by Myers, Amy
Only the latter part of his speech was correct. Egbert Rose should indeed know, and very quickly, that in the chest was the smashed and battered corpse, identifiable with difficulty, of Alfred Bowman.
Splashes of bright colour emerging out of the swirling fog were transforming bleak Paddington. Red carpet, the brilliant uniforms of the Blue and Royals of the Household Cavalry, trumpets at the ready, flags almost canopying the railway station.
A telephone call had informed them that since the SS Canada had been delayed in its crossing, the Field Marshal’s railway train would be late. Rose greeted this news with sinking heart. Another fifteen minutes in which that all too isolated figure could become a victim of a bullet. He tried to convince himself that everything that could be done had been done and that with so many pairs of eyes scanning every window and crevice for pointed guns, no assassin would stand a chance. Every constable in London was on the lookout for fat Italians with a furtive air and porkpie hat. A wide variety had thus been brought kicking and screaming into police stations all over the capital. Messages had flown back and forth, but all had been in vain. Of Fancelli there was no sign. Newspaper stalls, refreshment rooms and waiting rooms had been scanned and everyone on the station seemed to have a policeman by him – though many were not recognisable as such. Or indeed as anything, Rose thought glumly, remembering the motley assortment of ‘disguises’ he had seen early that morning: false beards, eye patches, farmers, fishermen, chestnut sellers, and a pièce de résistance by one ambitious lad, an Italian ice-cream vendor. ‘In case Fancelli fancies an ice cream, Sarge,’ he had told Twitch brightly. Their art of disguise would not make the stage of Her Majesty’s, thought Rose. If he ever made Chief, he’d do something to remedy it.
All had been in vain. Fancelli had not been caught. All Rose had seen, an illusion he put down to the early hour of the morning, was a white-overalled chef with rounded figure and dark locks emerging from the first Inner Circle underground train. But he vanished from sight in the early morning work crowds and was not on the station now. Rose had personally inspected the kitchens of the station hotels with great care. Nothing and no one had been found.
Rose peered up at the vaulted roof, as though at any moment a long rope might descend with an assassin slithering down it. What method would an assassin use? A gun? Most likely. Dynamite? Possible. That’s what the Boers had used to try to blow up Bobs in Johannesburg. But track and station had been scoured. How about the procession route to the palace? That was a danger. At least poison could be ruled out at Paddington Station, he thought wrily. Knife? Couldn’t get close enough. A disagreeable thought struck him as memories of William Tell and bows and arrows came to him. Or how about one of those knife-throwing circus performers? True, Fancelli didn’t look like a circus performer, but knife-throwing wouldn’t need a lithe figure. Rose brushed the thought away. He was getting fanciful in his old age. All the same, he’d ask Twitch just to check circus lists for the future. After all, what about the Carlton and Pall Mall? Plenty of opportunities there for a man with a knife on his mind.
The band stopped playing stirring martial tunes at the sight of the train slowly puffing into the railway station.
On the red carpet, the Prince of Wales and Duke of Connaught stood to attention, behind them the Princess of Wales, who had as usual assumed deafness to Bertie’s request for her absence. Nothing more to do now than pray, thought Rose grimly from his position ten yards away. Precisely opposite where the Prince and Duke waited on the red carpet, a carriage door was held open and the small figure of the Field Marshal responsible for apparent victory in South Africa, reliever of Kimberley, Mafeking and Ladysmith, stepped out. The trumpets of the Blues and Royals gave way to the national anthem. Salutes were given and acknowledged. No sound of guns, only of running footsteps. Rose whipped round, reflexes razor-sharp. Only a newsboy, determined to see his future monarch at closer quarters. Rose relaxed his taut muscles a fraction.
Five minutes later an open State carriage containing Bobs and Bertie drove away on its victory procession towards Buckingham Palace and luncheon. The ladies of the party and sundry other officials were packed into inferior hired carriages to take their back route to the palace, in order not to remove the limelight from Bobs himself. On this occasion the Yard had been gracious enough to grant expenditure for Rose and Stitch to follow this second procession, since they could hardly follow the Prince of Wales. Protection along the route was in the hands of Rose’s men.
Rose was admiring the precision and competence of the British in such ceremonial, listening to the cheers of those lining Praed Street at the sight of the Prince of Wales’s carriage turning in towards them, when he became aware of something wrong. The carriages in front of him were turning left, not right, and were following the Prince of Wales’s carriage.
A sharp look at Twitch. What the hell was happening? Who was driving these hired carriages? Whom did they contain?
‘Leave it to me, sir.’ Twitch leapt from the carriage, in pursuit of promotion, power, and saving royalty from the plots of assassins. ‘He must be in the front carriage.’
Rose, leaning from his window apprehensively, could see nothing in the blur of shouting, cheering faces, and the anonymous carriages of the second procession turning the corner to follow their leader. Then the crowd cleared, to reveal, as Rose’s carriage came level, Sergeant Stitch picking himself up dustily and painfully from the ground. Rose grabbed him and pulled him up into the carriage.
‘What’s happening, man?’ He shook him roughly.
Twitch was almost crying. ‘It wasn’t my fault, sir,’ he babbled. ‘I thought it was Fancelli in there for sure, going the wrong way like that. He wasn’t driving, so I threw myself inside the carriage.’ He looked at Rose beseechingly.
‘Well?’ Rose barked.
‘It wasn’t Fancelli, sir. It was the Princess of Wales, and Lady Roberts.’
Rose groaned.
‘I fell over the Princess’s feet, sir. She screamed. Then the door flew open the other side, and I sort of somersaulted straight out again.’ Twitch sat before Rose penitent, waiting for the verdict that must surely come. Even if he escaped being clapped in irons for terrifying the Princess of Wales, promotion could never now be his.
He underestimated Rose, who was magnanimous in defeat. But not that magnanimous. He let him sweat a bit. Then: ‘Tell you what, Stitch,’ he remarked at last. ‘Suppose I put in a report commending you for swift action in time of emergency, and preventing a dastardly attempt on the life of the Princess of Wales?’
Chapter Ten
Rose arrived at Cranton’s, a docile and devoted Twitch in tow, at two o’clock. He was none too happy. Relief at the absence of calamity at Paddington had been completely obliterated on his return to the Yard by finding that there had been another murder at Cranton’s. Furthermore he had had no time for luncheon, and for the first time in their acquaintance, Auguste let him down in this respect. So overcome was he at his macabre discovery that he omitted his usual summing up of a visitor’s requirements in regard to food. The customary journey to the kitchen or restaurant was not offered. Auguste, not perceiving the reason for Rose’s grumpiness, felt aggrieved. It was, he thought, as if Egbert considered he might be causing these crimes himself. Why? In order to ruin his first and probably his last opportunity to be a hotelier?
Sergeant Stitch was despatched to pacifying the guests who had been herded, to their annoyance, into the smoky billiard room after a luncheon served in a manner that could only be said to be perfunctory. The identity of the corpse had quickly become public knowledge if only through the absence of Mr Bowman from luncheon. Miss Guessings was missing from the billiard room, having swooned on hearing the news at luncheon.
In the drawing room, Rose stared down into the chest at the remains of Alfred Bowman. ‘How did you recognise him?’
August hesitated. ‘That lounge suit – and the brown boots.’
‘Boots? Look quite standard to me.
’
‘But they are brown. No gentleman, except Mr Bowman, wears brown boots in London.’
Rose eyed him for a moment in none too friendly a fashion and decided to let it pass.
‘Someone wanted to make quite sure he was dead all right. If it had been another knife killing, we’d know where to go.’
Auguste followed his thoughts. ‘Marie-Paul Gonnet? But there cannot surely be two murderers at Cranton’s?’
‘Unlikely,’ Rose grunted. ‘But this don’t fit our Marie-Paul. A woman wouldn’t have the strength. Where in hell and Tommy’s name is the doc?’
The latter obliged by bustling cheerily in.
‘Blunt instrument, eh!’ he remarked chattily, preparing for business. Having delivered himself of this only too obvious comment, he ceased to make comments, but Rose had no intention of waiting until the post-mortem was complete. Waiting in a mortuary while coroners formally requested PMs and doctors dictated their gruesome findings was never his favourite occupation.
‘Time of death? Approximately.’
‘Dead about twelve hours. Sometime during the night, I’d say – if I had to,’ the doctor offered unwillingly.
‘And what kind of instrument are we looking for, if that ain’t a State secret too?’
The doctor looked at him in surprise. ‘Why should it be?’ he asked blankly. ‘Heavy, weighted end, I’d say. Like a hammer, heavy mallet—’
‘Steak mallet?’ suggested Rose sharply.
‘Possibly,’ amended the doctor cautiously. ‘The PM will tell you more.’
‘Do you think he was killed in the chest?’ Auguste asked the doctor.
‘Why?’ Rose demanded, his face turning dark.
‘There is no – er – gore on the box, Inspector. And not much blood.’
‘So Fancelli kills his victim somewhere else, and carries him down here to give us a good laugh, eh?’
‘It was merely a deduction, Inspector. Where there is steak, there may be kidney,’ Auguste murmured feebly.
‘And what I’d give to see that,’ muttered Rose grimly.
Auguste shot a sharp look at his friend, and the awful truth struck him. He had forgotten the first duty of a hotelier, the first of a chef, and the first of any human being. Has one’s guest yet dined? Here he was clearly looking at a man who had not. True, the sight before them was not conducive to tempting the stomach, but un peu de. . .
‘Inspector Rose,’ he said formally, as the policeman began to remove the body, chest and all on this occasion, due to the problems of rigor mortis, ‘I offer you my sympathy, my apologies, and la bonne soupe.’
His third mortuary this Christmas period, thought Rose, strengthened by soup but not inured to the sights before him. Usually he distanced himself; today it was difficult. This case was growing snake-like tentacles faster than Medusa.
He averted his eyes as the process seemed to be entering the final gruesome stages. He was going to have to go through all this again when Bowman’s son came in for formal identification.
‘Cause of death?’ he asked automatically, as the doctor came over to him.
‘No doubt about that,’ the doctor replied informally. ‘Hands.’
‘Hands?’ repeated Rose blankly.
‘Oh yes, he was strangled. It wasn’t obvious at first because of the state the head was in.’
‘How much strength was used?’ Rose shot at him. ‘Could a woman have done it?’
‘Impossible from the force used. She couldn’t have rained down those blows, or carried out a manual strangulation on a man of that size.’
‘Suppose she stunned him first?’
‘Possible. But how’s she going to carry him to the chest? Didn’t you say there were no signs of blood in the room where the chest was?’
The last effects of the bonhomie created by the soup wore off remarkably suddenly, as Rose recalled that two of his male suspects, Fancelli and Nash, had escaped his control, an oversight which the Chief would undoubtedly view, in the manner of Lady Bracknell, not as unfortunate but as plain carelessness.
At Cranton’s the effects of luncheon had long since worn off as the guests faced the disagreeable fact that not only were their rooms forbidden to them while the hotel was being searched yet again, but that their movements too were being curtailed. There would be no afternoon visit to Hampton Court. A different entertainment awaited them – that of explaining their movements in detail for the last twenty-four hours.
Twitch was in his element. Now was his chance to show that he too was capable of subtle interrogation of the swells. His chance to shine before his superiors, perhaps even to produce a master clue that would solve the case that had baffled the best minds of Scotland Yard (all except for his, that is). It didn’t begin auspiciously, as Gladys Guessings decided to rejoin the company, in order, apparently, to swoon again, whereafter she had to be revived by sal volatile and Auguste’s camomile tea.
At the end of an exhausting afternoon, interrogation of the servants, who were beginning to think that employment in Cranton’s, however temporary, was by no means a wise career move, had revealed nothing. The search of the hotel, however, had been far more productive. There was no doubt as to where Bowman had been killed. His bed showed ample evidence of the results of the mallet attack, including a bloodstained towel.
‘But it was the strangling killed him all right,’ said Rose, surveying the bed closely. ‘Not a patch on the amount of blood there’d have been if he had been alive at the time.’
There was quite sufficient for Auguste. He was, after all, merely an amateur detective, he reminded himself in expiation of his shame in seeking the nearest bathroom.
Stitch’s interrogation of the guests had yielded little. No one had heard anything go bump in the night; they had all been asleep and only the twins showed any regret at this having been the case. Mr Bowman had appeared quite normal last evening, save that he was not as sociable as usual. Miss Guessings, weeping copiously, remained silent on this point. The Marquis de Castillon and Sir John Harnet debated their rights with themselves once again, and decided to conform, though disapproving of the mere sergeant status of their interviewer.
Late that afternoon Twitch had precious little to show for his efforts. But for the second time that day fortune was about to smile on Sergeant Stitch.
‘What are you going to do about it, eh?’ Carruthers stood in front of him belligerently.
‘The Yard’s doing everything in its power, sir. No stone will remain unturned.’
Carruthers snorted. ‘Won’t find it under a stone. Too big.’
‘What, sir?’ Twitch asked, puzzled.
‘The knobkerry that’s missing from the smoking room, of course. What did you think I was talking about? Honour of the army at stake.’
Auguste regarded a row of uncleaned carp without enthusiasm. Their glazed eyes seemed to return his stare as if challenging him to invent a sauce to overcome their dull and muddy taste. This morning, however, he was in no mood to invent sauce, not even for . . . Perhaps anchovy? But no, it would not work. Not even the deliveries arriving for luncheon and dinner could raise him to his customary state of fraught tension as to whether Senn’s had sent sufficient of their ‘Hygienic Caviare (free from superfluous salt and oil)’ and whether the widgeon had been hung precisely in accordance with his instructions. For once the sight of food dismayed, and did not cheer, for the events of the day before were all too vivid in his mind.
Gloom seemed to have descended in a cloud on the hotel, reflected Auguste unhappily as he entered the dining room, the Christmas decorations looking incongruous as policemen stalked the premises, outnumbering the guests, who appeared desperately to be attempting to maintain a façade that permitted them to ignore two murders and an arrest in the name of social convention.
‘Slipping, are you, Didier?’ said Carruthers, but there was no fire in his voice. ‘Forgot the curry powder in the kedgeree this morning.’ He stared disconsolately at his plate.
Gladys was not present, having requested a tray in her room. That was one relief, thought Auguste, as he reassured the Harbottles that they would not be murdered in their beds, pacified de Castillon, soothed Sir John, and avoided Bella’s eye. Running a hotel, he decided, was a job for a diplomatist. A chef could be free, independent, a law to himself; a hotelier was bound by the demands of his guests. He brooded darkly on his future.
Half an hour later, he was once more in his office with Egbert Rose.
‘The only excitement yesterday,’ Rose told him, ‘was that the carriages with the women and staff officers in it went the wrong way, by sheer mistake, and followed the Prince of Wales along the procession route instead of going back to the Palace by a back way. And that was that. Another State banquet at the Palace, and they are all alive and kicking at the end of it.’
‘So either your information was incorrect, or the attack on His Royal Highness will be made either at the Marlborough Club or the Carlton.’
‘Albert Edward won’t like that,’ remarked Rose gloomily. ‘It was hard enough convincing him when there was a definite time and place when he’d be at risk, but it’s going to be even harder to persuade him he shouldn’t drop in at his club or dine at the Carlton.’
‘There is another possibility,’ Auguste said thoughtfully, ‘that Fancelli decided not to go ahead with the attack because you had his accomplice in custody. Have you charged her, Egbert?’
Rose shook his head. ‘We’re going to have to let her go. It was a gamble, but with this further murder, a murder I don’t see how Fancelli could have carried out, I don’t have the evidence.’
