Page 10 of Peril in Piccadilly
“Darling!” She snuffled into his neck. “A robbery! It was terrifying.”
On the other side of the Hispano-Suiza, Christopher let himself out of the passenger seat with an eyeroll, and then pulled the seat forward so I could clamber out. I did it with less than my customary grace, given the stiffness of my knees. In fact, I needed a hand to haul myself out of the motorcar onto the cobbles.
“Oh,” Laetitia said when she caught sight of me—or of us, I suppose I should say, although it was probably just me. She doesn’t have much of a problem with Christopher. Her tone indicated deep disappointment.
Crispin glanced over his shoulder. “Right. I spent the night with Kit and Pippa.”
Laetitia looked betrayed. I thought about mentioning whose bed he had spent the night in—nothing wrong with speaking the truth, after all—but before I could, I noticed something that drove the inclination right out of my mind. “What happened to your engagement ring?”
She had stopped clutching at Crispin now, the better to impress upon him her level of disappointment, no doubt, but her left hand was still splayed on his shoulder, and the ring finger was bare.
“What happened to yours?” Laetitia shot back.
I eyed my ringless finger. “I turned it down. Although if you’re wondering about these—” I displayed my bandaged palms, “I fell down the staircase to the underground on my way home from Piccadilly last night.”
“I…” She stopped, and turned to Crispin, teeth in her bottom lip. “Darling, I’m so sorry. There was a robbery, and…”
Crispin cut her off with a quick and concerned, “Are you all right?”
From what Evans had said earlier, I had gotten the impression that the robbery had been at Sutherland House, but it appeared as if it had been Marsden House that had been violated, and Laetitia had made her way here for comfort and companionship, only to find Crispin gone. It was pretty typical, really. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.
“Did you call the police?” Christopher wanted to know.
Laetitia flicked him a glance. “Thompson did.”
The butler, one presumed. “Did they come?”
“I don’t know,” Laetitia said. “I left.”
She turned back to Crispin. He glanced at Christopher and me—it was obvious to all three of us what had to happen—before turning back to the Hispano-Suiza. “Let’s go.”
“We’ll take the backseat,” Christopher said, and opened the motorcar’s door again with a nod to me.
“But—” Laetitia blinked. “I want to stay with you.”
“We’re all going,” Crispin assured her, as he escorted her around the H6 to the passenger seat. Meanwhile, Christopher handed me into the backseat and crawled in behind me.
“Tom?” I asked him,sotto voce, as Crispin busied himself with getting his fiancée situated in the front of the H6.
Christopher shook his head. “I don’t know, Pippa. It’s possible. He mentioned a jewelry theft in Mayfair a few months ago, during that time when Flossie Schlomsky was missing, if you recall…”
Tom—Detective Sergeant Thomas Gardiner with Scotland Yard—was my cousin Robbie’s best friend at Eton, and after Robbie died in France, Tom transferred that loyalty onto Robbie’s little brother, and to a degree onto his elder one, although Francis was less in need of rescuing than Christopher was.
I wasn’t quite sure how Tom and Christopher had ended up meeting one another again. But Christopher and I had only been in London for a few months the first time I saw Tom in the foyer of our flat, having a low-voiced but intense disagreement with Christopher about the latter’s penchant for attending drag balls and the former’s need to keep him from being arrested for doing so. I ought perhaps to find out how it had happened, although if I had to guess, I would say that Tom had most likely recognized Christopher during one of the raids—quite an accomplishment on his part if so, because Christopher in his guise of Kitty Dupree looks very little like himself and quite a lot more like Laetitia Marsden, as it happens.
At any rate, Tom had become a regular part of our lives over the past six or seven months. Christopher kept him busy with rushing to the rescue every time Christopher found himself in trouble, be it another drag ball, another murder investigation, or that time he drank the cocktail meant for me, and ended up sleeping for several days.
“What are you whispering about back there?” Crispin wanted to know as he made himself comfortable behind the wheel of the H6. He pulled on his driving gloves and cranked the key over in the ignition.
“Tom,” I told him over the sound of the motor.
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Is he involved in this?”
“We think it’s possible. There was a jewelry theft in Mayfair in August that he investigated. If there’s a connection…”
I let the sentence trail off, since his guess was as good as mine.
“There was a robbery last week, as well,” Laetitia volunteered, and we both—we all, Christopher included—turned to look at her.
