The Girl Below(35)

I nodded, though I didn’t agree. Harold had shadowy, deep-set eyes, and his mouth was soured by a sneering expression. “I didn’t know you were an actress,” I said.

“Oh yes,” she said, sweeping her arm over the entire wall. “As you can see, I worked with all the greats. It was a marvelous time. Of course, they’re all dead now. And I’m almost there.”

Most of the photographs were black-and-white studio poses, with autographs scrawled across them, and there was only one other shot of Peggy, standing next to a short, dapper man.

“Is that Harold and Pippa’s dad?” I asked, recalling that their father had been an actor.

“Heavens, no! Their father was a scoundrel. You won’t find any photos of him here. I burned every single one.” Peggy stroked her finger across the photograph glass. “That’s Laurie,” she said, swooning at his name. “He should have been their father but he died.”

The man in the photo was intriguingly effeminate, with kind, amused eyes, and he and Peggy looked to be sharing a joke. I asked if he had died in the war, but Peggy ignored my question.

“You can stop gawking now.” She pushed off from the wall, obliging me to follow the wheelchair as it careened in the opposite direction. “I should like to sit by the window.”

On our way past the chaise longues, I examined the dark patch of wood where Madeline’s dais had stood. Long scratch marks on one side showed the direction she’d been dragged in but the marks stopped abruptly, as though she had been lifted up off the floor.

As we neared the windows, Peggy’s reptilian hand gripped my arm. “Ahh, Hillary, I do so love the sun! What a gorgeous day.” She nodded her head around the room, surveying her kingdom. “Tell Pippa to brew the tea for longer. She always makes it too weak.”

Pippa appeared in the doorway with tea and biscuits, a formal arrangement on a tray. “Last time you said it was too strong.”

“Well, it was,” said Peggy, surveying the tray. “Is that shortbread?”

“Yes.”

“You know I don’t eat biscuits.”

“So don’t eat any.” Pippa poured a splash of milk into each of three teacups.

“I prefer not to have things like that in the house.”

“You don’t normally have any food in the house, Mummy. Only grog.”

“Not anymore,” said Peggy. “You won’t let me.”

Pippa sighed. “And I’m sure you’ve found ways to get around that.”

Peggy shot her an indignant look. “Just what are you implying?”

“Nothing, Mummy, nothing at all.”

For half a minute, everyone sipped tea as starchily as ladies in an Edwardian costume drama. The sun obliged our charade and added its summery warmth, but it was too bright for Peggy and she held her hand up to her face.

“Hillary, do be a darling and fetch my sunglasses,” she said to me, an order, not a request. “They’re in my room, on the dresser, I should think.”

I stood up to obey. “The room you got stuck in this morning?”

“I believe I said, ‘in my room,’ didn’t I?”

“You did.”

“Stop it, Mummy,” said Pippa. “She isn’t your servant.”

They continued to bicker as I left the drawing room. In the hallway, I came to the door of Peggy’s room—her original bedroom—and tried to push it open but met with the same resistance I had the night before. I was bigger than Peggy and wasn’t sure if I’d be able to squeeze through the gap, so I pushed a little harder to see if the door would give way. Inch by inch, whatever was behind the door slowly moved, until the gap was wide enough for me to fit through.

The room was dark, unnaturally so for such a bright day, and I stood still, just inside the door, while my eyes adjusted. I didn’t think I’d ever been into Peggy’s real bedroom before, and it was both larger and messier than I expected. Clothes and shoes sprouted from every piece of furniture and lolled about on the floor—not really clothes at all, I saw on closer inspection, but costumes: piles of slippery silk and feathers and winking diamantes. No wonder I had never been allowed in here as a child—it was little-girl heaven, a giant dress-up box filled with vintage treasures. I would have broken things, accidentally on purpose, just like I had ruined my mother’s treasured locket.

So overwhelmed was I by all the finery that I forgot to look behind the door to see what had been blocking it, and when I finally did look, I wished that I hadn’t. There was Madeline, parked next to the bed, kneeling beside it, in fact, close enough to be petted by whoever was sleeping there. Her granite head was being used as a hat stand, and a satin undergarment was draped from her shoulder, but the indignity made her no less menacing. I should have guessed it would be her behind the door, but instead I felt ambushed, as though Madeline had won the first round in a blindfolded parlor game.