The Queen's Accomplice (Maggie Hope Mystery #6)(52)

Meanwhile, Hugh was also having problems, with his new cello. Philby had brought a Vuillaume, along with a Pajeot-tip bow. But even with a superb instrument, Hugh’s scales were shaky and slow, with quavering tones and more than a few flat notes.

“I wish we had music,” Sarah said, moving to the center for adagio.

Hugh looked pained. “I do know more than scales, you know. But I don’t have any sheet music with me.”

“Don’t you know anything by heart?”

“Ah.” Hugh thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said finally. He straightened and placed his fingers on the strings, the bow hovering. “Are you ready?”

When Sarah nodded, the Domus was filled with the arpeggiated chords of the prelude of Bach’s Suite No. 1 in D Major for unaccompanied cello. The instrument’s rich tones filled the room, reverberating off the rough stone walls.



Sarah was familiar with the flowing Baroque étude. She closed her eyes, tried her best to forget her new pointe shoes, and began to move.

Together, the two worked through the piece with both technical control and spiritual abandon. Sarah made Hugh part of her dance, pirouetting around him and the cello, coming down to kneel in front of him in a lunge before rising to dance again. As the last notes hung in the air, Hugh was perfectly still, as was Sarah.

Somehow, together, they had made magic.

Hugh began to play again, this time, Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.” Sarah smiled and began to dance, not ballet exactly, but her own mix of classical, the Charleston, and swing, and included handstands, somersaults, and back bends. As the music ended and she landed in a split, breathing hard and covered in sweat, they couldn’t contain their laughter.

“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” came a woman’s voice from the doorway. “I waited until you were done.”

The dancer looked up, shocked at the intrusion into their intimate world. She blinked, coming back to reality. “Of course,” Sarah said, going to her bag to get a towel and blotting her face.

“Miss Sanderson, you have a telephone call. From a Miss Margaret Hope. Miss Hope insists it’s extremely urgent.”

Sarah looked to Hugh, who was putting his cello back in its case, and felt a twinge of irritation at Maggie. She knew it was illogical, but she felt as if Maggie were deliberately following them, trailing after Hugh. She threw on a sweater and stepped into a skirt, then changed back into street shoes. “I’ll only be a moment, Hubert,” she called, hoisting her dance bag over her shoulder.

The dancer followed the woman past the budding magnolia trees to the main SOE office, where she picked up the Bakelite phone receiver. She took a deep breath to quell her impatience. “Hello? Maggie? Is everything all right?”



“Sarah? I’m so sorry to bother you at Finishing School—”

“Not a bother at all, kitten.”

“Sarah, when you first came to interview in London, did anyone here give you the names of any women’s hotels, boardinghouses, that sort of thing?”

Sarah considered. “Yes, the woman at the front desk gave me a card.”

Maggie’s breath caught. “By any chance, do you still have it?”

“One moment.” She opened her dance bag, rifling through soft leather slippers, more pointe shoes, a few extra pairs of tights, and several hair ribbons until she extricated her worn leather datebook. She flipped through the lined pages until she found the right date. “Alas, I don’t have the card anymore, but here’s a number I wrote down.”

Maggie copied it onto a piece of scrap paper. “Thank you.”

“Everything all right?”

Maggie gave a hiccup of a laugh. “Let’s just say it’s a good thing you stayed with us at the house the night before you left—and didn’t go to a hotel.”

“Maggie,” Sarah asked. “Things really are over between you and Hugh. Yes?”

There was a long pause. “Did he ask after me?”

Sarah hung up the hand piece.

Hoping she and Sarah simply had a bad connection, Maggie called the number her friend had given her and found the hotel’s name and address: The Castle Hotel for Women: Temporary Lodging for Ladies at 226 Ash Street, near the cross of Marylebone High Street and Paddington Street, and not too far from the SOE office on Baker Street.

—



When she and Mark arrived at the hotel, cold and breathless, no one was behind the reception desk.

Maggie pressed the doorbell a few times with a gloved finger.

As they were about to leave, the door across the lobby opened, and one middle-aged man let another out. “Thank you, Doctor,” the first man said, clapping on his black bowler hat and tucking his umbrella under his arm.

“I’ll see you next week, Mr. Finn.”

The man opened the front door to leave, and Mark caught and held it, letting Maggie and himself in. The lobby was almost as cold as outside, the embers in the fireplace dying. They looked up at the man whom the other had called Doctor. A brass nameplate on the door read IAIN FRANK, M.D.

“You’re Dr. Frank?” Maggie asked. The name sounded somehow familiar.

The doctor smiled, his pleasant face creasing. “The one and only.” Dr. Frank was of average height and average build, in his early fifties, but his face seemed enormous, like a baby’s, with pale, fat cheeks beginning their descent into jowls. He wore a rumpled Donegal tweed suit, his dark hair slicked back with Brylcreem, and he smelled of copious amounts of spicy cologne.