Page 37 of Evil at the Essex House
Sarah Schlomsky pulled herself together with what was an obvious effort. “Thank you for coming, Miss Darling. And so quickly, too.”
Her hair was falling down on one side, and her lips looked pale and pinched. Her husband’s complexion was florid.
“What’s happened?” I asked, looking from one to the other of them.
“A note,” Hiram Schlomsky said. “Delivered with the food this morning.”
He nodded towards the small table in front of the window. The remains of breakfast were gone, but the note was still there. I walked over to it and bent, with Christopher next to me.
The words were printed in capital letters, with a heavy dark pen. They slanted across the paper in a rather ominous way, and I don’t think it was only the words themselves.
IF YOU WANTTO SEE YOUR DAUGHTER AGAIN, BRING FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS TO ST OLAVE’S CHURCH ON TOOLEY STREET AT ELEVEN TOMORROW NIGHT. DON’T INVOLVE THE POLICE OR THE GIRL DIES.
ChapterNine
“We should contact Tom,”I said.
Both Schlomskys looked politely inquiring, and Christopher explained, “We’ve a friend who’s a detective sergeant at Scotland Yard.”
“The note says not to involve the police,” Sarah Schlomsky protested, and Hiram nodded vigorously. “Now listen here, young man…”
I looked from one to the other of them. “How will they know?”
“They?”
“The kidnappers. How will they know if you’ve contacted the police?”
“If someone is watching…” Sarah Schlomsky said, with a nervous glance at the window.
“Do you think someone is watching?” If someone was out there with a pair of binoculars, there was no way to know. The sun glinted on glass and church spires all over the place. One of the latter might have been St. Olave’s, for all I knew. This was the first I had heard of it—I hadn’t ever spent much time on the other side of the Thames—although that was about to change, I imagined.
Although even if someone was out there with a pair of binocs trained on the Savoy, how would they know which window belonged to the Schlomskys? There are a lot of guests, and a lot of rooms, at the Savoy.
Besides, if anyone was keeping an eye on the Schlomskys, it was more likely that they were camped out in the lobby or restaurant, or in the street outside, rather than watching the windows with binoculars.
Had anyone paid more than the usual attention when Christopher and I had approached the concierge earlier? I tried to bring to mind the surrounding area, but came up with nothing out of the ordinary. And I had kept an eye out, since I had thought there was a chance I might spot Wolfgang. So if anyone had been there, they probably hadn’t been close enough to hear me mention the Schlomskys.
Sarah shrugged, somewhat helplessly, and I exchanged a glance with Christopher. “If you don’t want to involve the police,” he asked, “what do you want to do?”
“Pay the ransom and get our daughter back,” Hiram boomed.
“Is this…” I rethought what I’d been about to say and tried again. “This is the first time your daughter has been kidnapped, isn’t it?”
Kidnapping for ransom is not a common occurrence in Britain, but I had heard about a few cases in other parts of the world. Several of them in America, I thought, including the abduction of a business magnate’s teenage son not too long before I’d been born.
“There was an attempt to snatch her away from university a year and a half or so ago,” Hiram said. “That’s when we decided to send her abroad. You’re more civilized here, it seems.”
Not in light of recent events, clearly, although I was loath to say that. Although it certainly put a different complexion on the Schlomskys’ statement that Florence had come to England for her health. If she’d been in danger of being abducted at home, London must have seemed like a safer bet, even with its less than desirable climate.
“That’s terrible,” I said. “What happened?”
Two men had driven up in a motorcar, it seemed, and one had attempted to pull Flossie inside while the other had stayed behind the wheel, ready to take off the second the heiress was inside the vehicle. But somehow Florence had kept her head, and when the kidnapper shoved her into the backseat and tried to squeeze in behind her, Flossie kicked him in the teeth and scrambled out the other side of the car. She had apparently caused such a ruckus that the kidnappers had decided that retreat was the better part of valor, and had taken off with a squeal of tires.
“Were they caught?” Christopher wanted to know. His eyes were bright and interested.
Hiram Schlomsky shook his head. “It’s a deserted kind of area, up there north of New York City. Lots and lots of trees. They were long gone before the police could be notified.”
“That’s awful.” It occurred to me to wonder whether that event was related to what had happened now. Two kidnappings—or kidnapping attempts—of the same girl: surely there had to be a connection?
