“I had it first!” Dahlia shouted.
“I was just robbed, therefore I deserve it more!” Primula countered. “More!”
“Ahem.”
As Alice cleared her throat, both women turned to stare at her. Not one speck of reproach showed upon her countenance, yet they blanched guiltily. Primula dropped the dress and smoothed her disheveled hair.
“You may have the rag,” she said haughtily to Dahlia. And clambering over the mess, she moved to the door, where she snatched her purse from Alice’s hand. “Come along, Dearlove. We are going to Harrods.”
“Yes miss.” Alice turned to follow her. “Good afternoon,” she murmured to Bixby.
“Good afternoon,” he replied, bowing.
And she walked away, no doubt never to see him again.
2
alice visits her aunt—tea and apologies— an alphabetic surprise—the unusual suspects— alice is not who she seems—an engagement
Alice walked in beauty like the afternoon of cloudy climes over Westminster, where all that was the best of dark and bright met in a sky about to rain. She entered a rather dingy building whose bronze doorplate advised that the tenants were Bover & Sons, Brushmakers, est. 1785. Within could be found a small manufactory of brooms, dusters, and specialist brushes, which oddly enough had not been applied to the cluttered and dusty premises. An old man whittling a broomstick looked up and nodded as Alice entered.
A lady like her, dressed in a smart, dark blue walking suit with the merest hint of a bustle, and bearing a hat so discreet it could have been safely employed as an ambassador to France, did not usually patronize such an establishment. But this was no real manufactory. And Alice was not in fact a lady like her. She nodded to the old man, then strode across the room, her bootheels tapping smartly against its wooden floorboards.
Alice loved that sound. It made her feel like a capable woman. Anintelligent woman. A woman who had this morning made an omelet without it turning into scrambled eggs!
Certainly not a woman who had tossed and turned all night, trying to ignore visions of a bespectacled butler straightening his cuffs after having bashed a man senseless.
She paused, looking around the manufactory. “You need a fan in here,” she informed the old man. “The air is decidedly hot.”
He nodded, since he was deaf and would have nodded even if she’d told him the place was burning down. Continuing on, Alice wondered what brand of starch Mr. Bixby used to get his cuffs looking so precise. The slide of crisp linen against his skin must be soothing indeed—although oddly enough her own clothes felt suddenly scratchy and constrictive. She would have to reconsider the ingredients of her laundry soap.
Arriving at a closet, she slipped inside, angling herself amongst its collection of mops. Shifting one to reveal a faded calendar picture of a woman in a bathing costume leaning against a horse-drawn carriage, she pushed against it. A panel swung aside to reveal another closet, this one empty. Entering, Alice closed the door and tugged on a clothes hanger suspended from the ceiling. The closet began to descend. Instantly bored, Alice took a small dictionary from her dress pocket to read.
Sensual... sensualism... sensualist... sensuality...
Well, that did not provide as helpful a distraction from thoughts of Mr. Bixby as she had hoped. Snapping the book shut, she returned it to her pocket just as the ground reacquainted itself with the spirit of its name. Before her stood another door. An abacus was set into its center panel, and Alice adjusted the beads along their horizontal tracks until the door clicked and swung open.
She stepped through to the headquarters of the Agency of Undercover Note Takers.
A.U.N.T. was England’s most secret intelligence agency, fortunately better at espionage than at naming itself. It had been established in the reign of Henry VIII, when his queens’ troubles led household servants to realize the tremendous power of gossip. Since then, the covert web of chambermaids and butlers, housekeepers and footmen, grooms and sweeps, had grown so extensive it had become in effect a downstairs government. With an information-rich net of service providers spread across the realm, A.U.N.T. ensured, amongst other things, that every scheme of the Wicken League was known, that pirates did not make too much trouble, and that spoiled rich girls were kept from killing one another on shopping sprees.
“It’s like one big family,” the man who recruited Alice had explained when he’d removed her from the orphanage where she’d lived for the first six years of her life. He’d given her lollies and set her inside a carriage with blacked-out windows, and Alice had thought she was going to meet her hitherto unknown aunty. She’d asked nothing, since she barely spoke in those days; she’d just hugged her battered volume ofAlphabets and Pictures for Children(and hidden the lollies beneath the carriage seat cushion, since they were bad for one’s teeth). Only after arriving at the Academy of Household Management and being assigned her first broom had she finally realized the truth.
Mind you, considering her sole understanding of “family” up until then had come from fairy tales, she was just grateful the teachers and other students did not throw her down a well or cut off her head. Ten years of service training passed before she even met Chief Servant Mrs. Kew, and another two before she graduated as a lady’s maid and spy.
Now her friends (which is to say, people to whom she said a polite hello when passing, and watched laughing together at the agencyChristmas party) knew her as A—ranked first, equal with the mysterious B, whose identity was kept secret even from her. Sometimes she almost forgot her Christian name, so seldom did she hear it. But that did not matter. Only service mattered. Well, that and returning library books before they accrued a late fee, of course.
“Don’t you ever wish for real friends?” Hazel Coombley had asked her once, soft-voiced and gentle-eyed, as they sat drinking tea.
“No,” Alice had responded. And she would have given the same response even if Hazel hadn’t been the agency clinician undertaking a psychological evaluation of her.
The only person in whom Alice felt any genuine interest was B, whose reputation had developed over the years into something close to mythology. For example, it was said B had saved Princess Louise from assassination, thanks to being in bed with her at the time. From this, Alice, an exceptional intelligence officer, deduced that B must be a woman. After all, who else would have a pajama party with the princess?
She herself rather wished to attend such a party with B. Whispering together under blankets, sharing intimate secrets... she imagined this would be entertaining indeed. In a way, she felt closer to B than to anyone else in the world, for surely no other could understand better what it was like to be essentially unknown.
That thought veered close to an emotion, and Alice stopped, halfway across the A.U.N.T. lobby, beneath the rose painted on its ceiling and just past the statue of Queen Victoria’s butler. The threat of melancholia rattled around inside her, disrupting her tranquility and sending her pulse into free fall. Suddenly the whole world felt like it might break apart. Fiddlesticks!
Slipping one hand into a skirt pocket, she tapped her fingers against her thigh with a steady one-two beat. This calmed her, and she was soon able to continue on. In an office at the far side of the lobby, she found Mrs. Kew awaiting her.
