She would cross that bridge when she came to it. First, she had to find someone who would talk. She spent several days researching the club as discreetly as she could, collecting various items that Auntie Eva had sourced for her from a theatrical costumier friend, and watching the staff going in and out of the back entrance after dark.
The following Saturday, under glowering skies over Piccadilly, a forgettable pot-washer showed up with mud-brown hair, thick glasses and hands rubbed red raw from washing dishes. She entered the club at seven thirty behind a couple of sous-chefs, back from a ciggie break, wound her way up the sticky, badly lit servants’ stairs, and found the manager’s office without too much trouble.
‘The agency sent me,’ she said, staring down at the cracked lino floor. The club rooms, she imagined, were lavishly carpeted and lit with crystal lamps, but here, every expense was spared.
‘What? Trumptons? Just now? Why?’
The harried manager barely looked up from the paperwork he was doing.
‘I dunno why,’ Joan said. ‘Only that you were three down and could I make it, sharpish, time and a half?’
The manager looked up properly at this. ‘Ha! Time and a half? You must be joking. We’re two down, not three, but . . . Normal agency wages. Tonight and tomorrow, yes? Give your name to Mr Holland in Accounts. No going past the baize door.’ This suited Joan. ‘You know where the aprons are?’
‘I’ll manage,’ she said.
She shut the office door and looked down the dingy corridor towards the sound of shouting and clanging pans coming from the club kitchen. She had no idea where the aprons were, but she would work it out. At the palace, they were always having trouble finding enough kitchen staff for big occasions. Joan had rightly guessed that on a Saturday night the club would be keen for whatever help it could get. And it would give her sore hands (she had rubbed salt into them at length) the weekend to recover. In the school holidays, she had occasionally helped out in the college kitchens at Cambridge. It was hot, busy, hard-going and thankless work: ideal for her purposes.
She headed down the corridor and into the kitchen.
‘I’m ’ere from the agency,’ she said again, in her best Cockney accent.
A tall, aggressive-looking man in chef’s whites looked at her through a gap in several piles of unwashed plates.
‘Thank God.’
He gestured towards a door that turned out to be the cupboard with the aprons. Joan put one on, wrapped her hair in a scarf and set to work, humming cheerfully to herself. The pressure-cooker atmosphere of the kitchen at peak service time took her back to her days in Cambridge. Soon she had reduced the teetering piles of dirty plates to neat stacks of clean ones, ready to go. She was quick at buffing glasses to a shine and good at taking on new greasy piles without complaint. The chefs de partie and even the front of house manager were grateful for her ability to get on with things without making a fuss.
Joan felt no need to ask questions at this point. As the evening wore on and service slowed a little, she joined in whatever kitchen chat there was. Her job tonight was all about teamwork, being amenable, suggesting she had a bit of money in her pocket and making friends.
Towards the end of service, when they were all looking forward to clearing up and clearing out, a harried house manager pointed at her.
‘You – wassyourname?’
‘Jennie, sir. Can I help?’
‘You certainly can. There’s been an incident outside the second floor lavatories. Somebody overindulged. Massive spew, all over the floor tiles. He didn’t make it to the porcelain in time. I’ve got Frank on it, but he needs a hand. Grab a mop and bucket and—’
‘But—’
‘But nothing. Get on it, woman!’
‘I’m not supposed to go beyond the—’
‘Now! I’m not asking!’
She didn’t have a choice. She found the required equipment, filled the bucket with hot water and asked one of the waitresses in the corridor where to go. With her backside, she pushed at the heavy baize door, insulated against the noise of the busy kitchen, that marked the entry to the carpeted quiet of the members’ side of the club. She hadn’t expected to come this far, but as long as she kept her head down, it couldn’t do any harm.
Upstairs, the scene that met her was disgusting. The smell of it assaulted her from several feet away. Her stomach lurched. Frank, one of the dogsbodies like her, was doing his best, but he clearly needed help.
‘Do what you can,’ he said gratefully. ‘I’ll get another bucket.’
He disappeared upstairs, where Joan assumed there must be a service cupboard with access to running water. Sure enough, he came down a couple of minutes later, his bucket freshly filled, just as she needed fresh water of her own.
She took her bucket to the top of the third floor stairs and glanced around to find the cupboard. It wasn’t easy in the dim light. There were two figures in evening dress, deep in conversation at the end of the corridor, slightly silhouetted by a Lalique lamp behind them. Joan started down the corridor trying each door in turn, hoping to find the door before she reached them, and not to put them off with the stinking contents of her bucket.
But before she found it, the taller of the two looked round with a wrinkle of nausea on his face.
‘I’m sorry, sir!’ Joan called out.
He continued to stare at her. She indicated the doors.
‘I’m just looking for . . .’ Oh.
She managed not to say the last word aloud.
The tall man looking at her was Tony Radnor-Milne. Dammit! Of all the people! Her wig was not a world-class disguise, because she had fully expected to stay on the servants’ side of the baize door. Her bare-faced look was designed to stand up to the scrutiny of strangers, not men she had spent a long and traumatic evening with. But the corridor was dim and this was the last place he’d expect to see her. For the second time, she beat a quick retreat from his company.
‘Excuse me,’ she muttered, heading swiftly back the way she’d come. She went all the way back to the kitchen and left poor Frank to finish the mopping on his own.
A couple of hours later, Joan left with the last of the staff. While mucking in with the dirty jobs, she had nevertheless let it be known to Frank and others that she was a little bit unusual for an agency temp: a bit older, with a nice wage as a shopgirl, just doing this for extra pin money. So when she said afterwards that she was stopping off at the café on the corner – one that stayed open all day and night to cater for people like them who worked all hours to be at the disposal of the toffs – Frank half-jokingly asked if she’d be paying. She assured him she was. Instantly a tired sous-chef and two waitresses showed eager interest. Joan bought a round of tea and toast with margarine for everyone.
They’d been through a long, hard Saturday night together, which formed bonds that might not last long, but felt real enough right now. There was plenty of sympathy for Joan, Frank and the ‘sea of sick’ outside the lavatory, and much gossip about the stripper who had allegedly been brought in for a private birthday party on the second floor, although none of those present had actually seen her. Joan let the conversation run its course before she glanced across the street and said,
‘Ooh, the Reform Club. I was working there the night of those murders. Could ’ave sworn I’d seen that man, wot’s ’is name? Perez—’
‘No, Rodriguez, they say it is now,’ the sous-chef said.
‘Oh, is it? ’Im, then. I could’ve sworn I’d seen ’im at the club the night before. Sworn blind. Gave me the shivers.’