Murder at the Ritz

To a prim, convent-educated London typist, Pierre-Joel Delaitre was all that a storybook French nobleman should be: tall, educated, tastefully dressed, charming, wealthy. To those who knew him better, he was also mean, hot-tempered, pampered, and a wastrel. Reared in luxury at the 18th century Chateau de Mainteniac, Pierre was the scourge of the neighborhood--borrowing the tenants' farm horses to race across country, frightening the villagers of nearby Prechatel by roaring through their marketplace in his racing car. He frittered away a fortune and tried to recoup by smuggling, but fell afoul of the law and paid a heavy fine. He carried off the family treasures to pawn or sell. Once he was reduced to selling lollipops to vacationing suckers at a seaside resort.

Typist on the Beach. "Pierre is no good," his mother used to say, as she let him have more francs to throw away. On the eve of his wedding, he chased his bride with a shotgun; she divorced him after their honeymoon.

Then Pierre met Eileen Hill, a London typist taking her vacation on the Breton coast of France. Eileen, daughter of a retired policeman, fell hard. Pierre, who was 40, took her nightclubbing in Paris, whirled her from bistro to chalet in his Bugatti racer. She became his mistress.

When Eileen got back to London, said her landlady, "she had her hair dyed blonde and told us she was going to Paris to marry a Frenchman." Back to Paris she went--but her Frenchman had changed. Eileen ran away while he slept, and returned to England with a black eye.

Pierre hired two detective agencies to find her, and when they did, he dashed to London, asking Eileen to marry him. Eileen said no, but agreed to one last weekend together. As "Mr. & Mrs. Pierre Delaitre of Paris," they registered a fortnight ago at the Ritz, the staid old Victorian hostelry on Piccadilly. Their room was No. 223--one of the best in the house, painted a glowing pink and with a Louis XIV bed.

Razor & Rope. One morning last week the maid got no reply when she knocked at the door of Room 223. Police broke it down. They found the room a shambles, the bedclothes scattered. Some time in the night, Pierre Delaitre had strangled Eileen and slashed her throat with a razor. She died on the Louis XIV bed. Pierre had cut his own throat, but not deeply enough. Bleeding heavily, he had scribbled an incoherent note telling of his anguish at losing the woman he could not live without, then tied one end of a 9-ft. rope around his neck. With the other end secured to the end of the bed, he had evidently walked backwards until the knot tightened and ended it all.

Scandalized and worried at what some of its titled clientele might think, the Ritz sealed Room 223, destroyed the Louis XIV bed, had the numerals 223 removed from the door and the number expunged from the hotel registry.

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