Ten Little Herrings

by L. C. Tyler

  A certain amount of evidence can be gained, if the victim is unable to communicate, from the pattern of defence wounds – cuts to the hands and forearms are usually sustained in trying to fend off or actually grasp the blade.

  Stabbings tend to be by young men and perpetrated on young men, but women will use a knife in the heat of the moment. One Margaret Williams, for example, stabbed her husband twice and got lucky on the second attempt, penetrating the heart. His last words were, apparently: ‘You think I’m scared of a little knife?’

  Stabbings are rarer in detective fiction than in real life. Perhaps writers consider them inelegant, though Christie employs stabbing in a number of classics – not only Murder on the Orient Express, but also Death on the Nile and (perhaps her finest work of all) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

  In my capacity as a writer of historical detective fiction my characters inevitably stumble across a range of stab wounds. Interestingly, however, we have added fewer new methods of murder over the intervening years than you might imagine: firearms, electrocution, bombs, hit-and-run driving. But sharp and blunt instruments, strangling, poison, drowning and suffocation are timeless. There are ways in which murder is quite familiar and reassuring.

  Seventeen

  I had been forbidden to interfere in police investigations, but that (surely?) could not include having friendly chats with hotel staff. Particularly not receptionists, who are likely to get lonely during the long hours after dinner . . .and who may wish to relive, with a nice, sympathetic literary agent (say), the events of the night they were on duty and a fatal stabbing occurred.

  Accordingly I drifted out of the bar, clutching my Perrier, and over towards the reception desk. The receptionist was sitting hunched over a newspaper. He was completing some sort of number puzzle, chewing a short stub of pencil contemplatively. He wore a cheap black jacket, white shirt and thin black tie with much the same ill grace as I once wore my school uniform. There was a small white badge pinned to his lapel. It looked like the sort of badge you get as waste-paper monitor, but this one said: ‘Jean-Luc’. A stale aroma of blighted hopes hung around him. One day soon he would look in the mirror and notice his hair was starting to turn grey and he would try to remember why he had thought it such a good plan to become a hotel receptionist.

  He looked up as he heard me approach and pushed his number puzzle to one side, but not so far that it was out of reach.

  I smiled sweetly and began to strike up a friendly conversation.

  ‘You work long hours,’ I said.

  Jean-Luc looked at me blankly. ‘Mais, oui,’ he said.

  ‘Poor you,’ I said, as if he were a novelist who had just had his book rejected by the tenth publisher in a row.

  ‘It is normal – in this business,’ said Jean-Luc, but he seemed pleased I had noticed, as hotel staff often do.

  ‘Have you worked here long?’

  ‘Since I was twenty,’ he said.

  So that was maybe twenty or twenty-five years ago?

  ‘So that would be about fifteen years ago,’ I said. Even men (contrary to what they tell you) are susceptible to a little flattery about their age.

  He gave a pleased sort of shrug. ‘A little longer, maybe.’

  ‘Your family – your young family – must find it inconvenient?’

  He nodded. ‘But it is normal,’ he said. ‘Normal in this métier.’

  So – a fairly regular sort of guy, a long-serving employee, a family man. Not a likely murderer, surely?

  ‘You certainly had a lot of stamp collectors here,’ I observed, trying to work the conversation imperceptibly towards asking him if he ever killed guests.

  ‘Stamp collectors?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, stamp collectors,’ I said.

  ‘It has been the stamp fair,’ he said as though explaining something very simple to somebody who was very simple. ‘There are naturally the stamp collectors.’

  ‘And a lot of your regulars came back?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think any of the guests – any of the guests who are still here – were with us for the fair last year,’ he said.

  ‘So you hadn’t met Jonathan Gold before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or Grigory Davidov?’

  ‘I’d heard of him, of course.’

  ‘And you don’t approve of the way he conducts business?’

  ‘It is not my affair. They say he wants to buy your Manchester United. I think you are crazy to sell your football teams to foreigners. If I supported Manchester United I would not be too happy.’

  I nodded and made a mental note to ask Ethelred to explain football to me some time.

  ‘And the other guests? What about them?’

  He shrugged, and I tended to agree with him. What was there to know about them?

  ‘Well, with so many stamp collectors around, I was lucky to get a room, then.’

  ‘It is safer to book when the stamp fair is on,’ he said. ‘Most of the other guests had booked well in advance, except you.’

  ‘Most?’

  He glanced quickly at his computer screen. ‘Monsieur Tressider of course made your reservation. Everyone else seems to have booked themselves.’

  There was something not right with this last piece of information, but at first I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then I could.

  ‘Including Monsieur Brown?’ I said.

  Jean-Luc sighed and looked again at the screen. ‘Including Monsieur Brown. He reserved some weeks ago by email.’

  So – this was the thing that was not right – Brown had clearly lied to me about this being a last-minute decision. I promoted him, immediately and deservedly, to Number One Suspect. But that meant there was something more I needed to know. Brown had been suspiciously absent from dinner.

  ‘What time did he get back here yesterday evening?’ I asked.

  ‘Get back?’ asked the receptionist.

  ‘After he had gone out.’

  ‘I don’t remember seeing him at all yesterday evening.’

  ‘What time did you go off duty?’

  ‘I am on duty during all of the night. There is nobody else. I stay on duty until after breakfast.’ The receptionist paused and then added: ‘Can you tell me something?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Why do you all ask me so many questions?’

  ‘All?’

  ‘You. Monsieur Taylor. Monsieur Smith. Monsieur Proctor. Monsieur Tressider. Do you all play at detectives?’

  ‘Some are playing, Jean-Luc,’ I said, ‘some aren’t.’

  He shook his head. ‘I think you are all – how do you say? – weirdos.’

  ‘Are you calling me a weirdo?’

  ‘Frankly, mademoiselle, yes.’ He reached over and pulled his number puzzle back towards him. He retrieved his pencil. ‘Is there anything else?’

  I wondered whether this was the point at which I should tell him that (frankly) he did not look a day under fifty, but I decided that could wait. So I thanked him with studied politeness and moved on.

  But I could see why the police had ruled him out as a suspect. He was an unlikely murderer. He seemed to have no previous connection with either victim and was more worried about the impact of Davidov’s money on the Premiership than his annihilation of a medium-sized town in India. And, in any case, why would he risk killing somebody at his own place of work?

  I went back to the bar to think just a little bit more about Mr Brown.

  Ethelred was already there, drinking a Calvados with his coffee. I told him what I had discovered about Brown. He did not seem impressed.

  ‘That doesn’t make him a murderer,’ he said.

  ‘But why should he lie about the booking?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t he just say it was a long drive, so he booked a room here to break the journey? Why pretend it was all by chance?’

  ‘So, which one did he kill? Gold or Davidov?’

  ‘Either or both,’ I suggested.

  ‘But
he had no links with them as far as we know.’

  ‘He is in the pharmaceutical industry. Gold was a pharmacist of some sort.’

  ‘Keep going. There are a surprising number of people here who know at least a little about drugs. What makes him stand out?’

  ‘You have to admit that somebody in the pharmaceutical industry would have access to poisons.’

  ‘You told me he had no drugs with him,’ said Ethelred reasonably.

  ‘If he’d stuck them all in the peach truffle, then he wouldn’t have,’ I said.

  Ethelred grinned, the way men grin to indicate that they’ve got a big male brain and you’ve just got a pathetic little female brain. I had to remind myself that I’d already murdered him once this year, which was probably as often as I could get away with. Still, there was always next year to look forward to.

  ‘He arrived just before Davidov was poisoned,’ I said. ‘He was keener than anyone to get away afterwards. And where was he all night?’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t go out. Maybe he had eaten at some service station before he even got to the hotel. Maybe he just decided to have an early night. Or maybe he did go out to some little bistro in town and when he came back the receptionist did not see him. Even receptionists have to go and pee sometimes.’

  ‘I think he poisoned Davidov,’ I said. ‘He has the knowledge of poisons. Nobody knows where he was all night. And he tells porkies.’

  ‘But,’ said Ethelred, ‘he doesn’t have a motive for either killing – or none that we know of.’

  ‘You don’t think he could commit a murder?’ I asked.

  ‘Anyone could commit murder,’ said Ethelred with a sigh. ‘You just have to be angry enough or frightened enough at the wrong time. Now, I think I might have another small Calvados, then I’m off to bed.’

  There’s nothing quite as dull as being confined to a hotel with peeling wallpaper during a police investigation that you are not allowed to interfere with in any way at all. People tended to move from one room to another to relieve the boredom of it all. I waited in the stuffy little sitting room. Sure enough, Tim Brown eventually drifted by.

  I hadn’t noticed how blond he was. That should have made him halfway good-looking, but, great hair apart, he was pretty ordinary – early thirties, medium height, a bit overweight from too many three-course dinners on the road and too many beers in the bar afterwards. He was still wearing the rather creased jacket and trousers, but they were a bit more creased than when I last noticed him. He looked tired and more than a little worried. Time for some more subtle questioning, but this time in a way that would not make me look like a junkie needing a fix.

  ‘Nice meal tonight,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘The food was good here last night too, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was fine.’

  ‘But you didn’t eat here last night,’ I pointed out.

  Clearly he had hoped to avoid the subject.

  ‘No, I found a little restaurant in town,’ he said, looking at the nearest magazine.

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘I don’t really remember,’ he said, picking up the magazine and starting to flick through the pages. He was holding it upside down, but he hadn’t noticed that yet.

  ‘Quick service?’

  He frowned and looked up at me. ‘I don’t quite understand . . .’

  ‘Service can be quite slow in France. It’s really irritating when you just want to get back to the hotel and off to bed after a long day, then you’re kept waiting for ever for the bill, don’t you find?’

  ‘No, the service was perfectly OK. I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

  ‘What I’m getting at is: how come you were out all night? That would be the slowest service I’ve ever come across.’

  OK, forget what I said about subtle questioning.

  The magazine fell to the floor with a loud plop.

  ‘Who says I didn’t come back?’

  ‘Jean-Luc, the receptionist.’

  He scowled. Well, that was one prematurely aged member of the hotel staff who would not be getting a tip from our Mr Brown.

  ‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps service was a little slower than I would have liked.’

  ‘All night?’

  ‘I went for a walk afterwards. I didn’t feel tired.’

  ‘I said: all night?’

  ‘It’s an interesting town.’

  ‘That sounds a bit unlikely, especially after a long drive up from Bordeaux.’

  ‘Er . . .’ said the poor male creature in front of me.

  ‘Do you want to just tell me everything?’ I asked. ‘It will be easier in the long run.’

  ‘Are you a private detective?’ he asked.

  I smiled enigmatically. Putty in my hands? That was an understatement.

  ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘OK. This was bound to happen sooner or later. Where do you want me to start?’

  ‘Were you planning to kill Gold all along?’ I asked, striking home with deadly accuracy.

  ‘Gold?’ he asked, bewildered.

  ‘I mean Davidov,’ I said, striking home in a slightly different, but equally good, way. ‘When exactly did you decide to poison Davidov, Mr Brown?’

  ‘Davidov?’

  Pretending he had not heard of his victims (if that was the plan) was not going to do him much good at this stage.

  ‘How did you get the poison in the chocolate? Did you inject it?’ I asked. ‘You may as well fess up.’

  He gave me that old familiar you’re-a-weirdo look.

  ‘Let’s get this straight: you’re accusing me of murdering either Gold or Davidov?’ he said, the penny beginning to drop in his small male brain.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  He gave a relieved chuckle. ‘Is that all?’ he said.

  Murder? It seemed plenty to be going on with. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ he laughed. He looked like the most relieved man in the Loire valley. ‘And I thought . . .’

  ‘You thought . . . ?’ I said, still hoping he might be about to crumble and confess all.

  He stood up. ‘Goodnight, Ms Thirkettle,’ he said. ‘I rather think I’ll turn in. As you say, it was a long drive yesterday.’

  ‘Do the police know you were out all night?’ I asked. A final shot at blackmail seemed worthwhile.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I told them.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘That’s OK then.’

  After he’d gone, I tidied away the magazine he had dropped on the floor and straightened some of the cushions. Then I went to bed too. I noted Ethelred was still in the bar, cradling his glass, but I didn’t think it was worth reporting back on my conversation with Tim Brown.

  Ethelred was already smug enough without that.

  I noticed a couple of things when I got back to my room. The policeman who had been guarding Davidov’s room had gone, suggesting that they’d checked it out as much as they were planning to. Second, as I opened my own door, I noticed that my light was on and that I hadn’t needed my key to get in. I was pretty sure I’d switched the light off before going down to dinner. And surely I had locked the door? Possibly, I thought, the maid had been in to turn the bed down or put a little chocolate surprise on my pillow. But no – the bed was in much the same state as before. No night-time chocolate treat. Everything was much as before, in fact. It was true that, the way I’d left things before dinner, it would have been difficult to establish whether the room had been ransacked, but I could at least be sure that nobody had broken in and tidied up.

  I walked cautiously over to the window and looked out across the dark street to the blank wall of the chateau grounds. The street was deserted and the lights made everything look pale and bloodless. Rain was starting to fall. I waited for a car to pass, but the street stayed empty.

  I drew the curtains together, expecting it to make the room feel cosy, but somehow it didn’t. I locked the door, expecting to feel
safer, but I felt just as before. When I went to the bathroom to clean my teeth I left the door open and kept my eye on the room in the mirror – I didn’t want someone, or some Thing, creeping up on me.

  I changed into my pyjamas. They were of the warm and comfortable variety rather than the ones you normally wear for seducing Brad Pitt, but it seemed unlikely he would show up, so I could risk the elasticated waistband and the pink bunny pattern.

  When I was a little girl, I had a firm rule that once you were safely in bed, the bogeyman could not get you. Whether the bogeyman also recognized this rule I can’t say. Strangely, that evening, even once I was in bed, I still did not feel safe. Of course, you only get one hundred per cent bogeyman protection if you pull the blankets right over your head.

  I switched the light off, pulled the duvet right over me and tried to sleep.

  Eighteen

  ‘I’m no closer to cracking the case,’ I said.

  ‘Nobody is asking you to crack it,’ said Ethelred. ‘Just leave it uncracked. That’s fine.’

  ‘But I can’t help feeling the answer is staring us in the face,’ I said.

  Ethelred smiled. I hadn’t even told him about the Tim Brown incident and he was still a bit too smug for my liking. Well, we’d see who got the last laugh.

  We were sitting in an otherwise empty dining room, enjoying a solitary breakfast, nobody else having chosen to get up at stupid o’clock. In the massive stone fireplace, last night’s ashes were cold and as yet untouched. Coffee had been slow to arrive and the pot was only half full when it did.

  ‘Not as lavish as yesterday,’ I observed, searching the bread basket in vain for a pain au chocolat.

  ‘No,’ said Ethelred. ‘I think that the hotel is beginning to repent its earlier generosity now investigations are extending into a second day. Apparently there will be sandwiches free of charge at lunch-time, but anything else will have to be paid for at the usual rates.’

  ‘Herbie won’t be too happy about that,’ I said.