Over a week had passed and there had been no word of Raymond. Only the whispers in the kitchenette at night. Only the abhorrent silence in the ballroom. Only the rumour that Rosa said she’d heard from a guest who’d heard it from a dancer down in the ballroom: Raymond de Guise was a blackguard. They say he was bedding some poor kitchen girl and ran out on her when the management found out . . .
She was approaching the Continental when she saw the door to one of the neighbouring rooms left hanging ajar. Chambermaids were taught that their presence in the Buckingham was not to be detected, that – for better or worse – they were to leave everything apparently untouched, no matter how unsavoury it might seem. Rosa had a story about a book of French postcards she’d observed in the suite of Elizabeth Enache, the Romanian countess who frequented in the summer season – every one of them detailing, without any shame, the beauty of a certain lady dancer from Constantinople. Almost everyone who’d worked at the Buckingham for long enough had seen something to make them blush, but the rule was simple: ‘You were never there, girls,’ Mrs Moffatt would say, with a nod and a wink.
Nancy had almost passed the door when she smelt the pungent tang of vomit in the air. Not even the collection of vinegars and polishes on her trolley were enough to eclipse that ripe scent.
Stay invisible! the voice in her head kept imploring her.
But Nancy opened the door to Vivienne Edgerton’s suite.
The figure lying slumped on the floor at the side of the bed was none other than Vivienne Edgerton herself. Nancy rushed to her side. Perhaps she’d rolled out of bed in the night – but, as soon as she dropped to the carpet to rouse her, she knew it was more than that. The carpet was sticky with whatever Vivienne had thrown up the night before; her face was caked in orange and red. Her skin beneath was a ghostly white – and, though it barely showed through the smudged Tangee lipstick that she wore, her lips were shrivelled and paling to blue.
‘Vivienne?’ Nancy whispered, forgetting herself. ‘Miss Edgerton?’
There was no reply. Nancy dared to touch her hair, brushing it away from her face. The girl was breathing; it was only faint but at least it convinced Nancy that she was still alive. She remembered her father. She’d found him like this once as well, the bottle of pills from the doctor half-empty at his side. The memory of it was almost as powerful a trauma as discovering him that April morning: the early spring sunshine tumbling through the window, and her father lying prone in a pool of his own filth. That had been the day she convinced him: no more. No matter what the pain, no matter what the distress, no more whisky . . . and no more dependence on laudanum.
It was as she was having this thought that she noticed the lavender purse on the carpet, itself caked in Miss Edgerton’s mess. Her eyes drifted to it. The drawstring was open and, in its mouth, was a tiny glass phial. A residue remained inside: white and crystalline, like finely ground sugar, slightly discoloured with age.
‘Oh, Miss Edgerton,’ she whispered, ‘what have you done?’
Something seized Nancy. She opened Vivienne’s eyes one after another. She lifted her head, as if to open the way to her lungs. Nancy was no nurse, but she knew enough. She’d administered enough to her father in those dying weeks and months – medicines and stern talking-tos, and all the love in the world, anything to keep him dignified and alive. ‘Miss Edgerton!’ she called, her voice rising in pitch, ‘Miss Edgerton, can you hear me?’
She pinched her cheeks urgently. Vivienne did not wake. Blood rushed to the place where her fingertips had been. That’s good, thought Nancy. At least her body can answer – even if Vivienne herself cannot.
‘Vivienne!’ she called again. ‘Miss Edgerton, I’m going to . . .’
She lifted Vivienne’s head, brought it to her lap. In the same moment, Vivienne’s body bucked. A single convulsion ran through the girl and erupted out of her throat. Bile was all that was left inside her. It splattered Nancy’s smart apron.
Vivienne opened her eyes a fraction.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ Nancy said, brushing her hair out of the smears on her face. ‘Miss Edgerton, you’ve done the most foolish thing – but it’s going to be all right. I’m going to get you help. Can you hear me, Vivienne?’ She remembered herself, remembered her place. ‘Miss Edgerton, are you there?’
Nancy looked up and called out: ‘Mrs Whitehead!’
Mrs Whitehead appeared, imperious, in the doorway. Upon seeing Vivienne Edgerton lying prone in Nancy’s arms, her face twisted. ‘Get up, girl,’ she said. ‘Quickly now!’
‘No,’ said Nancy – and was surprised to hear the boldness in her own voice. She caught herself, just in time. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Whitehead, but no – she needs a doctor, now, and he needs to come here. We can’t move her, not until we know . . . She’ll need water, and she needs warm towels, and she needs a hotel doctor now. Mrs Whitehead, I need you to fetch them.’
For a moment, Mrs Whitehead was frozen, aghast at the audacity of the chambermaid ordering her – gentlewoman, overseer, manageress – around. Then something changed. Mrs Whitehead saw the fire in Nancy’s eyes, and stepped backwards out of the door.
‘Stay with her, Miss Nettleton,’ she breathed, and hurried back along the hall.
In the bedchamber, Nancy cradled Vivienne Edgerton’s head. ‘You’re going to be fine,’ she said. ‘You are going to be fine,’ she repeated. But Vivienne only rolled her head, retching again into Nancy’s lap.
*
The door to Maynard Charles’s office opened and Nancy ner-vously walked through. She had often seen the hotel director from afar. He was a corpulent fellow, the sort of indulgent man who might quickly have perished if he’d lived the same life as her father, but here in the Buckingham his rounded tummy and second chin gave him the air of a leader. In the office he was standing behind his desk, with his hands folded behind his back and his belly straining at his simple black waistcoat. By his eyes, Nancy took him for a wearied man.
‘Thank you for waiting, Miss Nettleton. If you’d like to take a seat, Mr Simenon here will provide us with a pot of tea.’ The head concierge, who had been lurking solemnly in the corner, turned on his heel to do as Mr Charles instructed. ‘Bring the girl some sugar too, Mr Simenon. She has had quite an experience.’
There seemed a sickly pallor around Mr Simenon too. He looked over his shoulder as he left, as if to consider Nancy more closely, and then closed the door.
Mr Charles came to sit beside her. She should not have been anxious to be seated beside the hotel director – she was not some foolish little girl! – but the shock of the morning was indeed working its way out of her system. She shivered.
‘You’re not in trouble, my dear. I asked you to come here because I am very grateful for your service. What you did today may have been the difference between life and death for Miss Edgerton, and it does not go unnoticed.’
Nancy wanted to say that she hadn’t done very much. It was by sheer accident that she’d found her. The rest – sitting with her until the doctor came, wetting her lips with water from the hem of her dress, reaching into her mouth to stop her tongue from rolling back and choking her – had been instinct.
‘Is she going to be all right, Mr Charles?’
‘The doctors are confident of it. Vivienne had overindulged in the ballroom last night. She has been a very foolish girl, but she will live. Whether or not she may live with the humiliation is, of course, a very different matter. And that, in a roundabout way, is why I asked Mrs Moffatt to bring you here, Nancy.’
At this moment Mr Simenon reappeared and, clearly finding it beneath him to act as a waiter, proceeded to pour tea begrudgingly for Nancy and Mr Charles. Then he resumed his place in the corner.
‘Nancy, the Buckingham is in your debt. We will be in your debt further if you might do us another little service. I promise it won’t take any of your time.’
Haltingly, Nancy asked, ‘What is it, Mr Charles?’
‘This ha
s been a delicate business. You must know, already, how rumours can spread and change in a place like our hotel. I was here for the Spanish influenza, Nancy, and not even that sickness, vile as it was, was as virulent as a rumour in our Buckingham halls. I should like it, my dear, if you were to keep Miss Edgerton’s little indiscretion between ourselves.’
She felt herself compelled to nod – the weight of expectation in the room was palpable.
Mr Charles’s eyes were on her and they seemed so exacting. ‘Of course,’ she said, floundering for words.
Then she hesitated.
‘Mr Charles, if I may . . .’ Nancy, she thought, what are you doing? But the words came out of her anyway. She noted the way Mr Charles flinched as he nodded. ‘I would never gossip about Miss Edgerton. But . . . Forgive me for speaking out of turn, Mr Charles, but what happened to Miss Edgerton, it isn’t the sort of thing you can just sweep under the carpet. I’ve seen this kind of thing once before. My father needed his medicines too. He needed them so much he could have killed himself. And that’s what Vivienne Edgerton will do, if she isn’t helped. She needs a friend. She needs a chaperone. If she doesn’t have those things, why, she’ll . . .’
Mr Charles raised a hand, and Nancy fell suddenly silent. ‘I am aware of Miss Edgerton’s predicament, Nancy. I have been managing it for some time.’
‘Managing it?’ Nancy gasped. ‘Sir, that’s allowing it. She’s . . .’ Nancy didn’t stop to think; the words were out before she even knew. ‘She’s a human being. She doesn’t need managing. She needs to be cared for. Yes, that’s it. She needs somebody to love her enough to not let her harm herself. Hasn’t anyone asked where Nathaniel White was last night?’
Mr Charles’s face was a mask. His nostrils flared and his face seemed to turn in on itself as he contained an outburst. She doesn’t understand, he told himself. Why would she? What could she possibly know about scandal and reputation? How much of our livelihood depends on us quashing the former to defend the latter. We’re already to be without a king this New Year. Must we also be a cesspit of scandal as well?
‘Your concerns are noted, Nancy. But what happens next is none of your concern. I asked you here this afternoon to make this very clear. What happened to Miss Edgerton was an accident, pure and simple. She fell. She caught a fever. She is now indisposed. Only a handful of souls know otherwise, and were it to become common knowledge in this hotel, why, I believe I would know where to look. Don’t you?’
Nancy stood, shivering. You silly girl, you shouldn’t have spoken out of turn. ‘Yes, sir,’ she whispered.
‘You will receive an extra week’s wages this month in return for good deeds rendered.’
As she left, Nancy stopped in the doorway. ‘I didn’t do it for reward, sir.’
‘Indeed not. But moments like this deserve recognition, do they not?’
*
After Nancy was gone, Maynard Charles gave a muted roar of fury, slamming his closed fist into his desk. ‘She’s right, of course,’ he said to Mr Simenon – who stepped again out of the shadows in the corner of the office. ‘Vivienne will do it over and again, until one day she isn’t fortunate enough to be found by some passing chambermaid. And then where are we? At her stepfather’s mercy, and all of us banished from the Buckingham. New Year is coming. Christmas is already here. That chambermaid speaks more sense than the rest of us combined.’
‘Mr Charles, don’t blame yourself. I—’
‘I’m not blaming myself,’ Maynard Charles snapped. ‘I’m blaming whoever’s helping her. A girl like Vivienne doesn’t have the wherewithal to do this herself. Somebody is supplying her. Someone’s trading for her in my hotel.’
Mr Simenon looked guiltily to the ground. ‘Mr Charles, surely nobody here would dare do such a thing? Lord Edgerton is the head of our board—’
‘When I find them, I’ll string them up. This hotel is my life’s work. I won’t have it ruined by one foolish girl and her weaknesses. The girl is to receive no more packages, Mr Simenon, not without you or I having intercepted them first. Find him for me, Mr Simenon. Whoever is corrupting her, whoever is helping her kill herself – and all for a few measly pounds – find them and bring them to me. I don’t care how Vivienne Edgerton wants to ruin her life – but she won’t do it at the cost of the rest of us. She won’t bring my Buckingham down.’
Mr Simenon let Maynard Charles’s words wash over him. Though Maynard Charles did not see it, his ordinarily pallid cheeks were suddenly flushed full of blood. Sweat beaded on his brow as he tried desperately to work through all the permutations of what might happen were Vivienne Edgerton to tell anyone where she really got her secret packages from. He worked a finger under his collar, trying hard not to betray his guilt.
Then, with a sinking feeling, he said, ‘I’ll find them, Mr Charles. Whoever’s doing this, we’ll stop it now . . . before it’s the ruin of us all.’
*
Night had fallen across London, bringing with it fresh falls of snow. The long barrel of Cable Street was criss-crossed by the footprints of tradesmen and drunks on their way home. A lone fox darted between the upturned rubbish pails, its eyes aglow.
The knock came at midnight. Alma Cohen was the first to hear it. She turned over in the bed she’d once shared with her husband Stanley, and some instinct still made her reach out for him. A knock in the middle of the night only meant one thing. Bad news. She kept an old skillet at the side of her bed for nights like these.
She was coming through the bedroom door when she crashed into her son Artie walking along the hall. ‘I’ll see to this, Ma,’ he said. ‘You get your beauty sleep. It’s cold enough to freeze your knackers off out there.’
‘Artie!’
‘Sorry, Ma, but you’ve heard worse. Look, I’ll deal with this. I’m the man of this house, ain’t I?’
‘You’re not in trouble again, are you, Artie?’
If only I was, thought Artie as he tramped down the stairs. Then I might be making us Cohens some money . . .
Downstairs, the knocking grew in intensity. Artie braced himself, ready to deal somebody a fist of his own for having the temerity to wake his mother in the middle of the night, and opened the door.
His brother stood there, in the swirling snow of the night.
‘You,’ Artie growled.
Ray Cohen held up his hands. ‘I’m not here to fight with you, Artie. I’m here to give you what you want. I can’t dance for them any more. I can’t stand up and dance for everything that’s wrong in the world. I want to . . . what would Dad have called it? Even the scales? Redress the balance?’ Ray paused, a fringe of white forming on his wild black hair. ‘Get your overcoat, Artie. This night’s as good as any.’
Chapter Twenty-seven
THE TWO FIGURES WHO TRAMPED through the snow of Berkeley Square were careful to stick to the shadows at the edges of the townhouses, half-cloaked by the black iron railings and tall privet hedges of the Mayfair elite. In the shadow of the Buckingham, its ornate copper crown now capped in white, they stopped and gazed up.
Raymond urged Artie up the square and down the narrow alley of Michaelmas Mews. The cobbles here were glazed in yet more white, the railings turned to spears of ice on either side. Artie’s blood was getting up – but this was one enterprise in which Artie, no matter how talented he was in the subtle arts of breaking and entering, could not take charge.
At first, Artie had not known what to think when he had opened the door to his brother in the dead of night. It had taken Raymond some time to talk him around, to tell him that he was wrong, that he’d always been wrong – that when he’d said that the Grand was a world apart from the Buckingham Hotel and all its politicians and appeasers and fascists, its industrialists and aristocrats with money enough to solve the world’s problems if only they cared, he was fooling himself. The Grand bred them, he realised now. The Buckingham attracted the very same people who would march on Cable Street and face his family down. Th
is was not right. The life Ray Cohen had been living was not right. The gilded Mayfair world was one they could never hope to bring down or change – but they could take a little from it, chip away at the beast. Grand victories like Cable Street shook the world, but the little ones still counted.
But there was to be no breaking and entering tonight. The staff entrance was open at all hours, and all Raymond needed to do was perform a little distraction to get them inside. As they approached, he took Artie by the shoulder and told him to slow down. ‘A fine burglar you are,’ he said. ‘You creep around like you’re not supposed to be here.’
‘I’m not supposed to be here.’
‘Neither of us are, but we may as well act the part.’
Raymond pushed open the tradesman’s door. Inside, one of the porters – a lad who lived above the Exmouth markets – was slumped in a chair, reading from one of the high-and-mighty periodicals that were scattered liberally around the hotel lounges. Startled, he looked up – and Raymond saw that he had been close to sleep. His eyes were heavy and his bottom lip shimmered where he had started to drool. Embarrassment took hold of the lad and he straightened himself. ‘Mr de Guise, I know what you was thinking, but I wasn’t nodding off, sir. I was just . . .’
Raymond put on his best ballroom smile. He had come dressed in his evening suit and gentleman’s frock coat for this very reason. ‘You can close your eyes on my account. But don’t let the old man find you, it would be more than your job’s worth. Still up and wandering the halls, is he?’ He winked.
The boy checked the clock ticking on the wall. Its hands were inching towards 2 a.m. ‘Mr Charles retired half an hour ago,’ he said. ‘Did his final circuit and then off to bed.’
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