At Bertram's Hotel (Miss Marple 11)

“He says—” again the Chief-Inspector stressed the word—“that he does not know anything.”

“Very remarkable.”

“Isn’t it? The last thing he remembers is driving in a taxi to Kensington Air Station.”

Miss Marple shook her head perplexedly.

“I know it does happen that way in concussion,” she murmured. “Didn’t he say anything—useful?”

“He murmured something about the Walls of Jericho.”

“Joshua?” hazarded Miss Marple, “or Archaeology—excavations?—or I remember, long ago, a play—by Mr. Sutro, I think.”

“And all this week north of the Thames, Gaumont Cinemas—The Walls of Jericho, featuring Olga Radbourne and Bart Levinne,” said Father.

Miss Marple looked at him suspiciously.

“He could have gone to that film in the Cromwell Road. He could have come out about eleven and come back here—though if so, someone ought to have seen him—it would be well before midnight—”

“Took the wrong bus,” Miss Marple suggested. “Something like that—”

“Say he got back here after midnight,” Father said—“he could have walked up to his room without anyone seeing him—But if so, what happened then—and why did he go out again three hours later?”

Miss Marple groped for a word.

“The only idea that occurs to me is—oh!”

She jumped as a report sounded from the street outside.

“Car backfiring,” said Father soothingly.

“I’m sorry to be so jumpy—I am nervous tonight—that feeling one has—”

“That something’s going to happen? I don’t think you need worry.”

“I have never liked fog.”

“I wanted to tell you,” said Chief-Inspector Davy, “that you’ve given me a lot of help. The things you’ve noticed here—just little things—they’ve added up.”

“So there was something wrong with this place?”

“There was and is everything wrong with it.”

Miss Marple sighed.

“It seemed wonderful at first—unchanged you know—like stepping back into the past—to the part of the past that one had loved and enjoyed.”

She paused.

“But of course, it wasn’t really like that. I learned (what I suppose I really knew already) that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back—that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a One Way Street, isn’t it?”

“Something of the sort,” agreed Father.

“I remember,” said Miss Marple, diverging from her main topic in a characteristic way, “I remember being in Paris with my mother and my grandmother, and we went to have tea at the Elysée Hotel. And my grandmother looked round, and she said suddenly, ‘Clara, I do believe I am the only woman here in a bonnet!’ And she was, too! When she got home she packed up all her bonnets, and her headed mantles too—and sent them off—”

“To the Jumble Sale?” inquired Father, sympathetically.

“Oh no. Nobody would have wanted them at a jumble sale. She sent them to a theatrical Repertory Company. They appreciated them very much. But let me see—” Miss Marple recovered her direction. “—Where was I?”

“Summing up this place.”

“Yes. It seemed all right—but it wasn’t. It was mixed-up—real people and people who weren’t real. One couldn’t always tell them apart.”

“What do you mean by not real?”

“There were retired military men, but there were also what seemed to be military men but who had never been in the Army. And clergymen who weren’t clergymen. And admirals and sea captains who’ve never been in the Navy. My friend, Selina Hazy—it amused me at first how she was always so anxious to recognize people she knew (quite natural, of course) and how often she was mistaken and they weren’t the people she thought they were. But it happened too often. And so—I began to wonder. Even Rose, the chambermaid—so nice—but I began to think that perhaps she wasn’t real, either.”

“If it interests you to know, she’s an ex-actress. A good one. Gets a better salary here than she ever drew on the stage.”

“But—why?”

“Mainly, as part of the décor. Perhaps there’s more than that to it.”

“I’m glad to be leaving here,” said Miss Marple. She gave a little shiver. “Before anything happens.”

Chief-Inspector Davy looked at her curiously.

“What do you expect to happen?” he asked.

“Evil of some kind,” said Miss Marple.

“Evil is rather a big word—”

“You think it is too melodramatic? But I have some experience—seem to have been—so often—in contact with murder.”

“Murder?” Chief-Inspector Davy shook his head. “I’m not suspecting murder. Just a nice cosy round-up of some remarkably clever criminals—”

“That’s not the same thing. Murder—the wish to do murder—is something quite different. It—how shall I say?—it defies God.”

He looked at her and shook his head gently and reassuringly.

“There won’t be any murders,” he said.

A sharp report, louder than the former one, came from outside. It was followed by a scream and another report.

Chief-Inspector Davy was on his feet, moving with a speed surprising in such a bulky man. In a few seconds he was through the swing doors and out in the street.

II

The screaming—a woman’s—was piercing the mist with a note of terror. Chief-Inspector Davy raced down Pond Street in the direction of the screams. He could dimly visualize a woman’s figure backed against a railing. In a dozen strides he had reached her. She wore a long pale fur coat, and her shining blonde hair hung down each side of her face. He thought for a moment that he knew who she was, then he realized that this only a slip of a girl. Sprawled on the pavement at her feet was the body of a man in uniform. Chief-Inspector Davy recognized him. It was Michael Gorman.

As Davy came up to the girl, she clutched at him, shivering all over, stammering out broken phrases.

“Someone tried to kill me…Someone…they shot at me…If it hadn’t been for him—” She pointed down at the motionless figure at her feet. “He pushed me back and got in front of me—and then the second shot came…and he fell…He saved my life. I think he’s hurt—badly hurt….”

Chief-Inspector Davy went down on one knee. His torch came out. The tall Irish commissionaire had fallen like a soldier. The left-hand side of his tunic showed a wet patch that was growing wetter as the blood oozed out into the cloth. Davy rolled up an eyelid, touched a wrist. He rose to his feet again.

“He’s had it all right,” he said.

The girl gave a sharp cry. “Do you mean he’s dead? Oh no, no! He can’t be dead.”

“Who was it shot at you?”

“I don’t know…I’d left my car just round the corner and was feeling my way along by the railings—I was going to Bertram’s Hotel. And then suddenly there was a shot—and a bullet went past my cheek and then—he—the porter from Bertram’s—came running down the street towards me, and shoved me behind him, and then another shot came…I think—I think whoever it was must have been hiding in that area there.”

Chief-Inspector Davy looked where she pointed. At this end of Bertram’s Hotel there was an old-fashioned area below the level of the street, with a gate and some steps down to it. Since it gave only on some storerooms it was not much used. But a man could have hidden there easily enough.

“You didn’t see him?”

“Not properly. He rushed past me like a shadow. It was all thick fog.”

Davy nodded.

The girl began to sob hysterically.

“But who could possibly w

ant to kill me? Why should anyone want to kill me? That’s the second time. I don’t understand…why….”

One arm round the girl, Chief-Inspector Davy fumbled in his pocket with the other hand.

The shrill notes of a police whistle penetrated the mist.

III

In the lounge of Bertram’s Hotel, Miss Gorringe had looked up sharply from the desk.

One or two of the visitors had looked up also. The older and deafer did not look up.

Henry, about to lower a glass of old brandy to a table, stopped poised with it still in his hand.

Miss Marple sat forward, clutching the arms of her chair. A retired admiral said derisively:

“Accident! Cars collided in the fog, I expect.”

The swing doors from the street were pushed open. Through them came what seemed like an outsize policeman, looking a good deal larger than life.

He was supporting a girl in a pale fur coat. She seemed hardly able to walk. The policeman looked round for help with some embarrassment.

Miss Gorringe came out from behind the desk, prepared to cope. But at that moment the lift came down. A tall figure emerged, and the girl shook herself free from the policeman’s support, and ran frantically across the lounge.

“Mother,” she cried. “Oh Mother, Mother…” and threw herself, sobbing, into Bess Sedgwick’s arms.

Chapter Twenty-one

Chief-Inspector Davy settled himself back in his chair and looked at the two women sitting opposite him. It was past midnight. Police officials had come and gone. There had been doctors, fingerprint men, an ambulance to remove the body; and now everything had narrowed to this one room dedicated for the purposes of the law by Bertram’s Hotel. Chief-Inspector Davy sat one side of the table. Bess Sedgwick and Elvira sat the other side. Against the wall a policeman sat unobtrusively writing. Detective-Sergeant Wadell sat near the door.

Father looked thoughtfully at the two women facing him. Mother and daughter. There was, he noted, a strong superficial likeness between them. He could understand how for one moment in the fog he had taken Elvira Blake for Bess Sedgwick. But now, looking at them, he was more struck by the points of difference than the points of resemblance. They were not really alike save in colouring, yet the impression persisted that here he had a positive and a negative version of the same personality. Everything about Bess Sedgwick was positive. Her vitality, her energy, her magnetic attraction. He admired Lady Sedgwick. He always had admired her. He had admired her courage and had always been excited over her exploits; had said, reading his Sunday papers: “She’ll never get away with that,” and invariably she had got away with it! He had not thought it possible that she would reach journey’s end and she had reached journey’s end. He admired particularly the indestructible quality of her. She had had one air crash, several car crashes, had been thrown badly twice from her horse, but at the end of it here she was. Vibrant, alive, a personality one could not ignore for a moment. He took off his hat to her mentally. Some day, of course, she would come a cropper. You could only bear a charmed life for so long. His eyes went from mother to daughter. He wondered. He wondered very much.