A Murder in Mayfair by Celina Grace

Author:Celina Grace
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Isaro Publishing Ltd
Published: 2023-01-19T14:23:46+00:00

Chapter Twenty

It wasn’t late when I got home that evening – Inspector Marks had to leave our meeting after a couple of hours – but I was tired and wanted some time to think everything through. Everything – from how he had looked at me and spoken to me, the puzzle of the letter, what our next steps should be – I needed peace and quiet, although not more tea. We’d ended up having three pots and I was so full of cake that I wasn’t planning to eat any dinner.

I was still officially on my afternoon off, so I thought I’d run myself the luxury of a bath. The temperature had dropped quite sharply as night had fallen and the thought of a nice, steamy soak in hot water was inviting. I gathered together my dressing gown, night clothes and slippers, along with a good novel, and my bath salts.

The second bathroom in the house, used exclusively by the servants, wasn’t of course as palatial as the one next to Dorothy’s bedroom, but it was clean and neat enough and had a tiny fire. This wasn’t normally lit but Alice, good girl, had laid it ready to be so, a neat stack of kindling and balls of old newspaper filling the little grate. There were matches on the mantlepiece above it and I held a match to the waiting wood and paper, watching in satisfaction as rosy fire bloomed and heat began to fill the small room. As the fire crackled away, the steam began to rise from the filling bath, scented deliciously with attar of roses.

I lay back in the water with a sigh of satisfaction, when there was a tap on the door.

“Joan?” hissed a voice, if you can hiss a name with no ‘s’ sounds in it.

“What is it, V? I’m in the bath.”

“Oh, you cat, that’s what I was going to do. Leave the water in for me, will you?”

I had no objection to that, but I wasn’t going to rush my bath, even for my best friend. “Will do,” I said, trying to keep the weariness from my voice.

“And come and find me when you’re done, it feels like ages since we’ve seen one another.”

“Will do,” I said again. It had been a while – it was unusual for us to go a day without even a passing glimpse of one another.

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