Page 58 of Evil at the Essex House
“Eine Nutte?” he articulated delicately.“Ein Flittchen?”
“A prostitute?” I suggested, since there is no point in not calling a spade by its proper name.
Wolfgang nodded, looking relieved. “Yes.Eine Proztituerte.”
“I hardly think so,” I said. “She was forty-five if she was a day?—”
Wolfgang opened his mouth, presumably to tell me that hookers come in all sizes and ages, but he didn’t actively interrupt me, so I went on.
“—and furthermore, I happen to know that she was flush when she left Wiltshire.” Flush with a thousand pounds of Uncle Herbert’s hush money. “I’m sure it was as they said. A robbery. Such a shame.”
Not that I had many fond feelings for Hughes. She had blackmailed Uncle Herbert, after all. Although I certainly hadn’t wanted her to die for it. I’m not that bloodthirsty.
“Indeed,” Wolfgang nodded. “And your friend, the detective…”
“Tom? He went to Eton with my cousin Robbie, and with Francis and Christopher.” And Crispin, of course, but there was no point in mentioning that.
“Francis is your elder cousin?”
I nodded. “Christopher is my younger. Robert was in-between. But he died in the war.”
“Many bad things happened in the war,” Wolfgang said, as a shadow crossed his countenance.
Yes, indeed. And it was probably best if we didn’t go too deeply into those weeds, given that Wolfgang was German, and so was I, technically speaking.
“Tom went to Cambridge after he came Home,” I said, “and then he joined Scotland Yard. He’s a photographer.”
Wolfgang nodded politely. “And the two of you…”
I shook my head. “We are not involved at all.”
I honestly didn’t know whether Tom liked men or women in the romantic sense. I did know that he didn’t like me. There’d never been anything even remotely flirtatious about our interactions. I suspected he was rather fond of Christopher, although I wasn’t sure whether that was because Tom had been Robbie’s friend, and with Robbie gone, he had taken over some of Robbie’s responsibility towards Robbie’s youngest brother, or whether it had to do with Christopher himself. He’s eminently loveable, after all.
I was fairly certain Christopher’s feelings towards Tom were anything but brotherly, though. And I suspected there might be something going on, but I had no proof of it. If they were romantically involved, they’d been quite circumspect about the whole thing.
And none of this was any of Wolfgang’s concern, so I kept it to myself. “What about you?” I asked instead, fluttering my eyelashes and dimpling. “Is there someone in Germany who’s waiting for you to come home?”
Wolfgang disavowed this idea in strong terms. But of course he would, whether it was true or not. He seemed to have designs on me, so whether there was another girl in Germany or not, he wasn’t going to mention her to me.
“For how long are you in London?” I wanted to know. It seemed like a safe question to ask.
Not that I got a straight answer. “Until my business is done,” Wolfgang told me. And then he smiled indulgently. “Don’t worry your pretty head about it.”
I simpered back. “I’m not. I’m just wondering for how long I’ll have the pleasure of your company.”
Wolfgang drew in breath, but before he could utter whatever was on the tip of his tongue—I suspected some sort of bromide about my ability to have the pleasure of his company for as long as I wanted—the waiter appeared with the first course. Wolfgang let the breath out again as I sat back in my chair and smiled politely at the waiter.
We fell into small-talk after that. I asked him how he liked England, and he extolled the beauties of Bavaria. I had memories of growing up in Germany, but the older I got, the farther away that time seemed—which of course it was.
“You should come back for a visit,” Wolfgang said.
I smiled politely. “I’m afraid that would be rather difficult.”
“Nonsense.” He beamed as he dismissed my concerns. “You’d stay with me atSchlossNatterdorff, of course.”
Oh, of course. “That would be somewhat unconventional, surely?”
He smirked, but didn’t say anything, leaving me to wonder whether I’d be expected to stay as his mistress or his intended. Instead he said, “We’re distant cousins, you know.”
