Hélène looked back at her girls. Elisabeth was with Sofía and the room was a chaos of ball gowns and cases and missing shoes, but no matter what they looked like now, Hélène knew they would be striding into the ballroom without a hair out of place when the clocks tolled two. She herself would be wearing a floor-length cotton organdie gown with huge frilled sleeves – a perfect imitation of the one Joan Crawford had worn in Letty Lynton.

Hélène marched along the hall, up and away from the ballroom as Billy scurried in her wake. ‘Billy,’ Hélène said when they reached the hotel director’s door. ‘Is our honoured guest still in the Grand Colonial Suite? You know the man I mean. The Spaniard . . .’

Billy nodded. He was here to star in a picture show they were shooting at the old Heatherdon Hall. He’d brought his leading lady to dine at La Petite Salle, the Buckingham’s finest French restaurant (Billy knew she’d stayed the night as well, even though she was not on the hotel manifest).

‘Don’t suppose he’ll be going back to Spain now, will he, miss?’

Hélène tensed. ‘He’s not to go near Sofía tonight. A glass of champagne and he’ll want to dance with her. Do what you can, won’t you? A nice little distraction, here and there. Get Sofía partnered up with some other guest for the evening.’

Billy gave Hélène his most ostentatious bow – ‘Your wish is my command!’ – and then, readying herself for yet another battle, Hélène knocked sharply on the director’s door.

*

Maynard Charles was not what you would call an insignificant man – but he did pride himself on being invisible. He knew the names of every guest of note at the Buckingham Hotel. He made it a matter of honour that he could recite them all – and, because the Buckingham comprised two hundred bedrooms and twenty-six suites, this was certainly a Herculean task. And yet very few of those guests would have paid him a second glance had they passed him in the reception hall, or sat beside him in the cocktail lounge as they deliberated over their long Martinis. Invisibility, Maynard Charles had long ago decided, was advantageous.