Gwendolen stood on the pavement and watched the car driving away, still flabbergasted by Nellie Coker’s unexpected proposition. When she had agreed to meet her in the Crystal Cup, she had thought that, at best, Nellie wanted to thank her for her help after Aldo was shot or, at worst, wanted to try to secure her silence if he was dead. Had he died? Gwendolen reproached herself for not even enquiring about his welfare, but she had been so disconcerted by Nellie’s overtures.
* * *
—
“You had two gentlemen callers while you were out, Miss Kelling,” Mrs. Bodley announced when Gwendolen was barely through the door of the Warrender. Two? She was amused—were Nellie’s prophecies already coming to pass? And who could the two gentlemen be? Was one of them Niven? Had she missed him calling on her? Gwendolen felt the hunger of disappointment. She sensed a fuse had been lit. How would it end—with a bang or a whimper? （She had acquired Eliot for the Library.） She was reluctant to give Mrs. Bodley the satisfaction of asking.
“One of them was the gentleman—and I use the word loosely—who left a parcel for you the other day.” （Niven. Gwendolen’s heart gave a little bump. Annoying!） “Although neither of your callers gave their name. I think it very suspicious when a gentleman withholds his name.” Gwendolen burst out laughing. The woman was too much, she really was. A purse-lipped Mrs. Bodley said, “I’m thinking of your reputation, not mine, Miss Kelling.”
“You need fret no more about either of our reputations, Mrs. Bodley. I shall be leaving the Warrender.”
“Leaving? You are going home early?”
“I’m not going home. I am going to stay in London. I have employment here.”
“In a library?”
Gwendolen had no intention of giving Mrs. Bodley the satisfaction of a reply.
* * *
—
“Your last supper,” Mrs. Bodley said as Gwendolen took her seat in the dining room on her final night in the Warrender. Dinner was kidney soup, followed by veal cutlets on a bed of mashed potato, and then a Sussex Pond pudding. Gwendolen would miss the Warrender’s dinners. She would even miss the Distressed. （If she were to stay here any longer she feared she would become one of them herself.） She would not, however, miss Mrs. Bodley. The Last Supper, she reflected, was followed by the crucifixion, a punishment not beyond Nellie Coker if she found out about Gwendolen’s deception—according to Frobisher, anyway, who seemed extraordinarily prejudiced against Nellie Coker.
“I would like,” Nellie had said to Gwendolen over her fortune-telling cards in the Crystal Cup, “for you to run this club for me.”
“But I know absolutely nothing about running a nightclub,” an astonished Gwendolen had said.
“You have an orderly mind and seem capable in a crisis,” Nellie had said. “And you’re rather good at making people do your bidding. That’s all I need in a manageress, Miss Kelling. And it will be convenient for you, you can live ‘above the shop.’？”
The life waiting for her return in York had suddenly seemed appallingly empty. And, Gwendolen thought, she would be able to work covertly for Frobisher and continue the search for Freda and Florence, which was, after all, why she was here. And the fact that she would see Niven Coker again had nothing to do with it.
Sunday Best
And what of Freda, where was she on this day of rest? Unlikely though it seemed to Freda herself, she was attending the evening Mass in Corpus Christi church on Maiden Lane, mimicking the theatre of bowing and kneeling and miming the prayers and responses. Quick as ever to pick up a beat, she was barely a breath behind the rest of the congregation.
She had not intended to put on this performance of devotion, she had only gone into the church to see if by any chance Florence was there, unaware that there was a service in progress. A man had shooed her into a pew at the back, hissing, “You’re very late,” and she hadn’t felt that she had a choice but to go along with the whole thing.
Hoping to slip away unnoticed when everyone started going up to the altar to take Communion, she was outfoxed by the same man, who almost frog-marched her to the front as if she were visibly in need of redemption. Again, she managed to imitate what other people were doing. As a reward, it would have been nice if the Communion wafer had been a bit more substantial, as Freda had eaten hardly anything for two days and was fully expecting to drop dead of famine at any moment. Her growling stomach provided an embarrassing accompaniment to the liturgy. As it was Sunday, Covent Garden had been closed and she hadn’t even been able to scavenge in the bins of leftover fruit and vegetables put out at the end of the day in the market. Not so much as a carrot. Her supper had consisted entirely of Florence’s humbugs.