Valentina. In the Buick.
Why?
But Polly was still avoiding her. Staring at the froth on her cocoa and blowing lightly to cool it.
‘Polly, he’s gone,’ Lydia said.
Her friend’s worried gaze at last met hers. ‘Who?’
‘You know who. Chang An Lo.’
‘Gone where?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did soldiers take him?’
‘No. He escaped. So you don’t have to worry anymore about… well, you know… what you saw.’
Polly released a huge sigh of relief. ‘I’m glad.’
‘So am I.’
They smiled quietly at each other, and then Lydia put down her cup on the table, went over and hugged Polly. All the stiffness immediately left Polly’s slight frame and she squeezed Lydia tight. They laughed, the awkwardness sliding away, and took their hot drinks into the drawing room.
‘Wait here, Lyd, while I just run up to my room with the maps and copy them out. I won’t be long. Eat up the cake.’
The moment she was gone Lydia abandoned the drawing room, tiptoed across the hall’s parquet, and tried the door of Christopher Mason’s study. It opened. In a weird sort of way, that disappointed her. If you leave doors unlocked, you can’t have anything to hide, can you? She slipped in and shut the door behind her. The room was gloomy. The shutters were half closed and the tall bookcases along the wall looked… threatening. As if she were shut in. Trapped. A shudder rippled up her spine and she shook her head to clear it of foolish notions.
The desk. That’s where she had to start. She nipped behind it and found Mason’s leather-bound diary for 1929 placed neatly in the middle of the desk. She skimmed through the opening days of January and it was there, in bold black writing. Monday. Three-thirty. VP. Not VI anymore. Valentina Parker. Lydia wanted to hurl the wretched diary through the window.
Quickly she went through his desk drawers. Nothing of interest. Except a gun. In the top right-hand drawer under a fluffy butter-yellow dustcloth, it lay like a warning. Lydia picked it up. It was an army type, a revolver, heavier than she expected and smelling of oil. She squinted along the sights and aimed it at the door, switched the safety off and on again but didn’t risk pulling the trigger, and then she replaced it. She rummaged some more. Just household accounts, stationery, two gold fountain pens that three months ago she might have taken, a few letters from England. Not helpful, just chat about someone called Jennifer and someone else called Gaylord. A jade paperweight. A box of cigars. Nail clippers. And in the bottom one, a photograph of his cat, Achilles. Disappointing.
A sudden noise. Lydia froze. Listened. A servant’s footsteps crossing the hall. She breathed again, pushed the drawer shut, and looked elsewhere. An oak tallboy stood in one corner. Big brass handles. The first three drawers contained bottles of what smelled like chemicals of some sort, a sheaf of photographic paper, a cardboard box packed with reels and reels of negatives on top of which lay a silver hip flask. It dawned on her that Mason must be a keen photographer who developed his own work. It fitted with when she caught him in the library that time. He’d been looking at a book on photography then.
It was the bottom drawer that gave her a kick of hope. It was locked. Something to hide.
This was it. She took a moment to look coolly round the room. No keys in the desk. If she owned this room she would hide a key… where? The bookcase. Had to be. She listened intently for Polly’s footsteps on the stairs. No sound. Quickly she ran her fingers over the books and the shelves. Any one of the volumes could be hollowed out to secrete a key. No hope of finding it if that’s what he’d done. None. Instead she dragged over Mason’s big leather desk chair, climbed on it and stretched up above her head to feel on the very top of the bookcase itself. Nothing. A smattering of dust. A dead spider. She shifted the chair further along, searched again. This time her fingers touched metal.
‘Lydia?’
Polly’s voice. Still upstairs. Lydia rocketed off the chair and opened the door a crack.
‘Yes?’ she called.
‘Nearly finished.’
‘Don’t rush.’
‘I won’t be long.’
Lydia shut the door again, leaped back onto the chair, and retrieved the piece of metal. A key. It lay on her palm. Her mouth was dry. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was in that drawer. Already her head was filling up with suspicions. She took a long breath, as Chang An Lo had shown her, exhaled slowly, and then strode over to the tallboy and crouched in front of the bottom drawer. The key turned easily and the drawer slid open as if well used.
It was full of photographs. Tidy bundles of them in elastic bands. She rifled through them. Every one was of a naked woman. Lydia felt she should be embarrassed, but she didn’t have time for that. She snatched up each pile in turn and inspected it quickly. The sight of a Negro girl mounted by a black greyhound made her shudder but she didn’t stop, peering closely at the faces of the women. Most were hard and painted. Prostitutes, she assumed. She’d seen faces like that in the streets and hanging around the bars at the quayside. It was in the fifth bundle that she found it. A sultry picture of a slender white woman lying naked on a bearskin rug, one arm thrown in abandonment above her head, her hand twined in her thick long hair, showing off her breasts. The nipples were painted a dark color. Her legs were eased apart, one finger trailing in her dense pubic bush, a glimpse of something pale and glistening inside. The woman’s full lips were smiling but the dark eyes looked dead.
Valentina.
A sob shook Lydia. A rush of anger that almost choked her and an avalanche of shame. Her teeth clenched together and she felt her cheeks on fire. She went through the rest. Four more of Valentina. Twenty of Anthea Mason. Two of Polly.
Lydia wanted to scream.
She pushed them into her schoolbag.
‘Finished.’ Polly’s voice. At the top of the stairs.
In a final rush Lydia scooped out the books from her schoolbag and dumped all the reels of negative film in their place. She threw the key into the bottom drawer, kicked it shut, and with her books under one arm and the bag under the other, she left the room.
‘You don’t mind, do you, darling?’
‘No, of course not. I’ve got homework to do.’
Lydia kept looking at her mother, her eyes following every flick of her finger – that finger – as she skimmed through the latest Paris World magazine and each toss of her hair as she lit another cigarette. Why? Over and over it squirmed in her head. Why did Valentina do it? Damn it, damn it, damn it. Why?
Her mother turned to Alfred. ‘We won’t be back late, will we, angel?’
He exchanged a quick glance with Lydia. He had driven her to school that morning on his way to work, and she had mentioned that Valentina seemed a bit tense since the business with Chang An Lo and the soldiers. Maybe it would be a good idea to take her out this evening? A meal at the club? Dancing at the Flamingo? Alfred had jumped at it.
‘Well, I’m not sure what time it’ll be,’ he said with a look of open admiration at his wife. She looked stunning. An elegant new black and white evening gown that was cut low to reveal the full swell of her breasts. Lydia couldn’t look at them. Not now. Not after what she’d seen.
Alfred handed his wife her mink muff and helped her on with her coat.
‘Have a good time,’ Lydia said cheerfully.
The moment she heard the car swing out of the drive, she raced upstairs and pulled out the green dress.
‘Little sparrow, moi vorobushek, I think you’d forget an old lady.’
‘No, nyet, I’m here. I even have an official invitation.’ Lydia waved the thick embossed card.
‘So grand.’ Mrs Zarya chuckled with delight, her broad bosom swaying dangerously close. She tucked her arm through Lydia’s. ‘And quite lovely you look. So grown up now in your pretty green dress.’