“My husband has always been so optimistic.” She gave a weary sigh, pressing a hand to her forehead. “But the doctors are not.”
“I’m sorry. I shall make a point to visit more often.”
“He’d appreciate that. He has a great deal of affection for you, you know.”
“It’s mutual, Helen. After the scandal with my father came out, Richard took my mother on at the Bainbridge when no one else would hire her.”
“It wasn’t your mother’s fault that your father was dishonest. To this day, Richard says making her the head of housekeeping at the Bainbridge was one of the best decisions he ever made. Letting you buy half that hotel and take over its management was another. You doubled the profits in less than a year.”
“Still, the fact remains that at the time of my father’s death, no onewanted to hire a woman whose husband was a thief.” Simon paused, his father’s shame still a bitter taste in his mouth even after all these years. “I owe Richard more than I can ever repay.”
“Well, we are grateful to you as well, Simon. Especially now, I find your help with this Savoy business a godsend.”
He cast a worried glance at her. “Helen, please don’t distress yourself about the Savoy. Given Richard’s illness, I can manage things with the auditors and solicitors on my own if it’s too much for you. You needn’t be involved at all if you don’t wish to be.”
Her tired face took on a hard, determined look. “If you think I can bear to stand by, doing nothing as Ritz robs my husband blind, you don’t know me at all.”
He smiled at that. “I know you well enough to have known that’s what you’d say, but nonetheless, the offer stands. I take it our solicitors and detectives have made some progress in the investigations?”
“They have, and I’m afraid things are even worse than we previously suspected.”
“Worse?” Somehow, that surprised him, though he didn’t know why it should. “How much worse?”
Helen hesitated, but her grim expression told its own tale, and Simon drew a deep breath. “It’s that bad, is it?”
“Let’s just say we’ll be dismissing a great many more people before it’s over.”
As she spoke, an image of Lady Stratham stole into Simon’s mind. “Which people?” he asked, his voice harsh to his own ears.
“Let’s have lunch first.” Helen picked up the menu in front of her, and Simon forced images of Lady Stratham out of his mind. Over an excellent meal of turtle soup, filet of beef, and apple tart, the two of them discussed other topics, avoiding the matter of the Savoy altogether.
Only after the last crumb of tart had been eaten and they wereboth sipping their coffee did Simon once again broach the question uppermost in his mind. “Who will we be firing? Ritz, obviously, but then, we already knew it would come to that in the end. Who else?”
“Many of the restaurant staff will have to be replaced. As the anonymous letter said, half the waiters are collecting bribes from customers for the best tables, charging customers for flowers that were never ordered, and pocketing commissions on cigar sales instead of putting them in thetronc. They are also granting restaurant credit to the biggest tippers and then giving the cashiers a part of thetroncas a bribe to ensure the bills never get collected.”
“So these generous tippers never end up paying for the food and wine they consume.”
“Exactly. By the way, you recall how the author of that letter accused Ritz, Echenard, and Escoffier of helping themselves to the hotel wine and liquor without paying for it?”
“Yes, but then we learned that Madelaine Alverson, two of the waiters, and a kitchen maid were colluding to steal wine out of the Savoy cellars and sell it. The detectives caught them red-handed.”
“Yes, but we have now confirmed that what they were taking was only a drop in the bucket. When the accountants audited the wine inventory, they realized there was far more wine unaccounted for than those four could possibly have taken.”
“So another of the accusations of the letter writer has now been confirmed beyond doubt.”
She nodded. “And there’s more. Ritz, Escoffier, and Echenard have not only been taking wine for themselves, but they’ve also been dispensing additional hotel wine and liquor to their personal friends and charging it as an expense to the hotel. We estimate they’ve taken over ten thousand pounds’ worth during the past twelve months alone.”
“Ten thousand pounds’ worth of wine in a single year?”
“And they’ve been engaging in this practice from the very beginning, right under Richard’s nose. The accountants tell me that between them, those three men have stolen over fifty thousand pounds’ worth of wine and liquor during the past eight years.”
“If that’s so, then the head cashier must know all about it. Which explains why when Ritz was hired, he insisted on bringing in his own man for that position.”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Agostini is in this up to his neck. And it isn’t just the wine. As the letter said, they’ve also been helping themselves to the Savoy’s food stores, as have Agostini and both restaurant managers.”
“How can they get away with that? What, do they all just walk into the larder whenever the mood strikes and take what they want and no one notices?”
“Oh, no, it’s much more subtle than that. The food is given directly to them by the hotel’s suppliers as gifts. Vast quantities of groceries are being sent every week from the Savoy’s suppliers directly to these men’s personal residences.”
