Page 85 of Peril in Piccadilly
Lifting my head made me feel dizzy, so I stayed flat on my back and took stock. Nothing hurt, other than my head, and even that didn’t feel like an injury but more like I had drunk too much and was recovering. A slow probing over my temples and the back of my head found no injuries.
I was still dressed, including shoes, so that was a positive thing. No one had thought to cover me with a blanket, and that was perhaps less positive, although it didn’t seem to have hurt me appreciably.
The surface I was lying on was somewhat squishy, so I decided that it was more likely to be a (low quality) mattress than the floor. I fumbled around and found the edge of the mattress, so yes, I was lying on a small cot somewhere in a room I didn’t recognize.
A prison cell? It was certainly small and bare enough for that, but I couldn’t recall doing anything that would have gotten me arrested. The last thing I remembered was dinner at the Savoy, and talking to Wolfgang about his grandfather.
Had something happened to me on my way home? Had I been kidnapped in the same way that Christopher had been?
Was Christopher here?
I rolled over on my side and peered down at the floor. The movement made a wave of nausea rise through my esophagus, and I swallowed it back, determinedly, and flopped onto my back again. The floor had been empty, and so was the rest of the room. I was alone, although that didn’t mean that there couldn’t be another room just like this one nearby, that had Christopher in it.
It was around this time that I realized that the knocking in the walls was real and not a product of my headache. The entire room vibrated, and there were banging sounds from outside the room, and the smell of… my nostrils flared. Was that petrol?
It was, wasn’t it? The air stank of petrol and the floor was moving. It wasn’t simply that I was dizzy and discombobulated from whatever had happened to me. The room vibrated and the floor moved.
It took much longer than it should have done to put those two things together—or three things: add the smell of petrol to the other two—and come up with an answer.
A boat. I was on a boat. On the water.
I had been here before, I realized, or at least somewhere very like it. Twelve years ago, my mother had put me on a boat bound for Southampton, and had telegrammed her sister in England to meet me there. It was a long time ago, and I had been small and distraught about leaving my mother and the only home I had ever known, so I didn’t remember much about the trip. No details, just disjointed impressions. But I did remember the feeling of claustrophobia, and of being somewhere I didn’t want to be. And the rocking, the constant rocking of the floor.
If I left the cabin and went above deck, would I see land, or only open water?
Could I even leave the cabin if I wanted to?
I sat up carefully—my head swam, but it helped to know that the unsteadiness was the water, not me—and got my feet under me. I wobbled a bit when I stood, and my head did a slow roll. The nausea reasserted itself, and I had to close my eyes and wait it out, but I stayed upright.
The door was four steps away. I made it there and leaned on the wall for several moments before I could fumble for the lock.
By now, things had started to come back to me, or if nothing else, I was beginning to reason a few things out.
I was still wearing my salmon frock, so I had been abducted before I could make it home from supper. I remembered going to the Savoy, and sitting across from Wolfgang at table. I also remembered, quite distinctly, Crispin telling me, not once but several times, that he and Tom would be on hand, in separate motorcars, to follow Wolfgang home.
I must have been taken by someone else, then. Perhaps Wolfgang had put me into a Hackney for the trip home, and then he had gone off to his… rooms in Shoreditch, wasn’t it? I had a vague memory of him admitting to that. Unless I had imagined it, of course. My head was still fuzzy.
I was absolutely certain about what Crispin had told me, however. He and Tom would be outside the Savoy to follow Wolfgang to where he was going. One or both of them must have followed him home, then, and meanwhile, the Hackney driver had taken me… where? To the Royal Albert Docks? To Southampton?
Had I walked onto the boat under my own steam?
I couldn’t remember doing that. I couldn’t remember anything after talking to Wolfgang at table in the Savoy Restaurant. I had felt dizzy, hadn’t I? And he had told me that he would take care of me?
I had a mental glimpse of a cup of tea—and of a man’s hand knocking it over. And then déjà vu to another cup of tea, and… the same thing happening?
But no, I’d been drinking coffee last night, surely? The tea incident had taken place a long time ago, at least the first time. Crispin and I had reached for a cup of tea at the same time, one that Aunt Charlotte had poured for me. It had been just after I’d been shot, hadn’t it? Late April at Sutherland Hall. He had been trying to help me, because the wound in my arm made it hard for me to reach for things.
Or perhaps he hadn’t been helping. Perhaps he had knocked the cup over on purpose. He’s not usually clumsy, so perhaps there had been something in it that he hadn’t wanted me to drink. If Aunt Charlotte hadn’t been above trying to shoot me, she wouldn’t have hesitated to poison me, either. So I might owe him thanks for saving my life on that occasion. If I ever got out of here, I’d be sure to tell him so.
But that was a long time ago. More recently, Wolfgang had knocked a cup of tea practically into my lap. Not tonight, though. Tonight, we’d been drinking coffee.
No, that tea incident had been a few days ago. And like Crispin, Wolfgang wasn’t usually clumsy.
It had been just after that, hadn’t it, that the maître d’ had delivered the note for Wolfgang? Perhaps Wolfgang had put something in my tea, and the maître d’ had seen it, and then Wolfgang had aborted the mission once he knew that his action had been noticed?
And then he had tried again tonight, when another maître d’ was on duty, a less observant one, and he had succeeded in getting me here?
I could have spent a long time pondering the past, but I thought the best thing I could do for myself was to try to find a way out of my predicament. Before we arrived in Germany (or perhaps somewhere else; perhaps we were not on our way back to the Weimar Republic) and certainly before Wolfgang could arrive at my door to—just as a possibility—force me into a wedding ceremony by sea captain, or alternatively, if I refused, toss me overboard.
