Peril in Piccadilly

London, October 1926

Someone is out to get Pippa Darling.

Or perhaps not. The tumble down the stairs into the underground involved a lot of people, all of whom said someone pushed them, and all of whom, no doubt, had wronged someone, somehow, at some point.

And the Hackney cab that jumped the pavement and tried to run Pippa and her flat-mate Christopher down on their way home… well, it might have been after Christopher, mightn’t it?

It might even have been after Lady Laetitia Marsden. She wasn’t there, of course, but she looks rather a lot like Christopher in drag, and he was dressed as his alter-ego Kitty Dupree at the time.

Neither Christopher nor Pippa would mind very much if Laetitia were to be run over—it would save Christopher’s cousin Crispin from having to marry her—but of course it wasn’t either of them in the Hackney. They were too busy getting out of the way of the tires.

If Laetitia was the intended victim, the jewelry theft at Marsden House might have had something to do with it. The Sutherland engagement ring is gone, right out from under Laetitia’s nose. She even saw the man who took it. Not to recognize, of course, but perhaps he doesn’t know that. So yes, it might have been Lady Laetitia in the headlamps of the Hackney.

Or it might have been Christopher. Or it might have been Pippa.