The Bee's Kiss(3)

His eye followed the striking redhead he’d marked down earlier. She stood out from the crowd of flappers and gigglers, distinguished by her height – she towered over most of the men – and by her colouring. Her dark red hair was unfashionably long and piled on top of her head. This had the effect of lengthening further her elegant neck, her elegant neck around which hung a very remarkable necklace. Armitage had lost no time in giving it his professional attention. Emeralds, he judged, and the real goods. A family piece, he guessed, recently and fashionably reset. The stones were large, carried in a simple but heavy gold setting. She had chosen to emphasize their colour by wearing a low-cut gown of dark green taffeta which framed them as they lay gleaming against her smooth white throat.

He indulged for a moment or two in salacious thought. He acknowledged that she was, by his standards, quite old – perhaps even forty – but, given a chance to lay aboard, he wouldn’t have refused. He didn’t think many men would have refused. He watched on as she made her way towards the group of three who had become the focus of his surveillance. Well, at least it simplified things to have all his targets in one shot for a while. He approached the group softly, intrigued to hear their conversation. The woman laughed and flirted and sipped her cocktail prettily. The men vied to exceed each other in gallantry, obviously flattered by her attention. She twirled the stem of her glass and, when one of them noticed it was empty and called to a passing waiter, she asked for ‘Another French Rose. And no sugar round the rim!’ He had not been keeping count but he was aware that she was drinking steadily though you would never have guessed it from her speech or her behaviour. Yes, she could manage her drink, that one.

Now she was moving on to join that rancid toad Sir Montagu Mathurin at his table. There were stories circulating about him that made the sergeant’s flesh crawl and for a split second he was tempted to approach and warn her to move on. But then he pulled himself up. What was he thinking of? The chap was probably her second cousin or something and, anyway, this lady was capable of looking after herself. She greeted Mathurin’s rather sulky-looking little girlfriend (fiancée rather, judging by the ring which was visible clear across the room) with much warmth but at once turned the full glow of her charm on the rogue Mathurin. This was decidedly a display of a sexual nature, Armitage reckoned, frowning anxiously as he watched the apparently casual but practised gesture with which she leaned towards him and adjusted his tie. Anybody could see what that meant! Even across the room the sergeant felt the force of it and he swallowed in sympathy. Certainly Mathurin was responding in a predictable way. It was a relief to see that after a few minutes of fascinating Mathurin she had the good manners to draw the fiancée into the conversation. Trouble averted then. The last thing he wanted was the distraction of a pedigree cat fight but all claws seemed to be sheathed. And this was the Ritz after all, not the London Apprentice. And these were ladies not dockers’ molls.

A clock chimed midnight and this was greeted with raucous calls for more champagne. The redhead rose to her feet and began to thread her way through the crowd towards the door. She paused, turned and directed a look at someone on the other side of the room. Damn! Armitage looked round but he wasn’t quick enough to catch an answering look of complicity from any of the other revellers and wondered cynically which of the assembled men was the chosen one. He wished he had a mate in earshot to take on a bet with him. Whichever bloke rose to his feet and excused himself within the next five minutes, he reckoned was the lucky one. A matronly lady in wine-red brocade staggered to her feet and made her way, listing heavily, towards the door. A pretty girl in a short dress about as concealing as a cobweb noticed her predicament and with a cry of concern hurried after her, steadying her with a hand under an elbow and an encouraging smile. At a look from the maître d’hôtel, a waitress scurried after the pair to check there were no embarrassing scenes in the corridor. A group of chirruping girls followed, flighting their way like finches to the powder room, and Armitage wondered what instinct compelled them to undertake this journey across the room in flocks. Mathurin, deserted for the moment by his fiancée, looked at his watch in anxiety – or was it just boredom? But he stayed in his place. And that was the only excitement. After ten minutes Armitage decided with a sigh of relief that he’d misinterpreted the signals.

At exactly twelve fifteen he was given the nod by the maître d’hôtel and he embarked on the next stage of his surveillance. He was being cleared, as arranged, to make a tour of inspection of the exterior of the hotel. Action at last. A real job to do. His muscles began to tense in anticipation. It would be good to escape from this overheated room and overloud laughter to clear his lungs in the sharp London air. But he only had the designated half-hour. He slipped away and, having given a brief nod to young Robert by the lift, he hurried to pick up his bag of equipment from the staff cloakroom. On a wet dark night like this he needed his police-issue flashlight and some protection for his uniform. He couldn’t come dripping back into the party room without raising a few eyebrows even amongst this paralytic mob.