Page 70 of Evil at the Essex House
“How much farther?” Crispin wanted to know. His hands were wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. “I don’t like the way people are looking at us.”
I didn’t either, but I wasn’t about to admit it in front of him. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid, St George?”
He flicked me a look in the mirror. “Cautious, Darling. As you should be. This isn’t the sort of neighborhood where we’re welcome.”
No, it clearly wasn’t.
“I don’t know what we’ll do with the motorcar when we stop,” Christopher commented. “Up here on the right, Crispin. See the row of clapboard houses? The second one.”
Crispin eyed it. “That’s awful.”
I nodded. “There’s no Austin Twelve outside.”
“If it was a Hackney, there wouldn’t be,” Christopher pointed out. “But that was where it stopped. The man in the cap got out and went into the second clapboard house.”
We eyed it in silence from across the street. “No lights in the windows,” Crispin said.
I glanced at him. “They’re shuttered, can’t you see?”
He glanced back. “I can see the shutters, Darling. But no light coming through the slats.”
No, there wasn’t. “They may not have electric lights down here,” I said, looking around. Everything was quite dark, and lit only by the faint light of the moon, which had a difficult time penetrating the narrow street and gloom to reach us.
“I wouldn’t bother to electrify that,” Crispin said, eyeing the row of clapboard shacks. “It’s a slum.”
“People in slums deserve lights and heat, too.”
He glanced at me. “I didn’t say they didn’t, Darling. Just that I understand why no one’s bothered.”
We sat in silence a moment.
“I’m going in,” Christopher said and reached for his door.
I grabbed him by the back of his collar. “Not alone you’re not.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “I’m not taking you inside there, Pippa.”
“I’m not letting you go alone,” I retorted.
“I’ll take Crispin.”
We both turned to look at him. He shook his head. “That would mean leaving Philippa alone in the motorcar, and I don’t think that’s safe. She’s better off going inside with us.”
“That means leaving the motorcar alone,” Christopher pointed out. “By the time we come back out, there’s likely to be nothing left but the chassis.”
“Do we have to go inside at all?” Crispin wanted to know. “Can we not notify the police—or tell the elder Schlomskys—where the kidnappers went, and have them deal with it from here? It isn’t our jobs to track down kidnappers.”
Christopher looked at me and I looked at him. It was a reasonable suggestion, well-suited for a man who didn’t want to leave his luxury motorcar in a slum to be picked over by vultures. I thought about accusing Crispin of being cowardly again, but truthfully, I understood where he was coming from. There was no part of me that wanted to sit here, on this awful street, with an expensive motorcar, while the two of them went into the building without me.
On the other hand, there wasn’t really any part of me that wanted to go inside the building, either. Even the air smelled rank here, rancid and leathery from the tanneries, and the boarded-up windows gave the place an unfriendly air.
“We’re here,” Christopher said. “We should at least take a look before we tell Scotland Yard what we know. Maybe the kidnappers brought a note to the Savoy to let the Schlomskys know where Flossie is, and she’s sitting inside, bound and gagged, waiting to be rescued.”
It was possible. And he was right: we were here. It seemed a shame to leave without doing at least a little bit of investigating. If Flossie was inside, and we left without looking for her, I would have a hard time forgiving myself.
“We go together, then,” Crispin said. “We don’t know how many kidnappers there are, and if they’re inside, you two may be outnumbered.”
“You’re prepared to put our safety above that of your girlfriend, then?”
