CHAPTER 4
HOTEL RITZ, PARIS
Charlie’s taxi crawled down the Place Vend?me and pulled up outside the Hotel Ritz, where the doorman in a three-piece morning suit and top hat sprang forward to open her door with a gloved hand.
Charlie climbed out quickly, indicated she did not have luggage, paid the driver and strode through the spinning gold doors like she was a regular guest. Experience had taught Charlie that concierges and doormen at places like the Ritz could sniff out a fraud at a hundred paces, so she held her head high and was grateful she’d chosen to wear her best-fitted crepe suit and a cashmere scarf today.
Her scuffed satchel couldn’t be helped, but if she kept people talking, perhaps they wouldn’t notice.
Charlie strutted to the front desk and spoke to the head concierge with her most authoritative voice.
‘Could you please call up to Clementine Bell’s room and let her know that Charlie James is here and would like to speak.
Charlotte James,’ she corrected, using her full name, hoping a female name might be less intimidating.
The concierge’s eyes narrowed. ‘Does Mademoiselle Bell know you are here, Mademoiselle James?’ He was good; he’d already scanned her hand for a ring and found it missing, but perhaps still noticed the tell-tale white band, as she’d only recently taken the ring off when her divorce paperwork was finalised.
She leaned over the desk and spoke with what she hoped was a persuasive whisper as she lowered her eyes. ‘No, she doesn’t. It’s about a personal matter, very delicate.’
‘I see,’ said the concierge, giving her a second, longer glance. ‘May I ask … where you are from?’ He raised an eyebrow. He would most certainly know about a missing guest from his own hotel.
‘I’m …’ Charlie hesitated. She clearly was not police, and if she showed her press pass, the concierge would frog march her from the building. She couldn’t claim to be an acquaintance, as Clementine Bell would not recognise her name.
Charlie took in the acres of marble in the foyer, the gilt mirrors, the avenues of crystal vases overfilled with pink roses, and took a calculated risk.
She would name-drop one of the most recognisable people in Paris—someone guaranteed to be well acquainted with the Ritz and a person this concierge would know by reputation, if not sight.
Keeping her voice low, Charlie leaned a little further over the marble counter and said, ‘It’s a very private matter. Lady Ashworth has sent me.’
The concierge straightened. ‘Of course, Mademoiselle James. I’ll call up at once. If you could just take a seat over—’
‘I might go to the far corner if you don’t mind.’ She pointed. ‘More discreet.’
‘Of course.’
Ten minutes later, the concierge ushered two hotel guests over to Charlie.
The first was a stout middle-aged woman dressed in an expensive, tailored, pastel-blue suit that made her pale skin seem almost ghost-like.
Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy and she looked at Charlie James with equal parts distrust and curiosity.
Beside her was a similarly rotund man with an identical set of tight grey curls that were clipped close to the scalp.
The Bell siblings were the image of each other.
Charlie stood to greet them as the concierge nodded and backed away.
‘Clementine Bell,’ said the woman, holding out her hand. ‘This is my twin brother, Mason. How do you know Lady Ashworth?’ She eyed Charlie’s tatty satchel tucked under the table with scepticism.
‘Long story. I’ve worked with her and we’ve become … close.’ She needed to be convincing and brief. Charlie’s relationship with Lady Ashworth was complicated, but it opened doors and mouths. ‘Please sit. Just for a moment, won’t you? Can I please order you tea? Water?’
Clementine and Mason sat down and shook their heads.
‘I’m here because our mutual friend confided in me that your niece, Maisy Bell, is missing. I’m a reporter with The Times.’
Mason grimaced and started to stand as his already ruddy face reddened further. ‘We agreed to meet with you because of the Ashworth name, but I can see you’re wasting our time, Miss James. We do not want the press!’ He humphed. ‘We want to find Maisy.’
‘Please, call me Charlie! Just give me a minute.’ Charlie reached out and tapped Clementine on the arm. ‘I’m so sorry this has happened to you, but maybe I can help.’
‘How is that so, Miss James? Charlie,’ Clementine corrected herself. Her accent was as wide as Texas.
‘Well.’ Charlie had to think quickly. ‘I’m a fellow English speaker and foreigner—Australian—but I can speak French.
I know Paris. French people can be a little …
aloof with foreigners. Especially those who poke around in official police business.
And the police do have their official systems. I have a lot of contacts in the Metropolitan Police.
’ This wasn’t exactly false. She knew one officer on a first-name basis, and that was one more than the Bells did.
‘And I’m really good at finding out the truth.
I want to help you find out where your Maisy is.
I’m a young woman in Paris … I can only imagine my parents’ anguish if I disappeared for a week. Please!’
Clementine’s broad face softened and she turned to her twin for reassurance. Mason gave a grudging nod.
‘Thank you.’ Charlie pulled out her notebook and one of the photographs Lady Ashworth had slipped her. If the Bell twins were curious as to how Charlie came to have photos of their niece, they didn’t show it.
‘Why don’t we start at the beginning. You were all on holidays?’
‘Not Mason, he only arrived today. Maisy and I came over the Friday before last—her father paid for a graduation trip, a month in Paris.’
‘Graduation?’
‘Yes, she graduated from Barnard,’ Clementine said proudly. ‘My alma mater. French and Drama were her majors. Maisy was going home for some auditions on Broadway after this trip.’
Charlie let the past tense hang in the air but didn’t draw attention to it. Usually, people who had just lost a loved one took time to absorb the past tense. It was as if their heads needed time to catch up to their broken hearts.
‘May I backtrack a little, just so I can get a picture of exactly who Maisy was? You said she graduated from Barnard?’ The family had money.
Barnard was a prestigious liberal arts college for women in New York City that had links with Columbia, the fancy Ivy League school. ‘May I confirm what her parents do?’
‘Same as us. In oil,’ said Mason gruffly.
Bingo. It was just as Lady Ashworth had described. Oil. That word explained everything. Where there was money there was often motive.
Charlie wrote down oil and underlined it.
She had been dealing with the rich and powerful for long enough that she knew the bigger the wealth, the more discreet they were.
Texans were renowned for their exuberance and flashiness.
Still, the wealthiest would mention fancy holidays and friends with houses brimming with French furniture, but they would never mention their own.
It was all just as Lady Ashworth had described.
Charlie drew Mason and Clementine back to the story. ‘So you were here to celebrate. Take me through the timeline, the days before she disappeared. Did you meet anyone unusual? Go somewhere that might be linked? Tell me everything. I promise you there is no silly answer.’
‘Well, we did the usual things. Eiffel Tower … Galeries Lafayette, where she bought the most darling pair of Mary Janes.’
‘I hardly think that’s relevant,’ Mason said, cutting off his sister.
‘It is if she was wearing them,’ replied Charlie. ‘What colour?’
‘Black. Patent leather,’ said Clementine.
Charlie transcribed the description into her notebook as she said with encouragement, ‘Go on.’ She kept her eyes averted, hoping the brother got the hint to stop interrupting.
‘We shopped, bought tickets for the opera, Wagner. Went to the Louvre, took lunch at Chez Georges.’
‘Meet anyone unusual?’
‘No one out of the ordinary. Not until we attended those fundraising drinks in the ballroom. I told the police this and they dismissed it.’ She looked at her brother, distressed.
He cleared his throat and said with a reluctant nod, ‘Tell Miss James what you told the po-lice.’ They both spoke with a distinctive Texan drawl that broke words into long syllables.
‘Well, the night before Maisy disappeared, we were invited to drinks here at the Ritz. Your friend Lady Ashworth invited us—we had a letter of introduction to her as she decorated my friend Betsy’s brownstone on Park Avenue.
Filled it with French antiques and carpets from the East …
Though I haven’t seen it my-self, it’s as pretty as a picture, I understand. ’
‘Lady Ashworth has an extraordinary eye,’ agreed Charlie, wondering why Clementine didn’t mention that Lady Ashworth also decorated Maisy’s family home in Texas.
Why the omission? Was it familial discretion …
or something more sinister? ‘Tell me about these drinks.’ Charlie needed Clementine to open up.
The fewer awkward pauses, the better. Charlie had been at the event, but she wanted to see what Clementine had noticed, and what she hadn’t. Or rather, what she omitted.
‘Well,’ Clementine drawled, ‘the place was filled with roses, as it is now, I su-ppose. Every day. And there were the most interesting people—not just the fancy Paris types but artists, bohemian people. It seemed to be an open-door event—I’m sure Lady Ashworth can’t have known every guest personally.
Painters, ballet dancers, opera singers … Maisy adored art and artists.’