Chapter 18

Chapter Eighteen

The Schlomskys heard us coming, of course, and Hiram was ready for us when we walked through the door. But the absence of Crispin, or more likely the absence of the tire iron, seemed to help. Hiram kept a tight grip on the cane, and a keen eye on us, but he didn’t attack.

“Lord St George went to fetch the police,” I said immediately, and I daresay that may have helped, too.

Hiram grunted something, but he didn’t respond. It was Sarah who spoke up from where she was sitting: on the dirty floor beside the mattress with the body, with no care for her own clothes. “Thank you.”

“It seemed the least that we could do,” Christopher told her. “Hopefully it won’t be long before he’s back with reinforcements.”

He took a step towards her. “We’re sorry for your loss.”

It was, thankfully, too dark in the room for me to see Flossie’s head and the damage that had been done to it. I could see Sarah, could even see the tear tracks on her cheeks, but if I kept my eyes on Sarah and not on Flossie, the darkness of the room allowed me to pretend, when I wasn’t paying too much attention, that everything was mostly all right.

Christopher added, gently, “Is there anything we can do?”

“You can tell us everything you know,” Sarah said, in a voice that brooked no argument whatsoever.

“We don’t know much at all,” I told her. “It was as we said. We went to St Olave’s this evening to see the kidnappers, and to follow them to see if we could find Florence.”

Hiram shifted, and I winced. “Not like this. Of course not like this. We thought they’d have her bound and gagged in a room somewhere, while they went to fetch the money, and that once they had it, they’d let her go.” In one piece and none the worse for wear.

Truly, it made no sense that they would have killed her, and still less sense that they had done it in such a brutal way. I hadn’t gotten a good look earlier—and I was glad for it—but Flossie’s face had been all but obliterated.

A thought struck me and I added, perhaps unwisely, “It is your daughter, isn’t it?”

There was a moment while they both stared at me, and then Sarah said, in a voice just this side of hysterical, “Do you suppose I wouldn’t recognize my own flesh and blood, young lady?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I was just trying to think of a reason why?—”

I trailed off before I could wonder, out loud, why someone would have bothered to make Florence, for all intents and purposes, unrecognizable. There was no need to belabor that particular point. And after all, it had been the best part of a year since Sarah and Hiram had seen their daughter, hadn’t it?

Besides, it was dark in the room. I had recognized Flossie mostly based on the fussy pink frock she was wearing, but the frock couldn’t be familiar to her parents. Not if they had been surprised and shocked about her wardrobe in the flat two days ago. So it seemed at least possible that Sarah was mistaken.

Then again, if it wasn’t Flossie, who was it? Christopher had trailed the kidnapper straight to this house. It had to be Flossie.

Perhaps she had angered the kidnappers outrageously in the handful of days they had kept her, and that was why they had beaten her so brutally. It isn’t hard to murder someone without violence. Crispin’s mama had managed just fine when it came to both herself and her father-in-law. Both of them had looked as if they were asleep in bed when we’d found them. Florence had been in no position to reject an injection or any kind of food or drink, so it would have been easy to kill her with no fuss whatsoever. Destroying her face must have meant something to the kidnapper.

Christopher cleared his throat and I came back to myself with a murmured apology.

“What happens now?” Sarah Schlomsky asked. She sounded exhausted, and who could blame her?

“We wait,” Christopher answered. “Crispin is a speed demon, so it won’t take him long to get across the river to Scotland Yard, especially at this time of night. He’ll bring the police here, and they’ll tell us what to do.”

He hesitated for a moment before he added, “I imagine they’ll tell us to go home, and they’ll seal off the crime scene and wait until daylight to start working on it.”

The Schlomskys nodded. So did I. It’s one thing to work through the night when you can see what you’re doing. It’s another thing entirely to try to get anything done in pitch darkness, and when you’re tired anyway, after a long day’s work.

“So we wait,” Hiram said.

Christopher nodded. “We do.”

We waited. Time passed slowly, and it was difficult to stay awake. Not even the presence of the body prevented my eyelids from becoming heavy. We sat down on the stairs between the ground and first floors, and I leaned my head against Christopher’s shoulder and dozed. He leaned his shoulder against the stairway wall and did the same. When the door downstairs opened with a bang, and knocked against the wall in the hallway, we both jumped.

“Upstairs,” someone said, and through the adrenaline spike I recognized Crispin’s voice. “There are no lights on. Or they don’t exist. I’m not sure which.”

A dark figure came into view in the hallway below, followed by another. A torch lit up the dusty floorboards. Then the person in the lead turned onto the stairs and aimed the light up. Christopher and I both squinted into the glare.

“There you are,” a voice said. “Hullo, Kit. Philippa.”

“Tom.” Christopher sounded relieved, or perhaps just pleased and happy. The bright light leached all the color out of his skin, but under normal circumstances, I’m certain I would have seen a tell-tale blush on his cheeks.

“St George filled me in on what has happened.” Tom moved the torch aside so it wasn’t shining directly into our faces anymore, and climbed a few steps towards us with Crispin right behind. He stopped when we were face to face: him standing a few steps below, and us still sitting. “I sent Finch home to get some rest—it’s been a long day—but I’ll secure the crime scene, and then I brought a bobby along to stand guard for the rest of the night.”

“Bristol?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Different case entirely. Jewelry theft in Mayfair. Bristol PD is handling Hughes’s death.”

I nodded. “Sorry to interrupt. Carry on.”

He looked past me to the top of the staircase. “The elder Schlomskys are upstairs?”

“All the Schlomskys are upstairs,” Christopher said and pushed to his feet. He extended a hand to me. “Up you come, Pippa.”

I let him pull me up and then we both stepped against the wall so Tom could squeeze past on the narrow staircase. “Is there anything we can do to help?” I asked after him, but he shook his head.

“I’ll take care of it. The three of you may leave. I’ll need statements from all three of you tomorrow.”

Crispin opened his mouth, and Tom, without even having looked at him, said, “Yes, you too, St George. Your father will just have to lump it, I’m afraid.”

Crispin shut his mouth again, defeated. “I’ll let Tidwell know not to expect me.”

Yes, let us not bother Uncle Harold in the middle of the night, but it was perfectly fine to drag Tidwell out of slumber after a long day of butlering.

“You can kip with us,” Christopher told him. “Or go to Sutherland House, as you please.”

“Your father would probably prefer it if you spent the night at Sutherland House,” I added, “under the watchful eye of Rogers.” And far away from my supposedly distracting presence.

Crispin smirked. “Will you let me sleep in your bed again, Darling?”

“As long as I can stay on the Chesterfield,” I said.

“Then how can I resist? Between a cold and lonely bed in the ancestral pile, under the eagle eye of old Rogers, or a delightful few hours in sheets that smell of Chanel No 5, how could anyone make any other decision?”

“”It won’t make any difference to me,” I told him. “I won’t be sharing it with you either way. Although you must have me confused with one of your other conquests. I wear Shalimar.”

“Of course, Darling.” He smirked. “For the record…”

“No, you cannot count me among your conquests. It was a figure of speech only.”

“It’s settled, then,” Christopher said. “You’re coming to ours for what’s left of the night. Hopefully we won’t wake up to your father hammering on the door at the crack of dawn this time.”

Yes, indeed. Although in justice to Uncle Harold, I imagine it had been equally distressing for him.

“I know where to find you,” Tom said, waving us away. “Go home and get some rest. I’ll be by to get your statements tomorrow.”

I shot a glance at the door behind which the Schlomskys were no doubt listening. “You don’t want any help with them?”

“I’ve done this job for a long time, Miss Darling.” He winked at me. “I’m sure I can manage.”

As he’s all of twenty-seven, and had been at university until he was twenty-three, courtesy of the war and getting a late start, it hadn’t really been all that long. But since he was no doubt saying it for the benefit of the Schlomskys, I declined to make a case out of it.

“Of course you can. We’ll be off then. You wouldn’t like for us to give the Schlomskys a lift back to the Savoy once you’re done speaking to them?” And to give me a chance to hear the conversation he was about to have with them before he let them go?

“I brought a Tender,” Tom said, about the fleet of Crossleys the Metropolitan Police had invested in after the war. “I’ll take care of it. Off you go. Shoo.”

I stuck my lip out, but shooed. Crispin preceded me down the hallway to the front door, while Christopher lingered for long enough to exchange a few soft words with Tom before he followed. They may have been personal, or a warning about what Tom would see on the upper floor; I don’t know.

“After you.” Crispin held the front door open with a bow, and waited for me to pass through, for all the world like he was ushering me out of a ballroom in Mayfair, and not this rickety shack in a slum in South London.

“Thank you.” I entered the narrow street where, between Crispin’s H6 and Tom’s Tender, there wasn’t much room to walk at all. A young constable in uniform stood a few feet away at parade rest. He nodded when we came out, but didn’t speak.

“You made good time,” I added, when we had reached the Hispano-Suiza, and Crispin was opening the door for me.

“I got lucky.” He kept a hand under my elbow while I made my way into the backseat. “The roads were practically empty, and Gardiner and DS Finchley were unpacking the Tender when I drove into the Yard. It helped that they knew me. Cut down on the explanations.”

“I imagine it did.” I didn’t think Tom had any particularly fond feelings for Crispin—not like he did for Christopher—but he knows him well enough to trust that if Crispin told him there was a dead body, Tom could take him at his word.

I made myself comfortable and turned to watch as Christopher exited the building with a nod to the constable, and then came towards us. “I don’t suppose anything interesting was said?”

“Everything I say is interesting,” Crispin informed me as he made himself comfortable behind the wheel, “but if you mean did Gardiner say anything interesting, then no. They stopped unloading the Tender, Finchley went home, and Gardiner snagged a constable and followed me here. I don’t know what they talked about, but nobody spoke to me, because we were in separate motorcars.”

Of course. “How much did you tell him?”

“The basic information,” Crispin said, as Christopher opened the other side of the motorcar. “Florence Schlomsky has been missing for a few days, and two days ago her parents got a ransom note in the mail. Tonight they dropped off the ransom. We followed the kidnapper and found the body. End of story.”

He turned the motor on. The noise was loud in the quiet street.

“Succinctly put,” I told him.

He smirked. “Thank you, Darling. Ready, Kit?”

Christopher nodded. “Let’s go, and stand not on the order of our going, or however the saying goes.”

I had my mouth open to quote the saying, but that was just as the H6 took off down the narrow street with a roar. Instead, I let the burst of air that hit my face blow the words away and rejoiced in getting away from the dank and depressing place where Florence had breathed her last.

When the knock on the door came the next morning, I went to open it with visions of His Grace, the Duke of Sutherland, dancing in my head. When I pulled the door open and it only revealed Detective Sergeant Tom Gardiner, I considered myself lucky and invited him in.

“Christopher and Crispin are still asleep. If you’ll give me a moment, I’ll go knock them up.”

I scooped up the pillow and blanket from the Chesterfield and bade Tom sit. “I’ll only be a moment. Help yourself to anything you can find in the kitchen.”

I headed for the hallway to the bedrooms even as I was speaking, and pushed open the door to my own bedroom, which Crispin was occupying, with no concern for the sleeping lord. “Rise and shine, St George. We have company.”

He sat up straight in bed, looking confused and dazed and with his hair sticking out in every direction. I looked away as the blanket fell, leaving him bare to the waist. “It isn’t…” His voice was froggy, and he had to clear his throat and try again, “it isn’t my father, is it?”

I shook my head as I turned towards the wardrobe. “It’s Tom. Just give me a moment to find a frock and some unmentionables, and I’ll go change in Christopher’s room. The lav is all yours.”

“Thank you, Darling.” I heard the rustle as he threw off the bedclothes, and kept my eyes averted as he stalked through the room and out the door in what was surely nothing much at all. Once the lavatory door was safely latched behind him, I scurried down the hallway with my summer frock and shoes, and entered Christopher’s room with a brief knock. “Tom’s here. St George is in the lav.”

“Tom?” Christopher sat as upright as Crispin had at the news, but with rather more anticipation and less dread. His hair was sticking out every which way, too, and he was rubbing his eyes with his fists the way he had done when he was small. "Already?”

“It’s seven-thirty. Practically time for elevenses.” I pulled the pyjama top over my head and reached for my camisole. “I suppose he wants an early start, with a new crime scene to investigate and a fresh murder to solve.”

“No doubt,” Christopher nodded. “Better hurry up with that. Crispin will be here the moment he’s done in the washroom, just to see if he can catch you without your clothes on.”

“He wouldn’t be so gauche,” I said, even as I hurried to pull the frock over my head and smooth it down. “There. All safe.”

And none too soon, either, since the door opened just a few moments later, and Crispin stuck his head in. “Morning, Kit. Darling.”

He looked me over, but since I had managed to get the frock on just in time, there was nothing for him to see. He didn’t look disappointed, but I smirked anyway. “What do you need, St George?”

“I came to raid Kit’s closet,” Crispin said, and pushed the door open. “Don’t want to spend the day in black tie if I don’t have to. You don’t mind, do you, Kit?”

He walked in, wearing nothing but his trousers. I looked away, to where Christopher shook his head. “Knock yourself out. Just bring back whatever you borrow. You still have my flannel bags and pullover from the last time you rifled through my closet.”

“You’ll have to come down to Sutherland Hall and pick them up yourself,” Crispin said, as he pulled open the doors to the wardrobe. “Let’s see…”

“Excuse me,” I told them both, “I’m going to go splash water on my face and brush my teeth. I’ll see you both—and Tom—in the sitting room in a few minutes.”

It was the reminder Christopher needed—that Tom was waiting—to get him out of bed and moving. As I walked out of the room, he had gone to join Crispin in front of the wardrobe, both of them peering in at the clothes as if they expected some sort of outfit to jump out at them.

By the time I made it out of the bathroom and then my bedroom, after taking a couple of minutes to paint my lashes and lips, everyone was gathered in the sitting room. Tom was sitting in the chair with Christopher perched on the arm, while Crispin was leaning back on the Chesterfield, one leg elegantly crossed over the other. Everyone was smoking.

“Refreshments?” I inquired when I walked in. “Breakfast? It’s a bit early for alcohol, I suppose, but I could make a pot of tea or coffee?”

“Later,” Tom said, with an air of authority. “Sit.”

He nodded to the sofa next to Crispin, and I arched my brows and sat down.

“You too, Kit.”

Christopher also arched his brows, but he slid off the arm of Tom’s chair and took a languid seat next to me.

“So,” Tom said.

There was silence. We sat there, side by side, and waited. It felt a bit like being called to the headmistress’s office—or on the carpet before Uncle Herbert—but I honestly wasn’t certain what crime I had committed, and I don’t think the other two were, either.

“Why didn’t you tell me about Miss Schlomsky?”

The question was directed at all of us, but I assumed—and so did he—that it was meant for Christopher. “That she had been kidnapped, do you mean? We tried. But by the time the ransom note came, and we realized that something was wrong, we couldn’t find you.”

“You must have known that she was missing before then?”

“We knew we couldn’t find her,” I said. “We knew that she hadn’t shown up at the Savoy to see her parents, and that she wasn’t in the flat. But it wasn’t until the ransom note was delivered that we realized that she wasn’t staying away of her own free will.”

Tom nodded. “Tell me everything.”