Page 95 of Peril in Piccadilly
He slammed his door shut as a sort of final word on the sentiment.
“How extremely gracious of you,” I muttered, but I opened my door and stepped out onto the drive to stand beside him and contemplate the house without saying anything else about it. Instead, I pointed to the upstairs corner window in the back. “See that? Boards nailed across the window.”
He nodded. “That’s where they kept her?”
“So we assumed. She wasn’t here anymore at that point.” She had been in the morgue, after having been murdered the previous night.
Crispin looked around. “It looks deserted.”
Yes, it did. “I could be wrong, and there’s nothing here. It simply struck me as enough of a possibility that we ought to?—”
“Yes, Darling. Of course we ought.”
He eyed the house for a second, with all of the enthusiasm of a man presented with a dead fish.
“I’ll do it,” I said, and stepped forward.
The last time I had been here, the backdoor had been locked and we had had to pick the lock to get inside. Or rather, Wolfgang had done, using two of my Kirbigrips, and I don’t know why his ability to do that hadn’t presented itself as more sinister at the time. It ought to have done. But back then, I had simply been grateful that one of us had had the ability to get the rest of us inside.
This time, the handle moved under my hand, and the door opened smoothly. That didn’t make it any more likely that anyone was kept hostage here, of course, but neither of us mentioned it.
We stepped into the same ugly kitchen as last time, only more dusty and depressing now. Dead flies littered the windowsill and mouse pellets decorated the corners of the floor. There was also a horrible stench in the air, one that made Crispin’s nostrils flare.
“Struth,” he complained, “didn’t anyone think to take out the rubbish before they left?”
“That’s not the smell of rubbish,” I told him tightly. “Not even rubbish that’s festered for two months.”
He glanced at me. “No?”
I shook my head. “Let’s hope it’s a rat and not something worse.”
He turned pale—paler—and for a second, it appeared as if he were thinking of running ahead of me. I wrapped my fingers around his wrist and kept him where he was. His skin was warm under my hand, and I could feel his pulse jumping.
“Are you certain?” he asked. As if he wasn’t perfectly capable of recognizing the odor of decomposing flesh for himself.
“Positive,” I said. “Come on.”
I took a step towards the door to the dining room, tugging him behind me.
He resisted the pull. “Hold on, Darling. Shouldn’t we contact the local constabulary and let them deal with it?”
I eyed him. “It’s going to take them at least twenty minutes to sort themselves out to come here. Perhaps longer. Do you really want to stand outside—” because there was no way I’d breathe this air for any longer than I had to, “—and wait? Without knowing who or what is dead?”
He didn’t answer, and I added, “We’re here. Let’s just keep going and hope for the best.”
If the worst had happened, and Christopher was here, dead, I’d rather know it now than later.
Crispin hesitated, but eventually he gave a tight nod and followed me into the dining room.
“This was where we fought the kidnappers,” I told him, softly, as we crossed the room on our way to the front door and the staircase to the first floor. The furniture was still suffering from the altercation two months later, with overturned chairs and drops of blood here and there on the rug. “Hiram Schlomsky had a sword stick, did I tell you? And he went absolutely mad and swung it at anyone who came within range.”
“And Wolfie had to save your life,” Crispin said disagreeably.
I shot him a look. “Is that what Christopher told you? It wasn’t quite like that. It was a bit of a brawl, with a lot of fists and hair pulling and the like. And while I’m certain that fake Flossie would have liked to murder me, Mrs. Schlomsky was equally determined to murder her. I was never in any real danger. Besides, then Tom and Christopher showed up, and it all turned out quite all right in the end.”
“Kit made it sound like Wolfie swooped in like a knight on a white horse and swept you out of danger,” Crispin said with a grumble, and I giggled.
“Hardly. I mean, I’m happy he was there. The Schlomskys and I were no match for Sid and the two women. Without Wolfgang, they may have overpowered us. They had nothing to lose at that point, after all. They had already murdered the real Flossie. So I’m grateful that he was there to help us. But I wouldn’t have said that he saved my life. I’m not sure my life was ever in any real danger, and besides, as I said, it was only a few minutes before Tom and Christopher turned up.”
