Page 29 of Evil at the Essex House
“Well,” I said, “I’m certain Florence will turn up today, or if not, at least she’ll be here tomorrow morning. Perhaps she got her dates mixed up and thought you weren’t going to be in London until today.”
They glanced at each other, but didn’t respond.
“If there’s anything I can do in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to let me know. I live just down the hall.” I gave them the number of our flat, and added, “We’re not on the telephone, but you can always ask Evans to knock us up.”
They exchanged a glance, and Sarah Schlomsky’s lips twitched. “If you wouldn’t mind, Miss Sweetling—” her husband began.
“Darling.”
“—Miss Darling. If you see Florence, would you contact us at the Savoy to let us know that she’s back?”
“Of course,” I said. “I’d be delighted.”
Evans was much more likely to see her than I was, of course. He’d catch her coming in, as long as she did so before eleven o’clock. Although I supposed it wouldn’t be all that much of an inconvenience to stop by a few times tonight and knock on Flossie’s door…
“We’ll leave word with the doorman on our way out,” Sarah Schlomsky said, “but we would appreciate it very much if you would keep an eye out too, Miss Darling. As a friend of Florence’s.”
“Of course.” I smiled politely. “It was lovely to meet you both. I’ll look forward to seeing you both again soon.”
They murmured something in response, and I withdrew, down the hall to my own flat and to Christopher’s company.
ChapterSeven
“That’s strange,”Christopher mused later, after I had gone over everything that had happened.
I glanced at him across the tea service. “Which part?”
He placed his cup and saucer on the table and sat back against the Chesterfield and crossed one leg over the other, languidly. “All of it, I suppose. Strange that they wouldn’t let her know they were coming in the first place, but stranger still that she wouldn’t immediately run to meet them, if she hadn’t seen them in almost a year.”
I nodded. Although— “I don’t know that I think it’s all that strange that they didn’t give her advance notice that they were coming. They said they wanted to surprise her. And they did let her know at least a day in advance. They arrived in Southampton two days ago. If they had truly wanted to take her off guard, they could have appeared downstairs with no warning the way Uncle Harold did two months ago.”
“Uncle Harold was trying to catch you and Crispin inflagrante delicto,” Christopher said with a twitch of his lips, “so he’d hardly give you advance notice that he was coming.”
I made a face. “Well, perhaps that was what the Schlomskys were trying to do, too. See what their daughter was up to in their absence.”
“But they didn’t,” Christopher said. “They did give her notice. Enough to know that they were coming, at least. Enough to get rid of anything incriminating. And if they were suspicious, wouldn’t they have acted differently, instead of being surprised by everything they saw?”
Perhaps so. The Schlomsky parents seemed to have expected to find a much subdued Flossie compared to what we—Christopher and I, and Crispin—were used to seeing. If they had been suspicious of their daughter’s behavior here in London, they wouldn’t simultaneously have been surprised by it.
“What’s strange to me,” I said, “is that Flossie didn’t show up at the Savoy, either last night or this morning. If they were my parents and I hadn’t seen them for the best part of a year…”
Christopher nodded. “Perhaps she was worried about her parents’ reaction to… shall we say ‘the new Flossie’?”
“I suppose she might have been. They did seem quite surprised about everything I said.”
“And they expected there to be a maid,” Christopher said, half question and half statement, “and there wasn’t one.”
I nodded. “That’s what they said. Have you seen a maid around, Christopher?”
He shook his head. “It’s a service flat, so no need for a maid, really.”
Not really.
“Flossie was here before us. Perhaps she got rid of the maid before we took the flat. The senior Schlomskys were adamant that they wouldn’t have sent her across to England without one. So there must have been a maid at some point.”
Christopher nodded. “What else?”
“Her mother looked appalled at the state of Flossie’s second bedroom, which is essentially her closet, but I was appalled, too. So many clothes, Christopher! You would have been in heaven, or at least you would have been if any of them had fit you. But?—”
