The shrill, sharp ring of the telephone that Alfred had insisted on having installed in John’s quarters woke John up immediately, although it was several seconds before he realised just what had disturbed his sleep.
Getting out of bed, he hurriedly made his way to the living room, the telephone’s unexpected summons far too urgent for him to waste time switching on any lights.
The minute he picked up the receiver he recognised the voice of Ethel, one of the local exchange’s small team of telephone operators, telling him in relief, ‘Oh, thank heavens you’ve answered, Mr Pride, only they want to speak to you urgent, like, up at Moreton Place.’
John could tell from Ethel’s voice that she had been crying, and his stomach muscles tightened as a presentiment of bad news gripped him.
‘It’s His Lordship’s batman who wants you,’ she told him. ‘I’ll put him through now…’
There were a few faint crackles and then John heard Bates saying emotionally, ‘Is that you, Mr Pride?’
All at once the fog of sleep that that been clogging his mind cleared, leaving in its place an icy cold certainly of fear and dread. Something had happened to Alfred…
‘Yes. It’s John Pride, Bates,’ he confirmed. ‘What’s happened? His Lordship?’
‘Oh Mr John.’ John barely had time to register the old retainer’s use of his name in a fashion that virtually included him as member of the family before Bates’s broken voice continued, ‘The police are here, wanting to ask some questions, and…and Lord Alfred’s…’ John heard him blowing his nose. ‘I’m sorry to bother you, Mr John, but you was the only one we could think of and…None of us can…And…I was just wondering if you would mind coming up to the house?’
‘Of course I will, Bates,’ John assured him. ‘I’ll leave immediately.’
It was only as he pulled on his clothes that John realised he hadn’t even asked Bates what had actually happened.
Twenty minutes later, as he pulled his small Austin to a halt outside Moreton Place, he saw that the forecourt was filled with two police cars plus a large Bentley he didn’t recognise at all.
He had expected Bates to open the door to him, but instead he discovered that the front door was being guarded by a stern-faced and very large policeman, who enquired brusquely, ‘And who might you be, Sir?’
The front door had opened and another, obviously more high-ranking policeman, had stepped out.
‘John Pride,’ John introduced himself. ‘I’m an employee of Lord Alfred’s. Bates, his butler, telephoned me and asked me to come over.’
‘It’s all right, constable,’ the more senior officer announced. ‘Come in, Mr Pride. Sorry about that,’ he apologised as John stepped into the hallway. ‘But I’m sure you understand that in a situation like this the last thing anyone wants is Fleet Street’s press hounds descending on the family. Shocking business,’ he added with a shake of his head. ‘I’m Inspector Philpot, by the way.’
‘I’m sorry, but could you tell me what exactly?’ John began as he shook the hand the Inspector had extended, and then broke off as Bates came hurrying towards him. The older man had plainly been crying and looked somehow smaller and shrunken.
‘His Grace is in the library, Mr John. The doctor’s with him but…’
‘If I could have a minute of your time first, Sir?’ The Inspector asked him quietly, drawing John to one side.
‘It’s a matter of someone having to identify the body, you see, Sir,’ he explained heavily. ‘According to the local doctor, His Grace is in too much of a state of distress to do it, but the staff here told us that you were well acquainted with Lady Polly. And I have to warn you that on account of the severity of the accident…
This couldn’t be happening, John decided. He could not be standing here in Moreton Place listening to this inspector talking about Polly as ‘the body’. And it couldn’t be happening because if it was that meant that Polly, laughing, lively, fun-loving Polly, was dead. And surely that was impossible. She couldn’t be. He had only seen her this morning. His thoughts went round and round in slow disjointed eddies.
‘What…What do you mean?’ he heard himself asking the Inspector hollowly. ‘Lady Polly can’t be dead.’
The Inspector had started to frown. ‘Walters, bring a chair here and be quick about it,’ he ordered. ‘Sit down here, Sir,’ he instructed John when the chair was duly produced. ‘Didn’t anyone explain to you what has happened?’
‘No,’ John told him. ‘That is, Bates…He looked up at the Inspector. ‘I only saw Polly, Lady Polly, that is, this morning and I thought…I’d assumed…I thought it was His Grace who must…’
‘Very distressed is His Grace, Sir,’ the Inspector told John. ‘And quite naturally.’
‘You mean it’s true, then? Polly is dead?’ John asked him numbly.
‘I’m afraid so, Sir.’
‘Motor accident, Sir.’
‘A car accident,’ John echoed.
‘Yes, Sir. Seems like Lady Polly must have been on her way back here when it happened.’
‘Back here. But she was going to Oxford to pick up her fiancé and then they were going to his home,’ John protested, remembering what Polly had told him.
‘Yes, Sir, I believe that was what was planned,’ the Inspector agreed with a solemn expression.
Bates was hurrying towards them. ‘His Grace is asking for Mr John,’ he informed them.
‘Excuse me, Inspector.’
As he hurried to the library John could scarcely take in what he had been told. How could Polly possibly be dead? It couldn’t be true.
Alfred was seated behind his desk but he stood up the moment he saw John, exclaiming with relief, ‘John, my dear chap. Thank you for coming.’
‘It isn’t true, is it?’ John asked him. ‘Polly isn’t…’
Immediately Alfred’s eyes filled with tears, and he bowed his head. ‘Yes. She’s gone. Dead. That bloody roadster. I always did tell her she drove too fast. I…’
‘Steady on, old chap.’ John tried to comfort him, taking hold of his arm and guiding him to one of the chairs by the fire.
‘I’ve told the police I want her brought back here,’ Alfred told him brusquely, lifting his hand to wipe the tears from his face. ‘But they want me to identify the…her first. Damned bureaucracy. Want you to come with me, if you would, John. Can’t face going by myself, don’t you know. Shameful, what! Bloody coward.’
John could feel his heart slamming painfully into his chest wall. He wanted to refuse, but he knew that he couldn’t. Inside his head he could see Polly as she had looked earlier in the day. He bowed his head. ‘You aren’t a coward, Alfred,’ John assured him, his throat raw with pain.
Dawn was paling the sky to the clearest and freshest of perfect blue, the sun just starting to rise on a day filled with the promise of warmth and sunshine, when John and Alfred left the hospital. But not for Polly, John reflected bleakly. There would be no more days of sunshine and warmth for Polly, whose body they had left behind in the cold of the hospital morgue.
She had still been been wearing the dress John had seen her in that morning, her face turned towards them, one cheek upon the pillow, her eyes closed so that she might almost have simply been asleep.
Her neck had been broken by the impact of her car hitting a tree, the doctor had explained.
Alfred had been totally overcome, sobbing brokenly, as he looked at her. John had been too numb to cry at first. He had reached out for her hand, pale and so cold, and he had kissed it. It had only been when he had leaned forward to kiss her cheek, and felt the warmth of his tears on her skin, lending its deathly pallor a false life, that he had realised he too was weeping.
All Jay could talk about was New York, and Hettie was beginning to get caught up in his excitement. She had not said anything to the other girls as yet about Jay’s plans, but they themselves were in high spirits following Jay’s unexpected announcement that, due to a recent surge of renewed interest in Princess Geisha, he intended to continue the run for a further three months from the end of June.
‘I thought you were going to close the show down at the end of June?’ Hettie commented.
‘I was,’ Jay agreed. ‘But like all gambling men I am superstitious,’ he told her ruefully. As he signalled to the wine waiter in the Ritz’s beautiful dining room, he commented, ‘The Lyceum Theatre has been lucky for me, Hettie, and I want that good luck to continue, so I have decided to extend my lease on the theatre so that it will be here waiting for us when we return in triumph from Broadway. And since I am doing so, I may as well extend Princess Geisha’s run, although I do not expect to make as much money from it in the coming three months as I have done in the past five,’ he said with a laugh.
‘Princess Geisha has repaid my initial investment more than a hundredfold,’ he told her expansively. ‘And it, and you, are the best investments I have ever made, Hettie. Your understudy will have to take over your part, of course. She is nowhere near as good in the role as you are, Hettie, and no doubt the audiences will be disappointed not to see you, but that will not concern us, my little love, because we shall be in New York, where we will have a success even bigger than Princess Geisha.’
He broke off and turned towards the waiter, who was standing waiting patiently at a discreet distance, and instructed him, ‘A bottle of Moët champagne, please.’
‘Tonight, Hettie, you and I are celebrating,’ Jay told her, reaching across the table to take hold of her hand and squeeze it tenderly within his own, for all the world as though he were free to make such intimate gestures to her, Hettie noted.
‘You and I have already brought one another good luck, Hettie. It is my belief that in New York we will create more of it.’
The champagne had been poured and was sparkling palely in their glasses.
‘To us, Hettie!’ Jay toasted, lifting his glass. He was holding it in the palm of his hand, caressing it almost, and when Hettie glanced at his glass he laughed softly and told her, ‘Didn’t you know, Hettie, that the champagne glass was originally modelled on a woman’s breast? And, for that reason, whenever a man holds one he is immediately filled with a longing to caress the beautiful breasts of the woman he loves in the same way that he is caressing his glass.’
As he spoke Jay’s gaze dropped from her face to her own breasts, causing Hettie’s heart to pitter patter frantically fast.
She was wearing a new gown that was rather more daring than anything she had ever worn before. Hettie had spotted it on a market stall close to Covent Garden. And the thin, hard-eyed stallholder with the shrill Cockney accent had insisted that it was an exact copy of one of Worth’s newest designs, and that she could make it up exactly to fit Hettie’s slender frame.
All the chorus girls had their own, often jealously guarded secret sources of copied couture clothes, not the discreet ‘little dressmakers’ favoured by the aristocracy but cockneys, like the girl who had sold Hettie her gown.
In order for the new tube-like gowns to fit properly, young women were discarding the now old-fashioned heavy corsetry favoured by previous generations. Beneath the fine silk of her gown, with its beading and diamanté embroidery, Hettie was wearing a pair of new and very risqué silk satin French knickers, and a matching, equally shocking fine camisole top. Now with Jay looking so hotly and deliberately at her, her face burned with a mixture of confusion and excitement. She could feel her nipples tightening and pushing against the delicate fabric, and a seething molten sensation was filling her lower body.
Jay released her hand and leaned across the table to whisper wickedly to her, ‘Hettie, once we are on board the liner and on our way to New York, I promise you that I am not going to be denied the pleasure of seeing your breasts as nature intended me to see them. And I won’t just be looking at them, my little Hettie. I fully intend to hold them and to stroke them and to taste the sweet ambrosia of them, whilst I whisper soft kisses against the little buds of your nipples…’
‘Jay. I…I would have liked to go home to see my family before we leave,’ Hettie told him, deliberately changing the subject. ‘I have written to tell them that I am to visit New York, of course, but…My step-mother is to have another child, and I would just like…’
Hettie had no idea why she felt so awkward and embarrassed not only discussing Ellie’s pregnancy with Jay – especially when in a very few short weeks now she would be sharing the most intimate of physical relationships with him – but also about disclosing to him her feelings of love for her family. Jay never discussed his family with her, and she had never heard him speak about his sons.
‘We are only going to be gone two months and you will be able to visit them when we come back, Hettie,’ Jay pointed out. ‘There is a great deal we need to do together before we leave. Archie has sent two more songs, and I want you to learn them before we go. I have alerted the purser to the fact that we shall be travelling and I have suggested to him that the captain may want to invite you to sing for certain specially chosen guests.’
Hettie stared at him. ‘I can’t do that,’ she protested.
‘Of course you can.’ Jay laughed. ‘They will love you, Hettie, and even before we reach new York they will be wanting to hear you sing. Everything is arranged now for Princess Geisha to open there the week after we arrive. You will, of course, be singing, and I have made sure that the press over there have seen your reviews. The whole of New York will be flocking to hear you, and then, when we open with the new musical next year, they will come back.’
Hettie hoped Jay was right. To her, it seemed an extraordinary thing to do, to take her to New York to sing there for a mere six weeks and then come back, instead of waiting to go to New York until the new musical had been fully written.
‘And remember,’ Jay cautioned her, ‘not a word to anyone else of our plans for the new musical.’
Hettie nodded.
So far as anyone else knew she was simply going to New York to sing for six weeks whilst Jay found a suitable American singer to take over the role.
‘Eddie!’ Hettie smiled in pleasure. ‘I haven’t seen you in ever such a long time.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t do, would you? Eddie answered her sourly. ‘After all, you’re hardly ever here any more, are you?’
Hettie flushed a little at the accusatory tone of his voice.
‘I’ve been having extra singing lessons,’ she explained, her expression brightening as she continued, ‘But it’s good news that the run has been extended, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ Eddie demanded bitterly. ‘It might be for you, Hettie, but I certainly don’t consider the thought of having to endure Ivan’s cruelty for another three months as good news.’
‘Oh, Eddie.’ They had been standing in the shadows but now as someone pushed past them they had moved and a harsh beam of sunlight coming in through one of the skylights suddenly illuminated Eddie’s face for Hettie to see properly. He was unshaven, and his skin looked grey, his face thinner and his eyes bloodshot. Despite the warmth of the summer air, he was shivering and Hettie couldn’t help but see how much his hands shook as he tried to light a cigarette.
Everyone was talking about how much he was drinking and his frequent outbursts of drunken fury, and there was other more hushed gossip as well about his growing use of drugs.
She reached out and touched his arm, and then sucked in her breath in shock as she discovered how thin it felt beneath the sleeve of his shirt. Immediately he pulled away from her and pushed past her.
‘’E’s going to get hisself in trouble if he doesn’t watch it,’ one of the girls commented darkly, whilst Hettie watched him anxiously and then turned to look at Mary who was hurrying down the corridor towards the dressing room. As she pushed open the dressing room door, Hettie saw that she wasn’t wearing her ring.
It was three days now since Polly had been laid to rest, but John still could not really believe that she was dead. A part of him was still expecting the door to open and Polly herself to come hurrying in, bringing with her laughter and excitement.
But she was dead, no matter how little he wanted to accept that fact, and he still had a duty to perform on her behalf, even though it was not the duty she had originally given him.
In his pocket was the money she had left with him. He had telephoned Moreton Place and asked Alfred if he might see him, but now as he left his parked car and approached the familiar door he admitted to himself that he was not looking forward to what lay ahead.
Sir Percival Montford had not visited the flying club since Polly’s death and John had heard a rumour that he had actually left the country. True or not, he was glad that he would not be forced to endure the presence of the other man, because were he to have to do so John was not sure he could trust himself not to take him outside and quite literally beat him to a pulp.
Bates opened the door to his ring. The house was still dressed in mourning, a black ribbon attached to the door and the curtains closed.
Alfred came into the hall to shake John’s hand and show him into the library.
‘I wanted to give this to you,’ John told him abruptly, removing the semi-wrapped money from his pocket and putting it down on Alfred’s desk.
Alfred frowned as he looked at it. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s some money that Lady Polly left with me,’ John told him quietly. He took a deep breath and then continued firmly, ‘She told me that it would not fit into her handbag and she asked me to keep it for her until she returned from seeing Lord Ralph.’
He had practised the lie every day since the funeral, fiercely determined not to break the confidence Polly had given him but equally determined that her money must be returned to Alfred.
‘I cannot for the life of me think what Polly would be doing with so much money,’ Alfred told him unsteadily. ‘But I thank you for returning it to me, John. I spoke with Lord Ralph yesterday,’ he added quietly. ‘The poor chap is in the most dreadful state.’
John bowed his head in silence. Alfred had already told him that Lord Ralph had informed the police that he and Polly had had ‘a tiff’ and that she had announced that, instead of going to visit his mother, she was going to return home.
‘At least now she is at peace, and with Oliver,’ John told him thickly.
Alfred put his hand on John’s shoulder. ‘Yes, that is what I am trying to think as well. I confess to you, John, that I was not convinced this engagement of hers to young Lascelles would have worked. But he, poor fellow, blames himself, and says that if they had not quarrelled…’
John ached to be able to say that if anyone was to carry the blame that it should not be Lord Ralph Lascelles but Sir Percival Montford, because deep down inside himself John felt bitterly sure that the other man’s relentless hounding of Polly had been the cause of her death, if only indirectly.
But for Polly’s own sake he could not say so.
Hettie put down the letter she had just been reading and wiped the tears from her eyes. It was from Ellie and it contained the news of Lady Polly’s tragic death.
‘Her poor young fiancé is heart-broken and poor John is, as you can imagine, most affected by it,’ Ellie had written.
Had John secretly loved Lady Polly? Hettie wondered compassionately as she re-read the letter and then folded it carefully and put it back in her pocket, hearing the girls coming up the stairs after their morning’s rehearsal.
‘Fancy coming out with us for a bite of lunch, ’Ettie?’ Jenny asked, adding before Hettie could answer, ‘’Ere, you’ll never guess as what ’as happened, will she girls?’
‘What?’ Hettie asked her, her mind still on John, and more to humour Jenny than because she really wanted to know.
‘It’s Eddie,’ Jenny told her. ‘Only gone as mad as a hatter he has and…’
‘’Ere, Jenny, you don’t half go round the ’ouses to tell a tale,’ Aggie interrupted her. ‘Let me tell her what’s happened…There were a real to-do with Eddie and Ivan this morning, ’Ettie, and Jay come down and told Eddie he ’ad to collect his things and go.’
‘Yes, and that’s not all,’ Jenny butted in excitedly. ‘Eddie only went and ’ad another screaming fit with Ivan, and then he starts throwing pots of paint all over one of the sets. Like a madman he were, weren’t he, Jess?’
‘Yes,’ her twin agreed eagerly. ‘And then he threw one at at Ivan, red paint and all, and it were dripping all over him and you know what a dandy he is! Eddie were screaming all sorts of stuff and crying like he were a girl, one minute telling Ivan as how he hated him, and wanted to kill him, and the next saying as ’ow he loved him and couldn’t live wi’out him.’
Hettie went cold as she listened to the three of them describing what had happened, and how Jay had been sent for again but how Eddie had fled the theatre before Jay could have him physically ejected.
Hettie knew Jay well enough now to know how furious he would be.
‘Hettie, where are you going?’ one of the girls called out as Hettie suddenly started hurrying towards the door.
‘I’m going to see Eddie,’ she told them.
Since it was a Saturday afternoon the city was busy, the streets filled with people, and it seemed to Hettie that in every street she turned down she was having to fight her way against the flow of people going the other way. Piccadilly Circus was indeed a circus today – a circus of trams disgorging their passengers whilst others waited to get on.
Finally Hettie managed to make her way through the tightly packed mass of people. As she bypassed the theatre she saw that a queue was already beginning to form for the matinée performance, for which she would not be needed since her understudy was now doing the afternoon performances – a fact which had caused some sideways looks to be cast in her direction, as well as several comments about ‘some people getting special treatment’.
She half hesitated outside the public house she knew to be one of Eddie’s favourite haunts, but as a woman on her own she could hardly enter the main bar area, and she doubted that she would find Eddie in one of the small snugs set aside for women to use. Besides, her instincts were telling her that, with Eddie in the distressed state the girls had so graphically described, he would be turned away from any public house and was more likely to have gone to ground at his lodgings.
As she made her way through the warren of interlinked and increasingly poor streets, the crowds thinned out until there was only the odd solitary beggar standing on a street corner. As always Hettie stopped to give what she could, before hurrying on.
There was no need for her to knock on the heavy door to the lodging house since it was already open, but she did have to squeeze her way past a heavily made-up and extremely odd-looking woman, who was standing in the doorway smoking, her mannerisms more those of a man than a woman, Hettie decided, and her appearance that of a pantomime dame. But despite her observations it still shocked her to hear a passer-by call out, ‘Wotcha, Frank,’ as he walked past.
The stairway and landing were empty and the door to Eddie’s room closed. Hettie knocked firmly on it and waited anxiously. Even if Eddie were here and opened the door for her, she had no idea what she was going to say to him or indeed what she could do to help him.
She was just about to knock a second time when she heard him call out, ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me, Hettie, Eddie,’ she answered. ‘Please let me in…’
She held her breath as she heard sounds of movement, bedsprings squeaking and then the soft shuffle of feet followed by the click of the key turning in the lock.
She turned the door handle herself without waiting for Eddie to open the door for her and hurried inside the room.
‘I take it that you’ve heard what’s happened,’ Eddie drawled as he stood back to let her in.
Hettie nodded. He was calmer than she had expected, and actually smiling, even if it was an odd, vacuous sort of smile. ‘Are you all right, Eddie?’ she asked him anxiously.
He seemed to be having trouble focusing on her, Hettie realised as he frowned and then blinked before telling her slowly, ‘Not yet, but I am going to be soon…Very soon now, Hettie. You shouldn’t have come here.’
‘I was worried about you,’ Hettie told him. ‘You know that you won’t be able to come back, don’t you, Eddie? I’ll talk to Jay but…’
‘It’s too late,’ He told her. ‘In fact, it’s too late now for anything, Hettie.’ He looked at her and started to laugh. ‘Do you know, when you knocked I actually thought it might be him…I thought that somehow he might have guessed and that he would come to be with me out of remorse, if not love. Perhaps he will still come.’
He walked away from Hettie and went and sat on the bed. ‘I want him to come, Hettie. I want him to be here with me when it happens. I want him to see what he has done to me. I want him to see me take that last breath and to feel my body grow cold beneath his touch. I want him to beg me not to die, to plead with me to live. To weep and tear at his clothes, to…’
A horrible, unthinkable fear had taken hold of Hettie. ‘What do you mean your last breath?’ she demanded urgently.
Eddie turned to look at her and gave her a shockingly sweet smile. ‘I mean that I have taken steps to bring my life to an end, Hettie. It won’t be long, I don’t think. Already I can feel how my heart is slowing…Don’t cry, Hettie.’
‘Eddie, what have you done? Let me go and find a doctor…’
‘It’s too late,’ he told her simply. ‘No doctor can reverse what I have put in train, Hettie. The silent mercy of death is already in my veins.’
He was speaking and moving so slowly that Hettie felt her own anguished fear increase. She looked blankly at him, not understanding what he meant.
‘I have taken the ultimate panacea for my pains, Hettie, and am going to join the opium eaters amongst the heavenly fields of poppies,’ he told her drowsily. ‘Opium is such a Machiavellian drug – take just a little and one merely enters paradise temporarily, but once paradise has been entered one longs constantly to return. Now I have ensured that this time I shall stay there for ever…You will not mind if I lie down, will you, Hettie? Only…’ He stopped speaking as they both heard footsteps on the landing outside his room.
Immediately his thin face flushed and a look burned in his eyes that Hettie could hardly bear to see.
‘You must go, that will be him, my beloved Ivan. I knew he would come back to me. I knew he would not leave me to die alone! Open the door for him, Hettie…’
Hettie had heard the footsteps continuing down the landing but she still got up and opened the door.
‘Ivan!’ Eddie called out feebly.
‘There is no one there, Eddie,’ Hettie told him.
‘There must be. He must be there, Hettie…He must be! Ivan…Ivan!’ Eddie was struggling to sit up but his strength was fading so rapidly that watching him was like watching water run from a leaking vessel, Hettie acknowledged in despair.
She closed the door and hurried back to the bed but, by the time she got there, Eddie had slipped into unconsciousness.
Cold and sweating at the same time, Hettie didn’t know what to do. Her instinct was to run and find a doctor but some deeper awareness told her that there would be no point.
She pulled up a chair and sat down beside the bed, reaching for one of Eddie’s cold hands and holding it within her own. As though her touch disturbed him, he shuddered violently and called out something in a language she could not understand, his whole body arching off the bed and then dropping back on to it so quickly that she didn’t even have time to register her own horror.
This time he lay there rigidly, breathing harshly whilst Hettie trembled with shocked anxiety. She wanted to leave him and find someone to help but she was afraid that he might die whilst she was gone and she didn’t want to leave him to die alone. Instead she stayed where she was, praying that someone would walk past the door and that she would be able to call out to them.
But the landing remained silent, and the minutes became hours, and Eddie’s breathing had become such a frail movement of his chest that several times Hettie had to rub her tired eyes to see it.
The afternoon was fading into evening when suddenly Eddie opened his eyes and called out wonderingly in the voice of a young child, ‘Mama!’ whilst he gripped Hettie’s hand.
And then, shockingly, his breathing changed and became a raw gasp that turned to a hideous rattle followed by complete silence.
Hettie could hear men’s voices outside the door. Numbly she sat staring into Eddie’s still face, willing him to breathe even though she knew that he would not.
Someone was knocking on the door. Very gently she released Eddie’s hold on her hand and stood up, leaning over him to gently kiss his forehead before going to open the door.
Two men she didn’t recognise were standing there, both of them so femininely handsome that she knew at once what they were.
‘I think Eddie is dead,’ she told them, and then burst into tears.
It was gone ten o’clock and the streets were dark, but Hettie had refused to accept an escort back to her own lodgings. The doctor who had been sent for had confirmed Eddie’s death and then asked her so many questions that her head began to ache. She had been careful, though, not to say anything to him of Eddie’s admission to her that he had taken his own life. It was against both the law of the land and the law of the church for anyone to commit suicide, and so Hettie had been as circumspect as she could be, saying only that she had called to see Eddie because he was a friend and she knew he had been poorly.
Now as she stumbled into Piccadilly Circus she realised that she was trembling from head to foot. Suddenly she longed for Jay and the comfort of his presence. The comfort of his arms. On impulse, she found a hackney carriage and instructed the driver to take her to the Ritz, vaguely aware of the look he gave her and the fact that she was not dressed either for the evening or such an elegant venue.
Guessing that Jay would be in his suite, since he had told her the previous evening that he had some work to catch up on, she used the side entrance, hurrying passed the doorman on duty and summoning the lift.
The corridor leading to Jay’s suite was empty, but as Hettie hurried towards the suite door, another door suddenly opened and Harvey stepped out into the corridor in front of her. Immediately Hettie froze.
‘Well, well, if it isn’t Jay’s little song bird. And where might you be going, my pretty? he asked mock jovially as he stood in front of her, deliberately blocking her way.
‘I’m going to see Jay,’ Hettie told him, making to step past him, but as she did so, to her shock he took hold of her, laughing down into her shocked face as she demanded to be set free.
‘What for? Jay isn’t here. He’s gone off to see one of his other love birds, so why don’t you and me enjoy ourselves instead, eh?’
As he spoke he was pushing her into the hallway to his suite and back up against the wall, pinning her there with the weight of his body whilst he groped her breasts with his free hand, pinching at her nipples and grinning coarsely as he watched her impotent struggles to break free of him.
‘Let me go, let me go.’ Hettie wept as she struggled against his constraining hand.
A familiar suffocating sense of fear and loathing was spreading weakeningly through her as she remembered Mr Buchanan.
She could smell the acrid, sickeningly musky odour of Harvey’s sweat, his breath a heavy rasp in her ear and the grip of his hand on her breast painful as well as terrifying.
‘You can protest all you want, my little dove, but soon you will be singing a different song, and I promise you I shall make you sing it every bit as sweetly as Dalhousie.’ Harvey was breathing thickly in her ear. ‘Come on, stop pretending you aren’t eager for me. Women like you are always eager, and I promise you I won’t be ungenerous. These pretty ears of yours will look even prettier wearing a pair of diamond earrings.’
His hand was tearing at her bodice and suddenly the fabric gave way and his hard biting fingers were grabbing painfully at her breast, squeezing and kneading her tender flesh, his mouth a wet red gash of lust in the bloated flesh of his face.
‘No…’ Hettie moaned. ‘No…’
‘What the devil?’
‘Jay!’
Hettie sobbed weakly in relief as she was suddenly released, her trembling fingers pulling at the torn fabric of her bodice as she ran to Jay’s side.
‘Don’t listen to her, Jay. It was her idea.’ Harvey was gabbling wildly. ‘She told me she knew you weren’t here and…’
Without a word Jay took hold of Hettie and put her to one side and then with a speed that made her blink he grabbed hold of Harvey by the fabric of his shirt and slammed him back against the wall in much the same way as Harvey had done her. Then, whilst Harvey was still standing there, Jay hit him with his bunched fist so hard that Harvey dropped to the floor.
Horrified, Hettie looked at him. There was a thin trickle of blood oozing out of his mouth.
‘Jay, you’ve killed him,’ she whispered.
‘No I haven’t. Are you all right?’
Hettie nodded. ‘Yes, but I wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t saved me…’ She was shivering and tears were rolling slowly down her face.
‘Come on,’ Jay encouraged her, guiding her towards his own suite. ‘What exactly are you doing here, Hettie? You knew that I was going to be busy. You weren’t trying to check up on me by any chance, were you?’ he asked her dryly.
As he opened the suite door for her and guided her inside, Hettie shook her head and told him emotionally, ‘No, of course not.’
‘Then what?’
‘Jay, I had to see you. The most dreadful thing has happened…’
‘What dreadful thing?’ He was frowning now.
‘Eddie is dead.’
‘What?’ As he closed the door Hettie saw how Jay’s expression had changed and hardened. ‘How do you know about this, Hettie? Who told you?’
He was guiding her into the salon. Hettie stopped him and turned to him, telling him, ‘No one told me, Jay. I was there with him. I’d heard about…about what had happened at the theatre with…with the scenery, and how you’d dismissed him, and I…I decided to go and see him. I knew where he was staying because, well, anyway, when I got there he let me in and then he told me…’ She stopped and gulped. ‘He told me that he was going to die and that he taken something…opium. Oh Jay.’
Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks as she relived those terrible moments. ‘He thought I was Ivan. He wanted me to be and he really believed that Ivan would come to him.’
She started to sob, but instead of comforting her Jay ordered her sharply, ‘Stop that, Hettie. Damnation, what the hell were you thinking of, going round there in the first place? A scandal like this could destroy everything I’m working for and us with it. Who else have you spoken to about this?’
‘No one,’ Hettie told him. ‘Some of Eddie’s friends came and they got a doctor.’
‘And he saw you, this doctor?’
‘I said that I was a friend of Eddie’s.’
‘Did you tell him anything about what had happened at the theatre?’ Jay demanded sharply.
‘No. But everyone knows what happened there, Jay. All the girls were talking about it.’
‘They might have been then, but my guess is they’ll keep their mouths closed now they know he’s dead. It won’t pay any of us to have a scandal on our hands. It’s a pity the damned fool didn’t wait until we’d left for New York,’ Jay remarked with a brutal lack of compassion that jarred Hettie.
She had come to Jay expecting to find comfort and reassurance. Instead she had almost been raped by Harvey and now here was Jay himself talking about Eddie so callously that Hettie could hardly believe this was the same man who had whispered such tender words of love to her.
‘Has he any family, do you know?’ Jay asked Hettie curtly.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘But he told me that they had disowned him.’
‘They’re not likely to want any awkward questions being asked, then. Thank the Lord for that. If I had my way, he and all his kind would be…’
‘Jay, please don’t,’ Hettie begged him.
But Jay didn’t seem to have heard her as he paced the floor and then announced, ‘You’d better go back to your lodgings. No doubt the authorities will be informing me of his death and it wouldn’t look good if they found you here. Especially since you were with him when he died.’