Page 49 of Evil at the Essex House
There was no arguing with that, so I didn’t try. Instead, I asked, “What now?”
He slanted me a look, but accepted the change of topic. “What do you suggest?”
“I’m not sure what else we can do,” I admitted. “We’ve tried the Schlomskys, and they’re gone. Tom’s gone. Flossie’s gone, obviously. We looked at the church, or what’s left of it. Nobody can have noticed anything amiss on Wednesday night, or I’m sure we or the Schlomskys would have already heard about it. There would have been a notice in the newspaper, if nothing else, about a woman being forced into a motorcar on the Strand.”
“Unless she went willingly.”
Yes, unless that. “I suppose we could take another look at Flossie’s flat, if Evans will let us in. Just in case she did go willingly and there’s a clue there.”
“Or just in case her parents killed her,” Christopher agreed, ignoring the startled look he received from a woman passing by in the other direction, who caught what he was saying, “and there’s a clue about that.”
I nodded. “Certainly. We can’t discount infanticide.”
He flicked me a look. “She’s hardly a baby.”
“Of course she isn’t. But there’s no word for killing your adult child, is there? There’s matricide, when you kill your mother, and patricide, when you kill your father.” I held up two fingers. “Sororicide and fratricide when you kill your siblings.” Two more. “Infanticide when you kill your child who is a child.” The whole hand. “But no word for killing your child who is an adult.”
“Homicide?” Christopher suggested, only half in jest.
I rolled my eyes and dropped my hand again. “I knowthat, Christopher. Also murder and manslaughter and a few others. But no specific word for killing your own child once they’ve reached maturity.”
“You think the Schlomskys may have done that, then?”
“I should certainly hate to think so,” I told him, “and they did seem quite frantic this morning, about the kidnapping and ransom. You saw them. Did they appear to be hiding guilt?”
Christopher shook his head. “That’s assuming they’d feel guilty about it, of course, and not everyone would. But no, I didn’t get the impression that they were trying to cover up a murder. Then again, we don’t know them well enough to know what they’re usually like, do we?”
I supposed we didn’t. If it came down to it, we didn’t even know that theywerethe Schlomskys. No one had asked them to prove it. Not that I really thought they weren’t, of course. They had known where to find Flossie, so really, they had to be her parents, didn’t they? No one else would know that, in this teeming metropolis of Englishmen.
“Let’s see if we can’t talk Evans into letting us into Flossie’s flat,” I said. “There’s likely to be nothing there, but I wouldn’t mind another look around.”
“I wouldn’t mind a first look,” Christopher said, “Especially at that closet. How do you suppose we convince Evans?”
“We lie,” I told him.
Evans required verylittle in the way of convincing when it came right down to it. All I had to do was tell him that Mrs. Schlomsky had wanted me to retrieve the pair of gloves she had left behind in Flossie’s flat yesterday, and bring them to her—and by the way, here was the ten shillings she had given me to pass on to Evans for his trouble—before he gave me the key and told me I had five minutes to bring it back downstairs. Whereupon Christopher and I opened Flossie’s flat, retrieved a pair of likely-looking gloves from Flossie’s ostentatious second bedroom/closet, and then I took care that Evans should see them when I brought the key back. “Thank you, Evans. I’ll bring them to her in the morning. I’ll be sure to mention how helpful you were.”
Evans nodded and tucked the key away tidily. “Note for you, Miss Darling.” He lifted it out of the cubby and held it out. I took it between two fingers and peered at the envelope. It had the Savoy Hotel logo—a circle with the letters S and H inside—in the corner.
“Why didn’t you give this to me earlier?”
“It just now arrived,” Evans said blandly, which may or may not have been the truth.
There was nothing I could say, though—not when I didn’t know any better, and besides, I wanted to stay on the right side of Evans. So I simply thanked him and took my letter and buzzed off towards the lift, heart knocking excitedly. The GermanKurrentschriftwas easily recognizable, and when I ripped the envelope open, the note invited me to have supper withGrafWolfgang again, tomorrow night, back at the Savoy.
“What have you got there?” Christopher asked when the door was shut behind me and it was just the two of us in Flossie’s flat. “Another note from the Schlomskys?”
I shook my head. “Wolfgang.”
“TheGraf?” He held out a hand, and it didn’t even occur to me not to hand over the envelope. Christopher fished out the note, perused it, and sniffed.
“The nerve.”
I slanted a look at him. “Whatever do you mean?”
He handed the envelope back. “It’s a bit petulant, isn’t it? If you ‘can spare the time’ he would like to treat you to supper and try to make a better impression than last time. Crispin must have given hisamour proprea knock.” He grinned.
I tucked the envelope into my reticule. “St George does have a way of doing that, although I won’t say that Wolfgang seemed particularly wounded at the time. I don’t think it was his self-esteem that took the knock so much as his vanity.”
