Louise's Gamble (22 page)

‘She is,’ Dellaphine said. ‘Besides, I keep my eye on that bottle. And on the sleeping pills, too.’

The warm kitchen, the good news about Malta, the contented feeling of standing arm and arm with Joe all receded, as sharply as an airplane disappearing over the horizon.

Alessa was dead of a laudanum overdose, and everyone, even her husband, believed she’d committed suicide. Since tasting the Fernet yesterday, I knew she could have been murdered. The liqueur’s bitterness would have disguised the nasty taste of the amount of laudanum and Nembutal necessary to do the job.

‘Are you all right?’ Joe asked me. Both he and Dellaphine stared at me with concern.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘I spoke to you, and you didn’t answer,’ he said. ‘You were looking off into the distance.’

‘I’m sorry, I was thinking about Malta,’ I fibbed.

‘Come into the lounge and sit with me,’ Joe said. ‘We can listen to the President’s address from Warm Springs.’

I forced thoughts of Alessa to the back of my mind.

Later Phoebe drifted into the room to join us, her pupils almost completely dilated.

‘I’m not good for much of anything except laying the table,’ Ada said.

‘It looks lovely, dear,’ Phoebe said. For the first time since I’d come to ‘Two Trees’ we were using Phoebe’s good china, silver and crystal.

‘I got these as wedding presents,’ Phoebe said. ‘It seems so old-fashioned now.’ Like Phoebe herself, who, though only nearing fifty, seemed older because she wore her skirts several inches below her knee and crimped her hair.

‘I think it’s all beautiful,’ I said, from the perspective of a bride who’d gotten no wedding gifts. I’d married Bill in the midst of the Depression. If his job as a telegrapher hadn’t included the small apartment above the Wilmington Western Union building, we couldn’t have married at all.

We heard Madeleine come in the back door from work, and Phoebe left us to go into the kitchen.

‘Did you hear about Malta?’ I asked Ada. ‘And Stalingrad? And El Alamein?’

‘That’s all everyone talked about at the Willard.’ She lowered her voice. ‘It’s awful of me, isn’t it, to hope that Rein is dead.’ Rein was Ada’s husband, the German pilot who’d left her to join the Nazis and the Luftwaffe.

‘I don’t think it’s awful. I wish lots of people dead, starting at the top.’ Hitler himself. Why was it that someone hadn’t assassinated the man yet? I couldn’t understand it.

We heard the front door slam. It was Henry arriving home.

‘Henry’s here,’ Joe said, coming in from the lounge. ‘Does this mean we can eat? I’m actually slavering.’

We crowded into the kitchen to admire the turkey as it came out of the oven. To our surprise Henry brought a contribution to the meal. He sheepishly handed two bottles of champagne over to Phoebe.

‘It’s already chilled,’ Henry said. ‘The wine shop near the bus stop was open until four.’

‘Thank you, Henry, how wonderful!’ Phoebe said. ‘Ada and Louise, can you find the champagne flutes? The rest of you get out of here so Dellaphine and I can dish this up.’

Henry carved the turkey on the sideboard while Joe poured champagne into Phoebe’s crystal flutes. Ada and I washed them first, as they were so dusty with disuse.

We loaded our plates with turkey, oyster stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, baked winter squash, creamed onions, and hot cloverleaf rolls, then picked up our champagne and went to the table. Dellaphine and Madeleine followed us, filling their plates and taking a flute each. They stayed long enough to join us in prayer before carrying their meals into the kitchen.

Phoebe’s prayer was the standard Episcopalian grace, which seemed way too Anglican Prayer Book and short to suit my Southern Baptist upbringing, but it did cover all the bases. ‘Bless O Lord this food to our use, and us to your loving service, and keep us ever mindful of the needs of others, we ask in Christ’s name, amen!’

‘Amen!’ we chorused, and for the next couple of hours we put our troubles aside and were thankful for all that was good in the world.

THIRTY-ONE

L
ater that evening when I was alone upstairs in my bedroom, sitting cross-legged on my bed with my notebook open, I put Thanksgiving behind me and focused on the mess I was in.

For the last week I’d snooped around Alessa’s death like the amateur I was, poking into police and OSS files without authority and openly quizzing everyone I could locate who knew Alessa. I’d implied that she was murdered without thinking of what that meant. Now that I knew she could have dosed herself with laudanum and Nembutal without realizing it, I recognized the grave danger I was in. Her killer would be happy to dispatch me, too.

What did I hope to accomplish by going to this ball with Orazio tomorrow night? I could scout the scene. Where was the nearest bank of elevators to the Chinese Room, where Sebastian and Orazio had attended Count Sforza’s lecture, and to the Ladies Parlor, where Lucia had played bridge? I remembered how huge the Mayflower was. The rooms where Sebastian, Orazio, and Lucia spent the evening of Alessa’s death were almost a full block away from the hotel’s main entrance. How long would it take to get from those rooms to the Onetos’ apartment? How long did the bridge break last? The Sforza lecture intermission? The lecture reception? The hotel would be jammed packed with people who’d been there that night who might be able to answer my questions.

If Alessa had been murdered, which seemed more and more likely to me, was it personal or related to her mission?

If it was personal, Lucia, Sebastian, or Rossi must be her murderer. She didn’t know anyone else. What motives could the three of them have? Either Sebastian adored his wife and was grief-stricken, or he was a better actor than Olivier. He had no motive that I could see. And Rossi? Why would he want her dead? Lucia, though, was a possibility. She hated Alessa for being independent, for postponing children, and for endorsing Sebastian’s frugality.

Or if Alessa’s murder had been due to her mission, who were the suspects? The Mafia sleeper whose name Alessa had brought back from New York to turn over to OSS? How did I know Enzo didn’t work for him, that his story was true? Besides, if Enzo was
Mafioso
, the Mayflower likely harbored more Mafia small fish eager to make their bosses happy.

Who could help me? Only Orazio, it seemed.

I would have to handle all this delicately to avoid suspicion. And I was an amateur. A file clerk who’d fallen into an operation. Three days at ‘The Farm’ hardly prepared me to pull this off.

Speaking of suspicion, I was attending this very public ball with Orazio Rossi following being suspended for insubordination after attending a reception at the Onetos’ apartment. Any number of well-heeled OSS people who knew me could be there. Joan Adams, for example. She ran with a wealthy crowd. Don Murray, my boss, whose mother was a Peoples Drug Store heir. Bill Donovan himself, if he was back from Europe.

If I was seen by the wrong people with Rossi, flouting my instructions to stay away from the Onetos, I could kiss my career goodbye. It might not be the best career in the world, annotating and filing index cards and files, but it was the only one I had.

My second goal, of course, was to go through Alessa’s knitting bag looking for the information I wanted. How could I possibly get into the apartment to search? Maybe by the end of the evening I could trust Rossi enough to enlist his help.

I could avoid all this. I could call Orazio and tell him I had sprained my ankle, or was down with the flu. I didn’t have to go and risk everything.

But Alessa had risked everything . . . and lost. How could I do less?

Scared and sleepless, I padded down the hall to Phoebe’s room to ask for a Nembutal so I could get some rest.

THIRTY-TWO

‘
Y
ou don’t need to stand out here with me,’ I said. ‘I’m perfectly able to wait for a taxi by myself.’

‘A gentleman doesn’t let a beautiful woman stand on a curb alone,’ Joe said.

I did look nice. My blueberry-colored dress was even prettier on me in natural light than it was in the Woodies Dress Salon. Phoebe had lent me a black lace evening shawl and black kid evening gloves that fastened above my elbow with a pearl button. The rhinestone and zircon lavaliere and earrings she’d given me last summer looked perfect. And Ada had found a black beaded bag large enough to hold my compact, lipstick, money, house key, and my knife. My knife, what a joke!

I’d be excited about this evening, especially now that Joe was OK with it, if I wasn’t terrified of being seen by someone from OSS. Or confirming that Alessa was murdered.

Where was my taxi? The cold air crept under my shawl.

‘You’re jiggling,’ Joe said, his voice muffled by the scarf wrapped around his face.

‘I want the taxi to hurry up and get here,’ I said.

‘This does have something to do with your job, doesn’t it?’ Joe asked.

‘You know I can’t say.’

‘Sometimes I think I have a crush on Mata Hari,’ he teased.

‘It will never amount to more than a crush if we can’t find some time to be alone together.’

‘I know,’ he said.

I wondered if Joan would be willing to lend me her apartment when she visited friends out of town. She might be terribly shocked, but then again I’d been married, so maybe it wouldn’t seem too dreadful. Or perhaps Joe could rent one of the many cabins – ‘camps’, they were called – on the Potomac for a weekend.

My taxi arrived. Joe handed me into it expertly, even lifting my gown so it didn’t drag in the dirt as I climbed in, tucking the skirt around me once I was seated. He’d done this before, clearly! I wondered for whom, exactly, and added that to my long list of things I’d like to know about him.

Six blocks away from home my taxi joined a queue of mostly limousines unloading passengers who were dressed to the nines, either in evening wear or dress uniforms. My pulse quickened as the liveried Mayflower hotel footman opened my door and handed me out of my cab. I felt like a movie star attending a Hollywood premiere!

Orazio waited for me at the entrance to the hotel. He took my arm and threaded it through his.

‘You look lovely,’ he said.

‘Thank you. You look nice, too,’ I answered.

Orazio wore an impeccably tailored double-breasted tuxedo with satin lapels and a satin stripe down his trousers. His hair was slicked down with brilliantine, as always.

As we moved toward the open doors of the Mayflower and heard the music and throngs of people my excitement mounted. I felt guilty for enjoying myself. I was here because of Alessa – I didn’t want to forget that.

The lobby was lit by four priceless bronze and gold torchieres, blazing with gas flames, assisted by massive crystal chandeliers. Red, white, and blue bunting draped the mezzanine rail. A USO banner hung over the front desk. Pretty girls in khaki dresses with USO patches mingled with soldiers and sailors who must have been given tickets. No way they could afford it themselves.

I checked my evening shawl at the cloakroom. The attendant hung it between a full-length mink and an Army nurse’s blue cloak.

‘We need to walk all the way to the end of the Promenade and back to get the full effect,’ Orazio said when I rejoined him.

Twenty-six feet wide and a full block long, from Connecticut Avenue to Seventeenth Street, the Mayflower Promenade was a wide hall through the main floor of the hotel. Along its length it showcased priceless art and antiques. As we strolled, along with hundreds of other guests, we stopped to admire the exhibits.

‘I walk through this gallery every day,’ Orazio said, ‘but at night, when the hotel is lit and decorated for a fancy event, it looks like a palace.’

We gawked at two Louis XIV gold consoles, a collection of Aubusson tapestries, and, of course, the stunning white marble statues that occupied the place of honor in the center of the Promenade: ‘The Lost Pleiad’ – her hand shading her eyes, searching –
‘La Sirene’, and ‘Flora’.

We passed the Presidential Restaurant, where Orazio and I had dined the other night, on our left and the Mayflower Lounge on our right.

‘The bar’s set up in here,’ Orazio said, steering me into the Lounge. ‘I have four drink tickets, but, of course, we can purchase more later.’

‘Two drinks is more than enough for me,’ I said.

‘Would you like a cocktail, or champagne?’ he asked.

‘Champagne, please.’

He handed me a bubbling flute and took one for himself. I felt so Greta Garbo holding a champagne glass in my gloved hand.

‘Let’s stop at the ballroom before we go on,’ Orazio said. ‘We’ll come back to the Promenade later.’

We stood inside the door, drinking in the scene. The Ballroom was the most elegant room I’d ever seen. Bunting hung everywhere, obscuring much of the vermilion, gold, and ivory decorative painting. Its high vaulted ceiling was lined on three sides with two tiers of VIP balcony boxes. Black and gold marble pillars separated the boxes. Lush gilt ornamentation crowded what empty space there was between boxes and pillars. Four chandeliers, larger than their fellows in the lobby, lit the room brilliantly.

‘That’s the presidential box,’ Orazio said, pointing, ‘where the president sits during Inaugural Balls. And the murals are by one of my countrymen, Ampelio Tonillo, a Venetian.’

Couples already crowded the ballroom, mingling and chatting, waiting for the dance music to begin.

‘There’s a disappearing stage: it will rise when the music starts. There’s a movie screen, too,’ Orazio said, ‘though they won’t be using it tonight.’

‘It’s a fairy tale,’ I said. And I’m Cinderella, I thought.

Orazio squeezed my arm. ‘I’m so glad you agreed to come,’ he said. ‘It would be a shame to waste this.’

‘I’m glad, too,’ I said, and I was, except that I’d rather I was with Joe.

We turned and continued our stroll down the Promenade.

‘Where is Sebastian tonight?’ I asked.

‘At a friend’s apartment for dinner. He couldn’t bear to be here. Alessa bought her ball gown at Saks when she was in New York. She brought it back on the train. It’s still hanging in her closet. Sebastian has not yet cleaned out any of her things.’