by C. J. Archer
“And that she took pity on me.” He chuckled. “I hadn’t seen her in years, so I wasn’t sure she’d accept. I thought she might have forgotten me.”
“You are not easy to forget, Uncle.”
He chuckled again, but it quickly faded. “Are you telling me you want to be assistant manager? Is that why you’re reminding me that I hired a woman in a position of authority?”
The rapid flip of the topic had me in a spin for a moment. “No! I just don’t want you to close your mind to the idea of hiring women for positions they wouldn’t usually be considered for. Peter is the right choice for assistant manager.”
“He’s no—” His lips pinched, cutting off the end of his sentence.
“You’re right, he’s no Harry Armitage,” I said quietly.
It was a response that could have failed miserably and stoked my uncle’s temper again. But I’d wanted to remind him how good Harry had been as assistant manager. I wanted him to feel regret for dismissing him.
He snatched the pen out of the stand and pulled a stack of papers closer. I was dismissed.
I headed to my suite where a maid’s cart laden with clean towels, sheets and supplies was parked near the door. Harmony dusted the window sill in my sitting room, but stopped upon seeing me. She tucked the duster under her arm.
“I hoped you’d be back for lunch,” she said, taking a seat on the sofa. “I ordered sandwiches.” Indeed she had. Enough for two.
Harmony should only be half way through her shift at this time. She rarely joined me for lunch, but we almost always had breakfast together before she styled my hair.
“This is a treat,” I said, choosing a sandwich of cucumber and ham. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“No reason.” She picked up a newspaper and handed one to me then retrieved a second for herself from the small stack. She read as she nibbled a sandwich.
It had become our breakfast ritual to scour the newspapers for potential clients—victims of burglary, kidnappings, that sort of thing. I’d hoped Harry would pass on more clients to me, but so far, he’d sent none my way since the Warrington divorce case that had turned into a murder investigation. The lack of co-operation was further evidence that he wanted as little to do with me as possible.
This morning I’d hurried out after breakfast for the appointment at Maison de Poiters so we hadn’t finished reading through the papers. I’d assumed we’d leave it at that, but Harmony clearly wanted to read all the copies front to back.
I flipped the page and scanned the columns. “A shop burned down in Whitechapel.” I tapped my finger on the headline. “Arson is suspected after witnesses saw a man run away. I could approach the shopkeeper and offer to find the arsonist.”
“No shopkeeper in Whitechapel has enough money to hire a private detective, and there’s a good chance the building’s owner started the fire himself to claim the insurance.”
Harmony’s opinion of people was generally harsher than mine, but it wasn’t surprising considering our different upbringings. Mine had been thoroughly upper middle class, raised by an academic father and a mother whose wealthy family had cut her off upon her marriage. Harmony lived in a slum all her life until she moved into the Mayfair’s staff accommodation. She’d once told me she’d seen the worst of humanity as poverty made people desperate and desperate people did terrible things to survive. I used to subscribe to that opinion too until I started investigating murders and saw first-hand how cruel and devious folk in the middle and upper classes could be. There were good and bad in all walks of life.
Harmony folded up the newspaper she was reading and reached for another sandwich. “I should resume my chores.” She didn’t rise, however, and sat nibbling at her sandwich, lost in thought. When she finished, she offered the plate of sandwiches to me. “You should call on him.”
“Who?” I asked, oh-so-innocently.
“You know who. Go and visit him and see if he has a case for you. Tell him you’ll take anything, even the unhappy spouses.”
Harry had vowed he wouldn’t investigate the numerous cases that came across his desk where husbands and wives wished to employ his services to catch their spouse with a lover. Proving adultery was the easiest route to divorce, but I’d been surprised at how many couples wanted to formally end their marriage. Harmony wasn’t.
“If Harry wishes to pass them on to me, he’ll send them my way,” I said. “He hasn’t. I have no interest in going to his office, cap in hand. I’m above begging.”
Harmony gave me an arched look. “For now.”
She had a point. I couldn’t go on like this much longer. It wasn’t so much the money I needed—although the dream of moving out of the hotel got further and further away the longer I was without work—but I had to do something with my time. There was only so much shopping and afternoon teas I could take before I went mad. I’d visited all the museums and art galleries, several times, and taken walks most days, even in the rain. That was more than my cousin ever did.
Harmony left to resume her duties and I spent the afternoon reading the newspaper and writing letters, pausing to have afternoon tea in the hotel’s large sitting room with Flossy. We’d just finished and were about to leave when Aunt Lilian hurried in. She looked as though she’d just woken up after a restless night. Her eyes were hooded, the eyelids dark and ribbed with veins. Her hair was flat on one side and messy on the other, and the top button of her collar was undone at her throat. She searched the room and a look of utter relief washed over her face when she spotted Flossy and me.
She rushed forward, hands outstretched. “Florence, Cleo, there you are.”
I took one hand and Flossy took the other. “What is it, Mother?” Flossy asked. “Are you unwell? Shall I send for the doctor?”
“I don’t need a doctor, just my tonic.” She blinked back tears. “I can’t find it. I think it fell out of my purse at Maison de Poitiers.”
“You took it with you?”
“I thought I might need it, but I didn’t take any, even though I felt a headache coming on. I know you don’t want me to, but I carried it with me anyway. Just for an emergency, you understand.”
The tonic had been prescribed by her doctor to cure her melancholy disposition. It achieved that rather well. Whenever she took a dose, she always cheered up. It gave her energy and vitality. She was a different person when she took it, not faded and frayed like a flag left out in the weather too long.
But the tonic also made her condition so much worse when it wore off. Not only did she suffer from crippling headaches, her moods became very low too. And the more she took of it, the more often she needed the next dose and the next, and the worse she felt in between. Flossy and I had tried to tell her it was making her sicker, so some days she agreed not to take it at all. But on those occasions, she kept to her bed in her darkened room, as even the wan London sunlight hurt her eyes.
“Can you return to the salon to see if it fell behind the sofa cushions?” Aunt Lilian asked.
“It’ll be closed by the time we get there,” I said. “I’ll go tomorrow, first thing.”
“But it’s all I have left and I need it for tonight.” Her voice thinned to a whine. “I hear we’re dining with Mrs. Hessing and I ought to be there. She’s one of our best guests.”
Her desperate plea had caught the attention of three women seated nearby. One pursed her lips in disapproval.
I steered my aunt out of earshot. “Flossy and I will be hostesses in your stead. Mrs. Hessing will understand.”
Flossy tried to give her mother a reassuring smile. “Do try not to worry.”
Aunt Lilian chewed her lower lip, leaving behind teeth marks. “Even so, I need my tonic. What time is it, Cleo? Perhaps you can make it before the shop closes, after all. Our carriages are very swift.”
“Not with the end of day traffic.” I grasped her hand again, feeling it tremble before she snatched it away.
She rubbed her temple. “I’ll send for the doctor
. He can bring me another bottle.”
“It’s not an emergency, Mother.” Flossy gripped Aunt Lilian’s elbow, only to be shaken off. “You can go without for tonight.”
Aunt Lilian bared her teeth in a snarl. “Don’t speak to me like that.” She turned and rushed out, brushing past Mr. Chapman the steward without responding to his greeting.
Beside me, Flossy sniffed. “I wish she wouldn’t rely on it so much.”
“Do you think she’ll call the doctor?”
“She doesn’t know how to use the telephone, but that might not stop her asking Mr. Hobart to call on her behalf.”
Aunt Lilian didn’t join us for dinner. It was a long evening with Mrs. Hessing dominating the conversation, criticizing everything from the weather to the prime minister. Her daughter sat mostly silent, despite my efforts to draw her out. Despite her silence, or perhaps because of it, her mother spoke about her as if she wasn’t there. At one point or other, she managed to mention all of Miss Hessing’s good qualities as well as the amount of her inheritance. My uncle looked interested. Floyd did not.
The following morning after breakfast, I walked to Maison de Poitiers. I planned my journey so I’d be there when Madame Poitiers opened the salon. I wanted to be back at the hotel before my aunt awoke. It wasn’t far, but my aunt and cousin had insisted on taking one of the hotel carriages yesterday. As Flossy put it, only those who can’t afford private vehicles walk, even short distances.
As I approached the shop on New Bond Street, Madame Poitiers’ assistant approached from the opposite direction. She didn’t see me as she dug through her bag. She pulled out a key and inserted it into the lock.
“Good morning,” I said.
She jumped at the sound of my voice. “Oh! Miss Fox. You surprised me. Did you forget something yesterday?”
“My aunt thinks she dropped her medicine here. Did you happen to find a small bottle of tonic caught in the sofa cushions?”
“No, but come in and we’ll look together.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know your name,” I said apologetically.
She smiled as she opened the door. “It’s Anna Newland.”
She had a warm smile and a pleasant face with almond colored eyes and dark brown hair fixed in a simple bun high on her head. A straw hat sat in front of the bun, the brim decorated with yellow and orange ribbons arranged to look like a sunburst. It was simple yet stylish, much like the woman herself. She couldn’t have been more than my age. She wore no jewelry and a plain black dress, but like Madame Poitiers’ dress, it was well made and fit her frame perfectly.
Yesterday, I’d thought her shy but her easy manner this morning made me think she was simply staying quiet to counter-balance her exuberant employer. Inside, she opened the curtains, flooding the salon with light. I crossed the room to the sofa on which my aunt had sat, but stopped before I reached it.
The sight of two legs had me clutching my throat as bile rose. The rest of the body was hidden by the sofa.
I rounded it cautiously, reluctantly, and gasped. Madame Poitiers lay on the floor, her blood-red eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling, a white strip of lace wrapped around her throat. I didn’t need to feel her pulse to know she was dead.
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MURDER AT THE DRESSMAKER’S SALON
Available 7th June 2022
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Lord Hawkesbury's Players Series
Witch Born
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About the Author
C.J. Archer has loved history and books for as long as she can remember and feels fortunate that she found a way to combine the two. She spent her early childhood in the dramatic beauty of outback Queensland, Australia, but now lives in suburban Melbourne with her husband, two children and a mischievous black & white cat named Coco.
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