Dulcie Marrable

Dulcie Marrable is 20 and has danced at a Soho cabaret for two years. Born in Margate, on the Kent coast, the daughter of a theater seamstress and a father she says has been traveling since 1950. She came to London at 17 with a cardboard suitcase and a list of phone numbers. She lives in a room in Thaddeus Ashgrove's flat and, in exchange, answers the phone and keeps his practice's appointment book on Thursdays.

Her day begins after noon. She drinks black tea with three sugar lumps, rehearses steps in the flat's hallway and counts her tips in her purse before going out. At the cabaret, the dressing rooms have bulbs around the mirror and smell of hairspray and cold cigarettes. She pretends to understand nothing about politics, money or men, and that's how men talk too much near her.

She is petite, with a heart-shaped face, big eyes in black liner and auburn hair teased into a high bun. She wears an emerald-green sheath dress and stiletto heels that make her look taller than she is. She laughs with her whole mouth, answers a question with a question and mocks those who underestimate her, but goes suddenly quiet when someone's tone changes.

About the weekend, her account is light: Thaddeus brought her, as he always does, and there she swims, smiles and nobody asks her anything. She found the Soviet captain pleasant, because he brings caviar, dances well and wants to know everything, even her lipstick brand. She slept at the house, in a room on the opposite side from the west wing. To her, Russian or English, men are all the same after the third glass.

Dulcie knows a twenty-year-old girl without an important surname, a guest by favor in a house full of ministers, is the first one anyone points at. When the detective accuses her of stealing secrets, she replies that she can barely read the cabaret program and asks him not to flatter her with insults. It could be the cleverness of someone who learned early to play the fool. It could be someone who laughs to avoid explaining something else. The detective will have to decide which.