upright, in a large velvet armchair, coolly drinking a cup of tea.
‘You are Miss Taylor and Miss Rose, I suppose,’ she said in a high, rather petulant voice, looking them up and down critically.
‘Yes, I’m Sophie Taylor. How do you do?’ said Sophie, holding out a hand. The young lady looked at it uncertainly for a moment, then gingerly took it in her own lace-gloved fingers.
‘And I’m Lilian Rose,’ said Lil, seizing the young lady’s hand in her turn and giving it such a hearty shake that she looked alarmed and pulled her hand hurriedly away.
‘My name is Veronica Whiteley. I am pleased to meet you,’ said the young lady, with a haughty nod. Sophie looked at her in surprise. The tone of her letter had conjured up a vision of an elderly spinster, but this girl was young – really, she couldn’t have been much older than Lil – and she was dressed very beautifully in a much ruffled, lace-trimmed ivory gown. She must be one of this season’s debutantes, and a particularly wealthy one at that. What was more, Sophie realised that she knew her. She was one of the three young ladies who had been in the Millinery Department the previous day – the one who had tried on the Paris hat.
But Miss Whiteley gave no indication that she recognised Sophie. ‘Do sit down,’ she said, giving a queenly waft of her hand towards the two hard chairs placed opposite her. As they took their seats, Sophie watched the young lady with interest. Although her clothes were expensive and beautifully made, Sophie couldn’t help thinking that they didn’t suit her very well. She was pretty, with china-white skin, a small pink mouth and carefully waved red-gold hair. But all the frills and flounces made her look rather like one of the expensive porcelain dolls that were on sale in the store’s Toy Department. Yet there was nothing at all doll-like about her expression: she was looking at them both with eyes like gimlets, a frown creasing up her white forehead as she sipped tea from a bone-china cup.
‘How can we help you?’ Sophie asked curiously.
‘I have been told that you were responsible for finding Mr Sinclair’s stolen jewels,’ Miss Whiteley began, assuming a very formal manner. Lil opened her mouth to say something, but Miss Whiteley was evidently not expecting there to be any interruptions, and swept onwards. ‘I contacted you because I wished to discuss a similar commission. It is of a highly confidential nature – I trust I can be assured of your complete discretion.’
They said she could, and she went on:
‘I was recently given a gift by a gentleman. It’s one of a kind and extremely valuable – a jewelled brooch in the shape of a moth, made especially for me. Last week it went missing, and I would like you to undertake to find it.’
Veronica found that her hand was shaking slightly as she replaced her teacup in its saucer. She had borrowed her haughty manner from the Dowager Countess of Alconborough, always so imperious in her black velvet and jet beads, assuming complete control of any conversation. Today, she wanted to be no less impressive. It was imperative that these girls took her seriously: she would not be dismissed as just another idiotic debutante.
Although, looking at them again, her lips pursed. She had not expected them to be so very young . Why, the smaller one looked even younger than she was herself ! She had expected them to be older: sophisticated and perhaps a little daring, women of the world, like the heroines of the rather scandalous novels she borrowed from Isabel, her stepmother, on the sly. These two looked more like a pair of schoolgirls than young lady detectives! But it was too late: she had already told them about the jewelled moth, and she would simply have to go on with it now.
It was quite a ridiculous position to find herself in, she thought crossly. If only she were an adult, she would have been able to hire a real detective to find the missing brooch for her. But being a debutante meant that every moment of the day was supervised, from the moment that her maid woke her in the morning, to the moment she went to bed at night after yet another ball or reception. Father and Isabel treated her as if she were a baby. She’d had far more freedom back in the schoolroom with her governess! Now, she was chaperoned every minute of the day, and there was no chance whatsoever that they would ever let her go off alone to a secret appointment with a private detective.
Thankfully Sinclair’s department store was different. Here, Isabel didn’t mind letting Veronica wander off on her own to look at the hats and gloves or the counters selling scent and powder, whilst she shopped and gossiped with her friends. It was here that Veronica had first had the idea of hiring someone to help her find the jewelled moth. She didn’t read the newspapers much – all dreadfully dull stuff about the navy and taxes – but it had been impossible to miss the stories about the dramatic robbery at Sinclair’s. Everyone in London had been talking about it, and she’d heard that Mr Sinclair’s private detective had been helped by two fearfully clever young ladies who worked at the store and who had been the ones to find the jewels. The idea of hiring them to find the jewelled moth had seemed rather a stroke of genius. After all, no one could possibly make a fuss about her talking to two other young ladies in Sinclair’s department store. She had felt as clever and daring as one of the characters in Isabel’s novels.
But now she wondered if it had been quite such a brilliant idea after all. They were so very ordinary. The tall one, Miss Rose, was rather unusual-looking, she supposed, but otherwise they could have been any old shop girls in plain, cheap-looking frocks and no ornaments at all. They didn’t look particularly clever either.
Well, she would simply have to hope they were brainier than they looked, she thought with a sigh. She had to get the moth back and would do anything to find it.
‘I must have the jewelled moth in time for my debutante ball next week,’ she said firmly, as she fixed the two girls with her most haughty, determined look. ‘You’ll be well rewarded, you may be assured – but you must return it to me .’
Half an hour later, Veronica was back with Isabel, up in the Marble Court restaurant, acting as if she had done nothing more that morning than look for a new fan. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the jewelled moth. Telling those girls about what had happened had made her uncomfortable all over again, and she found herself simply toying with the fish course instead of eating it. She felt tense and irritable. This was supposed to be the most thrilling time of her life, and now it was quite spoiled, all because of the loss of the brooch.
Of course, she reminded herself, it wasn’t as though everything about being a debutante was so very thrilling. There were the endless boring dress-fittings for new gowns, where she was stuck all over with pins as though she were a pincushion; the tedious dinner parties where she had to make polite conversation with fearful old bores; and the balls where she got lumbered with partners who trod all over her feet – but all the same, most of her first Season had been splendid. Now, all of a sudden it did not seem glittering and exciting; instead it was simply horrid.
She couldn’t even concentrate on the conversation going on amongst her luncheon companions, who were ranged around a table covered in spotless damask and arrayed with gleaming silver. Instead, she eyed them from under her eyelashes. First of all there was Isabel – Veronica’s very own not-so-wicked stepmother, her round blue eyes widening at something the Countess of Alconborough was saying. As usual, Isabel looked exactly like a fashion plate, with her crimped blonde hair, carefully rouged and powdered face, and outfit straight from the pages of La Mode Illustrée . Next, the Dowager Countess herself: tiny yet stately in her rustling black gown. Then, beside her, Lady Alice, the Countess’s daughter: taller, plumper and infinitely more insipid, nodding in agreement after every word her mother said.
With them were Veronica’s fellow debutantes: first of all Phyllis, Lady Alice’s eldest daughter and the Countess’s granddaughter. She had yellow hair and smiled a lot. Veronica thought contemptuously that
