“Bring them along. Bring them along. We can do with anything helpful.”
Mr. Ball of the Black Swan was a large, slow-thinking, heavily moving man. He exhaled a strong odour of beer. With him was a plump young woman with round eyes clearly in a state of high excitement.
“Hope I’m not intruding or wasting valuable time,” said Mr. Ball in a slow, thick voice. “But this wench, Mary here, reckons she’s got something to tell as you ought to know.”
Mary giggled in a half-hearted way.
“Well, my girl, what is it?” said Anderson. “What’s your name?”
“Mary, sir, Mary Stroud.”
“Well, Mary, out with it.”
Mary turned her round eyes on her master.
“It’s her business to take up hot water to the gents’ bedrooms,” said Mr. Ball, coming to the rescue. “About half a dozen gentlemen we’d got staying. Some for the races and some just commercials.”
“Yes, yes,” said Anderson impatiently.
“Get on, lass,” said Mr. Ball. “Tell your tale. Nowt to be afraid of.”
Mary gasped, groaned and plunged in a breathless voice into her narrative.
“I knocked on door and there wasn’t no answer, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone in leastways not unless the gentleman had said ‘Come in,’ and as he didn’t say nothing I went in and he was there washing his hands.”
She paused and breathed deeply.
“Go on, my girl,” said Anderson.
Mary looked sideways at her master and as though receiving inspiration from his slow nod, plunged on again.
“‘It’s your hot water, sir,’ I said, ‘and I did knock,’ but ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I’ve washed in cold,’ he said, and so, naturally, I looks in basin, and oh! God help me, sir, it were all red!”
“Red?” said Anderson sharply.
Ball struck in.
“The lass told me that he had his coat off and that he was holding the sleeve of it, and it was all wet—that’s right, eh, lass?”
“Yes, sir, that’s right, sir.”
She plunged on:
“And his face, sir, it looked queer, mortal queer it looked. Gave me quite a turn.”
“When was this?” asked Anderson sharply.
“About a quarter after five, so near as I can reckon.”
“Over three hours ago,” snapped Anderson. “Why didn’t you come at once?”
“Didn’t hear about it at once,” said Ball. “Not till news came along as there’d been another murder done. And then the lass she screams out as it might have been blood in the basin, and I asks her what she means, and she tells me. Well, it doesn’t sound right to me and I went upstairs myself. Nobody in the room. I asks a few questions and one of the lads in courtyard says he saw a fellow sneaking out that way and by his description it was the right one. So I says to the missus as Mary here had best go to police. She doesn’t like the idea, Mary doesn’t, and I says I’ll come along with her.”
Inspector Crome drew a sheet of paper towards him.
“Describe this man,” he said. “As quick as you can. There’s no time to be lost.”
“Medium-sized he were,” said Mary. “And stooped and wore glasses.”