A Murder for Christmas

by David W Robinson

  “Told you, didn’t I?” she declared. “She was a slapper.”

  “Brenda! Really,” Sheila protested.

  “It’s not an insult,” Brenda insisted. “Joe always says if you tell the truth, it can’t be an insult and I’m just telling it like it is … or like it was.”

  “Her behaviour is irrelevant,” Joe intervened before the two women could properly fall out, “unless it was enough to prompt one of those three to kill her.”

  The two faces stared blankly.

  Sheila recovered first. “You don’t seriously imagine one of them murdered her in a fit of jealousy?”

  “No, I don’t, but it’s possible.”Joe shrugged. “Men have killed women for less. And Patterson says he heard muttered voices in the room before the bottle struck; as if there was some kind of argument going on.” He took another drink. “But like I say, I don’t think that’s what happened.”

  The women appeared relieved.

  “So what do you think, Joe?” Sheila asked.

  “I think we’re barking up the wrong tree. A little while ago, I said to Tom that you should always look at the victim when you’re looking for the murderer, but this time I think I’m looking too closely at her and that is distracting me. I should be looking elsewhere … or at the very least, I should be looking at more than her bed-hopping antics.”

  “You’re the supposed maestro,” Brenda declared, “so what’s your next move?”

  “I’m not sure. The more I think about it, the more I get the feeling that the computer could tell us something.”

  A stir ran round the lounge. Joe gazed around the room. With the time coming up to one, several groups were already ambling in the direction of the dining room. He took out his tobacco tin and rolled a cigarette.

  “I’ll just get a quick smoke before we eat. I’ll catch you up in the dining room. Save me a seat.”

  He made his way from the lounge, through reception and out into the bitter afternoon, and was not surprised to find Patterson and Ike Barrett at the door.

  In a playful mood, Barrett asked, “have you solved it yet, Mr Murray?”

  Joe smiled back. “I reckon I’m closer than you.” He lit his cigarette. “Tom, tell me something. Was Jennifer left-handed.”

  In the act of taking a drag of his cigarette, Patterson paused and frowned. “No. I don’t think so, in fact, I’m sure she wasn’t.”

  Joe smiled at Barrett. “See. I told you I was further ahead than you, didn’t I?”

  The young detective also frowned. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t understand.”

  “No, I know you don’t, but if you’d been listening when I spoke to your boss earlier, you would. Don’t worry about it, Ike. When the time’s right, I’ll explain everything.” He puffed on his cigarette. “Have you found the missing laptop yet?”

  Barrett shook his head.”We don’t actually know that there is a missing laptop, Mr Murray.”

  Joe looked to Patterson again and raised his eyebrows.

  “As I said to your superior, Mr Barrett, Jennifer always had her laptop with her.”

  “May I ask, sir, did you actually see her with the laptop?” Barrett asked.

  Patterson shrugged. “No, I can’t say that I did, but…”

  “There you are then,” the Detective Constable interrupted. “With all due respect to yourself and Mr Murray, our primary concern is Mrs Hardy’s murder, and our efforts are concentrated in that area. As and when we have the full background, we’ll look into other matters like a stolen computer.”

  “Suppose the computer has a direct bearing on her death?” Joe asked.

  “Do we know that it does, sir?”

  Joe agreed with Barrett. “No, we don’t, but you don’t know that it doesn’t, either. See, Ike, I keep coming back to motive, because in this case it’s all-important. Everyone in the hotel was carrying a bottle of complimentary plonk, and there aren’t many people kicking around at half past three in the morning. So when we look at means and opportunity, you have a building full of suspects. The only way you can narrow down the field is to look at those who have a motive. George Robson didn’t. George Robson had had what he wanted. Now me: I had a motive. I didn’t like the woman. What I saw of her, she was arrogant and vicious with it. And she dug me in the back in Debenhams. It hurt. There’s a motive for me to kill her. Tom, here, he had a motive.”

  Patterson’s face paled in shock.

  Joe ignored it and went on, “Jennifer had rejected him as a potential husband.” To Patterson’s relief, Joe immediately said, “As far as Tom and I are concerned, the motives are trivial. But Dennis Wright had a motive, too. She threatened to expose him as a love rat. What would that do to his precious reputation? And Oliver Quinton had been going through her like a dose of Epsom salts for months until she gave him the brush-off last night. He’s a nasty piece of work, that, and he was blazing when he came off the dance floor last night, so he, too, had a strong motive. Finally, Kirkland. I think he’s been giving her one, too.” Joe frowned. “But you can’t take any of those motives seriously. Wright wasn’t even worried about her threats, and Quinton has admitted he used her to try and get hold of the Middleton Penny. Right, Tom?”

  Patterson nodded and stubbed out his cigarette. “Right, Joe.”

  Barrett frowned again. “The Middleton Penny?”

  “I’m sure Tom will explain,” Joe said. “All these motives appear trivial, some less than others, and I think it has to be something deeper, something much more serious, and what price that something is stored on the hard drive of her computer?”

  Barrett, too, crushed out his cigarette. “Interesting theory, Mr Murray, and I’ll make sure my boss is made aware of it. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.”

  Joe and Patterson followed him with their gaze as he entered the hotel.

  “You really are clever, Joe,” Patterson complimented him. “I’m a boring academic, but our discipline demands a certain amount of logic and deductive powers, but I would never have been able to put that together.”

  Joe smiled modestly. “I told you earlier, Tom, it’s all about knowing people.”

  Patterson checked his watch. “Time for lunch, I think. I can tell you this, Joe. Jennifer locked her computer with a password. Like all historians, she was fearfully protective of her work. Whoever stole that computer won’t get very far without the password.”

  “You told me once before,” Joe reminded him. “If it was just a common thief, Tom, a password won’t matter. He’ll sell it on to experts who have ways of getting into the BIOS and bypassing passwords. They can still turn a profit on it.”

  Patterson looked puzzled. “BIOS?”

  “Basic input/output system,” Joe translated. “It’s the bit of the computer that starts everything up when you switch on.”

  Patterson laughed. “You’re a computer expert, too?”

  “No. Just a bit of a nerd.”

  “Afraid I’m a total duffer with them, myself. I can just about switch the thing on and off.” With a rueful shake of the head, Patterson headed into the hotel.

  Joe followed him, mulling over his lack of progress so far. He paused at the reception desk. “Can you tell me what happens to the waste bags when they’re taken from the rooms?”

  The redhead delivered a suspicious gaze. “Is it important, sir?”

  Thinking on his feet, he said, “Yeah. It may be. I, er, I lost my mobile phone. Can’t find it. I think I may have dropped it in the waste bin under the escritoire in my room and I…”

  He trailed off as his mobile trilled in his pocket.

  “Excuse me a minute.” Joe took the phone from his pocket. He looked at the menu window, and read ‘Lee’. Making the connection, he put the phone to his ear. “What do you want, Lee?”

  “Just ringing to wish you a Merry Christmas, Uncle Joe.”

  “What? Oh. Yeah. Same to you and Christine. And young Danny. Is there anything else?”

  “No. Only we did really good yes
terday. Takings were well up on Friday.”

  “They would be. It was Christmas Eve. Now, is that it, only I’d like to get to lunch?”

  “Okay. See you Tuesday.”

  Joe cut the connection, dropped the phone in his pocket and gave the receptionist a weak smile.

  She looked down her nose at him. “You lost your phone?”

  “I meant my camera.” He shrugged. “That is, I think I dropped my camera in the waste basket. It was on the escritoire last time I saw it. Will it have been taken away?”

  With a face that spelled out her disbelief, the receptionist told him, “All waste goes into the large bins at the back of the hotel, Mr Murray. Normally, that’s emptied daily, but today is Christmas, so the refuse vehicle won’t come. Would you like me to get a member of staff to search the bins for you?”

  “Could I not do it myself?”

  “That, sir, would be highly irregular.”

  “Tell you what I’ll do,” Joe said, making a point of checking his watch. “I’ll get my lunch and then while the choirboys are entertaining the guests, I’ll meet one of your guys at the back and give him a hand. How’s that?”

  “Well. I’m not, er, sure…”

  “Good. I’ll be back about half past one.” He chuckled and it sounded false even to him. “I never did like choirs anyway.” He turned and walked off. “At least that last bit is true, Joe,” he muttered to himself.

  Making his way to the dining room, he found it a hive of barely subdued excitement and chatter. Tables were laid out to seat four, Christmas crackers were set before each place, bottles of red and white wine stood in the centre of each table, and waiters were already delivering soup to those nearest the kitchens.

  Sheila waved at him from a table by the windows. Weaving his way through the crowded hall, he settled in with his two companions as a waiter arrived and left three bowls of consommé before them. Picking up his napkin and spoon, Joe gazed solemnly at the empty seat opposite. It reminded him of George Robson, currently languishing in a police cell.

  “Made your mind up what’s next, boss?” Brenda asked, tucking her napkin into the V of her jumper.

  Joe explained his next move to them, and both women were predictably astonished.

  “It’s Christmas Day, Joe,” Sheila scolded. “You’re supposed to be relaxing and enjoying yourself.”

  “And I will, I will,” he assured her.

  Slurping a spoonful of soup, Brenda ribbed Joe. “You’re never happier than when you’re scavenging through the dustbins, are you luv?”

  “I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous,” Sheila said, spreading her napkin across her knee.

  “Logical is what it is,” Joe told them, starting work on his soup. “Didn’t I tell you we were barking up the wrong tree by looking at Jennifer Hardy’s behaviour?”

  Breaking open a bread roll, Brenda ate with gusto. “You did, but you didn’t hang about to say why the computer was important.”

  “Yes I did … well, maybe not to you, but I said it to young Ike Barrett. Motive is the only thing that may lead us to the killer. George didn’t have one, and we can forget about Wright getting all jealous. Now let’s make a few assumptions. Let’s assume that what Tom Patterson heard in the early hours was an argument which led to Jennifer’s death. Let’s also assume that the argument had to do with either history or coins.”

  Sheila spooned up more soup. “A fair assumption considering you believe the killer was either Dennis Wright, Warren Kirkland or Oliver Quinton.”

  “Go on, Joe,” Brenda invited.

  Joe took another few mouthfuls of soup, and pushed the plate away. “When we serve soup at the Lazy Luncheonette, it’s soup, not warmed-up dishwater.” He dabbed at his mouth with the napkin. “Now, what was I saying? Oh, yeah. Tom has been pestering me because he can’t find Jennifer’s computer. Suppose that whatever they were arguing over is on that computer?”

  “Then the killer probably still has it,” Brenda said, tilting her dish forward to pick up the last dregs. “And you’re wrong, Joe. That soup was excellent.”

  “You’re wrong, too, Brenda,” Joe countered. “On both counts. The soup was crap and the killer has to get rid of the computer because the hotel is swarming with cops. If they don’t hang this on George, and instead go for a room-by-room search, he’s snookered. So what does he do with it?”

  “He hides it.” Sheila, too, finished her dish. “Joe, if that computer contains damning evidence, he needs to erase it.”

  Joe looked around. A party mood had begun to overtake the crowd. People were pulling crackers, donning party hats and playing with toys from the crackers.

  Joe eyed the four crackers on their table and picked up the nearest. Playing with it, he said, “Wrong again. Unless you really know your stuff with computers, you can’t erase everything. You have to reformat the drive. And who’s to say he wants it erasing? Maybe it’s something that he wants to use; an idea he’s going to steal. See? What you do is get into the computer, do whatever you’re going to do with it, and then get rid of it. You throw it away.”

  Brenda picked up another cracker and offered it to Sheila. They pulled it. With noise picking up around the room, the crack was almost inaudible. Sheila picked a toy frog from the table, and a written joke, while Brenda picked up and put on an orange paper hat.

  Reading from the joke, Sheila asked, “What do you get if you cross a vampire with a snowman?”

  “Go on,” Joe said.

  “Frostbite.”

  Brenda giggled and Joe groaned.

  “You were telling us he had to get rid of the computer, Joe.” Sheila reminded him.

  “He can’t afford to be caught with it, so he has to be rid of it. How does he go about that?” Joe asked, and hurried on to answer the question as Brenda offered him a cracker. “The police haven’t begun the room-by-room search yet. They’re concentrating on the body and grilling George. So on his way to breakfast, our killer carries the computer from his room, already in the bag from his waste bin, and drops it into the larger bins sited at either end of each landing.” Joe pulled the cracker.

  This time Brenda picked up a toy dinosaur and the joke, and placed a purple paper hat on Joe’s crown.

  “How do you make an idiot laugh on Boxing Day?” Brenda asked.

  They waited for the answer.

  “Tell him a joke on Christmas Eve.”

  Again Sheila and Brenda chuckled at the inane gag. Joe just shook his head.

  More soberly, Sheila said, “You’re telling us that he just walked calmly out of his room with the evidence in his hands and dropped it in the bin on the landing?”

  “Why not?” Joe demanded as Sheila offered him the third cracker. “He’s had the machine since half past three in the morning. Plenty of time to do whatever he was going to do. And what’s so suspicious about a man walking out of his room with a bagful of garbage and dropping it in a dustbin? No one will challenge him because at that time the police are not even looking for a missing laptop.”

  They pulled the cracker. Sheila took the green hat and put it on, and commandeered a toy mobile phone, while Joe picked up the gag.

  “Father Christmas came home on Christmas Day and apologised to his wife for not getting the turkey. ‘I forgot it’s Christmas, all the shops were shut’.” Joe groaned at the joke himself this time, and tossed the gag aside. “Well?” he asked his two companions.

  Brenda frowned. “I don’t get that.”

  “He’s Father Christmas, dear,” Sheila explained. “How could he forget it’s Christmas.”

  “Never mind the bloody joke,” Joe protested. “Concentrate on the case.”

  Sheila fiddled with her cutlery. “I think you have a point, Joe, but this is a hotel. The bins are emptied daily.”

  Joe smiled. “Which is exactly what the killer thought.” He picked up the appalling gag he had just read out. “Father Christmas wasn’t the only one who forgot that today is Christmas; the one time of t
he year when the hotel bins are not emptied.”

  Chapter Ten

  It was almost two o’clock by the time Joe emerged from the dining hall, his belly full, the desire for an afternoon nap threatening to overtake him.

  The meal, he had to admit, was excellent; from the turkey with all the trimmings, through the Christmas pudding, to the cheese, crackers and coffee, it was superb.

  “I still say we coulda done it as good at the Lazy Luncheonette,” he had said to his companions as they savoured a small glass of wine. But he said it without conviction. Lee, he had no doubt, could have prepared and presented the meal just as well, but the Lazy Luncheonette could never attain the cheerful ambience of the Regency Hotel. He even chose to forego his customary post-lunch cigarette in order to savour the atmosphere, and it was only when the choir of St Dominic’s ranged across the front of the dining hall, that he ducked out.

  “They’ll only come round with the collection box,” he grumbled, “and you know my feelings on chuggers.”

  “Chuggers?” Brenda asked.

  “Charity muggers,” Sheila translated. “That’s how Joe sees them. You go raid the dustbins, Joe. We’ll put a half crown in the box on your behalf.”

  “Half a crown?” Joe asked with mock incredulity. “You give ’em sixpence, in old money, and tell them I’m a poor man.” He hurried out of the dining hall as the choir struck up O Little Town of Bethlehem.

  He first called to his room and changed out of his shirt, cardigan and trousers into his thick jumper and jeans. Then, after standing, shivering and smoking at the front entrance with only a couple of members of the LHS for company, neither of whom were disposed to talk to him, he stepped out onto the snowy pavements and slipped and slithered his way along the front of the Regency, cursing himself for not bringing his coat, and stopped at the gates to the hotel’s side yard. They were locked. He could see the large bins and the overflow of black rubbish bags stacked around them just twenty yards inside the compound, but the gates were held by a stout chain and padlock. As he looked in, a security guard stepped from an office on the right.