Harlem After Midnight by Louise Hare EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Louise Hare
- Language: English
- Genre: Women’s Crime Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Tuesday, 8 September 1936
I’D BEEN IN the apartment for only fifteen minutes but already it felt like
home. The bedroom that would be mine for the next fortnight was perfect; I
might never want to leave. The bed was immaculately made with blue
cotton sheets and a pristine white comforter tucked into the foot, the floor
made of the same sturdy varnished wood that ran through the entirety of
Claudette and Louis Linfield’s home. Clean towels had been folded and
placed on a cozy navy blue velvet armchair that sat in the ideal position, in
a corner close to the window, where I could sit and catch the last rays of
sunshine at the end of the day. Claud had even laid out a selection of her
favorite books on the bedside table to ensure I had something to read before
going to sleep. She was a librarian by trade, so I supposed the habit ran
deep.
“You about settled in?”
Claud Linfield had a constant easy smile. Even though she and her
husband had been complete strangers only a couple of hours earlier, I
already felt that there was no place safer in the whole of New York than in
this cozy apartment.
“Yes. Thank you.” I moved to let her join me at the window, looking
down into the street that was so different from the narrow London streets
that I was used to. Wider, the buildings far taller, everything just that little
bit bigger and brighter than back at home. “It’s so kind of you to let me
stay. I know that I could have stayed on at the hotel, but—”
“Hotels are for those without their own people,” she told me. “Far as
I’m concerned, you’re with Will and that makes you family. He’s as good as
a brother to me and Louis.”
Will Goodman. The reason I was in Harlem and no longer a resident of
the luxurious but impersonal Sherry-Netherland hotel. We’d met on the
voyage over from England. A cliché of a story: I had been a passenger; he
was the bandleader, playing to the rich and famous every night in the
Starlight Lounge on the HMS Queen Mary.
It had been quite the voyage,
and the addition of a whirlwind romance had left my head spinning.
Perhaps it was foolish to throw my lot in with a man I’d only just met, but I
trusted Will. There were so many others whom I couldn’t, so when he’d
offered to arrange for me to stay with friends of his, I’d agreed without a
second thought.
“You all grew up around here, you and Louis and Will?” I could see a
group of young boys playing down in the road, shrieking and laughing
loudly, until a woman stuck her head out of a window across the street and
called out a warning for them to keep it down. Some things weren’t so
different from home.
Claud nodded. “Went to the same school, and Will and Louis went to
college together.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.” Louis was a pediatrician at the local
hospital. Had Will studied medicine as well? Doctor to musician was an
odd career change.
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