The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT by Marilyn Todd

I looked at the couple hovering in the doorway, him in Savile Row, her all blue Chanel and pearls, and thought: so rich, so wholesome. So unhappy.

“Mr and Mrs Cuthbertson,” he said by way of introduction, and there were enough plums in his mouth that I could have made jam, were I that way inclined. “We…” he cast a sideways glance at his wife, who had found a sudden need to check that the buttons on her jacket were in line. “We have an appointment with Mr Hepburn.”

“Please come in.”

I made a point of glancing at the diary on my desk, then smiling at the clock on the wall in a way that commended their promptness. They were on the dot. And had no idea how the rough end of the law worked.

“I’m afraid Mr Hepburn’s been summoned to an urgent court appearance,” I lied, shaking Mrs Cuthbertson’s limp white calfskin glove. “But he briefed me on your situation before he left, and asked me to run through the details with you.”

This is the point where I bring out my most reassuring smile, proof that all those lengthy visits to the dentist do pay off.

“I’m his daughter, Lois.” Ouch. Mr Cuthbertson’s handshake wasn’t only solid, though. I detected a distinct Freemason squeeze. “I guarantee you the same level of confidence and discretion that my father would give you.”

They glanced at each other, still a little uneasy. But they hadn’t travelled all this way just to take the next train home.

“That’s perfectly all right,” Mrs Cuthbertson said, and whatever her other faults, she was a terrible liar.

“Yes, indeed.” Her husband, now, he scored a little higher, but only a fraction, I’m afraid. “Y’see, Miss Hepburn, we would like this… business organized as quickly as possible.”

And that indeed was the truth.

“Absolutely.” I ushered the pair into my fictitious father’s office before taking a seat behind my fictitious father’s desk. After all, the year might be 1959 and Brighton might be Britain’s most sophisticated town outside of London, but the world still wasn’t ready for single female private investigators. To be honest, I’m not sure I was, either.

“My solicitor informs me that you can help speed up our divorce,” Mrs Cuthbertson said, in a manner that made it sound as though Stratton, Hall and Stratton might yet be playing a practical joke.

“I can.” This time I didn’t smile, but steepled my fingers. “Though you need to understand what’s involved.”

Mr Cuthbertson was the shuffling-in-his-chair kind. His wife was the avoid-direct-eye-contact type. I really did feel for them both.

“On the contrary, Mr Stratton was specific,” she said, toying with the clasp on her matching Chanel handbag. “Indeed, he went to some pains to explain how one of the very few grounds for a rapid divorce is adultery, and that providing proof can be given that one party has been indiscreet…” Her voice trailed off, and I noticed two bright red patches had sprung up to mar her immaculately rouged cheeks.

“Then there is a certain acceleration in the severance of the marriage that cuts years off the waiting time, yes,” I finished for her. “But this isn’t Reno, Mrs Cuthbertson.” Someone needed to point this out, and trust me, it was never going to be some posh, pin-striped solicitor. “One of you-” (usually the man, gentlemanly conduct and all that) “- needs to be photographed in what the courts like to describe as a compromising position.”

“But you do the… uh… groundwork?” her husband asked.

“If you mean by booking a hotel room and hiring a corespondent, then yes, Mr Cuthbertson. This agency takes care of that.”

As succinctly as possible, I ran through the procedure. The time for details was later, but this young couple needed to know here and now that evidence of not just a one-night stand but a long-standing, ongoing affair needed to be established. In practice, this was simply a matter of the man changing his tie for each of the photographs. The girls carried a change of clothing as a matter of course. I’d make lunch appointments every half-hour at different restaurants, dinner appointments in the evening, so there’d be wadges of photographs to lay before the court. The lovebirds holding hands between courses. The naughty couple toasting each other, whispering sweet nothings across the salt cellar, swanning in and out of hotels, that sort of thing.

“I will provide a back-dated contract that shows Mrs Cuthbertson approached this agency three months ago, asking us to investigate her husband’s infidelity,” I said, “but all this proves is that her husband has been meeting another woman over a period of time.”

To grant her a divorce, the courts need meat on their bones.

“At a prearranged time, one of our agents -” I truly hoped I’d made it sound as though there was more than one of me – “goes to the hotel room, and because the courts require the corroboration of an independent witness, persuades the housekeeper to unlock the door.” I paused. “Then we snap the client in as compromising a position as they can muster.”

The men were uniformly reserved, but the girls had no such qualms. At the required moment, they threw caution and their brassieres to the wind. No wonder the husbands looked so startled in the photos.

“Jolly good.” Mr Cuthbertson was relieved that his input to the arrangements would be minimal.

Mrs Cuthbertson didn’t even try to hide her joy at being left out of it completely. “That is excellent, Miss Hepburn,” she gushed, and I swear that little feather in her hat perked up. “Really excellent.”

I wasn’t convinced excellent was the word.

“Are you quite sure this is what you want?” This time I spoke to Mr Cuthbertson directly. “There’s no going back,” I told him. “You’ll be publicly branded an adulterer, your name will be blazoned across the newspapers-”

“Miss Hepburn,” his wife interrupted gently, “my husband and I married in haste, we have already repented. We have no desire to add to the leisure.”

I wondered whether they always did their arguing in such civilized terms, or whether they’d simply passed beyond that stage.

“The thing is, Miss Hepburn, both Margaret and I have met someone else,” Mr. Cuthbertson said. “We just want this marriage ended as quickly as possible, so we are free to marry again.”

It all seemed so gracious and polite that I imagined the four of them round the Cuthbertson’s elegant dining table, discussing it over a bottle of Margaux and a nice fillet steak. I thought it was about time someone added the mustard. “You are aware of the costs involved?”

“My family’s in tractors and my husband is in baby foods,” Mrs Cuthbertson said, carelessly rubbing her diamonds, “Money is no object, Miss Hepburn.”

“Then you’re also aware of why this fast-track divorce ploy is so expensive?” I leaned across the desk and looked her husband squarely in the eye. “If anything goes wrong, it’s not just you,” I told him. “We could both end up in jail.”

They glanced at each other, gulped, then nodded. Of the two, the wife’s nod was the least grim, I decided.

But then she wasn’t the one looking at porridge.

I want to make it very clear that what I do has no connection whatsoever with prostitution. Quite the opposite, in fact, because the girls I hire are usually married themselves and lead otherwise normal, respectable lives. It’s just that, like me, they need the money – and for this kind of money, people take risks. Wouldn’t you?

And it’s because there’s so much at stake, fixing up fake adultery cases, that I (a) charge exorbitant fees and (b) plan to the very last detail – then go over it time and again. That way, should anything go belly up, at least I have the satisfaction of having some money behind me to take care of Susan, plus I can wile away my stretch in the sure and certain knowledge that I did the best I could, which is all anyone can ask. Even crooked female private eyes.

So my confidence was pretty high as I took the elevator to the Belle Vue’s second floor. Of course, that had as much to do with the hired mink as my meticulous forward planning, because even though I’d never earn enough to buy one for myself, you really do feel a million dollars wrapped inside real fur. And a girl certainly needs the right clothes in a hotel like the Belle Vue. For one thing, it’s the best hotel by a mile, and that’s where several of my competitors tripped up. They’d tried to cut costs, and realized too late that judges, especially divorce-court judges, aren’t lemons. No man who has his shirts handmade in Jermyn Street books into a cheap hotel with an even cheaper floozy. So that’s the first rule. Horses for courses, and since you only get the one chance in a place like the Belle Vue, you need to convince the housekeeper with a single glance that you’re a bona fide guest who’s foolishly left her key behind.

“Here we are, madam. Two-two-three.”

The housekeeper made to knock, but I pointed to the “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging dutifully on the doorknob, and you’d be surprised how far a five-pound note still goes in the middle of an afternoon in 1959. While she jiggled the master key in the lock, I whipped my camera out of a vanity case designed for rather more feminine and undoubtedly more trivial activities, then checked the corridor for the billionth time. Still deserted, but on these carpets, you wouldn’t hear a herd of wildebeest charging down on you. The lift whirred gently in the background.

“Say cheese,” I breezed, as the housekeeper flung open the door.

“Jeez,” the housekeeper said.

So used to all this, I’d taken the photo before I even realized. It was a man on the bed, all right, but he wasn’t undressed and there was no sign of Mavis or her hired fox fur. (For the same reasons, I can’t have Mavis wandering round the Belle Vue without looking the part, either). But to be honest, I wasn’t surprised she’d done a bunk. His head lay at a horribly unnatural angle.

My first thought was for Mrs Cuthbertson.

My second was to get the hell out of there.

“This situation needs to be handled with the utmost discretion,” I told the housekeeper, backing carefully out of the room. “You fetch the manager. I’ll wait here, to make sure no one goes in.”

The trouble was, I couldn’t hear myself speak, there was this terrible din in the background. Not what one expects from the Belle Vue, I thought idly. What on earth was the place coming to? Then I turned round.

So much for keeping it quiet, I realized, and so much for slipping away.

That din was the housekeeper’s scream.

With no quick or easy way out, it was now a case of damage control. At the first screech, the lift boy, two chambermaids, some straight-backed, po-faced security manager, and a fat room-service waiter appeared out of nowhere, while there I was, camera in hand, pretending to be Mrs Two-two-three. My gut instinct said play up the distraught widow thing, who’s to say what grief will do, why shouldn’t the poor wife run off, the girl’s in shock? But it only goes to show. In the past, on the very few occasions I’d ever ordered room service, the waiters proved aloof and snooty specimens. Trust me to pick the breed’s only bleeding heart. And then there was the Belle Vue’s director.

“Drink this,” he insisted, pushing a cognac into my hand, having personally escorted me down to his office.

“How kind,” I sniffed, thinking, good, I can sneak away now, but compassion, it seems, has no bounds at plush hotels. He left a desk clerk as a deposit, and you wouldn’t believe how fast the police can move, either. When they try.

So there I was, surrounded on all sides by red velvet and gilt while the piano in the foyer tinkled Gershwin, computing a multitude of likely stories. I pictured Mrs Cuthbertson, fiddling with her handbag, fiddling with her pearls, and realized that I couldn’t maintain the pretence of being her. Her marriage might be failing, but her husband had been willing to put his upper-crust reputation on the line for her, and in any case, a murder investigation would quickly reveal that I wasn’t the genuine article. No, I’d have to be someone else who’d gone out without her damn room key. I warmed the cognac in my hand and sipped. Ultra smooth, but what else would one expect of the Belle Vue. And the more I thought about it, the better this scenario played out. If I was a woman who was stupid enough to forget her room key, I was certainly stupid enough to get the numbers muddled up. I finished off the brandy and pasted on my coy-but-nonetheless-ravishing smile for the benefit of the desk clerk. After all, who better to probe about the current guest list?

Within ten minutes, I was Mrs Henry Martin, newlywed bride, because if honeymoons don’t make a girl jittery, what the hell does? Not the sex. The fact that she’s committing to a lifetime with someone, bearing his children, washing his socks. That would scare the pants off me, I can tell you. So. Providing the police didn’t interrogate me in the presence of the desk clerk (300-1), there was no way of being caught out on my story, especially since the Martins had gone sightseeing in Eastbourne and would not be back before supper (7:30 onwards, dinner jackets only). Yes, indeed. Between the mink and the cognac, my confidence was restored and while the desk clerk answered the director’s phone, I whipped the film from my camera and stuffed it behind my suspender.

“Inspector Sullivan is on his way down to see you,” he announced, but even before he’d finished, the door had opened and the entire gap was filled by a man with a mop of unruly dark hair and a face that looked like it had come second in a fight with a brick wall.

I stood up, though if I wasn’t to be at a height disadvantage, I’d really need to stand on a chair. Still, I was ready, and I ran through the key points in my head. Mrs Martin. Just married. Nervous. Excited. Definitely light-headed. Then-

“Don’t I know you?” Inspector Sullivan asked, and his voice was rough from too many cigarettes, too little sleep. “Mrs Hepburn, right?” I hate conscientious policemen.

“Miss.”

“You run Hepburn Investigations?”

No point in stalling. I brought out my card. “Clients with confidence,” I said with none.

“Hm.” He chewed his lip, rubbed his jaw, ran his hand through his hair. And all the time his eyes were fixed on my camera.

My thoughts were of Susan. Growing up with her aunt. Visiting her mother in jail. Rapidly becoming estranged…

“If I didn’t know better,” Sullivan said at length, “I’d say you were fixing up one of those phoney divorce cases.”

I said nothing for the simple reason that the next person I intended talking to was my lawyer.

“Only the problem there,” he said, “is that Mr Hall wasn’t married.”

Mr Who? Then the penny dropped. I may have booked room two-twenty-three for Mr Cuthbertson and the lovely Mavis, but now I started to think about something other than covering my own backside, I realized that Mr Cuthbertson wouldn’t have been seen dead (pardon the pun) in a pale blue check suit. Relief made my knees tremble.

“So do you mind telling me why you burst in on an unmarried commercial traveller to take his photograph, Miss Hepburn?”

In fact I was so overcome with relief that I nearly blurted out the truth.

“That new road-safety officer came to the school again today.”

Susan was sitting on my lap braiding my hair, and although she’s a little too old and (dare I say it) a little too heavy, such moments are rare. For this reason alone, they are precious.

“He’s a scream,” she gushed. “Ever so funny.”

I really, really didn’t want to talk about policemen right then, but children can be immeasurably cruel.

“Do you know what happens if you don’t look right?” she persisted, using my spiky, mismatched plaits as handlebars. I shook my head as best I could. “You go wrong,” she squealed.

Maybe I would also have found this excruciatingly funny if I’d been nine years old. Somehow I doubted it.

“Do you have a crush on this teacher of yours?” Because suddenly there was me just turned seventeen, Mr Rolands my old maths master, and the only good thing to come out of that affair weighed seven and a half pounds and has his beautiful, soft golden hair.

“Oh, Mum!” Susan rolled her eyes. “The road-safety man’s not a teacher, and anyway he’s old.”

What constitutes old to a nine-year-old? Mr Rolands turned out to be thirty-six, and even now, I still wonder how I fell for that old I’ll-leave-my-wife line.

“So’s Rock Hudson,” I pointed out, “but his face is plastered all over your bedroom wall.”

“That’s different, he’s a film star.” She stopped braiding and sighed. “If I had a daddy, I’d like him to be like the road-safety man. He’s ever so handsome.”

If I had a daddy...? Next she’d be pulling out my fingernails with pliers.

“More handsome than Elvis?” I asked, because all good mothers know how to change the subject, and within no time we were jiving round the living room to “Jailhouse Rock”, “Blue Suede Shoes”, and generally getting “All Shook Up”.

It was only later, with Susan tucked up in bed and me patiently untangling the knots in my hair, that the enormity of what I’d risked today hit me. I could have lost everything, and I do mean everything, on the turn of a door key. I needed to think seriously about the future. When the next solicitor telephoned, asking could I help out, would I? Would I risk it? I let Elvis run through “Don’t Be Cruel” and thought, damn right I would. My daughter is not going to end up an unmarried mother at the age of seventeen. Susan’s a bright kid, on course for the grammar school, and what’s more, she’s desperate to go. But. I reached for as wide a toothed comb as I could find. Grammar schools are expensive. There’s the uniforms, the tennis racquets, the hockey sticks, the music lessons, not forgetting innumerable bus trips and a million other extra hidden costs. Truly, though, I do not care. My daughter will never be forced to earn her living grubbing through dustbins, following faithless husbands down lover’s lanes, or tracing children who’ve run away because their home life’s so damned wretched. Never. I will do whatever it takes to keep Susan from violent men and abusive women, and she will never need to take covert shots of homosexuals or men with prostitutes simply to pay the rent. Maybe, once she starts attending the grammar school, she’ll be ashamed of me. Of what I do and what I am. I hope not, I really, really do. But that’s another risk I am prepared to take.

All the same, I don’t sleep well. I worry.

“Miss Hepburn.”

I recognized that distinctive gravel without needing to look up. “Inspector.”

He lumbered into the inner office where I was typing up a perfectly legitimate infidelity assignment, but did not sit down. I wished to God I’d locked the filing cabinets, or even closed that open drawer, but Sullivan didn’t glance at them. To be honest, I would have rifled through every last one, had I been in his shoes.

“Room two-two-three,” he said, leaning with his back against the wall and folding his arms over his chest. “Rented one night to Stanley Hall, aged twenty-six, commercial rep in motor oil.”

I didn’t know Stanley Hall, had never heard of Stanley Hall, could swear on a stack of Bibles that I was not involved with anything connected to Stanley Hall, and with great enthusiasm, I imparted this knowledge. “I know sod all about motor oil, too,” I added with gusto.

“Hm.” Sullivan scratched his cheek and stared at the sparrows pecking at the crumbs along the windowsill. “What about a Mr and Mrs Cuthbertson?” he asked, still not bothering to look at me. “Know anything about them?”

At times like this there’s nothing else a girl can do but drop her file on the floor. “Name doesn’t ring a bell,” I said, although my voice was a tad muffled, seeing as how my head was stuck under the desk.

“No?” His suddenly appeared on the other side, and for large hands, they were surprisingly deft at picking up foolscap. “Only Mrs Cuthbertson made a reservation yesterday morning, specifically asking for that particular room.”

I like that room, I wanted to say. It faces the sea front, and from the bandstand you can, if you stand on the furthestmost bench to the right, get a half-decent snap of anyone in the bay window. The courts liked that sort of thing, especially when they were presented with photos of the clients closing the curtains. Furtive always goes down well with a judge.

“Really?” I scrabbled for an imaginary paper clip.

“It probably doesn’t mean anything,” he said, actually finding one. “Maybe they’d stayed there on their honeymoon, maybe she just liked the view.”

“Maybe,” I said and, still on my knees, pretended to arrange the scattered papers, even though I knew I’d never find anything in this damned file again.

“Who knows?” If he wasn’t craggy when he smiled, how come the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood suddenly sprang to mind? “But it seems they were so disappointed that the guest in two-twenty-three hadn’t booked out as expected that when the Cuthbertsons were given three-one-seven, they hardly stayed more than a couple of hours.”

“Oh?” I murmured, rubbing the bump where I’d brought up my head sharply.

“I expect it’s a class thing,” he said, straightening up and brushing the dust off his trousers. “All the same, though.” He paused. “Don’t you think it’s strange they didn’t check in until two-thirty-five, yet were gone by the time I went to question them at half-past four?”

Was that squeak as noncommittal a squeak as I’d hoped? Because here’s the thing. I’d agreed to supply the Cuthbertsons with evidence for a quick divorce. Their deposit was already earning interest in Susan’s trust fund. So the minute Sullivan had finished questioning me the day before, I’d flown upstairs to three-one-seven, stuffed a new film in the camera, and grabbed the nearest chambermaid.

At this point, I want to tell you about Mavis. She’s nowhere near as common as her name suggests, and very pretty with it, in a busty sort of way. But her husband left her for a bus conductress last September and… well, to cut a long story short, Mavis gets what I suppose you’d call lonely. I guess Mr Cuthbertson got bored waiting for my knock.

I think it’s safe to say that this was one set of evidence the divorce courts would not be querying.

“Can I go to the park with Lynn and Josie, Mum?”

“Yes, of course.” I know the park warden. The girls will be fine. He beat that last flasher to a pulp.

“There’s a bag of bread for the ducks,” I said, nodding towards the table. “But take a scarf, love, it’s cold.”

“Mum!” She dragged it into two syllables. “It’s summer.”

“It’s the second of October. Take a scarf.”

I couldn’t help but smile, hearing her belt out “Hound Dog” at the top of her little off-key voice while she skipped upstairs to fetch it. You keep that crush on Elvis, I thought happily. You dream about Rock Hudson, girl.

“You look over your shoulder,

Before you stick your right arm out.

When it’s clear, then you manoeuvre…”

“That’s not Elvis.”

“It’s what the road-safety officer taught us. He says that if you sing it to your favourite song, then you ain’t gonna get mown down…”

As I stuffed sage and onion into a chicken, I consoled myself with the fact that the RSO was “old”, and that if she did have a crush on him, she’d soon grow out of it. Lightning surely can’t strike twice?

“And you wrap it round your neck,” I insisted.

My daughter knows when she is beaten. She might have stuck her tongue out, but that scarf went round twice.

“Mummy, what’s a bastard?”

Four pounds of poultry slid straight through my fingers. Nine years I’d been waiting for this moment. Every single day for nine years I’d braced myself. And I still wasn’t ready.

“It’s… someone whose parents aren’t married, darling.” I have a feeling my voice was rather quaky as I explained the intricacies of illegitimacy, the fact that there was still a stigma attached to such children, though there shouldn’t be because it certainly wasn’t their fault, and that anyone who called children by that name ought to be shot.

“So when Peter Bailey called Jimmy Tate a little bastard, he was being horrid?” she asked, tipping her head on one side.

“P-Peter Bailey?”

“In the playground yesterday. Jimmy took his penknife and dropped it down the drain, so Peter called him a dirty little-”

“Hey! That’s enough bad language out of you, my girl!”

Relief rushed through me like water down a flood drain, and my knees were still imitating aspens as the door banged behind her, so much so, I didn’t even yell at her for slamming. But as she wheeled her bike adroitly through the gate then pedalled down the road, it wasn’t really Susan I was seeing. It was maths teachers. It was schoolgirl crushes, sleepless nights, schoolgirls growing into typists, then bumping into her old teacher one summer’s day.

Why, Mr Rolands! Those same old palpitations.

Please. It’s Stephen, now.

I should have stuck with “Mr”, because images of stolen kisses, secret meetings, declarations of true love flashed through at breakneck speed, and no doubt it was the pain of that damned chicken landing on my toe, but my eyes were watering like crazy. All I could think of were promises and reassurances that were as empty as his heart.

And over the kitchen chair draped casually, as if by chance, hung Susan’s scarf.

“Are you busy, Lois?”

Lois. He calls me Lois now. “I’m always busy, Sullivan. It’s how I pay the rent.”

I shoved the incriminating photographs of Mr Cuthbertson back in the envelope, and thought, Really, Mavis! That’s no way to treat a hired fox fur! And that’s when you realize that, civilized or not in the way rich people handle things, the cracks in that marriage were very wide indeed.

“I know how you pay the rent,” Sullivan rumbled, and there seemed twice as much gravel in his mouth this time. “That’s why I want to talk about the camera you were waving round room two-two-three.” He made himself comfortable perching on the edge of the desk and I thanked God it was solid oak. “You’re sure there was no film in it?”

“I showed you. It was empty.” I can do innocent. You just bulge your big brown eyes. “I even let you go through my handbag and pockets at the time.”

“Women have a surprising number of storage facilities,” he said in a way that suggested the species was foreign to him. “Tell me you’re not holding back on me, Lois.”

“But I explained.”

“Yes.” He nodded patiently. “You were visiting an old school friend, a Mrs Martin, on her honeymoon, in your hired mink, of course-”

“Who says it’s hired?” I asked indignantly.

“Lois, you rent a ground-floor flat on Albert Street, which is not a prime location, where you live with your daughter and no husband, and you also pay the rent on these offices, which are in a prime location but which are far too large for you, in order to sustain the fiction that this is a much bigger business than it is. Does a woman in that position really splash out on furs?”

“I wanted to impress my friend.” It sounded weak, even to me.

“I’m sure bursting in unannounced with a blank camera would have been very impressive indeed. Had Mrs Martin ever heard of you. Had you not asked the housekeeper to open room two-two-three with her master key. Had-”

“All right, that was a lie.” What else could I do, but admit it? “But I’m going to claim client confidentiality here, Sullivan, and you’ll just have to take my word that it has nothing to do with Stanley Hall’s murder.”

That grunt sounded unconvinced, but he didn’t follow up.

“As for the film,” I said, “There were a dozen witnesses who can swear I never touched that camera, including the Belle Vue’s director, his security manager, and that stuffy little desk clerk.”

“I know.” There it was again. That wolf-from-Little-Red-Riding-Hood smile. “Which is why I’m asking you directly.”

“Then trust me.” I’m also very good at lying directly. “There was no film in the camera and no photograph of Mr Hall sprawled with his neck at right angles on that bed.”

“Right angles, eh.” He looked at his watch. Looked at the clock on my wall. Checked with the church clock over the street. They all read eight minutes to one. “Get your coat, Lois.”

My heart sank. This meant police stations, formal questioning, warrants to search my offices and home and, even as he held the door open for me, I was frantically working on ways to weasel out of the lie.

“I don’t know why you women wear high heels, if walking in them makes you limp,” he said, in the street.

“It’s not the shoes. I dropped a chicken on my foot.”

“Hm,” he said, and I’m not sure at what point he linked my arm through his, but the support certainly made walking easier. “Right, then. Here we go.”

I thought he meant the car, although I wouldn’t normally have associated beige sports models with police cars. Instead, he meant the restaurant, decked out in red, white and green stripes.

“Surprised?”

“You could say that.” Italian, too. “You struck me as the sort who only eats at the police canteen.”

“You struck me as the sort who doesn’t eat at all,” he said, looking me up and down as if I were a racehorse, and I must admit I do lose track of time when I’m working, but was I honestly that bony? I looked at my wrists and thought, damn.

“How did you get into the PI business?” he asked, over antipasti of sardines and tomatoes.

It seemed an innocuous enough question, so I explained how I’d been temping as a shorthand typist in a solicitor’s (no one offers unmarried mothers permanent employment), and how, during the course of my assignment, I was privy to various telephone conversations between the partners and firms of private eyes. It didn’t need Einstein to calculate the difference between shorthand typing and the amount of money that could be made from divorce. Strangely, it took me right through the saltimbocca and halfway into my tiramisu to explain all this, though I omitted to mention that this was the first time I’d ever told anyone my history.

“You never wanted to get married?”

“To the father of my child? Of course I did!” What kind of strumpet did he take me for? “Unfortunately, he never had any intention of leaving his wife and at the first sniff of the word pregnancy, he dropped me like a brick.”

No offer of child support. In fact, no support of any kind. And he knew I was far too sweet to go blabbing to his wife.

“Dammit, Sullivan, he even denied the baby was his!”

“I, er, meant afterwards. The last few years.”

Oh. “Too busy,” I said, and then, in another burst of unaccustomed frankness (I blame the Chianti), I admitted that no one had ever asked me. “Men aren’t exactly tripping over themselves to put a ring on an unmarried mother’s finger.”

Instead they think of us as easy, which is why I took up judo and why I make Susan go to classes every Tuesday.

“What about you?” I asked, calming down over the coffee. “Are you married?”

“Nope.” He shrugged. “Engaged once, but she didn’t like the hours I kept and married a nine-to-five accountant. Then again.” He grinned. “It might have been because I’m so damned ugly.”

Not handsome, that’s for sure. Craggy/rugged/lived-in, call it what you will, that face was never going to end up on an advertising poster. But ugly…?

“We’d better go,” he said. “The restaurant is closing.”

Was it? I hadn’t realized we’d been sitting there so long, and though I can’t remember how we ended up going from trattoria to cinema, I have vague recollections of someone saying something about Cary Grant, which led to the fact that North by Northwest was playing at the Odeon, which in turn led to there being just enough time to catch the matinee before I met my daughter after tap class.

I knew full well what Sullivan was playing at. Softening me up, winning me over, drawing me into his confidence. It wouldn’t work, I didn’t care. It was the first time I’d been to the pictures in a decade. I’d forgotten what popcorn tasted like. It tasted bloody good.

October turned to November. Sunshine turned to rain. The nights began to draw in really fast. From time to time, like twice a week, Sullivan would drop by my office to discuss the Belle Vue murder – or at least vent his frustration at the lack of leads and progress – and invariably we’d end up having lunch or taking in a film. Ben-Hur. Rio Bravo. Some Like It Hot with Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe.

“I just wish I could find a motive,” he would say, spiking his fingers through that dark, unruly mop. “The door was locked, there was no key on the inside, and commercial reps in motor oil can’t break their own necks, that’s for sure.”

“Not and lock the door afterwards,” I’d agree, and trust me, I did feel sympathy. Needless to say, had I believed that holding back that photograph prevented him from bringing the perpetrator to justice, I’d have mailed it to him – anonymously, of course. Okay, he’d know it was me (even though I’d have denied it with my dying breath), but there was still the possibility, however remote, that someone else had snapped the dead man in that hotel bedroom. But I’d studied that picture over and over. It was just a dead man in a hotel bedroom, end of story.

“He’d stayed at the Belle Vue several times, that’s the silly part.”

The first time Sullivan kissed me was during the chariot race in Ben-Hur, and if anyone ever tells you that’s exciting, believe you me, it was nothing compared to the thrill of that kiss. I decided there and then that I liked being softened up, won over, drawn into a policeman’s confidence. Torture me all you like, Officer, I still won’t tell.

“I guess he made enemies in Brighton -”

“Motor oil is a dangerous business,” I grinned.

“But legitimate,” he said. “I checked, and he had genuine appointments in Brighton on every occasion that he stayed at the Belle Vue, even though the company he worked for didn’t spring for their uncompromising rates.”

That was odd, I thought. Usually reps stayed at fleapits and charged the higher allowance to make a bob or two, not the other way around. I was about to point this out, even though I’m sure Sullivan was way ahead of me, but then he leaned over the table and kissed me full on the mouth and in public, and it went straight out of my head. I had other things to worry about.

“My daughter has a crush on her road-safety officer,” I said. Lately we’d taken to having lunch on Saturdays, when Susan went to Josie’s. “She thinks he’s handsome, clever, funny, a real scream-”

“That doesn’t sound like a crush.” The gravel in his throat churned up in laughter. “It sounds to me like she’s found a friend, but in any case, where’s the harm? She’s nine.”

“Hero worship? Nothing.” I downed half a glass of wine in a single swallow. “Providing she grows out of it.”

And there it was again, too much damned Chianti, because suddenly I was blurting out my own stupidity at falling in love with an older, married man-

“Whoa.” His hand covered mine and half the table. “Why do you keep blaming yourself? The bastard knew exactly what he was doing, Lois. He’s the one who preyed on your youth and innocence. He’s the one who led you on, lied to you, and cheated. And Lois, he’s the one who bailed when you got pregnant.”

I’d never really thought of it like that, any more than I’d imagined Stephen Rolands as a child molester, who ought to be locked up and the damn key thrown away for good. If Sullivan ever got his hands on him, so help him, he said, Rolands would need a bloody plastic surgeon. What odds the bastard was still doing it today?

“Is he still teaching?”

“Long Road Secondary Modern, but-”

“But nothing. You said yourself, you’d only just turned seventeen, but times have changed in ten years, Lois. Rock and roll has taken over, Teddy boys are in, girls are wearing make-up, looking older. I’ll bet you a pound to a penny Rolands is targeting fifteen-year-olds or younger.”

I wanted to do something, say something, be really grown up about this business of scales dropping from the eyes. Instead I burst into tears.

“Don’t worry, we’ll stop him,” Sullivan said softly. “He won’t ruin any more lives, you have my word.”

“It’s not that,” I blubbed. In fact, it wasn’t even the thought of Susan’s father rotting in jail – nothing half so noble.

The thing is, right up till that moment, I’d genuinely believed that I was special.

It’s surprising how businesslike you become when there are no illusions left. How detached you feel snapping adulterous husbands with mistresses/call girls/rent boys and in places most decent people couldn’t imagine, or how disconnected you become furnishing cast-iron proof of wives with gambling addictions, drug addictions, lovers, or just a love affair with the bottle. After all, who was I to judge what constitutes an unfit mother? I only needed to take one look in the mirror.

As a result, shades of grey no longer figured in my life. My job was to secure Susan’s future, and whereas before, when it came to runaway children, my heart was torn between finding them and reporting their whereabouts to their parents, I simply reminded myself that if I hadn’t intended to return them, I shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. Black and white worked well. With the cheque from Mrs Cuthbertson’s solicitor, for instance, I could send Susan on a foreign-exchange visit, maybe two. Her life would never be like mine.

So Guy Fawkes Night came and went. We roasted potatoes in the bonfire, let off rockets from a milk bottle, tied Catherine wheels to the next-door neighbour’s shed, and frightened his dog with our jumping jacks. Susan took up ice skating and fell in love with horses, and since cases didn’t come in any faster, I found myself with more time on my hands than I’d ever known.

That’s what comes from being too efficient.

Which is why I was sitting at my desk one Wednesday afternoon, poring over the photograph of Stanley Hall’s dead body.

Someone broke his neck with one clean snap, Sullivan told me, shortly after the results of the postmortem had come through. That, to me, suggested someone who’d been in the army. You can’t kill that cleanly and that swiftly without training and (I’m sad to say) without practice. Then there was the trunk. Commercial representatives in motor oil don’t lug around huge amounts of samples. There are no demonstration models to tuck away in cases. For one night’s stay, he wouldn’t need much in the way of change of clothing, and as a lowly rep aged twenty-six from a council house in London’s notorious East End, he was unlikely to be sporting a tuxedo.

I made myself a cup of tea and dunked a ginger nut. Why the Belle Vue, either? I’d never met Stanley Hall and maybe it was unfair to judge, but somehow I wasn’t getting the impression that this was his own special personal treat. That blue check suit was more at home on a bookie’s runner than at Brighton’s top hotel. If Hall was pampering himself on the sly, subsidizing the room rate out of his own pocket, surely he’d have treated himself to more apposite attire? Or at least, like me, rented something suitable? Questions, questions, questions. I could see why Sullivan was so frustrated. The difference was, he had a dozen other cases to work on, while I had nothing to distract me except a bit of filing and maybe window cleaning. (It’s Christmas that widens the gulf in marriages to the point of irrevocability. Not the run-up).

More tea. More ginger nuts. And I guess it’s all that osso bucco and fettuccine, but I noticed the other day that my hips have got some shape at last, and those poached eggs on my chest no longer need so much cotton wool inside their bra. And I thought of Stanley Hall. His body still not released for burial. What his poor mother must be going through-

“Sullivan, it’s me. Well, no, it’s not me, of course, it’s the security manager. That’s who killed Stanley Hall.”

“Lois, slow down. You’re running all your words into one.”

“Then listen faster, Sullivan. Why didn’t Stanley Hall check out on time?”

“Because he was dead, darling.”

“Yes, but why didn’t someone go and check? He was supposed to have vacated the room by 9:30 in the morning, yet the “Do Not Disturb” sign was still hanging on the doorknob after lunch. Someone either told Housekeeping that this was fine-”

“She says cleaning two-twenty-three wasn’t on her list.”

“Exactly. Or, if you’d only let me get a word in edgeways, someone deleted that room number from her roster. And the only other person who has access to the housekeeper’s room is the manager of security!”

After eight years in the PI business, I know hotels inside out.

“The very first thing that struck me about him was his military bearing,” I continued firmly, before he could interrupt again. “I can’t be sure, but you check his army records and if he didn’t serve in Korea and have experience of one-to-one combat, I’ll eat my brand-new pedal pushers.”

“Please don’t, you look unendurably sexy in them.” I could hear his pencil scratching down the line. “So assuming you’re right, that’s taken care of means and opportunity. How about a motive?”

“Don’t CID ever talk to ordinary people?”

All it needed was a few discreet enquiries of the staff at the Belle Vue – and okay, I admit it, a few discreet ten-pound notes as well – to drag out the fact that three or four times in the past year, some of their clients had been robbed.

“The desk clerk confirmed – incidentally, I’m expecting Her Majesty’s police force to reimburse me for these expenses – but anyway, he confirmed that these robberies coincided with every one of Stanley Hall’s visits.”

That’s why that loud check suit didn’t matter. He never intended leaving the room. It was the security manager who had both keys and access. He who stole money, jewels, various other valuables.

“Just a few bits here and there, and never enough to justify the Belle Vue’s guests calling the police, but enough to launch an in-house investigation.”

In which their upright, vetted, army veteran was hardly going to investigate himself.

“Stanley Hall was the fence?”

“If you’ve ever been to the East End, Sullivan…”

I didn’t tell him this was where I was born, or that, council house or not, my family still disowned me, not just for being an unmarried mother, but for being a PI to boot. The shame is just too much to bear.

“That’s why he needed such a large trunk, and I’ll bet that’s why he was killed.”

“He started to get greedy?”

It would have been the perfect murder, had it not been for me and the Cuthbertsons’ divorce. Because having calmly hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door he’d locked behind him, the security manager was waiting until the mid-afternoon lull before removing his accomplice’s body, and in the victim’s own trunk, too. No wonder he’d arrived so quickly on the murder scene. No wonder he’d looked so bloody grim. But equally… I stared into the telephone. If it hadn’t been for me hanging on to evidence, he could have got away with it. I tried to console myself with the fact that at least now Mrs Hall could bury her son in time for Christmas. Tried is the operative word.

“By the way, Sullivan, one other thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Did you just call me darling?”

Susan was wheeling her bike down the hall on her way to Josie’s when I heard her call out, “Hello, Mr Sullivan.”

I blinked. I hadn’t associated him with either ice skating or pony rides.

“Hello, Susan.” He tapped her on the head with a rolled-up page of foolscap. “Still practising what I taught you?”

She laughed, in a happy, friendly, offhandedly familiar sort of way before bursting into song in the front doorway.

“You look over your shoulder

Before you stick your right arm out.

When it’s clear, then you manoeuvre…”

She was still Hound-Dogging away as the door slammed in her wake, and if she leaves that scarf behind one more time, I’ll throttle her with the bloody thing.

“You’re the road-safety officer?”

It was the first time he’d come to the flat, and I’d reckoned on Susan being gone by eleven-thirty. She’s usually pretty prompt. Else I dock her pocket money.

“That’s me. Handsome, funny, clever… and what was that other thing again?”

“Old,” I snapped. “And you could at least have the decency to look sheepish.”

“Why? Susan and I hit it off straightaway, it’s how I knew who you were, remember? You’re all she talks about, you know.”

“Really?” It takes pathetically little to make a mother’s heart swell.

“Uh-huh.” His nose wrinkled. “Until Rusty the pony came along, anyway.”

It’s only a small flat and he seemed to fill up most of it. “Here,” he said, handing me the sheet. “I thought you’d like a copy of the security manager’s confession.” He glanced at me from the corner of his eye as he made us both a cup of coffee. “Are you sure you didn’t write it for him? It’s almost word for word what you told me.”

I was so busy reading that it took me a few minutes to realize how quickly he’d made himself at home. Or how right it felt.

“Female intuition,” I said glibly.

“And a good memory,” he said, concentrating surprisingly hard on stirring coffee that contained neither milk nor sugar. “The size of that trunk? The colour and design of his suit? Neck at right angles to the body? One might almost say photographic.”

In a book, I’d have had the grace to blush. In real life, I stared him out.

“A word of advice, though, Lois.” When he leaned back in the chair, I heard it creak. Then again, it could have been a low chuckle in the back of his throat. “Next time, either tuck the roll into the inside of your stocking or wear a less figure-hugging skirt. By the way, happy birthday,” he said, tossing a box across the table.

No point in asking who had told him. “What is it?”

“What does it look like?”

It looked like a diamond solitaire. “A reward from the Belle Vue?”

“Are you kidding? Those people won’t even give their fleas away.” His craggy face grew serious. “Lois, please say you’re not going to make me go down on one knee.”

I dropped the box. We banged heads picking it up.

“You’re asking me to marry you?”

“Why not?” He ran his hand over his jaw. “I get free housing through my job, which would save you rent on this place, for a start. Then it’s not like Susan and I don’t get on.” If I had a daddy, I’d like him to be like the road-safety man. “And… well…”

“Well what?” This time I was determined he would do it.

“And I love you.”

I loved him too, but I was holding that one up my sleeve. “I won’t change what I do, Sullivan. I’ll still be Hepburn Investigations with seedy divorces and even seedier clients.”

“It never occurred to me that you would change, Lois, and I don’t want you to. Not ever.”

“I still bank my cheques in Susan’s trust fund?”

“Absolutely.”

I told him I supposed it was a deal, only on this occasion we didn’t seal it with a handshake. Afterwards, and once you could wipe the grin off my face, because that’s something else I hadn’t done in a decade, I have to admit that committing to a lifetime with someone didn’t seem half so scary.

Slowly, the world turned back to a million shades of grey.