Louise's Gamble

by Sarah R. Shaber

‘Louise, you are looking so thoughtful,’ Orazio said. ‘You are thinking I shouldn’t gossip about my employers so!’

  ‘I’m sorry, not at all!’ I said. ‘I was thinking about Alessa.’

  Pushing his dinner plate to the side, Orazio pulled the champagne bottle out of the silver ice bucket and refilled our flutes. I couldn’t finish my steak and asked the waiter for a brown bag when he cleared the table.

  ‘I have little to talk about other than my work and the Onetos,’ Rossi said. ‘But I am determined to remedy that. If I am to live here for the duration of the war, I need friends. Which leads me to my next request of you.’

  Oh no! This was a date after all! Damn! How would I extricate myself from this?

  The waiter brought us coffee, pouring it from a gleaming silver pot, reminding me of Enzo toiling in the sub-basement, filthy with silver tarnish.

  ‘There is a USO benefit ball here Friday night. Would you like to go with me? Sebastian and Alessa bought tickets, and Sebastian has given them to me.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. A ball. I’d never been to a ball.

  ‘I know it is short notice,’ Rossi said. ‘But it will be so gay. Gene Kelly and Mary Martin will perform, and many other celebrities are attending. There’s a buffet dinner and dancing to the Mayflower Orchestra.’

  If I went, I thought, I’d have another chance to learn the geography of the hotel, perhaps talk to some of the staff, and maybe add facts to the timeline of the night Alessa died. Maybe I could even bluff my way into the Oneto apartment again and look for her knitting bag! It would be risky; I wouldn’t want to be seen with Rossi by anyone from OSS who knew about Alessa. But how likely was that? Balls at the Mayflower drew thousands of people, and the tickets must be too expensive for most people I knew in OSS.

  ‘Please,’ Rossi said. ‘I know it’s wartime, but can’t we enjoy ourselves for one evening?’

  I said yes.

  It wasn’t late when I returned to ‘Two Trees’. I insisted on paying for the taxi myself, though Orazio offered. I pleaded work as a reason not to stay for music and dancing, but it was really the early breakfast with policeman Ralph that was on my mind.

  ‘There you are,’ Joe said, meeting me in the hall. He quickly kissed me on the cheek as Phoebe called out to me from the lounge.

  ‘Louise, dear,’ Phoebe said. ‘Come join us.’ She and Ada, who didn’t work on Tuesday nights, were listening to an Ellery Queen mystery, so I dutifully hung up my coat and went into the lounge trailed by Joe. We would never have a moment’s privacy as long as we lived here, I thought desperately.

  I wedged myself between Phoebe and Ada on the davenport. Ada wore a new pair of chic lounging pajamas. Phoebe’s hair was set in crimps with bobby pins hidden under a towel turban.

  Without thinking I placed my brown bag – stamped with The Mayflower Hotel’s trademark sailing ship and words ‘The Presidential Restaurant’ – on the cocktail table.

  ‘Dearie,’ Ada said, ‘did you go to the Presidential Restaurant tonight?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, furious with myself for being so careless. ‘I had dinner with a friend.’

  ‘Who?’ Phoebe said. ‘Tell us!’

  ‘I hope he paid,’ Ada said. ‘It’s so expensive! Did you see any celebrities? I heard Norman Rockwell is staying there, sketching in the lobby.’

  ‘No,’ I said, glancing at Joe.

  ‘You wouldn’t see many celebrities on a Tuesday,’ Phoebe said. ‘They’re still recovering from the weekend parties.’

  I’d made Joe unhappy. I could tell by the way he didn’t meet my eyes and turned away from me. He set about cleaning and refilling his pipe, his usual distraction.

  As few lies as possible, please, I reminded myself.

  ‘I had dinner with a friend of Alessa’s. We talked about her, that’s all.’

  ‘The countess who killed herself?’ Phoebe asked. Hearing her words hurt.

  ‘A man friend? And you wore that dress to the Presidential Restaurant?’ Ada asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t a date.’

  Joe silently tamped down his tobacco and drew on his pipe, sucking in flames from a match to ignite it. I loved the smell of his tobacco.

  ‘It must have been a nice change from Scholl’s,’ Joe said quietly, referring to the chain restaurant we’d eaten in over the weekend.

  That’s not fair, damn it, I thought to myself. But then I was the idiot who’d brought home the leftovers from my elegant dinner in a labeled brown bag. I didn’t answer Joe. I couldn’t tell him I’d rather eat a tuna sandwich on a park bench with him than go to any fancy restaurant in town, not in front of Phoebe and Ada. And I certainly couldn’t tell him that I was Pinkerton-ing Alessa’s death on my own. What would he think when I told him about the ball!

  Oh, what did it matter? Joe and I didn’t have a real romance, anyway, and likely never would. We were trapped by lack of money and social convention. After the war he’d go back to Europe and I’d stay here and consider myself fortunate if I had a job and lived in a comfortable boarding house for the rest of my life. And that presumed I wouldn’t lose this job! Going to college and having my own apartment one day were dreams, too. Lovely dreams, but not sensible.

  ‘I’m tired,’ I said. ‘I’m going on to bed. Have to get up early tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t forget to put your leftovers in the refrigerator,’ Joe said.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Ralph’s daily breakfast cafe was a greasy spoon. If I were on my own I wouldn’t set foot in the place. I could hardly see through the plate-glass window on account of the steam and grease coating it.

  I spotted Ralph right away at a table for two in a back corner. He waved, and five seconds after I’d sat down the colored waitress poured me a mug of coffee.

  ‘I see a sugar bowl,’ I said to him. ‘I don’t believe it!’

  Ralph grinned at me. ‘I’m a cop,’ he said. ‘There’s always sugar on the table for me.’

  Ralph ordered a stack of pancakes and sausage. I requested bacon and fried eggs over medium.

  The waitress warmed up our mugs of coffee before she left.

  ‘I guess cops get all the coffee they want, too?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, ma’am!’ He smiled. ‘One of the rewards of public service.’ He reached behind him, where his blue jacket hung over the back of the chair, and pulled a folded sheaf of papers out of a pocket. ‘Here,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘is the paperwork you wanted.’ Just like that.

  I took the papers from him and stuffed them into my pocketbook. ‘When do you need them back?’

  ‘No hurry. Anyone looking for them will think the file is lost.’

  I flinched. I spent my life at OSS making sure files were in their proper slots. Finding information, or not finding it, could save lives, or lose them.

  The bacon was crisp, and my eggs were fried the way I liked them, with only a bit of soft center. We even had real jam for our toast! I could see the benefits of befriending a policeman. I hoped Betty had the brains to hang on to him.

  Back at ‘Two Trees’ in my bedroom I spread the contents of the file Ralph had given me across my bed. Despite the rush to judgment on Alessa’s case the file was surprisingly thorough. There were no photographs, thank God. These days sleazy crime photographers crawled over any public death, hoping for a picture that would land them on the front page of a big newspaper. They weren’t reluctant to mess with the scene to improve the shot, either. I’d dreaded seeing a photograph of Alessa dead.

  The skimpy police artist sketch was disturbing enough.

  For one thing the artist hadn’t bothered with facial features. Alessa’s body lay outstretched under covers, her faceless head on a pillow, one hand dangling over the edge of the bed. A liquor bottle and a glass sat on her bedside table. I hadn’t noticed them when I’d visited her bedroom the afternoon of her memorial service.

  I flipped through the police report. ‘Deceased was in the habit of drinking a tumbler of Fer
net before bed,’ I read. What on earth was Fernet?

  The next drawing showed the inside of Lucia Oneto’s medicine cabinet, with her bottle of laudanum and Nembutal tablets. ‘The decedent’s mother-in-law, Lucia Oneto, stated that a substantial amount of laudanum, over two teaspoons, and perhaps several Nembutal tablets were missing from her prescriptions. She also stated that the decedent and she shared the bathroom, and that the decedent knew the medications were in the medicine cabinet. As far as she knew the decedent never took the medications before.’

  The standard dose of laudanum was one and a half milliliters – Phoebe used a dropper to dose herself. It tasted awful. ‘Perhaps the Fernet,’ the report went on, ‘made taking the laudanum palatable, and the Nembutal tablets brought on sleep before the uncomfortable side effects of the laudanum occurred.’

  Wouldn’t it also be possible, I wondered, for a murderer to dose Alessa’s tonic with laudanum and Nembutal? Or force her to take them, followed by the Fernet?

  As the members of the Oneto household were all foreign nationals, their fingerprints were on file. Lucia’s fingerprints were on the medications; Alessa’s on the Fernet bottle and tumbler. Of course, fingerprints could be wiped away.

  What in heaven’s name was Fernet!

  I slid off the bed and went downstairs, where I found Phoebe in the lounge with her mending. She was stitching a new ribbon border around the edge of a worn but still serviceable wool blanket.

  ‘Phoebe,’ I said, ‘do you know what Fernet is?’

  ‘The drink? It’s a horrible Italian liqueur. Awful taste. Full of herbs and spices. It’s like bitters, only worse. Why do you ask?’

  ‘A friend of mine uses it as a tonic.’

  ‘With all the stuff that’s in it it’s bound to cure something.’

  Once upstairs again I went back to the police report.

  Alessa’s household had alibis. Sebastian and Orazio attended a lecture together. Lucia was with friends who verified her presence. Lina spent her evening off with friends.

  According to Sebastian, when he came home, he found his wife sleeping peacefully in their bed. When he awoke the next morning she was dead beside him.

  Both Sebastian and Orazio said that Alessa had seemed somber and sad before they’d gone out that evening.

  I understood why the police, the coroner – and the Oneto family, for that matter – thought Alessa had killed herself. The circumstantial evidence was overwhelming.

  Discouraged, I turned to the transcribed police interviews.

  Alessa’s husband and his private secretary had attended Count Sforza’s lecture on the future of Italy after Mussolini. Then I clutched at the page and reread the next few words, stunned. Sforza’s lecture was at the Mayflower! Sebastian and Orazio were at the hotel all evening!

  The lecture was held in the Chinese Room, near the Seventeenth Street entrance, followed by a reception. Some alibis! You’d never convince me that either Sebastian or Orazio couldn’t have found an excuse to slip away from the lecture long enough to go back upstairs to the apartment and poison Alessa’s tonic.

  And Lucia Oneto was literally right across the Seventeenth Street lobby from the Chinese Room, in the Ladies Parlor! I had assumed she’d be playing bridge in a friend’s apartment. She could easily have excused herself go to the ladies’ room or down the promenade for a sherry while she was the ‘dummy’!

  When I’d first learned that Sebastian, Orazio, and Lucia were ‘out’ when Alessa died, I’d assumed they were off the hotel premises. Instead they were in the Mayflower all along, an elevator ride away from the Oneto apartment!

  Lina was the only person who had what I considered a good alibi. She’d been at the movies with two friends. They’d gone out for milkshakes afterwards.

  I reminded myself the murderer didn’t have to be Orazio, Sebastian, or Lucia. The Mayflower was the grandest hotel in Washington, crammed with hundreds of people at all hours. Anyone could have entered the hotel from one of its four entrances, taken the elevator to the fifth floor, knocked on the Onetos’ apartment door and been admitted. Including Enzo, the Mafia soldier. The possibilities made me want to tear at my hair!

  And, of course, while they were conducting the investigation, the DC Police had no idea that Alessa was a floater for the OSS, and that her ‘operation’ to deliver the name of a sleeper agent had ended with her death.

  How could I possibly sort all this out by going to a benefit ball? It was hopeless. But I was going to try anyway.

  I had no choice.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I needed a ball gown, but I quailed at the thought of what it might cost. I’d heard from Ada it was possible to open a charge account at some department stores and pay for purchases over time. I sure hoped so. I checked my watch. I’d have a sandwich and go shopping straight away.

  Downstairs I found Phoebe still hemming the new ribbon border on to her frayed blanket. I sat down next to her and tried to figure out what I needed to say.

  ‘Spit it out, dearie,’ she said.

  ‘I have to go to a ball,’ I said. ‘The USO benefit ball at the Mayflower on Friday night. I’m off to find a dress.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ she said, ‘you don’t want to tell Joe.’

  I felt sick. ‘Let’s put it this way,’ I said. ‘I need to tell him myself.’

  Phoebe lost the thread from her needle. After watching her fail to re-thread it twice, I took it from her.

  ‘Let me do that,’ I said. After threading the needle, I handed it back to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘You should get glasses.’ I pushed my own up the bridge of my nose.

  ‘I know. Dellaphine pesters me about it all the time. And most of my friends have spectacles. When I was a young woman no self-respecting debutante or young matron wore glasses.’

  ‘I don’t care; I’d rather see.’

  ‘So,’ Phoebe said. ‘You said “had to” go to the ball at the Mayflower. Does that mean you don’t want to go?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘So why are you going?’

  Desperately, I fell back on the standard wartime excuse. ‘I can’t say right now,’ I said.

  ‘I understand. Are you going to Woodies for your gown?’

  ‘Do you know somewhere cheaper? Maybe a consignment shop?’

  ‘Dearie,’ she said, ‘this is a big bash at one of the grandest hotels in the world left standing. You must make your best effort. You’re an attractive young woman with lovely manners and a brain. Make the most of it!’

  ‘That’s so kind of you.’

  ‘You’re as good as any woman who will be there. Your dress should be as fine as you can afford. So many career women ignore their looks, and it’s such a mistake.’

  She was right, of course. Times hadn’t changed enough for me to go to a fancy event poorly dressed and expect to be taken seriously.

  Without thinking I’d worn my Sears catalog man-styled trousers and a dull-gray buttoned up cardigan to shop for my gown. The minute I walked into the women’s evening wear department at Woodies I felt like a country bumpkin.

  Warm ivory walls reflected soft lighting from crystal lamps. Pink roses and chrysanthemums in silvered glass vases were scattered tastefully on occasional tables. A few wing-back chairs, upholstered in ivory silk brocade – before the war, of course – sat in front of a sort of raised platform, a stage, really, near the dressing rooms, where rich husbands could pass judgment on their wives’ selections.

  The room was lined with racks of jewel-toned or jet black cocktail dresses and ball gowns. Light reflected off yards of sequins and satin. Tulle, lace, and crêpe crinolines and overskirts poked out from the racks into the showroom.

  ‘What department are you looking for, dear?’ a saleswoman asked.

  ‘Here,’ I said. ‘I mean, this one.’

  She eyed me critically from head to foot. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked. The saleswoman, whose name tag identified her as Marian, was
dressed perfectly for her role. She wore a beautifully tailored shirtwaist dress in expensive wool with a double strand of pearls and pearl earrings.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, determined, remembering Phoebe’s words.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘let’s get started. What function are you attending?’

  ‘The USO benefit ball at the Mayflower Hotel Friday night,’ I said.

  ‘This Friday night!’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘No time for alterations, then,’ she said. ‘The dress will need to fit perfectly.’

  ‘I can hem it myself.’

  Her surprised look that told me that her customers didn’t hem dresses.

  ‘What size do you wear?’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘All right, let’s see what we can find.’ She led me over to a nearby rack. ‘You’ll want black, of course, so you can wear it again. How about this one?’

  She pulled out a stunning black gown with cap sleeves and elegant ivory lace insets in the bodice. The dress seemed to drop like a waterfall from neckline to hem. My heart stopped. I loved it.

  ‘Would you like to try it on?’

  I didn’t want to disappoint myself by trying on this dress if I couldn’t afford it.

  ‘How much is it?’ I asked.

  ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘it’s an Adrian. It’s one hundred and seventy eight dollars.’

  My instincts were correct. ‘I can’t possibly afford that.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, disappointed, her commission dwindling before her eyes. ‘Well, let’s go over to this rack. These are all Woodward and Lothrop house brands, you understand, but they are designed by some promising couturiers. All under a hundred dollars.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said. It wasn’t fine, but I could manage it.

  ‘Here,’ she said, riffling through the rack. ‘Two very nice black . . .’

  A bit of blueberry flashed by in the clutch of dresses Marian shoved over the rod as she searched for black gowns.

  ‘I want to try on that one,’ I said, pointing at the blue dress.

  Marian pulled the blueberry frock out and hung it on a display hook.