CHAPTER 3 #2
Charlie needed to find out who Maisy Bell was associating with in Paris.
Perhaps she left a diary or an appointment book in her room at the hotel?
She glanced around the office, where a dozen men with their shirtsleeves rolled up were tucked in their cubicles, tapping away at their typewriters.
Others spoke on the phone, while a pair in the far corner busied themselves with folding paper planes and angling them over the divider at each other with schoolboy laughter.
Charlie worked at her desk silent and alone.
These newspapermen never included her in meetings or when they workshopped stories.
The ancient subeditors returned her articles with illegible red scrawl top to bottom.
The only attention Charlie received from these men was an occasional request for coffee or a wayward paper plane on her desk. Her only ally in the office was Violet.
Charlie tugged the corner of her scarf so it sat better across her lapel. She knew better than anyone that you could smother yourself with cashmere, but all the cashmere in the world did not protect you from misadventure. Or from bad people.
Charlie had once been a fresh-faced young woman with the dream of being a news reporter.
As a junior reporter back in Sydney, she’d ached to cover the important stories, then she’d ached for a man and was torn between both.
When her marriage soured and her career prospects looked dim, Charlie had chosen travel and adventure.
She shuddered and pushed all thoughts of her ex-husband and her recent attack far from her mind.
‘James! Got that shoe paragraph for me to send through to page six?’ The square, ruddy face of George Roberts peered over her cubicle and locked on to the photos of Maisy Bell. ‘I don’t believe I asked for a society or actress piece today?’ he barked in his thick British accent.
‘Yes to the shoe piece. No to the actress piece.’ Charlie tapped the photo. ‘This is an American, Maisy Bell. Twenty-two and missing.’
‘Define missing?’ her boss snapped as he looked at his gold watch.
‘Nobody has seen Maisy Bell for over a week. She was staying with her aunt at the Ritz, went out sightseeing and didn’t come back.’
‘Says who?’
Charlie straightened her back and looked her employer in the eye. ‘Lady Ashworth.’
Silence filled her cubicle, as George scratched the back of his head with obvious annoyance.
The tap of typewriters continued but Charlie imagined her competitive male colleagues leaning in, trying to determine if Charlie James was going to be taken off her penance stories or if one of the young men would be assigned the story of a missing woman.
‘Always bloody Ashworth. How’s she mixed up in this?’
‘She isn’t, as far as I can tell. Simply the messenger.’
George snorted but his blue eyes twinkled. ‘And I’m the bloody Pope. Go on, James.’
Bingo, he was hooked. Charlie needed a fast pitch.
‘Maisy Bell. Texan. Oil heiress. Last seen at the Ritz. Reported to Cité Metro Police, but no follow-up. Maisy was chaperoned in Paris by her aunt. Lady Ashworth decorated one of the family homes—hence the connection. Her uncle has come across to escalate the search.’
‘Lot of good having a chaperone did,’ barked George.
‘Maisy was a young woman. She wasn’t chained to her aunt.’
‘You sure this Maisy Bell isn’t hiding away at another hotel, avoiding bossy relatives? Sounds like she could well afford it.’
‘No idea,’ Charlie said as she staked her claim on this story. ‘I’m going to the Ritz now to meet the aunt. I’ll ask some questions, see if there’s anything to it.’
‘It may be a simple misunderstanding.’
‘Or it could be the legitimate story of an American girl missing in Paris.’
George pursed his lips and scratched his head again. ‘I’m not sure, James, you’re only just back in the office …’
Charlie imagined the men in the closest cubicles rubbing their hands together with glee. She wasn’t going to give her unsupportive colleagues the satisfaction of using her lead.
‘I won’t know if there’re legs to this until I get there—and I’ll be in one of the finest hotels in Paris, people everywhere. Very safe. Lots of eyes …’ Charlie reassured George as she tucked the photos into her notebook and opened her trusty satchel. ‘It’s my job to find answers.’
‘Only when I tell you to.’ George gave a half-hearted humph. ‘Maybe the police aren’t involved because there’s nothing in it?’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ said Charlie. ‘But either way, we should be the first paper to jump on this. I’m off to the Ritz.’ She handed her finished write-up on the shoes to George as she stood and shouldered her satchel.
‘Very well. Given Lady Ashworth’s a contact.’ George stepped aside, squat and solid in his three-piece navy suit, and made for his office. He called over his shoulder, ‘No funny business, James. You report straight back.’
Perhaps Violet and George were right, and this was some kind of a misunderstanding. But what if they were wrong? If an American girl was missing in Paris then Charlie James was going to find her.