For a time, hunched over my favorite desk in the British Library that afternoon, I had toyed with the notion of an elaborate double-fake. It would be a twist worthy of the Black Tulip if the marquise were indeed the mastermind. A truly clever spy might deliberately choose women of her own coloring to set up as decoys, like the scene at the end of The Thomas Crown Affair, with all those men roaming the halls of the Met in identical bowler hats.
Unfortunately, subsequent events made that theory unlikely, to say the least.
It was always disheartening when the historical record failed to comply with my pet theories. Didn't they realize that my way was much more interesting?
The farther down Brompton Road I went, the more deserted it got. It was a cold, damp night, with a chill that bit through to the bone, the sort of night that must have sent the early Britons huddling around the fires in their huts, concluding that blue paint was no substitute for good, strong wool. It made me understand why the Pilgrims had taken ship to the New World. Forget the Lower School textbook stuff about religious freedom; they were probably just yearning for a beach. Tropical sand, some palm trees, sunshine…Instead, they got turkeys and Wal-Mart. And religious freedom, so I guess it wasn't a total loss in the end.
Wet leaves caked the ground, plastering themselves damply to the bottom of my shoes. They squelched eerily underfoot, like some watery monster out of the late-late-night movie. In honor of Pammy's mother, I had abandoned my habitual knee-high boots for a pair of pointy-toed pumps. In the flimsy shoes, my feet felt alarmingly open to the elements. But one didn't tread on Pammy's mother's carpets in boots, even if they were Jimmy Choos.
Reaching the end of the road, I turned in to the quiet crescent where Pammy's mother had lived since her remove from New York. It was an exclusive enclave of thirty Victorian mansions, all discreetly tucked away behind high white walls, bristling with enough alarm systems and security cameras to stock Fort Knox.
Pammy's mother had never worked in all the time I had known them, but she had made something of a career out of marrying well. Hubby Number One, the starter husband, had been long gone by the time I arrived on the scene, and therefore of little interest. Hubby Number Two had provided Pammy and a not-inconsiderable chunk of his legendary art collection, the latter in reparation for having had the poor taste to take up with a younger model—before officially initiating divorce proceedings with Pammy's mother. It was Hubby Number Three (after her American adventure, Pammy's mother had switched back to her own countrymen) who had contributed the house in the Boltons, along with a charming little property in Dorset, where Pammy's mother presided in the summer months, much in the manner of Marie Antoinette playing milkmaid at Le Petite Trianon.
As far as I knew, there was no Number Four on the radar screen just yet, but general wisdom (i.e., Pammy and my mother) held that it was just a matter of time.
Letting myself in through the gate, I waved at the security camera and started up the walk toward the front door, discreetly set back among tastefully landscaped topiaries. In the dark and wet, the shrubs looked like hulking beasts guarding the door, a Cerberus for either side. But the drawing room windows were golden with light, and even through the closed door I could hear the muted residue of bubbly chatter.
American chatter. I felt an unaccustomed swell of fondness for my compatriots. At home, I pined after things English like a parrot for the fjords, but after a few months of England—and Englishmen—there was something rather nice about a cacophony of brash American voices butchering the language as only we know how.
All in all, I was feeling decidedly sanguine as I bounced up the three steps to the front door. Pammy's mother wasn't exactly the warm, motherly sort, but there was the comfort that came of having known her for absolutely ever (or since I was five, which amounted to much the same thing). She was a known quantity. After dealing with strangers, there's a lot to be said for that. Once you've gotten Marshmallow Fluff all over someone's Prada bag, there's not much else that can go wrong.
Relinquishing my raincoat and bottle to the maid who opened the door, I ventured into the drawing room. It wasn't a big room, but it was cleverly arranged to provide the illusion of space, papered in textured pale blue and hung with Pammy's father's guilt offerings: one Degas, two Monets, and a smattering of lesser impressionists. His Renoirs were in the back parlor, which was paneled in Victorian walnut (original to the house) and as darkly traditional as the front room was airy, linked to the decorating scheme by the use of the same shade of blue in the accents on the upholstery.
I could see Mrs. Harrington holding court on a sand-and-blue sofa in the front room, chatting with a couple I didn't know, but whose voices marked them as fellow refugees on foreign shores. We were going to be just shy of twenty for dinner, Pammy had told me, and it looked like the gang was mostly here. The crowd seemed fairly well split between Pammy's friends and her mother's, a nice sample of the American expat community in various stages of development.
Pammy's mother's friends were of the banker-and-wife variety, men in suits or blazers with wives about a third of their bulk and/or age, with shoes even pointier than mine. As for Pammy's friends, only one guy sported a blazer. It was constructed of orange velvet with elaborate piping, and boasted a faux flower in the buttonhole. I had no doubt that, if asked, he would refer to it as ironic.
A bar had been set up in the back room, appropriately located beneath a painting of a frowsy Parisian barmaid, a depiction made acceptable for the drawing room with time and a famous name to sanctify it. I spotted Pammy there, wearing a belted sweater with fur bristling five inches deep from her collar and the hem of her skirt. Knowing Pammy, the animal-skin theme was probably in honor of Thanksgiving. I was just glad she hadn't insisted everyone arrive dressed in tasteful ensembles of wampum and turkey feathers.
Waving at her, I started across the room—and stopped short when I saw just who was standing by the bar next to her.
Oh, no. No, no, no. She wouldn't.
She had.
Next to me, I could hear orange blazer man drawling, "An ironic reconstruction of an iconic representation…"
All the I's and R's blurred in my ears into one general buzz. Maybe my ears were going. More to the point, maybe my eyes were going.
No such luck.
Detaching herself from her companions, Pammy bounded across the room, arms flung wide, a miraculous feat of balance considering the nearly full glass in one hand. "Ellie!"
I wasn't hallucinating. What I was, was the victim of an interfering, intermeddling—
"Pammy!" Flinging my arms around her, I muttered, "I could kill you. What is he doing here?"
I have to give Pammy some points; she didn't try to pretend that she had no idea what I meant.
Instead, she smiled a big cat-and-canary grin, glancing over her shoulder at Colin, who was chatting with a couple of Pammy's work friends and looking unfairly dishy. "Well, if Mustafa won't come to the mountain…"
"That's Mohammed," I said through clenched teeth.
Pammy waved a hand. "Whatever."
"I'm not interested."
"Sure you're not."
"I'm not!" I insisted.
"Oh, go have a drink, Ellie. It will put you in a better mood."
"Who said I was in a bad mood?"
Pammy held up a hand, palm out. "You are just so lucky we've been friends for twenty years."
"Twenty-one," I muttered after Pammy's departing back. She never had been any good at math.