Page 37 of Peril in Piccadilly
“Down there.” He nodded to the brick building at the end of the street, dead-ending into another brick wall. “That’s the old Cave of the Golden Calf.”
I eyed it dubiously. “It doesn’t look like a nightclub.”
“That’s because it isn’t,” Tom said. “The nightclub is in the cellar. Always has been.”
He indicated an unassuming door set into the wall beside the much wider and more ostentatious main entrance. “There’s the way in.”
“When I went with St George to Rectors,” I said, eyeing it, “there was a nun in a habit guarding the door.”
Or a man dressed in a nun’s habit; he hadn’t been an actual nun, nor had I ever supposed him to be.
“There might be someone inside, guarding this one,” Tom said, nudging me towards it.
I flicked a look up at him, even as I allowed it. “Do you know the password, if there is someone?”
“Do you?” He looked down at me.
“It depends,” I said.
He nodded. “Well, if it comes to it, I have a badge.”
“I’m sure you do. Although flashing that might do more harm than good.”
He didn’t respond to that. When I looked up at him, it was dark enough in the shadow of the building that I could barely make out the lower half of his face, the chin and mouth and the tip of the nose below the brim of the Homburg.
“Are you certain we should both go inside?”
“I’m certainIshould go inside,” Tom said, “and I’m equally certain that you won’t agree to stay here while I do.”
He was right about that.
“Nor,” he added, “do I particularly want to leave you up here alone. Kit would have my hide if anything happened to you, and he isn’t the only one.”
No, he wasn’t. The entire Astley clan, with the exception of Uncle Harold, would have something to say about it if I died from being left alone in a dark alley at night. Nor did I particularly want to be left alone, of course. Not because I was worried—the alley was deserted, and besides, I can take care of myself—but because I was curious. We were here: there was no way I would consent to being left outside while he ventured in.
“Come along,” Tom said. He reached for the door. I waited for him to pass through before I followed.
I had expected some sort of lobby, I suppose. Instead, we walked directly onto a dark and narrow landing with a stairwell going down into blackness. The music was louder in here, but still muted, as if there were a door or two between us and the musicians.
Tom took my arm as we advanced the couple of steps towards the staircase. “Don’t want you to fall again.”
No, that wouldn’t be good. Unlike last night, there was no one in front of me to break my fall, so if I tumbled face-first down the staircase, I would surely break my neck, or if not that, at least both my arms.
There were seventeen steps down, and at the bottom, we found ourselves standing in front of a heavy door. In front of the door stood a man in a deerstalker hat.
“I know about this,” I told Tom delightedly. “May I?”
He nodded, hazel eyes amused, and I turned to the gentleman in the hat. “Hello, Sherlock Holmes. We’re here to see Watson.”
The gentleman’s face didn’t change, but he stepped aside, pulling the door open at the same time. A wave of jazz music poured through and filled up the stairwell. When I stepped across the threshold with Tom right behind, the doorman winked, albeit not at me, but at Tom.
“How did you learn the password?” Tom wanted to know when the door was shut at our back, sealing the noise back into the club. He had to lean in to speak directly into my ear.
I leaned in the other direction to speak into his. “St George told me. The password to the nun at Rectors was ‘sister.’ He said if the doorman was dressed up as Sherlock Holmes, the password was ‘Watson.’ Apparently there’s a place in Spitalfields where you have to tell them that you’re there to get lucky, although I’ve never been.”
His lips twitched. “Lucky, or to Spitalfields?”
“Both,” I said, looking around. “You knew all this already, I assume?”
