“My family’s in tractors and my husband is in baby foods,” Mrs Cuthbertson said, carelessly rubbing her diamonds, “Money is no object, Miss Hepburn.”
“Then you’re also aware of why this fast-track divorce ploy is so expensive?” I leaned across the desk and looked her husband squarely in the eye. “If anything goes wrong, it’s not just you,” I told him. “We could both end up in jail.”
They glanced at each other, gulped, then nodded. Of the two, the wife’s nod was the least grim, I decided.
But then she wasn’t the one looking at porridge.
I want to make it very clear that what I do has no connection whatsoever with prostitution. Quite the opposite, in fact, because the girls I hire are usually married themselves and lead otherwise normal, respectable lives. It’s just that, like me, they need the money – and for this kind of money, people take risks. Wouldn’t you?
And it’s because there’s so much at stake, fixing up fake adultery cases, that I (a) charge exorbitant fees and (b) plan to the very last detail – then go over it time and again. That way, should anything go belly up, at least I have the satisfaction of having some money behind me to take care of Susan, plus I can wile away my stretch in the sure and certain knowledge that I did the best I could, which is all anyone can ask. Even crooked female private eyes.
So my confidence was pretty high as I took the elevator to the Belle Vue’s second floor. Of course, that had as much to do with the hired mink as my meticulous forward planning, because even though I’d never earn enough to buy one for myself, you really do feel a million dollars wrapped inside real fur. And a girl certainly needs the right clothes in a hotel like the Belle Vue. For one thing, it’s the best hotel by a mile, and that’s where several of my competitors tripped up. They’d tried to cut costs, and realized too late that judges, especially divorce-court judges, aren’t lemons. No man who has his shirts handmade in Jermyn Street books into a cheap hotel with an even cheaper floozy. So that’s the first rule. Horses for courses, and since you only get the one chance in a place like the Belle Vue, you need to convince the housekeeper with a single glance that you’re a bona fide guest who’s foolishly left her key behind.
“Here we are, madam. Two-two-three.”
The housekeeper made to knock, but I pointed to the “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging dutifully on the doorknob, and you’d be surprised how far a five-pound note still goes in the middle of an afternoon in 1959. While she jiggled the master key in the lock, I whipped my camera out of a vanity case designed for rather more feminine and undoubtedly more trivial activities, then checked the corridor for the billionth time. Still deserted, but on these carpets, you wouldn’t hear a herd of wildebeest charging down on you. The lift whirred gently in the background.
“Say cheese,” I breezed, as the housekeeper flung open the door.
“Jeez,” the housekeeper said.
So used to all this, I’d taken the photo before I even realized. It was a man on the bed, all right, but he wasn’t undressed and there was no sign of Mavis or her hired fox fur. (For the same reasons, I can’t have Mavis wandering round the Belle Vue without looking the part, either). But to be honest, I wasn’t surprised she’d done a bunk. His head lay at a horribly unnatural angle.
My first thought was for Mrs Cuthbertson.
My second was to get the hell out of there.
“This situation needs to be handled with the utmost discretion,” I told the housekeeper, backing carefully out of the room. “You fetch the manager. I’ll wait here, to make sure no one goes in.”
The trouble was, I couldn’t hear myself speak, there was this terrible din in the background. Not what one expects from the Belle Vue, I thought idly. What on earth was the place coming to? Then I turned round.
So much for keeping it quiet, I realized, and so much for slipping away.
That din was the housekeeper’s scream.
With no quick or easy way out, it was now a case of damage control. At the first screech, the lift boy, two chambermaids, some straight-backed, po-faced security manager, and a fat room-service waiter appeared out of nowhere, while there I was, camera in hand, pretending to be Mrs Two-two-three. My gut instinct said play up the distraught widow thing, who’s to say what grief will do, why shouldn’t the poor wife run off, the girl’s in shock? But it only goes to show. In the past, on the very few occasions I’d ever ordered room service, the waiters proved aloof and snooty specimens. Trust me to pick the breed’s only bleeding heart. And then there was the Belle Vue’s director.
“Drink this,” he insisted, pushing a cognac into my hand, having personally escorted me down to his office.
“How kind,” I sniffed, thinking, good, I can sneak away now, but compassion, it seems, has no bounds at plush hotels. He left a desk clerk as a deposit, and you wouldn’t believe how fast the police can move, either. When they try.
So there I was, surrounded on all sides by red velvet and gilt while the piano in the foyer tinkled Gershwin, computing a multitude of likely stories. I pictured Mrs Cuthbertson, fiddling with her handbag, fiddling with her pearls, and realized that I couldn’t maintain the pretence of being her. Her marriage might be failing, but her husband had been willing to put his upper-crust reputation on the line for her, and in any case, a murder investigation would quickly reveal that I wasn’t the genuine article. No, I’d have to be someone else who’d gone out without her damn room key. I warmed the cognac in my hand and sipped. Ultra smooth, but what else would one expect of the Belle Vue. And the more I thought about it, the better this scenario played out. If I was a woman who was stupid enough to forget her room key, I was certainly stupid enough to get the numbers muddled up. I finished off the brandy and pasted on my coy-but-nonetheless-ravishing smile for the benefit of the desk clerk. After all, who better to probe about the current guest list?
Within ten minutes, I was Mrs Henry Martin, newlywed bride, because if honeymoons don’t make a girl jittery, what the hell does? Not the sex. The fact that she’s committing to a lifetime with someone, bearing his children, washing his socks. That would scare the pants off me, I can tell you. So. Providing the police didn’t interrogate me in the presence of the desk clerk (300-1), there was no way of being caught out on my story, especially since the Martins had gone sightseeing in Eastbourne and would not be back before supper (7:30 onwards, dinner jackets only). Yes, indeed. Between the mink and the cognac, my confidence was restored and while the desk clerk answered the director’s phone, I whipped the film from my camera and stuffed it behind my suspender.
“Inspector Sullivan is on his way down to see you,” he announced, but even before he’d finished, the door had opened and the entire gap was filled by a man with a mop of unruly dark hair and a face that looked like it had come second in a fight with a brick wall.
I stood up, though if I wasn’t to be at a height disadvantage, I’d really need to stand on a chair. Still, I was ready, and I ran through the key points in my head. Mrs Martin. Just married. Nervous. Excited. Definitely light-headed. Then-
“Don’t I know you?” Inspector Sullivan asked, and his voice was rough from too many cigarettes, too little sleep. “Mrs Hepburn, right?” I hate conscientious policemen.
“Miss.”
“You run Hepburn Investigations?”
No point in stalling. I brought out my card. “Clients with confidence,” I said with none.
“Hm.” He chewed his lip, rubbed his jaw, ran his hand through his hair. And all the time his eyes were fixed on my camera.
My thoughts were of Susan. Growing up with her aunt. Visiting her mother in jail. Rapidly becoming estranged…