Page 91 of Peril in Piccadilly
“I have it on good authority,” Tom said, “that he has been disinherited by his grandfather. That makes him just like the rest of us, doesn’t it?”
He didn’t wait for either of us to respond, just flapped his hands at us. “Off you go. Into the wheelhouse where I can’t see you. Shoo.”
We shooed, into the darkest corner we could find, where we curled up side by side and waited for the prisoner to be brought out and down.
“There he is,” Crispin muttered a minute later, when a pair of legs came into view on the freighter’s ladder, descending slowly.
I nodded. “Stay here. You heard what Tom said.”
He shot me a glance. I could see the light reflect off his eyeballs for just a second in the dark. “It would be worth it. I only want to get one good lick in. Just one. You can’t say he doesn’t deserve it.”
“He deserves a lot more than that,” I said. “But I certainly don’t want you ending up in jail over it. Let the police deal with him.”
He sighed. “You’re a better man than I am, Darling.”
“We’ve always known that,” I told him. “Listen, St George.”
“Yes, Darling?”
“Do you have your motorcar at Ramsgate?”
He nodded. “We both followed him. All three of us, actually; Detective Sergeant Finchley was there, too. See, there he is.”
He pointed. I looked, and there he was, Tom’s colleague, making his way down the ladder after Wolfgang. The latter was at the bottom now, turning towards Tom, and as opposed to what Tom had told Crispin earlier, Wolfgang was in fact not in handcuffs. It would have been difficult for him to navigate the ladder with handcuffs on, I supposed, so that may have been why Finchley had taken them off. As we watched, Wolfgang took a step forward and then pivoted to present Tom with his back. He put both arms behind himself. Tom reached towards them, handcuffs in one hand… and just as he was about to make contact, Wolfgang took off, straight for the side of the lifeboat.
Two steps later, he was in the water. We both saw and heard the splash when he hit.
Tom surged forward—I imagined he was on his way over the side of the boat, too—but Finchley’s hand on his shoulder stayed his momentum.
“Light!” the latter called, and elsewhere in the wheelhouse, a switch flicked on and a powerful search-lamp illuminated the water in front of the boat.
Crispin made a move to get up, but I grabbed onto his sleeve. “We promised.”
“He’s off the side and in the water,” Crispin objected. “He won’t see us.” He tugged on his arm so I would free him.
I held on. “Just wait. They may pull him up again in another moment.”
But they didn’t. The lifeboat pulled away from the freighter and began circling, search-lamp sweeping from side to side across the choppy water. Tom and Ian Finchley had gone to the stern, one on each side, and were peering intently into the dark. They had been joined by most of the crew of the lifeboat, everyone who wasn’t necessary to actually maneuver the craft.
“Let me up,” Crispin said irritably. “I want to see.”
“It’s better if you stay here.”
I certainly didn’t want to watch them fish Wolfgang back out of the water, and then add evading arrest to his list of crimes. I wanted even less to watch them fail in fishing him out because he had drowned. I wanted to stay here, in the dark corner of the wheelhouse, where I could pretend that everything was well.
In the end, they gave up. Wolfgang was nowhere to be seen. The lifeboat circled the freighter several times, just in case he had made it to the other side of it and was climbing out of the water there, but there was no sign of him. He was either a very strong swimmer, or he had decided that drowning was preferable to hanging. It was hard to say whether he was right or wrong. I can’t imagine that either is pleasant, really.
“Take us back to Ramsgate,” Tom told the lifeboat crew, “and then you can go back out and look for him one more time, if you want. But I need to get the victim to shore and get her checked out by a physician.”
The coxswain nodded, and the boat turned towards shore, although he kept the search-lamp going.
“This is silly,” I protested. “I’m fine. I don’t need to be looked at by anyone.”
“You were doped, Miss Darling,” Finchley said, “and now you’ve been sitting here in the cold…”
I rolled my eyes. “I slept it off, Finch. I woke up on my own. And I’m not cold. St George gave me his jacket, and then Tom brought me my own. I’m fine.”
“No injuries?”
