To Wake the Dead (Dr. Gideon Fell series Book 9)

by John Dickson Carr

  “Suppose some other person—some outsider, someone not connected with Mr. Reaper’s party—had gone into Wing A or come out of it at any time during the night. Those men would have seen him, wouldn’t they?”

  “I should certainly think so. The wing is lighted all night. A person could have come up or down only by the lift or by the staircase; and the workmen were standing between both.”

  Hadley gave an interrogative glance at Sergeant Betts, who nodded.

  “Yes, sir,” agreed the sergeant. “I’ve got a statement from all three men. They seem straightforward enough and they all tell the same story. They remember Mr. Reaper’s party coming upstairs about a quarter past eleven. As a matter of fact, Mr. Reaper stopped and asked them some questions about how the lift worked, and how they were getting on with it. They saw the party separate at the turning of the corridor. Afterwards, they’re willing to swear no other person came in or went out of the wing all night.”

  “So. But is there any other way an outsider could have got in?”

  Hadley’s question was directed midway between Betts and the hotel-manager. After a pause the latter shook his head.

  “Unlikely,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Look at your plan. I don’t say it’s impossible, but you’re the judge of that.” Hardwick twisted the plan around on the table. “There are two other ways, theoretically. An outsider—I suppose you mean burglar? —might have climbed up the fire-escape to the window at the end of the wing. But, as it happens, that particular window is not only solidly locked on the inside: it was reported to me yesterday as being so stuck in its frame that it couldn’t be opened at all. A man was to have seen to it this morning. The only other way in would have been for your burglar to have climbed up the face of the building—either on the outer side towards Piccadilly, or else inside by way of the air-well—barged through someone else’s room without being seen, and got out the same way. Knowing what I do of this hotel, I should say it’s so unlikely as to be nearly impossible.”

  “You see where these questions are leading?”

  “Oh, yes. I see it.”

  Hadley turned to Betts. “Well, excluding outsiders, did anybody go in or out of that wing during the night? What about employees of the hotel?”

  “Nobody except the chambermaid, sir. She went off duty at half-past eleven.”

  “Yes, but—” Hadley scowled at his note-book. “What about the Boots? Wouldn’t there be a Boots, or whatever you call him? You put your shoes outside the door at night, and they take them away to be polished——”

  Betts nodded. “Yes, sir. But the Boots—he’s actually an under-porter—wasn’t in the wing until early this morning, a good many hours after the murder. It seems they don’t pick up your shoes and take them away during the night, in case someone comes in very late. They wait until five o’clock in the morning; then they gather up the lot, polish them, and put them back. The Boots went through at five o’clock, and spoke to the men working on the lifts. But only one person in the wing had put out a pair of shoes—Mrs. Kent. And the Boots knew there was some mistake.”

  “Mistake?” said Hadley sharply.

  “In the first place, they were a pair of brown suède shoes; and you can’t polish suède. In the second place, they weren’t a pair, though they looked alike at first glance. One was a lighter brown than the other, and had a small flat buckle on it. The Boots knew there had been a mistake somewhere, so he left the shoes there and came away.”

  Dr. Fell interposed, with an expression of painful interest on his face. “Just one moment. I’m interested in the mechanics of this citadel. Just how is a hotel run? Who would be in and out of the place at that time of night?”

  “There are some three hundred people employed here,” said Hardwick, “and it would take some time to explain how everything is run. But I can tell you this: after eleven-thirty at night, nobody would have any business upstairs at all—nobody—except one of the four under-porters.

  “It’s like this. The maids, who are on duty to answer bells and the rest of it during the day, go off for the night at eleven-thirty. That’s for moral reasons,” he explained blandly; “you don’t want a crowd of girls about when you’re turning in. At that time, also, any employees who would have had occasion to go upstairs during the day (like waiters or page-boys) are also off duty. The upstairs is left to the four under-porters on the staff of the night hall-porter.”

  “There are two shifts, I suppose?” asked Hadley.

  “Oh, yes. The night men come on at eight o’clock, and go on until eight the next morning. Each man takes care of one or two floors, according to how full we are. If a bell rings from his floor, he answers it. If luggage has to be carried up, or a guest forgets his key or comes home tight—all the odd jobs, you see. They also collect the shoes at five in the morning, as the sergeant says.”

  “The point is,” insisted Hadley, “did anyone go upstairs last night except the maid?”

  “No, sir,” said Betts. “That seems to be pretty certain.”

  With a very brief preliminary knock, the door opened and Dan Reaper walked in. After him came Francine Forbes, as though for a rear-guard.

  Kent got up automatically. She saw him, although Dan did not notice anything. More than ever, in London, Kent realised that Dan was built on a large scale like a relief map of Africa, and he required room in which to breathe. Yet, despite Dan’s buoyant energy, he looked ill; there was a part of his brain which for ever worried and worried and worried. His hair, turning dry and greyish at the temples, was cut short in the Teutonic style; his very light eyes, in a face whose brick-dust tan had not faded, were surrounded with little wrinkles which made the heavy face seem to have been gone over with a nutmeg-grater. His mouth, which expressed at once generosity and suspicion, had been pulled in so that the lower lip was drawn over the lower teeth.

  In appearance Francine offered a contrast, though in a few mental features she might have been his daughter. She was calmer than Dan, possibly even more determined: it was that determination which brought her and Christopher Kent into conflict whenever they met. She was slender, with that very fair skin which does not tan or burn, but seems to keep a kind of glow in its whiteness: emphasised by fair hair curtly bobbed, and dark brown eyes with long lids. She looked—there is no other word for it—overbred, though the overbreeding seemed to have run to vitality rather than anaemia. You knew that her brown dress was an extreme in fashion less because it was so plain than because it was so completely right for her.

  “Look here, Hardwick,” said Dan, with restraint. He put the palms of his hands flat on the desk, and then he saw Kent.

  Dan whistled.

  “How in the world—? He added, with a subdued roar.

  “I think,” said Hadley, “that you know Mr. Kent?”

  “Lord, yes. One of my best—” said Dan. He stopped again, and looked up quickly. “Did you tell him who you were, Chris? Because, if you did——”

  “I know: I lose. Never mind the bet, Dan. Forget the bet. We’re in the middle of too serious a mess for that. Hello, Francine.”

  Dan flushed, rubbing the side of his jaw. He looked at a loss, the other thought, because his innate tact was struggling with his innate desire to explain himself.

  “Rotten,” he said. “Rottenest nightmare I ever stumbled into. We tried to find you, Chris, but of course— Don’t worry, though; don’t worry a bit. I took care of everything. He was buried in Hampshire; you know his people came from there; everything of the best; cost me over five hundred, but worth it.” After these jerky utterances, even Dan’s strong nerve seemed to falter. He spoke querulously. “But I wish I were back having a nice comfortable drink at the SAPC. Now it’s Jenny. Have you got any idea what’s been happening to us?”

  “No.”

  “But you can tell them, can’t you, that nobody would want to kill Rod or Jenny?”

  “I can and have.”

  Hadley let them talk, wat
ching both of them. After barely acknowledging Kent’s greeting, Francine Forbes waited with that same air of just having emerged from a cold bath; it was a glow of the skin, he thought, as well as a mental atmosphere. But she was not at ease. Although the long eyes did not move, her hands did: nervously brushing the sides of her dress.

  “If we are through discussing Chris’s gallant gesture,” she said in her brittle voice—it made him hot and angry in a fraction of a second—“perhaps we’d better tell you, Mr. Hadley, why we are here. We form a deputation of two to tell you that we’re jolly well not going to stay caged up in separate compartments, like isolated cases, until we know what has happened. We know Jenny is dead. And that’s all we do know.”

  Hadley was at his suavest. He pushed out a chair for her, although she declined it with a turn of the wrist which indicated that she saw nothing except the matter in hand.

  “I’m afraid it’s all we know ourselves, Miss Forbes,” the superintendent told her. “We were coming round to see each of you as soon as we had gone over the room where the murder was committed. Yes, murder: the same as the other one, I’m afraid. By the way, let me introduce Dr. Gideon Fell, of whom you may have heard.”

  She nodded curtly: a salutation which the doctor, who had got up with vast wheezings, acknowledged by sweeping his shovel-hat across his breast. He also surveyed her through his eyeglasses with an expression of vast and benevolent interest which she seemed to find irritating. But she kept her eyes fixed on Hadley.

  “Was she—strangled?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?” asked Dan. He seemed to wish to assert himself.

  “We don’t know that yet; as I say, we haven’t been to the room or seen the doctor. I know,” pursued Hadley smoothly, “that it’s difficult to remain in your various rooms just now. But, believe me, it would help to keep matters quiet and prevent attracting attention to what’s happened—and to yourselves as well—if you would just follow my advice and go back there now. Unless, of course, you have anything important to tell us about last night?”

  “N-no,” said Dan, clearing his throat. “Not that, God knows!”

  “I understand your party came back here from the theatre about a quarter past eleven last night?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  Hadley paid no attention to his suspicious glance. “When you came back, Mr. Reaper, did you visit one another’s rooms or did you all go directly to your own rooms?”

  “Straight to our own rooms. We were tired.”

  By this time Francine had assumed so bored an expression that Kent longed to administer a whacking in the proper place. What he could never determine was whether these moods of hers were quite genuine or an elaborate shell of affectation.

  “Well, then: did you see or hear anything suspicious during the night?”

  “No,” said Dan rigorously.

  “You, Miss Forbes?”

  “Nothing, thank you,” said Francine, as though she were refusing something to eat or drink.

  “Did either of you leave your room at any time?”

  “No,” answered Dan, and hesitated. “No; that still goes. I didn’t leave the room. I put my head out and looked into the hall, that’s all.”

  “Looked out into the hall? Why?”

  “To see the clock. There’s a clock on the wall in the hall there, near Francine’s door. My watch had stopped. I called out to my wife to ask her if she knew what time it was; but she was in the bathroom with the bath running, and couldn’t hear me. So I opened the door,” said Dan, making a heavy gesture of lucidity, “and looked out at the clock. That’s all.”

  “At what time was this?”

  “At two minutes past midnight,” replied the other promptly. “I set my watch then.”

  Sergeant Betts moved unobtrusively round behind Hadley’s chair. He wrote a few words on the margin of his note-book and held it out. Kent, who was sitting nearest, could read it before Hadley noncommittally passed the note-book to Dr. Fell. It read: Doctor says she died about midnight.

  “Did you see or hear anyone then, Mr. Reaper? Anyone in the hall, for instance?”

  “No,” said Dan. “Nobody,” he added, “except one of the hotel-attendants, outside Jenny’s door, carrying a big pile of towels.”

  5

  The New Iron-maiden

  WHAT KENT COULD NOT understand was whether or not Dan realised what he had said—even whether he threw it off deliberately, and had come here to do so. It was difficult to think that a man of Dan’s practical intelligence would not think of it. But he spoke with his own casual air of flat positiveness, as though the matter were of no importance. Something brushed the atmosphere of that room, and they all felt it.

  “But—” protested Hardwick suddenly; then he adjusted his expression and remained polite.

  “Sit down for just one moment, Mr. Reaper,” Hadley said. “At two minutes past midnight you saw a hotel-attendant in the hall carrying towels? A man?”

  “Yes.”

  This time the atmosphere in the room brushed Dan like a touch on the shoulder. His look responded to it.

  “A man in uniform?”

  “Yes, naturally. I think so.”

  “What kind of uniform?”

  “What kind have they all got? Dark blue; red stripe on the cuff; brass or silver buttons; something like that.” Abruptly Dan’s heavy eyes grew fixed, and then opened slightly like those of a man making out something from a great distance away. “Oho!” he said.

  “You realise it, then. At the time Mr. Kent was murdered, a man in the dress of a hotel-attendant was seen at Sir Gyles Gay’s house——”

  Dan summed it up. “Ah, vootzach!” he said. After a pause he went on: “I see what you’re getting at, of course. But do you think it surprised me to see a hotel-attendant in a hotel? Do you think I’d regard it as suspicious? What the blazes should I expect to see? I didn’t even notice the fellow, particularly. I simply looked out—saw it out of the tail of my eye—and shut the door again. Like that.”

  Dan used many gestures when he argued. He was arguing now, with some heat. And there was reason in his position.

  “That’s not the point, Mr. Reaper. We have evidence, or seem to have evidence, that no employee of the hotel was in that wing between half-past eleven last night and five o’clock this morning.”

  “Oh,” said the other. He assumed his buttoned-up “business” expression, and he had assumed it suddenly. “I didn’t know that, superintendent. All I can tell you is what I saw. What evidence?”

  “The men working on the lifts say that nobody went upstairs or came down during that time.”

  “Staircase?”

  “Nor by the staircase.”

  “I see,” said Dan abruptly. “Well, what does that make me?”

  “An important witness, possibly,” Hadley answered without heat. “This man in the hall: did you see his face?”

  “No. He was carrying a big pile of—bath-towels! That’s it! Bath-towels. Must have been a dozen of ’em. They hid his face.”

  “He was facing towards you, then?”

  “Yes, he was walking along…. Just a minute—I’ve got it now! I was standing in the door of the bedroom of our suite, looking towards the left—towards the clock on the wall, naturally. He was coming towards me. As I was saying, he was just about outside Jenny’s door.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “I’ve told you,” replied the other, in a tone as expressionless as Hadley’s own, “that I hardly noticed him. I don’t suppose I had the door open more than a couple of seconds, just long enough to see the clock. I’d say he was either walking towards me or standing still.”

  “Which? All I want is your impression, Mr. Reaper.”

  “Standing still, then.”

  It was no very terrifying ghost to be found in the halls of an ordinary hotel; but it was a patient kind of ghost which strangled its victims and then battered their faces in. Kent found himself thinking that i
t was all the more unpleasant because it had been described as “standing still” near Josephine’s door.

  “Bath-towels,” said Hadley. “A number of bath-towels, we’ve heard, were found in the room where the murder was committed. It looks as though your mysterious man had at least gone into that room….”

  “Was her face—?” Francine cried suddenly.

  “Yes. And a face-towel was used to strangle her, as in another case we know about,” said Hadley. The girl did not falter, or anything of a dramatic nature; but her eyes suddenly grew so bright they thought she was going to cry. Hadley was not uncomfortable. He turned to Dan. “About this man: didn’t it strike you as odd to see an attendant carrying bath-towels? Wouldn’t it have been a job for the maid?”

  “I don’t know whose job it was,” retorted Dan. “It certainly didn’t strike me as odd, and wouldn’t have done even if I had noticed all the subtleties you’re putting into it. At home, in the hotels, you hardly ever find a maid at all. All the work is done by boys—Indians, mostly. I can see now that it’s queer enough; but why should it strike me then?”

  “Can you give us any description of this man? Tall, short? Fat, thin?”

  “Just ordinary.”

  Hardwick interposed. He had been standing unobtrusively on the fringe of the group as on the fringe of thought; but he looked so solid and so dependable that Dan turned to him as though he were going to shake hands.

  “You have been speaking about a uniform,” he said slowly. “What sort of uniform was it? We’ve got several, you know.”

  Hadley swung round. “I was coming to that. What uniforms have you got, to begin with?”

  “For that time of night, not many: as I told you a moment ago. If this had happened during the day, there would be a pretty broad range. But when you get to a time as late as midnight, there are only three kinds of employees who wear a uniform at all; everybody else, from car-starter to page-boy, is off duty. First, there’s the night hall-porter, Billings, and his four under-porters. Second, there are the two liftmen. Third, there are the two attendants in the lounge— you know, serving late drinks. That’s all.”