* * *
—
Nearly every night since starting at Bow Street, Frobisher had come down here to monitor the many comings and goings at the Amethyst. A seemingly endless procession of people, intent on indulgence, made their way through the doors of the nightclub. The war had made people hedonistic, and yet you would have thought it would have had the opposite effect, that people would be relieved to embrace the calm sobriety of peace. Frobisher had never understood the pursuit of pleasure as an end in itself. A belief, he supposed, that made him stuffy in the eyes of others. He believed in a moderate life—he was not a Puritan, but he was pained by the extremes of behaviour he found himself witness to. There was enough of that in Ealing.
Now, of course, there was a new restlessness in the air. He supposed it was all this talk of a General Strike, as if London did not have enough to cope with as it was. Not that he was without sympathy for the workers. The war had undone them in many ways. They were living in a dystopia.
He was hoping to catch Maddox entering the Amethyst. There must be a second secret entrance somewhere. Frobisher had looked, of course, but so far had failed to find it. No one in Bow Street would admit to knowing its location, but he suspected that they all did.
A girl, more wraith than girl, stepped into the circle of weak light cast from a lamppost further down the street. Thirteen? Fourteen? Fifteen? It was impossible to say. She was doll-like with blonde ringlets, rickety legs. The spangles on her cheap dress caught the light of the streetlight. Restless, nervous even, she kept looking around as if expecting someone. Frobisher was about to break cover and approach her and tell her to run home and not to linger in places like this, but then a cab drew up, disgorging a group of noisy, excited Bacchants, and by the time they were inside the club the ethereal figure of the girl had melted back into the night.
He watched and waited. Finally Miss Kelling and Cobb arrived. Was Cobb the right man for this job? Frobisher had his doubts, but Cobb was keen and seemingly sensible—a word that had appeared to irk Miss Kelling for some reason.
Cobb—a skinny streak of a man—was even less prepossessing out of uniform. He was wearing an evening suit that was a size too large and the cost of its hire had come from Bow Street funds. Miss Kelling perhaps deserved better.
Reluctantly, Frobisher made his way to the Tube station. Perhaps, after all, he did understand why people stayed out carousing until the early hours. It meant they didn’t have to go home.
* * *
—
Lottie had fallen asleep in her chair, her chest rising and falling gently with each breath. Beside her, the lid of her sewing table was open. Inside, nestling amongst the skeins of vibrant wool needed for the parrots, was a needle and an empty syringe. She had started again, then. Frobisher felt dulled by the inevitability of it all. Who was supplying her with the morphine? As far as he knew she barely left the house, apart from visiting the small parade of shops two streets away. Even then it was Frobisher who picked up most of the groceries.
He removed the needle and syringe, closed the lid of the sewing table and fetched a blanket to cover her with. It seemed she was determined on disintegration. He noticed that the tulips he had bought had already wilted—their soft stems had flopped over and their petals now gaped open voraciously. Served him right, he supposed, for buying them cheaply.
Carpe Noctem
“Everything all right at the Foxhole?” Nellie asked Betty when she and Shirley arrived at the Amethyst.
“Yes, Ma,” Betty said. “Everything’s fine.”
“And the Pixie?” Nellie said, turning her attention to Shirley. “No more fires?”
“No, Ma.”
“Who’s in tonight?” Betty asked. It was a routine query rather than an interest in celebrity.
“Mixed bag,” Nellie said. “Tallulah Bankhead, Frazzini, the King of Denmark.”
The King of Denmark? Shirley’s curiosity was piqued, she never gave much thought to Denmark as a country or a king.
“He seems all right,” Nellie said, rather grudgingly. She had once had an encounter in her youth with Edward, the previous king, when he was still Prince of Wales. She refused to talk about it, but take a good look at Niven’s nose, she once said when the New Year champagne had got the better of her.
“Give Mr. Frazzini a box of chocolates, will you?” Nellie said to Betty.
Nellie sold the boxes for fifteen shillings each but bought them wholesale from somewhere in the north for a shilling a box, all prettied up with ribbons （a penny each） by soldiers disabled in the war. The dance hostesses made a great fuss of persuading their partners to buy the boxes for them and then, after a few chocolates had been eaten, the boxes made their way back to the storeroom they’d come from and were refilled, ribbons adjusted, and sent out to be sold again.