Model Murder

by Nancy Buckingham

  By all the laws of logic, the second murder had to be linked with the first. Two entirely unconnected killings of top personnel at Streatfield Park was beyond credibility.

  So where the hell, Kate thought despondently, had all her brilliant intuition and deduction got her? Maybe, after all, Adrian Berger had finally told her the truth. Maybe his false alibi had been given, just as he claimed, for chivalrous reasons, in order to protect a lady’s reputation (and also, of course, to protect himself and his firm from the wrathful vengeance of his well-connected wife). Maybe Adrian Berger was entirely innocent so far as Corinne Saxon’s murder was concerned.

  Stuff that, Kate.

  Except—and what a bloody big except it was—Berger couldn’t also have killed Yves Labrosse. And why not? Because he’d been at DHQ when it happened, being questioned by her. Labrosse was seen alive at approximately ten o’clock, and discovered dead at seven minutes past eleven. Seldom could the time of death in an unwitnessed murder be pinpointed with such accuracy. The medical opinion on the matter of timing was superfluous, but Kate didn’t tell Dr. Meddowes that. The pompous little man was in a jovial mood, savouring the grandness of his new role as regional pathologist. Having pronounced Labrosse dead, killed less than an hour previously by a blow on the head from a blunt instrument, he was inclined to linger and relish Kate’s difficulties.

  “Two murders to solve now, dear lady. You’re not finding the responsibility of it all too onerous for you, I trust?”

  “I’m coping, thank you,” she said sweetly. “How about you, Dr. Meddowes?”

  “Me?” He looked mystified.

  “I was wondering how you felt you were measuring up to your higher status, Doctor. You’ve not got in above your head, I trust?”

  Kate regarded his huffily departing back with satisfaction. “Right, Tim, you know the drill. I’m going to have a word with Admiral Fortescue. Shan’t be long.”

  “The drill” consisted of opening up a whole new murder enquiry. Re-interviewing everyone they’d already questioned, in relation to the second killing. Reconsidering everything the police had so far uncovered, to see how it could be interpreted now that Labrosse too was dead. Just when she’d fondly been thinking there was light at the end of the tunnel.

  Kate knocked at the door of the admiral’s suite, and was confronted by a darkly doubtful Larkin.

  “Admiral Fortescue is very upset,” he told her in his north-country brogue. “He’s not well enough to see you now.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I must talk to him right away.”

  The manservant nodded sullenly. “I’ll go and tell him that.” He withdrew into the room, leaving the door just ajar. Kate heard a low murmur of voices, then the admiral called in a quavery voice, “Please come in, Chief Inspector.”

  He was seated in his usual armchair, looking paler and altogether frailer than she had ever seen him. Which wasn’t really surprising, with his managers falling like ninepins. He might even be wondering if he too were in danger.

  At his invitation, Kate seated herself. Larkin hovered in the background, as if standing guard over his master, and he didn’t get dismissed. Perhaps the admiral felt in need of moral support from his long-time steward.

  “The death of Mr. Labrosse has complicated matters, sir, just when I felt I was nearing a solution to Miss Saxon’s murder.”

  “Yes, yes, it’s a terrible thing. But does this mean, Chief Inspector, that you thought you had identified Corinne’s killer?”

  “Things seemed to be moving in that direction,” Kate said, without enlarging. “But now I have to consider whether the two killings were perpetrated by one and the same person. So I am faced with having to re-question everyone who had any kind of connection with both victims.”

  “The same person, you think?” Admiral Fortescue considered for a moment, then nodded his head. “Yes, I suppose that would be a logical assumption.”

  “At the same time, of course, I have to keep every possibility in mind. Have you yourself any thoughts as to who might have had a motive for killing Mr. Labrosse?”

  “None, Chief Inspector. None whatever.”

  “Are you quite sure?” He’d seemed to dismiss her question too readily. “Please think very carefully.”

  Choosing his words now, the old man said slowly, “I don’t think one could say that Labrosse was universally popular among the staff. He was, perhaps, a little over-abrupt in giving instructions. But that would hardly constitute a motive for killing him, would it?”

  “Has he ever had to dismiss any employee, who might since have harboured a grudge against him? Perhaps against Miss Saxon, too.”

  “Oh, no, there’s been no such incident, I’m thankful to say. The staff engaged by both him and Miss Saxon have all proved to be satisfactory, and they all appear to be happy working here. As far as one can judge.”

  “So you can’t think that any of the staff would have a reason to want to kill either of the victims?”

  “Absolutely not.” The admiral glanced round at the surly figure who stood hovering behind his chair. “Have you any thoughts on the matter, Larkin?”

  “Me, sir? Can’t say I have, sir.”

  Kate left it there. She had already established in connection with Corinne’s death that it would be possible—not easy, but possible— for an outsider to enter the hotel and move around without being challenged. Another possibility was that one of the guests might have had a motive for killing Labrosse, and perhaps Corinne, too. She made a mental note to pay particular attention to the guests whose stay had spanned both deaths.

  “I shall now have to ask you both,” she went on, “to account for your movements for the period during which Mr. Labrosse met his death. That is, between ten o’clock and eleven-seven.”

  “I was here, of course,” Admiral Fortescue said sharply. “I don’t usually leave my rooms until lunchtime, and not always then.”

  “And how about you, Mr. Larkin?”

  “I was here, too. With the admiral. Where else d’you think I’d be?”

  “So you can each vouch for the other?”

  “That’s right,” said Larkin.

  “Do you agree with that, sir? You can confirm that Mr. Larkin was here, too?”

  The admiral frowned, as though unable to grasp the reason for her insistence. Then he nodded in irritation, “As Larkin says, yes ... yes, indeed.”

  Sid Larkin stepped forward. “Now look here, miss, you can see the master isn’t well. You shouldn’t be bothering him like this.”

  “This is a murder enquiry,” Kate replied with a quelling glare. “I shall ask whatever questions I consider necessary at this time.” She turned back to the admiral. “What are your intentions regarding the hotel, sir?”

  “My intentions?” He gave her a lost, bewildered look. “I ... I really don’t know what is to be done. This has been such a shock, coming on top of Corinne’s death. I haven’t had an opportunity to consider the matter.” He shook his head regretfully. “I cannot see that I have any choice but to close the hotel—for the time being, at any rate. The guests will have to be asked to leave. Indeed, a number of them will probably wish to do so now.”

  “Couldn’t the hotel tick over for a while? At least for a few days? I’m very anxious that you shouldn’t take a hasty decision to close, sir. There will have to be further questioning of the staff and the guests, and it would be more convenient to have as many as possible still on the premises.”

  “I see. Well, I suppose ...” He seemed in something of a daze, all his former air of authority gone. Kate could well understand that the continuance of the hotel must seem of little importance to him in the present circumstances. “I’ll talk to the chef and the housekeeper, Chief Inspector, and see what arrangements can be made to keep going.”

  “Thank you.”

  Back at her office in the Incident Room, Kate instructed Boulter, “Get someone to go through the hotel’s files and let me see all correspondence relatin
g to Labrosse ... letters about his appointment to the job here and so on. Has anything useful emerged from the search of his rooms?”

  “No. He doesn’t seem to have had any outside contacts.”

  “Get the desk in his office searched, too. There might be something there.”

  The phone rang, and it was Richard.

  “Listen,” she said before he could say anything, “I’m up to my eyeballs right now. There’s been a second murder.”

  “My God! Who?”

  “The manager here, Yves Labrosse.”

  “Labrosse? That’s very interesting. I’d better come and see you now, Kate.”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? I won’t have a minute to spare, not for days. Possibly even weeks.” Her voice had grown shrill—from despair. Because there was nothing she’d like more at this moment than to be with Richard.

  “Okay, keep your wig on, Kate, I’ve just come across something that might be significant. Even more so now that Labrosse is dead. I’ll come over right away, okay?”

  Within fifteen minutes Richard was ushered into her office. His limp seemed very noticeable as he came forward and dropped into the spare chair.

  “Bloody leg,” he grumbled. “Means there’s more rain on the way.”

  “Can’t you take something for the pain?” Kate asked sympathetically.

  “Already have done,” he said with a grimace. “Now then, here’s my little offering.”

  From an envelope he’d been carrying, he shook out a couple of photographs and a cutting from a newspaper. Curious, Kate reached for them. The photos, just snapshots, depicted a much younger Corinne Saxon. In one she was in a small group that included Richard (looking devastatingly suntanned and attractive) at an open-air cafe. The second was a beach snap with just one other girl. Caught sunbathing on the sand, they were laughing up into the camera. Kate unfolded the newspaper cutting that was yellow with age. It showed the same two girls, in the same situation, but this time in a more studied, seductive pose.

  Richard said, “I know you felt a bit let down when I couldn’t fill you in more about Corinne in the early days. So I did a search through masses of junk at home that any sane man would have chucked out yonks ago and dug out this stuff. The pictures were taken in Greece, when I ... knew Corinne.”

  “In the biblical sense.” Stop it, Kate.

  “That newspaper pic, have you noted the legend beneath it?”

  She hadn’t. It read: Fun in the Grecian sun. An off-duty shot of model girls Corinne Saxon and Mitzi Labrosse enjoying the beach.

  Kate looked up swiftly. “Labrosse? Mitzi Labrosse? Is she the one you mentioned as being Corinne’s friend?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “So what’s the connection with Yves Labrosse? I take it Mitzi wasn’t married then? Labrosse was her maiden name?”

  “I shouldn’t imagine she was married.”

  The phone on her desk rang. It was Boulter, “Thought you’d like to know, guv, that there’s nothing whatever on file regarding Labrosse’s appointment to the job here.”

  “Nothing? No contract? No exchange of letters?”

  “Not a blind thing. It must have all been arranged verbally—or the evidence destroyed.”

  “Did you ask the secretary about it, Deidre Lancing?”

  “Yep. All she knows is that Miss Saxon spoke of someone coming soon as assistant manager, and the following week Labrosse arrived.”

  “Strange! Tim, something very interesting has cropped up. Come in as soon as Mr. Gower leaves, will you?”

  Kate put down the phone and looked across at Richard. “Didn’t you tell me that Mitzi was French? Not Swiss?”

  He shrugged. “She could’ve been Franco-Swiss. I just remember her and Corinne prattling away in rapid French every now and then.”

  “Did Corinne seem to know Mitzi from the past ... from her childhood years in France? You told me, I remember, that the family lived in the Lyons area up until her parents were killed and Corinne came to her aunt in England at around the age of six or seven.”

  “It’s possible,” he said thoughtfully. “Certainly she and Mitzi were pretty close ... as close as someone like Corinne would ever be likely to get with another female. Come to think of it, there did seem more to it than the normal sort of friendship between two girls in the same line of work.”

  Kate pressed him further, but nothing else emerged. “Okay, Richard, thanks. Get back to me, will you, if anything more occurs to you that I could use.”

  “Will do.” He rose to his feet, awkwardly and painfully. “When do I see you, Kate?”

  “I wish to God I knew.”

  “You have to sleep somewhere tonight,” he reminded her dryly. “At my place you’d have an excellent selection of dictionaries and reference books on hand.”

  “Get outa here, Gower.”

  Boulter came in the instant Richard had left. Kate filled him in with what she’d learned.

  “We’ve got to discover more about the Saxon/Labrosse connection, Tim. Get all the manpower we can spare at work on that aspect. Try to track down this Mitzi Labrosse ... she’s probably married by now. Talk to the various model agencies to see what information can be got out of them. And get on to the French and Swiss police to dig out what they can for us about the Labrosse family. If necessary, go over there yourself. I can’t really spare you, but ...” She gave the sergeant a warning glare. “If it’s absolutely necessary.”

  It was what Tim Boulter really liked, she knew ... being handed an assignment to work on himself rather than dogsbodying for her. He departed looking mighty chuffed. Kate sighed in anticipation of the fresh avalanche that was about to hit her ... the mass of reports flowing from the re-interviews, of which all but point one per cent would be totally irrelevant. Her job was to spot the little nuggets of gold among the dross.

  The receptionist and the secretary, she mused, had probably known Yves Labrosse better than anyone else on the staff. Kate decided it would be useful to talk to both these women herself. She sent for June Elsted first, and while waiting for her to arrive she took the chance to eat a sandwich the ever-thoughtful Frank Massey had sent in for her.

  The receptionist came in looking pale and upset, and not a little scared. Smiling, Kate tried to put her at ease.

  “Sit down, June. This is a very nasty business, and I know you’ll want to do everything you can to help me. First, I’d like to get things clearer about what happened this morning. You did see Mr. Labrosse earlier on, I take it?”

  A nervous dip of the head. “Yes. He did his usual tour around once breakfast was under way, checking that everything was in order. He stopped at the desk and we talked over one or two small problems, then he went through to his office. I didn’t see or hear anything more of him until about ten o’clock, when he came out and walked across to the lift. I suppose he must have been on his way up to his room, where he ...” She choked back a little sob.

  “Did he speak to you at that time?”

  “No, he just nodded as he went past. Smiled, actually. It struck me that he was looking rather pleased about something. As if he’d just had some good news.”

  “Oh? Have you any idea what it might have been?”

  “None at all. It can’t have been about the bookings, because we’ve had several cancellations since Miss Saxon was killed, and some of the guests have cut short their stay.”

  “Was it normal for him to go up to his room at that time of day?”

  An emphatic shake of the head. “Not at that time, no. Sometimes just before lunch he would go upstairs ... like when we had that very hot spell a couple of weeks ago and he wanted to change his clothes. Mr. Labrosse was always fussy about his appearance—he liked to look immaculate at all times, and of course it gave such a good impression to the guests. Anyway, apart from something like that, he usually spent the whole morning in his office, or in the kitchens, or around the reception rooms somewhere.” She gazed at Kate forlornly. “I don’t know ho
w the hotel can keep going without Miss Saxon or him.” Not unnaturally, June was thinking about her job.

  “Hopefully,” Kate said, “Admiral Fortescue will find someone else to take charge. Meantime, the best thing is for everyone to keep on doing their respective jobs as well as possible in the circumstances. Tell me, June, what did the staff in general think about Mr. Labrosse? Was he well-liked, would you say?”

  The receptionist was immediately wary. “He wasn’t what you’d call popular. With him everything had to be just so. I suppose that’s fair enough, in a smart hotel like this. But he was always sort of aloof from the rest of us. Never the least bit friendly.”

  Changing tack, Kate said, “You know Mr. Berger, the architect, I suppose?”

  “Yes, he’s here a lot ... not so much now, of course, since most of the work has been done.”

  “Always on business? Or socially sometimes?”

  “Oh, on business.”

  “Could there have been anything more than a purely professional relationship between him and Miss Saxon?”

  “Well ... I didn’t think so.”

  “Did he ever visit Miss Saxon in her private apartment?”

  “Never, as far as I know. I think it would have been talked about if he had.”

  That figured. Berger would have been anxious to avoid any gossip over an affair with Corinne—and thence the probability of messy repercussions. That much was certain, from the arguments he’d used to persuade Vincent Pascoe into giving him a false alibi for the afternoon Corinne Saxon was killed. So where had he and Corinne met for their trysts? Another hotel? The Cotswolds wasn’t exactly the sort of area where you could book a hotel room for a few daytime hours. And in this locality there’d be a big risk of their being recognised.

  “Might the two of them have met away from Streatfield Park sometimes, do you think? Did anyone ever mention seeing them together, perhaps? Think hard, please.”

  “Well ... oh no, it can’t have been anything.”

  “Tell me about it.”