* * *
After seeing two clients—a lost wedding ring and the inevitable lost dog, respectively—I wrote a note to Fitzroy Todd, asking to see him. It’s urgent. You know what it’s about. By teatime I had a reply by messenger, along with a second note by post. Fitzroy was agreeable to see me at seven o’clock, if I wanted to come by the house where he was cadging off of his parents. The second note was from James Hawley. It said only: Gild Theatre, Streatham, nine o’clock. Do not forget.
I stood by my front window, reading the note more times than its brief message warranted. I lowered the paper and watched Mr. Bagwell, my elderly neighbor, walk his collie, Pickwick, down the street. Both man and dog made slow progress, their legs equally arthritic, though the dog had slightly more spring to his step than his master. The collie turned his head and looked adoringly up at the man as they walked, his long, beautiful fur rippling as he moved.
A man on a bicycle came into sight, headed for my door. It wasn’t my next client, who was due in half an hour. The man wore a uniform and cap; another messenger, then. He saw me in the window as he dismounted and tipped his cap at me. I walked to the front door and opened it.
“Miss Winter?” the fellow asked.
“Yes.”
“Special message, miss.” He handed me an envelope.
I opened it and read:
You are making appointments, not investigating. Was the fee insufficient? Please advise of progress. Messenger will await reply.
Please report any new developments by telephoning Hampstead 1207. Messages left at that exchange will reach me.
—G. Sutter.
I frowned. Hampstead 1207. The exchange didn’t mean that George Sutter—whoever he worked for—was physically in Hampstead; it only meant he had someone answering the telephone for him there. I glanced up at the messenger, who only shrugged. I’d get no information from that particular source. Incensed, I took up a pencil and wrote across the bottom of the note:
Does MI5 have nothing better to do than to watch people’s houses?
—E. Winter.
I folded the note and gave the envelope back to the messenger. After he left, I lit a cigarette, something I never did during the day, trying to calm my nerves. How had anyone watched my house without my noticing? Through the front window, Mr. Bagwell returned home from his walk, Pickwick following on his leash. By the time the cigarette was ash, I was reasonably calm again.
I walked to the telephone I’d had installed in the front hall. I took up the receiver, dialed the first exchange, and began to cancel appointments.
* * *
Fitzroy Todd’s parental home, in Belgravia, was a narrow terraced town house of pale Georgian stone bordered by a wrought-iron fence. A maid admitted me into an elegant front hall, took my hat, and informed me that Mr. Todd was upstairs.
There seemed to be no one else home, and my heels made no noise on the thick carpeting of the corridor. “Up here,” came a masculine voice. I ascended all the way to the upper floor, where I found Fitzroy standing in a tastefully decorated but utterly messy dressing room.
He stood before a mirror, in trousers, braces, and a white shirt, carefully combing back his dark hair. He swiveled in one easy movement and saw me in the doorway. “Ellie!” he exclaimed, taking my hands and kissing me on the cheek. “You look too ravishing. Your hair—my God, that color! I could write poetry. Come in; it’s just an old dressing room. No need to be a prude.” He smelled of cigarettes and cologne.
“It’s nice to see you, too, Fitz,” I said, making my way over the shirts and ties left in piles on the floor. There was a chair beneath a stack of jackets, and I gingerly moved them and made myself a seat.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Fitz gestured around the room. “I know it’s a screaming disaster. I need to get ready for supper with Niles and a few other fellows before we go to the club, and your note said it was urgent. Mum and Dad aren’t home anyway, not that they’d mind.”
“No, I suppose not.” Fitz’s wardrobe stood open, revealing a tumbled spill of expensive clothing. A painting on the wall featured a seminude woman bending over a well to fill a bucket of water, her breasts visible through the thin cloth of her dress. Through the doorway I glimpsed his bedroom, the bed rumpled, a glass and bottle on the night table. The air smelled oddly musty, like a stranger’s body. I didn’t want to admit I’d never exactly been inside a man’s private rooms before; Fitz would only laugh at me. He’d been Gloria’s lover, and I wondered whether she had ever been here.
He returned to a gilt-framed mirror to straighten his collar. “You’re here about Gloria, of course,” he said. “I’m ripped to pieces about it, Ellie. Just gutted. You can’t imagine.”
I watched him study his handsome dark-eyed face in the mirror. “What happened?” I asked him. “I mean, you were there. What in the world happened?”
“Damned if I know.” He looked over his dressing table and ran his finger over a selection of ties. Many women thought Fitzroy Todd extremely attractive; he was invited to parties everywhere and was often pictured in the gossip columns, usually with a few beautiful women at his side. What the newspapers didn’t cover was that he usually ended such nights being poured, incoherent with gin, into taxicabs by those same callous hangers-on. He was well-bred and almost as tall as James Hawley, though not as muscled. As he selected a tie I looked at his hands and wondered whether they were strong enough to knock a woman out, stab her, and carry her to the lip of a pond.
“Just start from the beginning,” I said to him.