Page 44 of Peril in Piccadilly
Christopher didn’t let it bother him. “Did you get a look at the motorcar, Evans? All we saw were the headlamps.”
“A Hackney,” Evans said promptly.
“Was it really?”
“It looked like one,” Evans said. “Can’t say whether it was a for-hire car or not.”
No, that isn’t always easy to do, especially when it goes by at such speed.
“We’d better get inside,” Christopher said with a glance up and down the now quiet street. “Don’t want them to come back.”
We certainly didn’t. He presented his arm—rather incongruous in his pink tasseled gown—but I took it and limped towards the entrance to the Essex House. Evans held the door, and we made our slow way across the lobby.
“Any other news, Evans?” Christopher wanted to know as we approached the lift.
The doorman shook his head. “No, sir.”
“No messages or anything?”
“No, sir.”
“I’ve been gone less than two hours,” I reminded him. And then, when the doorman opened the lift door, “Thank you, Evans. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yes, Miss Darling.” He closed the grille and door carefully behind us, and we ascended to the second floor.
“You go wash up first,” Christopher told me when we were inside the flat. “I’m not hurt. The gloves protected my hands. But you’ve torn open the scabs on your knees again. Go put some plasters on, and then meet me in the sitting room. We’ll talk.”
I nodded and headed for the washroom while he disappeared into my bedchamber to take off his makeup and put away Kitty.
Fifteen minutes later we were sitting on opposite sides of the Chesterfield with a cup of tea each—each with a drop of something extra in it, for nerves—and I was shaking a little bit. Yesterday’s incident had been easy to dismiss as accidental. This one was harder to reject.
“No,” Christopher agreed when I brought it up, “that was certainly no accident. The motorcar jumped up on the curb to get to us. Until then it might have been a coincidence…”
“Until then,” I agreed, “I thought it was simply a vehicle traveling a bit too fast. Inconsiderate, certainly, not to slow down for two people crossing the street. But some people are inconsiderate, and Hackney cabs are known for driving fast. You don’t think?—?”
“No,” Christopher said. He was cradling the cup between two hands—saucer be damned—and might have been shaking a bit, too, now that I looked at him. “Until the pavement, yes. I thought the same thing you did, that someone was just being a bit of a bastard. But if that had been the case, they would have tooted the horn, don’t you think? And anyway, jumping the curb was a definite attempt to hit us.”
“It seemed to be.” I took a sip of brandy-laced tea and coughed. “Who would do that?”
“It depends on whether we think the target was you or me or both of us,” Christopher said. I opened my mouth and closed it again when he added, “For a simple explanation with no additional implications, it might have been a cabbie who was in a hurry and who thought he’d teach us to get out of the way faster next time.”
I suppose it might have been. Some people have anger issues. Although it was quite the risk to take. What if we hadn’t moved out of the way quite as thoroughly as we had done? The motorcar might have clipped one of us. Was that worth teaching someone a lesson about crossing the street at too slow a pace?
“Unlikely,” I said, “but I suppose it isn’t impossible. What else?”
“It might have been the same person who pushed you down the stairs yesterday.”
It might have been. Except?—
“I’m fairly certain yesterday was an accident, Christopher. Why would anybody want to push me down the stairs, or for that matter run me over?”
“If we knew that,” Christopher said, “we’d know who it was.”
“Yesterday you thought it was Wolfgang.”
“I wasn’t serious,” Christopher said. “Or not serious enough to worry about you going to tea with him today. He just seemed like the most likely suspect. You had just left him, so we know he was in the area. You had just told him you didn’t want to move to Germany?—”
“That’s hardly reason enough to push someone down the stairs. Besides, we know he wasn’t in the area today. We saw him just twenty minutes ago on Regent Street.”
