Tonight Ella wore sequins and silk, her darkly dyed cropped hair set in impeccable marcel waves, tight to the head and curled gently at porcelain cheekbones. One might assume she was dressed this way because she’d come from a lavish dinner, but Billie knew perfectly well that she dressed like this for dinner every night as a matter of course, whether she had company or not.If you don’t take pride in yourself, what is the point in living?she’d often say. As a once-divorced and now recently widowed Dutch aristocrat, the third of five daughters of Baron von Hooft, a former mayor of Arnhem, Ella had grown up with wealth and had never really let go of her taste for the finer things, even when her situation had become “strained,” financially speaking.
Something of a free spirit, Ella had lived a large life, having come to Australia from Holland with her first husband, only to have him take up a rather too public affair. It was then that she’d met Billie’s father, Barry Walker, a former cop turned PI, whom she had hired to gain the necessary proof of adultery, which was rather easy, as the story goes. What she hadn’t counted on was Barry’s gallantry and charm. They’d fallen in love hard and fast. She’d had Billie out of wedlock, something a woman without a title could have barely survived. But Ella had the title and the money to support herself and her little family, and she’d weathered the scandal in the way the upper classes sometimes did. She was a savvy, determined woman. She had done her time as a good girl, and it hadn’t paid off, as she saw it, so she’d married the man she wanted, had the baby she craved, and to hell with social expectations. Ella had not changed her name, either, which was just the sort of thing she would dig her heels inabout and Billie’s dad wouldn’t give a toss about. Barry Walker had been a thoroughly modern man, in his way, happy to let Ella be her own woman, an idiosyncratic and passionate “goddess,” as he’d liked to call her. They’d been a good match, Barry and Ella. Billie missed her dad keenly, and she knew her mother did, too. Since his death her mother had seemed listless, and a touch more demanding, which wasn’t something Billie felt like dealing with tonight.
“Let me have a look at you,” Ella von Hooft said to her daughter. “Give us a whirl. Where are you going tonight?”
“I’m not going to give you a whirl. I’m on a case,” Billie said, not in the mood for play.
“Being on a case doesn’t make you invisible, does it? Certainly not inthatdress.”
Invisibility would be handy sometimes,Billie thought.
“Have a drink with me.” Her mother changed tack, patting the seat beside her.
Billie sat next to Ella on the plush emerald-green settee, crammed with jewel-colored cushions of ruby and emerald velvet and silk. Alma poured her a tipple, a quiet smile on her ruddy, weathered face. Against Ella’s exciting presence, Alma appeared as calm and solid as the Pyramids of Giza. An Irish immigrant, Alma hadn’t family of her own. She’d first come on to help with newborn Billie, and as Billie had grown older, Alma had taught her to sew and mend. She had patience, a steady hand, and a keen eye for details, and she’d soon made herself indispensable. The other staff had been let go over the years, but she was always there. Ella would spend her last shilling to keep Alma, Billie knew, and unlike the other tenants in Cliffside, Ella had her maid live in the flat with her. She had a fair-size room at the east end of the flat as her personal quarters, andBillie understood it housed a near library-size collection of paperback romance novels and copies ofTalk of the TownandTrue Confessions,though the part of Alma that indulged in them remained well hidden beneath a sober surface.
There was a shared maids’ quarters at the top of the building, with beds side by side and a kitchen where the staff made meals for their various employers, but Ella wouldn’t hear of it. In truth the two women were inseparable, particularly since Billie’s father had passed on. While Billie and her mother sipped their drinks, Alma walked off to the kitchen to see to something that smelled quite divinely of sweetness and cinnamon. To add to her many talents, the woman was an impressive baker.
Ella had her eyes on Billie, thinking something over. “You know, your line of work shows you the worst of people. It exposes every nasty instinct,” she pronounced.
“Isn’t that what you found exciting about it?” Billie shot back. She leaned against the cushions and smiled, then took a sip of her sherry. This was a well-worn track for them.
Barry Walker had been charming and, behind his sometimes tough exterior, rather softhearted and compassionate, too, but that probably wasn’t all that had appealed to Ella von Hooft. Certainly he was the opposite of her first husband, if the stories were anything to go by, but it was more than that. Billie’s first and happiest memories were from the end of the Roaring Twenties, a freer time in many respects, with an aristocratic mother who was more than happy to “slum it”—as others liked to say behind her back—with her dad, the baroness painting the town red each weekend with her PI; insisting on throwing extravagant parties in her two-story home, attended by intellectuals, performers, and artists; and employing afair-size staff, in keeping with the standards of her Dutch childhood. The fact that the disapproval of others never fazed Ella was just one more reason Billie respected her. She thought Alma, her loyal lady’s maid, felt the same, despite what Billie took to be more conservative leanings. Her mother rather had a taste for the gritty, Billie suspected, despite her protestations and fiercely glamorous exterior. She was indeed a woman of contrasts.
“What are you working on at the moment? No peeping, I hope,” her mother prodded, not taking the bait.
“A rather clear-cut case, in fact,” Billie replied. “Not at all unsavory. A mother hired me to track down her missing son.”
“There must be a lot of those at the moment.”
“Indeed, but not like this. He’s not MIA.” Billie thought of Jack again and quickly pushed the thought away. This was getting to be a quite unhelpful habit, thinking of him when her mind should be on her work. “This one was too young to serve,” Billie added by way of explanation.
“Dear goddess, tell me it’s not like the Lindbergh baby!” Ella exclaimed.
“No. More like a teenage runaway. He’s seventeen. Hopefully the boy hasn’t got himself hurt somewhere.”
“Well, you wouldn’t know what to do with one of those, anyway.”
Babies.Billie groaned softly into her glass. “As I recall, you had Alma to help you out with me,” Billie said loudly enough to include everyone in the flat. From the corner of her eye she spotted Alma’s sly grin in the doorway of the kitchen. Her mother liked to rib Billie about her domestic circumstances, or lack thereof, but Billie knew that Ella had hardly embraced the domestic life herself, and it was no accident she’d had but one child. The baroness knew about MarieStopes and her family-planning devices and firmly believed in women controlling the fate of their wombs, despite what gray-haired men of religion had to say on the matter.
Billie rose and moved to the window, the red gown holding to her firm curves like liquid.
“That’s a lovely dress,” her mother said, and Billie thanked her. She had to admit it fitted better now that she was not as thin. Europe had taken the weight off her, and many others besides. The only people who got fat on wars were the ones who weren’t really there—weren’t on the front lines or in the factories, or starving at home, but were pushing pawns around as on a chessboard, far from the action.
“It’s for The Dancers,” Billie explained of her attire.
“Ahh,” Ella responded, understanding.
Billie looked around her, glass in hand. The baroness had a sweeping view over Edgecliff, Double Bay shimmering in the distance, in what was year by year becoming a rather too sparsely furnished apartment. What was still in place was impressive and in impeccable taste, but the pieces were gradually receding, like a glacier. There was a large space where a Steinway baby grand piano had recently stood, Billie noticed. Not that anyone had played it much since they’d sold the stately house in Potts Point and moved to Cliffside Flats. She took another sip of the sherry. If only things were going a bit better at the agency, she’d be able to support her mother as well as herself. Perhaps in time, she thought.
Her mother was giving her a look. “Where is your mind tonight? You look like you are somewhere else.”
“I’m fine.”
Ella wasn’t going to let it go. “It pains me to see you single likethis, Billie my girl. Men throw themselves at you. Surely you see that? Why don’t you take one of them up on it?”
Billie put the sherry down, folded her arms, and pulled her brows together. She didn’t like this conversation. She had a puzzle to solve and it wasn’t this one.
Ella raised her eyebrows. “All I’m saying is take advantage of it, Billie. Enjoy yourself. You only live once and there are plenty of nice young men out there. They certainly noticeyou.”
