Louise's Gamble (23 page)

‘Poor man.’ Would a woman about to kill herself buy an evening gown? I didn’t think so.

Orazio bent over to whisper in my ear. ‘Sebastian feels a bit guilty, I think,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Sebastian loved Alessa wildly – as a man should love his wife, of course. He worried that she was bored here. In fact, she went to New York to see her friends often enough that he fantasized that she had a lover.’

‘No!’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘When I rode the train with her to New York, he asked me to see if a man met the train. Of course, no one did. It was a ludicrous idea. Now Sebastian feels guilty that he even suspected her.’

‘Poor man,’ I said.

‘Lucia will be here tonight though. Nothing would cause her to miss the opportunity to wear her jewels.’

Except for the diamond bracelet she gave you, I remembered. He’d told me he pawned jewelry for Lucia, but maybe he was a gigolo! I studied him while he waved at an acquaintance across the room. I didn’t know any gigolos, but Orazio was handsome and gracious enough to fit the bill.

‘Isn’t the Chinese Room at this end of the Promenade?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ Orazio said. ‘Sebastian and I were at a lecture there the night Alessa died. Would you like to see it? It’s as stunning as the Ballroom in its own way.’

‘Yes, please, I’ve heard so much about it.’

Orazio pushed open a door and led me into a salon glowing with the reds and blues of the Chinese Chippendale style. The walls gleamed with gilt and red lacquer murals. Although smaller than any of the other rooms we’d seen, it still seemed huge by my standards.

‘How many people were at the Count’s lecture?’ I asked.

‘Oh, a couple hundred or so. Count Sforza is a fine speaker and a good man. If it weren’t for him, America would think all Italians were either fascists or mobsters.’

‘That’s not so!’ I said.

‘You don’t think so? I’m glad to hear it. But Sforza is an aristocrat. When the war is finally won, and Mussolini is dead, the people of Italy, and Sicily, will reject the monarchy and govern themselves. For the first time in its history, Italy’s wealth will be distributed to everyone.’

So Orazio was still a socialist. Not surprising. I wasn’t interested in politics tonight though, and I steered the conversation back to the floor plan of the hotel.

‘The Ladies Parlor is across the hall?’ I asked.

‘Yes, you can go see it. I can’t join you though. It’s for women only.’

‘No, that’s not necessary.’ I didn’t ask him if he’d seen Lucia leave the Parlor the night Alessa died. I didn’t want to seem obsessed with her death. ‘Have we walked a block yet?’

‘Almost. A few more steps through the vestibule, and here we are!’

A doorman swung the double doors open wide, and we stepped out on to Seventeenth Street.

‘That building across the way,’ he said, ‘is the National Geographic Society. I have spent many free afternoons there.’

Without the National Geographic Society the OSS wouldn’t have maps of half the countries we were fighting in.

‘You don’t have your wrap, come back inside,’ Orazio said. ‘It’s chilly.’

Once the doorman closed the door behind us, we heard music.

‘The Mayflower Orchestra is playing,’ Orazio said. ‘I do so hope you don’t jitterbug.’

I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Hardly,’ I said, though Madeleine and Ada had tried to teach me. ‘The foxtrot and the waltz compose my entire repertoire.’

‘Thank God,’ he said.

We found our way back through an increasing throng to the Ballroom. The stage rose, and Sidney Seideman, the famous violinist and conductor, climbed up the steps to take his place leading the orchestra. Seideman oversaw several orchestras in Washington, but on a night like this he was expected to be at the Mayflower.

The crowd cheered as he raised his baton, and the band launched into Glenn Miller’s ‘String of Pearls’. The crowd moved into the middle of the dance floor like an ocean wave rippling on to a beach.

I confess that in the excitement I forgot about Alessa for a time.

‘I think we can foxtrot to this,’ Orazio said, taking my hand and leading me out on to the floor. We joined couples in glamorous evening dress, sailors, USO hostesses, and military officers in dress uniforms weighed down with chest hardware, moving about the vast room in time to the music. As it died away, Seideman turned to face the audience. After a few words of welcome, he introduced, to deafening applause, the Incomparable Hildegarde, the most famous supper club entertainer in the world.

She was a blonde hazel-eyed Milwaukee beauty, wearing a slinky sequinned gown and the lipstick and nail color Revlon had named for her. Hildegarde didn’t waste any time. She took a microphone from Seideman with a white-gloved hand, turned, and began to sing her signature tune, ‘Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup’. It was a slow waltz.

Orazio took me into his arms, and we danced with our bodies touching. ‘This is very romantic, no?’ he asked.

‘Yes, it is,’ I said, surprised at the warmth I felt rising in my body from the feel of his arms around me. I thought guiltily of Joe, and then dismissed it. Who wouldn’t feel wonderful in such a place with practically anyone!

As Hildegarde’s voice trailed away, Orazio and I separated and applauded with the rest of the crowd. Through a gap in the crowd I noticed a familiar figure in military dress blues. Colonel Platon Melinsky, my former handler, lounged against the rail of a VIP box. He was holding the hand of an auburn-haired beauty in a flowing dove-gray gown. The beauty was Myrna.

I turned quickly to Orazio. ‘I need to go powder my nose,’ I said. ‘I’ll be right back.’

He didn’t have time to answer before I bolted out of the ballroom, my heart pounding and a roar of blood sounding in my ears. I headed for the nearest ladies’ room, glad I’d worn my sensible black pumps instead of splurging on high heels.

The lavatory was next to the Ladies’ Parlor. I burst through the door with intense relief, glad to find an empty stall, where I sat and waited for my pulse to slow.

I’d been worried about seeing someone who knew me, and now the worst had happened.

I must leave the Mayflower, now, before Melinsky spotted me and wanted to know why I was with Orazio Rossi when I’d been warned away from the Oneto household! What a wasted opportunity! I’d been here an hour and already learned new information about the night of Alessa’s death.

And I’d miss the chance to search her room: a slim chance, to be sure, but a chance nonetheless. Yes, solving the puzzle of Alessa’s death preoccupied me, but it was more important that I look for the name she’d brought back from New York City! The first slow convoy to Casablanca left in just a few days!

I felt myself calm down, and then a thought struck me.

Did Colonel Melinsky know Orazio Rossi? He’d never met him! He’d seen his name in a police report, that’s all!

As my handler, one of his job requirements was to stay away from, first, Alessa, and then the Onetos. That was the definition of an operation involving a cut-out. So if Melinsky saw me with Orazio, he would have no idea who he was! The USO benefit ball was a huge event with thousands of people attending; it was feasible I could be an innocent guest of a friend. I wasn’t under house arrest. I had to stay far enough away from Melinsky, and Myrna, that I didn’t have to introduce them to Rossi. I’d already taken countless risks and told so many lies that what did one more matter?

Relieved that my plan was salvaged, I left the stall to repair my make-up in front of the lavatory’s gilded mirror. This was some bathroom. Marble sinks, marble floors, and marble walls. I’d heard somewhere the fixtures were gold-plated.

I saw a second reflection appear in the mirror. Standing nearby was the Dowager Countess Lucia Oneto.

‘Why, hello,’ she said, ‘Mrs . . .?’ Lucia looked youthful in her dusty pink tulle gown. As Orazio said, she liked to show off her jewels. She wore a long string of fat pearls around her neck, a four-strand wide pearl cuff with a diamond clasp, and diamond and pearl drop earrings.

‘I’m Louise Pearlie,’ I said, reminding her. ‘How nice to see you again, Lucia. What a lovely dress.’

‘I’m so glad you and Orazio could make use of Sebastian’s tickets,’ she said. ‘What a shame to waste them. And Orazio has no friends here, few opportunities to go out socially.’

‘It was kind of him to ask me,’ I said. ‘I’m enjoying myself.’

Lucia drew a gold compact and matching lipstick case from her sequinned evening bag and carefully touched up her face, flicking an invisible bit of something off an eyebrow.

I followed her example, but with a plain powder compact and a drugstore lipstick.

‘Orazio is a nice boy,’ Lucia continued. ‘Not as well born as you might think from his education and manners. His father was in trade. I believe Orazio intended to practice law, until the Depression forced his father out of business.’

‘How sad for him!’

‘Yes. He and Sebastian became great friends at university. I didn’t want Sebastian to go, but his father encouraged him. Parents have so little control over who their children associate with at the universities.’

I didn’t trust myself to respond to that, since I would give my right arm to go to college. Instead I focused on carefully outlining my lips.

‘After my husband died Sebastian took pity on Orazio’s financial predicament and engaged him as his private secretary,’ Lucia continued. ‘To help with managing the estate. I suppose he has done acceptable work. I have no say in estate matters at all. As Dowager Countess I now survive on a pittance.’ She snapped her compact shut and turned to me. ‘That’s a woman’s place in the world, I suppose,’ she said. ‘We have no head for such things. Our purpose is decorative and maternal.’

I had my own ideas about that, but I didn’t say so.

The rest room was next door to the Ladies’ Parlor, so I took a few seconds to peer inside. Compared to the other assembly rooms of the hotel, it was small, say twenty-five feet by thirty feet. It would easily hold several bridge tables and then some. When Lucia had played here the night of Alessa’s death she could have slipped out on the pretext of using the lavatory or getting a drink and had plenty of time to go upstairs to the Oneto apartment. I saw a bank of four elevators just a few steps away from the parlor and the lavatory.

What intrigued me was that Sebastian, Lucia, and Orazio were all within shouting distance of each other and an elevator bank at the Seventeenth Street end of the massive hotel. Well away from the main lobby and the service areas, where more people gathered. Either one of them could have slipped away and gone upstairs and either forced Alessa to take an overdose of laudanum or, if she was in the coffee shop getting a sandwich, doctored her tonic. But why? I still didn’t see that anyone in the Oneto household had a reasonable motive for murder.

And of course, despite Mayflower security, anyone who looked presentable could have entered the hotel, made his or her way to the Oneto apartment, knocked on the door, and been admitted.

I despaired of ever knowing what had happened to Alessa. I wanted to give up and go home.

But then Orazio found me loitering in the vestibule.

‘Come, come,’ he said, ‘you’re missing all the movie stars!’

‘I’m sorry I took so long,’ I said, taking Orazio’s arm. ‘I was chatting with Lucia in the ladies’ room.’

We entered the Ballroom in time to see Hildegarde and Gene Kelley, dressed in a sailor suit, sing ‘For Me and My Gal’, followed by Mary Martin in a USO uniform crooning Cole Porter’s ‘My Heart Belongs to Daddy’.

Thousands packed the Ballroom. I worried less about blowing my cover. It should be easy to avoid anyone I knew in this throng. I noticed Joan Adams with her crowd, jitterbugging away, and all we could do was wave at each other. We couldn’t have made our way through the mass of dancers to make introductions even if we wanted to.

Speaking of jitterbugging, when the orchestra struck up another fast song Orazio and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.

‘This is a good time to eat,’ he said.

‘I agree! I’m starving.’

The Presidential Restaurant, where I’d had dinner on Tuesday with Orazio, hosted the buffet. A vast banquet table occupied the center of the room. It groaned with gleaming silver chafing dishes, platters, candlesticks, vases of flowers, sterling tableware, and china. Bunting and flags concealed most of the dark paneling and patriotic decorations.

We picked up our plates and silverware and progressed down the table, helping ourselves to lobster mousse with Normandy sauce, broiled filets of beef, sliced guinea hen, asparagus, scalloped tomatoes, rissole potatoes, broiled mushrooms, and sautéed soft-shelled crabs.

When I got to the end of the buffet table I noticed Enzo standing there, looking uncomfortable in Mayflower livery. His white-gloved hands hung stiffly at his side.

‘Hullo, Enzo,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Overtime,’ he answered, gesturing over the gleaming tables. ‘Watching the silver.’

‘Lord knows there’s plenty to watch over,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘we will lose a few spoons tonight, but nothing more, I hope.’

By now our plates overflowed.

‘Just think,’ Orazio said as we found two adjacent chairs where we could sit together, ‘in Britain people are eating creamed herring pie and fried bread.’

‘Sounds nasty,’ I said. ‘Do you think it will come to that here?’

‘No,’ Orazio said. ‘America has more resources, but food shortages will get worse. We should enjoy a good meal while we can.’

‘Dessert?’ Orazio asked, after we emptied our plates.

‘I couldn’t possibly,’ I said.

‘Coffee, then?’

‘Please.’

A waiter spirited away our plates before Orazio returned, and I felt gloom settle over me. This evening was so stunning, and Alessa had missed sharing it with Sebastian. Would miss the rest of her life – miss returning to her beloved Sicily and miss having children. What a waste. I was so sure she hadn’t killed herself; why would she deprive herself of her future? Yes, her life as a refugee was challenging and difficult, but Allied forces were poised to take Sicily on the way to Italy; why would she have despaired now?