Page 97 of Peril in Piccadilly
It had been an understandable reaction, of course. It’s instinctive, to put a barrier between ourselves and something unpleasant. But we needed to know that Christopher wasn’t in there, too.
I put out a hand. “Lend me your handkerchief, if you don’t mind.”
“Are you going in there?” But he handed me the silk square.
“I have to,” I said, accepting it. “We have to make absolutely sure that there’s nothing we can do.”
“He was dead, Philippa. There was absolutely no question about that.”
No, there hadn’t been. “Just let me look,” I said and turned to the door. “You can open the other door if you’d like. If the body is behind this one, it’s not likely that there’s anything unpleasant in the other room.”
He gave me a look and a mutter, but he stalked across the landing to the other door and pushed it open. I took the opportunity to do the same while his back was turned.
The bedroom in the back was small and dark. As it would be, when there were wooden boards nailed up across the window. I squinted into the darkness, but saw no sign of anything other than the very obvious body on the floor. There was a bed up against the wall—it must have been where Flossie had slept while she’d been kept here—and a wardrobe and a few other odds and ends, but no other sign of life. The bed had a few drops of blood on the pillow, I noticed when I inched closer. Nothing at all like the puddle that covered the floorboards under the corpse, though; just a few drops, as if someone had had a tiny scratch or puncture. The blood was dry, of course, as it would be, if it had been here since before Flossie died.
From this angle, I got a slightly better look at the dead gentleman, and caught my breath quickly.
“What?” Crispin wanted to know. He had returned from the other bedroom and was loitering in the doorway.
I eyed him. He didn’t have the look of a man who had come across anything else unpleasant. “Nothing?”
He shook his head. “Do you recognize him?”
“It’s hard to be sure, with him on his front like that.” And when all the blood in his body—the part of it that wasn’t in the dried puddle on the floor—had migrated to the lowest point and had turned his face purple. “But he looks like the maître d’ from the Savoy.”
“Not the chap from last night?”
“The chap from three or four days ago. The one who brought the note to the table after Wolfgang had dosed my tea.”
“Ah.” Crispin took another look at him. “Yes, I can see that. He saw what Wolfie did, and tried to extort money. And when Wolfie couldn’t pay, he—Wolfie—killed the bloke instead.”
I nodded. It was as good an explanation as any. “There’s no sign of Christopher in here.”
“Nor in the other room. There’s a suggestion that someone has been using it—more recently than two months ago—but it’s more likely to have been Wolfie, I’d say.”
“No rented rooms in Shoreditch, then?”
“Why pay for lodging if he could stay here for free?” Crispin said savagely. “Let’s go.”
He turned towards the staircase.
“We have to tell someone about the body.” I glanced at it on my way past.
“Gardiner,” Crispin said over his shoulder. “Best not to involve the local constabulary when it’s Scotland Yard’s case. Or when we don’t want to be detained.”
“So we just leave him there?” I shut the door behind me, but I couldn’t help one last look over my shoulder at the dead man.
“I’m not picking him up and taking him with us,” Crispin said. After a moment, he added, “He’s been there for several days already. A few more hours won’t matter to him.”
He started down the staircase.
It seemed like something we ought to take care of sooner rather than later, but perhaps he was right and it would be better to pass the responsibility on to Tom and Scotland Yard instead of involving the local Thornton Heath chaps.
“Wait for me,” I told his back and scurried to the top of the stairs and down on his heels.
ChapterTwenty-Two
“Welcome home, Miss Darling,”Evans greeted me when we, at long last, made our way into the foyer at the Essex House. “My lord.” He gave Crispin a bow.
