Page 77 of Evil at the Essex House
Crispin arched a brow. “They followed us, didn’t they?”
“So they said,” I nodded, “but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t know about this place already.”
“So you think they murdered their own daughter?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Christopher said. “He was awfully quick to brandish that cane, for a peaceful man. And it would make for a handy murder weapon.”
I nodded. “You would have been dead had it connected, St George.”
Crispin grimaced. “In justice to him, he did think we had murdered his child.”
“Or else he pretended he thought so,” Christopher said, “when, in fact, he knew better.”
There was a moment’s silence while Crispin and I both chewed on this, and then Christopher added, “But yes, we’ll go inside. If they don’t notice us, we’ll listen to the conversation. If they do, we’ll try to stay safe. Worst case scenario, we run away again.”
“But do be quick, St George,” I told him. “Both for Flossie’s sake, and for ours. I don’t fancy spending the rest of the night here.”
Crispin nodded. “I’ll be as fleet as the wind.”
“Just stay away from light poles. No accidents on the way. No stopping to chat up comely young ladies.”
“Especially not the sort who frequent this area,” Christopher added.
Crispin gave us both a crushing look. “If I wanted to trade money for affection, I could find that commodity closer to home, thank you both.”
Of course he could. And not in the sense that he’d have to pay for it nightly. He was an eligible peer of the aristocracy, with a title and a fortune and a dukedom in his future. His entire purpose in life, at least according to his father, was to find a woman on whom to bestow that title and money in exchange for the means to make an heir. The affection would come gratis, or at least as an unspoken part of the deal. Most any woman would manage to muster up quite a bit of it for a man who promises to make her a viscountess in the immediate future, and a duchess in due time.
“Just go,” I told him. “Stay safe. Hurry.”
“Not sure I can do both of those at the same time, Darling. But I’ll be back as quickly as I can with reinforcements. You two run back inside the house before I start the motor. That way, maybe he’ll think we’ve all left.”
That made sense, so Christopher and I wished him luck one last time before we scurried across the narrow road and back into the dark hallway. From upstairs we could hear Sarah wailing and Hiram try to console her.
“In here,” Christopher said, darting towards the empty ground floor flat. “We can stay hidden in the event he comes downstairs when he hears the car.”
We ducked behind the door just as the H6 came to life outside. It has a powerful motor, the same one Woolf Bernato used to set the Brooklands record in 1924, and the noise was practically deafening in the narrow street. All noise ceased from upstairs as soon as it happened, and then we heard footsteps overhead as Hiram presumably left Sarah beside the body and walked across the floor above us and into the hallway.
We waited for him to descend the staircase, but that didn’t happen. Instead, he stood and listened to the sound of the Hispano-Suiza fading away, before crossing the floor above our heads again to rejoin his wife.
We heard the murmur of voices above, but not what they said.
“We’ll have to get closer if we want to hear anything,” I murmured.
Christopher looked at me. We were nose to nose in the dark room, and our eyes had adjusted well enough to the lack of light that I could see his face almost clearly. His eyes glittered. “What could they possibly be saying that would make it worth the risk of being brained by Hiram Schlomsky’s walking stick if they hear us?”
“You never know,” I said, or whispered, rather. “I’m still not a hundred percent certain that it wasn’t Hiram and Sarah who killed Florence. They could have staged the whole thing. We could have been looking at a single Hackney cab motoring past St Olave’s in both directions all night. Go past twice to get the lay of the land, then go back to let Hiram deposit the money in the church tower. Wait three minutes and go back again. This time, the driver picks up the valise. Everyone drives here. But they notice you following them, so they turn the tables and follow you instead, back to the church tower. And then they follow all three of us back here and pretend to find the place for the first time.”
“Convoluted,” Christopher opined.
Of course it was. “It’s possible, though. Sarah isn’t stupid, and it was stupid to allow herself to be stranded here. Unless it was on purpose, to throw us off guard. And Hiram is awfully quick with that cane. He might have been just as quick if his daughter said something he didn’t like.”
“One would hardly think so, Pippa,” Christopher said. “And her mother seems genuinely grief-stricken, if nothing else.”
That she did. The loud wailing from earlier had died down by now, but Sarah was still sniffling softly upstairs, and doing it loudly enough that we could hear her one story below.
“That,” Christopher said, “is not for our benefit. Not if they don’t know that we’re still here.”
Fine. “So perhaps it’s just Hiram,” I said. “We don’t know anything about this family, other than the fact that Florence left her family and friends and everything else behind to come all the way to London. That could certainly indicate a strained relationship with her parents.”
