Angel of Brooklyn Read Free Page B

nails now scrubbed and full of carbolic, which he picked out all night). Lionel Bailey. Jed and Cora Matthews. The man in the corner was Jeffrey something. Then Mr Foxton from the quarry. Emily and Nathaniel. The man with the walking stick. Charlie.
    Jonathan poured the ladies another glass of wine.
    ‘Oh, we never usually,’ said Madge, holding out her glass. ‘My cousin’s just joined the Temperance Society. What he’d make of all this, I don’t know.’
    ‘Ada makes a lovely lilac wine,’ said Lizzie. ‘It gives you such nice dreams.’
    Candles filled the house with a buttery kind of light. Close to the fireplace, a man had all the attention. It was Lionel, with his small hunched shoulders and flat grey hair.
    ‘All this electricity,’ he was saying, ‘we don’t want it. It will make the birds fall out of the trees. Make fires. Create blizzards. And, you mark my words, it will hurt the innocent.’
    ‘You really believe that?’ said Frank.
    ‘Believe it?’ said Lionel. ‘I know.’
    ‘But electric light is just wonderful,’ exclaimed Beatrice. ‘It’s everywhere. In Luna Park alone there are a quarter of a million light bulbs. It’s a magical sight. Really it is. People stand gasping every night.’
    ‘It’s an amusement park,’ Jonathan explained.
    ‘An American amusement park?’ said Frank.
    ‘Yes. They call it the electric Eden.’
    ‘Good heavens.’ Lionel screwed up his eyes, as if all those lights had reached him.
    ‘It’s a marvellous place all right,’ said Jonathan.
    ‘Really? But what’s so wonderful about an amusement park?’
    ‘I don’t know. They make you feel alive.’
    Frank rolled his eyes. ‘I like Blackpool. It tastes different.’
    ‘Another drink?’
    ‘Not for me,’ said Lionel, putting down his glass. ‘I have to be getting along. Being out at such a late hour only upsets my routine.’
    Beatrice glanced at the clock. ‘But it’s only just gone nine.’
    ‘Ah.’ He tapped at his pocket watch. ‘I’ve things to do. The dogs don’t know what a party is. They’ll want walking. And I have to read a certain amount of my good friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, before my brain will tell me that I’m tired enough for sleeping.’
    ‘You really know Conan Doyle?’ said Beatrice.
    ‘We correspond from time to time but we haven’t met, so to speak, in the flesh. Well, I’ll take my overcoat from you now, and bid you all goodnight. Another Mrs Crane in the house, eh? I’ll have to get used to it. I dare say that I will. You are indeed a pleasant-looking woman, I can’t deny you that. Goodnight to you, goodnight.’
    Beatrice could feel the draught from the door, making the candles flutter like gigantic yellow moths, before grabbing the back of her neck.
    ‘Are people helping themselves to food?’ she shivered.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ Ada told her, ‘they’ve been nibbling all evening. The pies look very tempting. Pork?’
    ‘Veal.’
    ‘Well,’ she smiled, ‘they almost look too perfect.’
    Beatrice found the men in a huddle drinking port and puffing at their cigars. Jonathan smiled as she walked into the small clouds of smoke.
    ‘Now here she is again. My wife. She’s quite the conversationalist. She’ll certainly tell you what’s what.’
    ‘Are ladies allowed inside the smoking room?’
    ‘Of course,’ said Jeffrey, offering her a chair. Pale and blond, with wide grey eyes, he moved between the furniture like a dancer with oil on his shoes.
    ‘What we’d all really like to know,’ said Tom, ‘is how did you find him? Was he somewhere making a daft silly fool out of himself?’
    ‘A what silly fool? What was that word?’ Beatrice laughed, scratching the side of her head. ‘Another strange English word?’
    ‘Well, it means thick in the head, of course. Acting silly.’
    ‘Oh, I get you,’ she smiled. ‘No, he wasn’t “acting daft” as you say. Not then anyway.’
    The men laughed and sucked on their cigars.
    ‘So how did you