“Friends?” said Mrs. Bone.
Winnie nodded, voice strained. “It seemed…natural. That a girl would want to make friends with other girls. To learn about their lives. Understand where they came from. Share a little schooling.”
“Earn them an afternoon off,” said Mrs. King quietly.
“And those girls took liberties. Grew cheeky. Felt they were favored. I always chalked it up to a lapse in discipline. The master allowing indulgences, just to favor Miss de Vries.”
Mrs. Bone dragged her gaze back from the house. “Clever, really. A neat way to put the girls at ease. I daresay he needed them to be comfortable upstairs.”
Mrs. Bone felt a shudder pass through her. “Does Miss de Vries know?”
Winnie simply shook her head. “It’s like I said. You can’t…you can’t tell. It’s not spoken of.”
“Who was the man, then? The man in the gray coat.”
“I never found out.”
“Never asked, you mean.”
“He would have been a gentleman of means,” said Mrs. King. “He would have paid well for the visit.”
“Danny didn’t need more money.”
“Money isn’t everything,” said Mrs. King. “It isn’t influence.”
Mrs. Bone knew that. She understood patronage. A corkscrew chain of favors. Tastes, pleasures, likes, fancies. Powders, perfumes, poppies. And in the night, behind rich drapes, with oil lamps: girls. Dancing girls, chorus girls, waifs and strays. You had to know where to find them, how to train them, how to get rid of them. Mrs. Bone didn’t just avoid that business. She took in plenty of those girls, over the years. All those Janes.
She suddenly addressed Mrs. King. “No one ever came for you, did they?”
Winnie straightened, her eyes fierce. “Never. I shared a room with her the whole time. I wouldn’t have let them. I looked after you.”
There was something heated, something desperate, in the way she said it.
Mrs. King said, voice grave. “And you, Winnie? You were all right?”
Winnie’s eyes flickered back and forth. “Yes,” she said, quickly. “Yes, I was fine.”
“What about our fine lady duchess?” said Mrs. Bone, quietly.
“Hephzibah?” said Mrs. King. Her eyes widened at that, shocked. It was rare to ever see that look upon her face.
Winnie opened her mouth, shut it again. Shook her head.
Mrs. Bone crossed her arms. “That’s clear enough to me.”
Mrs. King said soberly, “And me.”
They looked at one another. “Something needs to be done about this,” said Mrs. Bone.
“Something needs to be done?” Winnie’s voice went up a notch. “You think I haven’t tried? I went to Shepherd. I went to the master.”
“What happened?”
“I said I’d discovered something perfectly dreadful.”
“What did he say?” Mrs. Bone asked, fearing the answer.
Winnie laughed, a bitter sound. “He told me not to be so disagreeable. The next day, I was given my papers. I was out of Park Lane barely an hour after that. No character, no wages.”
It wasn’t easy to read Mrs. King’s expression through the gloom. But Mrs. Bone had heard enough. Her heart was pounding in her chest. “Well?” she said. “I want answers. I want solutions to this.”
“We have our solution,” said Mrs. King. She averted her gaze from Winnie, reached out and tugged an ivy leaf from the wall. Ripped it up, piece by piece. “We get to work.”
Later, when the women had gone, Mrs. King examined her own feelings. Her heartbeat had accelerated. She studied it, measuring time. Until now, her plan had felt kaleidoscopic, shiny but fractured, made of a million tiny pieces. But now it had stilled, had become a frozen, glittering thing. It had precise dimensions, like a diamond. It had its own force, a pull. The sensation made her feel weightless, without bonds or limits.
Her mouth tasted like metal. Her blood was shouting orders at her, Fix it, fix it, put it right.
22
The day of the ball
The twenty-sixth of June. Dawn came, hot and heady. Park Lane dragged itself awake, forming its usual cluttered assemblage of curves and chimneys and striped awnings, and began to shimmer in the heat. Dust was already rising in billowing clouds as carts and motor vans stopped with deliveries. The de Vries house had become a hive of activity.
One of the under-footmen wedged open the tradesmen’s door, ticking visitors off a list, a long line of men carrying goods. Crates of wine, huge vases of lilies, hosepipes, boxes of linen. A newspaperman watched from the pavement and scribbled notes.
Mrs. Bone elbowed past him. “Bugger off,” she muttered.
She shrank behind an urn once she entered the hall. Miss de Vries was already on the move, flanked by Mr. Shepherd, William, the footman, and a string of housemaids. The house had taken on a new sort of brilliance. The surfaces had been cleared, and huge flower screens raised against the walls—crimson roses, orchids, delphiniums, a volcanic cascade of red peonies. The housemaids had worked for days polishing the marble to a terrific toothy shine.
Mrs. Bone was sweating. But her niece looked cool as she surveyed the arrangements, a cloud of black muslin. Her waist had been drawn in dangerously tight.
“And, Mr. Shepherd, there’s something delicate I’d like you to keep your eye on…”
The butler motioned the other servants away, but Mrs. Bone slipped behind the ornate railings of the staircase, concealed by flowers and glass butterflies. She listened hard but caught only a fragment of the discussion.
“…in the garden, speaking to William.”
“I shall confront him myself. And I’ll call the constable if she’s seen again, Madam.”
“No. I’ll speak to William myself.”
Mrs. Bone looked at the footman, standing stony faced across the hall, oblivious to the fact that he was being discussed.
“One more thing.”
The girl’s voice was like honey. Mrs. Bone’s senses prickled.
“Have you had any luck in your searches?”
Something curious happened to Shepherd’s face at the question. It closed down. “I’m doing my very best, Madam.”
It was hard to see Miss de Vries’s expression from this angle. But there was something dangerous in the level of her chin.
“I hope you are,” she said, and then she moved on, the chill moving with her.
Later, sneaking out to the mews lane for a smoke, Mrs. Bone nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Archie?” she whispered, disbelieving.
Her cousin was lurking under the guttering, fiddling with his mustache. He looked panicked. “It’s true,” he said. “You’ve gone and lost your head. Look at the state of you.”
“What in heaven’s name are you doing here, bothering me? Who’s minding the shop?” He smelled of new cologne—orange flower and spices. Who’s paying for that? she wondered.
“We’ve got trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“The shop’s gone.”
Mrs. Bone felt her pulse jumping in her neck. “What do you mean,” she said, very slowly, “‘the shop’s gone’？”