“There, there,” he said, rubbing her back. He had children, she reminded herself.
What if she had blabbed? Or told him that she intended to? Told him that she’d had enough of his game and was going to turn him in? What would he have done then? Her brain felt febrile. She knew him to be ruthless, that was why she had liked him, but what if he turned that ruthlessness on her? She would have to stay on her toes. The thought gave her some energy and she said, “You should go.”
“I’ll see you soon, Edith.” He gave her a pecky kiss on her clammy forehead. She was relieved when he left. A nurse came in and said, “What lovely flowers, Miss Coker, I’ll put them in a vase.”
She could still see him, in the corridor. See him being ambushed by one of the night sisters, see him putting on the charm. He couldn’t have got where he was without charm. She heard the nurse’s silly trill of laughter as she said, “What are you doing here? We’re not all under arrest, are we, Inspector Maddox?”
* * *
—
Maddox! Nellie was so surprised—a rare occurrence—that she said, “Oh,” out loud, prompting a passing ward nurse to ask her if everything was all right. “Quite, thank you,” Nellie said. “Are you looking for someone?” the nurse persisted.
“I’ve found them, thank you,” Nellie said, gazing at the end of the corridor, where Edith’s room was situated. The curtains had been pulled aside (she must have a word with someone about that) and Nellie could see in quite clearly. The nurse lingered, it was long past visiting time and she was confused by Nellie’s presence, but Maddox was not the only one who could circumvent the matron’s regulations. A crisp, new one-pound note could get you in (and out) of almost anywhere, in Nellie’s experience. She had a pocketful in her coat, a sable. Even her Chandos Place dressmaker could not tailor the coat to make Nellie look like anything other than a giant mammal. (“A beaver, or a very large otter,” Betty said to Shirley. “When she dies, that sable is mine. If she dies,” Shirley said.)
Nellie made a gesture of dismissal towards the nurse. The nurse found herself obediently withdrawing, bewitched by Nellie’s mysterious powers.
Edith had confessed to her mother when on her near-deathbed in the back of the Bentley. “Back street?” a bewildered Nellie had said. “Some woman with a knitting needle and a spoon?” When there were perfectly good clinics in Harley Street that she could have taken Edith to. What was she thinking?
Edith did not, however, admit to the identity of the father. “Who is he?” Nellie persisted. “Is he married?” But Edith had remained tight-lipped and then slipped into unconsciousness, and Nellie had been left in the dark as well, which was not a place that she liked to be. Edith was never fawned over by men. She seemed an unlikely candidate for lust.
Now, Nellie was creeping around, spying on her own daughter in the hope that the mysterious lover might show his face. This was most certainly not a job for the spies she had in her pay. Far too private.
There he was, perched on the edge of her bed for all the world to see. Maddox—Maddox, of all people!—holding Edith’s hand, like any common lover. He stood up as if to leave and Nellie slipped out of sight behind a screen, although not before she had seen Maddox lean over and kiss Edith goodbye.
All the time she had been in Holloway, Maddox had been seducing Edith. Edith was the key to the Coker empire—turn her and you had entrance. The books, the money, the connections, how it all worked. The pregnancy would have been the cherry on the top for him. Not only would he have possessed their secrets but her blood as well, although the two were interchangeable, really.
* * *
—
Edith had been corrupted by Maddox. Edith, her most trusted child. Edith must be brought back into the fold and protected from Maddox, who was undoubtedly using her for his own ends. He had already harmed Edith, how much more damage could he wreak? On Edith, on all of them.
If nothing else—God, patience, flowers, all lay by the wayside—Nellie still believed in loyalty. She had always known that Maddox would betray her one day, he didn’t have a trustworthy bone in his body, but she was surprised at the method he had used to achieve his ends.
When she was sure that he had gone, Nellie made her way out to the Bentley, parked in a side street to avoid curious eyes.
“Home?” Hawker asked optimistically. He was hoping for an early night.
“No, drop me at the Amethyst,” Nellie said. She would have been a grandmother if the knitting needle had not intervened. The thought made her queasy.
* * *
—
Before she had left the hospital, Nellie had collared a young ward maid on night duty and told her to draw the curtains of Edith’s room. “And get rid of those freesias as well. Throw them out with the rubbish.” The ward maid did not do as instructed, instead she took the flowers home at the end of her shift and gave them to her mother. “Freesias,” she said. “How lovely.”
Though She Be but Little She Is Fierce
Tired and hungry, Freda trudged wearily on through the inhospitable streets, eventually finding asylum in, of all places, a public library, in Westminster. It must have been the owner of the Neal Street café who seeded the idea in her mind. (“Oi, miss, this isn’t a library.”)
Cissy, of course, had suggested to Freda that her friend Gwendolen might get her a job in York Library. Freda had recoiled at the idea, but now was a different matter. She would happily spend all day shelving books if it meant that at the end of it she had food to eat and a bed to lie in. It could not be worse than anything that had happened to her in the Adelphi.
The reference section seemed to afford the best refuge and so Freda chose a book at random from the shelves and took a seat at an empty table, tucking her suitcase beneath her feet in an effort to make it inconspicuous. So far she had managed to avoid the eagle eye of any librarian. She imagined one saying, “Oi, miss, this isn’t a café,” although a librarian probably wouldn’t say “oi.” Gwendolen certainly wouldn’t.
It wasn’t long before an elderly gentleman approached her and Freda thought, Uh-oh, here we go—she was either going to be thrown out or he was going to proposition her. But instead he bent down and in a gentle murmur said that he had noticed that she had no writing materials, could he lend her paper and pencil so that she could take notes from her book?
Thus it was that Freda spent a fair bit of the afternoon having to scribble nonsense from Jane’s Fighting Ships to maintain the charade. Who was Jane?, she wondered. Women were not usually interested in ships, let alone “fighting ships.” What on earth did people see in books? They were so boring, although not the Greek myths, she was willing to make an exception for them. If only books were edible, how much more use they would be!
Eventually, a grim-looking librarian advanced on Freda and Freda knew her time was up and she sighed and gathered her belongings. The kindly gentleman was still taking notes from his own weighty and dull-looking tome and Freda bobbed him a little curtsey of thanks as she passed him. He would probably have given her a shilling if she had asked, but that would have made her feel cheap. (“We’re all cheap in the eyes of the gods,” Duncan said. “He means the war,” Vanda said.)
The kindly gentleman smiled back at her and acknowledged her curtsey with a little dip of his head and then he reached a hand out towards her and she thought maybe this would be a shilling after all, but no, he was trying to fish beneath her skirt with his bony old hand. Not so kindly after all! Freda shook him off in disgust. If she hadn’t already reshelved Jane’s Fighting Ships she would have hit him over the head with it.
Sometimes Freda felt as though everyone in the world wanted to take a bite out of her.
* * *
—