Chapter Four
Four
Billie took the small elevator up to the second floor of Cliffside Flats, her home in the leafy suburb of Edgecliff, leaning against her door to balance the bags of newspapers while she fiddled with her keys.
Once inside her flat, she dropped the bags to the floor with a sigh of relief and rubbed her aching biceps.
She couldn’t wait till the blasted petrol rationing was lifted.
Her perfectly lovely car was sitting unused in the garage at the base of the building.
What a crying shame that was. She hung her trench coat on the hallstand, slipped off her shoes, and noted with a vague sense of fatigue that the big toe on her right foot had begun to push through her stocking.
Blast.
She also noticed a piece of paper, neatly folded down the middle, that must have been slid under her door. She reached down and took it.
I NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU.
Billie recognized the handwriting as that of one of her valued informants, Shyla.
She had an idea of what the note was about, and on that line of inquiry she’d so far come up empty-handed.
Instinctively she reopened the door, looked down the hallway in both directions, and closed it again, disappointed.
Shyla had not waited around. The problem was, this particular informant couldn’t be reached through the telephone exchange, didn’t have a card or address of employment that she’d chosen to share with Billie, and had not divulged her personal address.
Shyla would reach her again when Shyla was ready, Billie supposed.
Billie padded over to her small kitchen, filled the kettle, struck a match, and lit the stove. Tea would help. Tea always helped.
What was it that enraged Adin? And is it relevant? If there was a page missing from that stack of newspapers, she’d have a pretty good idea, she hoped.
She slid her hatpins out and took off her tilt hat, ruffling her hair.
Lost in her thoughts about her new case, Billie absentmindedly removed her ivory blouse, then reached down and undid the smooth button of her skirt and the three little snaps disguised in the fold of the fabric beneath it, slid off her skirt, then sat down to unclip her right stocking.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. So many damned clips, but she supposed the things wouldn’t stay on straight otherwise.
She carefully rolled the damaged nylon down, undid the ties on the thigh holster for her Colt, and placed the whole thing, little gun and all, gently on the tabletop.
Then she undid the left garter clips. One. Two. Three . . .
Mrs. Brown’s son is certainly missing and she’s certainly distressed about it.
That much rings true. But why is he missing?
Is there a clue she’s leaving out? Billie sensed there was some element Mrs. Brown was withholding.
If so, she wouldn’t be the first. In the initial meeting, clients often held on to information they perceived to be sensitive or embarrassing.
But if this case was anything like previous cases, the truth would out.
Often the information would have been helpful to Billie’s work if offered at the start, but she knew a bit about human nature and it was not human nature to pour out every bit of detail to a stranger—not unless you thought you’d never see them again.
It had been that way during the war: The nearness of death and the constant movement of anxious people far from home could make any meeting an intense and intimate confessional.
But once everyone returned to the places they knew and had come from, they tried to make nice and to get on with their mouths shut.
There was still gossip, lives were still complicated, but details weren’t offered up as easily, not without the lubrication of liquor.
It might be something as simple as a now-regretted argument that had triggered Adin’s departure, or something unsavory the boy was into that wouldn’t reflect well on the family.
Or something about the family itself, Billie mused.
But there was something, the little woman in her gut told her, some key detail left out.
Perhaps a second meeting might see Mrs. Brown more forthcoming.
Perhaps her husband would be able to shed more light on the case.
Billie took her tea strong and black, and as the leaves steeped, she gave her other stocking a brief examination and decided it was not in need of mending.
Once she had a steaming cup in hand, she made her way toward the front of the flat in her slip, her damaged stocking over her shoulder, and took her place behind a small table in the corner nook.
This was the spot with good light. The curtains were open, but there was nothing but the tops of trees to witness her semi-undressed state or the lithe figure it revealed.
It was close to sunset now, and the evening sun was pouring in across the woodwork, the spools, the sewing machine, the pincushion, turning everything a lovely rose gold.
A rainbow of threads was propped neatly on the little wooden spikes of a rack mounted on the wall behind her.
The traffic from the street below seemed distant, as so many tired men returned from work in the city to so many bored wives at home grappling with a changed world after a war that had bid so aggressively, so openly, for their involvement, only to ask them now to return to domestic service behind closed doors.
Certainly there are many Mrs. Browns, but she doesn’t look like one, Billie thought, despite the decidedly brown theme of her client’s clothes. The name was English, and common. But Billie’s new client did not have an English accent. She wondered why it niggled, if it mattered.
Billie pulled her wooden egg-shaped mold from a drawer, ran her fingers over it to check its smoothness, and pulled the foot of her stocking over it.
Damned holes. She’d been fortunate enough not to have to go without stockings for too long, but now that nylon stockings were in supply again she’d be damned if she’d let that little hole get any larger.
Expensive things, stockings. Damned expensive.
And while there’d been plenty of men happy to give them to her, she wasn’t happy with their romantic price.
As with everything else, she’d buy her own, thank you very much.
What a client wanted for his pound was sometimes pretty steep in her business, but what men expected for nylons was something else entirely.
She found a fairly well-matched thread in tan, threaded her darning needle, and began to close the small hole.
The sun was lower by the time she was finished.
Night was coming and her telephone was due to ring.
It was only one minute past eight when it rang. That would be Sam checking in, right on time. He was to call the office, letting it ring, and if she didn’t pick up he was to try her flat. She put down her satisfactorily mended stocking and strode to her black telephone.
“Ms. Walker. What’s doing?”
“Sam, how did you go? Have we found our boy?”
“Bad news, I’m afraid,” he said to her. “I didn’t find anyone with his description. Actually that’s not such bad news considering the blokes I did find. Some of them were rather mangled.”
She hadn’t thought it would be that easy, but it had been worth a shot. “Righto. Change of plans, then. We’re going out tonight, Sam,” Billie announced. “Will that check okay with your dance card?”
“No problem at all. I have no, er, card.”
“It will be in a couple of hours, around ten,” she added, glancing at the clock.
“Where shall we meet? The morgue?” he asked.
She laughed. “No, the death house will have to wait.” Sam had not yet had occasion to visit the morgue, and Billie in fact preferred to make those visits solo.
“We have something more interesting to pursue. And more lively. Meet me back at the office, will you? Ten o’clock sharp? Oh, and wear the jacket.”
There was a pause down the line. “The white jacket?”
“Yes, dear Sam. The white jacket. Tonight is black-tie. We’ll be mixing with the high end of town.”
Billie hung up and reheated some leftover casserole on the stove.
It was, at best, below average, and the dirty dishes were depressing to look at afterward, an unfortunate price to pay for something that had tasted pretty lousy.
Housework and culinary pursuits had never been Billie’s forte, but she managed well enough on her own.
For lack of a wife or maid, or any prospect of either, Billie cooked merely to sustain herself, treating the work more as a chore than the art form it could be.
She saved her art for other mediums, content to experience great food in restaurants, or when dining with her aristocratic mother.
So it was with mild distaste that Billie slid the empty plate and cutlery into the sink under some tepid water and promised herself she’d clean up later.
She had, after all, no one to impress but herself, and the possibilities of her case seemed more important by half.
Fortunately she’d managed to purchase a bar of good dark chocolate—it had been terrifically hard to hunt out during the war—and she savored a single square in small nibbles, leaning against the kitchen counter in a kind of temporary ecstasy.
Her palate recovered, she tied her hair up with a scarf and peeled off her remaining silk underthings, leaving them on her bed.
She had started to feel a sticky heat out in Stanmore, or perhaps it had been all those heavy looks.
In the city she didn’t arouse quite so much attention, at least not when wearing a skirt suit and oxfords.