We’ve tried to keep explanations to a minimum and are paying him handsomely.
Rain comes and goes and nothing happens.
I think of some help from my morphine. “A slippery slope,” Norah would say. “You don’t want to depend on these things.”
I can understand Eve’s anger and total rebellion. I want to do the total opposite of what Norah would wish me to do. On purpose I want to hurt her, the way she’s hurt me.
“I don’t know what to think any more,” I say to Giles as I tap my cane off the back of the seat in thought. I’m on edge. “Something’s not right. I can feel it. You know when you just know? I might be blind but I know there’s more to this.”
“The letter was simply awful,” Giles says. “You’ve taken to blaming yourself for things that are out of your control again. Cook has sent sandwiches and I can smell the egg and onion.”
“Have one,” I say and even though my stomach growls I cannot face one. “I’m not hungry.”
“Sweet Lord,” Giles says suddenly. “That lady looks like she’s going in and her so prim and proper. Oh no. She’s just looking, she has walked on.”
“And they definitely cannot see us here?” I hiss. “They don’t know we are watching the house?”
“I cannot see how they would,” Giles says.
“What does it look like? The house, I mean?”
“For the fifth time. It’s an ordinary terraced Georgian house on an ordinary street with nothing distinguishing about it.”
“And there is no-one at the windows? Going inside? Nothing happening?”
“No. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. This is a waste of time.”
I let out a long and bitter sigh. I don’t want to think about what we are doing here at all. I want to go back to the time when I had peace of mind, believing that these Sinful Roses were the figment of a madwoman’s imagination. When I was safe, when I was almost normal again.
“Wait, there is movement by the front door,” Giles says. “Two women have gone inside. What will we do now?” He dithers in the seat, moving and screeching across the leather. “Let’s call the police!”
“And say what?” I snap. “We must follow them inside.”
“We can’t do that!” Giles says, highly incredulous. “What if they see us?”
“We’ve got to do something!” I say, fumbling for the door handle. “We need to find out what they’re doing. What good are we sitting here?”
“We are alive by staying right here,” Giles says. “And it’s lashing rain. Let’s wait out this shower. It’s torrential. Can’t you hear it on the roof?”
“For the love of God, man, we are detectives. We’re men on an important case. A spot of rain shouldn’t bother us. Does a tiny spot of rain stop our fighting heroes from doing their duty?” I’m most annoyed at his lacklustre reaction to the situation. “Get a move on, my good man, and help me out of this vehicle.”
“I have no umbrella! We’ll be soaked!”
“For pity’s sake!”
Giles has no idea what a real wetting is like. As a Royal Engineer in the heart of an Italian winter, I know what it is to be cold and bitterly soaked through with snow, mud and blood. “Help me get across the road, this instant!” I order like an officer.
Getting out of the automobile onto a footpath streaming with rain takes us far too long. Giles is unused to helping me and I stumble and catch the tail of my coat in the door. It’s farcical and we’re thoroughly drenched before we start on the small expedition of walking across a road. Being arm in arm with a man feels odd and my cheeks flush despite the rain and cold day. We must look a queer sight.
My feet squelch for Giles walked me into the drain. But we make it up the path and steps quietly. I motion for Giles to go inside and he falters for a second until I elbow him. The knob turns and he stands in and drags me after him. There is a pleasant smell from the air and I realise it is perfume. A mixture of a few scents.
The voices take us to the right and then Giles draws me by the elbow until I am facing a wall. I see a large lighter space to our left and guess it is a doorway. Voices emerge.
Giles’ whisper is no more than a breath close to my ear. “Stay still, sir. But if anyone begins to come out or in from outside, I will pull you quickly to our right under a stairway where we will be hidden. It is dark out here in the hallway.”
I nod and strain to listen.
Chapter 42
Norah Walsh
Alice has just finished arranging wooden chairs in a room illuminated only by some weak ceiling lightbulbs. The blackout blinds are closed tight, letting in – or out – not a chink of light. With my help she has also placed a table and two chairs on a podium at the top of the room – for the chairwoman and the secretary, she says.
Now that everything is fixed to her satisfaction, she lights up a cigarette in a long holder and lights a cigarette.
She takes a long hard look at me and points to a chair. “Sit yourself down. Don’t look so nervous. Everything is under control. Eve Good is no more. Though we may have to go to ground for a while.”
I nod, longing for a smoke or drink to settle my nerves.
“But eventually we’ll be able to come out of the shadows and meet again.”
I want to query everything, from her own motivations to her ambitions. But she’s like a stern headmistress the way she’s standing, taking a puff from her cigarette in its long holder and then folding her arms again.
“I like the sounds old houses make,” she says. “Do you hear that? The creaks and groans of timbers and the sigh of a house settling into its own peace. Makes me feel safe. Thistleforth is a fine house. Not like this dump. But Eve wasn’t safe where she was at all – was she?” Her eyes look murderous in this gloomy room. “Nowhere is safe from the Sinful Roses.”
The hairs on my arms stand on end and a shiver traces down my spine. She wants to talk about it. The very thing I want to forget and move on from – she wants to relive it!
“It was thanks to you that she was taken miles from any system that might have protected her in the past. She was dragged across an ocean right into my clutches.” She laughs. “Everything went so smoothly! Like clockwork. The clearing of the desks and corridors, the blacking out of windows happened right on time – just as our inside source had informed us. Then the activity settled down, almost all lights went out, and there was nothing but silence. And I moved in, with my keys and my map of the layout. I was so eager to get to her corridor. I wanted her to be awake. I wanted her to know I was coming for her, to hear the opening of gates, and locks, the sound of a woman’s heels in the corridor – not sounding like the normal guards. And she did. That makes me so happy.”
There’s a pause in her remembering where I could ask her to stop but I don’t. I even smile, encouraging her to confess the awfulness to me.
“I was excited – as you can imagine. I’d waited years to get that bitch. But I hid and waited for another ten minutes to make sure it was all possible without witnesses.”
My breath heaves in my chest. Holding it, I listen hard. Like my life depends on it. There is nothing to do but listen.
“No mistakes with knives or weapons she shouldn’t have. I fashioned a spring into a sort of weapon,” she says, looking at her hand as if her fingers were curling around it. “The sharp end looked like it might cut me if I lashed out carelessly because the metal turned back against my fist but nothing was going to stop the Roses this time. I turned the key in the lock of the door carefully but it creaked as it turned. It felt like it echoed over the corridor and I gripped my weapon and waited. The bed inside squeaked. “Come on in, you bitches, and let’s get this over with!” Eve said into the blackness. I almost laughed at her fake bravery. She was alone and scared. I stepped in and closed the door behind me without a word. She threatened to scream but she didn’t.”
Alice stops and looks at me.
“Do you know, I think she lost her voice then. She just seemed to fre
eze.”
I fumble to open a button in my blouse because I need air. Imagining how Eve was feeling is not difficult. It is nightmarish. But Alice needs to tell me this. Her success needs praise.
“Go on,” I say with a fear that she’ll do this to me someday and I’d better know what to expect. I swallow hard and hold my breath.
“She said words like ‘please’ and ‘don’t’ but they came out as a whisper. She pissed herself. I could smell it.”
I gasp.
Alice enjoys shocking me. She smiles broad and long.
“Relax. Her back was to the wall then and I touched the foot of the bed and didn’t say a thing. It was dark and I had to squint to see her fully. She rabbited on about not knowing anything at all. Not letting the Roses down. The whites of her eyes were bright. The flash of her teeth. But I was as quick as lightning. I held her arms rigid and she crumpled downwards so I could kneel on her chest. She was winded and barely able to breathe. She was angry, agitated and very scared.”
She stops. I meet her gaze with my own then, even though I can hardly bear to look at her enjoyment as she talks. She’s about to tell me how she killed another human being and, although it should disgust me, I’m enthralled.
When Alice is sure that I’m listening, she continues, “I bent and pressed my nose against her cheek. She smelt clean. She tried to toss me off but I held firm. I was devil-like!” She blew a smoke-ring. “She begged me to stop but I didn’t. I was so angry for all she’d put us through. I was spitting in temper when I told her how I’d found her and how I’d kill her.”
I gulp back the anguish in my chest. This is worse than reading Eve’s accounts. It’s much worse and yet I smile.
“No matter how hard she struggled, I had her!” Alice says. “Then the bitch tried to bite me. Like a dog she snapped her teeth but I was quick and she didn’t catch my skin. But that made me thump her hard over and over. She said your name. She blamed you for it all.”
“Unlike Eve Good, I know where my loyalties should lie,” I say in a shaky voice. “I promised to help and I did. I kept you well informed.”
“I hurt her good and proper for cursing you,” Alice says, pointing her cigarette at me. “She squirmed when I hurt her. I held that cold metal against the soft side of her neck. Near her ear. Here.” She points to her own throat. “The spring was sharp. The slicing sensation almost felt like it wasn’t happening for a second and then I pierced through the skin with the movement of the cut. Warmth flowed out onto my hands and she struggled and gagged but the instrument was deep. It was lodged and stuck somewhere under her chin. The coil of the spring was slick and slippery but she managed to get a grip on it somehow. I had to move off her but once she wrenched the metal out I could see she was done for. There was blood everywhere. We had won, Norah. Thanks to you, Eve Good lay in her own blood and piss and I told her that we had won. It was a fucking good feeling.”
I grip my hands in my lap to stop them from trembling and I’m about to speak when the door at the far corner of the room opens and in marches Lydia Dornan and Charlotte Davenport.
Chapter 43
Laurie Davenport
I cannot see Giles and I cannot move. What in God’s name have we just heard? A woman recounting Eve’s murder? And was that Norah's voice? It cannot be! Everything inside me curls up and almost dies. Whatever hope I had left is scrunched up in the knots forming in my gut.
Suddenly Giles hauls me to the right, pushes my head down and pulls me into a very dark space. We are under the stairs he mentioned.
Voices and the clicking of heels on tiles signal the arrival of the Sinful Roses. This goes on intermittently for quite a while and the volume of voices in the meeting room rises all the time. At last there is a sudden hush and then a loud authoritative voice begins to speak. We stay where we are until we feel no other Roses are likely to arrive. Then Giles draws me out of our hiding place by the elbow and we return to our previous position to the right of the doorway.
I want so badly to see what is happening, but then in other ways I don’t want to. We have come inside this den of sin, like Eve did, and I almost feel her at my other elbow, holding me in place to witness what she wants me to hear.
The voice is still speaking.
“We won’t dilly-dally with this,” says Lady Dornan. “Our Sinful Roses’ informant was right to plan this meeting. It was necessary. We have to make plans for the future. Now that the whole world almost fell in around our ears, we must agree on a way forward for the future. Thank you for coming all this way, Alice. This is a very dangerous time. But then, when did women like us shirk from danger? However, we must do so now. We must protect each other and ourselves at all costs. The fact that we are being investigated is a terrible shock and we need to stop any further bother landing on our doorsteps.”
Giles’ breathing is heavy. The noise of our hearts must be audible.
“There will be no more Sinful Roses for now and we’ll have to change the advertisement and house names in the future,” she continues with authority. “This has been done before in our history so don’t lose heart. I have to tell you though that this is the last time we will meet for a long time. I know it is a sad day for us and I understand that it will make people unhappy. If we are not careful we run the risk of being found out. The amount of applications is low presently and this is a good time for us to pack things away. We must protect ourselves.”
There are disapproving murmurs. My stomach heaves. She sounds very much in charge.
“I warned you all that the killing of too many military men was not a good idea,” comes Alice’s voice. “And it was I who never wanted Eve Good involved. Can I please have that noted, yet again? Eve Good was not one of us, and never was. We should have known better. But she blinded us with her sob-story.”
“And there have been far too many problems recently,” Lady Dornan says. “There will always be those who are unstable but Eve’s legacy has plagued us for many years. Of course, there are women who cannot go through with the deed but Eve was determined from the beginning to be a rotten egg. Charlotte, you are not like Eve Good. Please don’t look so worried. You have stayed the course, my dear.”
I sway against Giles and he grips my arm.
“Despite being under pressure from us all, the police, and your husband, you have been loyal to the Sinful Roses. I want it noted that Charlotte Davenport has stepped up to the mark with regards to her work for the last six months. She has done all that was asked of her and never uttered a word about us to anyone. Charlotte Davenport, we’re relieving you of your duty to us tonight. Thank you for the loyalty and support you have given to us. Yes, it is your case that is causing the problems we are facing, but it is not your fault, Charlotte dear. We all want to thank you.”
I almost sink to my knees. I cannot take much more of this eavesdropping. Giles’ grip tightens.
I hear Charlotte say, “Thank you for your kind words, Lydia. But I do think it’s appropriate now to thank the one who came out of nowhere to help and guide us. Writing to warn us and helping us with this evening and other important tasks recently.”
There is a round of applause.
“I, for one, would have been lost without her help and support,” says Charlotte.
“Yes, Charlotte,” Lydia says loudly. “Of course Norah Walsh’s work should be acknowledged here today.”
I shudder. Giles puts a supportive arm about me and I lean against him.
“You steered Charlotte’s husband away from me and the Roses. We understand that it cannot have been easy listening to Eve talk about us. We also appreciate the danger you put yourself in to expose all of this to us. We are forever in your debt, Norah. Thank you for being an honourable woman.”
Tears fall from my chin. I don’t want to listen any more.
“And for bringing us news of the definite death of Eve Good,” another voice says. “Now that bitch is what nearly sunk us. And it was sheer luck that someone blind, with no confide
nce or training was working on the case.”
“Your being there every step of the way helped steer things, Norah,” Charlotte says.
I wipe the droplets off but Giles must see them. What an utter fool I’ve been. I sniffle and Giles stiffens. It was louder than I anticipated. There’s a lull in conversation in the room. I hold my breath.
“And you convinced the cripple that all of this was a lie and in his head!” Lady Dornan adds. “What a clever girl you are!”
I cannot breathe. All this time Norah was a Sinful Rose! My feet move by themselves and I reverse into what was space behind me when we came in. Giles guides me out and when the air hits my nostrils I suck it in and lean on my knees.
“We need to keep moving,” Giles says, pulling me on. “I fear they heard us and we need to get to a telephone.”
Chapter 44
Norah Walsh
“What an unholy effing mess!” I say to Fredrick’s grin through the bars at the police station. “Get me out of here.”
“You’ll have to wait, just like any ordinary murdering whore,” he replies with a gleam to his eye. “And giving me evil stares like that isn’t going to help prove your innocence.”
“I am innocent!” I hiss at him, making the grip on the cold steel tighter. “I went there to catch them – not be one of them.”
“That’s your story,” he teases. “It’s a pity Laurie ruined your work as a double agent.”
“How is he?” I ask, breathing heavily. “He must’ve got a terrible shock.”
“Fine. Angry no doubt,” Fredrick says, fixing one of his brass buttons and picking fluff off his jacket sleeve.
“And what about you? What do you think?” I ask cautiously. “It was you who gave me this assignment in the first place. This is all your fault, you know. What are Lydia and Charlotte saying?”
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