‘Is this really necessary?’ she asked as I put my suitcases down in the hall.
‘It’s safer. I don’t want you and the girls involved in this. I don’t think anyone would dare show their face here again, but it would be best if I moved out.’
‘I will keep your rooms for you, Mr Lennox. I’m assuming this is a temporary arrangement.’
‘I would like it to be, Mrs White.’
The three of us stood awkwardly for a moment. Ferguson handed her a card on which he had scribbled down his home number as well as the St Andrew’s Square contact number.
‘I’ll arrange for the beat constable to check on you,’ he said. ‘But if you see anyone suspicious hanging around, ’phone me right away.’
‘I’ll ring with a contact number once I’m settled,’ I added. She nodded abruptly. Ferguson and I carried the cases out to my car.
It was still as foggy as hell. Or maybe in hell they complained about it being as foggy as Glasgow. I dumped my bags at my office and sat at my desk until it got dark and I had to switch the lamp on. The other offices were emptying and I smoked my way through half a pack of cigarettes and contemplated, not for the first time, how crap my situation was. My face hurt like a son of a bitch every time I placed even the gingerest of fingertips on it, but from what I could see from my reflection in the broad blade of my letter opener, it still hadn’t swollen. My side next to the small of my back still ached nauseatingly, but it was no longer a solo performance: all the wrenches and impacts of our scuffle in the smog were now singing in unison.
The darkening smog rubbed itself against my office window. I decided against venturing far to search for a hotel and was beginning to imagine the extra aches I would wake up with if I slept on the polished floor of my small office. Added to that, performing my ablutions in the toilet that was shared with the four other offices on my floor and the floor below did not appeal to me.
On an impulse I picked up the ’phone. I was surprised that the person I asked for took my call.
‘Hi,’ I said, failing to keep the weariness out of my voice. ‘It’s Lennox. Listen, I’m across the street in my office. I have a favour to ask … could you meet me in the lounge bar in ten minutes?’
And, to my further surprise, she said she would.
Leonora Bryson was late. Which was fair enough. There was an etiquette to these things: a woman couldn’t be seen waiting around in a bar for a man. You had to do the waiting. And women like Leonora Bryson knew that any man would wait for her, for as long as she wanted him to wait.
When she arrived in the lounge bar of the Central Hotel, she was again dressed in a formal skirt with a matching jacket and pale blue blouse beneath it. It was something that, on most women, would have looked almost drab, but on her it looked sexier than a bikini on Marilyn Monroe. She certainly attracted enough attention as she entered and I could have sworn I heard the marble bust in the corner give a gasp. I was waiting for her at the bar and suggested we take a seat at one of the tables. I asked her what she would like to drink. I was not surprised that she ordered a daiquiri, but was amazed that the Glaswegian bartender knew how to make it.
‘You look like you’ve been in the wars, Mr Lennox,’ she said, indicating the dressing on my cheek with a tilt of her daiquiri glass. There wasn’t the same frost in her voice, but there wasn’t any warmth either.
‘This? Yeah, stupid really … I walked into something in the smog.’ I neglected to explain that the something had been solid muscle with a gun.
‘Yes, I know …’ she said, suddenly animated. ‘I’ve seen some pretty bad smog in San Francisco, but this stuff is unbelievable. I mean, it’s not just dense, it’s tinged green.’
‘They colour it for the tourists. San Francisco … is that where you’re from?’
‘No … I’m from the east coast, originally. Connecticut.’
‘Then where you were brought up was a heck of a lot closer to my home town than it was to Hollywood. I was raised in New Brunswick.’
‘Really?’ she said, with an interest so tiny that you would have needed the Palomar telescope set to maximum magnification to spot it. ‘What is it you wanted to talk to me about, Mr Lennox?’
‘I need somewhere to sleep tonight …’
The final syllable had not taken form before the temperature dropped a thousand degrees.
‘No, no …’ I held my hands up. ‘Don’t get the wrong idea … With the smog and everything, and my office just over the way, I wondered if you could swing a special rate for me here. Just for tonight. It’s a bit rich for my blood normally but needs must …’
She appraised me with the glacial blue eyes and for a moment I killed the time thinking about what Rhine maidens and Valkyries might get up to in Valhalla. She seemed to make up her mind about me.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘we have a spare room at the end of our hall. We had it for one of the studio executives, but he’s flown home early. We have kept the booking open in case we needed it. I guess tonight we do.’
‘I’ll pay, of course …’
‘No need.’ She took a long, thin cigarette of a brand I’d never seen before from a specially made silver case. I held out a light for her the instant it met her lips. She took a draw and nodded a perfunctory thanks. ‘It’s paid for whether you use it or not. And, anyway, you’re working for Mr Macready. Just tonight?’
‘Just tonight.’
‘Was there anything else, Mr Lennox?’ She frowned at me over her sipped daiquiri, as if my presence was seriously compromising her enjoyment of it.
‘As a matter of fact there was. How much do you know about why I’ve been employed by the studio? About Mr Macready’s situation?’
‘Everything,’ she said blankly. ‘I am Mr Macready’s personal assistant. To do my job, I need to know everything that’s going on, good or bad. I am how Mr Macready connects with everybody and everything around him.’
I was about to say he’d done some pretty enthusiastic connecting himself, but let it slide. ‘Did you know about his … tastes before this incident?’
‘Of course.’ A little defiance now. And resentment.
‘Where were you when Macready was at the cottage with his friend?’
‘I was at the hotel. Not this hotel … the one up north. Up past that big lake. We were there for the shooting.’
‘And Macready gave you the night off?’
‘That’s right. He was in the bar of the hotel drinking with Iain.’
‘When I asked him about it, he said it was a spur of the moment decision to go to the cottage.’
‘That’s what he told me,’ she said, holding me in a blue glacier gaze. ‘Iain’s family owned the estate we were shooting on and the cottage was one he used now and again. He paints, you see. An artist.’ She said the word with disdain. ‘Mr Macready said that Iain suggested they go to the cottage to continue drinking.’
‘But as a guest of the hotel, Macready could order drinks after closing time …’
Leonora Bryson shrugged. ‘I don’t think drinking was what was on either of their minds. Why is this so important?’
‘Have you seen the photographs?’
A split second of outrage, then the storm passed. ‘No, Mr Lennox, I haven’t.’
‘I have. I had to. They were taken with some kind of hidden camera. In a wall void or something. I can’t tell for sure because the other party … Iain … is not, I’ve been told, to be made aware of this difficulty. That means I can’t examine the cottage. But it was an elaborate set-up. That means organization. Planning in advance.’
‘And that doesn’t fit with them going to the cottage being a spur of the moment thing … is that what you’re saying?’
‘Exactly. But that leads to the conclusion that his Lordship’s — or is it his Dukeship’s? — son and heir was in on the setup. And that simply doesn’t make any sense at all. He — and his father — have as much to lose as John Macready. More, probably.’