Lady Rample and Cupid's Kiss by Shéa MacLeod

Author:Shéa MacLeod
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: whodunnit, murder mystery, international mystery and crime, British detective, British mystery
Publisher: Sunwalker Press
Published: 2019-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

“I do look quite the tart, don’t I?” I said, admiring myself in the mirror.

“Yes, m’lady,” Maddie said dryly. “Very tarty, if I do say so myself.”

“It’s all thanks to you,” I applauded.

“And Lady Butty,” she reminded me.

After tea, Aunt Butty and Louise had gone off to sort through Aunt Butty’s attic. They’d returned an hour later with a pile of gowns—decades out of date as I’d suspected—and instructions for Maddie. Somehow, my maid had managed to whip up something suitable for the evening’s undercover adventures.

The dress, such as it was, had been repurposed from one of Aunt Butty’s red velvet gowns. It hugged my curves to the point of indecency, revealed a rather generous amount of cleavage—which Maddie had helped along with the use of a great deal of padding despite my not needing any assistance in that department—and showed rather more leg than I was strictly comfortable with. She’d also put on my makeup with a heavy hand. The end result was that instead of a lady, I looked like, well, a tart.

“Bravo,” Chaz said when he saw me. “Darling, you look a treat.”

“A rather cheap one,” I said in a snide tone. “You think he’ll fall for it?”

“If he doesn’t, believe me, he doesn’t bat for your team.”

I snorted. “Shall we get on with it?”

We took his car, which was only slightly less flashy than mine, and parked a couple blocks away from the club. We were supposed to be ordinary folk, and ordinary folk did not drive around in expensive motorcars.

The club was located at the edge of the East End, tucked among dozens of restaurants, shops, and other clubs. It was loud, flashy, and very obvious. Inside, big band music played while women in costumes even tartier than mine strolled around serving drinks and selling cigarettes. A familiar dastar in the far corner caught my eye.

“Is that—?”

“Mr. Singh,” Chaz confirmed. “Aunt Butty thought we could use some backup.”

Mr. Singh was Aunt Butty’s Sikh butler. She’d picked him up somewhere along her travels, just as she had her dreadful maid, Flora, and her new driver, Simon Vale. Mr. Singh knew things that no proper butler should know and had skills no proper butler should have. He was very mysterious, our Mr. Singh, and I liked him immensely.

He sat quietly, nursing what appeared to be a whiskey, neat, watching the crowd with what I was sure was feigned boredom. Boredom was not an expression Mr. Singh ever bore. His gaze swept over us, completely blank, as if he’d never seen us before.

“Let’s mingle,” Chaz said, pulling me into the crowd.

We’d formed a plan on the drive over. He and I would drink and dance and behave just as two people on a night out should behave. Once we spotted Derby Jones, I would arrange an “accidental” meeting during which I would work my feminine wiles. Once he was under my spell, so to speak, I would proceed to extract information about Dottie Lancaster Davis. Meanwhile, Chaz would work the crowd, trying to get whatever he could out of the patrons and employees.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.