Read Online 03 - Murder in Mink by Evelyn James - Free Book Online Page B

The hat was nondescript, a little knocked out
of shape. It had had sequins, but Clara was certain some had been missing.
However the woman’s make-up had been perfect, if heavy. She was masking her
age, but nothing could hide the crows’ feet at her eyes and the thin lines
along her lips from smoking. She was older than Andrew and it had shown.
    But the fur stole! Oh that had caught Clara’s eye at once
because it was thick mink, fawny brown with a soft cream lining. The sort of
thing you wore in the depths of winter for warmth and there she was swaddled in
it on a balmy spring day! It was so out of place, except it wasn’t. Not if the
woman was intending to prove that at one time she had been loved by someone who
could afford such things for her. Not if the mink had been given to her by
Andrew. Oh yes, she would wear it then. Her one prize from her wedding. She
would wear it and march up the steps of the church and rub it in Laura’s face.
Look what he gave me, just look!
    Clara collected her thoughts, what did this tell her
about the woman? Well, she was used to poverty and it was real poverty, the
kind where even the essentials of stockings were unaffordable. The dress was
homemade, maybe even borrowed, the shoes were likely her only pair polished up
for the occasion. The hat had been battered around, handled a lot, maybe even
been in and out of the pawn shop. But she had once known such wealth it had
spun her head. The mink was worth a fortune, she could have sold it at any time
to feed herself or buy dozens of stockings. But she kept it because it meant
more to her than money, it represented a lost love, a moment of hope when she
had thought she could rise above her poverty and be something else.
    Who was she? Clara didn’t like to think it, but she had
the hallmarks of a woman of the night. They were far from infrequent in Brighton
and they were made by poverty. There had once been a reform home for them in
the town, but more often than not the girls came to the seaside resort because
of the money that could be made from the tourists and the soldiers stationed
nearby. Clara had seen prostitutes haunting the town. It wasn’t precisely hard
during the season. Her mother had told her not to look at them, but it was difficult
not to when they were dressed to dazzle and falling off the arms of some toff
with too much money and not enough discretion. For all their flaunted ‘good-times’
and cheeriness, there were grim lines on their faces which they tried to mask
with heavy powder. It made her think so much of the woman in red’s face. Those
same lines, that same hardness. In their world it was girl against girl, anyone
younger than you was a threat and treated with disregard and no sympathy. Why
should Laura be viewed any differently?
    Clara shuddered off that line of thought. It had all
grown so muddled and dark, now she was comparing marriage to prostitution. Yet
it made sense. During the war London was a regular stopover for men on leave,
some preferred to stay there and indulge rather than go home. Indulging meant
drinking, sometimes drugs, and very often women – the bought kind. The truth
was prostitution had become quite a business in those strange days and the
police were barely able to keep on top of the brothels and call-girls. So
Andrew wanders into a den of vice and he meets a woman, and he likes her, he
thinks himself in love even. Then tomorrow he is headed to war, perhaps he
shall die on the front and he is swept up in a tide of passion and fear, and he
thinks he shall marry this woman, the woman he loves. He shall go to the front
with a sweetheart’s name on his lips.
    Clara paused. Had Tommy ever done something like that? If
he had, would he even tell her? She was not naïve, or stupid. The men who
refrained from consorting intimately with girls, whether prostitutes or not,
were remarkably few. She would not blame Tommy if he had, she didn’t blame any
of them. Not when the future they faced was