Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [55]
This time she led me into a morning room from which the sun had already retreated. But a fire had been laid and more coffee stood ready on the low table between two comfortable chairs. I was handed a cup without being asked if I wished it, and before I had done more than blow across the top of the cup, we were interrupted by a person whose presence went far to explain the vast and recent changes in the household.
A bustle in the hall-way and an exchange of words at the door warned of an impending invasion, and indeed, seconds later the door was flung open and in whirled a petite, black-haired, absolutely perfect specimen of the species Flapper Americanus. She was quite obviously just coming in from the night's entertainments, although it was well past nine o'clock in the morning, and her clothing and makeup were very much the worse for wear. Both of her silk stockings were out at the knees—stockings that I knew from my earlier bout of shopping cost nearly five dollars—an English pound for a pair of stockings! The hem of her abbreviated skirt cried out for the attention of an expert seamstress, her collar was smudged with face-powder, and unless wearing a single earring was the fashion here, she'd lost one of her diamond pendants.
What I found most shocking, however, was the lack of reaction on the part of her mother, who merely shook an affectionate head at the bedraggled state of the newcomer.
“Mummy, darling,” the jazz-baby was exclaiming before she had cleared the door-way, “Jeeves says you have a guest—what on earth are you doing bringing a guest home at this hour, I thought that kind of goings-on was reserved for the younger generation? And even I only drag friends in for breakfast after we've been out all night, I don't begin the day with abductions. Oh! I've been with Trudy for the past three hours, stuck on the other side of Market Street with that pig of a parade the children are putting on—twenty thousand boys, they say, God, what a nightmare thought, all of them banging away on instruments and marching and pulling floats, so that even if you weren't drunk beforehand you'd need to be by the time you'd got past it—and she's just given up smoking and I'm dying, just dying for a smoke, tell me you don't mind, Mummy dearest, and if your friend objects I'll just have to skulk away into the conservatory and puff away among the orchids.”
In the course of this speech, the girl had made her way across the room in that languid, loose-limbed shuffle characteristic of her species, moving as if her shoes were too large and threatened to fall off, or to trip her up. Neither mishap occurred, however, before she reached a swooping sort of octopus-armoire whose many arms were each topped by a small Benares-ware tray, seven in all. Drawing a brightly enamelled cigarette holder a good eight inches long from somewhere about her person, she flipped open the lacquered box that sat on one of the trays and pulled out a cigarette, sliding it into the holder with a frown of concentration. She lit it with a grenade-sized cigarette lighter that matched the enamel of her holder, drawing in a dramatic lungful of smoke and emitting a small cloud along with a sound of satisfaction. She then hurled herself onto the chaise beside the fireplace, crossed her knees in a manner that would have had her grandmother swooning, and looked at me brightly.
I was hard put to keep my hands from applauding.
“But this is Mary, my dear,” Mrs Greenfield explained. “You remember Mary, your best friend when you were a little thing? She used to play dollies with you.”
This was, as I had suspected, my former play-mate, Flo.
“I remember she used to play a vicious game of kick-the-can with Frank's friends, and one time climbed up to the top of that tree that Billy Murrow broke both legs falling out of.” The flapper's tired face creased in amusement, and she gave me a languid wave of her cigarette holder by way of greeting.