Chapter 1 #2
“Good evening, Sir Ronald, Lady Bainbridge,” Mr. Hirst said.
“Who is that fellow you were talking to?” Uncle Ronald asked, squinting at the other man. He had his back to us now as he walked quickly to the staircase, but I’d caught a glimpse of his beak-nosed profile before he turned.
“A guest,” Mr. Hirst said as the man disappeared up the stairs.
“Who?”
“Mr. Clitheroe.”
Uncle Ronald’s frown cleared. “Didn’t look like him.”
Aunt Lilian patted her husband’s arm. “Your eyesight’s not what it used to be, Dear.”
Mr. Hirst signaled to the night porter to help us with our coats. “How was the show?” Mr. Hirst asked as we handed them over.
“Marvelous,” Aunt Lilian said on a breath. “Simply wonderful.”
“Were the seats in the stalls adequate?”
“Adequate, yes.” Uncle Ronald all but grunted. “The dress circle would have been better.”
Mr. Hirst looked pained. “I’m sure Mr. Hobart did his best and would be deeply upset to hear you were disappointed.”
I frowned. He was twisting Uncle Ronald’s words.
Not that Uncle Ronald leapt to Mr. Hobart’s defense.
He must still harbor some anger towards the hotel manager and what he saw as a betrayal for hiring his nephew, Mr. Armitage, years ago, despite knowing Mr. Armitage had been a thief in his childhood.
It had been my fault my uncle discovered the truth, and it was my fault that Mr. Armitage subsequently lost his job.
My heart still pinched every time I thought about it.
“We weren’t disappointed at all,” I felt compelled to say. “The seats were perfect. We were very close to the arena, but not too close.”
Mr. Hirst bowed his head in acknowledgement. Uncle Ronald and the others didn’t seem to have heard me. They were welcoming their friends to the hotel.
Once coats were taken away and evening finery was again on display, Uncle Ronald suggested the gentlemen disperse to the billiards room, while the women enjoy the comfort of the small sitting room.
While both sitting rooms were located in the left wing of the hotel, the larger one was reserved for afternoon tea, whereas the smaller one offered intimacy for more private functions.
“Once we’re settled, you may retire,” Uncle Ronald said to Mr. Hirst.
Mr. Hirst bowed. “Thank you, sir. And goodnight.”
Mr. Hirst lived in the hotel, as did the other unmarried senior staff.
The only married one among them was Mr. Hobart and he lived off-premises with his wife.
The rest of the staff lived in a nearby residence hall.
While the night porter and a skeleton staff remained on duty overnight, including in the kitchen, most would start before dawn.
The gentlemen headed to the smoking and billiards rooms in a raucous humor, while Aunt Lilian led the women to the small sitting room, flapping her program to usher us along.
“My program!” I said, stopping. “I left it in my coat pocket.”
“It’ll be there in the morning, Cleo,” Flossy said.
“I want to read through it again.”
She smiled. “You are so provincial.”
I refrained from reminding her that I was from Cambridge, not the country. It wouldn’t matter to Flossy. Anything outside of London was “provincial” to her and therefore dreadfully dull. Only London and its endless amusements could satisfy her zest for life.
Aunt Lilian joined us and asked Flossy to fetch her bottle of tonic from her dressing table. Flossy hesitated.
“Now,” Aunt Lilian snapped.
Flossy bowed her head and hurried off.
I returned to the luggage room, which also acted as a cloakroom, and rifled through the pockets of my coat until I found the program. I was crossing the foyer again when the beak-nosed man who’d been talking to Mr. Hirst emerged from the stairwell beside the lift.
He scanned the area, spotted me, and hesitated. I smiled and he touched the brim of his bowler hat in greeting before heading for the front door.
On a whim, I said, “Mr. Clitheroe.”
He kept walking.
He exchanged glances with the night porter. The night porter did not open the door for Mr. Clitheroe as he ought to do for a departing guest.
I joined my aunt, cousin and their guests in the small sitting room, but didn’t feel like joining in the conversation.
Mr. Clitheroe had got me thinking. It wasn’t just that he didn’t respond when I said his name, or his furtive demeanor, it was also his clothes.
He wore a well-made suit that wasn’t out of place during the day, but didn’t belong in a luxury hotel in the evening.
All the gentlemen guests were dressed in tailcoats, bow ties, stiff white shirts with winged collars, and low-cut waistcoats with silk top hats, but Mr. Clitheroe wore a single-breasted coat and high-cut waistcoat with a simple necktie.
A guest of the sort the Mayfair attracted wouldn’t leave the hotel in the evening wearing his daytime suit.
Which meant the beak-nosed man was not a guest at all.
“Have you seen the papers this morning?” Harmony stood in the doorway connecting my bedroom to the sitting room, a folded newspaper in hand.
I sat up, blinking away sleep. “What time is it?”
“Eight.”
“I asked you to wake me at nine today.”
“Did you? I don’t remember.”
I lay down again and pulled the bed covers up to my chin. “Come back later. It was a late night, and I’m tired.”
“Your breakfast will get cold.”
My stomach rumbled. I pushed off the covers and picked up the dressing gown folded over the back of the chair. “I suppose you want to know all about the show.”
“Oh yes, how was it?” Harmony led the way into the sitting room and deposited the newspaper on top of the tray’s flat lid where I couldn’t fail to see it. She proceeded to plump the sofa cushions until I invited her to join me for a cup of coffee.
She gave up the pretense of tidying and sat on the other chair at the small breakfast table.
It was a little charade we went through every morning.
She came to wake me, usually at eight, and sat with me while I ate breakfast, enjoying a cup of coffee.
She should have been tidying my suite, and as far as the housekeeper was aware, that’s precisely what she was doing, but I kept the rooms tidy myself.
After breakfast, Harmony often stayed to do my hair.
The morning routine had given us time to become friends, as much as a woman and her maid could be friends.
More often than not, we spoke to one another as equals.
Harmony had quickly learned that I didn’t put on airs and wasn’t used to an idle, luxurious life like my aunt and cousin, and I’d realized she was clever and had a thirst for knowledge.
I’d taken to borrowing books from the hotel library and giving them to her to read on her time off. Not that she had much spare time.
I handed her the program for the Hippodrome’s opening show and described some of the spectacular acts. While she made all the right sounds, I knew she wasn’t particularly interested. I cut my account short and turned to my breakfast tray and the newspaper she wanted me to read.
I didn’t even have to turn the page to know what had piqued her interest. It was right there on the front in bold type: ACTRESS FALLS TO DEATH AT THE PICCADILLY PLAYHOUSE.
“How terribly sad,” I said as I read the article. “That must be why the theater was in darkness last night. It says here the show was canceled following her death in the afternoon.”
Harmony moved up alongside me. “It says it was suicide.”
According to the article, Miss Pearl Westwood had thrown herself from the second tier dress circle. Her body had been found by the theater staff preparing for the evening’s performance.
“The poor woman.” I folded up the newspaper and set it beside the coffee pot and cups.
“Poor Lord Rumford.”
“Why?”
She gave me an odd look. “She was his mistress. Didn’t you know?”
I stared at her, aware that my mouth had dropped open. “Lord Rumford, the guest currently staying here at the hotel? That Lord Rumford?”
“The very one.” Harmony sat on the other chair and poured coffee into the two cups. She handed one to me, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “If only Miss Bainbridge could see you now. She’d call you provincial for not realizing gentlemen keep mistresses.”
I closed my mouth and tucked into my breakfast of a boiled egg and toast. “I’m merely a little surprised.
I met Lord Rumford. He seems nice. He even told me how his wife was currently in the country as she no longer liked London’s fast pace.
” Lord Rumford must have been in his sixties, while the newspaper article claimed Miss Westwood was only twenty-six.
“How convenient that Lady Rumford prefers the country manor,” Harmony said with a wry twist of her mouth. “Gives his lordship freedom to see his mistress while he’s in London. Which he is a lot.”
“She didn’t come here to the hotel, surely?”
“She did sometimes.”
I didn’t know why it shocked me. I knew gentlemen guests kept mistresses, and I knew they sometimes brought them here.
A foreign count even had his mistress stay with him in his suite as if she were his wife, while his actual wife was at home in Russia.
But he’d been from the continent, and they did things differently there.
I hadn’t expected an English lord to parade his mistress openly at the hotel where he stayed while in the city.
Harmony scanned the newspaper article again. “I wonder why she ended it like that? She seemed to have everything she could want. Fame, money, adoring fans and an equally adoring lover.”
“Those are hardly things that make one fulfilled and happy,” I said. “And how do you know Lord Rumford adored her? Perhaps he was about to end their relationship and she threw herself over the balcony in despair.”