Chapter One #2
The constable took the dead gentleman’s shoulder in his large hand and shook him with unexpected vigor.
The stiff body did not bend, but the head was bumped against the wall and the whole corpse suddenly rocked and fell to the side until it was actually leaning against the back door in an even less natural position.
It revealed the dead man’s back for the first time, and the mother-of-pearl-handled pocketknife sticking out between his shoulder blades.
The constable gasped, and Jeremy bolted around the side of the house.
“Well,” Constance said shakily, “that explains him. What about the other one?”
“I need to send for my superiors,” the constable said, stepping hastily backward and almost falling over his own feet. He took the whistle from his pocket. “What is this address?”
When Constance told him, his jaw dropped and he blushed like a girl.
“Please go inside, ma’am. No one is to leave the house until the detectives say so.” He jammed the whistle into his mouth and blew several ear-splitting summonses. Obediently, Constance fled around the house to the area door and let herself in.
Everyone who was awake was in the kitchen while Bibby and Jeremy retold their story.
“Well,” Constance interrupted, “this was not quite the homecoming I had planned. What on earth have you been up to?”
At the kitchen table, heads snapped up. There was a surge of movement toward her, a clatter of chairs, cries of delight.
She was seized and dragged to the table, enthroned in the most comfortable chair and asked so many questions all at once that she laughed and forgot for a moment that there were two dead men on her doorstep.
“When did you get back?”
“How is it being married?”
“What is Italy like? Are the women beautiful? Are the men?”
“Is that gorgeous gown from Italy?”
“Where is the husband?”
“Did you ever leave the bedroom?”
“Fall over any mysteries?”
The last came from Janey, of course, who had been minding the Silver and Grey Inquiries office, and it was this question Constance chose to answer.
“Funnily enough, we did. A story for another time. Did you?”
“Fall over mysteries? They’re falling over me! There’s a mountain of inquiries in the office. I made a start on a few and solved two myself—with Lenny Knox’s help.”
“Good for you,” Constance said warmly. “You can tell me all about them as soon as we are allowed to leave the house. Now, what has been happening?”
While they told her all the establishment news, the footmen took it in turns to watch out of the back window and report any happenings. Several constables and a sergeant turned up, then most of them left again.
“Now we have men without uniforms. Two of ’em,” Max said.
“They’ll be the detectives,” Constance said calmly. “They’re going to want to speak to all of us.”
Janey swore long and fluently, as though she had been saving up the words for just such a situation.
Constance raised an eyebrow at her, and she actually blushed.
“Bad situation, ain’t it?” she said aggressively.
“Bloody coppers swarming all over the house, trying to arrest us all and shut us down. I been there before.”
“Oh, no, they can’t!” Bibby exclaimed, staring at Constance in distress. “Can they, ma’am?”
Constance glanced around at the suddenly frightened faces of the women who had become her friends and the men who helped protect them all. For some, this was the first safety they had known, the first certainty of food and shelter. For all of them, it was home, whether temporarily or not.
Plus, the police in general were the longstanding enemies of most of them.
“No, they can’t,” Constance said. “The house is mine. Everyone lives here as my friends, guests, and servants.”
“They don’t pay any attention to stuff like that,” Max said in disbelief.
“They will here,” Constance said. “We are well protected.” And they were, although she rather wished there was a way of getting a message to Solomon…
“Besides, they are investigating the bodies. All you need to do is tell the truth, without hostility, about where you were during the night. You need not say whom you were with unless you’re pressed—it is not a crime to have a lover, and the importance of our guests will almost certainly stave off further investigations.
I won’t leave you to be questioned without me, unless you wish it.
Now, I suggest we all get on with our work of the day.
” She rose from the table. “I shall be in the reception room—bring the police to me there.”
Her calmness seemed to reassure most of them, as they scattered about on their usual business.
She lingered only to see the still-distraught Bibby set to work on breakfast with Mrs. Cate, the experienced cook, before, satisfied, she turned toward the stairs.
She was only halfway up before the bell at the area door rang.
Constance paused to lean over the banister. She nodded at the frozen Jeremy and Max, to remind them of her instructions, then whisked herself the rest of the way upstairs to the entrance hall.
Tony the footman was skulking just on the other side of the baize door, scowling. Constance jerked her head toward the stairs. “Fetch me if there is any trouble,” she murmured. “Otherwise, treat them as any other guest.”
The hall and the reception room were just as gleamingly clean as they should be.
Glad standards had not dropped during her absence, she picked up a fashion magazine from the table and sat down in one of her favorite armchairs to flick through it.
She barely saw the images before her. Most of her mind seemed to be clinging to the dead faces on the back doorstep.
The rest was worrying about her staff and hoping that the detective assigned would be Inspector Harris, whom she and Solomon had helped before.
That would be the best situation for everyone.
She did not have long to wait.
Tony entered the open door. “The police, madam,” he said woodenly.
He was almost barged out of the way, which should have given her some warning.
The only-too-familiar figure of Detective Constable Napier strode into the room.
“Well,” he gloated, “it really is you.”
Not the best but the worst of all possible situations.
*
Solomon Grey let himself into the offices of Silver and Grey with a quiet sense of satisfaction.
It felt almost like the first, exciting day they had opened, both he and Constance abuzz with the anticipation of their new venture into the private inquiry business.
If he was honest, most of his excitement had been to do with Constance herself and the heady opportunity of seeing her every day as they worked together.
He had known then it would either cure him of his obsession or confirm it.
Foolishly, he had even hoped it would distract her completely from her other business, her “establishment.” It hadn’t, of course, but he had more understanding now, and more tolerance.
The establishment was so much more than a high-class brothel. And Constance herself was so much more than he had begun to guess even then. More than simply his friend, or his secret infatuation.
She was his wife, and she had taught him joy.
His skin prickled with memory and expectation as he hung his hat on the stand in the hall. He didn’t even mind that the establishment was her first concern on their return to London. She would join him here later.
“Janey?” he called, extracting a couple of letters from the box in the front door.
He was looking forward to seeing her again, all bright, intelligent eyes and wayward tongue—quite aside from his need to learn what had been happening with the business.
They had taken a chance leaving it in Janey’s hands, perhaps, but she had proven trustworthy, sensible, organized, and even surprisingly good at the inquiring.
But, of course, it was too early. She would probably be late today because she still lived at the establishment and Constance would be there. Strolling along to Janey’s little office, he found it empty. Her desk was neat, the closed appointment diary in the center.
He glanced through it and discovered no new appointments before next week.
Walking through to the little kitchen, he lit the stove to make tea, then wandered off to his office.
A large pile of letters had been left on his desk—all had Answered scrawled across the top, together with a date.
On the other side were short reports, some with letters attached, of cases she and Lenny Knox had managed to deal with.
Solomon smiled, impressed, as he read them through. He and Constance had talked about taking on another girl to do the reception work, freeing Janey for more actual investigating. Before the wedding, the amount of work had certainly justified it.
When he had made his tea, he took the cup and saucer back to his desk and began to plow his way through the waiting correspondence. It was only when the knocker sounded that he thought to glance at his watch. It was after nine o’clock.
Had Janey forgotten her key? Rising, he went to the front door, and discovered Lenny on the doorstep.
Lenny’s thin, sad face lapsed into a sudden smile. “Hullo, Mr. Grey! Good to see you home!”
“Thank you.” Solomon stood aside to let the man in.
“Janey not here yet?” Lenny said. “I was going to help her with a lost property case.”
“I suspect she’s with my wife.” Solomon still liked saying that. He thought he always would. “Cup of tea?”
“Go on, then. How is your wife?”
Although Lenny asked quite naturally, Solomon immediately thought of the man’s own wife, who had died so tragically along with their child less than a year ago, in the collapse of a slum building.
He had come a long way in these months, returning gradually to life and picking up what carpentry work he could, along with helping Silver and Grey out on a casual basis.
“She is very well,” Solomon replied. “And we both want to compliment you on the work you did in the house while we were away. We’re very happy with it.”
Lenny nodded. “I was pleased with it—glad you approve.”
“Come through to the office and tell me the news. I expect you’re more concise than Janey.”
“She makes her points,” Lenny said mildly, and yet it was somehow defensive of Janey.
Interesting.
They had drunk their tea and briefly discussed the solved cases and the current one when Lenny shifted restlessly and looked at his battered old watch.
“She should be here by now, or at least have sent a boy with a message. It’s not like her.”
Solomon frowned. “You’re right. It isn’t.” A vague but ominous alarm was seeping into his bones. “Something must be wrong.”
Lenny jumped up. “I’ll go, if you tell me where she lives.”
Solomon blinked. If Lenny knew of the establishment’s existence, he clearly did not know where it was, or even perhaps that Janey lived there. According to Constance, Janey was at least half in love with Lenny and had not yet told him about her disreputable past. Well, that was up to Janey.
Solomon stood, too. “No, I’ll go. If you would oblige me by remaining here to take any messages?”
“Of course.”
Was the man disappointed? Solomon, with an increasing sense of urgency, did not linger to find out. Something had happened that must be affecting both Janey and Constance.