Eventually he persuaded her back into bed and fetched her Luminal and spoon-fed her the tincture. It would be easy when she was in this state to encourage her to drink the entire bottle. Better, surely, than the slow death she seemed intent on. Of the soul, if not the body. Both her soul and his. He replaced the stopper in the bottle and put it back on the high shelf in the kitchen where it lived, as if his wife were a child or a dog who wouldn’t be able to reach it when all she had to do was stand on a chair to find oblivion.
She was soon drowsy and he left her to sleep, deciding that he may as well travel to Knightsbridge and find out how Miss Kelling had got on in the Amethyst, rather than wait until tomorrow for her “report,” as she called it. He had no expectation that she would have found the girls she was looking for, but perhaps she had managed to observe something untoward in the club, something that might be of some use to him. Going to the Warrender was legitimate police business, he argued with himself. It was a specious argument and he knew it. What he wanted was to see Miss Kelling, he wanted the respite of her company.
* * *
—
She was not at the Warrender, and he was shooed away by a termagant and then spent an hour in Hyde Park, thinking that somehow he would come across her amongst the weekend crowds, but the only person he saw whom he recognized was Niven Coker, ambling along with his dog as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Frobisher couldn’t imagine what it would be like to feel so unburdened by life.
Miss Kelling, however, was as fugitive as a wood nymph. Not a nymph, Frobisher reminded himself. He must not be fanciful. He must leave the sunshine and return to Lottie to suffer with her.
Necromancy
Gwendolen woke to a bright beam of sunlight slicing through a gap in the curtains. She had absolutely no idea where she was, but there was a handy clock by the bed—nearly ten!
She realized that she had been woken by someone knocking on the door, but before she could croak, “Come in,” the door opened and a maid came in bearing a large tray, with a cheery “Morning, miss. Did you sleep well?”
Hugging the bedsheet to herself for modesty, Gwendolen struggled to sit up. “I don’t think I ordered any breakfast,” she said. The maid bobbed a curtsey, “Compliments of the management, miss,” and scooted out of the door before Gwendolen could ask her anything else.
A silver pot of coffee, a jug of cream, warm rolls with pale butter, a dish of lime marmalade and, beneath an impressive silver dome, a perfect omelette, fluffy and flecked with finnan haddock. A mere week ago she had been breakfasting on toast and jam made from blackberries foraged in York Cemetery, cultivated by the bonemeal of the dead. Her mother, so recently laid in that same ground, must already be feeding the soil. No doubt she would resent contributing.
Gwendolen wondered how long her money would last if she moved into a hotel and lived a sybaritic life. Not long, probably. Wasn’t this how the devil caught you? You travelled in a cream Hispano-Suiza and shrank from the idea of returning to the omnibus. You tasted pheasant (or a perfect Arnold Bennett omelette) and your spirits drooped at the return to boiled mutton. Gwendolen could have added to this list indefinitely from her own experience of the last few years. She had boiled a good deal of mutton since the war.
She would never have thought of coming here if it hadn’t been for Niven. What had Frobisher said? It is very easy to be seduced by these people.
* * *
—
It turned out that the Savoy was indeed the kind of place that would not only send someone to a shop on your behalf but could also persuade a shop to break the Sunday trading laws and open up just for you. Gwendolen gave her measurements to a very pleasant, uniformed housekeeper, much the same age as herself, who went to Swan and Edgar and bought a complete outfit, from hat down to shoes and all the layers in between. The housekeeper asked no questions and Gwendolen gave no explanation. The rich really do have different rules, she supposed. Gwendolen was beginning to realize that people in London didn’t seem to care what you did, especially if you had money. “In London,” Azzopardi had said, “the law exists to be broken.”
“How much did that come to?” she asked the housekeeper when she delivered the new clothes.
“You can pay when you settle your bill, madam,” she said.
It was well after midday before Gwendolen—rather reluctantly—checked out, but when she came to pay, the man on reception said, “The bill’s been seen to, madam, it’s on the gentleman’s account.”
“And my Swan and Edgar bill?”
“That too, madam. All paid.”
Did she want to be beholden to Niven? Or any of the Cokers? On the one hand, it was, ultimately, the Cokers and their club who were responsible for the ruination of her clothes and for her being locked out of the Warrender, so perhaps it was only fair that they should have paid for her to stay here. Still, she had the odd feeling that she was being bought somehow.
“No,” she said pleasantly. “Please void Mr. Coker’s cheque, I shall pay for myself.”
* * *
—
The doorman at the Savoy hailed a cab for Gwendolen to return her to the dull prospect of the Warrender. It may as well have been a pumpkin pulled by six white mice.
Had her absence been noticed by the eagle eye of Mrs. Bodley? Or would the chambermaid have told Mrs. Bodley that Gwendolen’s bed had not been slept in last night? She had encountered the girl in the corridor once or twice, her arms laden with piles of folded sheets and towels, and they had exchanged smiles.
It helped, Gwendolen thought, as the cab disgorged her outside the Warrender, that she had no overnight bag with her and she was wearing her new Swan and Edgar outfit—a neat dress with a sailor collar and a kick-pleat skirt beneath a linen duster coat. A new hat, too, not a green one, she was celebrating spring with straw.
With any luck, she would look as though she had slipped out for a morning service at Holy Trinity, Brompton, rather than having lazily left a double bed in a hotel where she had slept naked between the sheets. Quelle horreur! Not to mention the blood and bullets of the previous evening’s drama. The Distressed might be entertained by her adventures but Mrs. Bodley would be appalled.
There was no avoiding Mrs. Bodley at the reception desk. She greeted Gwendolen with “Another parcel was delivered for you while you were out, Miss Kelling.”
Perhaps a parcel would appear every day, like some form of magic, or a fairy tale.
“By a good-looking man?”
“No. A delivery boy. On a Sunday,” Mrs. Bodley added with a shudder, as if Christianity itself had been brought into question. “I have never known such a thing.”
It seemed the Savoy was not the only power that could overcome the law, for Mrs. Bodley took out a large Liberty’s box from beneath the counter and said, “Would you like it sent up to your room, Miss Kelling?”
“No, I’ll take it myself.” It was an awkward shape, quite long and flat, and between them, Gwendolen and the box only just fitted into the cage of the elevator. It ascended slowly and she felt relieved when she was finally out of Mrs. Bodley’s disapproving oversight.
* * *
—
Gwendolen untied the purple ribbon and took the lid off the box. And there it was in all its untarnished glory—the sky-blue silk dress with the silver filigree embroidery. For a wild second she thought it must be the original, cleansed of blood, but that, of course, would have been impossible (or a miracle). Niven, she thought. It was, like the paying of her hotel bill, a gallant (some might say grandiose) gesture, but he could just have given her money to cover the cost. And how did he know her size? She imagined him assessing her. It made her uncomfortable.
In the box, there was an envelope on which was written “Miss Kelling.” So there was a note this time. Inside the envelope was a card, embossed with the words Mrs. Ellen Coker, Proprietor of the Amethyst Club and a telephone number. Gwendolen turned the card over. On the back, in a very small, neat hand, was written: “Dear Miss Kelling. Please find the enclosed in recompense for your trouble. Would you telephone me, please? I have something I would like to discuss with you.” It was signed “Mrs. Nellie Coker.”