Page 76 of Peril in Piccadilly
“But we don’t know where he is, and he could be dead or hurt somewhere he hasn’t been found yet.”
I made a face. “That’s a possibility, yes.”
“We should come up to London.”
“Crispin said you might feel that way,” I said. “Sutherland House?—”
She interrupted me. “Crispin’s there?”
“He motored up last night.”
“Let me talk to him.”
I arched my brows but waved him closer. “Aunt Roz wants to talk to you.”
His arched, too, but he took the earpiece and put it to his ear. “Hullo, Aunt Roslyn.”
They talked for a minute or two. Crispin’s share of it was mostly limited to things like, “Yes, Aunt Roslyn,” “No, Aunt Roslyn,” “I’m afraid I don’t know,” and “of course.” Of Aunt Roz’s part, all I could hear was a faint quacking from the earpiece. He winced once or twice.
“Do you wish to speak to Philippa again?” he asked eventually. My aunt must have said no—my feelings were a bit hurt—because he nodded. “I’ll let her know. We’ll see you soon, Aunt Roz. Sutherland House is always available to you.”
He deposited the earpiece in the cradle and breathed out, closing his eyes.
“They’re coming?” I asked.
“I talked her into giving it another day,” Crispin answered. “Or she mostly talked herself into it, I suppose.”
I supposed so. I certainly hadn’t heard him give voice to any kind of persuasion.
After a moment’s silence he added, “There’s nothing they can do here. We’re already doing everything we can. They’d be underfoot.”
“Tom probably thinks we are underfoot, too,” I pointed out.
“Well, I’m not leaving. But we do need to let him know about tonight.”
“Go ahead,” I told him, and watched him deposit more coins in the slot and ask the operator to connect him with Scotland Yard. A minute later he was explaining to Tom about the dinner invitation and the plan we—or he—had come up with. “It’s the Savoy again, so it ought to be fairly easy to lurk and follow him when he leaves.”
“As long as he doesn’t go out by one of the entrances we’re not watching,” Tom’s tinny voice came out of the headset. Crispin was holding it, but we both had our ears as close to it as we could manage without bumping heads. I’m fairly certain my hair must have tickled his cheek, although he didn’t say anything about it.
“I rang them up,” Tom added, “and confirmed that he’s no longer a guest there.”
“I hope—” Crispin began, and I could practically hear Tom’s eyeroll come down the line.
“This isn’t my first day on the job, my lord. I rang up from a call box, and I didn’t tell them who I was, just that I was trying to reach theGrafvon Natterdorff and this was the address he had given me. He did not leave a forwarding address with the concierge, although he does sometimes stop by and ask whether any messages have arrived for him since he left.”
Theoretically, then, I could send a note saying that I didn’t want to have supper, and he would receive it when he got there. But he’d already be there at that point, expecting to find me, which seemed impolite, and besides, we’d lose the opportunity to find out where he actually laid his head.
If he had anything to do with Christopher’s disappearance, we might also find Christopher, although I didn’t dare allow myself to hope for that. Or at least I did my best to talk myself out of hoping.
I was still talking myself out of hoping when it was time to leave. With Christopher’s absence, I had had to put on my own makeup—Crispin was no good at it, or at least he was too heavy-handed for me. The theatrical makeup he had learned to do at Cambridge made me look like a trollop, and I had to remove it and start over.
My lovely ivory gown was dirty and torn from my tumble down the Piccadilly Circus tube stop stairs last week, but of course I had worn it to dinner that night, so I couldn’t have worn it again tonight even had it been in perfect condition. You don’t want to give an eligible gentleman the impression that you only have one serviceable gown. Instead, I found myself having to decide between the apple green frock Crispin had told me made me look like a Bramley, the butter yellow gown he had once likened to the marvelous Josephine Baker’s banana skirt, and the salmon pink I had worn the night we had found Flossie Schlomsky’s dead body.
That particular gown had also prompted the comparison of my humble self to a stalk of rhubarb—Crispin seemed to have a strange fixation on fruits when it came to describing my attire—but truly, that last part paled in comparison to the memory of Flossie.
And that part ought to have disqualified the salmon forever. I had, in fact, not worn it since that night. I had bought the ivory to replace it. But now, looking at them all, I found my eyes drawn to it.
“Apple, banana, or rhubarb?” I asked Crispin.
