“Okay. I guess we can’t really include her,” said Nellie, glancing at Michiko, who was taking another sip of scotch. “So just do me.”
“Which do you want?”
“I guess . . . do the deed.”
A wide grin spread across Cora’s face and Nellie’s heart sank. Okay, so she’d chosen the wrong option.
“You have to go into the sitting room . . .”
“No,” said Nellie right away.
“You said the rule was you had to do whatever I told you to.”
“But—”
“You have to go into the sitting room and kiss the dead guy on the forehead.”
“Cora!”
“You have to do it!”
“I refuse!”
“You can’t!”
Nellie pouted for a moment. “Fine. I’ll do it, but only if you admit you have a crush on Mr. Harris.”
“That’s not the rule!”
“I think you really want to see me do this, and I can tell you I just won’t unless you admit to it. So it’s up to you.”
“You can’t break the rules.”
“Look. When it’s your turn, either I’ll make you tell me if you choose ‘do the deed’ or I’ll ask you if you like him, and I know you do. So why not just get it over with now?”
Cora sighed. Then responded, “I. Have. A. Crush. On. Mr. Harris.”
Nellie laughed and clapped her hands. Michiko did the same.
“But it’s a very little one,” Cora added hastily, “founded on biological impulses. He’s clearly meant to be someone that girls are attracted to. It just shows I’m a normal human being. However, pragmatically—”
“Oh, shut it,” said Nellie, laughing, pulling the covers off and slipping out of the bed.
“No, really, pragmatically I find him a fool, and I could never be truly interested in someone who—”
“Are you coming or not? I thought you wanted to see this?”
With another sigh Cora climbed off the bed, and she and Michiko followed Nellie into the sitting room. At one point Cora listed toward the wall, and Michiko grabbed her to keep her heading straight.
“Thanks,” Cora said. “Who knew walking down a hallway could be so treacherous.”
The three girls stared at the body lying on the couch. Or rather stared at the white sheet that covered the shape of the body beneath it.
Nellie could hear Cora start to giggle behind her. Okay. So maybe she couldn’t handle her booze as well as she’d initially thought. Giggling just didn’t seem right for Cora.
“This is so mean.” Nellie crossed her arms over her chest.
“Do it,” said Cora.
Nellie inhaled deeply. It was fair play, she thought, slowly approaching the couch. After all, when they’d shared secrets in the cab, her fear of this body had been just as big as Cora’s secret about Mr. Harris. And she’d had way too much fun picking on Cora about him. This was payback.
The body seemed to float toward her, even though she was the one moving toward it. The white sheet almost made it creepier. And she had this feeling like all of a sudden the body would sit up, just as she was about to peel the sheet off. She reached out her arms, trying to make them as long as she could, keeping the rest of her body far away from it.
Please don’t sit up. Please don’t sit up.
She leaned over, her fingers touching the white sheet . . .
“BOO!”
Nellie screamed and whirled around. Cora was doubled over in laughter, Michiko staring down at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Damn you, Cora Bell! Damn you, and your bloody stupid sense of humor! What the hell is wrong with you?”
“That scream,” Cora wheezed, “it was so . . . I’m sorry, but your face!”
“You’re dead, you hear me, dead!” Nellie could barely hear her voice over the frantic beating of her heart. She turned back to the body and with one swift angry motion peeled back the sheet.
The scientist looked pretty much the same as he’d looked earlier that day. A little less healthy maybe, a little more dead. Gray. Just do it, Nellie, and get it over with.
“Pucker up,” Cora encouraged from behind.
Nellie shook her head and took a deep breath, plugging her nose. She leaned over. Just one kiss. One quick kiss.
She was pulled back fiercely, and though it wasn’t half as startling as Cora’s “boo,” it still shocked her. She turned to see Michiko standing with a deadly serious expression on her face.
“No,” said Michiko.
“What?”
“No. Much disrespect. No.”
Nellie glanced at Cora, who had stopped laughing and was looking startled.
“It was . . . just a game, Michiko,” Cora said.
Michiko’s head snapped toward her. “No,” she repeated.
Cora nodded slowly, and Michiko turned to Nellie again.
“I didn’t want to do it in the first place,” Nellie said, holding up her hands. She really didn’t need an insanely talented sword fighter mad at her.
Michiko released a breath, and gave a little smile. “Good.”
“I’m getting a little tired. I don’t suppose you’d mind having company for the night? It’s so late it’s almost morning, and I’m certain Lord White will assume I’ve already gone to bed. I won’t be missed,” said Cora, leaning against the doorframe.
“You’re already in your underwear. Stay over. And who knows when Raheem will be getting back. So he can’t say no now, can he?” Nellie grinned. She turned to Michiko. “Stay?”
“Stay?”
“Here. Tonight. Stay till morning?”
There was no way of knowing what the girl was thinking, if she even understood. But she eventually nodded, so it seemed she sort of knew what was going on.
“What was that?” Cora turned and stuck her head around into the hall.
“What was what?”
“I thought I heard a knock on the door . . . but it was so quiet . . . there it is again . . .”
Nellie followed Cora out into the hall and they leaned against the front door to listen. Well, Cora leaned, Nellie kind of fell against it. Michiko stood behind them.
Suddenly there was a loud bang on the door, startling the girls and causing them to bolt back upright.
“What the hell do you want?” yelled Nellie at the solid oak in front of her.
There was a muffled response.
“Louder, please! Can’t hear a damn thing yer sayin’!”
The muffled sound got a bit louder with at least one recognizable word.
“Police?” said Nellie. Her heart was pumping again, and she stared at Cora in a panic.
“Probably the whole Dr. Welland thing,” said Cora. “Remember, I told the cabby to go to the police. He probably told them about us, where you live and all. Don’t worry. But, uh, let’s hide the dead body maybe?”
“Shoot, you’re right. Good call. Raheem doesn’t like it when the police get involved in his business.” There was a knock on the door again. “Look, I’m naked, okay, give me a minute!”
There were no further sounds from the other side of the door.
Cora had already grabbed Michiko’s arm and dragged her back into the living room. Nellie watched her give frantic instructions to the girl, who didn’t seem to understand fully until Cora took hold of the body by its armpits. Alarmed, but clearly aware something was wrong, Michiko took the feet, and the two girls lifted the body.
Nellie was impressed by how strong they both were and let them do the work without her interference. Not that she had any desire to touch a dead body, mind. She watched as they carried it down the hall. It wasn’t exactly the smoothest she’d seen people negotiate a hallway. There was quite a bit of teetering, and Cora had started giggling slightly, which wasn’t helping the situation in the least. Especially as it was clear that Michiko was trying to be as respectful as possible in carrying the body. But finally they got their bearings and were able to make it down the hall and into, oh
no . . . please no . . . her bedroom.
Great. Now she’d have to sleep in a room that had had a dead body in it.
When they had disappeared, she turned to the front door, took a moment to attempt to compose herself, and then answered it.
It was, indeed, a police officer. Though to call him that felt wrong. He was just so young, and the uniform he wore made him look even younger. Like he was playing dress-up. His not-quite-there blond mustache and hair slicked back with a little too much pomade only added to the effect. He looked terrified to see Nellie answer the door, and his gaze immediately fell on the pad of paper in front of him.
“Um, I’m looking for a . . . Mr. Raheem,” he said almost inaudibly.
Nellie was finding it hard to remain standing. She grasped the doorframe. “He’s not here.”
“Oh.” The young officer appeared extremely flustered by this sudden turn of events, and made strange faces as he flipped the pages of his pad, until finally, with a sigh of resignation, he looked up and made eye contact with her. Nellie thought his eyes were a very pretty shade of blue.
“Can I help you?” she asked, hoping the words were coming out in the order she wanted them to.
There was a sound from somewhere behind her, and she turned around in time to see a mess of dark hair vanish back into the bedroom.
“Shhh!” she called out
“Is there someone else here?”
“No.” The young police officer furrowed his eyebrows, which Nellie thought made him look extra adorable. Poor fellow. She probably shouldn’t lie to him. Much. “Yes. My . . . friend.” She suddenly didn’t think that Michiko, with her sewn cheek, would make a good impression.
“Could you ask her to come here?”
“She’s in her underwear.”
Instantly the officer’s face turned bright red. “Oh, I . . . I see. I . . .” Clearly he was using all of his problem-solving ability to figure out how the situation could be resolved. Finally he hit on it. “Can she put on a robe?”
“I’m here, I’m here.” Cora came to her side, wrapped up in one of Nellie’s shawls. “What’s all the fuss and other, Bofficer?” She thought for a moment, and then laughed. “That came out wrong.”
“Uh . . . yeah . . .”
“What can we do for you?”
“Well, this cabby came to the station, and . . . there’s been a murder, see . . . so he told us where he’d dropped off three witnesses, and so here I am.”
“Yes, you are.”
Nellie felt some relief that Cora had taken over communications and resigned herself to watching the young officer and his nervous twitches, which for some reason gave her a slight butterfly feeling in her stomach.
“Uh . . . so . . . can you tell me anything?”
“I can tell you many things—where to go for dinner on Friday nights, what the fashion for hats is this season, which votes are coming up in Parliament. . . . What in particular interests you?”
“What you . . . witnessed.”
There was a pause as Cora stared at the officer. So many things to decide. Nellie understood why it took her a moment.
“Miss Harrison and I were returning from a gala hosted by the Prime Minister when our cab came across another cab, which was empty. On the ground, we discovered the unconscious body of another young lady we had met that evening. Next to her was the head of Dr. Welland, who had, coincidentally also been at the affair. We brought the young lady back here, and she is currently sleeping. Sadly, she doesn’t speak English, so questioning her might be a little . . . pointless.” Nellie was impressed that, despite a bit of slurring, Cora was able to enunciate her words so well.
“No English?”
“She’s Japanese.”
“Ah.”
“She was injured, and I can only assume it was by the same person who killed Dr. Welland.”
The young officer nodded, writing it all down frantically.
“And, uh, is there anything else you can add?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re awfully cute,” said Nellie. She covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes wide. Had she really just said that?
The young officer’s face, which had only just returned to its normal color after its first reddening, was instantly a deep shade of burgundy once more, and he stumbled a few steps backward. Nellie looked at Cora, who, she could tell, was trying to maintain her composure, but was awfully close to bursting into laughter again.
“Well . . . if . . . uh . . . that is to say . . . if that’s everything . . . good-bye.” The young officer disappeared around the corner, and the two girls leaned around the door to watch him fly down the hall and down the stairs.
“I didn’t just say that, did I?” Nellie was in a mild panic.
Cora started laughing and pulled Nellie back into the flat, closing the door behind them. “You did. And you scared him half to death. Oh, that was hilarious!” She sighed and put her hands on her hips. After taking a moment to calm down, she said, “Well, you lock up this mess of contraptions you have on this door, and Michiko and I will bring the body back. Guess we didn’t need to move him after all.”
Nellie nodded and stared before her as she pictured the young officer running wildly through the streets of London. She let her forehead fall against the door.
God, I’m such an idiot.
15
A New Kind of Morning
CORA AWOKE WITH a start. She didn’t know what had prompted such a rude awakening, only that her heart was pumping in her chest and she had to sit still for a moment to allow it to regain a regular rhythm. It was in that moment of stillness that she remembered the night before, where she was now, and, thanks to the sudden sharp stab of a headache whisking its way from behind one eye to the other, just how much she’d had to drink.
She sighed and looked to her right. They’d been lying like squished sardines, side by side on Nellie’s bed, the slight Michiko in the middle. Cora was closest to the window, and she slipped out from under the covers as quietly as she could to take a peek outside. The square below was starting to fill up with vendors, and the sky was stuck somewhere between night and day, as if it hadn’t quite made up its mind which to go with yet.
Go with night, thought Cora.
It didn’t.
There was a sound from out in the hall.
Nellie and Michiko stayed curled up together, and it seemed likely they’d stay that way, even if a parade took a detour through the room.
Cora decided to investigate. She grabbed Nellie’s shawl that she’d used the night before and suddenly remembered. Oh my God, the police officer. She’d happily presented herself to him in her underwear with nothing covering her but a shawl, and she was pretty sure she’d made a mess of her conversation. How humiliating.
She followed the noise down the hall to the kitchen and took a peek around the corner. She didn’t gasp. She was grateful she didn’t gasp. Any other time she probably would have, but for some reason, in this moment she didn’t.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen half-naked guys before. In the summers, as a child, she’d sometimes go swimming in the Thames, and there were always older guys there, doing flips off the wall into the murky water. She’d also seen men without their shirts on before, just working, out in the sun on a hot summer day. But seeing some man with his shirt off in his own home after he’d been sleeping in his own bed . . . that just seemed wrong.
Besides. There was something about seeing a man, not a boy, not even a young man her age, but a fully grown man who’d been one for quite some time, in his altogether. Or almost altogether. It reminded her, despite her every attempt to be as mature as possible, that deep inside she still felt very much like a little girl.
The Great Raheem was standing at the far end of the kitchen, wearing nothing more than loose-fitting beige trousers that ended midcalf, staring out the small window above the washbasin. His hair was tied up in a knot on his head, so she had a perfect view of his back. His skin
stretched tight across broad shoulders, and his muscles contracted beneath it as he raised a cup of tea to his lips. In fact, Cora considered his back a perfect replica of a drawing she’d seen in one of Lord White’s physiognomy books of the ideal human musculature system.
“I see you,” said the Magician.
“No, you don’t,” replied Cora, pulling herself back behind the door into the hall. Her heart, having just settled, was beating fast once more.
There was a low laugh, and Cora felt a mixture of pride at her joke and deep embarrassment at being caught out. She was debating whether or not to go into the kitchen when the man’s shadow appeared in the doorframe.
“And who are you?” asked the Magician, looking down at her.
Aware that they were both in their undergarments, and also aware that there was nothing to be done about it at the moment, Cora decided it was for the best to pretend all was normal. “I’m Cora Bell. Lord White’s assistant.” She extended her hand.
“Ah yes, now I recognize you.” He took her hand and kissed it softly. “And I’m Raheem.”
“I know. The Great Raheem.” Cora, he knows he’s the Great Raheem.
“Not in the early hours of the morning in my undergarments. In the early hours in my undergarments, I am only Raheem.”
Cora smiled. “Well then, in the early hours of the morning in my undergarments, I’m Miss Bell.”
The Magician laughed again.
“Thought I heard voices!” Nellie came bursting out of her room in her robe, and skipped to Cora’s side. “It’s early. What the blazes are you doing up, Cora? I mean, this fool always rises before dawn, but you?”
“I don’t know. I just . . . woke up. But I should probably head out soon anyway. Before his lordship wakes up and discovers I wasn’t home all night.”
Nellie nodded and practically pulled Cora back into her room with her, leaving the Magician to return to his tea.
Michiko was awake and sitting on the edge of the bed watching them closely as Nellie laced Cora back into her gown.
“I . . . I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?” asked Cora as Nellie gave the strings a good yank.
The Friday Society Page 9
