Paternoster (18 page)

She attached herself to Daphne and wheedled herself into the girl’s affections.

‘You know what would look lovely on you?’ Rachel said, under pretence of delousing and ragging Daphne’s hair one evening. ‘An emerald green shawl. It would set your hair off beautifully.’

‘I don’t have a green shawl,’ Daphne said.

‘Really?’ Having raked through Daphne’s box, Rachel was only too aware of the fact. She cracked a flea with her thumbnail. ‘Then you must get one. They can be got quite cheap, and it would look so pretty.’

‘But where?’

‘There’s a shop in Cheltenham. I saw it the other day when I was out walking.’ Rachel gripped Daphne’s shoulders and spun her round to face her. ‘We could go together, and look at the fabrics and try on bonnets! Would you like that?’

‘Ye-es.’ Daphne didn’t seem to realise the great honour that Rachel was bestowing on her, condescending to traipse about dreary Cheltenham shops and counterfeiting an interest in Daphne’s scrawny appearance.

Undeterred, Rachel pasted on her brightest face. ‘Then we’ll go tomorrow,’ she announced.

The next day, they tramped into a mercer’s shop on the High Street, where Rachel set about bossing the assistant to fetch shawls and bolts of fabric and lengths of ribbon and lace. She held up each item to the light for scrutiny before assessing it against Daphne’s muddy skin.

‘Too bright. Too tawdry. Too cheap. Now
this
one is right for you. Very subtle.’ It was a bolt of sprigged muslin. She heard the shopkeeper mutter the price and pulled a face. ‘Oh, but it’s very dear,’ she said disingenuously, and made to return it to the counter.

‘No matter,’ Daphne said, foraging in her reticule. ‘I can afford it. If you truly think it suits me, Rachel?’

Rachel’s eyes clamped on to Daphne’s purse, as she scrabbled in it and drew out a bank note. Rachel watched the note’s journey across the counter to the shopkeeper’s twitching fingers, and saw a sudden spark of interest flare in the man’s eyes.

‘You’re flush,’ she said, lightly.

Daphne blushed.

‘Got a sweetheart, have you?’ She elbowed Daphne in the ribs.

‘No.’ The blush deepened to an ugly rash over Daphne’s neck and bosom.

‘Go on! Look at you; you’ve got a special gentleman, spoiling you. Eh?’

Daphne fastened her eyes on the fabric as it was measured and cut. Rachel knew when her quarry had bolted into a hole, and feigned fascination in a box of buttons on the counter. While she turned them over in her hands, the shop bell rang and a couple of ladies entered. Rachel cast them a glance, dismissing them for their dowdy dress and red cheeks hatched with broken veins.

But something one of them said to the other caught her attention, and though she continued to riffle through the buttons, her whole attention was fixed on what the women were saying.

‘A disgrace, that’s what it is. We shan’t be going.’

‘No, nor us. Mr Proudfoot was most insistent that we should not go.’ A wistful tone crept into the woman’s voice. ‘Though I should love to see the wallpaper. I heard it was specially printed.’

The other woman snorted. ‘Greville House wallpaper! You’d sell your soul for a glimpse of Chinese print!’

‘Well, no, but I hear the gardens are a sight.’

The other woman puffed up her chest. ‘To think that such people should do such things in Cheltenham.’

‘Quite.’ A pause. ‘What things? Exactly?’

‘You must have heard the rumours. Though I never attend to gossip myself.’

‘No, of course not, one would never think of doing such a thing. Mr Proudfoot spoke in such chilling terms about Greville House, but he didn’t
specify
.’

Heaving-bosom leaned closer to her friend. ‘You have heard of the Hellfire Club?’

Mrs Proudfoot’s hand crept to her mouth. ‘No!’

A sage nod. ‘Women brought in from London. We can imagine why.’

‘Can we?’

‘Gambling. Drinking. The worst excesses. Human sacrifice and cannibalism!’

Daphne’s head snapped round at this. So you’ve been eavesdropping, too, Rachel thought, and softened a little towards Daphne.

‘Men with money and influence, the highest in the land, and they behave like animals!’ Heaving-bosom declared. ‘A disgrace. We certainly shall not be going.’

‘No, certainly,’ Mrs Proudfoot echoed, and she stroked a bolt of printed cotton and sighed with something that sounded suspiciously like regret.

Rachel could barely wait until they were out of the shop before she rounded on Daphne. ‘Men with money and influence, the highest in the land – who were they the other night?’ Rachel demanded.

Daphne sighed. ‘Sons of dukes and earls, a foreign count, the sons of politicians, and men of fortune.’

Rachel made a swift calculation. ‘But there were only four of them there. You’re talking as though there were dozens and dozens.’

‘There was,’ Daphne said. ‘Later. In the tunnels.’

But more than that, she wouldn’t say.

Rachel sprawled on one of the sofas in the seraglio and calculated how she would spend twenty guineas. The stagecoach back to London for a start, then some swish new gowns and a room somewhere while she let it be known she was seeking a new keeper. She was out of the game, stuck here in fusty old Cheltenham surrounded by sick people guzzling water. A girl like her should be at the heart of the action.

Her designs were interrupted by squealing and shouts from the room above. Roseanne and Daphne were dealing with a group of schoolboys, by the look of them, who’d bundled in and announced it was some fellow’s birthday and it was time he became a man. They wouldn’t take long.

Mrs Bedwin poked her head round the door and tutted. She’d taken the boys’ money before they even clapped eyes on the girls. And charged them double for wine and cakes, addressing them as ‘gentlemen’ the whole time. They were so busy giggling and shoving each other in the ribs that they never noticed the gleam in her eye. When she’d allowed them into the boudoir, they’d chosen Daphne for her youth and Roseanne for the novelty. From the expression on Roseanne’s face when one addressed her as ‘the blackamoor’, Rachel suspected that Mistress Pain would take control upstairs. Serve the upstarts right.

A sedan chair had called for Emma that morning, and jolted her away to a ladies’ bathing party. Goodness knew what that meant, Rachel shuddered. But Emma seemed to enjoy them. She’d been fetched before, and always came back looking like the cat that got the cream. And so Rachel was alone with her thoughts.

The mythical twenty guineas was almost spent in Rachel’s mind when a clatter on the stairs announced a new customer. Rachel draped herself artfully over the sofa as a man of about twenty-five shuffled into the room.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said, with a little bow. ‘I wonder, are you free?’

Rachel sat up. ‘Not free, but very reasonable, sir,’ she purred.

‘What? Oh yes, very good. Hem.’

‘Do you wish to choose me, sir?’

‘You’re very pretty.’

‘Then come sit by me a moment.’ She patted the sofa. ‘Would you care for wine and cakes?’

Mrs Bedwin slid into the room and put down a tray of small cakes and a bottle of wine. She extracted money from the man and said, ‘Use the pink boudoir.’

Rachel took his hand. He was trembling. ‘There’s no need to worry, sir. Rachel will look after you.’

She poured his wine and he gulped it down. She refilled his glass and sipped delicately at her own.

‘What’s your name, sir?’

‘Rodney Paige.’

‘Mr Paige. That’s nice. Are you here for the waters?’

‘Oh no, nothing wrong with me. Fine and hearty.’ A bit of wine went down the wrong way and he choked. She thumped him on the back until he caught his breath. ‘I’m here to make my fortune. I hope.’

‘Really?’ Rachel eyed him over. Fair curly hair, worn long and giving him the appearance of a small boy. Big brown eyes, gentle and soft. They gazed at her now as if she were a water sprite who’d vanish if he startled her.

She led him upstairs to the pink boudoir. Through the wall came muffled giggling and shouts of ‘Go on, Horace!’ as the bed springs creaked.

Rodney glanced uneasily at the wall. ‘Making rather a din, aren’t they?’

Rachel smiled as if it were no matter. She’d heard worse. They’d be done soon, anyway. What she had here now was a young man of pleasing countenance and pretty manners, all set to make his fortune. She glided up to him and eased him out of his coat.

‘Let’s make you more comfortable, sir,’ she said.

‘Please call me Rodney. Sir sounds so impersonal, considering what we’re about to …er … become to one another.’

‘As you wish,
Rodney
.’ Her breath fanned against his cheek as she said his name.

‘That’s much better.’ His fingers fumbled with his shirt, and she stepped up to help him ease it off over his head.

‘Skin a rabbit,’ she murmured.

‘My nurse used to say that.’ He blushed. Rachel hid a smirk: what would nurse say if she could see him now, in a Cheltenham cat house. No wonder the poor boy was trembling.

She helped him to undress. Naked, he was pale and vulnerable, as though only half formed, like a newborn mouse. His legs bowed and he was pigeon chested with just a tuft of sandy fluff on his breast and another at his groin.

Rachel draped herself over the bed and urged him to join her. As they lay together, the boys in the next room started to roar and thump on the wall. Roseanne’s voice bellowed out, admonishing them, and there was more sniggering. Rachel glanced at Rodney. His face was sheened with sweat and his eyes darted about the room.

‘Not used to us bad girls, sir? Rodney, I mean?’

‘No. That is, you’re not bad. I’m not used to girls at all. One of seven boys.’ He glugged his wine. ‘I just want to make sure that everything is … pleasurable … for you. Hem. Not just me.’

‘Don’t you worry about that, Rodney. My pleasure is your pleasure.’ She reached over and took the wine glass from his hands. ‘Now, follow me.’

‘You will tell me if I do anything wrong, won’t you? Or if you don’t like it?’

She looked at him properly for the first time. His eyes pleaded with her. He was so anxious to please, her heart melted a little. How many men had paid for their transaction and done the business, never casting a thought to her? Yet here was Rodney Paige, begging her to tell him how to please her.

She nuzzled his neck, her teeth nipping lightly at his skin. ‘Tell me, Rodney,’ she murmured, ‘how you propose to make your fortune here in Cheltenham?’

Eden drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she drew up in a long line of cars at a red light. At this rate the police would have identified Donna and searched her house before she even got there. The clock was ticking. The pathologist would already have alerted the police to Paul’s suspicious death; it wouldn’t be long before they made the connection between Paul and Donna, and then she’d be muscled out of the investigation altogether.

The lights changed and she accelerated, turning towards the imposing circular building that housed GCHQ, the spy base. It was known locally as the doughnut because it was built in a ring, the middle part of grass and shrubs visible from the air. Myths abounded about the place: it was haunted by spies who’d committed suicide, that there was an underground train connecting it to Downing Street, that Cheltenham was riddled with spy escape tunnels.

She’d been inside once, years ago, when she was Jackie, and had quickly become muddled by the building’s layout, glad she was escorted everywhere otherwise she was convinced that she would have spent the rest of her natural life wandering in circles, trying to find her way out.

Rather than standing in isolation, new housing estates had sprung up alongside GCHQ. Strange thing to wake up to a view of the tinted curved windows and razor wire, Eden thought. This, though, was where Donna chose to live. Eden skirted a line of cars queuing to get into the GCHQ car park, and turned right into Donna’s street, crawling along, hunting for the right number. She spotted it, and parked further up the street and walked back.

Donna’s house was tall and narrow with a Scandinavian twang to it, overlooking a tiny front garden and a collection of wheelie bins. The grass verge outside was piled with cardboard boxes of recycling. One had tipped over, spewing plastic cartons across the tarmac.

Eden looked up at the house and its neighbours, walked to the end of the street, and slowly made her way back, her phone clamped to the side of her face as if she was making a call. No one worried about a dawdler on the phone.

When she reached Donna’s house, she ducked down a side passage and tried the back gate. Unlocked. Careless, but lucky for her: she disliked scrambling over fences. She slipped inside and closed the gate firmly. The tiny garden consisted of a square of turf and a few patio slabs. Evidently Donna didn’t have green fingers.

She glanced up at the windows – blank patio doors facing the garden; upstairs the curtains were still closed. No movement inside the house, no sound of a toilet flushing, a washing machine running, or a shower. No radio or TV. It seemed the house was empty.

Drawing a set of pick locks from her bag, Eden set about opening the back door. She felt a pang of nostalgia for the old days when she could open a locked door in seconds using a credit card. These days it took patience and specialist tools, or an enforcer wielded by a beefy plod, but eventually she got the door open.

She wasn’t the first one to get there. The place had been turned over. Not police: even they wouldn’t make this mess. Eden stepped into the kitchen over shards of glass and china. Broken plates and mugs, cupboard doors hanging askew, packets of flour and sugar burst open on the tiles. Pots of herbs had been flung to the floor and trampled, releasing a scent of basil and mint over the chaos.

Feeling in her backpack, Eden drew out a pair of latex gloves and slipped them on as she moved into the living room. Here, the sofa was tipped upside down, the webbing underneath ripped open. Drawers hung drunkenly, their contents spilling on to the floor. A handful of romcoms had been swept from the shelves and lay with their pages crumpled on the carpet.