Page 70 of Peril in Piccadilly
“You’re a fine one to talk,” I told him, and he shot me a look in the mirror.
“What was that, Darling?”
“Never mind,” I said sullenly. But five years of silence, really? And he had the nerve to criticize other people for keeping things to themselves?
Now was not the time for that conversation, however. “Yes,” I said. “Fine. Wolfgang is hiding something from me. Which is the entire reason we are in this situation to begin with, if you’ll recall. Let’s just focus on Christopher. You and I can have things out later.”
“If you say so, Darling.” He gave me another dubious look in the mirror, but focused his attention forward again as we followed Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill past Saint Paul’s to Cannon. The dome of the great cathedral faded into the heavy grayish background of the sky.
“Looks like snow,” Tom commented.
I turned to him, appalled. “Surely not.”
It was cold enough for it, certainly, but we were hardly even halfway through October yet.
He shrugged. “Looks like it.”
Hmph. I leaned back against the seat and folded my arms across my chest.
It was a few minutes later that Crispin had parked the motorcar in the small stub of Queen Street, and we were standing where Christopher and I had stood yesterday, with the somber façade of St Mary Aldermary looming across the street and the cheerful windows of Sweetings up ahead.
“There’s the doorway.” I pointed to it. “The last time I saw Christopher, he went into it while I continued up the street and into Sweetings.”
It was a wide doorway, filled with heavy, double, wooden doors. It looked like the entrance to a fortress.
Tom eyed it, his head tilted to one side. “Interesting. I didn’t realize what this was.”
I flicked a glance at Crispin, who looked as non-plussed as I felt. I turned back to Tom. “You didn’t realize… what? I’m sorry?”
“This is the Albert Building,” Tom explained. He tore his eyes away from the forbidding entrance for a moment to glance up at the four levels of windows above our heads, before turning back to it again. “I thought they would be flats, so I planned to take you both inside so we could all knock on doors. But I don’t think that the incumbent government would be happy about that.”
“The… what?”
“This is the incumbent government’s office building,” Tom said. “I doubt they would appreciate the two of you wandering around inside.”
“I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t appreciate that at all,” I agreed. “Can you go inside yourself, and look around? You work for the government, or some periphery of it.”
“I work for the Metropolitan Police Department,” Tom corrected, “but yes, I could probably go inside. More easily than the two of you could, anyway. Although it’s not likely that anyone up there has Kit stashed away in a closet.”
No, it wasn’t. “Will you do it anyway? Just to make certain?”
“Of course I will.” Tom squared his shoulders under the tweed. “Who knows? Perhaps someone up there deals with German relations, and it turns out that Natterdorff chose this restaurant for a reason.”
“He did say that he had business in the area,” I said. It wasn’t impossible that that business had had something to do with British-German relations. He had implied as much, in fact, even if he had denied that it was in any official capacity.
“What will you two do while I canvass the Albert Building?”
“I want to visit the church,” I said, gesturing across the street at it, “and we can also stop into all the retail establishments we can see, and ask whether any of them noticed Christopher. It should keep us busy for a while.”
I glanced at Crispin, who nodded.
“Very well,” Tom said. “Shall we meet at the motorcar after we’re done?”
We agreed to do so, and then we watched as he rang the buzzer next to the formidable wooden door, gave his name and occupation to the disembodied voice that answered, and pulled the door open. He gave us one last look before stepping across the threshold. The door shut behind him with the approximate sound of a crypt door. I shuddered.
“None of that, Darling.” Crispin put a hand on the small of my back and turned me away. “He’ll be all right. And so will we. Shall we visit the church or the tobacconist first?”
I ran my gaze from the line of shops on the first floor of the Albert Building and then across the street and up the wall and the clock tower of the church opposite. If Tom had vanished inside the equivalent of a vault to search for Christopher, how could I do any less?
