They’d been discovered.
Shyla was struggling with someone. A man. Billie made out his rounded silhouette. It wasn’t the pale man, but someone shorter, heavier, older. Georges Boucher? That would be his Daimler out the back, Billie realized, and he must have heard the two of them and come through the door silently while they were talking. Fortunately Shyla had not secured the window, and Billie hauled herself up onto the sill, just in time to see her friend hit squarely in the face. Rather than crumbling, Shyla scooted backward, escaping his grasp. Billie pulled her Colt out, but Boucher, filled with rage, ran at Shyla, grabbing her by the throat, while she held a hand over his mouth, preventing him from calling out. It was too tough to get a clear shot. Billie rushed to help her friend, but in a blink Shyla reached behind her and took something in her hand. She hit Boucher with it across the side of his head, and the body that had set upon her with violence jerked and crumpled, landing with a sickening thud on a Persian rug. A vase of flowers on the table next to the object in Shyla’s hands swayed once, twice, and crashed to the floor, showering the rug with glass and water and native flowers.
For one stretched-out moment everything was quiet and still.
Billie lowered her gun, her mind focused and as sharp as crystal. Shyla stood firm, holding a small bronze bust of Captain James Cook in her hand. Time seemed to have stopped. Could the commotion have been heard by Franz?
“Can we get some more light?” Billie ventured quietly, and stepped forward to close the room off from the rest of the house,shutting the door carefully. Shyla pointed to the kerosene lamp that was sitting on the table, and soon the whole grisly scene was illuminated before them. Both women were still again, not saying a word. Georges Boucher was still on the floor. His chest did not move.
Slowly, Billie knelt next to Boucher, placing her unfired pistol in the waistband of her skirt. She checked Boucher’s wrist for a pulse. Nothing. She checked his neck. It was warm, but also without a pulse. His eyes were unseeing. She didn’t need to touch his head to know it would be warm, wet, and soft where the heavy bronze bust had connected with it. He was dead.
Billie stood up and gently took the statuette from Shyla’s hands, then stepped out of her silk half-slip and wiped the statuette clean of prints, leaving the small mess of blood and hair that was centered on the bust’s base. She placed it carefully beside Boucher’s body, then stepped back and considered the scene. Could Boucher feasibly have fallen onto the bust? After a beat, she moved the table the bust and vase had stood on forward a touch, so it was closer to the body. She pushed at the rug, rippling its surface, and then observed the arrangement again. It would have to do. She picked up her bloodstained slip and, disgusted with it, balled it up and stuffed it into the pocket of her driving coat, as one would a large silk handkerchief.
“How does it look?” Shyla asked, anxiety in her voice.
“That depends on who’s looking,” Billie replied honestly, in a low whisper. “He tripped over the rug and hit his head. When the police ask, and they will doubtless ask, I will be a witness. I entered the premises and he saw me and panicked, ran away, and slipped on the rug. There are no prints on the bust anymore. It was an accident.”
Shyla, normally so collected, was shaking her head back andforth, melting into panic. “The coppers won’t believe me, Billie. They don’t believe us.”
“It will be okay, Shyla,” Billie tried to reassure her, placing a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “You won’t have to be the one to explain this. You weren’t in the room. It was only me. You didn’t even see it happen,” she told her. “If that comes up in a bruise,” she said, pointing at her neck, “Franz did that in another room. Or Boucher did. Not here, not now.”
Billie felt eyes on them and they both turned. Another girl was watching silently from the doorway, a hand to her mouth. She’d opened the door a hair and they’d been so absorbed they hadn’t even noticed. Now it swung farther open on its hinges, revealing the small figure. This would be one of the girls Shyla had spoken about. Ruthie, Billie guessed.
“He fell. He can’t hurt you now,” Billie said to the girl quietly. “My name is Billie. Billie Walker. But we have to stay quiet. Franz is still awake, isn’t he?”
The girl nodded, large, dark eyes riveted to the dead man on the floor, and something passed behind them—fear? relief?—and she looked to Shyla. After a beat Shyla nodded, as if to say this white woman was all right, could be trusted, at least for now. Billie was struck by how young the girl was. To see all this, to be trapped in a place like this, so young...
“I’m Ruthie,” the girl said finally. She was diminutive, no older than fifteen, Billie guessed. Her hair was pulled back under a cap, her dress was worn, and her wool cardigan was buttoned to the top. A cross hung around her neck and glinted in the light of the kerosene lamp. Although her eyes kept going to the body of Boucher, lifeless on the floor, she did not scream, did not say a word about it.
“Can we get the two other girls out?” Billie asked. “I have a car down the road, around the bend. I can drive us out of here to safety.”
Ruthie looked up at Billie, eyes brighter. “No, he keeps the keys,” she said.
At this, Shyla came to life again. “I’ll wash my hands in the kitchen and check on him.”
“Be careful. Take off your shoes. Clean them in the kitchen if necessary,” Billie instructed her in a soft, even voice, her eyes taking in the scene impassively, looking for the kind of evidence the police would be searching for. She was grateful for her clarity in these moments. It wasn’t until you saw a dead body for the first time, or had a bullet fly just past your ear, that you realized what kind of person you really were—the kind who panics in a life-or-death emergency, or the kind who becomes strangely calm, everything shifting into hyperreal focus. She was pleased that Shyla and Ruthie had both assumed a sort of surreal calmness.
They would get out of this. They would.
“Where are the other girls now?” Billie asked Ruthie.
“Down the corridor,” Ruthie said, and moved into the hall to point the way, then folded her arms and stepped back. She clearly did not want to accompany Billie. One room Ruthie indicated had what looked like a padlock securing the door. The other might not be locked, Billie thought hopefully.
She pulled her Colt from her waistband, heartbeat steady, and moved forward, keeping it ahead of her as one might shine a torch into the darkness. Behind her, Ruthie slipped away, and Billie was alone.
She decided to go for the door without the padlock first. If shecouldn’t open the padlock easily with a hatpin, she’d have to shoot at it and that would alert Franz.
Billie became conscious of the oddest thing as she moved slowly in the darkness, eyeing the light glowing under the two closed doors.Perfume. Cologne.Yes, it smelled good.French.Billie liked French perfume, had developed a real taste for it in Paris, though this was not her favored scent, Bandit. In this context, a fine French scent was jarring, peculiar. Everything was jarring here, the masterpieces and the rustic furniture and the death’s-head owl and the cologne. This strange place, this house, was its own world, had its own rules. She kept her right hand on her Colt, and her left reached out for the doorknob, slowly...
And it turned.
It turned before she reached it.
Billie scurried back, holding her breath, and pressed herself against the wall of the corridor. The door creaked open in front of her, shielding her from the person on the other side. She heard steps. Heavy steps.
“Georges?” a voice queried. A male voice. He was moving down the hallway, toward the room where Boucher’s body lay.Blast.Billie flicked the door back with her heel and extended her gun. It made contact with his upper back.
“Was ist das?” The pale head turned. It was him, the tall white-haired man.
