Page 67 of Peril in Piccadilly
Tom shook his head. “He wasn’t arrested, as himself or as Kitty.”
I didn’t think it likely that he had been—he would have rung me up had that happened, or so I assumed—but I supposed there had been a chance that he’d been arrested and simply not offered a chance to phone anyone. Now that chance was out the window, it seemed.
“You checked the morgue,” Crispin said, his voice carefully controlled, “I presume?”
Tom made a face. “Much as I hated to do it, yes. No one matching Kit’s description was brought in last night. Not to the morgue, nor to any of the London hospitals.”
The only option left was the dank cellar, then. Or something like it. A bedroom in a cottage in Thornton Heath, like the one where Flossie Schlomsky had been kept.
Something popped into my mind, and then exited, just as quickly, when Tom said, “I also took the time to ring up Germany.”
Ring up— “Why?”
“Better get with the program, Darling,” Crispin advised. “He wanted to make sure that Wolfie is really Wolfie, I imagine. Is that right, Gardiner?”
Tom nodded. “Got it in one, St George.”
“And is he?” I wanted to know.
“He’s Wolfgang Ulrich Albrechtvon und zuNatterdorff,” Tom said, “or so it seems. I phoned the local constabulary in Natterdorff—that’s a hamlet in the vicinity of where the castle is located?—”
I nodded, since Wolfgang had told me as much. Crispin did as well, although this was most likely the first he had heard of it.
“And I described the chap we know. The local bobby recognized him. He’s the grandson of the old count, it seems.”
“I could have told you that,” I said. “He’s an orphan, like me, but his grandfather is still living.”
Crispin looked at me, brow elevated. “If his grandfather is living, he can’t be theGraf von und zuNatterdorff, Darling.”
“Of course he can,” I said. “You have two grandfathers, don’t you?” Or did, until Duke Henry died? “Just because he has a grandfather, doesn’t mean that that grandfather is theGraf. He could have been Wolfgang’s mother’s father.”
Crispin looked as if he had bit into something foul. He doesn’t like being wrong. “But he’s not,” he asked Tom, “is he? The old man, I mean?”
Tom shook his head. “He’s theGraf von und zuNatterdorff, and Wolfgang’s paternal grandfather.”
“So if the grandfather is theGraf,” I asked, “what does that make Wolfgang?”
“Apparently he’s theGraf von und zuNatterdorff, as well. Don’t ask me how it works—” this came with a warning look at Crispin, “—but that’s what the bloke at the constabulary called him. The youngGraf.”
“Maybe they call them allGrafs, then? The one with the title as well as the one coming into it?”
“Who knows,” Tom said. “The important bit seems to be that he is who he says he is. More or less.”
There was a moment of silence. “Let me clear it up for you,” Crispin offered. When I shot him a look, he added, down the length of his nose, “I was bred for this, you know. Up until the Great War, German nobility was just like any other European nobility: something I was expected to know about and possibly marry into. I spent hours memorizing lines of succession, and woe betide me if I got any of it wrong.”
“I’m glad to hear that you were well educated in useless information,” I sniped, even as the last part of the sentence imparted a measure of worry. Uncle Harold has never been easy on his son and heir, and I didn’t like the idea of what corporal punishment he might have meted out for Crispin not being up to snuff in memorizing foreign noble titles. “Go on.”
He held up a finger. “The oldGrafis theGraf.” Another. “His wife is theGräfin.” A third. “Their eldest son and heir would have been theErbgraf. Younger sons are calledJunkers. A grandson would also be called aGraf, although with his father out of the way, I suppose Wolfie is technically theErbgrafnow?—”
“But the bottom line,” Tom said, “is that he is not calling himself by a title he doesn’t own?”
Crispin shook his head. “He’s likely not theGraf von und zuNatterdorff—that would be his grandfather—but he’s aGrafin the Albrecht family, heir to the Natterdorff title.”
“Like you,” I said, and Crispin gave me a disgruntled look.
“Not at all like me, Darling.”
“Philippa. And how on earth is it not like you? You’ll be inheriting the title from your father and not your grandfather, but other than that…”
