Page 62 of Peril in Piccadilly
“Indeed.” He took a sip and winced. “You weren’t joking, were you?”
Not at all. “Neither of us got much sleep. I thought it might help.”
“I won’t need it.” Crispin smirked. “You always keep me on my toes.”
And there it was, another of those comments that, before this weekend, I would have taken at face value—a joke about our usual animosity and constant bickering—but which I now heard as yet one more misdirection.
When I didn’t say anything, just stared at him, he flushed. “What now?”
I looked away. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“Are you certain?”
“Positive,” I nodded. There was no need for us to talk about this. He hadn’t brought it up in the past five years, and nothing had changed since the last time I saw him. Nothing aside from the fact that now I knew how he felt—or ostensibly felt.
But he was still engaged to Laetitia, and I was still not interested in any kind of relationship with him—not that we could have had one at this point, considering Laetitia. So what this really came down to, was me wanting to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, and shriek, “What were you thinking? You can’t be in love with me!” But since nothing good would come of that, especially on a day when we would be spending hours and hours together, it was just as well if I didn’t make the situation any more awkward than it already was. No matter how curious and/or appalled I was.
He pushed to his feet, and then shoved the coffee cup into my hand. “Let me visit the loo, and then we can head out.”
“There’s no rush,” I began, although of course there was. Not enough of a rush that we had to leave right this minute, though. “You can take the time to finish the coffee.”
“That’s all right, Darling.” He shot me a smirk over his shoulder on his way to the hall doorway. “As I said, your presence is abrasive enough to keep me alert.”
“Ditto,” I told him, as I picked myself up and headed for the kitchenette with the two cups.
Five minutes later we were in the Hispano-Suiza, making our way along the still-dark streets towards Chelsea. Christopher and I had left a message at Tom’s flat once, and I was able to direct Crispin to it. By the time we pulled up across the street, the sun had risen east of London, and the street lamps were off. Tom’s building, all four stories of it, sat silent.
“There’s no doorman,” I told Crispin. “We can ring the bell and see if he’s at home. If not, I suppose we can leave another message.”
“You left one at Scotland Yard last night?”
“When I rang up,” I confirmed, “yes.”
“Let’s go, then.” He pushed his door open. I did the same, and hurried around the motorcar. He was eyeing the building. “Which flat is his, do you know?”
“I’ve never been inside,” I said, “so I’m afraid I have no idea. The only reason I know where it is at all, is that Christopher took me here once. But we only left a note.”
He nodded. “No time like the present.”
He presented his elbow and I hooked on for the trip across the street.
We found Tom’s card—Thomas Gardiner, 3C—beside one of the buzzers, and Crispin put his finger on it. The buzzer, I mean; not the card. Nothing happened—there was no sound—but 3C was probably far enough away that even if it rang inside Tom’s flat, we wouldn’t hear it. A minute passed—Crispin pressed the buzzer again twice—and then an irate voice called down from above. “What the bloody hell is going on?”
We stepped back out of the doorway and peered up. A window two floors above had opened, and Tom was peering out, his hair in disarray and his face flushed.
“Oh,” he said when he saw us, “it’s you two. What’s wrong?”
And then he must have noticed the Hispano-Suiza parked on the opposite side of the street—it’s difficult not to, when the motorcar is bright blue—and some of the angry color faded from his face in favor of a more subdued pallor. One might even say that he paled. “St George?”
“In the flesh,” Crispin confirmed. I supposed that, up until then, Tom must have assumed I was with Christopher. It’s an easy mistake to make, even for someone who hadn’t just been ripped from sound sleep. Crispin was with me, where Christopher was likely to be. It was still a bit dark down here on the street, so visibility was somewhat compromised, and Crispin was wearing a hat, so Tom couldn’t see that his hair is a shade lighter and cooler in color than Christopher’s. From up above, he might not even be able to see Crispin’s face well enough to tell the difference.
It also answered the question of whether Christopher had spent the night with Tom, of course. And obviously he hadn’t, if Tom was asking about him.
“Where’s Kit?”
“That’s what we want to talk to you about,” I said, and watched the rest of the color fade from Tom’s face.
“Two minutes.” He withdrew from the window, and the sash slammed down. We migrated back to the front door—I assumed he would unlock it from upstairs so we could go in and up—but instead a minute passed, and then another, and then Tom appeared in the lobby.
