With any luck, she would look as though she had slipped out for a morning service at Holy Trinity, Brompton, rather than having lazily left a double bed in a hotel where she had slept naked between the sheets. Quelle horreur! Not to mention the blood and bullets of the previous evening’s drama. The Distressed might be entertained by her adventures but Mrs. Bodley would be appalled.
There was no avoiding Mrs. Bodley at the reception desk. She greeted Gwendolen with “Another parcel was delivered for you while you were out, Miss Kelling.”
Perhaps a parcel would appear every day, like some form of magic, or a fairy tale.
“By a good-looking man?”
“No. A delivery boy. On a Sunday,” Mrs. Bodley added with a shudder, as if Christianity itself had been brought into question. “I have never known such a thing.”
It seemed the Savoy was not the only power that could overcome the law, for Mrs. Bodley took out a large Liberty’s box from beneath the counter and said, “Would you like it sent up to your room, Miss Kelling?”
“No, I’ll take it myself.” It was an awkward shape, quite long and flat, and between them, Gwendolen and the box only just fitted into the cage of the elevator. It ascended slowly and she felt relieved when she was finally out of Mrs. Bodley’s disapproving oversight.
* * *
—
Gwendolen untied the purple ribbon and took the lid off the box. And there it was in all its untarnished glory—the sky-blue silk dress with the silver filigree embroidery. For a wild second she thought it must be the original, cleansed of blood, but that, of course, would have been impossible （or a miracle）。 Niven, she thought. It was, like the paying of her hotel bill, a gallant （some might say grandiose） gesture, but he could just have given her money to cover the cost. And how did he know her size? She imagined him assessing her. It made her uncomfortable.
In the box, there was an envelope on which was written “Miss Kelling.” So there was a note this time. Inside the envelope was a card, embossed with the words Mrs. Ellen Coker, Proprietor of the Amethyst Club and a telephone number. Gwendolen turned the card over. On the back, in a very small, neat hand, was written: “Dear Miss Kelling. Please find the enclosed in recompense for your trouble. Would you telephone me, please? I have something I would like to discuss with you.” It was signed “Mrs. Nellie Coker.”
So not Niven, then, but his mother. The infamous Nellie Coker wished to see her. To discuss something. What intrigue was this?
She delayed. Not so much from hesitation as not to seem to be at the Cokers’ beck and call. There was a telephone in the hallway of the Warrender, in a wooden cabinet, although Gwendolen doubted the cabinet’s walls were enough to protect her from Mrs. Bodley’s prying ears. After a decent interval and while Mrs. Bodley was supervising the Sunday lunch, Gwendolen took a seat in the booth and dialled the operator and asked for “Gerard 5875.” She was put through straight away as if Nellie Coker had been waiting for her call.
* * *
—
Nellie Coker was spreading fortune-telling cards out on one of the tables in the Crystal Cup. There was a pot of tea, too, one that Nellie had made herself as, it being Sunday, there was no one else here and the club was closed and shuttered against the holiness of the day outside. “Or would you prefer something stronger, Miss Kelling? I have some excellent plum brandy, a gift from the Polish ambassador.”
She was trying to impress, Gwendolen thought. It would take more than a diplomatic glass of brandy. “I’m not much of a drinker, I’m afraid,” she said.
“Nor me,” Nellie said. “You cannot profit from your own vices, only those of others.” Gwendolen thought Nellie Coker sounded like a street-corner evangelist.
“Your fortune awaits,” Nellie said. So perhaps more of a mountebank than a charlatan.
The cards were a mystery to Gwendolen. “Is this the Tarot?” she puzzled.
“No, Lenormand, I prefer it. I’m presuming you think such things are stuff and nonsense, Miss Kelling.” She seemed indifferent to Gwendolen’s opinion, her hands hovering over the cards as if absorbing their funny little pictures—a fox in the snow, a mountain, a snake, a little girl in a blue dress bowling a hoop along the road. A pair of mice. “It doesn’t matter what you think. You don’t have to believe for the cards to tell the truth. Do you go to church, Miss Kelling?”
“Church? No, not any more.”
“No, nor me. It is a great freedom to lose your religion.”