Mrs Moffatt did not look up as Nancy lingered in the doorway. Whatever she was concentrating on, it seemed, was much more pressing than the delinquent chambermaid hanging around outside her office, still smelling of the cigarette smoke and cheap rum of the Midnight Rooms. Mrs Moffatt raised her hand and, still not looking up, beckoned her in. With a sinking heart, Nancy stepped through and closed the door behind her.

As she fell into the seat in front of the desk, the image of a bloodied Raymond flashed again across her eyes. Things like that didn’t happen all the time, did they? So what was he mixed up in? Raymond said that everyone had stories, everyone had secrets – but what were his?

‘Mrs Moffatt,’ she said, ‘I know what I did was wrong. But let me explain. It was a mistake and I made it in the . . .’

Mrs Moffatt lifted a hand and, after spending a moment ordering her papers, looked up. Making a steeple of her fingers, she considered Nancy.

‘It was a mistake, Mrs Moffatt. That’s all. It hasn’t been the most marvellous of nights and I—’

‘That’s not what you’re here for, Nancy.’

Nancy stalled. ‘Mrs Moffatt?’

‘You know better than to come through the guest doors, Nancy. You’re an astute, intelligent girl. It’s your rotten luck that Mr Simenon, snake that he is, is working so late this evening – but there are guests coming in on the American Airlines flight. Richard Noble, I understand.’ Noble was a filmmaker who courted his stars in the cocktail bar of the Buckingham Hotel. He was known to take great suites and was never a spendthrift with the credit afforded to him by his studio. ‘Mr Simenon intends to be here to meet them . . . but that is his business and this is ours.’ Mrs Moffatt paused. ‘We can make allowances, Nancy. It takes time for a new member of staff to find their feet in an enterprise as vast as the Buckingham. But you’ve been here two months now, and there are reports.’

Nancy repeated the word back at her with horror. ‘Reports, Mrs Moffatt?’

Mrs Moffatt seemed to sense something. She wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘It isn’t just forgetting your place. The door we might overlook, if that was the only thing. And yet . . . Where have you been tonight, Nancy?’

‘I’ve been . . . out, Mrs Moffatt.’ Something hardened in her. Stand up for yourself, Nancy! ‘Why, I’m not a prisoner here, am I? A girl can still go out, if she wants to. I’m not at work until six. I can—’