Anna finally escaped from Hayati with an excuse no one could argue. She had to powder her nose.
He offered to escort her to the powder room, but she insisted she would find her own way.
The powder room on the ground floor, however, turned out to be a Turkish toilet—a hole in the floor, straddled by two cement footprints. Anna smiled. This would work to her advantage. If the Wingates’ house was anything like the Burkhardts’, then there would be a western toilet on the floor above. If someone caught her upstairs in Cora’s bedroom, she would claim to be searching for the western facilities.
She ran up wooden stairs to a darkened hall. At the end of the hall, a light shone in a bedroom, drawing her to it, the moth to flame. A small lamp sat atop a vanity table, cluttered with a disarray of boxes and spilled cosmetics and sprinkled with a fine dusting of perfumed powder.
Anna’s heart soared. This would be easier than she’d thought.
She hesitated only an instant, distracted by a display of miniature photos in silver frames, and then bent down to the narrow drawers beneath the cluttered tabletop. A place to hide stolen letters.
Her fingers shaking, she went to work, pulling out drawers one by one, sifting through beads and feathered clip-ons and rhinestone pins. Halfway through her search, the letters still hadn’t turned up. She dug on, certain that the very next drawer would be the hiding place.
“Looking for something?” a husky voice said from the doorway.
Anna lurched, straightening upright. Beads slipped from her fingers, clattering back into the drawer she’d been searching.
Fran!
Anna squared her shoulders and stepped away from Cora’s vanity table. What could she say? She’d been caught red-handed. The heat of a flush crept up her neck. Her ears must be red flags.
Fran Lafferty smirked while leaning one shoulder against the doorframe. Her cigarette holder, even though it was empty, cocked between two fingers. She arched one penciled eyebrow high as she studied Anna and waited for an explanation.
“Um, yes,” Anna said. “Cora has something of mine, and I was looking for it.”
“I see. And you took it upon yourself to reclaim the presumably borrowed item? I wonder what that could be?”
“Never mind, it doesn’t matter. Look, I know what you must be thinking, but you’re wrong. I didn’t take anything. Search me if you want. You must believe me.”
“Why should I?”
“I can see this looks bad. I would prefer that you not say anything about this to anyone.”
“No doubt.” Fran switched her meerschaum holder to her other hand. Her eyebrow arched even higher, and frowns lined her forehead.
Anna’s head throbbed as her indignation flared. “I was on my way to the powder room, you see, and when I saw the light on in here, I became distracted.”
“You don’t seem like the sort of woman who distracts very easily.”
“Oh, I am. Really.”
“No. That’s Mitzi. Not you. You don’t strike me as anything like Mitzi. In fact, it’s hard to believe you’re sisters.”
“Oh, we are. Half-sisters, actually. Our fathers are different.”
“It’s okay,” Fran said. “You don’t have to pretend with me. I know all about it.”
“You do?” Anna took another step back. “That is, what do you know?”
“I know what you’re looking for. And I know why you don’t want me to tell anyone.”
Great. Anna had been caught, and she couldn’t deny it. As bad as her position appeared, however, Fran’s was worse. She steeled herself and pressed on. “What you think you know...is that also why you think I’m in the middle of some coup that may be brewing?”
Fran tipped her head sideways. “Where on earth did you come up with that?”
“I heard you and Paul talking. I was waiting for my phone call, and you two came in and—”
“Forget it,” Fran said. “It’s nothing.”
Anna didn’t believe her. The scrapes and bruises on her knees and wrists still stung, as a result of Rainer’s tackling her. He certainly hadn’t thought the conversation they’d overheard was nothing. It was important enough that he hadn’t wanted to be caught.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” Fran said. “I won’t say anything. Why should I? I’d lose my job if I told.”
“Is that why you want to bury whatever information you have on Rainer?”
“Rainer? Ah, yes. Your ‘friend.’ Look, you and Henry are going to great lengths to cover up Mitzi’s addiction, and if I blew the whistle, he’d have me fired. But you don’t have to hide it from me.”
Anna’s heart skipped a beat. Addiction? What was this woman talking about? She opened her mouth to say something, anything to deny Fran’s outrageous suggestion, but only a choking sound came out.
Fran continued. “What we don’t know is where the opium came from. You think Cora supplied her, but you won’t find it here. That’s what you’re looking for. I know. I’m sorry. Look, it didn’t come from Cora, that much we know.”
Opium? Anna swayed on her feet, feeling the same waves of pain she’d felt earlier from the brass blow to her head. “W-what do you mean ‘we’?”
“Paul’s the one who found the treatment center in Switzerland. Maybe you didn’t realize that.”
“Uh...no, I didn’t.” They’d gone to Switzerland, instead. That’s why Yaziz couldn’t find Mitzi and Henry in Nairobi. There would be no call from there. Rainer was right. But how had he known?
The call could still come from Switzerland.
Fran sighed. “It’s always a danger in places like this for the wives. They have nothing to do but get into trouble.”
The initial shock slowly eased its chokehold on Anna. She lifted her chin, steeling herself against this woman’s preposterous claims. “I wouldn’t say they have nothing to do. There are the children to raise.”
She shuddered. Priscilla knew. That would explain her difficult behavior.
Fran went on. “They have enough help from the servants and the entire community that the children don’t notice their mothers’ absence from time to time. Mitzi was clever, I’ll give her that much credit.”
“She’ll be back!”
“I hope so. For Henry’s sake.”
Anna collapsed onto the velvet cushion of the stool before Cora’s dressing table. The ghost of her face reflected back at her in the mirror, where photos of family and everyday life tucked into the frame.
“In that way,” Fran said, “being clever, I suppose she was like you.”
Anna didn’t care for the reference to her sister in the past.
“But as for you,” Fran said, “you’re too clever for your own good. You can forget about that little conversation you thought you overheard between Paul and me. We’re not here to interfere. We let underlying sentiments run their course. You understand?”
Anna stared into the mirror, understanding one thing too well. The woman who stared back at her was not the woman Anna thought she was.
Several heartbeats later, Fran broke the silence. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her deep voice broke through the fog that clouded Anna’s mind. “This is clearly a difficult subject for you. Has Mitzi suffered...other addictions in the past?”
It took all of Anna’s strength to turn her head, to lift her focus from Cora’s mirror to Fran Lafferty, who’d moved from the doorway to stand by Anna’s side. Anna felt as if a lead blanket weighed her down and strapped her to the dressing table’s stool. The cry for help from Henry about Mitzi...