Phil dined alone on a delectable cassoulet and then stretched out on the sofa, sipping an excellent cognac, something she would never have thought to do when she lived in England, where no one dared to put their feet on sofas. That ignominy was reserved for the chaise in her ladyship’s boudoir.
She was startled out of this sleepy reverie by the telephone.
Odd; it was after midnight. Who would be calling her now?
Preswick appeared in the doorway. “Mrs. Reynolds on the telephone, my lady.”
“Ah.” Bev was probably bored and wanted to talk.
“I won’t take no for an answer,” Bev said before Phil had even finished saying hello. “Marty just called. She has news. So get dressed. We’re going to the Cavalier Club downtown. Very expensive, very exclusive, and very naughty. I’ll pick you up in an hour.”
Marty had news. About Tommy Green’s murder? About why Detective Sergeant Atkins had been at the Times building? All feelings of fatigue evaporated.
“Preswick, send Lily to me. I’m going out after all.”
True to her word, Bev arrived at the Plaza entrance exactly an hour later. She was in high spirits, wrapped in what looked like a new fur coat mostly hidden by a driving rug, which rather overshadowed Phil’s fur-trimmed black velvet cape.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Phil?” Bev said as they drove away. “To be out and about like the old days, when I didn’t give a fig about what society thought.”
“Do you now?”
Bev laughed. “Not in the least. But I will try a little for dear old dad’s sake. Fortunately, the Elizabeth Abernathys of town will be in bed, and tonight we can enjoy ourselves as we used to do.”
They drove downtown, and Phil was a little surprised to see Union Square. When they passed the Theatre Unique, its façade lit up in white lights, Phil couldn’t prevent a shudder.
At the next corner they turned right and came to a stop halfway down the block. The Cavalier Club was a respectable-looking brownstone with an electric sign above the door. It was doing a lively business as couples bustled in and out of the wide double doors. Across the street a few lights still burned in the upper stories of apartment buildings, but the street-level stores were dark. One building was boarded over completely, its charred bricks illuminated like black flames from the lights of the after-hours club.
A fire? Phil couldn’t prevent her mind from wondering if it had been an accident or the work of the Black Hand.
Bev barely waited for her driver to open the door before she jumped out of the Packard and bustled Phil inside.
They retired immediately to the ladies’ lounge to divest themselves of their outerwear and repair any damage to their toilette that a drive downtown might have caused.
And Phil got her first good look at Bev’s fur coat.
“Sable?” she asked.
“Yes. Isn’t it divine?” Bev slipped the coat into the waiting hands of a uniformed attendant. “I had them send the bill to my father. That should give him a happy Christmas.”
“It will certainly be a surprise,” Phil said. “Shall we go find Marty?”
Marty was sitting at a table across the crowded dance floor from a horseshoe-shaped bar that was packed three deep. She looked very different than she had at lunch in her gored skirt and white tailored blouse. Tonight she was wearing a silver chemise made of one of the new metallic fabrics. Her hair was lifted and curled and kept in place by a bandeau of diamantés with a peacock feather that curled down past her ear.
Her notebook and pencil were tucked discreetly—but within easy reach—beneath a gold chain-mail evening purse that sat on the table to her right.
“Oh, how I’ve missed this,” Bev exclaimed over the band as she sat in one of the four upholstered chairs at the table.
Marty blew smoke from her cigarette into an already smoky room. She nodded to Phil to sit on her other side, which gave all three of them a view of the room and the clientele.
“A crush tonight,” Marty said, scanning the crowd and looking bored.
If she had news she was certainly not in any hurry to divulge it.
“Are you covering the club tonight?” Phil asked.
Marty blew out another long exhale of smoke. “In a manner of speaking. I plan to do a column on the nightlife of New Yorkers, if I can convince Carr that it isn’t too lowbrow.”
“He thinks it might not be ‘fit to print’?” Phil quipped, quoting from the Times’s banner slogan.
“Sometimes I think I should be working for Hearst,” Marty said. “Now there’s a man who knows how to report a good scandal.”
“Plus it would make your parents apoplectic,” Bev added.
“That, too.” Marty stubbed out her cigarette.
They ordered drinks, and as soon as the waiter walked away, Bev jumped up.
“Oh, there are some old friends of mine. I haven’t seen them in donkey’s years. I must say hello. Don’t drink my cocktail while I’m gone.” She rushed off across the room.
“If ever there was someone not made for mourning, it’s Bev,” Marty said.
“True,” agreed Phil. “So Bev said you have news. Are you following a lead?”
“Actually, I’m following him.” She turned her head and Phil followed her gaze across the room.
“Is that—?”
“Sydney Lord.”
“Is this your news?”
“No, but I was covering the Buxton fête tonight. And Sydney was there. He sees himself as a player, but he’s never even had a beat, just a desk, behind a partition. He’s a news editor, one of several, I might add, under Carr, but he wouldn’t recognize a lead if it bit him. He’s invited everywhere, not to report, but to enjoy himself at other people’s expense. I don’t know how he manages to stay on every hostess’s guest list.”
“Probably because he’s good-looking, charming—”
“And knows it and is willing to use it,” Marty finished.
“Has he tried to use it on you, perhaps?”
Marty laughed. “Tried and failed. And consequently I get passed over for all the big stories in favor of one of his male friends in the newsroom.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I haven’t given up. He’ll have to accept me as an equal eventually.”
Phil wondered. Men like Sydney rarely did. They rarely had to.
“But in the meantime, I won’t take his officious attitude lying down. Where, in case you’re wondering, he would like me to be. He’s on to something. I overheard him tell someone to meet him here tonight. He sounded agitated. That alone was enough to pique my interest. He doesn’t exert himself in anything but polo and … I can’t think of anything else. Certainly not news gathering. Damn, he’s seen us.”
“We’re not exactly hiding.”
“Exactly,” Marty said with an arch look, and lifted her chin in Sydney’s direction, more of an acknowledgment than an invitation.
Sydney took it as an invitation, and he sauntered toward their table.
“I didn’t know you were planning to be here tonight, Marty, we could have shared a taxi. Lady Dunbridge, a pleasure.” He placed his drink on the table and, without waiting for an invitation, he sat down and pulled out a package of cigarettes.
“Bev Reynolds invited us,” Marty lied. “She’s over there somewhere.”
“Ah,” Sydney said, and patted his pockets for a light. Marty didn’t offer hers.
Finally he came up with a box of matches, lit his cigarette, and tossed the matchbox on the table next to the cigarettes.
Phil stared at the matchbox. Black with a red rose on top.
“My, what a pretty box of matches,” Phil said.
“Huh? Oh, couldn’t find my lighter.”
“Very distinctive,” Phil added.
Sydney put them back in his pocket. “Not even sure how they ended up in my pocket. These things get passed around, you know.”
Phil let it drop; she didn’t want to appear too obvious and she didn’t want to sidetrack Marty, who had an agenda.
“So what brings you here tonight?” Marty asked.
“Me?” Sydney shrugged. “Thought I might run into some fellows for a nightcap. You have to admit, the Buxtons’ do was a dreadful bore.”
“You know, Sydney, you’re at every affair. You should be the one writing about them.”
Sydney laughed and finished his drink.
Bev returned. “Oh hello, Sydney.” She sat down.
“I’ve got to powder my nose,” Marty said, and left the table.
Sydney watched her go, shook his head. “She’ll come around eventually. If you ladies will excuse me?” He scooped up his cigarettes and took himself off.
“I doubt it,” Bev said as soon as he was out of earshot.
“She doesn’t seem to like him.”
“A bit of a history there. But it was a long time ago. Back when we were girls.”
“You old thing,” Phil said just as Marty slipped into her chair.
“I thought he’d never leave.”
“You had news?” Phil reminded her, just as the waiter returned with their drinks. Really, at this rate it would be morning before Phil learned anything. Except Sydney Lord had the same matchbox as Tommy Green—and probably half the men in the club, though the Cavalier Club’s boxes were red and embossed with a gold overlapping CC. There had been a bowl of them at the entrance.
Marty’s attention had drifted away from the table.
Was she making Phil work for it? Delaying was a useful tactic in love, war, and sometimes investigation. It made the suspect nervous and more likely to spill the truth.
But Phil was not a suspect and she had no intention of playing that game. She leaned closer to be heard without shouting. “So why am I here, in addition to adding to my knowledge of Manhattan nightlife?”
“I found out what your police detective was after.”
“Oh?” Phil didn’t bother to correct her about whose policeman John Atkins really was.
“Charlie Miller and Carr asked him to come. It seems we have a leak in the newsroom.”
So not because they feared Tommy Green was dead.
“Someone who is giving out information about what your reporters are investigating? To other newspapers? So they can get the—”
“So they can scoop us,” Marty supplied for her. She tapped the rim of her glass with a manicured nail. “We do all the work, they get fed the results and come out with the headline before we do. And someone at our end gets a nice payoff. The worst of underhanded journalism.”
Phil reached for her glass, put it down. She’d had wine with dinner, and a cognac. She needed to stay clearheaded. Marty was a clever woman, and determined. Phil hadn’t been invited to the club for a ladies’ night out on the town.
How much had Bev told Marty about her? She looked over to her friend, who seemed to be totally absorbed in the music, and probably longing to dance.
“Important stories have been killed lately because some other paper published them first. We don’t just cover accidents and events and society teas. The Times does in-depth reporting. We should do more of it, but the times are slow to change at the Times.” She shrugged.
“Do you think this snitch might be involved with why Tommy Green was—is late for his deadline? Did he ever show up?”
“No. Evidently Carr was worried enough to have Harriet talk to the detective. I don’t think it went very well. Sydney managed to worm his way into the meeting. Word is she was barely there five minutes before she came out in tears and spent the rest of the day crying over her typewriter. Carr told her to take the rest of the day off.”
Marty raised her eyebrows, inviting comment.
“Why on earth?” asked Phil. She already knew the answer, but she bet Marty didn’t. Atkins must not have informed them of Tommy’s murder. Then again, perhaps he didn’t know of it, either.
“Who knows?”
The ball was back in Phil’s court.
Phil could hold her own against almost any gossip in England. And her success in New York depended on her complete and unswerving discretion. She settled in to play this game of wills.
“Is he really worried?” Phil asked. He certainly should be; his reporter was dead. But Phil wasn’t going to tell Marty that. She might, however, have to have a little talk with John Atkins soon.
“Of course he is. We all are.” Marty leaned closer. “It isn’t like Tommy to be this late. At least he would have checked in. I’m afraid he might have come to some harm.”
And here it was.
“Bev says that you’re good friends with Detective Sergeant Atkins. I thought perhaps you might…” Marty trailed off. Took a sip of her cocktail. Smiled up at Phil, a coy, deadly expression that reminded Phil to never trust her. “You know, I can get you in to see the New Year’s Eve ball drop up close.” She raised an inviting eyebrow. “It will be the biggest event of the holidays.”
Phil burst into spontaneous laughter. “Is that a bribe? I’m afraid Bev was overly enthusiastic about her claims on Detective Sergeant Atkins. I think we both annoy him and it’s only his good manners that prevent him from giving us the cut direct.”
She was actually dying to ask Atkins what he knew. But he would not be happy to see her involved in another one of his—evidently as yet unknown to him—cases. He would never believe her when she told him she’d just happened to have taken a whim to see the nickelodeon and sat down next to a dead man.
She’d love to dump the whole absurd situation in his lap and concentrate on the holidays. But without directions from the now missing—presumed to be the most annoying—specter in the night, she didn’t feel comfortable telling the detective sergeant more than what was absolutely necessary.
“You know something, don’t you?” Marty prodded.
“I know that Detective Sergeant Atkins is a tenacious man. That if Mr. Miller or Mr. Van Anda want him to find this snitch, or your missing reporter for that matter, he will.”
“You certainly respect him, but no one will talk to him. Most of the police are in the pockets of some politician or other. Atkins will eventually sell out, or already has and is just putting on a good front. Either way, no one will grass out a colleague. You never know when it might come back to slit your throat.”
Phil caught her breath.
Even Bev turned momentarily from the music and frowned at Marty. “Not John Atkins.”
Phil didn’t comment, merely studied Marty’s face.
“Do I shock you?”
“Not really,” Phil said. “I was just thinking about what a lovely throat the detective sergeant has.”
“He does,” Bev said, and sighed.
Marty laughed. “I noticed.” Mentioning a handsome man would send Bev off on any tangent Phil desired, but Marty was more single-minded than her school chum. “But I’m more interested in what he knows.”
“What are they saying in the newsroom?”
“Half are saying that Tommy just drank himself into a celebratory stupor and forgot to turn in his copy. Others think whatever he was working on led him into trouble.” Marty shook her head. “There’s a lottery on whether he gets fired or not. It’s got fifty dollars in it already.”
Well, nobody would win that lottery, since Phil didn’t think it was possible to fire a dead man. Why hadn’t someone contacted them? She had been certain—well, almost certain—that Atkins had been on his way to inform the Times editors that the reporter’s body had been delivered to the morgue.
But evidently not.
“So now, you.” Marty leaned forward on her elbows. “What do you know about all this?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Do you really think I believe you suddenly developed an interest in publishing at the charity-ball meeting yesterday?”
“Well, actually, yes, I did. Plus Bev talks so much about you and Roz, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Get to know you and have a private tour to the paper. But perhaps on a less tumultuous day.”
“Lady Dunbridge, Phil, I’m not stupid. I saw how you looked at Harry when she stepped out of the elevator.”
Phil tilted her head, trying to remember what her reaction had been.
“It was shock. And I wonder why.”
“Well, perhaps because I had until that moment assumed Harry was a man. It took me a couple of seconds to readjust my expectations. That’s all.”
Marty lit a cigarette and watched Phil through a haze of smoke. “I don’t trust you, Phil. If there’s a story here, I want to be first at the trough. Get me out of society news.”
“I have no desire to prevent you from doing that.”
“Just as long as we understand each other.”
Phil gave her a brief nod of agreement. “Now tell me, just what do you think the big story is?”
“Not a clue. But I’ll bet you money Harry might. She typed all his notes. Tommy never really got past using two fingers.”
“Then you should ask her.”
“She’d never talk to me, too afraid I’ll try to scoop her. Not that she’ll ever have a story to scoop. The poor girl just doesn’t have what it takes to make it in journalism.”
“Moxie?” Phil said at her driest.
Marty laughed. “Money. Do you think I live on what the paper pays me? Harriet lives in a boardinghouse with the other typewriter girls where the closest telephone is downstairs and always in use. Good way to miss a story.”
Marty’s eyes drifted back across the room. She seemed almost as interested in watching the crowd as she was in getting Phil to help her.
“At last,” she said with a sudden look of satisfaction. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
Phil and Bev looked toward the entrance, where two men had just entered.
“It’s Jarvis Chandler,” Bev said. “But I don’t see Roz anywhere.”
“That’s because she isn’t here. But look who is.”
Bev craned her neck to see. It wasn’t really necessary. The man with Mr. Chandler was well over six feet, big-boned, and barrel-chested.
“Oh, saints preserve us,” Bev said primly. “No one with that much money should wear a toupee that bad. Does he do it on purpose?”
“Who is he?” Phil asked.
“Imogen Trout’s husband,” Bev said. “The man with his fingers in every pot, especially if the pot belongs to beautiful women or rich men. Samuel Trout.”
Phil stared at her friend. “I guess you don’t care for him, Bev?”
“Reggie had a few dealings with him. Could have lost a fortune but pulled out just in the nick of time.”
“He’s also bosom buddies with Roz’s husband,” Marty added. “We’ve been trying to get dirt on him for years.”
The two men stopped briefly to speak to some acquaintances, then continued to the back of the room and through another door.
“Dare I ask what goes on back there?” asked Phil.
“At your peril. This is a favorite haunt of Tammany politicians. They sit at their offices discussing business, then come to the Cavalier Club, where the real deals are made in the back rooms. And if they’re so inclined, they can finish up the evening with a trip to Sally Toscana’s. It’s right around the corner.”
“Which I gather is a house of…”
“A high-class brothel. A favorite of our civic leaders. I’ve heard there’s an underground passage between the two buildings, in case of inclement weather. Or a police raid.”
“Were you expecting them?”
“I didn’t know whom to expect, but I’m not surprised.”
And suddenly Phil wondered if Marty might be subsidizing her own journalistic career with a spot of blackmail.
Moments later, Sydney Lord, who had been standing at the bar with a group of friends, quietly slipped away, wove through knots of patrons, and followed Jarvis and Samuel Trout through the back door.
“What is he doing?” Marty said. “So help me if he’s onto something. He’s already beaten me out of one story, I’ll be damned if he does it again.”
She looked at Phil, and Phil recognized that glint of anticipation she often felt herself at the beginning of a case. “Let’s just take a look, shall we?” Marty stood and, without waiting for Phil or Bev, started across the floor.
After only a second’s hesitation, they followed.
They were stopped at the closed door by a large man in a black uniform.
“Gents only,” he said.
Marty looked like she might argue, but Phil had no intention of calling attention to herself.
“Sorry, we were looking for the ladies’.”
“That way.” He pointed across the room, and Phil dragged Marty away.
“What did you do that for?”
“Because the direct route is not always the best route,” Phil said. She had no intention of causing a scene tonight.
“You have a better idea?” Bev asked.
“Actually, I’m going home to bed. It’s been a long day.”
Phil didn’t think she could get much more information out of Marty. First thing tomorrow, she’d figure out a way to talk to Harriet Wells. Then she would lay it in the lap of John Atkins, and she and Lily and Preswick would go out to buy a Christmas tree.
“Let me know how it turns out.” Phil collected her coat from the cloakroom and asked the doorman to summon her a taxi.
A remarkably short time later, a man in gray livery stepped into the entrance hall. “Lady Dunbridge?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He bowed and ushered her outside.
She stepped out on the street to see not a taxi but a large enclosed limousine.
Phil hesitated, wondering if she was about to be kidnapped. The driver opened the door to the back, and an unmistakable aroma of that special tobacco wafted out.
Well, at last, she thought, and stepped into the limousine.
He was sitting at the far side, a wide-brimmed fedora pulled low so that she couldn’t see his eyes. The rest of him was concealed by dark trousers and an even darker jacket.
She turned toward him as the auto pulled away from the curb, and her patience broke. “Where on earth have you been? What happened at the Theatre Unique? What did you do with the mistletoe man? Was that even you?”
“Chicago. You nag just like a wife.”
Momentarily nonplused, she finally managed, “Do you have a wife?”
“Of course not. What would I do with one?”
Phil had a couple of ideas, but then men never were as attentive and creative toward their wives as they were to their mistresses.
“I wouldn’t know. But things have been happening here and I had no way of contacting you or anyone else who might be involved. Why didn’t you send me instructions? Especially if you’re just going to lurk in the shadows and not tell me what’s going on?”
She sucked in a breath. “When I sat down and realized the man was dead, I thought it was you. Do you know how that made me feel?”
“No, tell me.”
“Ugh.”
He laughed, then turned and looked her straight in the eye. At least he seemed to, though the brim of his hat covered most of his face. “It’s something we all face at one time or another, and if you stick with it, so will you.”
Deflated, she asked, “So why was I there?”
“A reporter had information about a project I’m interested in. We were to meet, but I was, um, unavailable. It was decided that you would do in a pinch.”
“In a pinch? Why, you low-down…” She turned on him, fists raised.
He grabbed her by her wrists. “Your Americanisms are charming, but would you really hit a defenseless man?”
“You are never defenseless. A machete couldn’t get past your attitude.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be life-threatening. And you would have done admirably except for the assassin.”
“Assassin?”
“Killer, if you will. It should have been a simple pass-off. Safe. Obviously a miscalculation on our part.”
“Which brings us to who is ‘our’? Are we even working on the same side?”
His slow smile made her mind and other parts of her wander into dangerous territory.
“Do you really have any doubt?”
She did, but so far he hadn’t proven her fears.
“I’d rather be useful than safe.”
Another of those smiles, which even the disguise he was no doubt wearing couldn’t mute.
She looked him in the eye, or where his eyes would be if the brim of the hat wasn’t hiding them. “Do you find that amusing?”
She longed to snatched the hat from his head. Make him understand that she was risking everything: her reputation, her livelihood, her future—but of course he understood already. Had understood from the beginning, even before she had.
“I find you fascinating.”
She felt herself leaning toward him—she pulled back. “Nonetheless, this is a very inefficient way to do business.”
“Perhaps, but of necessity at the moment.”
“I didn’t get home to see your note until it was too late to make the rendezvous on time. I might have saved the man’s life if I had.”
“Or gotten yourself killed along with him.”
“I did think of that, too. So what was he going to pass on?”
“We don’t know what he had. Either it died with him, it was stolen off him by the murderer, or it’s locked up safe someplace.”
“Someone got me out the back door of the theater. If it wasn’t you, who was it?”
“We had a secondary man for backup. Obviously a total fiasco. Though he managed to get you away. That was something. Did you find anything?”
“I learned he was covering the Black Hand, but I learned that later,” Phil told him. “And I got a letter with a black hand on it warning me to stay away.”
He bit back an expletive. “It’s probably nothing. Anyone with a pencil can claim to be a member of the Hand.”
“Are you telling me not to worry?”
“No. You should always be alert. I’m saying that the note situation has been taken care of. Though perhaps you should stand down until I get back.”
“Get back from where?”
“Can’t say.”
“Ugh. And how will I know when that is?”
“I’ll contact you.”
“That’s not good enough. We need a better system. And I won’t stand down. I sat next to a dead man, was dragged out of the theater by someone who said he was the manager, but you say was your security man. Just so you know, he had blood on his hands; it left stains on my winter coat.”
“Buy yourself a new coat.”
“I will. I have no intention of standing down. I’ve already made contacts at the Times, and I’m following a lead, albeit a thin one, into Tommy Green’s murder.”
“You are something else, Countess.”
“So you’ve said before.”
“Still, you should be careful,” he said seriously, then breathed out a laugh. “Well, maybe not careful; just don’t get yourself killed.” He ran a finger down her jawline. “I have plans for you.” He leaned forward to speak to the driver. “Let me off at the next corner.
“And as for you…”
Phil saw the glint—of a gold tooth?—before he pulled her against him and planted a memorable kiss on her all-too-willing lips.
The limousine stopped. He let go, and she felt the rush of cold air as the door opened. A quick touch to his fedora. “Don’t forget me.” And he shut the door.
Little chance of that. The auto took off, and though she turned in her seat to try to catch a glimpse of him, he had already disappeared into the night.