Page 31 of Peril in Piccadilly
“He received a note while we were sitting down to tea. The maître d’ delivered it to the table.”
“Perfumed?”
I wrinkled my brows. “Not so as I noticed.”
The envelope hadn’t reeked of anything, I did know that much. But I may have missed a subtler scent in the other odors of the tearoom.
“Did you get a look at it?” Christopher wanted to know. He had put down the eyebrow-pencil now, and had picked up his lipstick instead. Christopherau naturelhas soft coloring: pale skin, sunny blond hair, light eyelashes and brows. His alter ego, Kitty Dupree, looks quite a lot like Laetitia Marsden, with her glossy, black Dutch Boy bob—which in Christopher’s case is a wig, of course. He darkens his brows and lashes to match, and he also uses strong color on his lips. Tonight’s lipstick was blood red.
I shook my head. “He opened it at the table, but didn’t say a word about what was in it, other than that it was to do with a business matter. He lasted another five or ten minutes before I suggested that we should call it a night.”
“You suggested it? He didn’t?”
I confirmed that I had done, not Wolfgang. “He fidgeted a bit,” I added, “so I thought he would welcome the chance to leave. And he didn’t try to get me to stay longer. In fact, when we walked out, he put me into a Hackney and paid the fare.”
“As if he wanted to be certain you left,” Christopher said.
He’s quick on the uptake, my cousin.
“Precisely. By the time I made it back?—”
He grinned. “Of course you went back.”
“Of course I did. It took a few minutes. I couldn’t get the cabbie to set me down until we got to Charing Cross. By the time I got back to the Savoy, Wolfgang was nowhere to be seen. I thought he might have gone up to his room, so I asked, and that was when the doorman told me that theGrafvon Natterdorff isn’t a guest of the Savoy any longer.”
“So he wouldn’t have a room to go to,” Christopher nodded. “Although I suppose he might have gone up to someone else’s room.”
He might have done, at that. “I thought about sticking around the lobby for a bit, just in case he came back, but I didn’t want to risk him seeing me there and thinking I was spying on him.”
“Probably a good decision,” Christopher agreed. “If he’s up to something, he wouldn’t want you to find out what it is. If it was something he had wanted you to know, he would have told you.”
So one would think. “Speaking of…” I said, “you didn’t stop by the Savoy at any point this afternoon, did you?”
“I would have told you if I had done,” Christopher answered, turning back to the mirror for the final adjustments to his—or Kitty’s—face. “And also I would have waited, to take you home. Why do you ask?”
“Wolfgang thought he had seen you. Or perhaps Crispin. But he must be in Dorset by now, surely.”
“Hours ago, I’m quite certain,” Christopher agreed, pushing his chair back. “It wasn’t me, and I can’t imagine that it was him, either. He has a distraught fiancée to make feel better, and an engagement ring to replace.”
I made a face but didn’t comment, since I didn’t want to prolong the conversation about that particular subject. Instead, I watched as Christopher headed for my wardrobe, his size forty-two T-strap shoes clicking against the floor.
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from Tom? News about the investigation?”
“Nothing so far,” Christopher said, pulling open the wardrobe. “There was no murder, so they aren’t likely to be working around the clock.”
I supposed not. “Do you expect to see him later?”
He shook his head. “Not tonight. That would mean another raid, and I can’t very well hope for that, can I?”
“You could do. Or you could phone in an anonymous tip yourself, on the way there.”
If the Metropolitan Police received a tip-off about the drag ball, Tom would most likely be there in advance of any raid to drag Christopher to safety before anything could happen to him.
He shook his head. “I’d never. I don’t want to put any of my friends in danger of being arrested.”
“Of course not. You just like it when Tom rushes to the rescue.”
He didn’t say anything to that, although his cheeks turned pink under the blusher. I added, “Have you ever considered that perhaps you ought to give the man a break and not put yourself in harm’s way simply so he has to save you?”
