Chapter One #2
This was where her late father had spent so much of his life, where so many of the stories he’d told her at the dinner table had been born.
She’d changed the space very little since taking over; the setup, furniture, and pictures were largely the same, but of necessity she’d sublet two of the office spaces he’d used to accommodate his employees.
Hers was a smaller agency and she liked that just fine.
Office spaces were at a premium, more than seven pounds eight shillings per week for a single, and revenue aside, there was some considerable animosity aimed at those who didn’t do their best to make room for the returned men and their needs.
Keeping more of the office space than absolutely needed would not have aided her socially or professionally, and as it was, acceptance of Billie and her work was still at best uneven.
After Victory in the Pacific Day women were expected to walk out of the aviation plants and munitions factories and news offices and hospitals they’d run successfully during the war and abandon the independence of a wage to return to their kitchens, but Billie had never been one of those women, hadn’t been raised that way, and she certainly wasn’t going to bow to the pressure now.
The door was unlocked, her secretary already seated in the outer office, where clients sometimes waited.
Billie unbelted her double-breasted trench coat and cast a glance at the line of four neat walnut chairs placed before the low table she kept stocked with an assortment of respectable, somewhat bland magazines and a couple of the more fashionable women’s journals.
The chairs were distinctly unoccupied. The magazines were neatly spread out, untouched.
There was no one waiting today, no appointments set.
Hadn’t been for more than a week. This was another solid reason to sublet the two office spaces.
“Good morning, Ms. Walker. Your mail is on your desk,” Samuel Baker informed her, standing as if at attention.
She slid out of her coat and he took it and hung it on the coat rack.
She removed her round sunglasses, adjusted the hatpin in the small green topper that sat over her left ear, smoothed down the lines of her fitted summer-weight skirt suit, thanked her secretary-cum-assistant, and strode into the inner office, settling down behind her desk and leaving the communicating door open.
Her office had a rust-red carpet, a couple of fading hunter-green filing cabinets, a globe of the world, and a wide wooden desk, blotter, pen set, and telephone that had belonged to her father and had graced the room for at least two decades.
On the wall was a large map of Sydney in a slightly battered wooden frame.
It had been there for as long as she’d known the office and she suspected that if it was ever moved, the wall beneath would likely be a startlingly different color.
It wasn’t a fancy space. It didn’t need to be.
Clients didn’t come to her for interior decorating tips.
Her father’s ashtray sat on the far edge of Billie’s desk, positioned for clients’ convenience.
Most women now smoked, but Billie had never liked it as a daily habit.
There were smoking days, yes, indeed, but this wasn’t one of them.
The ashtray was cleaned out and empty. The daily newspapers sat on her desk—The Sydney Morning Herald, the scandal sheet the Truth, and the most recently available Paris Herald Tribune—all neatly folded.
It paid to know what was being said in the world.
Two framed pictures faced Billie. One was a formal portrait of her mother and father on their wedding day, her father in tails with white tie and a black shining top hat tucked under his arm (probably the only time he’d ever touched one) and her mother in a glittering headpiece, a waved bob hairstyle she hadn’t changed since, and a scandalously short gown that showed her ankles above low-heeled shoes tied with glossy ribbons.
Ella held a bouquet that trailed to the floor, and on her dark lips was the grin of the cat that got the cream.
The other frame was smaller and held a more recent image, one of Jack Rake, taken by Billie in Vienna.
It was mostly in focus and it caught him smiling that weekend before the world crashed in around them. That weekend they’d fallen in love.
Billie’s breath caught in her throat. Jack was just as he looked in those flashes that haunted her each time she closed her eyes. That smile. And the seriousness that followed. Those earnest, searching hazel eyes. “Blast,” she murmured, and looked away. She needed work to keep her occupied.
Her ivory blouse had been tied in a pussy bow at her throat but had begun to loosen, and with neatly kept, unvarnished fingers Billie fixed the knot, then picked up the top envelope on her wide wooden desktop.
Her eyes narrowed. It was addressed to Mr. B.
Walker, and not for the first time. This might be mail for her late father, but well over a year after his death that was unlikely to be the case.
Billie Walker was not what many people expected.
Perhaps foremost, Billie was not a Mr. But then, what was the fun in doing or being what was expected?
She slit open the envelope and glanced through a solicitor’s dull note about a previous case involving marital disharmony.
The day’s mail brought little to be excited about and she soon turned to the newspapers, flicking through them before committing to a more thorough reading with a fresh cup of tea on the way.
A shipyard lockout was causing havoc at the Sydney docks.
A series of pictures showed Chifley with the governor-general, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, at an official function.
Sydney auction houses were busy moving valuables, some of which appeared to be major estate pieces.
In world news, two-piece swimming costumes were being modeled in Paris.
There was a large-scale withdrawal of Russian troops from Germany.
Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg agreed to repatriate German war prisoners as soon as possible.
France had still not signed any agreement.
Billie looked up from the papers as Samuel came in with the tea tray, a morning routine that was always a pleasant distraction.
Broad-shouldered and lanky, wearing a lightly pin-striped suit and a pleasing burgundy and sky-blue tie of the current style, he sprawled out in one of the two chairs opposite Billie’s desk and dropped a sugar cube into her tea, most of his professional formality evaporating when he left the outer office that was his guard post. His tea making was surprisingly good, something he’d mastered either in the army or at the urging of a mother with good English sensibilities. He pushed her teacup across to her.
“What’s doing?” he asked, absentmindedly rubbing some irritation under the glove that covered his left hand.
“Very little, Sam, I have to say,” Billie responded. She pushed her deep brunette curls back behind her ear and sipped her tea.
Sam was one of those earnest Aussie lads who had enrolled in the army young and had worked in a secretarial role for some time before war broke out and he was needed for more exciting work in the 2/23rd Battalion—exciting work in the war being the kind that set you up as cannon fodder if you didn’t have the right connections.
Sam wasn’t a connected bloke, and had he been rich, he likely wouldn’t be working as a second to a PI now.
He had many skills as a secretary, but truthfully he wasn’t a great typist. Anyone could see why, and clients had good-naturedly joked about it more than once.
In Tobruk an Italian thermos bomb had finished off many of his comrades-in-arms and he’d come away with a few less fingers and some terrible scarring on his hands—defensive wounds, Billie had surmised.
His left hand was wrapped in a leather glove, filled in the necessary places with wooden prosthetic fingers.
His right, though scarred, was whole and as steady as you could want on a trigger hand.
Typing aside, Sam’s role was varied. Sometimes it paid for Billie to have a strong arm around.
Sometimes it paid to have a tall man in the outer office to run interference if a disgruntled husband came in, angry that she’d helped his wife divorce him.
And sometimes it simply paid to have a man for added cover when Billie was in the field, or to compensate for the fact that she was a woman working in a predominantly male business.
It helped matters that Sam looked passingly like Alan Ladd, though much taller, which made him easy on the eyes, and realistic as a partner for Billie when such a masquerade was required during an investigation.
Most of the grizzled gents in her profession wouldn’t pass convincingly as a match for her, but she and Sam made an attractive pair, and that went a long way in certain circumstances.
He didn’t know much about detective work yet, having been on the job only a few months, but he was great with orders, and unlike some other men he didn’t mind taking them from a woman—decent work being rather scarce even for able-bodied men, after all.
And by some measure, working as a secretary for Billie was probably more exciting than being in the forces, or at least that’s what Sam claimed.
It wasn’t all filing cabinets and administrative work.
He was getting to know all the bars, hotels, doss-houses, and back alleys in the city.
Not glamorous, exactly, but not dull, either.
And if he couldn’t type with ten fingers, well, that was just fine.