But he certainly wasn’t going to rely on not being interrupted by her. That was something you learnt early on in this game: expect the worst and prepare for it. Assuming Lex were to get interrupted in her room, he would need a viable excuse. And that, naturally, meant dressing up as a member of staff. It wasn’t fool proof, of course, for the woman had spent the entire evening sitting across from Lex at the dinner table. But people who were that disgustingly rich didn’t usually see servants. Not really. And Lex would only need to mumble his reason for being in her room before making a speedy retreat. She would not see his face clearly during that time, especially if he was wearing a hat.
And, fortunately, the bellhops at the Majestic all wore hats.
Obtaining a uniform wasn’t too terribly difficult. Lex simply slipped out of the hotel and went round to the back. All hotels had back entrances for members of staff to come and go less obtrusively; somewhere the trash cans were kept and where the chefs could nip out for a quick smoke when it all got a bit too much for them in the kitchens. So Lex wandered around and found the place easily enough. From there it was a simple enough thing to wander unobtrusively through the kitchens. Lex had mastered the unobtrusive walk some time ago, now. It was very important to a fraud to be able to walk through a busy place without being noticed. And this was where he blessed his relative lack of height and his generally unimpressive stature. Jesse would find it much harder to walk unobtrusively because of his broad shoulders and height, whereas Lex could just slip right past everyone with barely more than a second glance spared his way. Now that it was a little later in the evening, one might expect the hubbub in the kitchen to have died down a bit. Not so at the Majestic. It appeared that, at this luxury hotel, breakfast, elevenses, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner were not considered to be enough. There was a midnight buffet as well, the centrepiece of which was a magnificent hog roast. There was, therefore, much hustle and bustle going on. Lex slipped through it all easily, grabbing up a big pile of dirty discarded aprons as he went.
Once he was out of the kitchens he wandered around for a while in search of the laundry room. No one stopped him. After all, he was carrying dirty washing. In the end he stopped a waiter who was going past and said, ‘Er… can you tell me where the laundry is? I’m new.’
The waiter quickly gave him the directions before hurrying towards the kitchens. Once Lex got to the laundry he dumped the dirty aprons down and rooted around in the great mounds of clean clothing until he found a bright red jacket that was about his size. Yet another benefit of wearing all black was that it was adaptable: put on a red jacket with a bit of gold braid and he looked like he was wearing a uniform. He grabbed a matching hat and rammed it on his head before walking back to the kitchens. There he lingered just long enough to pick up an unattended plate of cakes? walking off with them with complete confidence as if he was absolutely supposed to take them.
Margie’s room was on the fifth floor, number 512. Lex walked into the elevator with his head held high in a posture of absolute confidence. The quickest way to draw attention to yourself was to look guilty. So he strutted into the elevator and calmly told the attendant that he was heading for the fifth floor. Unfortunately, it got a little bit hairy at that moment because, just as the doors were closing, a foot rammed into the gap to open them again and two people walked into the elevator. Lex knew, of course, that there were bound to be people milling about in the lobby, and possibly using the lifts, who had come from the dining room and had seen him there, or else had seen him play in the first round. But he also knew that most of those people would not really have seen him to the point of recognising him in a bellhop uniform. After all, there was no obvious reason why Lex Trent would be wandering about dressed up as a member of staff.
It was, therefore, most unfortunate that the two people who entered the lift now were Tess and Jeremiah East, probably the only two people (with the exception of Lorella and her sprite) who would recognise Lex in such a get-up. Instantly, he assumed a slouching attitude, hunching his shoulders and leaning against the elevator wall in a sulky sort of manner, his head bent at such an angle that they could not see his face.
Luckily, it was irrelevant, anyway, because Jeremiah and Tess paid him no attention whatsoever. Tess was too busy crying and Jeremiah was too busy trying to comfort her. At least she was doing it quietly? Lex couldn’t stand bawling kids. He would never even have realised Tess was upset if it hadn’t been for Jeremiah leaning down to her level, with his hands on her shoulders as he said, ‘People die in Games all the time, Tess. Jesse would have known that when he signed up for it. What happened wasn’t your fault.’
‘It… was,’ Tess replied, so quietly that Lex could hardly hear her. ‘I shouldn’t have picked up the octopus. But I didn’t want someone to stand on it…’ She trailed off with a whimper, but she was scowling through her tears, as if angry with Jeremiah or herself or perhaps both.
Lex rather liked her for that. And the fact that she was getting all wound up and upset about a man who wasn’t dead at all, almost? almost? made him feel bad. So, as the doors opened for the Easts on the third floor, Lex took a chance by picking up one of the pretty, frosted cupcakes on the plate he was carrying and thrusting it out to Tess. It was a risky thing to do. After all, she only had to look at his face and she would surely recognise him. And how the heck would he explain to Jeremiah what he was doing dressed up in a bellhop outfit? He could try making out that he’d cracked under the strain of Jesse’s death, but that really seemed to be stretching it just a bit too far and he was sure Jeremiah would be suspicious. But Lex liked risk. Sometimes he just couldn’t help himself. So he held the cupcake out to Tess, even though he knew it might get him caught.
She started shaking her head but Jeremiah said, ‘Take it, Tess; you barely touched your dinner.’
So she took the cake from Lex’s hand with a muttered word of thanks.
‘That’s very kind,’ Jeremiah said. ‘Thank you.’
Lex merely nodded? careful to keep his head lowered? faintly surprised that Jeremiah would even bother to thank a mere bellhop. He supposed it was because there was no one important around to witness it. In another moment, Jeremiah and Tess had stepped out and the elevator continued up to the fifth floor without them.
When Lex got to Room 512, he took out the key and let himself in. It was just a bedroom, and so not as nice as his own suite on the top floor, but still rather impressive, nonetheless. Lex walked in and left the door slightly ajar behind him. Margie probably wouldn’t notice her key was missing until she actually got to her room, and Lex didn’t really want her going down to reception and possibly returning with a manager to let her in, so he left the door slightly open. He would hear her approach in time to put down anything he shouldn’t have been touching and the plate of cakes he was carrying would constitute an effective excuse to explain his presence there.
As soon as he walked in, his eye fell on the large framed photo by the bed. He wandered over to it and saw that it was a picture of Margie with a thin little man wearing a monocle and a bemused sort of expression.