Page 73 of Peril in Piccadilly
“Whatever business he’s doing doesn’t involve a job, then.”
Tom shook his head. “Or not a legal one, at any rate. He listed the Savoy as his permanent address on the paperwork, and after someone made certain that he had actually checked into a room there, nothing else happened. He wasn’t of particular interest to anyone. Too young to have fought in the war, not on any of the lists of communists that rioted in Hamburg in 1923…”
“And aGraf,” Crispin supplied dryly from behind the wheel. “That sort of thing matters here, even if the Weimar Republic did away with it half a dozen years ago.”
“So we know nothing more than we did this morning,” I said.
Tom shook his head. “I’m sorry, Pippa. We know that Wolfgang’s business wasn’t at the Albert Building. That’s one thing. And we know that nobody saw Kit disappear. We can widen the net, I suppose—ask further afield. I can dispatch a constable or two to do that. You don’t have a photograph of him, do you?”
“Not as Kitty,” I said. “That’s not something we want sitting around the flat in case the wrong people notice it. And a photograph of Christopher as himself wouldn’t help, I expect.”
Tom shook his head. “The constables will have to make do with a description, then. Tell me exactly what he was wearing, if you please?”
I described my clothing and Christopher’s hat in detail while Tom took the information down in his little notebook. “The German attaché provided me with a photograph from Natterdorff’s file,” he added as he slipped the notebook and pencil back into his pocket, “and I suppose it can’t hurt to flash that around too, and ask whether anyone saw them together.”
“You do suspect Wolfie, then,” Crispin commented, and Tom flicked him a look.
“I don’t. No more than I suspect the public in general. But it was Natterdorff that Kit was going to follow yesterday, and we do know that if nothing else, there’s something a bit dodgy about his living situation. That doesn’t seem as if it would be enough motive for kidnapping or, God forbid, something worse, but it has to be considered.”
“What do you want us to do?” I asked after a moment, and he turned his attention to me.
“Go home and think, I suppose. Wait for Kit to contact you if he truly is just out there somewhere of his own free will. Perhaps Natterdorff went off to Calais overnight, and Kit went with him.”
“Not without his passport,” Crispin said.
“Somewhere domestic, then. Cardiff or Edinburgh. Stowe. Somewhere where the telephone exchange is unreliable.”
I supposed it was possible. Not likely, perhaps, but possible.
Indeed, if Wolfgang was the jewel thief, perhaps he had decided to pay the Fletcher family a visit. Their ancestral home was somewhere near the Scottish border, according to Crispin. Northumberland or North Yorkshire or some such place. If Christopher had followed him there, it might be days before he came back.
“You’ll let us know if you learn anything new?” I asked when Crispin had pulled the Hispano-Suiza into the courtyard at Scotland Yard and Tom was on his way out of the vehicle.
“You’ll be the first,” he assured me. “And you’ll do the same?”
I promised that we would do, and then Tom went into the building and Crispin put the H6 back into gear, and we rolled off towards home.
“There’s nowhere else you want to go?” he asked. “Can I interest you in a spot of tea somewhere?”
“There’s tea at home,” I answered, “and I’d rather like to know whether there’s any post. I also have to ring up Beckwith Place and update them on what’s going on. Or rather, on what isn’t.”
“I had hoped we would be farther along by now,” Crispin admitted. “That we’d have made some sort of progress, you know? But instead there’s nothing.”
“I wouldn’t say nothing.” It was mostly negative knowledge, admittedly, but it was something. “We know that he wasn’t dragged, kicking and screaming, into a Hackney and spirited away. If he had been, someone would have reported it. That isn’t the kind of thing that goes unnoticed, especially not on Queen Victoria Street in the middle of the day.”
“Especially not with the government offices right there,” Crispin agreed.
“And we know that he isn’t in jail, or in hospital, or the morgue.”
“I suppose that’s something. Although at this point, I would almost rather have had him in hospital or jail.”
I looked at him—I had moved into Tom’s seat now, instead of staying in the back of the motorcar—and he added, “Not the morgue. Obviously not. But at least then we would know something. It’s the not knowing that’s difficult.”
“It’s all difficult,” I said. “I’m glad he isn’t hurt, or hasn’t been arrested. But yes, it would be good to know something for certain. I don’t know what I’m going to tell Aunt Roz.”
“The truth,” Crispin said, as he navigated Trafalgar Square and headed north on Charing Cross Road. “Scotland Yard is working on it, and at least he isn’t dead, in hospital, or in jail.”
He wasn’t in jail or hospital, no. But he might still be dead, and we simply hadn’t found the body yet. But when I opened my mouth to say so, no words came out.
