Chapter One #2
“Sometimes,” Billie said, and leaned one elbow on the wooden desk.
One of her competitors was currently in jail for some petty matter, nothing to do with Billie, of course.
Her main competition came from male investigators, however.
They dominated the trade, and always had.
In fact, much of her post still arrived for Mr. B.
Walker, as if the fact of her obvious femininity was not quite enough to overcome the assumption that the principal at a private inquiry agency would be a grizzled gentleman gumshoe.
“How may I be of assistance today?” Billie asked.
“You assisted a friend of mine, Nettie Brown, you may recall,” the woman began.
Billie did recall. That had been in late 1946, almost six eventful months before, and had begun as a seemingly routine missing person case, a search for Nettie’s seventeen-year-old son, and evolved into something far larger and more sinister.
She resisted looking again toward her smoking balcony, even while a vivid image of the Nazi who had flung himself over it flashed through her memory.
Yes, she did indeed recall the case. A fair bit of Sydney did, also.
“Nettie was quite impressed by you. She recommended you rather highly,” the woman went on.
“That is pleasing to hear.”
Billie’s gaze moved to the glass-eyed fox around Mrs. Montgomery’s shoulders, as if it could tell her that it had been purchased at the Brown family’s fur shop at the Strand Arcade.
Her muscles had tensed at the memory of the case.
There had been a good outcome, but not without shots fired, and lives altered and lost. But then, she and trouble knew each other rather intimately.
No reason the end of the war would stop such a seemingly natural pairing, she supposed.
“I understand you spoke with her a few months ago?” Mrs. Montgomery continued.
“Yes,” Billie replied.
She had, in fact, run into Mrs. Nettie Brown, in the literal sense, under quite the most extraordinary circumstances on New Year’s Day.
It had been a frightfully humid day, and just as Billie was having her semi-regular afternoon tea with her informant Shyla at the Central Railway Refreshment Room, a freak hailstorm had hit, assaulting Sydney from the skies with considerable violence.
The clock face above the station was smashed, and the skylight along the entire main assembly platform had been decimated, raining shards of glass on those below.
To Billie it had sounded like a squadron of bombers, and those who had been there could be forgiven for thinking it the return of the Blitz.
Fortunately, most of the waiting commuters had only recently been whisked away on their various journeys.
In the midst of this maelstrom, Billie had sprinted from the refreshment room to determine the cause of the thunderous crashing—always the type to run toward chaos and not away from it—and Nettie Brown had run straight into her, head on.
After a moment of shocked recognition, the women had sheltered together by the central concourse until the storm passed.
Their somewhat bruising meeting had felt peculiarly like foreshadowing at the time.
The case for the Brown family was officially closed, but loose ends niggled at Billie, never quite letting her go despite the passing months, and it seemed the powers that be weren’t keen on releasing her, either.
She only hoped those loose ends weren’t weaving themselves into a noose, for her or for someone else.
The year 1947 had announced itself with a bang. Billie had almost been waiting for this follow-up.
“The case quickly faded from the headlines, which was a small miracle,” Mrs. Montgomery continued when Billie offered nothing more. The Browns would not have liked the publicity. And the case had faded from the headlines, but not before making a considerable impression.
“Yes, though I’m afraid I can’t claim responsibility for such miracles. I’m not that powerful,” Billie remarked of the press eventually moving on.
Mrs. Montgomery frowned. “Nettie assured me you can be discreet.”
“Discretion I can guarantee, Mrs. Montgomery. Discretion is an important aspect of my work. Had I had it my way, the Browns’ case never would have made the papers at all, but once a Nazi war criminal is involved, there’s no holding the papers back.”
“He’s the one who . . .” Mrs. Montgomery trailed off, lifting a manicured hand toward the now-closed balcony doors, one finger extended for a moment, before curling back, as if broaching the subject might have been too vulgar.
Billie nodded, pushing away the rather too vivid memory.
The Bakelite clock above the doorway ticked. Billie’s prospective client shifted in her chair and seemed for a moment to sink into the embrace of the deceased fox wrapped around her shoulders, as if it could comfort her. It seemed a performative gesture.
“The public’s appetite for a grisly story is always ripe,” Billie said, offering that morsel of truth to ease an uncomfortable silence.
“But they move on. There’s always something else to catch their attention.
I can’t claim any credit for steering them away.
” The case had steered new cases to Billie’s agency, however.
The women of Sydney had come knocking, and now here she was, gainfully employed for the first time since the war.
For many women, the war had been a time that had first provided the independence of a proper wage, modest or otherwise.
That Billie’s agency was doing a roaring trade now, after so many women were again out of work, was a stroke of luck for Billie, but that winning streak was not guaranteed to continue.
Billie was becoming rather concerned that she would soon run out of disgruntled wives, having aided so many through her offices.
How many more could there be in one city?
Not that it appeared Mrs. Montgomery would be able to relate to the financial worries of single workingwomen.
“I am at your service, Mrs. Montgomery, and you have my discretion. Nothing you tell me will leave this room without your blessing,” she said, hoping to move things along.
“It gives me no pleasure to be here, you understand,” Mrs. Montgomery admitted. “Oh, no offense.”
“None taken. Like dentists, perhaps, few revel in our professional presence, but we are a necessary evil, you could say.” If you don’t want the rotting tooth to fester—or the rotten marriage—and eventually take the whole patient with it.
There was a gentle knock at the door, and Sam appeared with a tray, upon which two teacups and the necessary accoutrements were neatly assembled.
This felt like good timing. The woman had still not given a single clue as to the reason for her appointment, and Billie was starting to become impatient.
In her experience there were two types of clients: the kind who came in with a rush of tears and stories rolling off the tongue, and this type, reticent or hard to read.
Anything might be on Mrs. Richard Montgomery’s mind, though the impression of the bird in the gilded cage still clung to this woman.
What had made her fly the coop, if that’s what this was?
Was there a job on offer, or not? Billie had been busy, but there was a worrying hole in her calendar coming up.
She could use a touch more security from well-heeled clients such as this one.
“Sugar?” Billie offered, and the woman nodded. She prepared a cup and pushed it across. “Now, if you will, how may I be of service?”
The Joan Crawford jaw flexed, relaxed. The woman took a sip of her tea, decided something, and those bright, glinting eyes fell on Billie with a different intensity. “It’s a delicate matter. You see, my husband is a very wealthy man, and he . . . well, he likes his little adventures.”
“I see.” A divorce case, then.
Some part of Billie shrank, but then again she was the one who had decided to reopen her father’s inquiry agency. Divorce work came with the turf.
“You are perhaps wondering where his adventures have led him?” Billie suggested gently. This was a frequent complaint for the clients who entered Billie’s office. “Another woman.”
“Undoubtedly,” Mrs. Montgomery replied. “Perhaps several. Or I believe there was.”
“Was?” Past tense.
“Miss Walker, my husband hasn’t been heard from in almost two years. That is an awfully long time.”
“Indeed it is,” Billie agreed.
“You see, he’s an advertising man, quite successful, and some government department—what do they call it again?—the Bureau of Information, well, they got him to help them out with their war efforts and so on.”
Billie had heard of the department, though she didn’t know a great deal about it. From what she did know, its bureaucrats were responsible for the promotion and advertisement of war bonds, government propaganda, and censorship of information.