Page 11 of Evil at the Essex House
“Famous last words,” Christopher responded. “As for His Highness, five quid says we’ll hear from him tomorrow.”
His Highness? “Do you mean Crispin?”
“I mean theGraf. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if Crispin showed up tomorrow, too, just to remind you what he looks like.”
“He won’t have to show up for me to remember what he looks like,” I said. “He looks like you. And that’s too soon to hear from theGraf.” If we heard from him at all, that was.
“Five quid on tomorrow,” Christopher repeated.
I shook my head. “Don’t be vulgar, Christopher.”
“What’s vulgar about betting on when my flat-mate will hear from a bloke who took her fancy?” He grinned.
I rolled my eyes. “First, he didn’t take my fancy. He was pretty, yes, but otherwise, not my type. And secondly, that wasn’t the part I thought was vulgar.”
“Quid is Latin, darling.”
“And here I thought it came from the papermill at Quidhampton,” I said dryly. “Don’t call me darling, Christopher. You sound too much like your cousin when you do.”
“His has a capital D. Or so you always tell me.” He leaned forward to put his empty glass on the table. “I’m serious, Pippa. Five pounds sterling says he’ll be in touch tomorrow.”
I shook my head. “Thursday, at the earliest.”
“Shake on it?” He stuck his hand out across the table.
I took it. “You’re on.”
As it happened,we were both wrong about the time it would take Wolfgang,GrafNatterdorff, to get in touch with me. He must have gone directly home—or up to his room at the Savoy, or wherever else he was staying—and penned the note, because it arrived an hour later by messenger. Evans rang up from the lobby to let me know it was there while Christopher and I were in the middle of indulging in beans on toast, and I ran downstairs to pick it up, with Christopher’s laughter in my ears.
“What does he want?” he asked when I walked back into the sitting room, note in hand. And then his eyebrows rose when he noticed that the envelope was still sealed. “Don’t tell me you waited until now to open it?”
“I wanted to hold your hand,” I said. “What if it’s bad news?”
He rolled his eyes. “How can it be bad news? It’s a young, good-looking gentleman asking for some of your time. I wouldn’t turn him down, let me tell you, but you can always say no if you don’t want to meet him.”
“You’re certain that’s all it is?” I turned the envelope over in my hand.
Christopher nodded. “What else could it be? Just open it and get it over with, Pippa.”
Fine, then. I took a breath and tore the envelope open and pulled out the notecard with the Savoy’s insignia in the corner. TheGraf’s handwriting was sloped and elegant, flowing across the paper in tidy lines.
“What on earth?” Christopher said, staring at it, his eyes wide.
I glanced at him. “What?... Oh. It’sKurrentschrift. A bit different from English cursive, isn’t it?”
He glanced back. “You can read it?”
“Of course I can. Can’t you?”
“That’s a lowercase F,” Christopher said, pointing to it, “but that’s also a lowercase F, and it looks different. And that, and that, and that—” he indicated, “are all capital letter Ls, and they’re all different.”
“That’s because that F,” I pointed to it, “is a lowercase H, and the three Ls are an L, a B, and a C, respectively. This F is actually a capital I.”
“That’s mad,” Christopher said. “But you understand what it says?”
“Yes, of course I do.” It was a bit more difficult to make out than it would have been a dozen years ago, admittedly. I hadn’t dealt with GermanKurrentschriftsince I left Germany. “He’s inviting me to have supper with him tomorrow. Seven o’clock in the Savoy’s dining room.”
“Oh, lovely,” Christopher said. “He didn’t waste any time, did he? You owe me five pounds.”
