Текст книги "A Spider in the Cup"

Автор книги: Barbara Cleverly

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

CHAPTER 21

“You’re very good at this, Cornelius,” Lydia commented as Kingstone swooped and removed the last of her counters. “I hardly ever play but I can usually beat the girls.” She began to clear the pieces off the board. “Joe’s not bad but our best player is Marcus. You’ll have to go up against him to call yourself house Morris champion. But with Joe doing his interrogation in Guildford and Marcus striding about the grounds with the inspector looking for tyre marks, you’re stuck with me, I’m afraid. Shall we play another round?”

“You make all your guests play?”

“Oh, yes. I usually choose the moment after a heavy lunch and a glass of wine or two—as now—when they’re not feeling too sharp! Or distracted and worried. All things considered, I thought I must stand a fighting chance with you! It’s said to be a good test of character.”

“Well, I warn you—I like to win. No quarter given for sex or age and I’ve had practice at this game.”

“So I see! But so has Marcus. He jolly well ought to be good at it! He grew up here and there’s a game board cut out right there on the village green. He’s been playing with the local lads since he was big enough to hop between the holes. Not many of the green games left these days, sadly. They’ve mostly been removed along with the stocks and the pillories, the bowling alleys and all the other fun things. No one needs them now there’s a picture palace in Guildford and a wireless in every cottage.”

“On the green? You mean carved right out of the turf?”

“Oh, yes. From time immemorial! You find them marked on any smooth surface from the backs of Roman roof tiles to the tops of Victorian pub tables. The first record of our village game is fourteen hundred and something. The greens were gathering places, centres for entertainment as well as public punishment and announcing the news. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Titania grumbles that ‘the Nine Men’s Morris is filled up with mud.’ They had terrible weather in those days as well.”

“It’s been played in some strange places. Wherever men had time on their hands, strengths to try, schemes to make in discreet surroundings.”

“Yes. Men. Women disguise their gossip and chicanery under layers of harmless sewing. Now, chess is totally absorbing but quilting and Nine Men’s Morris are not demanding enough to distract attention from the main business of the day. You can look innocent and occupied on the surface when your mind and your tongue may be busy with any kind of roguery. Marcus can play blindfold while reciting the Encyclopaedia Britannica,” she finished proudly.

“You’re not tempting me to a showdown with the master, Lydia.” Kingstone laughed. “It’s not a game to be despised, though. It’s a game of strategy. If you’ll excuse my pointing it out, it was a mistake to start off by concentrating your pieces in one section of the board. It feels more secure to you, perhaps, but it’s much more effective to space them out strategically around the board.”

Lydia nodded. “I’m always too eager to get my mill going! Three counters in a row. Three strong men. That’s you, Marcus and Joe! I go straight for it.”

“Right.” Kingstone placed two white counters back on the board in a line pointing from the six o’clock position to the centre and then a third on the row above and offset by one place. “Look here—when you move this stray back in line, you’ve made a mill of three and you’re in a position to get rid of one of your opponent’s men. Next move, you just slide the same counter back out of line, then you replace it when you can and cull another black one. Just go on like that, dodging back and forth, until you’ve cleared the board. You establish your strong position, put your head down and keep going. It’s not thrilling but it’s effective.”

“Who makes the most challenging opponents, Cornelius? Clearly not women—after two rounds of shuffling to and fro, we’re bored stiff and looking about for socks to darn. How about … New York bankers? Birmingham industrialists? German economists?”

For a moment he was startled. “Did …? Who …?”

“Joe put me up to it. He told me about your adventures yesterday at the Victoria. The lunch you attended given by those estimable people—the Pilgrims. I was telling him what good work they do for some of the women’s charities I’m involved with, and he mentioned what you did afterwards. You shouldn’t expect to hide these things from Joe, you know. I stopped trying when I was sixteen. He always finds out what you’re up to.”

Kingstone greeted this casual, almost teasing, confidence with perceptible shock but his voice when he replied was measured. “Joe uses you, Lydia. He had no right to put you into danger. First by bringing me here. Then by telling you all this. Because danger’s what you’re in. Up to your neck. And I’ve brought it down on you.” He glared at the game on the table in front of him. “Forget all this nonsense! No more Morris! This is a distraction. A sideshow.” He folded up the board, scooped all the counters angrily into one large palm and replaced them in their bag.

With the action, his voice lost its gritty directness, its swift allusive expression, and took on a senatorial authority. “It is a pseudo-cultural caprice indulged in by men with much to hide and much to lose. It’s a mask for the activities of a group of powerful men. Men who sip brandy and move their counters with a manicured forefinger in a cynical salute to what they fancy to be an endearing echo from their past. But the game they play has little to do with those sweaty, penniless adventurers who spent long hours confined aboard a little ship—men trying to preserve their sanity in a hostile and uncertain world. The players hide their purpose within the body of a charitable and hallowed institution as the parasitic wasp buries its eggs, unresisted, in an unsuspecting fat caterpillar. A cover—quirky but apparently harmless—for meetings which are anything but innocent. These constitute an intensive exchange of views and formulation of plans by the members of a highly selected élite. Things are said face to face that may not be spoken over wires or even put in diplomatic bags. Decisions made at their meetings are carried unanimously, are final and binding. And always expedited.”

His voice was chill, his face as expressionless as that of a hanging judge as he concluded, “As a result of these meetings, Lydia, fortunes are made. Governments fall. Ships are sunk. Wars are started. And, on the way to achieving these ends, men—and women—are assassinated, swept from the board like counters.”

Lydia was pale and wide-eyed, absorbing every stark word. At last she spoke. “Well! I’ve heard some pretty inventive excuses for wriggling out of a game but that takes the biscuit! I won’t dare to suggest chess! I’ll leave you to make your own plans with Joe and Marcus. Here, Cornelius, have a look at the papers … do the crossword … you didn’t have time this morning. I’ll go and search out my needlepoint. Much less distressing. It’s a bit early but I think I could do with a cup of tea. I’ll go and make us one.”

She got to her feet, once again the brisk hostess.

Rising with her, he caught her hand. “I’ve startled you and I meant to. I’m a straightforward operator, Lydia. It was always my way to keep my troops informed. Tell them the worst. How can you keep your head on your shoulders if you don’t know where the fire’s coming from and when it’s coming?”

“Don’t worry, Cornelius. I know now. From every direction. All the time. Tin hats on, I think. Earl Grey or Darjeeling?”

PEARSON GREETED JOE on his return with a calm account of domestic activities since his departure. “We had not looked for you so soon, sir. All’s well,” he thought to add. “Mister Marcus is on patrol in the grounds and Miss Lydia has withdrawn to the morning room with her embroidery. You’ll find the senator in the drawing room, asleep. Shall I have more tea sent in?”

“We’ll let him snooze on for a bit,” Joe said, “and I’ll have a word with my sister.”

“No, Joe, she’s going to have a word with you!” Lydia had heard him arrive and came out to greet him, size three crewel needle held at the tilt. “In fact she’s planning to puncture your composure.” She ushered him into the morning room. “You set me up to play a perfectly ordinary Sunday afternoon game with Cornelius, never bothering to tell me I risked blowing the lid off the jam jar. Now he thinks I’m some sort of Mata Hari and he’s clammed up. Did you have any idea you were bringing down death and destruction, not just on the innocent Surrey stockbroker belt but apparently—the world? The Nine Men of Mystery you told me to pump him about turn out to be a sinister blend of Knights Templar and the Mafia and all run, we’ll no doubt find, by Professor Moriarty, drawing on the technical expertise of Alphonse Capone.”

“Yes, yes,” Joe interrupted her. “I know all that. And your indignant squeaking speaks volumes. Not something to be taken too seriously perhaps? You didn’t manage to discover what Cornelius’s role is in this coven? Moving force? Recent recruit? Sacrificial victim? That’s the sort of thing I’d really like to know.”

“Well, you’ll have to ask him yourself. He didn’t confide that much. His warnings were more all-enveloping, open-to-interpretation, Cassandra-like utterances than personal confession. All I can say is that he didn’t strike me at all as a willing conspirator; in fact the whole thing seems to scare him rigid. He got very hot under the collar when I spoke out and revealed that you knew what he was up to.”

“I must go and talk to him.”

“Can’t you leave it for a bit? He’s been asleep for the last hour. Badly needed sleep, I think. Catching up on days, perhaps weeks, of deprivation. Speaking as his self-appointed medical nurse, I’d say—leave him for as long as you can. He’s in the drawing room, curled up all of a heap in the armchair with the cat. One’s snoring, the other’s purring.”

“Oh, no! You didn’t let that slobbering old brute get at him? He’s got bad breath and a worse temper.”

“No, no! The old thing knew just what was required. Cats are very healing creatures, you know. He marched in, jumped up onto his knee without a by-your-leave, licked the senatorial ear and settled down in his lap, purring.”

“Hardly a course of therapy his hostess could administer.” Joe smiled. “I can see that. Well—if it’s working …”

“He’s on the mend, I’d say. Just don’t offer to play him at Nine Men’s Morris or you’ll undo everything,” she called after him.

JOE STOOD IN the doorway for a moment, amused by the scene. The drawing room, the heart of the house, reflected the comforts of an earlier, more upholstered age. William Morris fabrics strained around well-stuffed sofas, velvets gleamed on rounded cushions. The walnut surfaces of tables and dressers glowed with beeswax, their amber highlights echoed by soft Persian rugs. The more rigorous glint of hand-crafted pewter-framed mirrors, the cooler notes of modern French glassware and the restrained arrangements of white flowers rescued the room from any suggestion that Victoria still reigned. Everything in this room had earned its place because it was loved and in some cases had given years of good service.

Tall windows were standing open to green lawns rolling away down into the valley and somewhere in that dense foliage a late cuckoo who should have been winging his way to Africa by now called a mocking farewell. And, in the middle of all this, another discordant note.

Cornelius had changed for lunch, digging deeper into Marcus’s wardrobe. No shirt was up to the task of encircling his muscled neck and the collar was standing open, the tie discarded. The tick of a stately grandfather clock beat out in syncopation with a harmonious strand of snoring and purring coming from the armchair. Straight out of a Punch cartoon, Joe thought. Gentleman at his unbuttoned ease in his douce English drawing room. An ease he was going to have to shatter.

“I say—I do apologise, Cornelius, for the uninvited guest! Bugger off, Brutus!”

At the sound of Joe’s voice, the black cat leapt up and fled under a sideboard.

“Don’t scare him! I was flattered!” Kingstone said, struggling awake and suppressing a yawn. “We’re getting along just fine. He’s a beast I’m proud to know. In fact he’s rather like me. He sees us as brothers, I think. Moth-eaten, battle-scarred but still feisty. Though my teeth are in better condition.”

Joe grimaced. “That’ll be the ale. He drinks it out of a Wedgwood saucer. Rots his teeth and gives him the temperament of a street brawler.”

“Like I said—brothers in arms. Pass me my saucer.”

“It’s Wedgwood, but the best Darjeeling, if that’s all right? I brought in a tray. Thought you’d be ready for a bracer after going a round or two with Brutus,” Joe said genially, busying himself with the tea things.

“Brutus, eh? Named for the upright Roman senator?”

“The very same, though honouring that senator’s more dubious skills. Famous assassins, both!” Joe was amused. “My sister left you snoozing the afternoon away with your soft parts exposed to the claws and fangs—such as they are—of a champion ratter. Deadliest in the county!”

Joe talked on easily, realising he was putting off the moment he dreaded. His interview with the wretched Cummings had confirmed his worst fears and he had nothing but a further dollop of heartache to offer his guest. Kingstone also seemed happy to be clinging to the ritual of tea cups and casual chatter and ready to prolong it. Or perhaps he was simply a cat lover. Some of the most unlikely people were.

“He looks kind of … venerable?”

Joe was touched that, even with the cat out of earshot, Kingstone had searched for the kindliest word.

“He’s ancient. Mangy old flea-pasture! They had an infestation of rats on the estate some years ago. With children about the place, instead of doing the obvious thing—putting down poison or getting in a frisky pack of Jack Russells—Marcus equipped himself with a pair of kitchen cats. Gift from a neighbour. You know Marcus now—what else would he call a couple of lethal backstabbers but Brutus and Cassius? They hunted as a pair. And very effective they were, I have to admit. The corpses piled up by the back door. The deep silence of the Surrey night was rent by eldritch screeches whose awfulness the Bard himself would have had a hard time attempting to convey. Brutus’s brother and partner-in-arms died last year. In a state of utter bliss—on the field of battle.”

“He’s still lying low under there.” Joe turned to see Kingstone on his knees, peering under the furniture. “Do you think I could tempt him out with …?”

“Oh, go ahead!” Joe sighed. “He’ll happily drink milk at this time of day. It’s a bit early for his beer.”

He settled down opposite Kingstone, stern-faced, unable to put off the moment any longer. “Now, Senator. Guildford jail. I’ve charged the men with an impressive list of offences. But the one that really got them going was the threat of a charge of murder. I implied I was ready to add Miss Kirilovna’s death to their account.”

“Good thought! How did that go down?”

“It was received with granite-jawed indifference by Onslow but Cummings showed some emotion. He was startled and dismayed, I’d say. Last thing he’d expected to hear. I left Onslow to stew in his cell. With much banging of cell doors and merry calls down the corridor for pale ale and sandwiches for two to be brought in, I gave Onslow reason to suspect his mate was having a cosy chat with his new police confessor. In fact, I didn’t get much although he was ready enough to oblige in his eagerness to avoid the noose. He claimed that Natalia was alive and well when they left her. He held his hands up for everything else.”

“Did he say what she was doing there with them in the first place? It’s all right, Joe. I’ve figured it out. I just want to be sure there are no more surprises.”

Joe stirred his tea, reluctant to encounter Kingstone’s sorrow-filled eyes which held, in spite of everything, the desperate hope of a last-minute surprise. “She was there to supervise your killing. The agreed plan was to trick you into going out to meet her in the car, which would have taken off the minute you settled.”

“We’d call it being taken for a ride. Thought as much.”

“By staging our shooting party, we changed the points and diverted Onslow onto another line. Our chosen line. That Cummings glows with all the energy of a forty-watt electric bulb—he wasn’t able to shine much light into the shadowy area beyond Miss Kirilovna. She was the sole authority he had knowledge of above Onslow. He was there to look tough, growl and cover you while Onslow drove to a suitably quiet spot. Beyond that we can only speculate.”

“Execution. She was working with them all along. I wonder if she’d have pulled the trigger.”

“Possibly three times,” Joe suggested.

“Right.” Kingstone’s thoughts had kept pace with his own. “The Surrey police might well have stumbled on the scene of an American-style shoot-out?”

“Brave senator dies defending himself, taking his killers with him?”

“Huh! They’d have it on celluloid in no time. Another role for Paul Muni?”

With that reef safely cleared, Joe decided to change tack.

“Kingstone, this Nine Men’s Society … my sister suggests that you were—would a good term be ‘shanghaied?’—into membership of it.”

“That lady’s not often wrong, I’d guess. But try—press-ganged. Like your British Navy used to do with our American sailors on the high seas back in wilder times. That would be nearer the mark. If you want to man your ships with fellas who already have the skills and strength you need, you don’t go trawling for them on the city streets. You pick ’em straight off another ship. They liked my background, my circumstances and my contacts. I found myself black-jacked and hauled aboard. I had no idea they existed before they approached me.”

“The other Pilgrims—are they aware …?”

“I can’t speak for them. Societies of any kind are not something I would ever be interested in. I’ve lately joined a few clubs because that’s where I can get to meet the men whose ears I want to bend, whose arms I want to twist … but, no. I’ve never yet heard from any bona fide members that they suspect anything odd is happening right under their noses. No one’s ever quite certain who is a member of the Pilgrim Society and who is not, after all. Names are listed in the papers of course, but they vary according to where the meetings are being held. That’s all over the globe. Hard to keep track. Certain names are well know and constant—the ruling body is composed of men whose office demands it—ambassadors, your prime minister, a member of your royal family, our president—whichever man is holding the post.”

“I’d have thought Roosevelt would qualify as a pilgrim regardless of political eminence?”

“He surely would. On both sides of his family, he’s descended from very early pilgrims. Mayflower blue blood in all his veins.”

“And you, Cornelius? You had spoken dismissively of your ancestry.”

“A late ocean crosser! Only three generations ago. But that was enough for them. A technicality. They didn’t press-gang me for my bloodline. Or my money.”

“What then did they see in you that they wanted?” Joe asked, thinking he probably knew.

“My military record and reputation,” Kingstone replied, surprising him.

“Which I know to be excellent,” Joe murmured, calling to mind the medals and citations listed in the senator’s Military Intelligence notes. His stories of stopped watches, fraternisation in machine-gun nests and illicit frankfurters were entertaining but came nowhere near conveying the truth of the man’s achievements. “You’re a national hero. Or would be if you didn’t actively avoid the spotlight. But your closeness—some would say influence—with the new president … must have been of some account?”

“Less important. They never asked me to sweet-talk him. Or spy on him. I told you, Joe, that I was being coerced into making a speech before them that would swing the economic situation, which is balanced on a knife edge at the moment. I led you to believe that the motivation behind this plot—conspiracy would not be an exaggeration—was an economic one. It is not. I handed you—not a lie, I wouldn’t do that—but a half truth which you were ready, even primed, to believe. The situation is, indeed, a dire one and much depends on the outcome. Can the United States be swayed into coming back onto the gold standard, which we abandoned in April, or do we stay off it and risk ruining the economies of most other nations in the world? What terms will we make on war repayments by our European debtors? How will the president fund the launch of the New Deal he is about to unveil on the fifteenth—three days after the start of the conference? I have considerable personal interest in that because one of the clauses concerns the setting up of the Tennessee Valley scheme.”

“Three vital questions,” Joe agreed, wondering where he was going with this.

“But not ones that are exercising the Nine Men. With them, political concerns trump economic ones. They are not the same, though they’re intertwined. I can’t tell you more than I have and that’s already too much, Joe. I won’t tell you what their plan was—maybe still is—for me. It’s too burdensome for any pair of ears, even yours.”

Joe sensed from the firm way Kingstone closed his jaw and looked into the distance that he was not prepared to reveal more and Joe was not prepared to ask him. Once again, Joe feared for him. The man, it seemed, still had an image of himself as a victim. Joe had caught that same blend of defiance and despair on the faces of martyrs in lugubrious dark oil paintings as the masked executioner approached, lighted torch in hand. And here was the British bobby standing by, as impotent as the inevitable priest performing his incantations at a safe distance in the background. Joe longed to snatch the mask from the tormentor’s face and look into the features below. He was in the mask-snatching business. He knew well that it was in the black concealing silk that the horror lay. The man beneath, ugly enough no doubt, could well be known to the victim and despised by him.

“What influence are they using? What threats or incentives are they holding over your head? Can you tell me that much? It might help. I am still, after all, tasked with your protection for this next bit.”

“The usual winning combination. Carrot—to be served up back home in the States. I will not reveal the nature of this and it would not be of much use to you to know. And stick, a sample of which you have already witnessed. Person or persons unknown, as you’d say, have been threatening me—and the one I had thought dear to me—with torture and death. Their acts are ruthless, carried out at second or third hand and never attributable to the inner circle that decrees them. They can hire the best. But the men who pull the triggers and chop off the toes do not know for whom they are acting. These tools—accidents and suicides a specialty—are well chosen, effective and well rewarded. And they get away with it—unless they have the bad luck to come up against Sandilands.”

“Or be employed by Sandilands,” said Joe, with a smile. “You could be describing my Branchmen and—speaking of hired killers—how on earth did William Armiger manage to get himself in on the Nine Men’s act? Before you ask—no, it wasn’t Bill who told me about your meeting. He doesn’t know that he was spotted and we haven’t discussed it. Your officer,” he added carefully, “is the soul of discretion.”

“Ah. Interesting! I had assumed Armiger was the source of your information. I was always prepared for his loyalties to be stretched once we were back in the old country. Glad to hear he’s remained discreet. It confirms my original assessment of the man. I wasn’t going into that snake pit by myself, Sandilands. I’d used Armiger on several occasions. He’d been recommended by his boss. J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI seems to see him as an up-and-coming man. His subsequent behaviour and his personality appealed to me. He passes in all kinds of society, from ballroom to barroom. He can foxtrot with a Daughter of the American Revolution in Washington one day and win a spitting contest on a Bronx sidewalk the next. And, you know, Joe—they’re both the real Armiger. We got on just fine.”

“He sees the potential in getting close to the man who’s close to the president?” Joe asked bluntly.

“Of course he does. That’s well understood. But I felt safer with William at my back. I made it a condition of membership that I took Armiger along with me. As he’d come over on a boat—even though it was a passage in first class on a transatlantic liner some six years ago—it qualified him for the deal. What really recommended him to them was his own status—the one he’d carved out for himself in the world of Law and Order. They see such an organisation as a potential tool in their armoury. An arms-carrying, legally and democratically appointed force with a man of theirs at or near the top? Well, you can imagine how useful that might be to them. Seed corn of the very best kind! These men think twenty years into the future. Armiger earned his own counters.” He smiled. “Picked up the old game pretty quickly too.”

Joe was about to quibble, Which old game would that be? Treachery or Nine Men’s Morris? but he bit back the words. He was becoming increasingly weary with hearing the recitation of Bill Armitage’s dubious qualities and with the revelations of shady international manipulation, which would always remain outside his sphere of influence and his understanding. Instead he commented, “I’m assuming that these top-drawer villains—the Nine Men—are beyond even the long arm of the Law?”

“They are. They’re connected. I told you so. I shall have to find my own way of dealing with them. But that’s not to say we can’t go for the second layer—the ones who carry out their wishes. I’d relish that! I’m not talking about the lower orders: gun-toters and neck-crackers like that pair of bozos we trapped down by the lake. I mean the people who make their arrangements, phone calls on their behalf, who spy on the targets, gather information, ease their path …”

“Their adjutants?”

“That’ll do.”

“Like—Natalia?” Joe held his breath, reluctant to probe an open wound, even though he suspected that wound still contained lethal shrapnel.

“Like Natalia,” Kingstone said heavily. “I never did get to hear her reasons.”

“She’d been spying on you for some time, do you reckon?”

“Not spying on. Worse than that. Knowing and betraying. Being close. I had thought—loving. But I was wrong. You can’t make people fall in love so I’m assuming they got hold of her some time after that performance in New York when it was quite clear I was knocked sideways. Perhaps she was already with them,” he said thoughtfully. “She easily acquired the kind of contacts they like, travelling around the world meeting the cream of society. I never asked her and she never told me. It always seemed like water under the bridge.”

“But what if the stream were still flowing?” Joe dared to ask quietly. The senator may have had his eyes opened but his emotions were still raw, he reckoned. “It would certainly be interesting to see a list of her … um … the relationships she established over the years.”

“You’d need to ask Julia the names of her conquests. I think when Natalia got her instructions she faked up a row with me, swept out and disappeared. Then they were free to threaten me. She’d been kidnapped, I was told. Her life depended on me and my performance. I gave them what for. What do they do next? Pile on more pressure. It’s well established. A newspaper cliché, because it darned well works! What happens in kidnappings to create terror? You send a bit of the victim’s anatomy through the post implying that the rest will follow in small instalments until death occurs. What I didn’t know was that Natalia was acting as advisor behind the scenes.”

“ ‘Someone’s got into my head,’ I think you said.”

“The someone had got into my life! She was informing whoever was overseeing the business about my habits and preferences. Right down to the chocolates. Did she get Julia to put those in my room, do you suppose?” He asked the question brusquely. “I had thought better of her.”

“I was wondering how far you thought you could trust Julia. She showed a certain regard—even warmth—for you,” Joe said speculatively, casting a fly on the water.

“I probably got that wrong as well but, yes, I thought there was a mutual regard between us. You wouldn’t expect it, given our differing situations. but we did get to know each other pretty well. The hours we spent sitting around in dressing rooms waiting for the light of our lives to come and shine on us for a while! Julia’s sharp and she’s funny and she’s well-informed. If you have an hour to kill I can’t think of a better companion.”

“She may well have wondered where her own future lay when, or if, her mistress decided to throw in her lot with you?”

“Never occurred to me. If it had, I’d have thought—she’d be taken care of. I would have welcomed her into our lives. Or paid her handsomely to start afresh.” He sighed, frowned for a moment and then confided: “But, with Natalia dead, things change for Julia. She’ll be devastated, of course, but she’ll also be independent. I’ll give you the address of Natalia’s lawyer in London. You’ll be needing that. She had no close family. They all got caught on the wrong side in that Russian business. I’m pretty sure she would have been planning to leave all she had to Julia.”

“Thank you. I’ll follow that up. I did wonder about the placing of the chocolate box. It’s possible, you know. Even probable. The two were in contact. I had Julia followed. Natalia was doing her directing from the wings, did you know? Not far away. From a house in Harley Street. The annexe of a hospital for women. An establishment that offers rather special care and repair for the female body. They have facilities dancers are often grateful for—at a price. She was clearly at home there.”