The hall-porter assumed an even more heavily reluctant air.
“Ah, but that’s just the trouble, sir,” he pointed out, shaking his head. “Under the circumstances——”
“What circumstances?”
“Your good lady being asleep up there, and having hung a ‘quiet’ sign on the door,” said the porter, with an air of handsome frankness, “you can see we hardly liked——”
“My good lady?”
“Your wife. It would hardly do for us to wake anyone up with a request like that. But I thought if you wouldn’t mind going in and explaining to your wife——”
Even as his mind registered the word “sunk,” Kent found himself being urged by some hypnotic power in the direction of the nearer of the two lifts.
2
The Crime of Murder
THERE WERE, HE AFTERWARDS realised, very few courses open to him. No course, in fact, except that of walking sternly and quickly out of the hotel: an action into which his inflamed conscience put an interpretation of guilt bringing about immediate pursuit. Also, with a stomach now lined with good food, he began to take a pleasant interest in the situation. It was like a situation in one of his own books; and it stirred in him the quality of devilment. Apparently he would have to break into the room of a blameless husband and wife, now asleep upstairs—and get away with it somehow. Adventures (he could have told Dan Reaper) are to be found within walls, not on the plain.
Going up in the lift, the hall-porter was affable.
“Have a good night, sir? Sleep well?”
“Pretty well.”
“I hope you weren’t disturbed by the men in the hall getting ready that second lift. That top floor where you are, you know, is very new; we’re quite proud of it; and it isn’t quite finished. They haven’t finished installing the second lift. They’re working double-time to get all that floor ready in time for Coronation. Ah, here we are.”
The seventh floor of the Royal Scarlet was constructed on the principle of fewer and larger rooms. It had four wings, of which wing A (immediately to your right as you stepped out of the working lift) was the only one with which Kent ever had any concern. A broad descending staircase faced the two lifts, set side by side, and on the second lift workmen were now tinkering with the mechanism under a powerful light.
Wing A was spacious and luxurious enough, although Kent could have wished for a little of the less frantically modern note in chromium, glass, and murals. To the right of the lifts, a broad corridor ran some distance down before turning again at right angles. Underfoot was a very thick grey carpet; and the walls were decorated in a way which suggested the smoking-room or lounge of a liner. On one side ran a full-length representation of a scene round a prize-ring, and the other side appeared to be composed of a coloured alphabet gone mad. Dim lights illuminated it with a chrysalis effect. It was very new, and not quite out of its smooth rawness; you could almost smell the streamlining as you could smell the paint.
Kent was growing even more uneasy as he came to face it. Number 707 was in the corner at the turning of the corridor, its door being round the corner and out of sight from the direction of the lifts. Kent, a little ahead of the hall-porter, was the first to see that door. Outside it stood a pair of woman’s brown shoes: of what material he could not tell or did not notice. And hanging from the knob was one of those cardboard notices reading, “Quiet is requested for the benefit of those who have retired.” But that was not what made him stop dead, instinctively shielding the card with his body. Across the notice had been scrawled, half-writing, half-printing, in red ink:
DEAD WOMAN
In Kent’s mind it took on a weird clearness. At the end of this bend in the corridor there was a window, and outside the window a fire-escape; he seemed to notice a dozen things at once. He noted also the linen-closet at the end of the corridor: there was a bright light inside it, and a chambermaid in a blue-and-white uniform. Yet it all concentrated on those words, “Dead Woman,” hanging helpfully outside the door.
Surely if the chambermaid had already passed the door, those words would have been noticed? His own voice sounded very queer when he said:
“I’m afraid I haven’t got my key.”
(Well, should he own up now, or bolt for it?)
“Oh, that’s all right, sir,” the hall-porter assured him, in a surprisingly natural tone. “Well have the maid here in half a tick. S-sss-t!”
He was already hurrying down the hall to get the maid. Christopher Kent remained where he stood: he did nothing because he could think of absolutely nothing to do. But one thing he did not like. He put out his hand quickly and reversed the card, so that its inner side (printed in the same way except for that curious note in red ink) was now outwards.
“Here we are, sir,” said the hall-porter. The key clicked in the lock and the door opened an inch. Even if the porter had not tactfully stood aside, Kent was instantly in front of him.
“If you’ll just wait here a moment—?” he said.
“Of course, sir. No hurry.”
Gritting his teeth, Kent slipped in and let the door swing shut after him; it was one of those which automatically lock on closing.
The room inside was almost dark. Heavy cream-coloured blinds had been drawn full down on its two windows, and made opaque blurs against the gloom. Neither window could have been up, for the place smelt heavily stuffy. In the wall to his left he could dimly make out the line of twin beds; and he momentarily expected someone to sit up in one of them and ask him what the devil he was doing there. But nothing stirred, not even the quilted counterpane on either, and he saw that both beds were empty. Nothing stirred, that is, except his own scalp; for he began to realise that the notice on the door was probably true.
A little way out in the big room he could discern a wardrobe trunk, of the sort that stands on end and opens out like a book. It now stood part way open towards him, and something was projecting along the floor from between its leaves. First it was a dark mass; then it had a leg in a grey silk stocking; then a hand. It was a woman’s body lying on its side with the head between the leaves of the trunk. Something white was partly draped over the shoulder.
Those interested in such matters have argued what an ordinary man in the street would do if he were thrown into a bad position with a dead person before him; Kent had argued it himself. He did nothing. The time he actually spent in that room he afterwards computed as about three minutes.
First he must bring himself to go and look. His hand was moving uncertainly in the air, and to the right of the door his fingers brushed something which made him draw back. A little table stood there: on the table was a huge pile of neatly-folded bath-towels.
He did not think of turning on a light or raising a blind. In his pocket he had a box of matches, with two or three left. He went over to the woman as quietly as he could, bent down, and hurriedly struck a match. That this was murder he had not doubted from the first. And, after a quick look, he blew out the match with equal haste: swallowing to keep down that feeling of revulsion which creeps on you before you are aware of it.
To the best of his knowledge, he had never seen the woman before. She seemed to be young, and had brown bobbed hair: which was one of the few details of which he could be sure. She was fully dressed, in a dark grey tailored suit and white silk blouse, except that instead of shoes she wore soft black slippers trimmed with fur. Evidently she had been strangled: the murderer having wrapped on his hands, to avoid leaving any marks, the ordinary crumpled face-towel which now lay across her shoulder. But this was not all that had been done. Her face had been heavily beaten or stamped on—undoubtedly after death, for there was not a great deal of blood despite the damage of that vicious afterthought. She was quite cold.
Kent crept across the room. There was a chair near the window and he sat down on the edge of it, though he automatically refrained from touching anything. He said to himself, coolly and half aloud, “My lad, you’re in one terrible mess.”
&n
bsp; He had claimed he had spent that night in the room, with a woman he did not know from Eve. Logically, one thing ought to sustain him: he was in no danger of eventual arrest or hanging. The woman had been dead many hours. He had spent the night at a coffee-stall on the Embankment, and he could prove it by much congenial company; fortunately, his alibi was secure.
But that was only eventually. If he did not wish to spend the next day or so in a cell—to say nothing of being obliged to reveal his real name, losing a thousand-pound wager to Dan, and making himself a laughing-stock—he would have to get out of there somehow. All his stubbornness butted against this mess. Flight? Certainly; why not, if it could be managed? But in decency he could not leave that woman lying there——
There was a discreet knock at the door.
Kent got up quickly, searching for the bureau. One name and address now stood out in his mind as clearly as the lettering on the card. It was the name and address of a man whom he had never met, but with whom he frequently corresponded: Dr. Gideon Fell, number 1 Adelphi Terrace. He must call Dr. Fell. In the meantime, if he could find that infernal bracelet which someone had left behind in the bureau, he might get rid of the hall-porter.
He found the bureau, which was between the two windows; he had to touch things now. Through the sides of the blinds, pale light illuminated it. But he did not find the bracelet, because it was not there. A sense of something even more crooked and dangerous stirred in Kent’s brain: he did not exactly suspect the waxed moustaches of the hall-porter, now waiting patiently outside the door, but he thought there must be something wrong besides murder. There was nothing at all in the bureau, whose drawers had each a clean paper lining.
Gingerly lifting a corner of the window-blind, Kent peered out. The windows of the room opened out on a high enclosed air-well faced with white tiles. Something else was wrong as well. A little while ago, the folded card bearing the number 707—the card that had brought him here—had floated down from some high window into his hand. But he had been standing in front of the hotel. Ergo, it had come from someone else’s room….
The discreet knock at the door was repeated. This time he thought he could hear the hall-porter cough.
Kent turned round and studied the room. In the wall now on his right there was another door; but this side of the room formed the angle with the two corridors outside. He made a quick and correct calculation. Unless it were a cupboard, that door must open directly into the corridor on the side out of sight of the hall-porter. It did: he drew back the bolt and opened it, now in sight of the men working on the lift. Accept what the gods give; in other words, here goes! Slipping out, he closed the door behind him and made off towards the stairs. Fifteen minutes later in the midst of a thickening snowstorm, he was ringing the doorbell at number 1 Adelphi Terrace.
“Aha!” said Dr. Fell.
The door was opened by the doctor himself. He stood as vast as the door itself, projecting thence like a figurehead on a ship, and beaming out into the snow. His red face shone, as though by the reflection of firelight through the library windows; his small eyes twinkled behind eye-glasses on a broad black ribbon; and he seemed to peer down, with massive and wheezy geniality, over the ridges of his stomach. Kent restrained an impulse to cheer. It was like meeting Old King Cole on his own doorstep. Even before the visitor had mentioned his name or his errand, Dr. Fell cocked his head affably and waited.
His visitor arrived at a decision.
“I’m Christopher Kent,” he said, breaking the rule and losing his bet. “And I’m afraid I’ve come six thousand miles to tell you I’ve walked into trouble.”
Dr. Fell blinked at him. Though his geniality did not lessen, his face had become grave. He seemed to hover in the doorway (if such a manoeuvre were possible), like a great balloon with an ivory-headed stick. Then he glanced round at his own uncurtained library windows. Through them Kent could see a table laid for breakfast in the embrasure of the bay, and a tall, middle-aged man pacing round as though with impatience.
“Look here,” said Dr. Fell seriously, “I think I can guess why and who. But I’ve got to warn you—you see that chap in there? That’s Superintendent Hadley of the Criminal Investigation Department; I’ve written to you about him. Knowing that, will you come in and smoke a cigar?”
“I’d like to.”
“Aha!” said Dr. Fell, with a pleased chuckle.
He lumbered into a big room lined to the ceiling with books; and the watchful, cautious, explosive Hadley, whose mental picture Kent had been able to build up already, stared when he heard the visitor’s name. Then Hadley sat down quietly, smoothing out his noncommittal face. Kent found himself in a comfortable easy-chair by the breakfast-table, a cup of coffee in his hand, and he told his story with directness. Now that he had decided to lose his bet and let Dan’s triumph go hang, there was satisfaction in feeling like a human being again.
“—and that’s the whole story,” he concluded. “Probably I was a fool to run out of there; but, if I’m going to jail, I’d rather be sent to jail by the head-man than explain to the hotel-staff how I cadged a breakfast. I didn’t kill the woman. I never saw her before in my life. And, fortunately, I’m pretty sure I can prove where I was last night. That’s the fall list of my crimes.”
Throughout this Hadley had been regarding him steadily. He seemed friendly enough, if very worried.
“No, it wasn’t the thing to do,” Hadley said. “But I don’t suppose there’s any great harm done, if you can prove what you say. And in a way I’m glad you did. (Eh, Fell?) The point is—” He drummed his fingers on his brief-case, and moved forward in the chair. “Never mind about last night. Where were you last Thursday fortnight: the 14th of January, to be exact?”
“On the Volpar, from Capetown to Tilbury.”
“That ought to be easy enough to prove?”
“Yes. But why?”
Hadley glanced at Dr. Fell. Dr. Fell was sitting back in an enormous chair, several of his chins showing over his collar, and looking in an uneasy fashion down his nose. Over Kent’s account of the wager he had made rumbling noises of approval; but now his noises were of a different sort.
“It would not be either striking or original,” he observed, clearing his throat, “if I observed that I did not like this. H’mf. Ha. No. The business itself is neither striking nor original. It is not very bizarre. It is not very unusual. It is merely completely brutal and completely unreasonable. Dammit, Hadley——!”
“Look here, what’s up?” demanded Kent. He had felt a tension brush that snug and firelit room.
“I know you found a woman in that room,” Hadley said. “The news was phoned to me here not five minutes before you arrived. She had been strangled. Then, presumably after death, her face had been so battered as to be almost unrecognisable. You saw her by the light of a match with her head against the floor. Now, Mr. Kent, I assume you’re telling the truth.” His eyelids moved briefly. “And therefore I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you. If you had got a better look at her, you might have recognised her. The lady was Mrs. Josephine Kent—the wife of your cousin, Mr. Rodney Kent.”
He looked from Hadley to Dr. Fell, and saw that neither of them was in the mood for joking.
“Jenny!” he said. “But that’s——”
He stopped, because he did not know what he meant himself. It was simply that the two ideas, Jenny Kent and death, would not coincide; one was a stencil that would not go over the other. He tried to build up a picture of her. Small, plump, neat woman; yes. Brown hair; yes. But the description would fit a thousand women. It seemed impossible that it should have been his cousin’s wife over whom he had struck a match not half an hour ago; yet why not? That piece of clay beside the trunk would not carry Jenny’s extraordinary attractiveness.
Hadley looked hard at him. “There’s no doubt it is Mrs. Kent if that’s what you’re thinking,” the superintendent said. “You see, Mr. Reaper’s party arrived at the Royal Scarlet last night, and t
hey’re occupying that wing on the seventh floor.”
“The whole party? Then they were already there when I walked in?”
“Yes. Did you know Mrs. Kent well?”
“I suppose I should have expected that,” muttered Kent, reflecting that much trouble could have been saved had he known it. He tried to arrange his thoughts. “Jenny? I don’t know,” he answered, honestly doubtful. “She wasn’t the sort you did know well, and yet everybody in the world liked her. It’s difficult to explain. I suppose you could call her ‘nice.’ Not unpleasantly nice; but you couldn’t imagine her on a party or doing anything that wasn’t strictly according to Hansard. And she was amazingly attractive without being beautiful: bright complexion, very quiet. Rod worshipped her; they’ve been married only a year or two, and—” He stopped. “Good God, that’s the worst of it! This will just about kill Rod.”
The figure of his cousin Rodney was very distinct in his mind then. He sympathised more with Rod than with the woman who was dead, for he had grown up with Rod and liked him very well. To Christopher Kent things had always come easily. To Rodney they came by plodding. Rodney was in simple earnest about everything. He was admirably suited to be Dan Reaper’s political secretary; to answer letters with interest and thoroughness; to assemble the facts for Dan’s speeches (Rodney Kent’s facts could never be questioned); and even to write the sincere prose into which Dan stuck a tail-feather of rhetoric.
“The double room at the hotel, of course.” Kent remembered it suddenly. “Rod would have been with her. But where was he? Where was he while she was being murdered? He wasn’t there this morning. I tell you, it’ll just about kill him——”
“No,” said Dr. Fell. “He has been spared that, anyhow.”
Again he became aware that both Dr. Fell and Hadley were looking at him.
To Wake the Dead (Dr. Gideon Fell series Book 9) Page 2
