Prudence Ambler

Prudence Ambler is 52 and for twelve years has written the society column for the yacht owner's newspaper. Born in an eastern port city, the daughter of a ship's agent, she learned to listen before she learned to write: the family table was always full of sailors telling stories they shouldn't. She started as a typist in the newsroom, became a proofreader and one day took over the column nobody wanted, and now nobody dares ask for it back.

She lives in a bright three-room apartment near downtown, full of cardboard folders organized by year and surname. She has breakfast reading the competition, eats lunch in restaurants where the waiters know her tastes and dines at parties that always have a fresh topic. She keeps a Siamese cat named Duke and a collection of fans given to her by people who wanted to look good in the column.

She is plump and well groomed, with a round, powdered face and small, attentive eyes. Her gray hair is short in marcelled waves, she wears navy crepe with a white lace collar and a three-strand pearl necklace. Her tortoiseshell glasses hang from a chain and the leather notebook never leaves her hand. She speaks softly, as if telling a secret, and smiles before saying the sharpest thing.

She was the one who saw, at 1:55, the comedian pass by the cabin door drenched, green with pallor and smelling sour, and finds it funny that he now swears he slept all night. Of the yacht's owner, she says he ate salted almonds and drank champagne, despite an ulcer. About the actress he puts on every cover, she states that she only writes what her employer orders. As for the notebook, it is hers, and whoever asks should have manners.

Prudence knows whoever writes everything down ends up being written down as well. It could be the professional curiosity of a journalist who sees stories where others see guests. It could be someone who knows each piece of information has a price and chooses when to collect. The detective will have to decide which.