Inspector Zhang Goes To Harrogate

by Stephen Leather

  “Someone pushed him off the chair?”

  “Pulled, I think. But give me a minute or two to confirm my suspicions are correct.” He looked over at Mr Dumbleton. He was watching them with narrowed eyes, the cigarette forgotten in his hands. “He is worried, you can see it in his eyes. There is something here that he does not want us to find, I’m sure of that.”

  He let go of his wife’s hand and walked back around the side of the building. He looked up at the bathroom window, then at the ivy, and then he smiled to himself.

  “I know that smile,” said Mrs Zhang. “What have you seen?”

  Mr Zhang chuckled but didn’t say anything. He walked along the wall to a glass-panelled door and put his hand on the handle. He turned and pushed the door open. It led to a corridor. At the far end of the corridor was the reception area, and to his right were the bathrooms. Inspector Zhang closed the door and turned to smile at his wife.

  “Mr Dumbleton was in the banqueting room at the murder mystery lunch, and he left only for a few minutes to visit the bathroom. That was when he killed Mr Hyde.”

  ‘But how? The maid would have seen him enter or leave the room.”

  “He didn’t go into the room to kill Mr Hyde. He did it from here.”

  Mrs Zhang frowned. “From here? Now you’re confusing me.”

  Inspector Zhang pushed away the ivy at the base of the wall. “He hasn’t had time to remove the evidence. That’s why he’s outside. Whatever he used is still here.”

  “What could he have possibly used that would have made Mr Hyde kill himself?”

  “String,” said Inspector Zhang. “Or wire.” He took a step to the side and brushed away a clump of ivy, then sat back on his heels. “Wire,” he said.

  Mrs Zhang looked over his shoulder. Half hidden by the ivy was a coil of green plastic-covered wire. Inspector Zhang pushed away more of the ivy to reveal a black fabric eye shade.

  “What is that?” asked Mrs Zhang.

  “An eye shade, like the one you wore on the plane,” said Inspector Zhang. “Mr Dumbleton had difficulty sleeping. He used ear plugs. And I believe he used an eye shade, too. This eye shade.” He took his fountain pen from his jacket and used it to gently turn the eye shade over to reveal the two Velcro strips that kept it in place. The green wire was looped around the eye shade at about the halfway point.” Inspector Zhang nodded thoughtfully. “Now that was clever,” he said.

  “What’s clever?” asked Mrs Zhang.

  Inspector Zhang straightened up. “That was how he prevented Mr Hyde from calling for help,” he said.

  Mrs Zhang bent down to look at the eye shade. “How did it end up here?” she asked.

  “Can’t you see, it’s tied to the wire?”

  Mrs Zhang nodded. “I think I’m starting to understand.”

  Inspector Zhang smiled at his wife. “Why don’t you tell me how he did it?”

  “I’m not the detective,” she said.

  “I’d like you to try,” said Inspector Zhang.

  She squeezed his arm. “And I’d like you to try to iron your own shirts, but we both know that I do it better.”

  Inspector Zhang laughed and kissed her on the cheek. “Then I shall tell you what happened,” he said. “Mr Dumbleton went to see Mr Hyde and somehow managed to get inside his room. This was long before the mystery murder lunch. Maybe after breakfast. I didn’t see either of them at any of the morning sessions. Mr Dumbleton probably said he wanted to apologise, he’d have said whatever he had to in order to convince Mr Hyde to let him in. Once inside the room, he overpowered Mr Hyde. He handcuffed him and gagged him by stuffing a handkerchief in his mouth and keeping it in place with the eye mask. His plan was to wait until the murder mystery lunch was about to begin.”

  He took off his spectacles and began polishing them with his handkerchief. “Mr Dumbleton is a writer of mysteries, albeit not very good ones, and I think he had spent some time planning this, perhaps for a story. But yesterday, after his shouting match with Mr Hyde, he decided to put it into practice. He fixed a rope around the door, then put a chair under the noose. Then he forced Mr Hyde onto the chair and placed the noose around his neck. He then tightened the noose to restrict Mr Hyde’s movement but not enough to cut off his air supply. It must have been a nightmare for Mr Hyde, not being able to move or to cry out.”

  Mrs Zhang shuddered. “That is horrible. Really horrible.”

  “Mr Dumbleton is a sociopath, I am sure he enjoyed making Mr Hyde suffer,” said Inspector Zhang as he continued to work the handkerchief over the lenses of his glasses. “He took the wire and attached it to the eye shade, knotting it so that when the wire was pulled it would drag the eye shade away from Mr Hyde’s face. Mr Dumbleton looped the wire around the leg of the chair. Then he passed both ends of the wire out of the bathroom window, allowing it to mix in with the ivy. Later, when he was outside, pulling on both ends of the wire would yank the eye shade away from Mr Hyde’s mouth and then a fraction of a second later the loop would catch on the chair and pull it over. Mr Hyde would fall and be strangled. And Mr Dumbleton would simply pull one end of the wire through the window, bringing the eye shade with it. He had just enough time to coil up the wire and hide it here before returning to the banquet room. From start to finish it would have taken less than a minute.”

  “That’s horrible,” said Mrs Zhang. “Truly horrible.”

  The maid heard the chair tumble but Mr Hyde didn’t have time to cry out. Later, when she opened the door to clean the room, she discovered the body. And by the time the alarm was given, Mr Dumbleton was eating his dessert. He had the perfect alibi, surrounded by several hundred mystery fans.” He put his handkerchief away and replaced his spectacles. “That probably gave him a great deal of pleasure, to carry out the perfect murder in front of so many mystery fans. Sociopaths love to show the world how clever they are.”

  “But why would he kill Mr Hyde?”

  “Jealousy,” said Inspector Zhang.

  “He killed a man for that?”

  “Men have been killed for less, I’m afraid. But it’s clear that Mr Dumbleton is unbalanced. A sociopath, or a psychopath perhaps. His mind does not function in the same way as yours or mine.”

  “He’s mad?”

  ‘We don’t use words like that these days,” said Inspector Zhang. ”But yes, he is quite mad. I could see it in his eyes.”

  “And he killed Mr Hyde because he was jealous of his success?”

  “That was the spark that ignited the fire, I think. But when his online campaign of harassment didn’t achieve its objective, he became increasingly frustrated. The final straw, I think, was when he was publicly humiliated at the event where Mr Hyde was speaking. That is what pushed him over the edge.”

  “So he is a murderer, there is no doubt?”

  “None at all,” said Inspector Zhang. They walked together around the corner to the front of the hotel.

  “But can you prove it?”

  Inspector Zhang shrugged his shoulders. “I think the police here are as adept technically as we are in Singapore,” he said. “I don’t think that Mr Dumbleton would have worn gloves, or at least if he had done they would be here with the wire. That means his DNA is almost certainly on the wire. There should be marks on the window frame in the bathroom where the wire rubbed against it and I myself remember seeing marks on one of the chair legs. I am assuming that Mr Dumbleton did not come to Harrogate planning to kill Mr Hyde which means he almost certainly bought the wire locally. And if he used the sleeping mask himself, his DNA will be on it.”

  “Does that mean you will arrest him?” asked Mrs Zhang.

  The inspector looked over at Mr Dumbleton. Mr Dumbleton smiled and nodded and raised his cigarette. The inspector nodded back. “I have no powers of arrest in England,” he said. “And besides, a man as deranged as Mr Dumbleton can be dangerous. He might well lash out when cornered.” The two English policemen walked out of the hotel. Chief Inspector Hawthorne looked at his watch
and said something to Sergeant Bolton, then they began walking in Inspector Zhang’s direction. “I will simply inform the local police of my findings and leave it up to them.”

  “So they will take the credit?”

  “It is not about the credit, my dear,” said Inspector Zhang. “It is never about the credit.”

  She squeezed his arm. “And you know what? We never did find out who the murderer was at the dinner.”

  “That? That was easy. It was the professor. He killed the victim with the shard of glass and then wiped the prints off with the victim’s handkerchief. He then planted the handkerchief in Miss Smith’s handbag when he sat down next to her in the library. He knew he would be alone in the greenhouse because he reset Mr Miller’s alarm clock when he went to see him that morning. By resetting the clock by just one hour he knew Mr Miller would miss the appointment and the victim would be alone in the greenhouse.”

  “And what about the motive?”

  Inspector Zhang nodded thoughtfully. “That was the difficult part. Because they were so keen to lead us astray, they gave strong motives to the three innocent parties. But Professor Green seemed to have no motive at all. In fact the real motive was only hinted at when he referred to the death of his partner, Mr Livingstone. Everyone assumed he was referring to a business partner but I think that he actually meant he and Mr Livingstone were lovers. Mr Livingstone, if you recall, killed himself after the victim took almost all the royalties from his first novel, the one that was a bestseller. I think that Professor Green killed the victim for revenge, one of the purest of motives.”

  “I have such a clever husband,” said Mrs Zhang.

  “And I have the best wife in the world,” said Inspector Zhang. “Now, let me talk to the English detectives and then we shall go for a walk around this marvellous city.“

  THE END

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Stephen Leather is one of the UK’s most successful thriller writers and is published in more than twenty languages. He was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Before that, he was employed as a biochemist for ICI, shovelled limestone in a quarry, worked as a baker, a petrol pump attendant, a barman, and worked for the Inland Revenue. He began writing full time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into more than ten languages. He has also written for television shows such as London’s Burning, The Knock and the BBC’s Murder in Mind series, and two of his books, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were turned into movies. You can find out more from his website at www.stephenleather.com.

  If you enjoyed this Inspector Zhang story, there are five more available – Inspector Zhang Gets His Wish, Inspector Zhang and the Falling Woman, Inspector Zhang and the Dead Thai Gangster, Inspector Zhang and the Perfect Alibi, and Inspector Zhang and the Disappearing Drugs.

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