The other man looked and then bit his lip and nodded.
Roosevelt left him alone with the body and went back up the huge room and into the corridor, where he found Cleary. He said, “This is never to come out. Can you handle it?”
“There has to be an investigation.”
“We’ll leave it that an unidentified woman of the streets was murdered. It will be an unsolved case.”
Cleary was not stupid. He was not foolish, either. “Are you ordering me to end the investigation, Mr. Roosevelt?”
“I’m ordering you to keep the identity of the woman and of her husband out of the public record. Can you do that?”
The two men looked into each other’s eyes for several seconds. Cleary said, “I guess I can. I just hope you appreciate what I’m doing here, sir.”
Roosevelt stared at him some more. “Mr. Harding will be grateful for your help.”
Cleary gave the faintest of smiles. “That’s all any man could ask, isn’t it?”
The departure from the hotel next morning was nerve-racking and mostly unpleasant, everything ready to go wrong, Arthur in the deep gloom he always fell into when he had to get somewhere on time. Worse, he grumbled that it was Sunday and they hadn’t time to go to church. Louisa pointed out that they often didn’t go to church at home. He said she was being “light.”
Ethel had been put in charge of the luggage and had commandeered two boys; they had immediately mixed everything up, grabbing the smallest things first and marching off with them, although the smallest (and most female) things were the very ones that Ethel and Louisa had meant to carry themselves so they wouldn’t get left behind.
“Where’s my satchel with my manuscripts?” Arthur demanded halfway through the hurly-burly that was moving them out of the suite and down to the lobby.
“Oh, I’m sure the boys have taken it already, dear.”
“I didn’t see it go! If I arrive in Buffalo without that satchel, I’ll be finished! Cooked! Plucked and boiled!”
Louisa ran into the bedroom and corraled Ethel. Ethel swore that the satchel had already been taken. “They grab the easy things first, the wretches! They hope I’ll take the heavy ones myself.”
“It’s quite all right, Ethel; don’t let them upset you.”
“One of them called me ‘honey.’”
“Well, that’s probably a compliment, isn’t it?”
She ran back to Arthur to tell him that the satchel was safe, but he was already fulminating about something else. “The tickets! What in hell has happened to the tickets! They’re not in that satchel, I hope. Dear God, if they’re in that satchel and it goes into the baggage car — no, not in the baggage car, I want the satchel with me!”
He was carrying his overcoat on his arm; she lifted it and felt in the inside pocket. “There are the tickets, dear. Right where you put them.”
“Well, thank God for small favors.” He kissed her. “You are a large favor. I shouldn’t get so exercised, should I.”
“Well, you don’t want to risk apoplexy. Why don’t we go downstairs? Ethel will take care of everything.”
“You trust Ethel?”
“Entirely.”
“If I had that damned valet, we wouldn’t be having all this trouble!”
She led him toward the lift. It was her view that they weren’t having any trouble. On the other hand, to be fair, he was a public man with obligations for every minute of the next month, so he had every right to be nervous. She looked at her watch, a little thing pinned above her left breast. They had two whole hours before the train left.
Arthur recoiled from the lift and trotted back toward the suite. “I’d best tell Ethel to hurry.”
Downstairs, a number of parties were leaving, perhaps taking the same train, she thought. That would be an odd and fantastic thing, if they kept meeting the same people all across America. But how exciting it was going to be, even without anything fantastic! Cleveland, Ohio, sounded as romantic to her as Timbuktoo. What places she was about to see — and what remarkable people she would meet!
“Leaving already, Mrs. Doyle? It seems unkind, that we should meet one day and part the next.” It was Mrs. Simmons’s nephew, Mr. Newcome. He looked extraordinarily slender and stylish and glossy, as if somebody had gone over him with a tool and burnished him.
“Perhaps we shall meet in London,” she said.
“Perhaps we shall.” It was idle chat, meaningless; they both knew it.
Arthur came up then and she introduced them, and Newcome murmured something about “your wonderful books” (even though he didn’t say which ones), but Arthur was distracted because he had to wait behind several other people at Reception. He said, “Yes, yes,” a couple of times, and then excused himself and said rather loudly that he had to catch a train, and would anyone who was not on a schedule please stand aside?
Nobody stood aside.
“This is infamous!”
Newcome touched his arm and smiled. “Allow me.” He went behind Reception and through a door, appeared seconds later to wave Arthur to him. Louisa was left standing alone. She looked about, saw Ethel with the luggage, waved. Over the shoulder of one of the men waiting near Reception she saw part of a newspaper page, a small headline, “Has Jack the Ripper Come to New York?” That would be more about that poor woman, she thought. Did she have time to run to the newsstand? No, Arthur would be furious. Perhaps there would be newspapers on the train. Not that she deeply cared, surely not; she was leaving it behind; perhaps she would never hear of it again…
Newcome came back and said, smiling down at Louisa, “One gets special privileges, being the nephew of the oldest resident. I’ve put your husband with the awful Carver.”
“Who is that?”
“The manager — a bit slimy to the touch, but otherwise all right, I suppose. It may simply be professional surface — a glossy carapace, like a beetle.”
He seemed quite brittle today; she remembered her sense yesterday that Newcome was somehow “safe.” Today, she didn’t feel it, whatever she had meant by it. As if he knew what she was thinking, he said, “My aunt thinks I’m not much better than Carver, I’m afraid. She thinks that London has made me ‘a poser,’ by which I suppose she means a poseur.”
“And are you?”
“Oh, isn’t everyone?”
At that point, Arthur came out, smiling rather grandly. He shook Newcome’s hand. “You saved our lives. We’d have missed that train for certain if you hadn’t done what you did. Capital!” He smiled at Louisa. “Carver fixed everything in two shakes. Splendid man, splendid.” Suddenly, his face darkened. “Where is Ethel?”
Louisa turned him toward the bronze doors. “She’s the woman with all the luggage piled around her.”
“Has she everything? Is my satchel there? Dammit, Louisa, if she’s misplaced that—!”
He insisted on seeing the satchel and then on counting all the luggage. “Fourteen, fifteen. Or did I count this one before? Damn! I shall have to start over!”
“You didn’t count it before, and there are fifteen, and that’s everything. Do calm yourself, Arthur.”
“Ha! Well — are we ready? Boy!”
The same two boys had been waiting at the outer limits of the luggage; now, each picked up a suitcase in each hand and started out. There was confusion about a carriage, then about the trunks — they’d have to come in a separate vehicle — but Ethel seemed already to have commandeered both, so off the boys went. Then came Ethel with the small bags (the lady’s essentials); then the boys came back, and so a kind of revolving wheel of people and luggage went in and out until suddenly the carpet was bare.