“And this man, the stranger you were dancing with, is he helping you on your mission?”
Gwendolen squirmed under this further catechism. How to explain Constable Cobb, both his appearance and disappearance? To her relief, they had reached the Warrender. They drew up outside the hotel and Niven turned the engine off. “You’ll be in trouble with the Mother Superior, coming in after curfew,” he said.
“You’re determined for it to be a convent.”
“I could drop you at the Savoy instead, it’s not far. They know me there. We’ll pay the bill, of course. We’ve inconvenienced you.”
The Warrender did look rather uninviting. The building was completely dark, not even a light to illuminate the porch. “This will do me just fine,” she said firmly.
He shrugged, as if he didn’t care one way or the other. How irritating he was. He got out and opened the car door for her.
“Was it you who returned my handbag?” Gwendolen asked. “It must have been you,” she added, without waiting for confirmation. “How did you find it?”
“Let’s say I know people.”
“Thieves?”
“Isn’t everyone a thief in some way?”
“No!”
“What a life of virtue you must have lived.”
“You make it sound like an insult.” She slipped his coat from her shoulders and handed it back to him, saying, “Good night, then.”
“Good night.”
She had already mounted the steps of the Warrender when she realized that she had no key for the front door. And there was no night porter, Mrs. Bodley had made a point of telling her. (Mrs. Bodley had made a point of telling her many things.) She would have to raise her from her bed. Oh, my Lord, what a thought. What would Mrs. Bodley make of her dishevelled, blood-spattered state? She must look as though she had murdered someone. She might not be let in, she might be left out on the street like a stray. She shrugged helplessly at Niven, still standing on the pavement. He laughed at her predicament and held open the car door for her. “The Savoy, then, Miss Kelling?” he said.
* * *
—
And thank goodness, really, as in the Warrender the bathroom was at the end of the hall and she would have had to spend what was left of the night scrubbing the bath of the blood she had sluiced off herself, never mind what Mrs. Bodley would have had to say about a guest drawing a bath in the middle of the night. The plumbing in the Warrender was alarmingly noisy and would probably have woken the Distressed, who, according to Mrs. Bodley, were very light sleepers. The alternative would have been an unappealing cold-water sponge bath in her room from the ewer and basin.
Her room in the Savoy, on the other hand, had the luxury of a warm en-suite bathroom with an endless supply of hot water, and if she did leave behind traces of a London gang member’s blood the chambermaid probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid. No doubt the large London hotels, unlike the Warrender, made allowances for indiscretions. After all, wasn’t that what people paid for?
Gwendolen assessed herself in the cheval mirror in her hotel bedroom. What a sight! The Trojan women after the sacking of their city probably looked in better order. Her beautiful new dress, in her possession for only a handful of hours (but what hours!), was ruined beyond rescue. The delicate blue silk—previously the colour of a summer sky—was now little more than a damp scarlet rag; her petticoat, too, as she had been soaked to the skin with the blood of that poor man. The lovely silver sandals that had been fit for an Arcadian princess were now only fit for the dustbin. She peeled off her soiled clothes and put them in a wicker laundry basket in the bathroom. Perhaps she should leave an extra tip for the maid. The clothes were followed by the sandals she had danced in half the night, ruined now beyond repair. Who were you dancing with?
What had happened to Constable Cobb? Your partner seemed to abandon you at the first sign of trouble. Niven was right, it was not the conduct of a gentleman. Gwendolen could only presume that Cobb had been frightened out of his wits, or—a more generous explanation—that he had thought it best not to have his “cover” lifted and had hurried to report back to Frobisher. Or perhaps he was just avoiding the bill at the end of the evening.
The man—Aldo—had, thank goodness, not died, at least not on her watch, but had been taken away in a car by his fellows. They were under the command of the short, well-dressed man who had seemed ambivalent about Aldo’s fate. Luca, she had heard Nellie Coker call him. Frobisher had told her that the Amethyst was crawling with criminals and Frazzini and his men certainly did seem to fit into that category, although they had behaved in a decent fashion towards Gwendolen. She had made them promise to take their comrade-in-arms to a hospital, even if it was only to drop him at the door before driving away. Most of them seemed to have been in the war and one or two of them had obviously seen the inside of a field hospital. They recognized her for the nurse she had been, as she had recognized them for the soldiers they once were. Hopefully Aldo would not be left in a gutter somewhere. (Sorry, Sister…Sorry, Sister…Sorry, Sister.) Of course, one could never predict how a thing would end.
After the bath (glorious) she sank into the bed with its lovely thick sheets—so much nicer than those in the Warrender. She was sleeping naked for the first time in her life. It felt transgressive. What on earth was she going to wear in the morning? She supposed the Savoy was the kind of place where they would go and buy something for you. They must get many stranger requests. The alternative would be to walk naked from the Strand to Knightsbridge like Lady Godiva, although without the horse. Or the modest veil of hair, for that matter. Now, that would be transgressive. And what’s more, would probably lead to her being arrested. Frobisher would have to come and free her. The thought of standing naked in front of Frobisher made her feel flustered and she was grateful that he wasn’t capable of policing her thoughts.
She closed her eyes, worrying that it would take her a long time to get to sleep after the evening’s excitement, but before the thought had even formed fully in her mind she fell into soothing oblivion.
Keeping the Sabbath
“I can’t see anything about the fight,” Betty said. She was yawning her way through the Sunday papers, a great pile of which were delivered to Hanover Terrace every week. She was on the lookout for anything that might have been written in the gossip columns about Saturday night’s skirmish in the Amethyst.
Sundays were languid in the Coker household, it being the day that they all dismounted from the mad, whirling carousel, for even nightclubs needed a day of rest. “I don’t see why,” Nellie grumbled. “If the British Museum can be open on a Sunday, why can’t we?”
“Not quite the same thing, Ma,” Shirley said.
“Open is open,” Nellie said, “closed is closed.” A remark that made no sense at all.
“I can’t believe it hasn’t made the news,” Betty said. She put the papers to one side and started to hollow out a solitary egg with a small spoon. She had been obliged to boil the egg herself as the cook insisted on having Sundays off. They rarely bothered with the niceties of Sunday lunch like other families (“le rosbif,” Nellie called it dismissively). Roast beef was for the suburbs, for the couples from Pinner, not for the Cokers. If they wanted rosbif, Nellie said, then they could go to a restaurant. No Sunday church services either, of course. The Cokers were all heathens, although Nellie fully intended to be given extreme unction at the end in the hope that it would wipe the slate clean of her many sins.
“I thought Vivian Quinn was in the club last night,” Shirley said. “Is there really nothing in his column?”
“No, it’s all about the new Gargoyle, thank goodness.”