The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [84]
I put the Cartwright file together, then glanced at my watch. “I'd like to see about the shoes Yolanda wore, before Lestrade gets around to it. The shop should be open.”
“And I must compose an anonymous letter to Damian's lawyer in Paris, advising him that the police may call. Shall we meet back at my brother's?”
“How about the Café Royal instead?”
He raised his eyebrows. “We shall have our passports stamped for Bohemia. At one o'clock, then, Russell.”
On foot and by sardine-tin omnibus, my steps took me out of Westminster and past the Palace to the Brompton Road again, although not as far down as the meeting room for the Children of Lights.
Harrods is a meeting place for another kind of worship, that of excess in all its glory. Under the stoutest of circumstances, I can tolerate twenty minutes inside its decorative doors before my fingers begin to twitch and my eyes scan the endless halls for an exit. But then, I am not a person who considers browsing through shops a recreational activity.
Even with a specific objective in mind—ladies' shoes—it did not prove simple. Did I wish walking shoes, riding boots, ballet flats, shoes for the hunt, shoes for tennis—ah, heeled dress shoes. Daytime, evening wear, or for Court?
I eventually tracked down the department featuring the Cardiff designer: There sat the shoe, glossy and unsullied by grass or bloodstains, the small, pointless bow at the back a bit of frippery that should have looked pathetic but instead struck me as oddly brave. One of the VAD nurses I knew during the War had painted her lips with care each morning before stepping onto the ward, to cheer up the boys, she said. This shoe in my hand had the same attitude.
“A lovely shoe, that,” said a voice at my shoulder.
“Not, however, for me,” I said.
“It is also available in a patent black.”
I put the shoe down and turned to give the woman a smile. I could see from her encouraging expression that she had already glanced at my feet, and knew that the only way I could be wearing this shoe would be if I ordered a pair made to fit.
Although, this being Harrods, she could probably arrange that as well.
It would almost be worth it, to see Holmes' expression.
“Actually,” I said, “I am trying to find a person who purchased just this shoe recently. Is there someone who would be able to help me?”
She reached out to shift the display model, rectifying my deliberately careless placement of the shoe against its mate. The proprietary gesture confirmed what I suspected: This woman was this department.
“I rather doubt that would be possible,” she answered.
“Let me explain. My sister is two years older than I, and received all the family elegance and little of its common sense. This spring, while I was out of the country, she fell in with a man of dubious background. Very good looking, you understand, and enormously plausible, but not, shall we say, out for my sister's best interests. Lally—that's what we call her, her name's Yolanda—always wants to believe the best of a person, and I've always been around to keep her from doing anything too stupid, until now.
“I must speak with her, but this man denies that she is with him. I even managed to track them to an hotel in Paris this past week, but they had just left. No doubt they caught wind of my search. The only trace of them was a shoe under the edge of the bed, just one shoe. This shoe.”
The woman had gone from mistrust to the edge of enthrallment—still uncertain, but wanting to believe, wanting the romance of one of her shoes in the midst of a tale of misplaced love and sororal fealty. One thing might bring her onto my side.
I stretched out a finger and touched the little bow. “However, I have to say, the shoe we found wasn't quite as pretty as this one. It looked as if Lally'd been made to walk through puddles in it.”
“But she's only had the shoes for a week,” she exclaimed.
I kept all trace of triumph from my face. “Yes, I thought they looked new. A week, you say?”
“Almost to the hour. Monday last, they were. One of my first sales of