by Emily Organ
“Yes,” I said. “He spoke to us about them last night.”
“Oh dear. You will need to exercise some tact when reporting on this incident, in that case. We don’t want the family finding out about this lady.”
“This lady,” I ventured. “Is she also—?”
“Yes, she is deceased as well. She was attacked with what we suspect to have been the same weapon, and her throat was cut. The attacker clearly wished to be rid of the only witness first.”
“I wonder who she was,” said Mr Blackstone. “One of the maids?”
“I shouldn’t have thought so,” said Mr Somers.
“You knew Mr Gallo well,” I said to Mr Somers. “Was he the sort of man who entertained lady companions?”
His face coloured. “I wouldn’t wish to speak ill of a dear friend who has just lost his life, but for the purposes of the inspector’s investigation I can say that he has indeed socialised with certain lady companions, as you describe them, before now. But it is extremely important that his family does not find out.”
“Do you know who this poor lady might have been?” I asked.
“I haven’t a clue, I’m afraid. I had no idea that anyone would be visiting him last night.” He wiped his brow with a handkerchief and turned to face the inspector. “Do you know how the murderer entered the building?” he asked.
“Not yet. My men are searching the hotel from top to bottom, as you can imagine. We are hoping to find the murder weapon, and that will surely yield a few clues. I must ask you all to remain at the hotel for the time being, as we will need to interview everyone about the events of yesterday evening and last night. I understand the staff have laid on breakfast for everyone; not the usual fare you might expect in a place like this, but quite impressive that they have managed to put anything together under the circumstances.”
“We need to get out of this place in order to file our stories,” said Mr Blackstone.
“I understand that, but you must recognise that it is our duty to speak to you all.”
“But the deadline for this evening’s edition is midday today.”
“It’s important that you remain inside the hotel, Mr Blackstone. No one has been allowed to leave since Mr Gallo’s body was found. We will do all we can to accommodate your need to contact your offices. Perhaps there will be time for you to attend the telegraph office presently so that you may explain the matter to your editors. For the time being, please go and partake of the breakfast that has been supplied. We shall ensure that the interviews are conducted as quickly as possible.”
Bread rolls, bacon and boiled eggs had been laid out on a sideboard in the Chinese Dining Room. The garish yellow decor felt at odds with the subdued mood of the room. I struggled to believe that the man who was now dead had hosted us in this very room just hours earlier. The clock on the mantelpiece had not yet been stopped, which was the usual practice after a death. It read a quarter-past eight.
A waitress rushed over to pour me a cup of coffee as I took a seat close to Mrs Mortimer and Mr Wentworth.
“It’s incomprehensible, isn’t it?” Mrs Mortimer said. A bread roll sat untouched on her plate. “I cannot understand it at all. It’s brutal, absolutely brutal. That’s what it is.”
“They think he was chased from his room by the attacker,” I said. “Did you hear anything in the night?”
“Nothing at all. Did you?”
“I heard a door slam, but I couldn’t tell you what time that was.”
“Perhaps it had something to do with this horrible business. Did you hear anything else?”
“A shout, I think. The inspector says that Mr Gallo was chased from his room, and they believe he fell as he ran down the stairs.”
“And that’s where he was set upon, was it not? The whole affair is truly awful.”
I didn’t like to mention the lady who had been found in his room. For some reason it seemed disrespectful to allude to the secret rendezvous now that Mr Gallo was dead. I wondered how many people knew about her.
“I heard nothing,” said Mr Wentworth. “Despite all the talk of ghosts and curses last night, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow and knew nothing further until half-past seven this morning. I haven’t slept that well in a long time. It must be the beds they have here. I awoke in a fine mood and then I discovered that this dreadful tragedy had occurred… And now, well I wish we could somehow turn the clock back to yesterday evening and prevent this awful murder from happening. Gallo must have caused someone a great deal of upset.”
“Even if he did, he cannot have deserved to die for it,” I said.
“You are quite right,” he replied. “There can be no excuse for murder, can there? And whoever did it has got clean away. I don’t know how they’ll ever find him now.”
“Maybe he hasn’t got away,” I said.
“You think he might still be hiding somewhere in the hotel?” asked Mrs Mortimer with a shudder. “It’s possible, I suppose. There are plenty of empty rooms here. The police will be searching all of them, I imagine, though it will be quite a task.”
“He might not even be hiding,” I said. “It could be one of the guests who stayed here last night.”
Mr Wentworth laughed. “Goodness! One of us? That would be quite something, wouldn’t it? I cannot think who, though. We were all invited here, and everyone has been such good company. One of the guests a murderer? I think it far more likely that an intruder somehow got into the hotel during the night.”
“The police have found no sign of a break-in,” I said.
“Not yet. But it’s a big hotel, isn’t it? As Mrs Mortimer says, there are many rooms to search.”
“I suppose that anything is possible at this stage,” I said. “I wish we had some understanding as to what the motive might have been.”
“He was a powerful businessman,” Mr Hardy piped up. “Attaining success in business usually involves upsetting a few people.”
“A rival hotelier, you mean?” I asked.
“I cannot imagine another hotelier doing such a thing. Can you?”
“They wouldn’t have done it themselves, I’m sure. They would have hired a professional killer.”
“And if it were a professional assassin there is probably no hope of finding the murderer at all,” said Mrs Mortimer. “They’re trained to leave no trace of evidence behind.”
“The criminal world has plenty of informants, however,” said Mr Wentworth. “Allegiances change and grievances arise. Someone will talk.”
“Sometime after the crime has been committed, perhaps, in which case the police will struggle to get this case solved any time soon,” replied Mrs Mortimer. “And in the meantime we are all expected to stay here and sit this out!”
Chapter 12
I had no appetite for breakfast. I left the dining room as soon as I had finished my coffee, keen to keep up with any progress in the investigation. Scotland Yard had presumably been informed by this time. Had James heard about it yet? I wondered.
I followed a corridor in search of the back stairs, which I hoped would offer a clandestine route to the first floor. I wanted to get as close as possible to the Venetian Suite, though I had no doubt that a police officer would stop me in my tracks as soon as I was seen.
The back stairs were hidden beyond a set of plain swing doors. I climbed the steps two at a time and ventured out into the corridor on the first floor. About thirty yards ahead of me I could see two police constables. As I walked toward them, I realised the bedchamber I had occupied on the second storey was likely to have been almost directly above the Venetian Suite.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but no one is permitted on this floor,” said a tall police officer with fair whiskers, who came striding over to me.
The door to the Venetian Suite stood open, but there was no chance of seeing inside the room that lay beyond it.
“I am Miss Penelope Green, a reporter from the Morning Express. I’ve come to find out everything I can about
the lady who lost her life here last night.”
“We don’t know who she is. Some unfortunate wench he found on a street corner somewhere, no doubt. You have no business reporting that, though.”
“I won’t. I realise it would cause great distress to Mr Gallo’s family,” I replied. “I cannot imagine that he found her on a street corner. He was entertaining us yesterday evening, and I shouldn’t think he left the hotel after that, and especially not in this thick fog. Perhaps he had made a prior arrangement with her.”
“We don’t know either way, ma’am, and speculation won’t get us anywhere. There’s no hope of us identifying the lady at the present time, but perhaps she has relatives who are missing her. Someone will turn up before long, making enquiries. Miss Green, may I remind you that you are not supposed to be up here? Please oblige us by returning downstairs to the dining room. I hear that a breakfast has been laid out—”
“I have already breakfasted, thank you.”
I turned and walked toward the back staircase, counting my steps as I did so. By the time I reached the door to the stairs I had counted forty-three steps. I climbed the stairs to the floor above, where the room I had occupied the previous night was, and walked forty-three steps along the corridor before stopping. I was only four or five steps away from my bedchamber, which confirmed my suspicion that the Venetian Suite lay almost directly beneath me.
I returned to my room and realised that I had left the door unlocked. I fetched my carpet bag, which had my notebook and pencil in it, then locked the door behind me. My case remained on my bed, ready for one of the hotel staff to transport it to the foyer.
“At what time did you hear the door slam, Miss Green?”
Chief Inspector Fenton and I sat in Mr Gallo’s office, which was located just off the foyer. It was a handsome room with mahogany wainscoting and large paintings of pastoral scenes on the walls.
Mr Gallo had evidently not been a tidy man. At one end of his desk sat a pile of papers, which looked as though it had been pushed to one side to make space for the inspector’s coffee tray. More papers were scattered across a writing bureau, and a police constable was busy leafing through them.
Sitting beside Chief Inspector Fenton was Inspector Pilkington, whom I recognised from my reporting on the St Giles murders. He had a large grey moustache and a crooked nose.
“I’m afraid I don’t know. I had been asleep for a while by that time.”
“Was there a clock in your room?”
“No.”
“What time did you retire last night?”
“About midnight.”
“About?”
“It was almost exactly midnight. I remember looking at the clock on the mantelpiece in the Lady Jane Lounge and seeing that it was approaching twelve. It was at that point that I decided to retire for the night.”
“By what time would you have been in your room?”
“Definitely by midnight, but I didn’t go to sleep immediately.”
“How long would you say that you remained awake for?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I would say at least an hour.”
“So you may have dropped off at about one o’clock?”
“Yes.”
“And the door slam woke you?”
“No. I had already awoken and was trying to get back to sleep again.”
“What had awoken you?”
“Nothing that I’m aware of. I didn’t hear anything immediately.”
“But it’s possible that a noise you weren’t aware of may have awoken you?”
“I suppose that may have been the case, yes.”
“Did you hear anything other than the door slam?”
“I think I heard a shout, but I cannot be certain of that.”
“Male or female?”
“Male, I think.”
“This was after the door slam?”
“Yes.”
“But you heard nothing before that?”
“No, nothing at all. And no warning that it was about to happen, such as footsteps or loud voices or anything. That’s what startled me so much.”
“Which direction do you think the sound came from?”
“I feel quite certain that it came from the floor beneath me, the first floor. And that would tie in with what you believe to have happened, because my room was almost directly above the Venetian Suite.”
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions just yet. What did you do when you heard the noise?”
“I sat up in bed. I was a little bit frightened, if truth be told.”
“Did you leave your room to investigate where it had come from?”
“No, I stayed where I was. It sounds foolish now that I’m saying it aloud, but at the time I felt too nervous to be wandering around the hotel at night.”
“That doesn’t sound foolish at all, Miss Green.”
“I turned on the lamp in my room for a short while and remained awake for a while, listening out for further noises, but I heard nothing else.”
Chief Inspector Fenton consulted the notes he had made so far.
“So if you went to sleep at about one o’clock, Miss Green, it is quite feasible that this moment of awakening might have occurred around half an hour later?”
“I feel sure that I had been asleep for longer than that.”
“An hour?”
“It might have been, but I can’t be sure.”
“So this noise occurred nearer two o’clock, and possibly later than that. How long were you awake after that?”
“Once again, it’s difficult to say. I felt reassured once I had turned the lamp on and went back to sleep fairly quickly.”
“And you awoke when?”
“It was about eight o’clock, I think. After sunrise. Although sunrise is quite difficult to discern in this thick fog. Do you think the door slam had something to do with the murder?”
Chief Inspector Fenton gave a thoughtful sigh. “It’s a possibility. Mr Gallo’s body was found at half-past five o’clock this morning and the police surgeon believes he died no later than four o’clock. We think you heard the door slam around or after two o’clock, and if the noise is connected to the murder the time of death would likely fall somewhere between two o’clock and four o’clock.”
“Was the door to the Venetian Suite left open or closed after the attack?” I asked.
“Open.”
“Then why did the door slam?”
“Why indeed? That is something we will need to work out. Who remained in the Lady Jane Lounge when you retired for the night?”
“Everyone except Mr Blackstone and Mr White, who were in their rooms by then. Actually, Mr Blackstone was, but none of us could be certain where Mr White had got to. Mrs Mortimer left the lounge at the same time I did.”
“Interesting.”
“The lady wasn’t there, though. The lady you found in the suite, I mean.”
“I realise that.”
“Do you know who she was yet?”
“Not yet. Sadly, the unfortunate found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Have you any idea who might have wished Mr Gallo harm?” I asked.
“None at all as yet, Miss Green.”
“He might have fallen out with someone. A business deal gone wrong, perhaps.”
“We are making enquiries.”
“And do you have any idea how the intruder broke in? It may not have been an intruder, of course. It may have been one of the guests staying here.”
“Still no sign of a break-in as yet. All possibilities are being considered. Thank you for your time. We may need to speak to you again.”
“There are countless places in this hotel to hide the murder weapon. So many empty rooms.”
“Indeed there are, Miss Green.”
“And then there’s the staff to consider. You’ll be questioning them as well, I presume.”
“Yes, everyone will be questioned.”
“Did anyone else y
ou have spoken to hear the door slam?”
“My time is precious, Miss Green. Will you please allow me to proceed with my interviews?”
“Yes of course, Chief Inspector. When can I leave the hotel?”
“Not for a good while yet. Return to the dining room for the time being, if you please. In the meantime, we must search your bedchamber. We are searching all the guests’ bedchambers.”
“I’ve just locked the door. Shall I go and unlock it?”
“No need. We have spare keys for all the rooms.”
Chapter 13
News of Mr Gallo’s murder spread quickly, and a noisy, inquisitive crowd soon gathered outside the hotel. We were permitted to visit a nearby telegram office in order to send messages to our editors, and as I pushed my way through the onlookers people pestered me for information.
“You can read about it in the Morning Express tomorrow,” I told them.
“Miss Green!” a man’s voice called out.
I looked up to see my rival from The Holborn Gazette, Tom Clifford.
“What’s ’appened?” he shouted.
I chose to ignore him and continued on my way.
Lunch was served in the dining room when I returned, and although I still had little appetite I managed to eat some ham and cold mutton.
“How much do you know of Mr Gallo’s business affairs?” I asked Mr Somers.
He wore a green and red plaid suit, but would no doubt have worn suitable mourning clothes had he brought any with him.
“A little,” he replied. “What do you mean specifically?”
“I’m interested in the people he associated with. And anyone he may have fallen out with.”
“The New York hoteliers who come to mind are Marshall, Jarvis and Walters. There is a rivalry between them, of course, but I don’t think any of them would sink to the depths of having a rival so barbarically attacked in the middle of the night. When Nathaniel opened the Maganza in New York it was reported that he took quite a bit of business away from the Excelsior on Fifth Avenue. It’s no secret that the Excelsior’s owner, Mr Marshall, bears Nathaniel some animosity as a result. Mr Marshall is a colourful character and is known to have a strong temper.”