Page 27 of Evil at the Essex House
Flossie must have claimed the slightly bigger back bedroom—Christopher’s in our flat—for her own. Christopher had tried to talk me into taking it—it had a window looking out on the courtyard, while the front bedroom, closer to the hallway, had no natural light—but I had insisted. I was only living there through the generosity of Uncle Herbert, and I wasn’t going to deprive Uncle Herbert’s son of the nicer bedroom. Besides, I sleep better when it’s dark, anyway. Might as well avoid the ambient light from outside and make it easier. It’s never really properly dark in London at night, with all the street lights.
What was my bedroom in the other flat had been turned into Flossie’s closet, I discovered as I got closer. I glanced through the open door on my way past, and then stopped as my brows climbed up my forehead.
Where I had fit an entire bedroom set into the room—bed, tallboy, dressing table and chair—Flossie’s front bedroom held nothing but apparel. Clothes and shoes and handbags and hats, hanging on racks, piled on shelves, lining the walls. Christopher would have been in heaven—or at least he would have been if he and Flossie were anywhere close to the same size. To me, it looked excessive to the point of obsession. Not to mention how very pink it all was.
And it wasn’t even well-maintained. Silk scarves were piled in baskets, shoes without shoe-trees were tossed on the floors with no attempt to line them up neatly. Unmentionables in pretty pastels—mostly shades of white, cream, and pink—overflowed their drawers. And in the middle of the room, Sarah Schlomsky stood with her mouth open, taking in the mess with wide, shocked eyes.
I smiled sympathetically. “Was she more tidy at home?”
Christopher had certainly been more tidy at Beckwith Place than he was now. I was mostly the same, I thought, but then I hadn’t spent so much of my time suppressing who I really was, either.
Not that Christopher is careless. All of Kitty’s paraphernalia is housed in my wardrobe and on my dressing table. Living alone, in a flat in London, made it much easier for Christopher to do what he wanted and to be who he was, but we did still get occasional visits from family, and there was no point in flaunting his monthly cross-dressing.
Mrs. Schlomsky was clearly shocked down to the toes of her very sensible shoes to see her daughter’s excesses. She looked around as if she had never seen anything like it.
“This is—” She ran down and looked around one more time before turning to me. “Is this really my daughter’s apartment?”
Flat, I translated in my head. And nodded. “Yes, Mrs. Schlomsky. This is Florence’s flat. There’s another bedroom in the back. I’m sure she’s sleeping in that one.”
There was no room to sleep here.
A tiny wrinkle appeared between her brows. “Where does Ruth sleep?”
“Who is Ruth?” I didn’t think Flossie had a flat-mate. I had certainly never seen one, and surely I would have, when we had lived in the same building for half a year now.
“The maid,” Sarah Schlomsky said, as if it were obvious, when in fact it was anything but.
“I don’t think Florence has a maid,” I said, since I knew very well that she didn’t. “She’s never mentioned a maid, and I’ve never seen one, either.”
Mrs. Schlomsky sniffed. “Of course she has a maid, you silly girl. We wouldn’t have sent our daughter halfway around the world without a maid.”
“Of course.” I nodded politely. “It’s just that I’ve never met the maid. And I don’t know where she’d be sleeping. There are only two bedrooms in this flat, and if this one is in use as a closet…”
There was the pantry, I supposed, if Florence was heartless enough to relegate her maid there just so she herself could make use of both bedrooms. But that didn’t explain why I had never seen or heard of Ruth.
Mrs. Schlomsky glanced around again, but there was no way to deny what I had just said.
“Hiram!” She brushed past me without so much as a by-your-leave. “Hiram!”
Her voice disappeared down the hallway to my right. I stayed where I was long enough to take another look around the room—around Flossie’s closet—before I followed, past the lavatory and to the bedroom at the end of the hall.
I reached the doorway in time to see Mrs. Schlomsky confront her husband, both hands on his arms. “Ruth, Hiram! Where is Ruth?”
Mr. Schlomsky looked around, as if expecting the missing Ruth to materialize out of thin air. She didn’t, and it’s hard to say whether she could have, had she wanted to. The room was chock full of furniture, to such a degree that there was hardly any floor space left. I stayed in the doorway, since doing anything else would have put me as close to Hiram Schlomsky as his wife was currently, and that would have been practically indecent.
Flossie had a reproduction four-poster bed with gauzy hangings—I knew it was a reproduction because I have slept in the real thing at Sutherland Hall—along with a matching tallboy and a makeup table with a chair, and a small loveseat and a footstool and of course a night table or two—one on each side of the bed. The loveseat and footstool were both upholstered in rose velvet, while the draperies and bed-hangings were shell pink. A fussy lawn nightgown, dripping with ribbons and lace, lay across the counterpane.
At this point, the sheer level of pinkness was overwhelming. I knew that Florence favored the color—had seen her in dress after pink dress—but I hadn’t realized that everything else inside her flat would be in shades of pink, also. It was cloying and too sweet and a bit like being inside someone’s mouth after they’d sucked on a peppermint.
I tried to push it aside to focus on the Schlomskys and their dilemma. No Florence, and now no Ruth.
“I don’t know, dear,” Hiram told his wife. “She’s not here.”
“But she has to be here, Hiram!” Flossie’s mother clutched at her husband’s forearms, her voice turning shrill. “They both have to be here!”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” I said from the doorway, and they both turned to me. Sarah frowned, and Hiram pursed his lips. I added, “Honestly, it happens to a lot of young people when they get out from under their parents’ thumbs.”
They both narrowed their eyes, and all right, it might not have been the most diplomatic way of putting it. I soldiered on. “Your daughter probably decided to enjoy her freedom while she was away from home. So she let go of the maid and started to take care of herself. It’s not a bad thing. Independence and an ability to take care of oneself are healthy.”
