Page 53 of Evil at the Essex House
Like an unsuitable gentleman—or less than a gentleman—friend.
Although if she had an unsuitable boyfriend, what was she doing, kissing Crispin at every opportunity?
“Or perhaps it was a photo of herself doing something she didn’t want her parents to see,” Christopher suggested. “Smoking, drinking, dancing. The same reason we don’t have any photographs of Kitty in our flat, really.”
“I didn’t realize there were photographs of Kitty.”
“Certainly there are. But I’m not about to put them on display in places where our family might see them.”
No, that was probably best. “I don’t think Flossie gets up to those kinds of shenanigans,” I said, “do you? The first time Crispin met her, she said she was on her way to Lady Montfort’s soiree, and those are as staid as they come.”
“Where washegoing?” Christopher wanted to know. “Some Bright Young party, wasn’t it? The Jungman sisters, or something like that? Perhaps he took her there instead, and corrupted her, and now she’s deeply into the Bright Young Set, and drinking cocktails and doping herself and having sex and all the rest of it. Her parents would be appalled.”
They certainly would. Or I had gathered the impression that it wouldn’t be what they’d expect from their darling Florence, at any rate.
“I suppose that’s possible.” I looked around again. “Would she get rid of the evidence entirely, do you suppose, or just hide it away somewhere less visible?”
“There weren’t any framed photographs in the closet,” Christopher said. “Or the second bedroom, I guess I should say.”
“None in the actual bedroom, either. Or the bathroom.”
“So where would she have put them? Behind the tea leaves in the kitchen?” He eyed the sitting room. “There are no bookshelves to speak of, so she couldn’t have taken them out of the frames and hidden them there.”
“They’re not in the desk?”
He shook his head. “I’ll go look through the kitchen. Leaf through those magazines, if you would, and see if there’s anything hidden between the pages.”
He headed towards the other side of the sitting room while I reached for one of the magazines on the coffee table. Flossie might not be much of a reader—he was right; there were no bookshelves anywhere, and no books, either—but she must like gossip, or perhaps pictures of pretty people in pretty clothes, because there were plenty ofTatlersandDaily Yells.
I leafed through them all, making faces at pictures of Crispin and Lady Laetitia Marsden, and Crispin and other young ladies of the aristocracy. I turned them over and shook them to see whether anything would fall out, I looked for notations… and eventually, I came up empty.
“Nothing?” Christopher asked when he appeared in the doorway to the kitchenette. I shook my head. “No, not here either. She must have taken the photographs with her when she left. Perhaps she took them somewhere to dispose of them. Or hide them until her parents were gone.”
“Much easier just to take them out of the frames and put them on the fire if she wanted them gone,” I said.
We both eyed the fireplace. It was clean and tidy with no ashes. Not surprising, since it was August, and we had no need of extra heat.
“Perhaps she took them to a friend to hold for her until her parents left again,” Christopher suggested.
I looked around again, disgruntled. “I suppose she must have. Although it seems like a lot of trouble to go to when she could have just stuffed them in a drawer for a week. Surely her mother wouldn’t snoop through her unmentionables to see if anything was hidden underneath.”
“We did,” Christopher said.
“But only because she has been kidnapped. And she couldn’t have known that that would happen.”
There was a pause. “Maybe I was right,” Christopher said, “and the kidnappers did come here after they grabbed Flossie. Perhaps she was taken by someone she knows, someone who had struck up a friendship with her, and they were in the photograph with her. And after they got Flossie, they had to get rid of the photograph because it was a clue.”
Perhaps. It would explain the gone-in-almost-broad-daylight-from-the-Strand, and it made more sense than that Flossie would want to hide her own face from her parents, too.
“I’d like to know how they made it past Evans,” I said, “although I suppose he might have been asleep, or in the loo, or they lured him outside and then sneaked in while he had his back turned, or something.”
“Or they came in during the night, when he was off duty,” Christopher said. He looked around. “Anything else we can learn from this place, do you think? Or is it time to go?”
I did the same, and couldn’t see anywhere we hadn’t already inspected. Nothing I looked at gave me any ideas for something we might do that we hadn’t already done. “I think it is.”
“Then let’s go back to our own flat,” Christopher said and headed for the front door. “You have a supper invitation to consider.” He waited for me to go past him into the hallway, and then he shut the door behind us and made sure it was locked.
There was nothing to consider,of course. I accepted the invitation from Wolfgang, with the caveat—made between Christopher and me—that if supper went late, he’d fetch me, straight from the table if he had to. While I liked Wolfgang, and looked forward to spending more time with him, I wanted even more to be on time to catch the money drop in Southwark.
