He nodded toward where she stood rooted beside the door. Though her exit was no longer restricted, Pru found herself unable to move. Mrs. Spencer’s demeanor had flipped. She was at once more attentive, ready to play. Pru wanted to stick around and finally hear the full tale.
“Miss Valentine? What does Miss Valentine know of your recordings?”
“I played her the tapes. Then I promptly reached my limit and chucked the device against the wall.”
“You threw it?”
“It didn’t break!” Pru chirped. “He didn’t use enough force to cause damage. It was more like a high lob.”
She arched her arm to demonstrate.
“Many thanks for that,” Win said. “A bloke can’t feel too manly around here, can he?”
“I want to be recorded,” Mrs. Spencer said. “I can’t trust you to write my words as I say them. You don’t seem particularly bright. No offense.”
“How could I possibly take offense to that?” he said and rolled his eyes. “You win, Mrs. Spencer. If you provide a single crumb of information not web-footed or feathered in nature, I will gladly record your musings.”
He opened a desk drawer. After groping its contents for thirty seconds, Win found an unused tape. He jammed it into the recorder and tapped the red circle.
“Where would you like to start?” he asked.
“I was born in 1881.”
“Righto,” Win said with a nod. “Just as the Duchess of Marlborough was.”
“No,” Mrs. Spencer said. “I mean 1892. My apologies. I’m old, you see.”
“I use that excuse all the time, too.”
“Yes, yes. I was born in 1892, at the Hotel Brighton in Paris. It was on the Rue de Rivoli across from the Tuileries Garden. My first official home was at Fourteen Rue Pierre Charron, a few blocks off the Champs-élysées. My family was from America but I lived most of my life in Europe and consider myself a Parisian, through and through.”
Win jotted a few notes. Pru tried to see them from her place near the door.
“My mother was a known femme fatale,” Mrs. Spencer continued. “More than that, she was a demimondaine, a bygone being who was equal parts countess and courtesan.”
“Demimondaine,” Win said, addressing Pru. “A prostitute, basically. But higher class.”
“A prostitute?” She gawked.
“Oh, Miss Valentine, don’t get so prudish about it,” Mrs. Spencer clucked. “Why am I even bothering? I can’t properly explain this to a woman of the modern era, what with her job-seeking and bra-burning.”
“Note to manuscript. Mrs. Spencer glared at Miss Valentine upon speaking the word ‘bra.’”
“Believe me, there was honor in the position, in one’s ability to use her beauty and charm to make a life. Quite a nice life, it should be stated. The last home Mother lived in was a castle, decorated with unicorns and virgins.”
“Not the least bit vulgar,” Win said. “Though this is a woman who traded sex for peignoirs and incited at least one death.”
“I quite don’t know what you’re speaking about.”
“Note to manuscript: Mrs. Spencer is sniffing haughtily as can be.”
“Are you interviewing me or adding your commentary?”
“Both,” he said. “Miss Valentine, you look uncomfortable standing around like that. Why not have a seat?”
With both pairs of eyes on her, Pru scuffled against the wall and planted herself at the far side of the bed, near Win’s pillow, which still had on it faint traces of his unwashed, musky scent. Her heart rate sped up by a few extra beats.
“Where was I?” Mrs. Spencer asked, watching Pru.
“Your mother,” Win reminded her.
“Right. Mother. She was a majestic being. A noted femme fatale, as I mentioned. This got her into a spate of trouble.”
“I’ll say.”
“Mother was … her beauty … it was a crashing chandelier. She was elegant and graceful and made a scene simply by walking through a door. Her luxurious chestnut hair was envied more than her figure and her clothes, which was saying something given her resplendent serpentine dresses. She had accounts at the finest shops, bills paid by the finest men.”
“Like I said, high-class prostitution.”
“Mother traveled the world,” Mrs. Spencer went on, intent on ignoring the wisecrack, a solid strategy when dealing with Win. “But never without the four of us girls and our accompanying nurses, nursery maids, and governesses. We toured every major country in Europe, and even some minor ones. We summered in Newport, where our American cousins thought us fast merely because they caught us warming our bloomers at the fire.
“We visited Africa. South America. The far Orient. But mostly we stayed in Paris. Sometimes we lived at the best hotels, other times in meticulously appointed flats in the Marais. Either way, Paris was our home.”
“Did you study in Paris?” Win asked. “As a young girl?”