25
It hadn’t been a productive day at the Washington Tribune’s London bureau. Ruth rubbed her eyes and gave her piece one last read before submitting it. Looking radiant in a scarlet Issa dress, Kate held her husband’s hand and waved to the small crowd . . . She smiled ruefully; a story on the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visiting the American Embassy for a tea party wasn’t exactly Watergate, was it? Normally Ruth would have passed something like this on to Jim’s PA Rebecca – she seemed to love these kind of assignments – but as Rebecca had called in sick with a bout of menstrual cramps, Ruth had been forced to bite the bullet. Jim wanted 750 upbeat, smiley words about the royals meeting the ambassador, and Ruth needed to keep him sweet while she worked on the Riverton murder.
Clicking the ‘send’ button on her computer, she pulled out her earplugs, sat back in her chair and took a swig of her coffee. Eww – stone cold. She desperately needed a caffeine hit if she was going to make it to the end of the day; she’d been pulling too many late nights recently.
‘Hey, Chuck,’ she said, waving her paper cup at her colleague across the office. ‘Any chance of doing a coffee run?’
Chuck smiled and held up his own cup.
‘I went ten minutes ago,’ he said. ‘I did ask, but you had your headphones on and I didn’t want to disturb the master at work.’
Dammit. She dropped her coffee cup into the trash bin and looked across to Jim’s office; the lights were off. Chuck was right, Ruth had been ‘in the zone’, bent over her computer writing her royals story for the last hour – she hadn’t even noticed the bureau chief leave.
‘Where’s the boss man got to?’ she asked Chuck.
‘Pub, round of golf, shopping for shoes? Who knows – he never shares his plans with me.’
Ruth laughed. She liked Chuck. He was far too much of a company man to ever question Jim in an editorial meeting, but get him on his own and he could be sarcastic and funny.
‘Maybe he’s gone to help Rebecca with her women’s problems,’ he said with a knowing smile.
‘My money’s on that one,’ said Ruth playfully. Perhaps it wasn’t strictly professional to gossip about your boss behind his back, but it made the working day a little more fun. Jim’s relationship with his PA had been a running joke between the rest of the staff. It was pure speculation, and especially considering they were all hard news journalists, no one had a shred of evidence to back it up, but the two of them did seem particularly pally. Anyway, if it was true, Ruth could certainly have understood it. It was an occupational hazard of being a foreign correspondent that it was difficult to maintain relationships. There was a high turnover of staff and the particular stresses of the job tended to mean you were either absent, overworked or both; not ideal traits in a potential Mr or Miss Right – she knew that from personal experience. She was pulled from her thoughts by the insistent ringing of her desk phone. She grabbed it.
‘Miss Boden?’
The voice was American: Texan, Ruth guessed. Low slung and treacly.
‘Yes, this is Ruth Boden,’ she said.
‘This is Jeanne Parsons. I got a message from my housekeeper to call you urgently.’
Ruth was surprised the woman had called back so promptly. Overnight, the Washington office had assisted in tracking down Nick Beddingfield’s girlfriend, providing her with a number first thing that morning. Ruth had indeed spoken to the housekeeper, who had rather tersely told her that ‘Mizz Jeanne is sleeping.’
‘Thank you for calling me back,’ said Ruth. ‘I’m phoning about your friend Nick Beddingfield.’
There was a pause, and Ruth could hear a door being closed.
‘Yes, Nick,’ said the woman finally. ‘How is he?’
‘I’m afraid I have some bad news. Nick Beddingfield is dead.’
Ruth clicked on to her computer and pulled up the photograph of Jeanne Parsons that the Washington office had sent over. It had clearly been taken at some sort of society function; she was wearing an off-the-shoulder ball gown and holding a flute of champagne. She was a perky, smiling forty-something blonde, with a tiny body and big breasts; the sort Ruth imagined to be the life and soul of any party, except she certainly wasn’t smiling now.
‘Oh no,’ she said, her voice trembling. Ruth heard the click and hiss of a cigarette being lit and imagined the hazy blue smoke being blown at the ceiling. God, I could do with one right now, she thought.
‘How did it happen?’ asked Jeanne.
‘He was found dead in a hotel room in London, the Riverton. The police are treating it as suspicious.’
‘And who are you, Miss Boden? Are you not a police officer?’
‘No, I’m a journalist.’
‘Ah, that figures,’ said the woman. ‘So if you’re a reporter, I guess you’ll know Nick was more than my friend.’
‘Yes. And I’m so sorry to have to tell you this.’
There was another pause.
‘So what do you want to know?’
Ruth flipped her notebook open.
‘I want to know who might have wanted to kill him. Did he have any enemies? Had any business deals gone wrong?’
‘That boy ticked off a ton of people over the years, honey. He was always hustling people.’
‘Hustling people? How exactly?’
‘Whichever way he could. Let’s just say he could charm the birds down from the trees – and he often did.’
‘So you’re saying Nick was a con man?’ asked Ruth, her pencil poised over her pad.
‘Well that depends on your point of view, doesn’t it? Nick was a salesman, he could sell anyone anything – does that make him a con man? He was a businessman, I guess, but he sailed pretty close to the wind sometimes.’
‘Like what?’
‘One time we went to Dallas and he talked a Ferrari showroom into letting him “borrow” some bright red quarter-of-a-mil monster for the week while he decided if it was “up to his standards”. I had to send someone to take it back because I knew he was never going to.’
She gave a gentle, affectionate laugh.
‘But he was such fun. He made life fun and you don’t realise how seductive that can be. When I was with him, I felt we were like Bonnie and Clyde. Little old me, boring society wife.’
‘You’re married?’ said Ruth with surprise, then felt foolish. Of course she was married.
‘And not to Nicky,’ laughed Jeanne. ‘Although sometimes I wished I was.’
‘How long were you in a relationship for?’
‘About two years on and off. I gave Nicky the keys to my bachelorette flat in Houston and he stayed there when he wasn’t flying off around the world.’
‘When was the last time you saw him?’
‘About a month ago, I guess. I live in Dallas with my husband and only saw Nicky about every month or so for a night at a time – I think you can guess how it all worked. But lately he’d been spending a lot of time in Europe. I did hear things, though.’
‘You heard things? About Nick?’
Jeanne sighed.
‘What we had was barely an affair, we were both too busy for that. But in my world, people like to talk. This life, this society as they call it, it’s a tiny place. Each one of us, we live our lives in a fishbowl, everyone knows everything about everyone. So yes, people knew about me and Nick and they would go out of their way to tell me how they’d seen him in Megève with an American heiress or in Monte Carlo with some old countess. People are vicious, Miss Boden. Quite vicious.’
‘And do you know why he was in London?’
‘Not exactly, but I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago and he told me he was going to be in England for a big business thing. He said if I heard on the grapevine that he’d been seen in London with a young, beautiful woman, I was not to worry because it was just work.’ She laughed again, but this time it sounded sad. ‘That was Nick; so sweet. He thought I didn’t know about the other women, wanted to spare my feelings.’
‘I’m so sorry, Jeanne.’
‘So am I,’ she whispered, her voice finally breaking. ‘So am I.’