Lady Be Good

by Heather Hiestand

  “Very good,” she said smartly, pulling the stool he used sometimes up to the wall. “How long will you be out?”

  “One never knows,” Glass said, slipping on his hat. “Hopefully we’ll make progress on the Konstantin matter.”

  Vall-Grandly followed him out of the door. They crowded into the lift with his fellow guest on the seventh floor, the actress Mrs. Arrathorne, and her entourage, which included a maid, a small black yapping dog with very sharp teeth, and an extremely attractive young woman in a blue coat with a fur collar.

  “My daughter, Lord Walling,” the actress said. “May I present Miss Ruby Arrathorne?”

  “Charmed,” he said, inclining his head.

  “A pleasure to meet you, my lord,” she said. Her gray eyes were grave, her manner contained. While her mother might want her introduced to a lord, this young lady couldn’t have cared less. A secret beau, perhaps, of whom her mother was unaware?

  The lift jerked to a halt, and the door opened on the fourth floor. A salesman joined them, reeking of the cologne he sold into shops. Glass had been in the elevator with him before.

  “Lord Walling,” the man exclaimed. “A pleasure to see you again, sir!”

  “Beecham,” Glass responded. “Ready to make your sales quota?”

  “Indeed I am, sir,” Beecham said, squeezing the handles of his valise until the leather squeaked. “An exquisite new product just came in this morning. Top notes of rum and pineapple. Might I have the honor of sending a sample up to your suite?”

  The look in the man’s hangdog eyes was so hopeful that Glass couldn’t resist. “Why not? We’ll see what the ladies think of it.”

  Beecham’s gums displayed themselves. “Very good, my lord. As soon as I return I’ll have it sent upstairs.”

  Glass turned to the front of the lift as it stopped on the ground floor, happy to get away from whatever scent poor Beecham had poured over himself that morning. He didn’t smell pineapple or rum, so he must not have sampled the new goods.

  Vall-Grandly followed him out. “What a headache,” he said, rubbing above his eyebrows. “That odor.”

  Glass ate up the marble floor with rapid steps and lifted a finger to Johnnie, the doorman.

  Johnnie touched the bill of his cap. “Taxicab for you, sir?”

  “Chucking it down out here,” Vall-Grandly observed. “I know we’ll get wet, but why not start out dry?”

  “Get us a taxicab,” Glass said. “Queen’s Theatre, Johnnie?”

  “Yessir,” Johnnie said, in his strong American South accent. He put his fingers in his mouth and blew. A taxicab waiting down the block puttered up to them.

  Glass flipped the doorman a coin and pointed Vall-Grandly toward the cab, close enough to the awning that they were only exposed to the wet for a couple of inches. Still, he felt the sharp stings of rain on his back as he bent over to enter.

  After too much time in heavy traffic, they pulled onto Shaftesbury Avenue, in front of the rounded edge of the theater. Taller than the buildings around it, it hulked on the corner. They could have walked there as quickly.

  “Why didn’t we bring umbrellas?” Glass muttered as he paid the driver.

  Vall-Grandly shrugged. “Good weapons in a pinch but unwieldy otherwise. We aren’t going to see much in this muck.”

  “Let’s scout around, see if there are any shafts opened up yet for the underground station construction.”

  “Right you are,” Vall-Grandly said. “What did the report say?”

  Glass began to sing “I’m Just Wild about Harry” inserting the name “Konstantin” for “Harry” at every repetition.

  Vall-Grandly chuckled. “Not much, I take it.”

  “No, but we know Konstantin likes to harass his cousin, so he never travels far from the hotel.”

  “How many times have we almost caught him?”

  “A few.” Glass grimaced. “Come on, Konstantin, you rat. Where are you lurking?”

  They wandered through the dark, rainy streets. Early March did not look different from February. Periodically, Glass stepped under an awning and tipped rain off his hat. When they reached the former home of the Eros statue, not to be replaced until 1931 when the construction would finally end, Glass looked around for the famous Mrs. Bonner of flower-selling fame but didn’t see her.

  “Let’s go into the station, see if we can find any hidey-holes,” Vall-Grandly suggested, “though we might need one of our pets from Special Branch to get us access.”

  “Very well.” Glass led the way to Jermyn Street.

  “A bun and a cuppa sound about right,” Vall-Grandly said, seeing the little bakery on the right side of the entrance.

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Glass agreed. Despite his coat and hat, rain had gone down the back of his collar, soaking him all the way to the skin. Most of his body was damp.

  They walked past the Arabic arched awning on the side of the bakery and went indoors, shaking off droplets like wet dogs.

  “Tea,” Vall-Grandly groaned, beelining for the counter.

  The clerk, a pretty brunette with a short, angular cut like a movie vamp, smiled at him. “Anything else, sir?”

  “Two cups, please, and a couple of currant buns. Got to stoke the fires,” he said, pulling coins from his pocket.

  Glass stared into the station through the window at the back of the shop. He scanned the people inside, looking for a tall fellow with the triangular jaw and thick neck. When his gaze went back the other way, he thought he saw a similar form. He squinted, unbelieving, as Vall-Grandly came up behind him, holding a cup of tea.

  “It’s him,” Glass said, grasping his agent’s coat sleeve instead of the tea. “Konstantin.”

  Vall-Grandly said nothing, just tossed back the contents of his cup, heedless of the temperature. He set it on a table and tucked his bag of buns into his pocket. “Let’s go get him then.”

  “You take the left and I’ll go right; then we’ll bear down on him from either side,” Glass instructed. He took the other teacup, and Vall-Grandly went out the door. Sipping his tea, Glass watched him, marveling that his agent could swallow the steaming contents down. The man must have had a throat of iron. As soon as he’d warmed his throat, Glass set down his cup, went out the door, and moved to the right, setting a parallel track for the man he thought he recognized.

  He kept his gaze moving, not wanting to tip him off, just taking quick mental snapshots: gray cap, loose blue scarf around the thick neck, long, baggy gray coat over dark trousers. When he was four feet away, he glanced toward his agent and saw him coming up, a couple of feet farther back. He paused in the middle of the old, high-ceilinged station, a fatal mistake, his wet shoes squelching on the damp concrete.

  Konstantin’s gaze, shadowed beneath the stained cap, stopped on Vall-Grandly, moved away, and moved back to him. Had he recognized the agent? Maybe they had overlapped in the common areas of the Grand Russe? They had both been there.

  Glass darted forward, ready to tackle the man before he legged it. Instead of running, though, he stood his ground. That didn’t seem like Konstantin. Glass stopped two feet away at a different angle, confused.

  Vall-Grandly had his hands out, low, ready to tackle. But the other man shifted his stance, and his coat opened. Glass moved behind him, close enough to see the paralyzed expression in Vall-Grandly’s eyes. He followed his agent’s gaze down to the other man’s waist level and saw what had petrified him. The narrow metal cylinder of a gun was pointing right at him.

  Glass stopped moving and opened his coat. He reached for his Webley MK VI service revolver, tucked into a specially designed holster pocket. Not standard issue for Secret Intelligence, of course, or the police for that matter, but left from his army days.

  Vall-Grandly’s gaze shifted to Glass. Glass saw Konstantin rotate his weight onto his right side, clearly made nervous by the agent’s change of focus.

  “Put the gun down, Konstantin,” Glass called, moving forward, his gun outstretched.r />
  The man shouted something in Russian, gibberish to Glass’s ears. Vall-Grandly, out of paralysis, stepped forward, and Konstantin’s coat fell away from his arm.

  What the hell was the Russian doing with a Thompson submachine gun? Did he have ties to the IRA, the Irish terrorists who were known to have purchased some of the American-made weapons? He jabbed his gun into the back of Konstantin’s neck, feeling the flesh buckle, but instead of setting the submachine gun down, the Russian raised the barrel, one hand in front of the drum magazine on the fore grip and the other on the trigger.

  The drum on the gun rattled, not a stealthy weapon. He tried to reach for the gun, but Konstantin raised the barrel, pointed at Vall-Grandly’s face, and fired. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. Rat-a-tat. The brass went flying in all directions.

  The agent’s right cheek disappeared in a hail of bloody bits. He crumpled to the ground, blood, teeth, brains all scattered around him. Dead. Bill Vall-Grandly was dead. Glass discharged his weapon, thinking it pointed at Konstantin’s neck, but his shot went wide. He must have jerked his arm away in the shock of the moment.

  The world seemed to stop moving, and Glass could see the scene: his dead agent, Konstantin’s wide back, the Thompson still firing, passersby ducking, screaming, running, clutching their companions. Then the universe began again, the horror all too real. A little trace of smoke drifting from the Thompson, but his gun was still cold in his hand with just one wrong shot fired.

  He grabbed for the Russian as the wailing began from others in the station, but his target had already moved. A man had collapsed off to the left, his newspaper across his chest, his arms flung wide. He’d been standing just a few feet away. Another clutched a bloody leg as a woman knelt next to him, her hands hovering over the wound.

  Hoping he hadn’t been the one to shoot either man, he flew toward Konstantin, gun at the ready for a close-in shot that wouldn’t hurt others, but the large man turned. Instead of firing again, he threw his weapon at Glass and ran.

  Glass leaped over the gun and gave chase. He couldn’t fire. People had crowded around the two bodies, the bloody living man too, instead of running away. Konstantin darted out the station door onto Jermyn Street, instantly anonymous in the rain except for his height.

  Following, Glass dropped his gun into his pocket and reached for his whistle, hoping that blowing it would bring the police. Fumbling, he continued following his target, finding the whistle just as Konstantin ducked into the road in front of a fast-moving taxicab. Glass blew, waiting to cross the road until he had a moment when the road was clear. His feet slipped in muck, horse dung mixed with rain, and he slid onto the pavement and took a header into a lamppost. Dazed, he slid down with his back against the post, falling to his knees.

  He struggled back up, ignoring the stares of passersby, and craned his neck at the corner of Duke of York Street, hoping to find his quarry again. Konstantin had vanished, helped by the rain and the general grayness of the day. A smart man, he’d left his gun behind. Otherwise, the screams of passersby would surely have alerted him to the Russian’s progress.

  He rubbed the front of his head, and his hand came away bloody. When he felt around, he found he’d cut above his right eye somehow. He wiped away blood, maybe tears, too, he didn’t know.

  Where were the police? How could Bill have died like this, bleeding out in the middle of Piccadilly Station? He could do nothing but head to Special Branch and explain what had happened to Detective Inspector Dent, get the police searching, and start filing reports of his own with his superiors.

  Holding a handkerchief above his bleeding eye, he went toward a hotel so he could catch a taxicab to Dent’s office.

  As the taxicab sped him to his destination, he wondered if he had gone soft. Why hadn’t he checked where he was firing? He’d seen people he cared about die before, and he’d needed to take Konstantin out. Had he made the mistake because he didn’t want to kill the princess’s cousin? That couldn’t be it. The man needed to die.

  What if Konstantin went to Olga for aid? Had he put his dear princess in danger?

  Chapter 11

  At the end of her shift, Olga went to the staff lounge to toss her apron into the laundry bin and retrieve a clean one from the rack so that she could go straight to work in the morning from her room. She hadn’t glanced at the staff board yet today, so she took a moment to check it. The notice was almost a day old at that point as they were updated in the early evening.

  Greetings from Peter Eyre. 9 March! The Grand Hall is meant for guests of the hotel and the businesses inside. If you see “ladies” loitering, who do not appear to be visiting the Salon, Restaurant, or Shop, please tell Mr. Dew or Mr. Neville so they can assess the situation and remove any professionals from the premises. Please offer any concerns regarding this order in full detail to your supervisor. Your servant, Peter Eyre

  Nothing was said about “ladies” who were anywhere else. Peter didn’t want transactions originating in the hotel, but there were plenty of ways to bring in the prols.

  “Olga.”

  She glanced away from the board and saw John Neville entering the staff lounge, trailed by a number of chambermaids just coming off shift. She went forward to meet him as the girls made a beeline for their timecards. “Mr. Neville.”

  Neville wore his new Savile Row suit well, though she wondered if any muscle at all existed on his thin frame. He seemed only held up by his bones. This did no harm to his attractive face, just made his pale skin look delicate over the strong bones.

  “Mr. Eyre would like to see you in his office.”

  She forced a smile past the exhaustion of a long day. Up and down too many stairs over the day had made her knee start aching again. “Should I be prepared?”

  Neville shrugged. “Our guest Lord Walling is with him.”

  “Something about the seventh again,” she said, her heart leaping at the sound of Douglas’s title. “The Russians?”

  “I really couldn’t say,” the day manager said. “Truly.”

  “Very well. Are you coming along?” She tucked her fresh apron under her arm.

  “No, I wasn’t requested. I thought I’d inspect the laundry.” He nodded at her and went out the far door. A corridor, where the laundry bin was, led to the room where the hotel washing was done.

  She went upstairs, holding onto the bannister as she climbed the steps, wondering what the denizens of the Piano Suite had done this time. Or maybe her cousin had done something. She closed her eyes for a moment when she reached the Grand Hall. Was he dead, this closest relative of hers in England?

  She pressed her lips together. If so, good riddance. He had long since stopped deserving any pity from her. A liar, a bully, and surely a murderer, destroyer of property, ruiner of peace. That was her cousin.

  She forced a smile as she went by the concierge and Hugh Moth, who looked weighted down by cares greater than his years. The secretarial staff started work an hour later than the chambermaids and they were still busy at their desks. She waved to Alecia Salter at the switchboard, then went through to Peter’s office.

  Peter and Douglas both stood when she entered. The room smelled like cold ashes, but Peter wasn’t smoking. She saw a fresh cut above Douglas’s eye. It created a T-shape when added to the old scar.

  “What happened?” she asked, unable to read his face. “Did you fight with Georgy Ovolensky again? Or his men?”

  “I had a report,” Douglas said, his voice hollow, “of Konstantin hanging about the Queen’s Theatre. You remember the newsreel about Piccadilly? When I realized construction on the new Underground station had begun, I knew the area suited your cousin perfectly.”

  “You found him?” she asked. Her knees wobbled.

  Peter moved from behind his desk, showing the grace that normally only revealed itself when he danced, and pushed her into a chair.

  Douglas turned the chair by him to face her and sat down, putting his hands over hers. “I’m sorry, Princess. We chased h
im into the station. He had a gun, a submachine gun, and when Bill Vall-Grandly approached him, well. You remember him?”

  She shook her head.

  “Spells me upstairs sometimes?”

  “Shorter, a bit heavy?” she asked, digging through her brain. He didn’t have too many visitors.

  “Yes, that’s him.” His fingers went to the cut.

  “You should bandage that,” she said.

  “Listen to me, Princess. Your cousin opened fire in Piccadilly Station. Killed two men, wounded a couple of others.”

  Black spots swung across her vision. The room grayed. She blinked hard and grabbed for the armrests of the hard wooden chair, trying to anchor herself. Behind her, Peter put his hands on her shoulders.

  She touched Douglas’s knee, her fingers light as a butterfly’s wings. “Your agent is dead? This Bill?”

  “Yes,” Douglas said soberly. “I watched him die. And I didn’t take my shot properly. I lost Konstantin on the street. He could be anywhere.”

  “You’re in danger, Olga,” Peter said.

  “I’m sorry,” Douglas said, his mouth creasing down.

  She couldn’t fit the words into anything coherent. “Sorry for what? Not killing my cousin?”

  “He opened fire in a tube station,” Peter said, squeezing her shoulders. “What do you expect? He’s a rabid dog.”

  She cast her gaze down to her hands, realized they were trembling.

  “She needs a cup of tea,” Douglas said.

  “She needs to stop caring about her cousin,” Peter said more harshly. “If I had only known. I should have protected her better.”

  “You can’t even protect a few prostitutes,” Douglas pointed out. “How can you guard a headstrong princess?”

  “I’m the closest thing she has to family.” Peter’s voice came out strangled.

  “I didn’t know you thought that way,” Olga said. It explained a few things.

  “Of course I do,” he said. “I know my sister seems cold, but she feels the same way.”

  “She trained me,” Olga said, “which earned me the money that Konstantin stole. What if he bought that gun with my five pounds?” Her eyes filled with tears.