Page 69 of Evil at the Essex House
He flicked me a look, but didn’t comment, just continued, “It’s the only reason I can drive the way I do. If I were less capable, I’d be dead.”
“Tell that to the light pole you had your encounter with last year,” I informed him. “I think it would beg to differ.”
He shot me another look. “I walked away, didn’t I?”
“The Ballot didn’t.” The motorcar before the Hispano-Suiza. Dead and buried now.
He huffed. “That’s the point, Darling. I’m a good enough driver to wrap my motorcar around a light pole and walk away without a scratch.”
“Not quite without a scratch.” He had a scar above his left eye from the encounter. Really, the hypocrisy of him commenting on Wolfgang’sSchmissewas astounding.
“Besides,” I added crushingly, “that’s hardly due to your prowess, is it? A capable driver would have avoided the accident. You only walked away because you got lucky.”
Crispin sniffed in offense, but didn’t continue the conversation. Instead he turned to Christopher. “A bit of direction might be nice.”
“Of course.” Christopher looked from him to me and back. “Just go that way—” He indicated the direction in which we had seen the two motorcars disappear earlier, “and I’ll tell you where to turn.”
Crispin let the clutch out and we rolled off.
“Tell us what you saw,” I told Christopher as we proceeded down Tooley Street into Bermondsey. “We couldn’t see much at all from where we were standing.”
He nodded. “I didn’t see much more from where I was sitting. There was a Hackney cab that passed twice, and then it either came back with Mr. Schlomsky, or a different Hackney did do.”
“We noticed that, as well,” I nodded. “The first taxi could have been the kidnappers looking the place over, or it could have been Hiram getting the lay of the land before coming back to actually place the money. Unless you could see who was inside?”
Christopher said he hadn’t been able to. “Eventually one of the Hackneys stopped, and I saw Hiram duck out and into the tower with the valise. It only took a few seconds for him to drop it, and then he was back in the cab and off they went.”
“And then a few minutes later the other Hackney came,” I said.
Christopher nodded. “Or the same one. There was no way to tell them apart, really. Especially in the dark. Turn right here, Crispin.”
Crispin turned right, and asked, “Am I understanding you right, Kit, that it could all have been the same motorcar?”
“Who can tell?” Christopher said with a shrug. After a moment he added, philosophically, “It’s dark, and all black cars look the same.”
I snorted. “But you saw Hiram drop the valise, and then the Austin he was in drive away. And a few minutes later another Austin drove up, or the same one, and someone else went inside the tower and picked up the valise.”
“A young man in a tweed suit,” Christopher nodded. “Definitely not Hiram.”
“No sign of Flossie, I suppose?”
“Not that I saw,” Christopher said. “She might have been inside the motorcar, or Hiram might have been, but if so, I didn’t see her. Or them. Only the chap driving. Left here, Crispin.”
“Did you recognize him?” I asked. “The bloke who picked up the valise?”
He shot me a look over his shoulder. “How would I recognize him, Pippa? There are almost eight million people in London!”
“I thought perhaps he was someone you had seen before,” I said.
“Because I regularly spend time around kidnappers?” He shook his head. “No. I’ve never seen him before. Not to my knowledge.”
“Can you describe him, at least?”
“Young,” Christopher said. “Over twenty-five, under thirty. He was wearing a cap and he kept his head down, so I didn’t get a good look at his face. I think his hair was dark. Slow down, Crispin. The streets are getting rough.”
“I can see that,” Crispin muttered. “I’m frankly surprised you and my car made it out of here alive.”
I looked around and realized he was right. While I had been busy interrogating Christopher, we had entered a part of Southwark that wasn’t for the faint of heart. A far cry from either Sutherland House in Mayfair, or the Essex House Mansions, with its slightly less upscale but nonetheless very reputable address. Here, dilapidated tenement buildings rubbed elbows with pockmarked walls and peeling paint. Rubbish clogged the sides of the streets where nobody cared enough to pick it up, and the few people we saw kept their shoulders up and their heads down, even when they cast furtive glances at the H6.
