Page 65 of Peril in Piccadilly
“By the time we reached the other side, there was another motorcar coming down the street towards us. A black one. It looked like a Hackney.”
“Yes?” Tom said.
I made a face. “It jumped up on the pavement and came within a few inches of hitting us both.”
They both stared at me.
“I don’t know whether it was an accident,” I said, “or if it wasn’t, whether it was me or Christopher it was after?—”
“Or Laetitia,” Tom said. When Crispin arched an incredulous brow, he added, “Come now, St George. You know as well as I do that Kit looks quite a lot like your fiancée when he’s dressed as Kitty. It’s the black wig more than anything, I suppose…”
“I’m still not sure I like what you’re insinuating,” Crispin said stiffly and Tom smirked.
“I’m not insinuating anything, St George. It’s not as if you’re attracted to Kitty, are you?”
“Are you?” Crispin shot back, and then shuddered. “Lord, no. Not that she—that he—isn’t quite lovely like that. But unlike some people, I recognize my cousin. Even in drag.”
Tom nodded. “I wish you two would have told me this before now, Pippa.”
“There was nothing you could have done,” I said. “A black Hackney. There are thousands of them in London. And we don’t know that it wasn’t an accident, anyway.”
“It does put a different complexion on this thing, though. If Christopher was the target, and now he’s missing.”
Yes, of course it did. But I had been the one pushed down the stairs to the underground. And Laetitia was the one who had seen the jewelry thief. It had seemed more likely that either of us two was the target of the person in the Hackney rather than Christopher.
Of course, Christopher was now the one missing, so there was that.
“Let’s go,” Tom said and nodded towards the Hispano-Suiza. “You drive, St George.”
“Are you certain you trust him to do that?” I asked, at the same time as Crispin inquired, “Where to?”
“Scotland Yard,” Tom said, with barely a flicker of a glance at me, while Crispin shot me a scowl. “From there I can at least make sure that he wasn’t picked up for public indecency and hasn’t spent yesterday afternoon and last night in a jail cell. After that, we’ll start ringing up hospitals.”
“After you, Darling.” Crispin opened the car door for me to crawl into the backseat. He flipped the seat back and situated himself behind the wheel. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” Tom said, and shut his own door. The Hispano-Suiza started up with a roar, and we took off down the quiet street like a bullet from a gun.
ChapterFifteen
I won’t boreyou with a recounting of the time that Crispin and I spent sitting in the waiting area at Scotland Yard while Tom was in his office on the telephone. It was utterly stultifying, of course, and at the same time nail-biting, sitting here waiting for news, and we spent the time sniping at one another in the way we usually do when we’re together. The higher the tension, the more tense the sniping became. It was familiar enough that I was able to forget, for long seconds of time, that apparently he was in love with me. There was no sign of it, or no more sign than there had ever been. He entered into his usual cutting sarcasm with gusto, and even if I caught the occasional double entendre that I would have normally let pass without notice, bickering with him felt no different now than it had ever done. And it gave both of us something to focus on other than Christopher’s disappearance and what Tom might be digging up.
Some people gave us curious looks as they went in and out, and a few even addressed us. Or addressed Crispin, more specifically. By name, or rather by title, but either way they clearly knew who he was.
“What was that about?” I inquired after one of them, a strapping young specimen in mufti, had walked past and out the door. “Do you have a police record that I don’t know about?”
He shook his head. “Grimsby dug up whatever there was to know, Darling. If you read his dossier, you know it all.”
Not all, clearly. His feelings for me had not been in the dossier.
“I don’t recall there being much in it about you being arrested,” I said.
“That’s because I can usually talk my way out of being arrested,” Crispin answered. “Or bribe my way out of it, if all else fails.”
I blinked. “Does Tom know that his colleagues are open to bribery?”
“I have no idea what Gardiner knows or doesn’t know,” Crispin said. “And perhaps ‘bribe’ is too strong a word. Let’s just say that some people are amenable to looking the other way given the right incentive.”
Just as he said it, the door to the street opened, and a WPC walked in. Crispin gave her an appreciative up-and-down look, and when she gave him a stern one in return, he winked at her. I waited for a verbal slap to come his way, but instead she smirked and kept going. I waited until she had disappeared through the door on the other side of the lobby before I said, “You found your female constable, St George? It’s just a few months since you were excited to learn that they existed. Did you deliberately go look for one?”
