by Granger, Ann
A waiter was hovering. Clearly the man itched to know what was written on the mysterious sheet but Gervase had been careful to put it down folded so that no glimpse of the message showed. The waiter looked peeved. ‘Sir and madam?’ he asked.
‘If you don’t order something,’ Gervase told Jess, ‘they get depressed.’
‘Thank you!’ Jess told the waiter crisply. ‘We’re fine.’
The waiter marched off.
‘That’s the way to do it!’ Gervase’s voice suddenly took on a Mr Punch squawk.
‘Not serious enough, then,’ Jess suggested, ‘to stop you making jokes?’
‘Never heard of gallows humour, Inspector? Aren’t you going to look at it?’ He pointed at the note.
Jess picked up two cardboard drinks’ coasters on the table and used them to open the folded paper out flat, making no fingertip contact with it. She was aware Gervase was watching with amusement. ‘Nice to watch an expert,’ he said.
‘You handled this,’ she said. ‘Has it been handled by anyone else?’
‘The person who sent it, presumably,’ Gervase said, sounding irritated.
‘I mean, did anyone else to whom you showed it?’
‘I didn’t actually show it to anyone. It’s not the sort of thing you shove under someone’s nose, is it? I nearly screwed it up and chucked it into the wastepaper basket when I saw what it was. At first I didn’t know whether to be angry or amused. Then I thought of that poor stiff burned to a crisp in my house, and it didn’t seem so funny. There’s a nutter running round out there.’
Gervase pointed towards the main street visible through the nearby window. The angle of the sunbeam had already changed a little and no longer fell directly on him. Instead it fell on the note on the table like a spotlight. Dust particles danced in it.
‘Possibly.’ Jess wasn’t ready to commit herself to any theory.
Someone had been at work with glue and scissors. In characters clipped from newspapers, the message read, IM WATCHING NEXT TIME NO MISTAKE. But that wasn’t what struck Jess.
‘This isn’t an original,’ she said suspiciously, looking up at Gervase. ‘It’s been photocopied. Where’s the original?’
‘Ah, there you have me, Inspector. That is how it was when I found it. If there is an original, and I suppose at one point there must have been, I haven’t seen it.’ Gervase shrugged.
‘So, exactly when and how did you find it?’ Jess was mindful of her observations on entering the building.
‘I told you, pushed under the door of my room. It wasn’t there this morning when I got up. I came down to breakfast …’ He pointed past Jess to some spot beyond the lounge. ‘Breakfast room is through there.’
‘What time was this?’
‘About nine fifteen.’
‘Any other person waiting about upstairs near your room?’
He shook his head. ‘Some people had gone down earlier. I heard them walk past my door. The corridor itself was empty when I came out. But the cleaner was in the room next door, not the one I had to walk past, the other one, on the other side. I knew she was there because the door stood open wide and her little cart with cleaning materials was wedged in the doorway.’
Gervase paused, apparently reviewing his actions. ‘I hung the little notice on my door handle, the one reading, “Please clean the room”. I suppose I was about three-quarters of an hour at breakfast, after which I came in here to see if they’d put out a copy of any of today’s papers. They had, but it was only a tabloid and it took me all of five minutes to glance through it. I went outside for a cigarette. I thought I’d give the woman time to clean my room.’
‘Did you smoke your cigarette in the street or in the yard at the back?’
‘In the street.’
‘Did you just stand out there watching the world go by, or move about?’
‘This,’ Gervase told her, ‘is turning into a regular interrogation. I am not the defendant. I’m the plaintiff.’
‘We’re not in a court of law yet,’ Jess retorted. There was no denying Gervase Crown had a rare ability both to annoy and to be annoyed. ‘But if I am to work out what happened here, I need to know what everyone did and where everyone was. This building is a maze of corridors. The timing, by your account, was pretty tight. You weren’t away from your room for long. During part of that time, the cleaner was active along that corridor. Anything at all that you noticed – either upstairs or down here – is very important. You yourself might not yet realise how important it is. Witnesses often don’t. It’s not enough for you to report an incident and then loaf about in here waiting for me to work a miracle. I need your help! You’ve been pretty good so far,’ she conceded. ‘Don’t clam up now deciding you’ve told me enough.’
‘Oh, all right.’ Gervase held up his hands in surrender. ‘I stand corrected. What did I do next? I walked up the road as far as the church and back again. My father’s ashes are under a stone in the churchyard, if you must know every little detail. I went to check it out. The inscription is overgrown and almost illegible. I shall have to give the church a donation and ask for it to be cleaned up. Not out of filial respect, you understand, more a sense of obligation. At the moment it’s an eyesore. I don’t suppose the whole exercise took me half an hour at the very outside. I reckoned the cleaner must have tidied up my room by then. So I returned, went back up, opened the door and all but stepped on that.’ He pointed at the note.
‘Had the cleaner been into your room?’
‘Yes, all as neat as a new pin. She wasn’t in that corridor any longer, but she was on the floor above. I went up and found her there. I asked if she’d seen a folded note lying on the carpet in my room and she insisted nothing was there when she was. She told me, rather snappily, if there had been anything on the carpet, she’d have picked it up. I apologised nicely and gave her a fiver. She very nearly smiled.’
If he’d hoped to make Jess smile, he was disappointed.
‘Have you any idea who might have pushed it under the door?’
‘No.’
‘Did you enquire at Reception if any non-residents had come into the hotel?’
‘There was no one at Reception. They don’t man it all the time. There’s a bell on the desk for anyone to ring for service. I did ring it. The manager came out of his office to see what I wanted. I told him that someone had left a note for me upstairs but I didn’t know whom it was from. He gave me a funny look. Then he suggested I asked the housekeeper. That’s the title they give the cleaners. I told him I’d already done that. He said he was very sorry but he couldn’t help. They were always very busy in the mornings.’
‘And you have no idea who might have done this?’
‘If I knew,’ Gervase Crown told her impatiently, ‘I’d go and find them and ask them what the dickens they think they’re playing at?’
‘Do you think it might be meant as a poor-taste joke?’
‘No!’ Gervase snapped. ‘I think it means I’m next in line to end up like the poor bloke who died at Key House!’
‘So you think someone’s out to kill you?’ Jess asked him. ‘That’s rather extreme, isn’t it? Even if you’re not liked, to want to kill you …’
‘I know I’m not liked,’ Gervase said icily, ‘you know I’m not liked. My unpopularity doesn’t bother me. I have no ambition to be Weston St Ambrose’s Man of the Year. But I don’t take kindly to being threatened. Moreover, seeing as someone was murdered at my house, I assumed the police would want to know.’
‘Indeed, we do! You did absolutely the right thing to let us know at once, Mr Crown.’ Jess opened her bag, took out an evidence envelope and, again using one of the coasters, slid the note inside, watched with interest by Crown. ‘I’ll take this with me. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind waiting here while I go and ask a couple of questions of the hotel? I might not have much more luck than you did, but you never know.’
Gervase said nothing, but gestured expansively towards the door and the hotel be
yond.
Jess went to the breakfast room, following the faint noises of movement within. She found the waiter who’d come to them in the lounge, now setting out the tables for the next meal. He gave her a jaundiced look. Jess produced her ID and his expression became even more distrustful.
‘We’re not accustomed to see the police at The Royal Oak,’ he told her.
‘Pleased to hear it,’ said Jess. ‘Have you noticed any non-residents in the hotel this morning?’
‘Always a few,’ he said. ‘They come in for coffee in our lounge. It’s a popular meeting place locally.’
‘Do you remember any of them? Were they known to you? Were they strangers?’
‘We always get strangers,’ the man said, ‘on account of this being a tourist area. We don’t know them, naturally. But we’re always pleased to see them. We depend on them, you might say. I can’t say I’ve seen any strange faces this morning. We had a few regulars drop in for coffee, too. They’ll be in later for tea.’
That would bring it down to staff and residents. On the other hand, outsiders did come into the hotel on a regular basis in the morning. Perhaps if one came a little earlier than normal, it wouldn’t cause a stir.
‘You saw no one appearing hesitant or acting furtively?’
‘At The Royal Oak?’ he exclaimed in horror. ‘I should hope not!’
‘I understand you’re busy down here, in the lounge and in the dining room. Do you have any reason to go upstairs?’
‘Only if someone wants room service, you know, breakfast in their own room, but no one did this morning. I don’t have any call to go upstairs. If you have a query about anything that’s happened upstairs,’ concluded the waiter with dignity, ‘you should address yourself to housekeeping.’
Jess left him and went to find the manager. On the way she passed by the lounge door and saw that Gervase Crown was still there, leaning back in the same chair and reading a well-thumbed copy of Country Life. Some other people had joined him in the lounge. It looked as though the locals had begun to drop in as the waiter had described. A couple of middle-aged women had deposited carrier bags of shopping around their feet, giving the impression they had camped out.
The manager reacted to Jess’s ID much as the waiter had done.
‘We don’t expect trouble at The Royal Oak!’ he said firmly.
‘No trouble, sir,’ she soothed him. ‘Just a question. If someone – not a resident – came into the hotel and went upstairs, would it be noticed?’
He opened his mouth to deny indignantly that his hotel’s security was anything but 100 per cent, but then recollected in time that this was a police officer asking. ‘We do our very best,’ he said cautiously. ‘But the mornings are always very busy. Guests are checking out. The rooms are being cleaned. Deliveries are being made in the kitchen and for the bar. All the staff and myself included have a lot to occupy us. It is just possible but, I must stress, it is highly unlikely. Besides, non-residents come in all the time, local people, so there is a certain amount of traffic past this desk. They wouldn’t go upstairs. They go into the lounge or the restaurant.’
‘Do you have a lift? Even a service lift?’
He shook his head. ‘This building dates from around 1600 and stands on mediaeval foundations. The cellars are original and considered to be fourteenth century. As you would expect, National Heritage have it listed. There is no room for a lift and because of the restrictions imposed by the listing, we can’t alter it to install one. We have two bedrooms on the ground floor for guests with a disability preventing them using the stairs. May I ask, is this a complaint made by Mr Crown?’
‘Why do you think this is connected with Mr Crown?’ Jess asked.
‘Because he came to see me earlier. He looked very put out and asked the same question. He said someone had left him a note, pushed it under his door. He said he didn’t know who the note was from, which seemed very odd to me. Wasn’t it signed?’
‘There is some confusion,’ Jess said vaguely. ‘How about the cleaner who turns out the rooms on that floor?’
‘The housekeeper,’ he corrected her. ‘You want Betty. Wait a minute.’ He went back to his office and returned almost at once with a sturdy woman in an overall.
Jess put her question.
‘It’ll be Mr Crown, I suppose,’ Betty sniffed. ‘He came asking me about a note or a letter. I don’t know nothing about a note.’
‘Can you tell me if you saw anyone in the corridor, while you were cleaning the rooms, anyone who shouldn’t have been there?’
‘No,’ said Betty. ‘I was busy. I’ve got the whole floor and the one above to do. I can’t be standing around watching who goes up and down the corridors. I tidy a room, make the bed, clean the en suite, empty the wastebasket, and so on down the corridor. Then I put the vacuum cleaner over the carpets in the whole lot and along the passage. After that I’m off up to the next floor and start all over again. It’s no use asking me if I heard anything, either. The vacuum makes a racket. I need a new one …’ She broke off to give the manager a meaningful glare. ‘I don’t hear anything and I don’t see anything … and I don’t know anything about a note.’
Jess thanked them both for their time and left them looking after her with equally dissatisfied expressions.
The lounge now had several people in it. The waiter had reappeared and was taking orders for snacks and drinks. Gervase Crown put down Country Life and raised his strongly marked black eyebrows.
‘Any luck?’
She shook her head. ‘I got pretty much the same answers you did. We’ll get on to this, Mr Crown. In the meantime, take care. If there is anything else, if anyone contacts you in any way, or you remember something, let us know at once. Oh, and if you can think of anyone who might bear you a particular grudge …’
‘I’m sure you’ve heard about the Stapleton family. Well, whatever you’ve heard, you can forget them as suspects. It wasn’t either of the sisters!’ Gervase said angrily. ‘Petra couldn’t and Kit wouldn’t.’
You’d be surprised how out of character people can act, thought Jess, but didn’t say it. ‘You’ve seen both sisters since your return?’
‘You obviously know that I have.’
‘Actually, I only knew for certain that you’d seen Petra. I guessed you might also have seen Kit by now.’
‘Indeed I have. She was round here like a shot to tell me off as soon as she heard I’d called on Petra. But that, Inspector Campbell, is Kit’s style: right to your face. She wouldn’t shove bits of paper under doors. And as for their mamma, she’s a very proper sort of woman. She wouldn’t send letters made of bits of newsprint. She’d write by hand on headed notepaper. What’s more, she wouldn’t send threats – and I haven’t seen her since my return.’
Gervase had recovered his equanimity. He stood up and accompanied her courteously to the cobbled yard and her car.
‘Thanks for coming so quickly, anyway,’ he said. He smiled. ‘I do appreciate it, and your taking my problems so seriously, because I don’t suppose you’ve got much time for me, either.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Jess felt herself flush. ‘Why on earth should I dislike you?’
‘Why shouldn’t you? Most people seem to. Anyway, I’ve done time, as they say. I’ve got “previous”. Don’t pretend you don’t take that into consideration whenever you look at me, or discuss me with your boss.’
It was what she had thought when she had first met him. He knew it. He was using that knowledge now to rile her. It seemed an extraordinarily unwise thing for him to do and she wondered why he was doing it. She said angrily, ‘I think, Mr Crown, that you are attempting to test me in some way. If you are, then I can tell you I don’t have time to waste on that sort of mind game. As regards our dealings now over the matter of the threatening message you’ve received, and the arson attack on your house involving a fatality … I’m a police officer, a professional. That I am aware of your past history doesn’t mean it influences any inves
tigation I make. You’ve been out of the country until recent events. So far, you’re the victim in all this. And Mr Crown, you do need me on your side.’
‘Believe me,’ Gervase said fervently, ‘I’d hate to have you as an enemy!’
‘I’m not your enemy. Don’t treat me as one.’
‘Jess!’ yelled a childish voice. Feet clattered across the cobbles and Millie appeared unexpectedly, running beneath the arched entry into the yard. She came to a halt by them and stared long and hard at Gervase, who stared back saying nothing.
‘Who is he?’ asked Millie of Jess, pointing at the stranger.
‘Don’t be rude, Millie,’ said Jess gently.
‘I’m Gervase,’ said Gervase. ‘You are Millie, I gather.’
Millie greeted this coldly. ‘Jess is my daddy’s friend,’ she told him in a stern voice.
‘No!’ gasped Jess, ‘I mean, not like that …’
‘Haven’t you got some dolls to play with or something?’ asked Gervase.
Millie’s opinion of him, obviously already poor, now hit the floor. ‘I don’t play with dolls! MacTavish doesn’t like them.’
Gervase looked enquiringly at Jess.
‘He’s a bear,’ explained Jess. ‘Millie, where’s Monica?’
‘Coming,’ said Millie vaguely, waving towards the archway. She turned her attention to Gervase again. ‘My daddy,’ she said loudly and very clearly, ‘is a—’
‘Goodness, Jess!’ Monica arrived, puffing, in the nick of time. ‘Millie, you shouldn’t run off like that. Gervase, it’s you!’ Monica realised that Crown stood by Jess. ‘Monica Farrell, you remember me?’
‘Indeed I do, Miss Farrell.’ He shook the hand she held out. ‘I passed by your old schoolhouse this morning. It seems to be a private residence now.’
‘It is, everything’s changed since you left here. I’m sorry such a tragedy brought you back, Gervase. But it’s good to see you.’