The Missing Party-Girl: A Rags-to-Riches Cozy Mystery Romance

by Nhys Glover

  “Look what I found,” Adie said, holding up the silver-backed brush, comb and mirror set.

  “What’s the big deal about them?” he asked, not critically but not impressed either. “The silver is probably the only thing valuable about them.”

  “I’m not sure. I just… They’re interesting. Look, there’s even strands of hair in the brush. I wonder whose it was. I wonder what she was thinking as she brushed her hair a hundred times before bed every night. That’s what they did back then. I guess these soft brushes made hair shine more than modern brushes.”

  “They didn’t have conditioner, so they had to get the natural oils spread through the hair,” Cage informed her, helping her climb over the last impediment between them.

  “How very unromantic of you,” Adie grumped, finally finding a spare space to stand unhindered.

  “What’s romantic about brushing your hair?” He picked up her thick braid to finger the silken tendrils that always seemed to escape. “The hair itself, on the other hand, is very attractive. Long hair like yours, especially.”

  Adie’s mouth fell open. Was he paying her a compliment about her appearance? What about looks meaning nothing?

  As if reading her mind, Cage dropped her braid and assumed his stoic demeanor. Adie let out a soft sigh of disappointment. It was always two steps forward one step back with him.

  “Probably time for lunch. And Jig needs to go out,” Cage said.

  It wasn’t until they’d almost finished their healthy lunch of chicken salad wraps that Cage raised the subject of the Mystery again.

  “When are you going to start on the journal? 1965, right?” Cage asked.

  He hadn’t pushed her about it since they’d come home. Maybe he’d sensed she needed time to settle back in to her world before challenging her to do more.

  “This afternoon. The weather is awful, so there’s no chance of a walk. I may as well settle in with a good book. Or whatever Minerva’s journal qualifies as. I know I’ll be giving Winsley more of a lead, if I don’t knuckle down and get something done.

  “Although his lead didn’t get him very far. He got to two people, neither of whom did as he ordered. Of course, it doesn’t matter that they ignored the ‘roach, they still didn’t move us any closer to solving this crime.”

  “There’s still a chance there was no crime,” Cage reminded her.

  “I know. I have to keep all doors open. But I can’t get past the fact that, even if she’d gone on some wonderful weekend getaway with a rich boyfriend, she wouldn’t have stopped writing to her son or failed to pick him up from school. From everything we’ve heard she was a loving and dedicated mother. A bit of a flake, sure. But her son came first.”

  Cage nodded. “You like her, don’t you?”

  Adie looked up from her empty plate in surprise. “Like who? Georgie? I never met her, how can I like or dislike her?”

  “We make up our minds about people we don’t know all the time. Movie stars… oh, wait, you never saw any movies. Well, the rest of us make up our minds about movie stars, or people in history. People we hate, like Hitler. Or love, like Eleanor Roosevelt. We take a bunch of facts and judge the person, without ever actually meeting them.”

  Adie considered this point of view for a moment. Most historical figures never engendered any emotion in her. But the two he cited were exceptions. Hitler she hated because of the terrible things done on his orders. The foul diatribes in his book and what he spewed from podiums. She didn’t need to know someone like that to know she’d have hated him.

  The same could be said of the beloved president’s wife. Everything she said and did marked Eleanor as a woman to be respected and admired. Loved? Maybe that was a stretch. It might be better to think of it as loving what she stood for. Loving the woman she presented to the world. All those in the public eye had one face they showed the world and one they kept private. Adie and everyone else had to believe that the outer reflected the inner. That actions reflected intention.

  She gave herself a shake. How had she become diverted from what was important? The Mystery was waiting to be solved, and even though she’d never met Winsley, his words and actions had made him loathsome to her. He couldn’t be allowed to win!

  While Cage went back to clambering around the rooms, she headed for her bed with journal in hand. A low thrum of excitement filled her. Reading Minerva’s journal, like reading her grandfather’s war diary, was like stepping back into the past. It was always a revelation.

  Opening the first page, she settled back to read. The first few entries were irrelevant, but they gave her a better picture of her family. A grandmother and grandfather who had lived a storybook love affair, complete with evil villains and heartbreak. Yet they’d come through it all to live a happy and ordinary life together.

  Adie was also getting a better impression of her father. As he’d died when she was five, she had no clear memory of him. Not even a smell or other sensation. All her mom had ever told her was that he’d left them. Which was a blatant lie, she now knew. Minerva’s little brother, Addie’s father, had been a wastrel and drug addict, but he’d stuck by her mother because of her. This last insight she’d been able to determine from bits of information she’d gleaned from here and there. He didn’t leave them, he’d died. There was a very big difference.

  Now she was reading about a cute kid brother Minerva loved and loathed in equal sibling measure. He was annoying and outrageous, which must have been bad, given how outrageous Minerva could be. And he was loved. His home had been a loving one.

  Why had someone from such a good home ended up living such a wild life? What had sent him away from that home, never to return again, even for his own father’s funeral?

  With a big sigh, Adie brought her focus back to her reading. Maybe she’d understand more as she read the journals. Right now, she had one task. Find out what happened to Georgie and stop the odious Winsley from getting the million pounds.

  It was mid-January when the first mention of Georgie appeared. Though it was several months before her death, Adie focused on the impressions Minerva gave her about the woman.

  16th January

  Daddy and Mummy helped me move all my things into my new flat in Soho today. Because of its past reputation, Daddy isn’t happy about my choice, saying it was a rough area and good girls weren’t safe on the streets here. I convinced him that the Soho he knew during the war and the new Soho were worlds apart. This was a vibrant new city filled with young people just like me. Artists, musicians and performers. So many talented and forward-thinking types live and work here. People who were challenging the old ways of the world.

  In the end, the only reason Daddy accepted my choice of accommodation was because of Georgie. Letting three teen girls live together would have been a disaster, but with an older woman—a mother—in the mix, to settle us down, it would be better. Or so he thought.

  Little does he know that Georgie is probably wilder than either me or Tansy, my other flatmate. But when she met my father Georgie was on her best behavior, promising to keep a close eye on his beloved daughter. One day Georgie will make it big in films. She’s the consummate actress, as I saw for myself when she donned the role of housemother for Daddy.

  Nothing more was said about Georgie for a few more entries, then she was front and center yet again.

  20th January

  It’s all been so exciting! I never knew that so much adventure could be mine here in London. My greatest fear had always been that the talk about this new London, this Swinging London that people are now starting to call it, would be an illusion. That my life would be no different here to my life at home. Luckily, my fears came to nothing. London is not like home in the least. It’s noisy and bustling. Everywhere I go I’m greeted with sights and sounds I never could have experienced at home.

  Yesterday Georgie and I went down to High and Carnaby Streets. It’s the happening place for fashion. Of course, neither of us can afford the clothes in the new tren
dy dress shops. But we can look and try on the latest fashions. And that was what we did.

  Because Georgie was a model before she had her son, she knows people in the ‘rag trade’, as it’s called. A friend of hers actually introduced us to Mary Quant, who’s considered the Mod woman’s greatest advocate. She personally showed us some of her mini frocks, which are shockingly short. Mary (yes, I was asked to call her by her first name!) said she called them ‘minis’ after the cars. I laughed. She said that young women needed freedom of movement so they can run and jump onto buses, unrestricted by long skirts. Just like men, was implied rather than said.

  She let Georgie and I try on several of her ‘miniskirts’. I was a little nervous about coming out of the dressing room, I must admit. There was so much of my leg on view. But as no one in the back room batted an eye over a skirt that showed my knees, I relaxed. I imagine it will take a little time before I’m comfortable wearing the new style in public. But I do like the simplicity of the lines and the bright colors.

  Georgie is a bit of a seamstress. Her aim is to copy some of the clothes we saw today. We might not be able to buy clothes featured in Harper’s Bizarre or Vogue but we can have close copies.

  Georgie is an amazing person. What she went through with her ex-husband is horrifying. But instead of wallowing in her awful past and missing her ten-year-old son, she makes the most of every day. If ever there was someone who represents this new Mod generation it’s Georgie.

  There was a gap of a month before Georgie is mentioned in detail again. In those entries Adie got an even better glimpse into that exciting time. Things Adie took for granted in the twenty-first century, were novel and often shocking to the teen spreading her wings. Going to a ‘pub’ to drink, smoke cigarettes, and be ‘chatted up by chaps’ was outrageous behavior for the young Minerva. Of course, they’d be outrageous to me, too, given my upbringing. But for most girls these days such simple activities would be considered run-of-the-mill.

  There was mention of the endless search for acting opportunities. Cattle calls, getting work as extras, and hand delivering photo portfolios to agents across the city, in the hope that one of them might take her on. She talked on and on about not being pretty enough, or sophisticated enough, or knowledgeable enough about her craft. She wondered if she should take an acting class, because there were dozens of them springing up everywhere in the West End. The sheer number of girls like her doing exactly what she was doing stole much of her initial optimism.

  One entry captured the wonder the young woman felt at the beginning of her career.

  30th January

  Tansy and I had our first experience of real film-making today. We went out to Pinewood Studios to be extras in a film called The Ipcress File. It stars Michael Caine, of all people! The studio is 20 miles from Soho. It took a train and bus trip before dawn to get us there, but it was well worth it. Getting dressed up in costumes, catching glimpses of the stars, seeing just what it was like behind the scenes of a film, all of it was just so exciting. Well worth the hanging about for most of the day and being ordered around like we were imbecile children.

  Did you know the mark of a good extra is their ability to remain unremarkable? If they are, then they get to be in more than one scene, which is more money in their pocket. I must have mastered ‘unremarkable’ well because I get to go back tomorrow, while Tansy doesn’t. She was spitting chips all the way home on the train.

  The studio lot was very impressive. It was a massive conglomeration of warehouses and barn-type buildings covering several acres, all set behind a magnificent Victorian mansion called Heatherden Hall. It was so exciting to see whole streets recreated on the sets with the lights and sound booms just hanging out of camera range.

  But it was exhausting. It will be an early night tonight I’m afraid.

  Adie paused to experience vicariously the excitement of visiting a movie studio as a participant. For any girl, that would have to have been a heady experience; but for a girl who was obsessed by movies, it would have been doubly thrilling.

  She couldn’t wait to read more…

  Chapter 9

  The thrill of first discovery dwindled into more mundane entries after that. They dealt mainly with the endless search for a way into the industry. One entry did make her smile, though. And squirm a little.

  12th February

  Oh, dear Lord, how utterly embarrassing! Today I braved public outcry by wearing one of the mini-dresses Georgie made me. I thought that if an agent saw that I was a thoroughly Mod young woman, he might be more interested in me.

  It was a baby-blue A Line frock with a lace collar, and it ended just above my knees. My hip-length white wool jacket was supposed to keep me warm. But it wasn’t nearly enough. Little did I know of the impracticalities of wearing a short skirt in the coldest month of the year. It was utterly freezing! And though I wore tights, it wasn’t nearly enough.

  On top of the cold, I had to deal with a number of outraged stares and lecherous comments as I walked through the West End. I felt like Lady Godiva, riding naked through town on the back of a horse. Or worse, like a woman of ill repute. And it was all for nothing. No one of importance got to see my beautifully fashionable apparel.

  Georgie, who has to wear short skirts and the new knee-high boots when she dances at the Go-Go club, told me I was making a fuss over nothing. The surest way to lose the interest of agents and other influential people was to appear shy about your body’s allure. I need to own my sexuality and use it to attract attention. The film-industry is no place for prissy misses. That was her word for me. A Prissy Miss.

  Is she right? Am I caught up in old-fashioned morality that belongs in the past? If the last war taught us anything it was that women could do almost anything a man can. And if men are free to take sexual pleasure wherever they chose, then why shouldn’t a woman? After all, I am on the pill. I don’t have to worry about getting pregnant. And I’m not a virgin. So why do I behave like some innocent ninny who doesn’t understand a woman’s true power? The greatest actresses of our time knew how to project sexual magnetism. You can’t do that without intimate knowledge of your own body.

  One night, Georgie explained how a woman can achieve sexual pleasure from touching herself. I tried not to be outraged and embarrassed when she explained the details. Clearly, I might not be a virgin, but I still have a lot to learn in that regard.

  I have so much to learn about a great many things.

  A few days later Adie got a better impression of Georgie’s work as a Go-Go Dancer at The Den and her relationship with her ex-husband.

  14th February

  Georgie came home from work an hour ago in tears. I heard loud, anguished crying. It was usually only her ex-husband and her son who made her cry like that.

  Although I didn’t want to intrude, I felt that it was the mark of a good friend to offer what consolation I could. So, I threw on my dressing gown and went to find her.

  As I’ve mentioned more than once, Georgie is an exquisitely beautiful woman. But tonight, or more correctly this morning, she looked anything but beautiful. Her hair was a rat’s nest. Her make-up was smeared all over her face. She reminded me of a clown caught in a storm. Her demure dress, which she wore when she had to walk home late at night on her own, was torn.

  I asked her what happened. She told me a frightening story with details she previously never shared with us. It seems that The Den also offers prostitution on the side. Her boss had tried to get her involved in that aspect of the business a number of times, but Georgie had refused. Just as she’d refused Jeffer’s many blatant offers, and accompanying threats, to sleep with him.

  Tonight, as she was leaving the club by the back entrance—which is how all the staff leave—a big burly chap was hiding in the shadows and attacked her. He said if she wasn’t willing to let him pay for what he wanted then he’d just take it instead.

  When I asked her why no one stepped in to help her, she said she was late leaving after being
waylaid by her boss, and everyone else had already gone.

  I told her to report it to the police and go to the hospital. All she did was laugh at my naiveté.

  She said something like, “Do you think the Old Bill will do anything about an attack on a woman like me? I may not be a prostitute, but as far as the plod are concerned I may as well be. I deserve whatever I get. And the hospital staff would be no different. I don’t need their condemnation right now. I’m feeling bad enough already.”

  I asked her if he hurt her down there. She brushed my concerns away.

  What truly horrified me was her next comment. “You learn to just give in when you know you can’t escape. It doesn’t hurt as much if you just give in and let it happen.”

  From that I gathered it wasn’t the first time Georgie had been attacked. When I looked at her, my question written all over my face, she laughed a little.

  “A wife can’t legally be raped by her husband. But believe me, it happens.”

  By the time I helped her into a bath and clean clothes, it was impossible for me to go back to sleep. So, here I am recording it all.

  Georgie had given me far too many ugly insights into her life tonight. For such a liberated woman, my friend is weighed down by so much awfulness that I can’t understand how she can project such lightness and confidence. Maybe it’s simply her consummate acting ability. Then again, maybe she has learned the hard way to lock away the awful parts of her life and focus on the good.

  This new information added yet another suspect to the list. Could the rapist be her murderer? But then, if that was his aim, wouldn’t he have killed her that night? No, it was likely not this rapist. But how many others might have followed her home and waited their chance to have her? Maybe a rapist had killed her, not knowing she wouldn’t report him. He wouldn’t have known she didn’t bother reporting rapes.