“Of course it was,” Brenda agreed, “but you don’t deal with that kind of behaviour by retaliating. You rise above it. I have and her insult was aimed at me.”
“Gar.” Joe waved their arguments away with an irritable sweep of his hand. He dug into his pockets, came out with his tobacco tin and began to roll a cigarette.
“You can’t smoke –”
He cut Sheila off. “I know I can’t smoke it in here, for God’s sake. What is it with everyone? Do you think I’m living in the past just because I’m from the past?”
Sheila tutted and turned away. Brenda settled alongside him and put a friendly arm around his shoulder. “What is it, Joe? What’s wrong?”
He ran his tongue along the gummed edge of the cigarette paper and completed the roll-up. “It’s this whole thing,” he barked, tucking the cigarette in his shirt pocket. “Christmas. I don’t like it in Sanford and it’s worse here. At least when I’m home, I can be miserable on my own. Now for crying out loud, just let me be.”
He jumped to his feet, fished into his pocket for his cigarette lighter, fought his way from the table and hurried out of the room, turning right to the main entrance.
Once outside, he was greeted by a freezing wind whipping at his face. He did not feel it. All he could feel was boiling anger. He jammed the cigarette between his lips and struck the flint wheel on his Zippo lighter. A bright fire erupted between his cupped hands. He pulled on the smoke, and drew it deep into his lungs, letting it out with an angry hiss.
A group of young people walked past. “Merry Christmas, pops,” one called to him.
“Bugger off,” Joe grumbled and pulled at his cigarette again.
The snow came down heavier, the wind seemed colder and he began to shiver. With the sensation came the first hint of self-recrimination.
“Serves you right,” he said to himself. “You’re a nasty old sod, Joe Murray.”
He knew he would have to apologise to Sheila when he returned to the ballroom. Not only Sheila, but Jennifer Hardy too, unless she was so drunk that she could see no further than George Robson’s charms.
Thoughts of George tumbled through his agile mind. The same age as Joe, they were friends in the schoolyard four decades back and they had a lot in common. A gardener for Sanford council, his situation was similar to Joe’s inasmuch as his wife had left him almost ten years previously. Unlike Joe, George did not brood on his return to bachelorhood. Instead, he lived a fairly full life, enjoying a startling reputation with the ladies. Joe did not know where Jennifer Hardy would be sleeping tonight, but it was odds on George would be alongside her. The man simply revelled in life, whereas Joe did not. Unless he was presented with a puzzle or working at his business, he was surly and zero fun to be with.
And yet, even though Joe recognised his failings, they were like his passion for the Lazy Luncheonette; he could do nothing about it. No amount of persuading himself that he was having a good time would make him enjoy the evening, and no amount of telling himself that he loved Christmas would make him do so.
Give him a robbery, a murder, put him on the dais as a DJ or behind the counter at the Lazy Luncheonette and he was the life and soul of the party. But drop him in an alien environment like the Regency and he was the Grinch personified.
He took a final drag on the cigarette and stubbed it out on the wall before throwing the butt into a waste bin. From somewhere to his left came the sound of church bells pealing, calling the faithful to prayers before Midnight Mass. Joe wondered where his own faith had gone.
“To the Canary Islands,” he muttered, turning back into the hotel, “along with Alison.”
The crowd on the dance floor was moving to Greg Lake when he arrived at the table. Sheila and Brenda were somewhere amongst them, and he could see George and Jennifer in another clinch.
“If he doesn’t have that one saddled before morning, I’ll serve minestrone for breakfast a week on Monday.”
Shivering as his body came back up to normal operating temperature, he finished off his drink and made for the bar, where he stood with Patterson again.
“Gimme a pint of bitter, a gin and it, easy on the it, and a Campari and soda,” he ordered, then spoke to Patterson. “What are you having?”
“Kind of you, Joe. I’ll have a scotch and ginger.”
With a nod to the barman, Joe concentrated on Patterson. “Whenever I buy a round of drinks, it’s guilt,” he explained. “I was a bit rough with your lady friend.” He laughed nervously. “Let’s hope she’s too drunk to remember, huh?”
“Jennifer? Drunk? Not likely, old boy. Likes the odd glass of wine, but hardly touches the stuff otherwise.” Patterson tapped his head. “Can’t take alcohol, see.”
The barman delivered the drinks and Joe handed over the money. “Cheers,” he said to Patterson. “She seemed pretty drunk when she and George came over here.”
“Had a glass of wine at dinner,” Patterson confirmed. “That’s enough to set her off.”
Joe chuckled to himself. “Maybe George won’t get so lucky tonight, then.”
“She actually said you were right,” Patterson told him. “After you’d gone. She told me how badly she behaved this afternoon.”
“That doesn’t cut much ice with Sheila and Brenda,” Joe said, “and they’ll give me both barrels before the night’s out.”
With the last chords of I Believe In Father Christmas ringing round the ballroom, the crowd on the dance floor began to disperse again and Joe picked up his drinks.
“And talking of Sheila and Brenda, if you’ll excuse me, Tom, I have some more grovelling to do.”
“Of course, Joe, and if I don’t see you again, Merry Christmas.”
Joe scowled and just as quickly smiled. “Yeah. Likewise, I’m sure.”
***
The knock on the door was timid, but audible. Switching on her bedside light, Jennifer checked her travel clock. 3:30 a.m. Who on earth could be knocking at this time of night? George? She hoped not. He had left her satisfied but thoroughly exhausted, and she needed rest, not more excitement.
She slid from beneath the sheets and checked her appearance in the full-length wardrobe mirror, ensuring her black nightie, designed to conceal as much as it revealed, was fulfilling the former role, and padded across the carpet to the door. She pressed her eye to the viewer, recognised the face and slipped back the lock.
Opening the door, she yawned. “Do you know what time it is?”
“I couldn’t sleep for thinking about you.” He held forward a bottle of house red. “Merry Christmas.”
Jennifer sighed. After her earlier exertions, all she wanted was sleep, not Christmas partying in the early hours, and she certainly did not want any more physical attention.
His face appeared like a puppy keen to curry favour with its mistress.
“Just a small one, then. But no more.” She turned back into the room. He followed her and closed the door behind him. “I know it’s Christmas but…”
She never finished what she was going to say. Blinding pain shot through her skull accompanied by a loud shattering of glass. The floor rushed up to meet her. The aroma of inexpensive wine filled her nostrils, red fluid spattered across the carpet. Somewhere in the depths of what remained of her consciousness, she realised that some of that liquid was blood – her blood. Her hands clawed at the hard fibre of the carpet, trying to find a purchase, trying to drag herself away from him.
The shattered remnants of the bottle lay around her head. The lights began to dim as she drifted to eternal sleep. The last thing she saw was the contents of her handbag spilling out around her.
Chapter Four
Detective Constable Isaac Barrett yawned. “You’ll have to excuse me, Mr Glenn. The last thing I expected in the early hours of Christmas morning was a murder.”
The Regency’s night duty manager, Andy Glenn, still white faced and shaking, smiled weakly. “I understand, constable.”
In his early forties, tall and
balding prematurely, Glenn looked every inch the hotel manager, if anyone wanted Barrett’s opinion. Smartly turned out in a company-issued pinstripe, with a clashing, pale blue waistcoat, he had that air of haughtiness about him redolent of 4-star fusspots.
Barrett felt himself to be exactly the opposite. A graduate of Leeds University, not yet thirty, it was incumbent upon him to be as neatly attired as Glenn, but he had to pay for his own suits, and as a consequence, they fitted better. Like Glenn, he too had procedures to which he must adhere, but there was none of the prim, prissiness about them such as was attached to Glenn’s duties. Barrett was a cop. It was his job to ask awkward questions and carry on asking them until he arrived at satisfactory answers.
Running a hand through his head of untidy, black hair, the constable checked the notes he had made in his pocketbook. “So let me run through this again. You were called about half past three by the gentleman in the next room, Mr Patterson, after he heard a disturbance, and you couldn’t get an answer when you knocked on the door.”
Glenn agreed with a nod. “You have to understand my job requires a great deal of discretion. Even when confronted with Mr Patterson’s concerns, I could not simply barge into an occupied room.”
“Obviously. Wouldn’t do to walk in on a lover’s tiff only to find that they were making it up in the time-honoured fashion, would it?” Barrett chuckled.
Glenn took the innuendo more seriously. “That, constable, is precisely why I have to be discreet.”
Barrett read through the account again. “So you knocked, got no answer and then used your pass key?”
Glenn took the digital key from his pocket and held it up. It was about the size and shape of a credit card, coloured a rich red and emblazoned with the Regency’s logo. “Every room has its own key, programmed to the lock, but this one will open any room in the building.”
“And when you opened it,” Barrett said with complete disinterest in the technology of the key, “you found the lady on the carpet, dead?”
Glenn shook his head. “I found the lady as she is. I didn’t know she was dead. I just assumed she was. It was obvious that she’d been attacked, she wasn’t moving and I feared the worst, but I did not touch anything in the room.”
“You didn’t think to check her pulse?”
The manager shuddered. “I could never bring myself to touch any person or animal that was, er…”
“Dead or, shall we say, apparently dead?” Barrett suggested, and the duty manager nodded. “What are the chances of someone getting hold of a pass key like yours?”
“Very slim,” Glenn replied. “We insist that guests do not take them out of the building, but hand them in at reception when they go out. Obviously, some do take them, but…”
He trailed off lamely and Barrett made another note. “So it’s unlikely that someone just let themselves in? Mrs Hardy would have answered the door to him … or her.”
“Very likely.”
Again, Barrett made notes. “How many staff do you have on duty, Mr Glenn?”
“Perhaps a dozen,” the manager replied. “I’m usually manning reception, we have a couple of kitchen porters on duty, and the rest are maintenance staff. They busy themselves all over the building carrying out work such as…” Glenn paused, his eyes raised. “Changing light bulbs, for example. It’s work we don’t want them doing during the day. As long as a job is minor, and doesn’t present a danger to the guests, we leave it for the night crew.”
Barrett nodded. “And did any of your staff report anything unusual?”
“No. Nothing at all.”
Barrett folded his pocketbook away. “All right, Mr Glenn, you can go back to your duties. This room will be sealed until Scientific Support are through and my boss, Chief Inspector Dockerty says it can be used again.”
With the look of someone relieved to be away from the situation, Glenn turned and hurried along the corridor to the lifts.
With a wry, dismissive smile, Barrett knocked on the door of room 208, and presently a worried Tom Patterson opened it. Despite the early hour, he was already dressed, wearing a plain white shirt and dark trousers.
Barrett showed his warrant card. “Good morning, sir. Detective Constable Barrett, West Yorkshire CID. It is Mr Patterson, isn’t it?” The older man nodded and Barrett asked, “May we speak in private, sir?”
Patterson stood back and let the policeman into the room. Barrett noticed that it was pristine, not a thing out of place, and he surmised that, like Glenn, this was a man in whom tidiness was a habit. A plain tie and jacket hung on the wardrobe door, and on the escritoire, a laptop computer glowed, its screen filled with text.
“A disturbed night,” Patterson said. “I thought I might as well do a little work in the interim.”
“Of course, sir,” Barrett replied while Patterson shut down the computer.
The historian sat at the escritoire, and Barrett perched on the edge of the mattress, noticing that the bed, too, had been made. He checked his watch and made a note of the time in his pocketbook and with a smile of reassurance to Patterson, he said, “I understand you raised the alarm, sir.”
Patterson nodded. “I had a couple drinks in the bar last night and, well, you know, at my age…” He trailed off and looked pointedly towards the bathroom.
“I understand, Mr Patterson,” Barrett said. “Please go on.”
“I was awake, and I heard voices from next door. Then there was this awful, er, crash of glass shattering against wood, or what sounded like wood. I was scared half to death, I don’t mind admitting. After that, all I heard was Jennifer’s door closing a moment later. When I finished my business in the bathroom, I went out and knocked and I couldn’t get an answer. I knocked several times. You have to try to keep the noise down at this time of night, but I was worried, so I contacted the night manager and told him of my concerns.”
“And he came up to see what was going on.”
Patterson chewed his lip. “Yes. And he took his damned time about it, too.”
“You were aware of the time, were you, sir?” Barrett asked.
“It was just before three thirty when I woke up,” Patterson said. “Everything happened within the space of a few minutes, but it was a quarter to four before I heard the manager knocking on Jennifer’s door, and it was another few minutes before he knocked on my door and told me how he had found her.”
“Discretion, sir,” Barrett explained, utilising Glenn’s excuse. “He did not want to go barging in there and find the lady in flagrante delicto, as it were.”
Patterson snorted. “Jennifer? What kind of woman do you think she was, constable?”
“I notice that you use her forename, sir, so you must know her well.”
“I do.” Patterson smiled weakly. “We’re both historians, and we both teach at the university. She was one of the longest serving members of the Leodensian Historical Society, and a close, personal friend.”
Pedantically wondering what kind of close friend there could be other than a personal one, Barrett asked, “She wasn’t, shall we say, the gadabout type, then?”
“Oh, good lord, no.” Patterson appeared quite shocked by the question. “Obviously, she had relationships. Don’t we all? She’s been divorced some five years as I understand it, but she has the occasional, er, dinner date. But that doesn’t make her a…” He trailed off unable to verbalise his thoughts.
“Quite, sir. May I ask, do you know where Mrs Hardy spent the evening?”
“In the bar downstairs. Along with the rest of us, and that crowd from Sanford.”
Barrett checked his notes again and the information Andy Glenn had given him on the hotel guest list. “That would be the Sanford Third Age Club?”
Patterson nodded. “That’s them. I was chatting with their chairman, grumpy chap by the name of Joe Murray. That would have been about 10:30-ish. At the time, Jennifer was dancing with one of the Sanford number. Man by the name of George Robson, if I have it right. He’s the Dir
ector of Leisure Services in Sanford, from all I understand. They came across and Jennifer introduced him, then that Murray tore a real strip off her. Apparently they had met earlier in the day quite by chance and had a bit of an argument.”
Barrett made a note. “Mr Murray was angry, sir?”
“Very angry. And very rude to Jennifer. His colleagues explained that he’s a naturally ill-tempered sort, but Jennifer admitted she had behaved quite badly earlier in the day.”
“I see, sir.” Barrett made more notes. “And after the bar closed?”
Patterson shrugged. “I really don’t know. She left with Robson, and that is as much as I can tell you… oh.” Almost as he was about to speak, Patterson clammed up.
“Go on, sir.”
“No. One doesn’t like to say.”
The CID man sighed. “Mr Patterson, someone has killed your neighbour, a lady you claim was a close friend and colleague. For now, we’re treating it as murder. The best chance we have of catching the killer is to move quickly and early. You must give me whatever information you have in order for our inquiries to proceed. Now please tell me what’s on your mind.”
Patterson sucked in his breath and let it out with a sigh. “I’m sure it’s nothing, but Dr Dennis Wright is in the hotel. He’s one of our members from the University of Alabama. He recently published a book and he’s over here to promote it. Jennifer was in Alabama last year, helping him with the research and manuscript preparation. They had a, er, liaison. You understand?”
“Perfectly, sir.”
“Jennifer,” Patterson went on, “was half convinced that she and Wright would get together again while he was here, in Leeds, but I spoke to her yesterday afternoon, and he had rejected her. She was quite angry about it, and Murray, the chap from the Sanford club, told me there had been a bit of an argument between Jennifer and Dr Wright in Debenhams some time earlier in the day. That was why Jennifer was so rude to Murray.”
Ignoring the comment on Joe, Barrett asked, “Enough of an argument to turn this American into a killer?”
A Murder for Christmas Page 6
