Death and the Chaste Apprentice

by Robert Barnard

  Iain Dundy gave a meaningful look at the other policemen that said, Five minutes would be enough. But Dawn, under inquisition, had regained some of her perkiness, and she noticed the look. She said, smiling sweetly: “And when I came back, Win had poured out drinks for Interval, like I said. While I’d been away, she’d done about fifteen white wines, about ten reds, and the same number of whiskeys and gins. You try doing that in five minutes and killing your husband!”

  “Couldn’t they have been done before you came on the scene?”

  “Where would she have kept them? The white wines would have to have been kept in the fridge. I was in and out of the fridge during the first half of the play, getting ice and whatnot. There were no ready-poured glasses of white wine there; that I can tell you for sure.”

  Charlie cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “My girl had white wine at Interval. First thing she said when she sipped it was ‘Lovely and cool!’ ”

  Charlie’s imitation of upper-class girlhood was perfect. Superintendent Dundy sat looking gloomily ahead of him. To Sergeant Nettles his expression said as clearly as words: It’s the arty types we’re going to be stuck with.

  Finally he shifted in his chair and turned to Dawn with a smile. “Thank you, love. That’ll be all for tonight. I think we ought all to go home and get an hour or two’s kip.”

  Chapter 10

  The Dining Room

  THE HEADWAITER supervised breakfast next morning. This was not something that he did very often, but he did it the day after Des’s murder. He had heard about the killing the night before, of course, as he and his staff were waiting for the last of the supper-takers to leave. Dawn had been the first to bring the news, and further snippets of information had been gleaned (by guile) from the many policemen infesting the Saracen’s Head. The kitchen and dining-room staff had been thunderstruck and hadn’t enjoyed anything so much in years. They had quite lost the desire to get rid of the eaters and go home to bed. In fact, they had related the news to favored eaters with varying degrees of subtlety. (“I’m sorry the service has been a bit erratic tonight, but you see, the manager’s just been murdered.”) The head waiter participated in all their contradictory emotions, though on a loftier plane, of course, and he had made do with a very few hours’ sleep in order to be at the Saracen early, apparently to ensure that the dining room’s high standards of food and service were in no way compromised by the untoward little incident of the night before.

  Incidentally, he also intended to be the first to inform the headquarters of the Beaumont hotel chain. It is in the nature of headwaiters that they like to be the first with news, however hushed, regretful, or reverent the tone of voice in which they choose to broadcast it.

  Thus, when the various members of the cast and other residents of the hotel came down severally to breakfast, they found eggs scrambled to a nicety, kippers beautifully frizzled, the traditional fry-up traditionally fried up. What was different was the atmosphere. They all dallied over their breakfasts for a start, hoping that someone else would come down with a new theory they had thought up in the long watches. All the play people sat at adjacent tables (not something they normally did) and exchanged intimacies and abrasions across the gaps, while the orchestral players and odds and ends sat as near them as they decently could and listened unashamedly, as did the unusually attentive waitresses, who fussed unconscionably around the tables in the hope of picking up something new.

  “The point is,” said Jason Thark, still in the magisterial mood of the night before, “that it would be quite impossible for any of us to go through the dining room here without being seen. Let alone the kitchen, let alone the Shakespeare Bar, but the dining room would have been quite impossible. And we would have had to go through all three to get to the stairs that would have taken us up to the first floor. No—Ronnie was quite right: We’re out of it.”

  “There was just one thing,” said Ronnie, “something I’ve been thinking over during the night. When I was playing onstage, I was conscious of faces in the windows of the dining room watching the play. . . . Were you?” he asked, swiveling round in his chair and transfixing the waitress, who was dawdling round with a toast rack in her hand as an excuse. She blushed.

  “Well, some of us was watching.”

  “Never all of you?”

  “No. Some of us watched some of the time. But you couldn’t hear, not through the window, so you couldn’t follow what was going on, though it looked a good laugh and you had us splitting our sides, sir.”

  “But some of you didn’t watch at all?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And where were the ones who were not at the window?”

  “They were around the table by the door into the kitchen having a bit of a giggle and a gossip, sir.”

  Ronnie leaned back in his chair, satisfied.

  “So I was right. Nobody could have got past.”

  “There was also some poker playing in the kitchen,” volunteered the waitress, unwilling to lose the limelight now that she was used to it.

  “Right. Them we could see from our part of the kitchen. I admit that they most probably wouldn’t have noticed if anyone from the cast had tried to sneak past. But the gag— Sorry, collection of staff by the door into the kitchen would certainly have noticed anyone, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well, I expect so, sir. We did see this gentleman”—she gestured at Peter Fortnum—“go through and then go back again. Not that it meant anything, I’m sure.”

  She retreated rather suddenly from the table, as if she had all but accused Peter of murder. She left some embarrassment behind her as well, though not in Jason Thark, who was impervious to any such human emotion.

  “You see? She noticed. One of them would certainly have noticed if our murderer had tried to go that way. And apart from Peter, who was not to know that Connie would run out of gin, so I see no significance in his trip, nobody did.”

  For one moment this made everyone feel better. For only a moment.

  “Oh, come,” said Clarissa Galloway, putting back on her plate a delicate triangle of toast. “I really wouldn’t have expected you to be so deficient in logic, Jason, my pet. For a start, Peter could have made sure Connie would run out by nicking a half from her bag. She said, if you remember, that she had never forgotten to have one there in reserve before. Secondly, he could have been intending to use some other excuse but seized on this when he heard Connie’s laments. Of course, Peter darling, I’m not saying that any such thing happened, merely that we must, above all things, remain logical, because we can be sure the police will.”

  “I quite understand,” said Peter, tight-lipped.

  • • •

  As soon as he saw it was nine o’clock, the headwaiter ceased supervising the mundane business of distributing breakfast goodies and slipped into his little office in the corner of the kitchens. Somebody would now be in at the head office.

  The Beaumont chain had hotels from Aberdeen to Bodmin and from the sublime to the disgusting. Its headquarters was in Kensington, and when the headwaiter made it clear that this was a matter of the utmost urgency, he was put through without further ado to the managing director’s office.

  “He’ll not be in until ten or so,” said the great man’s secretary. “He’s been at Brighton with his son—he’s a spastic and takes a lot of looking after. Where did you say you were speaking from?”

  “The Saracen’s Head, in Ketterick.”

  “Ah, yes. One of the jewels in our crown.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Haven’t you got that festival thing on there at the moment? I hope it’s not causing any problems.”

  “No, or not directly. It’s the manager. Mr. Capper . . .”

  “Ye-es?” Did the headwaiter detect an note of wariness, or at least of circumspection?

  “He’s dead. Murdered.”

  “Good God! Have you called the police?”

  The headwaiter raised his eyebrows to heaven. “It
happened last night. Of course, the police have been here since then. That’s all taken care of.”

  “I shall inform the managing director the moment he comes in. He’ll be most upset. He knew Mr. Capper personally. And he won’t like all the publicity there’ll be. It will clash horribly with the Saracen Head’s image.”

  It was the headwaiter’s opportunity, the reason he had been so keen to relay the news. His voice took on tones of the most magisterial: “If you will allow me to say so, the whole Capper appointment clashed with the Saracen’s image.”

  “Ah . . .” There was silence at the other end, as if the secretary were not used to being taken down a peg or two by employees from the suburbs. “You thought so?”

  “I would say the whole hotel thought so.”

  “As far as this office was aware, he was doing an excellent job. He rang up last night, you know, to say that the play was going well. The duty man left a note for the managing director. He was first-rate like that, at keeping in touch. He must have been murdered after that.”

  “He must indeed. At what time did Mr. Capper make this phone call to your duty man?”

  “The note is dated seven-thirty.”

  “I shall certainly inform the investigating officer.”

  “I hardly think— Is that necessary? Do we really want to involve Head office? Well, you must use your discretion. . . .”

  “The main thing now is,” interrupted the headwaiter, who had every intention of following his conscience and doing his duty as a citizen, “that we get a temporary manager as soon as possible. You do have qualified people who are between assignments, I suppose?”

  “Oh, yes. Of course.”

  “The play isn’t on tonight. It’s the first night of the opera. After that the play runs every night of the festival except Sunday. It’s essential we have somebody here by tomorrow. And preferably someone who could learn the ropes tonight.”

  “It’s a tall order. But I’ll list the possibilities and show them to the M.D. as soon as he gets in. I suppose Mrs. Capper isn’t in a condition to—”

  “Mrs. Capper is not the managing type, and by all accounts she is in no condition at the moment to do anything. It would hardly be seemly in any case even to have her helping behind the bar, whatever her mental state.”

  “No. No, of course not. Well, I’ll try and get a lightning decision and ring you as soon as I have any news. Meanwhile, soldier on, eh?”

  • • •

  The discussion was continuing in the dining room. Breakfast had never taken so long, but the kitchen staff was not complaining. The waitresses were picking up an unending stream of fact, conjecture, innuendo, and downright falsehood, and they were regaling it to the cooks, who were putting their own interpretations on them. (“You mark my words!” the head cook kept saying after each particularly bizarre leap of the imagination.) Before long, they all felt, they would be ready to make an arrest, even if the police were not.

  “Right,” Ronnie Wimsett was saying. “Peter’s absence is not in dispute. He went to get gin for Connie. We all find it pretty impossible to get to our own rooms—still, after a fortnight here—so it’s not surprising that he found it difficult to get to Connie’s.”

  Peter, and Natalya, too, sat stewing over their tea, looking straight in front of them.

  “The question is, could any of the rest of us do it? Now, to my mind, going through on the Webster and Massinger side of the hotel is simply out. For one reason, at some stage you would have to come out—either into the courtyard or into the street. In the courtyard you have audience who would see you, including twelve standing-room customers at the back, by the main gates, whose vision you would have to cross. On the other hand, if you go out into the street, you still have to get back in past hawk-eyed Frank on the main entrance. Impossible—right? That leaves the route via the kitchens and the Shakespeare, which is inconceivable for reasons we’ve already gone into. So all in all—apart from Peter, and sorry about that, old chap—there simply seems no way any of us could have done it.”

  There was silence after this, though one or two, notably Susan Fanshaw, looked unhappy. Indeed, she started to speak but cast a half look in the direction of Carston Galloway and cut the sound short in her throat.

  “Well, that settles it,” cooed Clarissa. “We’ll explain it to that rather melancholy looking policeman, and it will leave him free to direct his attentions elsewhere.”

  “After all,” said Ronnie Wimsett, “we’ve been here for a couple of weeks or so, but Capper’s been manager for months. Who knows what backs he’s put up in his time?”

  “The main thing is,” said Carston, pushing back his chair and making to get up, “that we’re all in the clear and can now get on with our business.”

  Brad Mallory’s drawl broke unnervingly into the general euphoria. “Anyone would think,” he said, “that the Saracen’s Head was a one-story building.”

  He was sitting slightly apart, at a table for two, which Singh had just left. There was silence for a moment after his words, but then Ronnie Wimsett broke into it confidently:

  “No, no, old chap. I’ve thought of that. To get to the stairs in the foyer outside the Shakespeare you still have to go through the kitchens, dining room, and the bar itself. And on the other side the stairs are between the Massinger and the Webster and you’d have to go through the one and could be seen from the other. No, that doesn’t wash.”

  “Brad doesn’t relish his position,” said Clarissa in serpentine tones, “of being one of the few actually in the hotel part of the Saracen at the time of the killing.”

  Brad’s smile in return revealed that he was hardly to be outdone in the friendly-snake department.

  “Quite true if Des was killed after eight-fifteen. Yes, I could in fact have returned from the concert and gone straight upstairs and killed him. In fact, I went to my room, but I could just as easily have gone along to his flat. But what if he was already dead by eight-fifteen?”

  Clarissa shrugged. “So what? It leaves us exactly where we were. Apart from young Peter, none of us could have gone through to the front part of the hotel.”

  Bradford Mallory, no less than Clarissa, could relish a big moment. “I seem to remember,” he said, almost dreamily, “from one of my visits to your delightful play in rehearsal, a moment . . . a line—what was it? ‘What mean these sudden broils so near my doors?’ Something like that!”

  “ ‘Have you not other places but my house, to vent the spleen of your disordered bloods?’ ” went on Gillian Soames, as if this were something she had been itching to bring up for hours.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” said Clarissa Galloway with all the considerable force at her disposal. She had put her hand over the breakfast table and covered her husband’s in a display of solidarity. It was a revealing gesture, which suggested that their instinct was to draw together at moments of crisis. She also revealed that this was something they had discussed overnight. Brad Mallory ignored her and went on in his dreamy fashion.

  “It was, if I remember, a speech of Ralph Greatheart, at night, quieting the riotous behavior of the apprentices . . . and appearing to them in his nightshirt . . . appearing—and this is the point—above, on what we may call the upper stage. In fact, appearing on that part of the balcony over the center of the stage. Is that not right, Miss Fanshaw?”

  “Yes,” said Susan, tight-lipped.

  “And my impression is that this scene occurs—what?—about an hour into the play?”

  “Something like that,” agreed Susan.

  “And that with Ralph Greatheart on the balcony there is his stage wife and his daughter Alice—dear Gillian.”

  “Right,” agreed Gillian.

  “And did you, Miss Fanshaw, accompany them to the first floor to see that all was well?”

  “No, I checked costumes and props at the bottom of the staircase as they all went up.”

  “The staircase,” said Brad.

  “I went
up,” said Jason Thark, hurriedly, before anyone else could mention it. “It was a tricky scene, and I went and stood in the bedroom behind.”

  “That’s right,” said Carston, “and you—” He shut up suddenly.

  “I think, you know,” said Brad, “that the police had better look into that scene and that staircase and who was there for that scene and who might have used the staircase before and after.”

  “There goes your alibi for all of us,” said Gillian to Ronnie. “Somehow it always did seem too good to be true.”

  Chapter 11

  The Manager’s Flat

  THE RESIDENTIAL QUARTERS of the manager of the Saracen’s Head consisted of four rooms immediately above the entrance foyer and reception desk. They could be reached by a small staircase from the manager’s office behind Reception or by a door from the maze of corridors and open areas on the first floor—a door that led directly into the sitting room. Des’s murderer could have gained or been given access to the flat from either of these.

  Superintendent Dundy had sent Nettles off to talk to the kitchen and the cleaning staff. Nettles was an excellent chap, but he did tend to chat, to comment, to make his presence felt. Dundy liked to sniff out a place in silence—walk around, get the feel, sense a personality. Then he would look around and think of what was missing, what was out of place. So he said to Charlie, down in Reception: “Let’s go up and quietly get the lie of the land, shall we?” Charlie nodded, and together they ascended the stairs and went to work.

  The manager’s living quarters—or dying quarters, as they had so soon become for Des Capper—had been inhabited for twenty years by “dear old Arthur,” as Gillian Soames and others always called him, and his impress was still on them. His had been the choice of furniture, his the choice of the pictures on the walls. It was mainly in the extras and inessentials that Des and Win had made their tenure felt. Or that Des had made his tenure felt.

  The photo of the hotel in Dubbo, squarely in the center of the sideboard, had Des standing by the wrought-iron pillar of a wonderful nineteenth-century structure, looking loathsomely proprietorial. Win was not to be seen. Perhaps she was behind the camera, but as it seemed a highly professional photograph—you could feel the flies, smell the sheep-dip—this was unlikely. Probably she had been behind the bar as usual. The books all seemed to be Des’s, too: The Homemaker’s Medical Enquire Within, The Secrets of the Tarot, Desmond Morris, Reader’s Digest evaporated books, L. Ron Hubbard, and Arthur Hailey. Even the Jane Fonda Exercise Book belonged, Dundy guessed, more to Des than to Win. There were newish paperbacks of several biographies of the Mountbattens, presumably purchased to give corroborative detail to Des’s recent incautious claims, which Dundy had heard about from Frank. There was also Heat and Dust and a popular book on Indian religions.