A Thrust to the Vitals

by Evans, Geraldine

  Seward, like Rafferty and his two younger brothers after they had moved to Essex from their south London home, had attended the local RC secondary modern. But Seward, to give him his due, had been smart even then and had been destined for higher things. It had only been his early idleness that had caused him to attend the secondary modern in the first place, rather than the grammar school. But, in his final year, he had obtained a scholarship to St Oswald’s, the nearby fee-paying boarding school with an excellent reputation.

  He hadn’t wasted the opportunity. Nor had he hesitated to crow about it. Even now, twenty-five years later, Rafferty could recall his younger brother’s resentment at Seward’s boasting of his scholarship success and Mickey’s relative ‘failure’, as Seward called it, in merely managing to get signed up to attend the local technical college. No, Seward had not been a nice man.

  Rafferty, being a year older than both his brother Mickey and cousin Nigel, had seen less of Seward’s youthful arrogance than had been displayed to his two relatives. And, as a teenager, Rafferty had been both taller than his younger brother and cousin and handy with his fists, so Seward had had the sense not to tangle with him in the way that he had so enjoyed tangling with those younger or smaller than himself of whom, Mickey, of course, had been one.

  But, while the grown-up Mickey might not have Seward’s money or worldly success, he did have a craftsman’s skills in carpentry, painstakingly acquired during the City & Guilds course he had taken at the local college during his apprenticeship. And even though his brother had managed to put himself in an extremely unfortunate position over Seward’s violent murder and his self-evident failure to bring it to anyone’s attention before he scarpered with the words ‘chief suspect’ inevitably trailing behind him, what Dally the pathologist had said about the number of people who would be glad to assist Seward to even greater, heavenly, glory, was true enough. It provided Rafferty with the only solace currently on offer.

  Of course, he had yet to meet Seward’s unwillingly lingering guests, though, from all the reports he had so far heard, they sounded a pretty uncongenial lot.

  Okay, finding yourself involved in a murder scene when all you had expected to do was drink and stuff your face, would be a shock to anyone. Still, given that Sir Rufus had known and associated with some characters who were, by repute, as unpleasant and ruthless as he was, Rafferty felt it wasn’t unreasonable to hope that at least one of them would be revealed to have nursed a magnate-sized grudge against the dead man. It might yet let his idiot brother off the hook.

  Chapter Three

  After having a quick word with the rest of the team, Rafferty led Llewellyn away from Seward’s suite. Outside, in the corridor, he found Reynolds, the hand-wringing night manager, hovering as close to the suite as the uniformed guardians of the door permitted. As soon as he emerged, Rafferty was met, once again, by the man’s imploring, Bambi gaze, though what the manager imagined he could do to guarantee continued discretion on the murder front goodness only knew…

  Jonty Reynolds was far from being a jaunty Jonty at the moment, as his hand-wringing testified. After his first, fraught few questions, he had asked little more. Probably afraid of the answers he would receive, as Rafferty presumed Mr Reynolds had managed, since they had last spoken, to conjure up for himself far more colourful examples of the publicity likely to spring from the murder of such a prominent guest than even a cynical policeman could have provided. Rafferty, fearing tears weren’t far away, interrupted Reynolds’ hand-wringing to remind him, ‘You said we could use one of the ballrooms to question the reception’s remaining guests. Perhaps we could see it now?’

  In his late forties and clearly with fears of being ‘let go’ by his employers on his mind, Jonty Reynolds, his forehead beaded with the sweat of acute anxiety, nodded, and led them into the even more impressive Edwardian splendours of the now deserted main ballroom. They found themselves surrounded by the detritus of some other party’s long-since concluded festivities. The ballroom, like Seward’s suite, was still awaiting the attentions of the cleaning staff, who, warned that the police would be using it for their interviews, had been told to keep out. The leftovers from the buffet and the bar were all around them, scattered on the floor and tables. The fiftieth wedding anniversary congratulatory banners were still in place for Cyril and Cynthia.

  Rafferty, wondering at the likelihood of current newlyweds staying the course over such a time, and feeling the need to acknowledge such an achievement, from a nearby table plucked a glass still containing dregs of white wine and raised it towards the banner in a silent toast to the golden couple.

  Llewellyn, the particular, seemed subdued by the abandoned and curling remains surrounding them. His nostrils faintly flared as if, even so far from the ground, he could detect the smell of bad drains.

  Rafferty grinned to himself. He was only too aware that the Welshman could never abide such mess. Strange that he should choose such a mess-encountering career as the police in which to earn his living. Ironic, too, that he should have the far from tidy Rafferty as his senior officer.

  Certainly, the mess didn’t trouble Rafferty one jot - rather the reverse, in fact. He felt quite at home. Besides, by now he was absolutely ravenous and happy to help himself to the curling remnants of yet another celebratory party buffet in the hope this Oliver Twist act would spur the manager into offering them something to eat.

  Thankfully, once the distraught night manager spotted how starving was his late-arriving and unexpected guest, he was obliging and wily enough to attempt some damage limitation – Rafferty had met him previously, during another murder investigation – and to temporarily put aside his hand-wringing and get on the right side of the investigating policeman.

  He enquired as to Rafferty’s food preferences and swiftly organized the late-night kitchen staff into rustling up a huge plateful of beef and horseradish sandwiches. These, fortunately, were of policeman preferred proportions rather than the hotel’s normal, more dainty fare.

  Rafferty wasted no time in getting himself outside most of these sandwiches before the guests still awaiting his questions had the opportunity to ruin his appetite.

  In spite of Rafferty’s enthusiastic encouragement that his partner follow the example of their free-loading boss and the rest of the party guests and ‘fill his boots’, as it was likely to be a long night and even longer day, Llewellyn seemed to have lost his appetite.

  When Llewellyn still declined, Rafferty shrugged, said, ‘Suit yourself,’ and reached for another sandwich.

  Once the guest list and Seward’s address book had been photo copied so the rest of the team could make a start on contacting those named therein, Rafferty and Llewellyn settled down to a longer study of these documents. At the same time Rafferty didn’t fail to address his attention to the very superior sandwiches.

  By the time this study was concluded and the plate of sandwiches, but for a few crumbs, despatched, young Timothy Smales, the uniformed officer allocated the task of guarding the door where the late-staying guests were currently confined, passed along the message that they had now quietened considerably.

  For Rafferty, this quietude provided a welcome indication that their over-tired and alcohol-stimulated belligerence had died a natural death. Perhaps now he would be able to get on and question them to some purpose. Maybe, Rafferty thought, he might be lucky and get a straight answer or two.

  He had installed a couple of plain clothes officers in the newly-opened suite where the guests were sequestered. He hoped that Mary Carmody and her colleague DC Andrews, had, before the alcohol influence totally abated, overheard something else to his advantage other than the revelation that Superintendent Bradley had been present for the latter part of the evening. Though given such a juicy piece of information, Rafferty couldn’t believe he would be lucky enough to squeeze any more juice from the guests’ overheard chit-chat.

  Of course, once the removal of the alcohol had begun the sobering-up process and les
sened the unwise confidences that it had encouraged, the presence of the two police officers had naturally inclined this revealing chatter to fade. But he couldn’t have it both ways. Neither could he delay much longer the necessity of interviewing them all. By now, they would all be tired, emotional, and ready for their beds, so they might yet be encouraged to spill some more beans of the revelatory, or even incriminatory, sort.

  But if he was honest with himself, Rafferty thought this last unlikely: even those who had had no hand in Seward’s early exit from the world, would, once relatively sober, feel a guilty complicity in his violent demise and be keen to keep their mouths shut.

  Fortunately, in such circumstances, in Rafferty’s experience, such wisdom usually came along too late. He was hopeful that one or more of these guests would, indeed, have blurted out something revealing in the interim.

  Before Rafferty and Llewellyn left the ballroom to speak to the waiting guests, Jonty Reynolds had pleaded with them that they conduct their investigation with as much discretion as the circumstances allowed.

  Too late for that, was Rafferty’s thought as he recalled his phone conversation with Mickey, which had revealed that news of the murder had already spread beyond the confines of the hotel itself. His reassurances sounded weak even to his own ears. Certainly, they must have sounded hollow to Jonty Reynolds, to judge by his drooping head as he slouched his way across the floor and out. Reynolds’ body language acknowledged that the Elmhurst Hotel was, all too soon, likely to be besieged by the media - if it wasn’t already. And, from the look of the manager, Rafferty could only surmise that the ladies and gentlemen of the Third Estate were hammering at the door - if they hadn’t already battered it down in their usual Genghis Khan-like desire for those career trophies that the violent death of a VIP brought to those sufficiently quick off the mark to be in almost at the kill.

  Constable Timothy Smales gave what he obviously presumed was a restrained, ‘one professional to another’ nod, as Rafferty arrived at the double doors leading to the suite holding the remaining guests, before he thrust open both the doors to the suite’s main living area, and invited the detective inspector, with a wide-flung arm, to enter the room.

  Rafferty would have preferred a more discreet entrance, one less likely to induce excitement in the already over-emotional occupants, but young Smales, with his inherent feeling for drama, had ensured it was too late for that. Rafferty braced himself for the barrage as the remaining guests rushed forward in a body as if they were all still on an alcohol-fuelled high. And even if alcohol no longer greatly stimulated their bodies, the fumes were still evident on their breath as they demanded answers.

  Rafferty had already been provided with the guests’ names by Seward’s efficient assistant, Marcus Canthorpe, before he had been requested to rejoin them.

  Pushing himself to the fore was the imposing, grey haired, bristling and red of face, Ivor Bignall. Rafferty recognized him from the local newspaper in which he often featured. As the councillor who had organised the reception in liaison with Canthorpe, Bignall evidently felt he must take command.

  ‘You’re Inspector Rafferty, I take it?’ he began in a disconcertingly loud voice. ‘Why have we been kept here for hours? It really is quite intolerable.’

  Rafferty quietly apologised and explained the need to prioritise. And on a murder investigation the first priority was the victim and the scene of crime.

  To his surprise, Bignall immediately subsided. He simply nodded his understanding. Presumably, Rafferty supposed, as both a councillor and a businessman, Bignall understood the importance of prioritising one’s workload. At any rate, he posed no more questions for the moment.

  Rafferty also recognised his blonde, pale, though very attractive and much younger wife, Dorothea. She had elected to remain seated in the shadows beyond the suite’s twinkling Tiffany chandeliers. She appeared subdued; hardly surprising in the circumstances, of course. Presumably she had concluded that it was pointless to attempt to pose any questions — her forceful husband, given time and opportunity, being more than capable of posing all the questions either of them could desire.

  Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprising given that the mayor must have the best part of fifteen years’ advantage age-wise — Bignall allowed himself to be edged aside by Idris Khan, the town’s half-Welsh, half-Asian current mayoral incumbent. Khan was wearing his full regalia, which apparently included his much younger blonde wife, Mandy, who clung on to the back of his mayoral insignia like a limpet. Her pinpoint pupils indicated to Rafferty that she had recently been sniffing something that was rather more potent than snuff or her own mucus. Perhaps, between the drugs and the alcohol, she felt unsteady on her feet and required the support of the sturdy mayoral chain of office?

  When Idris Khan spoke, it was clear he wasn’t quite sure whether the occasion demanded he be terribly British and pukka sahib about the whole thing or whether he would be more likely to coax the required responses if he played the minority card and let his Asian half predominate. Perhaps, because he had spent most of his childhood in India, the latter won and he began to flail his arms about in a most excitable manner while directing a stream of sing-song sentences in Rafferty’s direction.

  ‘You must the inspector be,’ he addressed Rafferty. ‘This is very dreadful, dreadful thing to happen to poor Sir Seward. Very dreadful. My wife is over tired and wishes with a most strong desire, to go to her home now. As Mr Bignall said, we are waiting here these many hours and are most distressed. But let me assure you, most heartfeltly, my dear inspector, that poor dear Sir Seward’s dreadful death has nothing whatsoever at all to be doing with any of us and—’

  He was interrupted by Bignall’s big voice booming above his own. ‘Be quiet a minute, won’t you, Iddy? And don’t be silly, my dear chap. Of course it must have been one of us who killed him. I don’t know how you can even try to pretend otherwise. Who else could have done it?’

  Clearly, Ivor Bignall wasn’t one for trying the head in the sand approach. Of course, he had hit the nail squarely on its head. Who else could be responsible other than one of those present at the private reception, given that access to the suite had been policed by two of the hotel’s own security guards throughout the evening, and that Dr Sam Dally estimated Seward had died but a short time before his own arrival — sometime between 11.00 p m. and shortly after midnight?

  ‘Inspector,’ Bignall continued. ‘I appreciate that as the investigating officer you have a job to do and will need to question us all as a matter of routine. But could you at least give us an idea of how soon we are likely to be able to go home? My wife doesn’t feel well. She’s very distressed — as are we all, of course,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘Poor Seward. The mayor’s quite right. It is a dreadful thing to have happened. But—’

  But life went on, Rafferty silently finished for him. He held up his hand before Bignall could continue or anyone else had a chance to get in on the act. ‘Ladies and gentleman, if you please. We will get through the preliminary interviews as speedily as possible so you can all go home. But we’ll get done a lot quicker if you remain calm and quiet. Perhaps you will allow me to explain a few things so you all know the drill.’ He paused. ‘We shall require each of you, individually, to come along to the Boudicca Ballroom on this floor, where we shall be conducting the interviews. Unless any of you have anything of great moment to confide, I doubt any of these will take longer than a few minutes. Once you have been questioned, you may go home. Unless, of course,’ he added on a sudden burst of optimism, ‘one of you would like to confess now to Sir Rufus Seward’s murder, and save us all a great deal of trouble?’

  This brought a collective gasp, as well as a few uneasy sniggers, as he had known it would. But it was late, he was tired, they were tired, and, as Bignall had already pointed out, one of those present must have killed Seward. Who else was there, apart from Mickey? And Rafferty was as nearly certain as anyone could be that Mickey was no more capable of such
a murder than he was himself.

  If he had hoped that such a brisk suggestion might shock an admission out of one of them, he was disappointed. His quick sweep around the large reception room to check if there were any takers, took in Marcus Canthorpe, the dead man’s assistant, whom he had already briefly questioned, as well as Roy and Keith Farraday, thirty-eight-year-old identical twins, whom he also had no trouble recognising, as they had attended the same secondary school as Seward and Rafferty, as well as his brothers and cousin.

  Canthorpe had told him the twins had been taken on Sir Rufus’s staff only a matter of months ago as general dogsbodies and gofers.

  Rafferty wondered if the Farraday brothers still indulged their childhood hobby of snitching to teacher and spying out information they could sell for a profit. He was willing to bet this evening had brought a few unwise disclosures they must hope to use to their advantage. He was surprised a man of Rufus Seward’s renowned acuity hadn’t recognised them for what they were straight away. Or perhaps he had? Maybe he had had his own reasons for employing the pair…?

  Rafferty noticed his cousin, Nigel Blythe, hovering at the back of the crowd as if hoping he wouldn’t be noticed. Nigel proved unwilling to meet his eye. Bloody Nigel, Rafferty thought, annoyed all over again that his cousin should once more turn up in his life like the proverbial bad penny. His presence needlessly complicated an already complicated situation. As if the problem inherent in Mickey’s brief but oh-so-traumatic attendance at the party wasn’t causing Rafferty enough, yet to be resolved, grief!