Page 96 of Peril in Piccadilly
Crispin nodded and took a look around the sitting room. “This is depressing.”
It was. The furniture was old and worn, and here, too, everything was covered with dust and dead flies and mouse droppings. There were dead plants on the windowsill, and that permeating odor of sweet rot.
“The stairs,” I pointed. The corpse—rat or otherwise—must be up there, because it wasn’t down here. This was a small house, just the three rooms downstairs and, I assumed, two bedrooms and lavatory on the first floor.
We stopped at the bottom of the staircase and peered up. It was narrow, and would allow only one of us to ascend at a time.
“I’ll go first,” Crispin said.
“I’m older,” I countered.
“I’m the man.”
“I’m older.”
“I don’t want you to see this, if—” He stopped before saying it.
“I don’t want to see it, either,” I said, “but there’s simply no way, if Christopher is up there, that I’m not going to look at him. I’ll be one step behind you. But if you insist, you can go first.”
He nodded tightly and turned to contemplate the staircase again. After a moment, he squared his shoulders and started up. I followed.
The stench got worse and worse as we got closer to the top of the stairs. I stopped breathing through my nose as soon as we got halfway up, and began to draw air through my mouth instead. The idea of that was unpleasant, of course, but it made the smell a little easier to take.
Crispin reached the top of the stairs and stepped aside to give me room. We stood side by side on the landing, looking at three closed doors.
“That’s most likely the lavatory,” I said nasally, pointing to the one in the middle. “We know that that one—” on our right, “—is the back bedroom. That’s the one with the boarded-up window. The one on the left must be the front bedroom.”
Crispin nodded.
“Bathroom first,” I said.
He shot me a look. “Do you have to vomit?”
I did, of course, or it felt as if I could easily do, but I shook my head. “Least likely place for a body. Let’s eliminate it.”
“Be my guest.” He gestured to the door.
“So much for being the man,” I told him, as I pushed past him and took hold of the handle. There was a moment of squaring of shoulders, and then I pushed the door open.
The lavatory was small and dinky and dirty, with a pedestal sink and toilet, but it was corpse free. I breathed out and pulled the door shut again.
We locked eyes for a second across the small landing, and then we both turned to the door to the back bedroom. If Christopher was anywhere in this house, it was likely that he was there.
“I’ll do it this time.” Crispin crossed to the door and wrapped his hand around the handle. I put a hand against his back—for support—and peered over his shoulder as he pushed the door open.
And gagged as he slammed it shut again. “Oh, God.” The toilet was right there, of course, but I swallowed hard, and did it again, and kept myself from sicking up.
“Could be worse,” Crispin managed. He was pale and looked clammy, but he wasn’t vomiting either.
“How?”
“It wasn’t Kit.”
No, it hadn’t been. It had been a man in a dark suit, not someone wearing my serge skirt and high heels.
“Did you look at the rest of the room?”
“I mostly just slammed the door shut as soon as I could,” Crispin admitted.
