by Mark McCrum
She was shivering, uncontrollably, like someone out in the cold. ‘Now calm yourself,’ said Francis. He took her hand between his. ‘You’re OK. Breathe deeply. That’s it. Did you manage to check his pulse?’
‘There’s nothing.’ She looked up at him, her eyes desperate. ‘He’s gone.’
Another woman had now appeared from the end of the corridor, in a long white nightie. Her shoulder-length hair was distinctive: shiny black with a thick streak of white in the middle of her fringe, like a badger.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked. ‘All this screaming.’ Her voice was fluting, old-fashioned, upmarket.
‘It seems there’s been a death.’
‘Not … Bryce?’ she replied, looking towards Room 29.
‘Apparently, yes.’
‘Heavens above! Let me see.’
‘No!’ said Francis, surprising himself by the force of his reply. He held up a hand. ‘We mustn’t go in there. The police will want things left as they are.’
‘What are you saying? That it’s not a natural death?’
‘Please,’ Francis interrupted, gesturing with his eyes at Priya, who was shaking with silent sobs, white snot dribbling from her nostrils. ‘I’m not saying anything. Just that, whatever has happened, we must follow the correct procedures.’
‘What’s going on?’ It was the hotel manageress, clutching a torch, though the lights were all on in the corridor.
‘There appears to have been – a fatality,’ said Francis. ‘We need to call an ambulance. And the police as well.’
‘An ambulance isn’t much use if he’s dead,’ said the badger-woman. ‘Anyway, how far away’s the nearest hospital? Dewkesbury?’
‘This is standard procedure,’ said Francis. ‘Trust me.’
‘Who are you, anyway? Telling us all what to do?’
‘Please,’ said Francis. ‘This young woman’s in shock. Can somebody get her a cup of tea with several sugars in it.’ He turned to the manageress. ‘Are you OK to do that? I can call the emergency services from my room.’
‘I’ll do that,’ she replied. ‘And we can sort out some tea for her, that’s fine.’ She turned to a dark-haired girl who stood in blue and white striped pyjamas right beside her. ‘Irina, can you get that, please. Cup of tea, three sugars. Quick as you can. Don’t forget to switch off the fire alarm before you go into the kitchen.’ She hurried past several more guests who were now crowding down the corridor, in dressing gowns or the hotel’s white robe. Among them were the TV celebrity known as Family Man and a sour-faced woman who was presumably his wife.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘There’s been a death,’ said Francis. ‘This young woman’s partner. The manageress has gone to phone for an ambulance now. I think the most constructive thing would be if everyone went back to their rooms. At least until the police have arrived. I’m quite happy to take charge in the meantime.’
‘We can see that,’ said the badger-woman. ‘Has anybody even been in his room yet? Or taken a pulse? I happen to know Bryce.’
‘Bryce Peabody?’ asked Family Man.
‘Yes,’ said Francis. ‘Now please …’
‘Ms Westcott.’
‘Ms Westcott, I hardly think this young woman is making it up. I can go and check everything in a moment, once we’ve got her settled.’
‘You can check, can you? None of us even know who you are.’
‘My name is Francis Meadowes. I’m a crime writer. I do have some understanding of how to deal with sudden or suspicious deaths. Now can we please be grown up about this.’
‘But you don’t even know Bryce. I’ve known him for years. I’m also a writer –’
‘Oh shut up, you stupid woman!’ It was the Asian girl. ‘He’s my boyfriend. He’s dead, OK. As a doornail. He’s straddled across the bed with his arms outstretched. And no pulse. Now why doesn’t everybody do what the man says and return to their rooms.’
‘Oh kay,’ said Ms Westcott slowly.
There was the sudden clanging of an electric bell.
‘Oh dear!’ she yelled over it, needlessly. ‘The fire alarm.’
Thirty seconds later it stopped.
‘Now everyone in the hotel will be awake,’ she said.
‘Whatever the cause of death,’ said Francis, taking advantage of the silence, ‘the police will want as little disturbance as possible. Fifteen new sets of DNA trampling all over the place is not going to help.’
‘Whereas one set is perfectly fine,’ said Ms Westcott. ‘OK then, I shall do as I’m told and go back to bed.’
‘I think you’re right,’ said Family Man. ‘Less is rather more in this situation. I suggest we all take your advice, Mr Meadowes, and return to our rooms.’
There was more muttering among the assembled guests, as they realised there was nothing more to see and started drifting back up the corridor.
‘Did someone say it was Bryce Peabody?’
‘Yeah, seems so.’
‘What did he die of?’
‘Nobody knows.’
‘Maybe Dan Dickson bumped him off.’
‘That’s just silly. And offensive in the situation.’
‘Oh lighten up.’
‘A man’s just died, for Christ’s sakes!’
The manageress was back. ‘Sorry about that. One of my staff accidentally set off the fire alarm. Right, I’ve spoken to the emergency services. They’re sending police and ambulance. There’ll be someone here within the hour.’
‘Where’s that tea?’ asked Francis.
‘Irina’s just getting it.’
‘Would you like to come and sit in my room?’ Francis asked the Asian girl. ‘I don’t imagine you want to be in the same room as the body.’
‘Yes,’ she replied, in a thin voice. ‘That would be … better. I mean, d’you mind?’
‘Not at all,’ said Francis.
The waitress had arrived holding out a mug, which read HAPPY on it in large red letters.
‘Tea. Three sugars,’ she said.
‘A miracle,’ said the manageress, checking the contents. ‘Thank you, Irina. You can go back to bed now. Normal start time, though: six thirty.’
She handed the mug to the Asian girl, who cradled it gratefully.
‘You may find it rather sweet,’ said Francis. ‘But you’re in shock, so you need the sugar.’
‘Is there anything else I should do before the police arrive?’ the manageress asked. ‘Otherwise I ought to get dressed and ready for them.’
‘Perhaps you could sit with … with –’
‘Priya,’ said the Asian girl.
‘Priya, thank you, just for a couple of minutes, while I check over the room. If that’s OK with you?’ This last addressed to Priya.
‘Whatever,’ she replied. ‘You seem to know what you’re doing.’
‘Fine by me,’ said the manageress. ‘Remind me which your room is?’
‘I’m right here. Twenty-one. I’m Francis, by the way. Francis Meadowes.’
‘Cathy. Tyndale.’
‘Priya Kaur.’
They all smiled, despite themselves. It seemed an odd time to be making introductions, but necessary all the same. Tyndale – that was an unusual name, Francis thought. Hadn’t some famous medieval printer or someone been called that? Kaur, by contrast, was a common, even generic Sikh name, the female equivalent of Singh. He showed the two women through his still open door, then backed quietly out, scooping up his key with its oblong blue plastic tag from the top of the chest of drawers. He walked up the steps at the end of the corridor, then turned right into the short passage that led to Room 29. The door was wide open, and through it came the light of early morning, a paler version of the brilliantly rosy sky outside, which deepened towards crimson and yellow streaks by the dark treeline above the river.
The body was on the bed, an antique four-poster in the middle of the room. The eiderdown, blanket and top sheet were pulled back and Bryce was stretched out for
all to see, his head resting on two pillows. His upper torso was naked, though a pair of pale green pyjama bottoms covered his lower half. Francis turned and pushed the door to, then he tiptoed closer.
The celebrated critic was dead all right, but his expression was peaceful enough: his eyes closed, his mouth in repose, almost as if he’d just drifted off in sleep. Only two things suggested that the situation might not be so simple. There was a fresh bruise on his upper right cheek; and on his neck a prominent love bite.
Francis felt sick. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen a corpse before. But though he’d written seven crime novels, this was the first time in his life he’d been present at the scene of a sudden death. Much as he would have liked this to be a murder, he didn’t for a moment think that it was. That sort of thing was strictly for the books. Most likely this was a heart attack, though it must have been serious to knock Bryce out before he was able to call for help. Then again, perhaps it was a stroke or other brain breakdown: such things were more common than people realised. As for the marks on Bryce’s body, the love bite was easily accounted for. That bruise, however, was fresh, and definitely raised questions. Had Bryce been in a fight? Was it possible that the blow that had bruised him had led to his death?
So what would George Braithwaite have noticed, he wondered, pacing slowly round the bed, hearing each footstep loud in the silence. In his books, Francis drew his readers’ attention to significant details (as well as the odd red herring). But here, in the real world of this silent room, there were countless things to take in – and which would have caught the attention of the scrupulous investigator? The window half open to the garden below – surely there was nothing unusual about that? Bryce was a man who liked fresh air when he was sleeping. The pink jacket thrown across the back of a chair, below that the black polo-neck and T-shirt, blue jeans, dark green boxer shorts – Bryce’s party gear, discarded on his return. Then the laptop on the low table by the window, its lead stretching across to a power point in the wall, the tiny oblong light on the transformer glowing blue; the contact lenses, soaking in a little dish by the bed, a bottle of solvent and another of Optrex alongside – what was sinister there? Next to that was one of the hotel cups, in which sat a herbal teabag, Twinings Tranquillity, still marinading in half an inch of yellow-green liquid. Beside that was a silver Parker 45, with an inscription. Unwilling to move it, Francis bent down and looked closely.
dd. V.R.C.W. Memento mori. 7.5.79.
Now what did that mean? dd stood, Francis rather thought, for ‘given by’, though he couldn’t remember the exact Latin it was short for. The two words after the initials meant ‘Remember your mortality’, something like that. Whatever, Bryce had hung onto this writing instrument for an impressively long time.
Here was another intriguing detail. There was a single pillow chocolate on Priya’s side of the bed, complete with a tiny pink sugar rose. But it wasn’t on top of her two plumped, untouched pillows, which is where the staff would have left it when they serviced the room, it was on the table by the phone. Bryce must have eaten his and put his girlfriend’s there for her return. How touching!
Francis cast his gaze back to the body. He had written often about rigor mortis. He knew that this post-death hardening of the muscles happened because aerobic respiration ceased; that rigor set in after three hours, moved from the head down through the body and reached its full effect after twelve hours, when a corpse became, as the Americans put it so graphically, a stiff. Now Francis reached out a thumb and forefinger and gently squeezed the muscles of Bryce’s upper arm. They were no harder, surely, than they would have been in life? And the body was still warm. Gingerly he ran a finger up the neck to the face, which wasn’t cold either, nor drained of colour, though the lips were an eerie pale purple and the eyes were closed. Francis was no pathologist, but his strong suspicion was that rigor had not yet set in, which meant that Bryce must have died some time within the last three hours. It was five to five, he noted, glancing at his watch.
In the bathroom there were two washbags. Nothing madly unusual in either. The larger one, in fake leather, with brass rings at each end, contained half-used blister packs of Imodium, a sleeping pill called Zimovane, and Galpharm Non-Drowsy Allergy Relief (a hay fever remedy?). There was also a battered box of Alka Seltzer, a round plastic dental floss dispenser, and a small bottle of shampoo from another hotel – the Crown at Southwold. The smaller bag had Liz Earle Body Cream, Miss Bollywood GLAM-X liquid foundation and Sunora Deep Shine Shampoo alongside a half-used, shiny green pack of contraceptive pills. On the floor was a towel; another, still damp one was slung over the shower rail, drying. And that was it. There were – that Francis could see anyway – no stray hairs on the sheets, no fragments of unusually coloured fibre on the fawn carpet, no mugs of cocoa laced with strychnine on the side.
It was time, he thought, to head back and offer some comfort to the primary witness.
EIGHT
Priya and Cathy were sitting side by side on the blue couch by Francis’s window.
‘Well?’ asked Cathy, as he walked in.
‘I’m afraid he’s dead all right, no doubt about that. I’m sorry, Priya.’
She nodded dumbly.
‘What’s your verdict?’ Cathy asked.
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Francis. ‘But he looks peaceful enough. Almost as if he died in his sleep.’
‘He does,’ muttered Priya.
‘Maybe it was a heart attack. Or a stroke or something. I mean, how old was he?’
‘Fifty-four,’ said Priya.
‘I had a college friend,’ said Francis, ‘who died in his sleep at forty-two. Perfectly fit guy, went to the gym regularly, drank moderately, never smoked. An aneurysm, they said it was.’
‘And what’s that when it’s at home?’ asked Cathy.
‘Sudden breakdown in the brain. Like a stroke, only more severe.’
‘Bryce did have high cholesterol,’ Priya said. ‘He was supposed to be changing his diet, but he was way too greedy for that.’ For a moment, the expression on her face was almost a smile; then she lapsed back into blank seriousness.
‘So what now?’ asked Cathy. ‘There’s not much an ambulance crew can do for him, is there?’
‘Except pronounce him dead. Legally speaking, of course, you still need a medic to issue the death certificate.’
‘The ambulance crew can’t do that?’
‘No. They’ll have to send for a doctor. Or the police will. One of their own surgeons, more than likely.’
‘Out from Dewkesbury?’
‘I should imagine so. Or further afield.’
‘So what’s the point of the ambulance?’
‘It’s procedure. They have to check there’s nothing more they can do.’
There was silence. Then Priya said: ‘D’you mind if I use your toilet, Francis?’
‘Please …’ As Francis waved in the direction of the en suite, Priya ran. The door was hurriedly pushed to, then came the sound of retching. Francis looked at Cathy, who made a face.
‘The shock … kicks in,’ he said in a whisper.
‘What if I called Dr Webster in town here?’ Cathy asked. ‘To issue the certificate.’
‘You could do. Is he likely to come out at five on a Sunday morning? I thought those days were over.’
‘No, no, Roger won’t mind. He’s a friend and he does pretty well by us. It might get things moving. To be perfectly honest, I don’t really want the customers to be watching police vans and ambulances coming and going all day. This is our busiest weekend of the year.’
‘I guess they’ll have to know there’s been a death on the premises.’
‘It’s the difference between knowing and having your face rubbed in it, if you’re with me.’
She let herself out. A couple of minutes later Priya emerged from the bathroom. She looked pale and was trembling visibly. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said.
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Dela
yed reaction, I guess.’
‘Now you sit down,’ said Francis. ‘What can I get you? Another cup of tea? Or something stronger from the minibar?’
‘No, no, I’m fine.’ She sat, one hand clasping the other in her lap, staring out across the room. ‘Thanks, by the way, for taking charge like this.’
‘Not a problem. Make the most of the lull, I should. It’ll all kick off again once the police arrive.’
‘How many will they send?’
‘It’ll be a couple of uniforms probably, in the first instance. They may want to call out CID.’
‘Detectives?’
‘It’s fairly routine when you get a sudden death like this. Especially of somebody who seemed so … fit and well …’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry, Priya. This must be a terrible shock for you.’
She had got to her feet. ‘Actually, I might just go back up there for a couple of minutes. To get some things. And say goodbye. If you don’t mind.’
‘Take your time. I’ll wait here for you.’
Francis pulled off his pyjamas and slipped into the en suite for a quick shower. It was one of those rickety plastic jobs, which produced a narrow stream of water with no effective temperature regulation: it either scalded you or, when you turned the dial, went suddenly cold. Strange that a hotel that paid such attention to detail in other areas should have such a crappy unit as this. Towelled dry, he slipped into fawn chinos and a pale blue cotton shirt. Then he lay back on his bed. Outside he could hear the birds chirruping away fit to bust. The occasional car passed along the road.
He had almost dozed off when there was a light double knock on the door.
‘Come in.’
It was Priya, changed out of her party dress into jeans and a brown polo-neck. She was carrying a big red handbag and a scuffed leather overnight case.
‘I brought a few bits along. Hope that’s all right?’
‘Make yourself at home. You OK?’
‘Actually, if you’re offering, I might have something from your minibar, after all.’
‘Brandy?’
‘Sure.’
‘No ice, I’m afraid,’ he said, as he unscrewed the top.
