“My aunt’s lover.”
“Is he the author of this diary?”
“No. That was her husband. It’s very complicated.” I was trying not to look at his nose. “You know, I know an excellent plastic surgeon in New York, does all my mother’s work. Much better than these National Health quacks you’ve got here, by the looks of it.” I tapped my own nose. “I’ll bet you’d have much better luck with the ladies.”
Without another word, Little Roger set Lionel’s note on the metal table and walked out of the room.
And that, my friends, was the last I saw of Little Roger.
? ? ?
NEXT UP. The beanpole. He must have been seven feet tall, at least from my vantage point in the low-slung chair, and the sleeve of his poor uniform only reached the furry middle of his forearm. He had a head of sparse blond hair that spread in a wispy bowl from a point at the crown of his head, and he had even less sense of humor than that poor Little Roger.
“I hear you fancy yourself a bit of a comedian, young lady.” He had one of those whiny provincial accents, which he wielded like an instrument of medieval torture. “We’re not fond of comedians here in Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise.”
“Coming from a representative of the land that gave us The Goon Show,” I said, “I find that impossible to believe.”
He ran his gaze over the table between us. I pointed to Dr. Grant’s journal. “That’s the pornographic one. I’m sure you’ll want to take a nice long look. Do you mind if I smoke?”
The official, we’ll call him Long Peter, pulled a pair of glasses out of his uniform pocket and settled them on his nose. I took that as a yes. He picked up the journal; I picked up my pocketbook and lit a cigarette.
A companionable silence ensued. There was no ashtray. I flicked over the linoleum floor instead. Long Peter read slowly and avidly. I watched the back-and-forth progress of his eyes behind the glasses.
“August thirteenth. That’s the real paydirt,” I said. “But there’s a three-night bender in October worth a look, if only for the description of the ladies involved. Go on. I won’t tell.”
He snapped the book shut and gave me the old official glare. “You do realize, miss, we’re not impressed with you vulgar American girls who run around in tight skirts and make smart remarks and think they’re so bloody clever.”
I stubbed out my cigarette against the metal table and leaned cheerfully forward. “It’s Miss Schuyler to you, bub, and you do realize that my father took a bullet in the oysters in defense of this great country of yours, so you could stand there and harass his innocent daughter on her perfectly legitimate overseas holiday, hmm?”
At this point, you might be wondering why I was being so difficult. Well. For one thing, I never could resist a deserving target. For another, I knew like I knew my own dress size that in matters like this, you went straight to the top. Never, ever mess around with your front-line civil servant, all juiced up on petty power and regular coffee breaks. You asked to see the manager, and make it snappy.
This was just my little old way of asking to see the manager.
He arrived shortly after Long Peter departed. I knew at once this was a man I could deal with. Eyes sharp and steely, middle-aged hair sleeked back over a bald spot the size and color of a ripe peach. His jaw looked as if it were missing an important section on the right side. An ex-soldier, without a doubt. He would dismiss all this nonsense in a second.
“Miss Schuyler.” He nodded and addressed himself to the table.
“You know, I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job, but I must say that Her Majesty isn’t exactly putting her best face to the world with those two sad sacks you sent me earlier.”
“You say this isn’t your suitcase?” He fingered the handle.
“It belonged to my great-aunt. The contents, too. I’m planning to return them to her. The Maxwell Institute? In Paris?”
“I’ve never heard of it.” He was rooting around inside the suitcase, making me feel rather uncomfortable, if you must know. As if he were violating my person somehow.
“It’s a very small institute.”
But he wasn’t listening. He slipped a hand into the interior of his jacket and produced a penknife, and before I could leap to my feet and utter an outraged howl, he had sliced open the lining of Aunt Violet’s suitcase and reached inside to the elbow with all the squalid enthusiasm of a veterinary midwife.
“Hello.” He withdrew his hand and produced a leather envelope. “What have we here, my beauty?”
Violet
Lionel and Violet leave the eighth floor of the Hotel Adlon just before four o’clock in the morning, not by the lifts and across the elegant marble lobby, but down the back stairs and through the service door at the rear. A motorcar sits in the blackened alley. Lionel opens the passenger door and urges her inside.
“Lionel, what . . . ?”