the surprise away.”

I nodded. “”That’s logical. So as far as Mama Schlomsky knew, the last time she communicated with her daughter, Ruth was still here, taking care of Florence.”

“So it seems,” Christopher agreed. “But we’ve been here six months or so now, and as far as we know, there’s never been a Ruth.”

I looked around, vaguely. “I wonder if Flossie has the contact information for Ruth written down somewhere.”

“If she had, I imagine she would have tidied it away before her parents arrived, don’t you?” But he was looking around, too, vaguely.

“She didn’t know she was going to be kidnapped,” I said, “did she? Although it isn’t anywhere in this room, if she had it. I looked everywhere. There’s nothing but jewelry in the jewelry box—a few very nice pieces, a couple of strings of real pearls, something I would swear are real diamonds—but no contact information for anyone.”

“False bottom?”

I shook my head. “If there was, I didn’t find it.”

Christopher nodded. “Let’s check the sitting room, then. And the kitchenette. Nothing’s likely to be there, I guess, but we should look.”

Of course we should.

“I’ll take the escritoire,” Christopher said, “if you’ll take the table and chairs. Be sure to check the cushions.”

“I hardly think Ruth’s direction is going to be hidden behind a sofa pillow,” I told him as I headed towards the seating area, “but I’ll certainly check. It will be a formality, I’m sure. If there’s anything, it’ll be in the desk.”

“If it is, I’ll find it. But look carefully anyway.”

Of course I would. I flipped sofa pillows and slid my hands below and under cushions and found nothing for my trouble except a few coins, a misplaced lighter—no distinguishing marks, but it looked more dainty than masculine, so was probably one of Flossie’s own—and several Kirbigrips that must have made their way out of her—or someone else’s—hair.

“Have you noticed the gaps?” Christopher wanted to know, and I turned to him with a wrinkle between my brows.

“Noticed what?”

He threw out a hand, and I looked around. And now that he had mentioned it, I did notice a few gaps. The mantel had a vase in the middle, with pink flowers in it, and to the right, a few small trinkets. To the left there was nothing.

“You’ve never been here before, have you, Pippa?”

I shook my head. “We’re not close, Christopher. You know that. You’ve never been in Flossie’s flat before either, have you?”

He shuddered. “No. You were here yesterday, with the Schlomskys.”

I glanced around again. “Yes, but nothing has changed since then. How could it? She was already gone yesterday afternoon.”

“The kidnappers would have had her key,” Christopher said.

“I hardly think they would risk coming back here, do you? Besides, Evans would have mentioned anyone coming in and going up to Flossie’s flat.”

He hummed. “It’s more likely that Flossie herself removed whatever was there. But if so, where did she put it?” He looked around, pensively.

“And why remove it in the first place?” I glanced over at the mantel again. “Photographs?”

“That would be my guess,” Christopher said.

“Someone she didn’t want her parents to see, then, most likely. So she tidied it away in advance of their arrival.”

Like an unsuitable gentleman—or less than a gentleman—friend.

Although if she had an unsuitable boyfriend, what was she doing, kissing Crispin at every opportunity?

“Or perhaps it was a photo of herself doing something she didn’t want her parents to see,” Christopher suggested. “Smoking, drinking, dancing. The same reason we don’t have any photographs of Kitty in our flat, really.”

“I didn’t realize there were photographs of Kitty.”

“Certainly there are. But I’m not about to put them on display in places where our family might see them.”

No, that was probably best. “I don’t think Flossie gets up to those kinds of shenanigans,” I said, “do you? The first time Crispin met her, she said she was on her way to Lady Montfort’s soiree, and those are as staid as they come.”

“Where was he going?” Christopher wanted to know. “Some Bright Young party, wasn’t it? The Jungman sisters, or something like that? Perhaps he took her there instead, and corrupted her, and now she’s deeply into the Bright Young Set, and drinking cocktails and doping herself and having sex and all the rest of it. Her parents would be appalled.”

They certainly would. Or I had gathered the impression that it wouldn’t be what they’d expect from their darling Florence, at any rate.

“I suppose that’s possible.” I looked around again. “Would she get rid of the evidence entirely, do you suppose, or just hide it away somewhere less visible?”

“There weren’t any framed photographs in the closet,” Christopher said. “Or the second bedroom, I guess I should say.”

“None in the actual bedroom, either. Or the bathroom.”

“So where would she have put them? Behind the tea leaves in the kitchen?” He eyed the sitting room. “There are no bookshelves to speak of, so she couldn’t have taken them out of the frames and hidden them there.”

“They’re not in the desk?”

He shook his head. “I’ll go look through the kitchen. Leaf through those magazines, if you would, and see if there’s anything hidden between the pages.”

He headed towards the other side of the sitting room while I reached for one of the magazines on the coffee table. Flossie might not be much of a reader—he was right; there were no bookshelves anywhere, and no books, either—but she must like gossip, or perhaps pictures of pretty people in pretty clothes, because there were plenty of Tatlers and Daily Yell s.

I leafed through them all, making faces at pictures of Crispin and Lady Laetitia Marsden, and Crispin and other young ladies of the aristocracy. I turned them over and shook them to see whether anything would fall out, I looked for notations… and eventually, I came up empty.

“Nothing?” Christopher asked when he appeared in the doorway to the kitchenette. I shook my head. “No, not here either. She must have taken the photographs with her when she left. Perhaps she took them somewhere to dispose of them. Or hide them until her parents were gone.”

“Much easier just to take them out of the frames and put them on the fire if she wanted them gone,” I said.

We both eyed the fireplace. It was clean and tidy with no ashes. Not surprising, since it was August, and we had no need of extra heat.

“Perhaps she took them to a friend to hold for her until her parents left again,” Christopher suggested.

I looked around again, disgruntled. “I suppose she must have. Although it seems like a lot of trouble to go to when she could have just stuffed them in a drawer for a week. Surely her mother wouldn’t snoop through her unmentionables to see if anything was hidden underneath.”

“We did,” Christopher said.

“But only because she has been kidnapped. And she couldn’t have known that that would happen.”

There was a pause. “Maybe I was right,” Christopher said, “and the kidnappers did come here after they grabbed Flossie. Perhaps she was taken by someone she knows, someone who had struck up a friendship with her, and they were in the photograph with her. And after they got Flossie, they had to get rid of the photograph because it was a clue.”

Perhaps. It would explain the gone-in-almost-broad-daylight-from-the-Strand, and it made more sense than that Flossie would want to hide her own face from her parents, too.

“I’d like to know how they made it past Evans,” I said, “although I suppose he might have been asleep, or in the loo, or they lured him outside and then sneaked in while he had his back turned, or something.”

“Or they came in during the night, when he was off duty,” Christopher said. He looked around. “Anything else we can learn from this place, do you think? Or is it time to go?”

I did the same, and couldn’t see anywhere we hadn’t already inspected. Nothing I looked at gave me any ideas for something we might do that we hadn’t already done. “I think it is.”

“Then let’s go back to our own flat,” Christopher said and headed for the front door. “You have a supper invitation to consider.” He waited for me to go past him into the hallway, and then he shut the door behind us and made sure it was locked.

There was nothing to consider, of course. I accepted the invitation from Wolfgang, with the caveat—made between Christopher and me—that if supper went late, he’d fetch me, straight from the table if he had to. While I liked Wolfgang, and looked forward to spending more time with him, I wanted even more to be on time to catch the money drop in Southwark.

There was no response from the note we had left for Tom the next morning, and because we’d be going to the Savoy anyway come early evening, and because the Schlomskys had not been in touch to request our presence again, we didn’t go near the Strand until it was almost time for me to meet Wolfgang for supper.

By then, Christopher had tweaked and polished me in front of the mirror for an hour. I was wearing the new evening frock I had purchased for Cousin Francis and Constance Peckham’s engagement party in July, the frock I hadn’t had the chance to wear at the time, because of the murder.

It was a rather stunning salmon pink confection with a very simple cut—V-neck, straight arms, slightly uneven hem, just enough for some movement. It ended right below the knee. There were no variations in fabric, no different top and bottom, nothing like that. It was all of a piece and all very simple. What made it special was the decoration: tiny beads the same color as the fabric over most of the dress, making the whole thing sparkle with depth in the light, but with a pattern in warmish brown along the neckline, the arm holes, and the hem. The same darker color was used to make patterns of reeds here and there: from the shoulder down toward the middle, and in both directions from the beaded ‘belt’ that circled my hips.

“Stunning,” Christopher told me when I was standing in front of him after he had finished putting on my face. “He won’t know what hit him.”

I smirked, somewhat complacently, as I looked at myself in the mirror. “I’d like to see St George come up with anything derogative to say about this.”

He had likened my apple green evening frock to a Bramley and made snide comments about my banana yellow frock, as well. That had been deliberate, admittedly. Christopher had asked him to, but he had been able to come up with something nasty to say, so the thought must have been there in his head all along, or he would have been stumped. And he had managed the Bramley comment all on his own. But this, this was beyond his nastiness.

“So would I,” Christopher agreed, looking me down and up again.

I tilted my head. “You haven’t heard from him, have you?”

“Crispin? Not since we spoke on the telephone yesterday afternoon.”

“He doesn’t know that I’m going out again with Wolfgang?”

“I haven’t told him,” Christopher said.

“Good.” Then I wouldn’t have to worry about Crispin taking a hand in removing me from Wolfgang’s company later tonight. Christopher at least would be polite when he did it. With Crispin, all bets were off. “So you don’t know if he’s planning to show up in London tonight, or not.”

“I haven’t heard,” Christopher said. “But you spoke to him yourself yesterday. I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up, after that. But he hasn’t said one way or the other.”

“Uncle Harold might be successful in keeping him in Wiltshire.”

“Might,” Christopher agreed, and was kind enough not to comment on my wistful tone. “I wouldn’t count on it. Crispin usually manages to do what he wants to do.”

“He didn’t really know Flossie well.”

Christopher shook his head. “But he knows us well. And how likely is it that he’ll let you and me go to Southwark on our own—without Tom’s backup—to look for a ransom drop and a blackmailer?”

Not very likely, I supposed. Although— “He’s younger than both of us. If anyone should stay home, it’s him. He’s the baby.”

“Better not let him hear you say that,” Christopher advised with a quirk of the lips. “He’s more used to taking care of himself than either of us, I daresay. He gets up to a lot more trouble than we do. And he usually does it alone. We have each other.”

“You go to drag balls alone.”

“And when there’s been trouble, I have had Tom there to pull me out,” Christopher said. “So far.”

“It was St George and I who got you out of the drag ball in June before the raid started.”

“And dragged me straight into a murder,” Christopher answered. “Besides, I don’t think you can take credit for that, Pippa. It was a coincidence. You had no idea that there was going to be a raid that night. We just happened to leave early.”

I shrugged. He was right, so there was no point in persisting. “Perhaps we’ll just hope that Uncle Harold has St George under lock and key tonight, then.”

“Perhaps we won’t,” Christopher said. “I’d much rather take the Hispano-Suiza to London Bridge at eleven, than the train. I’d feel much safer in Crispin’s motorcar. The docks district at midnight isn’t a place I’d like to linger with no way home.”

“We can always run across the bridge.”

“And be thrown into the water by the kidnappers,” Christopher said. After a moment he sighed, “I know how you feel about him, Pippa. But I’d rather have him—and the H6—in London tonight than in Wiltshire. And if that means that you have to put up with him, then so be it.”

I made a face. “Have it your way.” He had a point, after all. About the motorcar and all that, and why we’d rather have the H6 here with us tonight. If Crispin came along, too—as he would have to—then that was just something I would have to deal with.

“Off to see the Schlomskys, then,” Christopher suggested, “before supper?”

“We may as well,” I told him, and let him escort me out.

The Schlomskys, luckily, had not gone anywhere for supper yet. And although they seemed less than thrilled to see us, they did allow us inside the suite and consented to answer the handful of questions we had.

“Yes,” Hiram Schlomsky said, “the money’s all taken care of. Or as much of it as I could get on short notice.”

He gestured to a valise on top of one of the beds. I eyed it a little longer than perhaps I should have, since it was frankly a lot smaller than I had expected it to be. I would have believed fifty thousand American dollars to take up more space than that. But perhaps he had gathered very large bills, hundreds or thousands, even...

Hiram cleared his throat significantly. I flushed and dragged my attention away from the bag, and Christopher wiped a smirk off his face.

“You look nice, Miss Darling,” Sarah Schlomsky said, with an up-and-down look that was, frankly, less flattering than you might think from the words. There was a tiny wrinkle between her brows. Perhaps she thought my skirt was too short—her own was longer—or perhaps she thought the color of my frock was too bright. They were both dressed in shades of black and gray with some white. Mourning, I would say, if they were Brits, but perhaps the colonies held other traditions.

Although it wasn’t as if Flossie was dead, was it? Unless they knew something we didn’t, of course.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m having supper with the Graf von Natterdorff later. Christopher escorted me here.”

“The Graf von Natterdorff?”

“A German nobleman,” Christopher said. “The equivalent of a British earl.”

“And he’s staying here, is he? At the Savoy?”

“We assume he is,” I said, with a glance at Christopher. “The first time we met him, we were taking tea in the tearoom. Last time he invited me to supper, it was in the restaurant downstairs.”

It was the Schlomskys’ turn to exchange a glance. Years of silent communication was wrapped up in it, and we didn’t stand a chance of understanding what they were tacitly saying to one another.

“How pleasant for you, Miss Darling,” Mrs. Schlomsky said blandly. “And you, Mr. Astley? You’re just going back home? Alone?”

“I’m expecting my cousin up from the country later,” Christopher explained. “The two of us will be picking up Pippa after her date. Can I assume that you’ve already familiarized yourselves with St Olave’s? If not, we’d be happy to tell you what we know.”

The Schlomskys exchanged another look. “Are you familiar with it?” Hiram asked.

“We took the train out yesterday morning,” I explained, “to see the terrain. You’re planning to travel by Hackney, I assume? Unless you would like Lord St George to?—?”

“The doorman will arrange for a taxi,” Sarah said.

I nodded. “That’s probably best. Charing Cross isn’t far, but the docks district can be a bit questionable at night. Best if you have him wait while you leave the valise, I think.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Sarah said and exchanged another glance with Hiram. I exchanged one with Christopher, who looked as if he found something about the whole situation humorous.

“If there’s nothing we can do to help,” he said, “I suppose we’ll leave you to it. All that’s left of St Olave’s, for your information, is the bell tower. The rest of the church looks as though it was demolished quite recently. It’s just a mound of dirt with some blocks of worked stone left behind. But the money ought to be safe in the tower. I’m sure it won’t be there long. The kidnappers will be keeping an eye out, I’m certain.”

“Ready to snatch up the valise as soon as it gets there,” I nodded. “I certainly wouldn’t linger.”

Christopher’s lips curved further. “No, Pippa. You’ve never been one to let the grass grow under your feet.”

“Precisely.” I nodded, and turned to the Schlomskys, who were standing side by side presenting a united front while watching us carefully. “If you will excuse me, I should go downstairs and find the Graf . We’ll be in the dining room for the next two hours, if you think of anything I can do to help you. And Christopher will be back here by nine-thirty, as well. Please let us know if there’s anything we can do.”

“Yes,” Christopher nodded. “Please do let us know if we can be of any further assistance. Come along, Pippa.”

He took my arm and tugged me towards the door, lips twitching. I smiled apologetically at the Schlomskys over my shoulder. “So nice to see you again, even under the circumstances.”

“Out you go, Pippa.” Christopher shoved me through the door and into the hallway before I could say anything else, and ducked out behind me before he shut the door behind us. The last thing I saw was the Schlomskys’ partly baffled, partly suspicious countenances.