At Bertram's Hotel (Miss Marple 11)

“Never gave me any address. Must have mixed me up with somebody else. Muddle-headed old fool. Always was. Scholarly sort of chap, you know. They’re always absentminded.”

Father persevered for a little longer but soon decided that conversation with General Radley was practically impossible and almost certainly unprofitable. He went and sat down in the lounge at a table adjacent to that of Miss Jane Marple.

“Tea, sir?”

Father looked up. He was impressed, as everyone was impressed, by Henry’s personality. Though such a large and portly man he had appeared, as it were, like some vast travesty of Ariel who could materialize and vanish at will. Father ordered tea.

“Did I see you’ve got muffins here?” he asked.

Henry smiled benignly.

“Yes, sir. Very good indeed our muffins are, if I may say so. Everyone enjoys them. Shall I order you muffins, sir? Indian or China tea?”

“Indian,” said Father. “Or Ceylon if you’ve got it.”

“Certainly we have Ceylon, sir.”

Henry made the faintest gesture with a finger and the pale young man who was his minion departed in search of Ceylon tea and muffins. Henry moved graciously elsewhere.

“You’re Someone, you are,” thought Father. “I wonder where they got hold of you and what they pay you. A packet, I bet, and you’d be worth it.” He watched Henry bending in a fatherly manner over an elderly lady. He wondered what Henry thought, if he thought anything, about Father. Father considered that he fitted into Bertram’s Hotel reasonably well. He might have been a prosperous gentleman farmer or he might have been a peer of the realm with a resemblance to a bookmaker. Father knew two peers who were very like that. On the whole, he thought, he passed muster, but he also thought it possible that he had not deceived Henry. “Yes, you’re Someone you are,” Father thought again.

Tea came and the muffins. Father bit deeply. Butter ran down his chin. He wiped it off with a large handkerchief. He drank two cups of tea with plenty of sugar. Then he leaned forward and spoke to the lady sitting in the chair next to him.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but aren’t you Miss Jane Marple?”

Miss Marple transferred her gaze from her knitting to Chief Detective-Inspector Davy.

“Yes,” she said, “I am Miss Marple.”

“I hope you don’t mind my speaking to you. As a matter of fact I am a police officer.”

“Indeed? Nothing seriously wrong here, I hope?”

Father hastened to reassure her in his best paternal fashion.

“Now, don’t you worry, Miss Marple,” he said. “It’s not the sort of thing you mean at all. No burglary or anything like that. Just a little difficulty about an absentminded clergyman, that’s all. I think he’s a friend of yours. Canon Pennyfather.”

“Oh, Canon Pennyfather. He was here only the other day. Yes, I’ve known him slightly for many years. As you say, he is very absentminded.” She added, with some interest, “What has he done now?”

“Well, as you might say in a manner of speaking, he’s lost himself.”

“Oh dear,” said Miss Marple. “Where ought he to be?”

“Back at home in his Cathedral Close,” said Father, “but he isn’t.”

“He told me,” said Miss Marple, “he was going to a conference at Lucerne. Something to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls, I believe. He’s a great Hebrew and Aramaic scholar, you know.”

“Yes,” said Father. “You’re quite right. That’s where he—well, that’s where he was supposed to be going.”

“Do you mean he didn’t turn up there?”

“No,” said Father, “he didn’t turn up.”

“Oh, well,” said Miss Marple, “I expect he got his dates wrong.”

“Very likely, very likely.”

“I’m afraid,” said Miss Marple, “that that’s not the first time that that’s happened. I went to have tea with him in Chadminster once. He was actually absent from home. His housekeeper told me then how very absentminded he was.”

“He didn’t say anything to you when he was staying here that might give us a clue, I suppose?” asked Father, speaking in an easy and confidential way. “You know the sort of thing I mean, any old friend he’d met or any plans he’d made apart from this Lucerne Conference?”

“Oh no. He just mentioned the Lucerne Conference. I think he said it was on the 19th. Is that right?”

“That was the date of the Lucerne Conference, yes.”

“I didn’t notice the date particularly. I mean—” like most old ladies, Miss Marple here became slightly involved—“I thought he said the 19th and he might have said the 19th, but at the same time he might have meant the 19th and it might really have been the 20th. I mean, he may have thought the 20th was the 19th or he may have thought the 19th was the 20th.”

“Well—” said Father, slightly dazed.

“I’m putting it badly,” said Miss Marple, “but I mean people like Canon Pennyfather, if they say they’re going somewhere on a Thursday, one is quite prepared to find that they didn’t mean Thursday, it may be Wednesday or Friday they really mean. Usually they find out in time but sometimes they just don’t. I thought at the time that something like that must have happened.”

Father looked slightly puzzled.

“You speak as though you knew already, Miss Marple, that Canon Pennyfather hadn’t gone to Lucerne.”

“I knew he wasn’t in Lucerne on Thursday,” said Miss Marple. “He was here all day—or most of the day. That’s why I thought, of course, that though he may have said Thursday to me, it was really Friday he meant. He certainly left here on Thursday evening carrying his BEA bag.”

“Quite so.”

“I took it he was going off to the airport then,” said Miss Marple. “That’s why I was so surprised to see he was back again.”

“I beg your pardon, what do you mean by ‘back again’?”

“Well, that he was back here again, I mean.”

“Now, let’s get this quite clear,” said Father, careful to speak in an agreeable and reminiscent voice, and not as though it was really important. “You saw the old idio—you saw the Canon, that is to say, leave as you thought for the airport with his overnight bag, fairly early in the evening. Is that right?”

“Yes. About half past six, I would say, or quarter to seven.”

“But you say he came back.”

“Perhaps he missed the plane. That would account for it.”

“When did he come back?”

“Well, I don’t really know. I didn’t see him come back.”

“Oh,” said Father, taken aback. “I thought you said you did see him.”

“Oh, I did see him later,” said Miss Marple. “I meant I didn’t see him actually come into the hotel.”

“You saw him later? When?”

Miss Marple thought.

“Let me see. It was about 3 a.m. I couldn’t sleep very well. Something woke me. Some sound. There are so many queer noises in London. I looked at my little clock, it was ten minutes past three. For some reason—I’m not quite sure what—I felt uneasy. Footsteps, perhaps, outside my door. Living in the country, if one hears footsteps in the middle of the night it makes one nervous. So I just opened my door and looked out. There was Canon Pennyfather leaving his room—it’s next door to mine—and going off down the stairs wearing his overcoat.”

“He came out of his room wearing his overcoat and went down the stairs at 3 a.m. in the morning?”

“Yes,” said Miss Marple and added: “I though

t it odd at the time.”

Father looked at her for some moments.

“Miss Marple,” he said, “why haven’t you told anyone this before?”

“Nobody asked me,” said Miss Marple simply.

Chapter Fifteen

Father drew a deep breath.

“No,” he said. “No, I suppose nobody would ask you. It’s as simple as that.”

He relapsed into silence again.

“You think something has happened to him, don’t you?” asked Miss Marple.

“It’s over a week now,” said Father. “He didn’t have a stroke and fall down in the street. He’s not in a hospital as a result of an accident. So where is he? His disappearance has been reported in the Press, but nobody’s come forward with any information yet.”

“They may not have seen it. I didn’t.”

“It looks—it really looks—” Father was following out his own line of thought—“as though he meant to disappear. Leaving this place like that in the middle of the night. You’re quite sure about it, aren’t you?” he demanded sharply. “You didn’t dream it?”

“I am absolutely sure,” said Miss Marple with finality.

Father heaved himself to his feet.

“I’d better go and see that chambermaid,” he said.

Father found Rose Sheldon on duty and ran an approving eye over her pleasant person.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “I know you’ve seen our sergeant already. But it’s about that missing gentleman, Canon Pennyfather.”

“Oh yes, sir, a very nice gentleman. He often stays here.”

“Absentminded,” said Father.

Rose Sheldon permitted a discreet smile to appear on her respectful mask of a face.

“Now let me see.” Father pretended to consult some notes. “The last time you saw Canon Pennyfather—was—”

“On the Thursday morning, sir. Thursday the 19th. He told me that he would not be back that night and possibly not the next either. He was going, I think, to Geneva. Somewhere in Switzerland, anyway. He gave me two shirts he wanted washed and I said they would be ready for him on the morning of the following day.”

“And that’s the last you saw of him, eh?”