Page 35 of Evil at the Essex House
“So he set her down on the Strand, two or three blocks from the Savoy. What do you think happened after that, Christopher?”
“There’s only one of two things that could have happened,” Christopher said. “Or perhaps one of three.”
“Elucidate me, please.”
He held up a finger of his free hand. “She told Crispin that she was going to the Savoy, but she was really going somewhere else instead.”
“Why would she do that, if her parents were at the Savoy?”
“I don’t know, Pippa. For now, we’re talking about the options for what could have happened, not why Flossie may or mayn’t have actually done them. We’ll get to that later.”
“Fine,” I said. “Proceed, please.”
He held up another finger. “She planned to go to the Savoy, but was prevented from getting there.”
“In the couple of blocks between Charing Cross and the Savoy? On the Strand? How do you imagine that might have happened? A motorcar accident? Surely we would have heard about it, if it had been something like that, don’t you think? I mean, Crispin and I were both right there. Surely one of us would have noticed the upheaval.”
“Perhaps,” Christopher said, “perhaps not. For now, it’s option two. She either wanted to go to the Savoy, but something prevented her, or she didn’t want to go to the Savoy, and went somewhere else instead.”
“If she wasn’t planning to go to the Savoy in the first place, why tell Crispin that she was going there? It would make no difference to him whether she was going there or elsewhere.”
“No idea,” Christopher said. “Also a discussion for later.”
I nodded. “What’s option three, then?”
“She went to the Savoy,” Christopher said, “and her parents are lying about it.”
I squinted at him. “Why would they do that?”
“Who knows?” He gave a languid shrug. “You said yourself that her parents seemed surprised by the changes in her. Perhaps she showed up and they were appalled. Maybe things were said and they ran her off.”
Or perhaps things had escalated and she had ended up dead. I pictured the hefty silver knob at the head of Hiram Schlomsky’s walking stick, and imagined it whistling through the air and meeting Flossie’s head. I had seen a young woman with her head bashed in by a trench club less than a month ago. This would probably look very much the same.
I made a gagging noise and Christopher squeezed my arm. “I’m sure she’s fine. She’ll turn up tomorrow, I’m sure.”
“If she doesn’t,” I said, “I’m phoning Tom.”
Christopher hummed agreement. “It can’t hurt. If nothing else, he’ll be able to tell us whether she’s lying on a slab somewhere, and the news just hasn’t made it back to the Essex House and the Savoy yet.”
Yes, he would. Not that that was the outcome I was hoping for.
“I don’t believe it’ll come to that,” Christopher added, with more optimism than I, frankly, thought the situation warranted. “I’m sure she’ll turn up tomorrow and everything will be fine.”
“I hope you’re right.” I let him open the door into the lobby for me, where Evans informed us that no, Flossie had not come home in the twenty minutes we had been out, and there had been no word from her.
“Message for you, Miss Darling,”Evans’s voice said from the lobby.
It was the next morning, at the unfashionably early hour of eight thirty. Not that I wasn’t awake—it hadn’t been a late night—but who contacts someone before nine in the morning?
“Who?” Christopher mouthed from over in the kitchen doorway, where he was lounging with a cup of coffee in his hand and his hair sticking up every which way. His eyes were heavy and, I thought, a bit bloodshot. Perhaps he had spent part of the night worrying, too. I knew I had.
“I’ll be down in a minute,” I told Evans, and turned to Christopher. “If it’s Wolfgang, I don’t want Evans reading the missive to me.”
Christopher’s lips twitched. “Would there be sweet nothings, do you suppose?”
“I’d hardly think so.” But even without that, I still didn’t want Evans reading my note before I could. “I’ll be back in two minutes.”
I headed for the lobby, where Evans handed me an envelope with my name scribbled across it in elegant script and—yes!—the logo of the Savoy Hotel in the corner. I thanked him nicely and ripped the flap open as soon as the lift door had closed behind me.
