There was a mirror not very far away. She’d slipped off her overall before she’d come up here, because you weren’t supposed to mingle with the customers. The tan woollen skirt she was wearing complemented perfectly the leather straps on the vanity case, just as its cream leather complemented perfectly her cream silk blouse. She’d had the skirt made up from a roll of fabric she’d spotted on a stall in Portobello Market, which the stall holder had told her with a nod and wink was French. More like fallen off a lorry, Dulcie suspected. The cream silk blouse had come from a second-hand shop in posh Kensington, which Dulcie had heard about by eavesdropping on a conversation between two of the other girls who worked in the perfume department.
Together with her brown leather shoes, she reckoned that she looked every bit as good as Gracie Fields. In fact, she thought she looked a good deal better, seeing as she was far prettier and much younger than the famous singer.
The mirror wasn’t very far away, but as she turned towards it Dulcie suddenly heard a sharp female voice exclaiming, ‘David, call the manager. That girl is trying to steal that case. I recognise her from the perfume department. She’s got no right to be up here.’
In the mirror Dulcie could see David James-Thompson standing behind her, a purse-lipped Lydia Whittingham at his side.
Angrily Dulcie turned round, but before she could defend herself David James-Thompson was saying calmly, ‘I’m sure, Miss . . . ?’ He looked enquiringly at Dulcie, who obliged with a pointed dagger look at her rival, ‘It’s Dulcie, Miss Dulcie Simmonds.’
‘I’m sure that Miss Simmonds has a perfectly good reason for being here, Lydia.’
‘That’s right, I have,’ Dulcie agreed.
Lydia Whittingham flashed her a venomous look of female dislike, insisting, ‘I doubt that. It was plain to me what she was up to. Another few minutes and she’d have been walking out of the department with that case. Not that she would have got very far. It’s perfectly obvious to anyone with eyes in their head that she simply isn’t the sort who could ever afford such an exclusive and expensive item. I’m going to call the manager, David. He can deal with her, and you can buy me that lizardskin handbag you promised me for my birthday.’
Never one to back down from a challenge Dulcie drew herself up to her full height and tossed her head, her confidence boosted by the appreciative look she could see David giving her behind Lydia Whittingham’s back.
‘You can call the manager if you like, and if you don’t mind making a fool of yourself when I tell him that I got sent up here officially to look in this here case to see how much makeup could be packed into it.’
‘You’re lying,’ Lydia proclaimed immediately.
‘No I’m not.’
‘So who sent you up here then – and be aware that I shall check.’
‘Mr Selfridge,’ Dulcie told her with aplomb and without the slightest concern for the fact that she was lying. ‘And you can go and ask him yourself if you want. He said that the case was a gift for a young lady of his acquaintance.’
To one side of her, Dulcie could hear David James-Thompson’s muffled laugh.
Lydia opened her mouth to challenge her and then closed it again, and Dulcie knew perfectly well why. It was an open secret to the staff that, despite his advancing years, Mr Selfridge was prone to passions that led to him indulging the current recipient of his feelings with expensive gifts from the store.
Delighted by Lydia’s heightened furious colour and obvious inability to refute her lie, Dulcie carried the case back to where she had got it, placing it carefully on top of the pile.
‘Come along, David,’ Lydia commanded her escort in a sharp voice, turning on her heel so that her back was towards both Dulcie and David.
Seizing her chance, Dulcie turned to him and told him nonchalantly, ‘If you was ever to feel like dancing, I go dancing at the Hammersmith Palais most Saturday evenings.’
The look he gave her in response was one of amused admiration. Miss Iron Knickers might think she’d got him well and truly hooked, Dulcie thought with some satisfaction, but she, Dulcie, certainly didn’t think so.
‘David . . .’
‘Coming,’ David answered as he turned to follow Lydia.
The little shop girl didn’t hold back when it came to putting herself forward, and there had been a look in her eye that he had liked. David had a weakness for girls like Dulcie, no doubt because his paternal grandmother had been a Gaiety Girl before she had ‘snared’, to use his own disapproving mother’s word, his grandfather. His paternal grandfather’s regrettable lapse of good taste was not something David’s mother approved of. Her family was stoutly county and rigidly proper. His father might be a judge and his mother’s family might have come over with William the Conqueror, but there was no money in the family, which was why his mother in particular was so keen to see him engaged to Lydia, whose father might be merely a director at Selfridges but whose mother came from a family of wealthy mill owners and was likely to inherit a very nice sum of money indeed when her own elderly father died.
The basket she had filled with the new season’s root vegetables from Covent Garden was beginning to weigh heavily on her arm as Olive headed for Article Row, so when Sergeant Dawson came out of the police station just as she was passing it and offered, ‘Let me carry that for you,’ she was rather grateful to hand the basket over to him.
‘I hadn’t realised how heavy the veggies would be. I got a piece of scrag end of mutton yesterday and I thought I’d make a nice tasty mutton casserole with it for the girls, and thicken it up with some veggies.’
‘Sounds good.’
Tall, well set up, and just turned forty, his dark brown, slightly curly hair now covered by his helmet, Sergeant Dawson looked very smart in his police uniform. Despite everything he and his wife had been through with the illness and then the loss of their son, Sergeant Dawson always had a kind look in his hazel eyes and a friendly word for everyone.
Olive felt very sorry for both him and his wife. Nancy might complain that it was unneighbourly of Mrs Dawson to keep herself to herself in the way that she did, but Olive felt that that was the sergeant’s wife’s way of dealing with the sorrow of her loss, and that they shouldn’t talk about her behind her back.
‘I must admit I’m partial to a good mutton casserole,’ Sergeant Dawson confided to her. ‘My ma used to make it. Thickened it with barley, she did.’
‘I do the same,’ Olive told him with a smile.
‘I miss Ma’s casseroles, but Mrs Dawson – well, she doesn’t see the sense of making a big bowl of casserole when there’s just the two of us to eat it. Working out all right, is it, having your lodgers?’
‘Very well,’ Olive answered. ‘My Tilly and Agnes – that’s the little orphan girl – get on really well together, and if Sally – that’s the nurse – has her way we’ll be eating our own veggies next year as she’s taken over the garden.’
‘The other one looks a bit of a flighty sort,’ the sergeant opined.
‘Dulcie.’ Olive sighed ruefully, appreciating the sergeant’s understanding tone. ‘I dare say she doesn’t mean any harm, but I do worry about the effect she might have on Tilly and Agnes. Tilly has already started hinting that she and Agnes are old enough now to go out dancing, but I’d rather see them going to dances at the church hall than the Hammersmith Palais, which is where Dulcie likes to go.’
‘It must be hard work for