Page 94 of Peril in Piccadilly
And I absolutely refused to believe that Wolfgang had murdered Christopher. There was no reason for him to do so, not even if Christopher had discovered that Wolfgang lived in rented rooms in Shoreditch. That was not a killing matter. And the idea that we might get to the cottage in Thornton Heath and find Christopher dead was one I would not countenance. So no, Wolfgang was not a murderer. Call him a kidnapper and leave it at that.
At any rate, the drive had not been unpleasant. We had discussed our hopes of finding Christopher alive and well. I had regaled him with a description of what had transpired during my last visit to Thornton Heath, since Crispin hadn’t been there for that. We had talked about the likelihood (or lack thereof) that Tom and Finchley and the lifeboat crew would find Wolfgang alive—poor in Crispin’s opinion, a bit more hopeful in mine—and whether it was possible that he might have made it back onto the freighter after the lifeboat navigated away with us onboard.
The possibility that Wolfgang had survived the water and was on his way to Germany even as we spoke was a bit of all right with me, I’ll admit. I didn’t much like the idea of his being dead, but having him out of the country—and out of my life—was better than the possibility that he had made it back to shore and that I would see him again.
“You’re too soft,” Crispin complained when I said as much.
I scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. No one knows better than you how well I hold a grudge.”
He slanted me a sideways look. “I’m not seeing a grudge in this case.”
“It’s only because it’s a choice between this and death,” I said. “I’d rather have him be alive than dead. I don’t wish death on anyone. And I’d rather he be alive in Germany than in England, so I don’t have to deal with him.”
“I’d rather him be alive in prison,” Crispin grumbled, and I supposed I had to give him that. Besides, if anyone in the family was better at holding a grudge than me, it was him.
At any rate, the sun was up and warming our backs when we drove into Thornton Heath and began to look for the rental cottage. I could no longer remember the address, although I did recall that the cottage was termed Ivy Cottage, and of course I knew I would recognize it when I saw it. But that was different from knowing where to go to find it. We ended up spending fifteen minutes just driving around peering at houses, in the hopes that I would see something I recognized, until that actually happened.
“Right there,” I said, and he peered out the windshield.
“Where?”
“At the corner. Turn. There!”
“Oh.” He turned the corner, a bit too abruptly. “I thought you meant?—”
“I know what you thought. But this is the road. At the end of it, there’s a cottage on the right that sits a bit apart from the others. The drive is on the right before the house itself.”
Crispin nodded. “Just point to it when we get closer.”
By then I was on the edge of my seat, with both hands braced on the console, trying to make the H6 move faster. Not that it couldn’t move faster than it did—a Hispano-Suiza H6 had set the Brooklands record in 1924—but it wasn’t wise to employ those kinds of speeds in the middle of Thornton Heath.
“There! There!”
I pointed. Crispin followed the direction of my finger, and wrinkled his nose. “Not very picturesque, is it?”
It wasn’t. I had noticed the same thing the last time I was here, as a matter of fact. You would expect a house with a name such as Ivy Cottage to be a lovely, rambling sort of place, covered with greenery and climbing roses. Here, there was a squat brick house—and not attractive brick, either—behind a sagging gate, with a barren front yard and a pockmarked drive that led back to a dilapidated garage. The last time we had been here, the garage had held a black Hackney, and the occupants of Ivy Cottage had been frantically packing their belongings preparatory to making their getaway. This time, the garage doors stood open and the space inside was empty but for some debris and empty petrol cans.
“I suppose the police probably took the motorcar,” I said as Crispin brought the Hispano-Suiza to a stop beside the back stoop.
He shot me a look. “What’s that?”
“There was a motorcar here back in August. A black Hackney. I suppose the police must have taken it.”
“Or Wolfie did,” Crispin said, which made sense now that I thought about it. He would have needed a way to get back and forth to London, and it explained the black Hackney that had come so close to running Christopher and myself down the other night. “It’s parked at Ramsgate, as it happens. It was the vehicle he used to get you there.”
“Was it really? And nobody thought anything of it?”
“I don’t know what Gardiner and Finchley thought,” Crispin said as he turned off the motor. “They were in the police issue Tender. I was alone in the H6. And I had no idea that there had been, or ought to be, a black Hackney here.”
I glanced at him. “I do appreciate you coming after me, you know. In case I didn’t say it already. You didn’t have to do that.”
He glanced back. “Yes, Darling, I did. Kit would kill me if I hadn’t done whatever I could do to get you back in one piece.”
“Christopher wasn’t there,” I pointed out. What I didn’t say, was that he might not be there again.
“He’ll hear about it. And he’d have had something to say about it if I hadn’t stepped up.”
He pushed his door open before he added, “Besides, I’m not going to let you be doped and abducted and not do something to stop it. You’re part of the family, Darling, whether I like it or not.”
