Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
When Billie knocked on the door at the end of the hall one floor up, clad in her peach robe and matching slippers, her hair tousled and the mascara of the night before smudged around one eye, it was Alma who answered.
Such was the early hour, the baroness’s lady’s maid was not yet neatly put together.
Her eyes were watery from the rude awakening, and she wore a quilted robin’s-egg-blue robe, hastily tied with a sash and buttoned at the neck.
Alma’s hair was in pin curls, held under a brown net, and her thinly plucked brows were pulled high in surprise.
Billie pushed past her, aware from Alma’s expression that her countenance was alarming. She was aware, too, that her hair had not been brushed and had gathered on her head in something like a dark bird’s nest. That was unimportant.
“Can you lock the door? I need to see Mum right away,” Billie instructed urgently, forgoing niceties.
Alma did as requested, unspoken questions on her tongue.
“I’ll need you, too, I think,” Billie added.
At this, Alma’s already wide-eyed expression exaggerated further.
She moved off to Ella’s room without a word.
Her mother took some time to be roused. There was little doubt where Billie got her sleeping genes.
Billie turned on some lights, then paced around the living room, trying to think the situation over.
After what felt like half an hour but was probably closer to five minutes, the baroness emerged in hair scarf and curlers, a satin eye mask pulled up to her forehead and a belted black silk robe embroidered with flowers hanging from her slender form.
Her feet were bare, black satin slippers in her hand, and her eyes were unfocused and bloodshot.
She had no eyebrows to speak of, having plucked them away when it was the rage.
“Darling, you look a shocker,” Ella said automatically, looking her daughter up and down with astonishment and a fair measure of disapproval.
Billie resisted returning the compliment.
“Really, darling, you look pale as the moon. What time is it?” With a confused expression, she began searching the living room for a clock.
“What’s all this about? I thought it was lunch we were having.
It’s practically still dark out. What time is it?
” she repeated. “You can’t go out like that. ”
In her days as a war reporter, Billie had seen torn-up soldiers coming out of anesthesia talk with about as much sense as her mother was now.
For her part, Alma observed the muddled exchange and walked off to the kitchen.
The sound and smell of coffee being ground soon emerged.
Wonderful, blessedly clever woman. Though Billie preferred black tea on most occasions, the aroma of strong coffee was quite appealing under the circumstances.
She could use a bucket of the stuff at this hour.
“You’re wearing the necklace now, with .
. . that?” It was still around Billie’s neck.
She distantly remembered having been too tired to manage the clasp at three in the morning.
“What do you need your gun for?” Ella continued, now with more clarity, and Billie realized she was still holding the thing at her side, gripped tightly in her right hand.
She released her white-knuckled grip and placed the weapon gently on a table.
“Sorry. Mother . . . Ella . . . This isn’t about lunch today. I have to cancel that anyway. I have to attend an auction, I think . . . Well, never mind that for now.” Billie put her hands on her mother’s shoulders and looked steadily into her eyes. “There is a . . . problem. I need your help.”
“Good goddess, at six in the morning?” Ella broke away from Billie’s gaze and rubbed at her eyes. “Alma, coffee, please,” she muttered, though Alma could scarcely have heard her from the kitchen and was well ahead of that thought process. “Are you okay?” She looked searchingly at Billie.
“I’m physically unharmed, Mum. Don’t worry. I think . . . Well, it looks like I’ve been set up, and we have scant time to fix the situation. I’m not sure we have time for coffee.”
She paused, the reality dawning on her in increments. She’d been drugged at The Dancers. Someone had followed her to the People’s Palace, or rather followed poor Con. “Someone is trying very hard to get me out of the way. It must be the new case. Yes, I’m sure of it.”
After sharing her life with Billie’s father for so many years, Ella was more aware than most—certainly most society women—of the situations people in Billie’s line of work might find themselves in. “Set up? How?” she asked, her eyes clearing and that old steely intelligence coming back into them.
“I think you’d better come down and see for yourself,” Billie said.
She took her mother by the hand, unlocked the door, peered out, and led her down the staircase toward her flat.
As they came out on her floor, she checked the corridor.
Everything was unchanged, still dark, still silent, not a neighbor stirring.
They crept down the carpeted hall in their slippers.
Billie unlocked the door of her flat, looked both ways again, held her breath, and listened.
No creaks. No breathing. It was as quiet as a grave.
Once satisfied they were alone, she ushered her mother inside and locked the door behind them.
“There is a man in here,” she said in a whisper, and moved with her toward her bedroom. They stood at the open door and looked.
“Great Hera!” her mother said simply, eyes riveted to the form on the floor.
“I saw him last night, the same man. Con Zervos is his name. He was just like this, but in his own lodgings over at the People’s Palace.
” The clothes were the same, even his shirt, still partially undone.
The main difference was the increasing greenish-blue tinge of his skin.
The past few hours had not improved things.
“By the time the cops came he was gone and they tried to tell me I’d imagined it,” she continued.
“Someone must have taken the body before the cops got there. Then I woke up this morning to find him. Someone switched it up so he’d be here in my flat.
They moved the body in here while I was sleeping. ”
She realized what she was saying. Someone had come into her room while she was passed out on her bed in her slip. Billie shivered and wondered fleetingly if she’d ever be able to sleep again.
“You are unharmed?” Ella asked, watching her daughter’s face carefully.
“I’m unharmed, just as I was when I fell asleep.
Although I was slipped something that knocked me out.
No one looted the place, either. Your sapphire earrings are right here .
. .” She pointed. “No, they’re gone,” she realized with another layer of horror.
Whoever was here had swiped them, the rat.
“I was too tired to get the necklace off. That clasp is tricky . . . but it looks like someone took the earrings. I’m so sorry . . .”
Her mother shot her a look.
“There’s no time to worry about that now. We have to worry about him.”
Even without Alma’s coffee, the baroness was now wide-awake. She lifted her chin, her mouth set in a grim line. Her hands went to her hips. “I guess we’d best get rid of him,” she said matter-of-factly.
Billie nodded. “Agreed.”
“I think we ought to get Alma,” the baroness said.
“I think so, too. I’ll run up. Don’t you touch anything.”
The baroness took an exaggerated breath. “Trust me, darling, I have no intention of touching any of . . . this,” she said, making a circling gesture with an open palm. She backed out of Billie’s bedroom.
In a couple of minutes Billie returned to her flat with Alma and a thermos of fresh coffee.
Billie poured it into three cups while Alma stared at the corpse on the Persian rug, blanching.
Billie had forewarned the dear woman, but the shock made her dry retch and she ran to the bathroom.
This was not a good morning for Ella’s lady’s maid.
She liked order and quiet and doubtless didn’t like anything about this situation.
There wasn’t much to like about it in Billie’s books, either, especially this close to home.
“Drink this.” Billie thrust a steaming cup at her mother. Ella sipped eagerly and seemed to grow a touch taller.
She heard the toilet flush and Alma returned, her face damp and ashen. Billie handed her a cup of black coffee, and after a few sips some color returned. The three women stood in a semicircle looking down at the corpse.
“He seemed a nice man,” Billie offered after a short silence. “I only met him twice. I think he was about to tell me something important.”
“I’d bet my finest pearls you’re right about that,” her mother replied. “You’ve been poking in the right fireplace, my dear.”