don’t you tell us more about yourself?”
Will restrained himself from throwing his plate at his host and sat through the rest of the meal, listening to the two women’s strained voices, and Waring and Cheveley’s smug satisfaction as they carried on talking and talking. Saying whatever the hell they wanted, because they could. Because they saw from Kim’s demeanour that they’d win, again, as they always did.
As they ate the sweet course, Phoebe’s head came up. “Is that a motor coming up the drive? Who could that be?”
“You have good hearing my dear,” Waring said. “No doubt it is a man I called earlier to do some work for me. He will wait.”
They finished the cheesecake, Waring eating with particular slowness as if he wanted to drag this out. Will ate all his because the food was good even if everything else was awful; so did Maisie. Like Kim, Phoebe left her sweet untouched, and there were red spots on her cheekbones when her father finally put down his fork.
“Coffee?” he said.
“I won’t, thank you, Daddy. We would rather have another drink and play some gramophone records.”
“If you care to, my dear. You will have coffee, Arthur, Mr. Darling.”
“We need them to dance with,” Phoebe said with a bright smile. “Johnnie will have coffee with you. Come on, everyone.”
Will rose, following her and Maisie out. They got into the corridor; Phoebe said, flatly, “A word, please,” and walked away with Kim. That left Will and Maisie looking at each other.
She jerked her head in the direction of the drawing-room. Will accompanied her there. They both sat down on the sofa, and Maisie said, “Well, that was fun.”
“God,” Will said. “Blimey.”
“I want three things. I want to go home, but I suppose it’s too late, and I want a drink please, and I want to know what’s going on. All of it.”
“I’ll tell you,” Will said. “But tell me something first, before I forget. The customer who gave you the champagne voucher, for the High-Low. What was her name?”
“You’re asking me that now?”
“I should probably have asked before.”
Maisie shook her head. “Her name was Mrs. Galloway. About thirty, perhaps a bit older, very fashionable. A lot more so than we usually get in the shop. She told me she wanted a hat for her grandmother’s birthday. We had a bit of a laugh while she tried things on, and she gave me the voucher as a thank-you because she took so long about it.”
“Is that usual for your customers?”
“Heavens, no. Half the time they barely speak to me. Does that help?”
Will had no idea if it would help, but he bet he knew a man who did. He handed her a gin and tonic—he was sticking to soda water—and sat on the sofa. “All right, here it is. You know those people I got mixed up with last year, who kidnapped me?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, I’d forgotten all about that.”
“Lord Waring’s their boss.”
“What?”
He told her the lot. Their suspicions of Waring and of Cheveley, the whole High-Low business, Waring’s threats. She finished her G&T on that, and held out the empty glass wordlessly. Will mixed her another.
“Question,” she said when he sat down again. “You said a copper tried to accuse you of indecent behaviour. How was that going to work? You can’t just turn up at someone’s house and expect them to be behaving indecently.”
“Right, no.” Will took a deep breath. “Thing is, they probably did expect it.”
Maisie’s mouth dropped open. He added hastily, “Phoebe knows, all right? Kim isn’t—I’m not—going behind her back.”
“I know about Kim. We’ve talked about that. But I thought you liked girls.”
“I do,” Will said, with a sudden dread she might think he’d been playing the fool with her. “Really. It’s just, uh—”
“Oh, like Edward Molyneux,” Maisie said, with the satisfaction of one solving a crossword clue. “Phoebe says he’s always falling in love and it doesn’t matter who with. Well, it matters to him, but you know what I mean. There’s a word for it. Ambidextrous? Something like that.”
“I wouldn’t know. You, uh, don’t seem surprised?”
Maisie considered. “I’m a bit surprised. But maybe not that surprised, because you do talk about him an awful lot. Oh, and that’s why Phoebe’s been on at me for ages about understanding people in couture, so I wouldn’t be shocked about this. Well, that was nice of her. I suppose.” She rolled her eyes. “As if we never heard of it in Cardiff. Honestly, they don’t half