Off the Record (13 page)

A few minutes later he heard the sound of footsteps followed by a timid knock. ‘Sir? Are you all right in there, sir?’

He crossed the room and opened the door fully. Outside stood the chambermaid, a plump woman in her fifties, at a guess, with iron-grey hair. His heart lifted. He’d read the various statements from the witnesses at the hotel and the chambermaid who found Dunbar’s body, a Mrs Doris Gledburn, had given her age as fifty-three. With any luck, this was her.

The worried expression on her face cleared as she saw him. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but I thought I heard a noise.’

‘So did I,’ said Jack, cheerfully. ‘Terrific bang, wasn’t it? Goodness knows what it was.’ He gestured to the window with his cigarette. ‘A car or something, I expect, backfiring in the street. It made an awful racket. It sounded like a gun going off.’

A startled look leapt into her eyes. ‘Well, that’s it, sir. And . . . And . . .’

‘I say!’ said Jack, apparently struck by a sudden thought. ‘This is the place where that chap, Whatsisname, got shot, isn’t it?’ He looked at her with sympathy. ‘Good Lord, you must’ve thought it was happening again.’ He lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘It was this hotel, wasn’t it?’

She looked round and edged a bit closer to the door. ‘Well, I don’t know as we’re not really meant to talk about it. Mr Sutton – he’s the manager – doesn’t want it spoken about. He’s very keen on the Marchmont’s reputation and says it’ll give us a bad name, but really, I can’t see it. It’s hardly our fault, is it?’

‘I don’t suppose it happened because of rotten service,’ agreed Jack. To his surprise she smiled.

‘He wouldn’t have found that here, sir. We’re very particular.’

He smiled back. ‘I’m sure you are. It’s a nasty shock for everyone, though, finding a body.’

She nodded vigorously. ‘I know all about that, sir.’ She looked at him with a sort of reluctant pride. ‘I was the one who found him.’

Jack felt a glow of satisfaction. So this really was Mrs Gledburn. Not only that, but she was obviously quite happy to talk about what must have been one of the most startling experiences of her life, and he was perfectly willing to let her. ‘Good Lord,’ he said with flattering interest. ‘You actually found him?’ He looked behind him in sudden, if assumed, concern. ‘It wasn’t this room, was it?’

‘Oh no, sir, don’t you worry.’

Jack breathed a very convincing sigh of relief. ‘I’m glad about that. It must have been terrible.’

‘Oh, it was.’ Mrs Gledburn, glanced up and down the corridor, saw a reassuring absence of senior staff, and shifted her position into an agreeably gossipy stance. ‘I’ve had nightmares about it.’ She clasped her expansive bosom and rolled her eyes. ‘Nightmares. Just two doors along from here, it was.’ Jack put his head round the door and peered solemnly down the corridor. ‘I went into the room and there he was, lying all stiff and cold.’ She leaned forward impressively. ‘Murdered!’

Jack’s jaw dropped. ‘
Murdered?
’ he repeated.

‘Yes, sir, murdered.’ She lowered her voice still further. ‘What’s more, I think I saw the man who did it.’

The thrill of discovery ran through him. This was new. Mrs Gledburn had made no mention of seeing anyone in her statement. ‘You actually saw him?’

Mrs Gledburn leaned forward confidentially, flattered by his interest. ‘Yes, sir. Lurking on the corridor he was, leaning against the wall. I didn’t know as much then, but he was overcome with guilt, and no wonder! He had his head in his hands, sort of upset like. I caught sight of him before I found the poor gentleman dead, and that put it out of my mind, as you might say. I did wonder if I should tell someone, but I talked it over with the other ladies here and they said it was better to let sleeping dogs lie.’

‘Couldn’t he have been a guest?’

‘We thought about that, but if he was a guest he’d have gone into his room, not stood hanging about on the corridor. It did strike me as he may have lost his way but he didn’t want to be seen, not by the way he was acting. As soon as he saw me coming he went down the stairs and I thought, “Hello, what do you want, I wonder?” because we’ve got to be careful, you know, about robberies and suchlike. Then I went in to give Mr Dunbar his towels and it gave me such a turn, I forgot all about it. They said at first he’d made away with himself, so I didn’t think anything of the man for a while. Then, when it came out he’d really been
murdered
, I tell you, I could hardly breathe, when I remembered how close I’d been to the man who did it.’

She shuddered. ‘It was a blessing I didn’t speak to him. Why, I might have been murdered myself. I read in the paper he was one of these mad scientists, the sort who want to be blowing us up with their nasty bombs and poisoning us with gas and such like, as if we didn’t have enough of that in the war. It’s not right, is it? I tell you, I could have been struck down as sure as I’m stood here.’ Her chest heaved and her eyes closed momentarily at the thought of her narrow escape. ‘There’s enough trouble in this world without looking for it.’

‘Absolutely right,’ said Jack, radiating sympathy. ‘Would you know him if you saw him again?’

Her face fell. ‘I’ve asked myself that many a time. I looked at the photo in the paper of what’s-he-called, the man they arrested, but those pictures are very deceiving, aren’t they? It’s not like seeing someone properly, like. I
might
do, but I’m not sure. After all, I only had a glimpse of him, and he had his hat and coat on. I don’t know if I could swear to him again. Even if I could, I don’t want to get mixed up with the police.’

‘Didn’t you have to talk to the police anyway?’

‘Well, I
did
,’ admitted Mrs Gledburn grudgingly, ‘but that was all about finding the body and so on.’

Jack looked at her thoughtfully. To have found a murdered man almost begged to be matched with a sight of the murderer. It was too good a chance to miss and yet, if she were making it up, he would have expected her to embroider the story with more detail. ‘Did he have staring eyes?’ he probed gently. Surely she couldn’t resist that lure. ‘I’ve always heard that murderers have staring eyes.’

For a moment she hesitated, then shook her head regretfully. ‘I couldn’t tell you, sir. It’d be different, perhaps, if I saw him again, but I can’t bring to mind if he was fair or dark or anything. I think he was a youngish man, but I can’t really be sure of that, even. It was him though, and no mistake.’ Mrs Gledburn shuddered agreeably once more. ‘It makes me go cold all over, thinking about it.’

‘And I suppose you heard the shot, too?’ said Jack in an awe-struck way. ‘I read that it sounded like a thunderclap. Everyone thought there was a storm brewing and one of the maids was so startled she broke a teapot and, when she looked at the leaves, said there was a death on the way.’

Mrs Gledburn smiled indulgently. ‘The rubbish that they do write, I don’t know. I think they make it up half the time.’

This was so undoubtedly true that Jack mentally congratulated her on her scepticism.

‘We didn’t hear anything, sir, not me or the rest of the maids, and we would have done, I’m sure.’ She sniffed. ‘We’d have certainly heard about it if one of us had broken a teapot, murder or no murder. We’d been having a bit of a chat in the Maids’ Room at the end of the corridor before I went round with the towels. I was a bit behind as Gladys Street’s daughter’s just had a new baby and she was telling us all about it.’ Her voice softened. ‘Eight pounds three ounces, he was and a lovely little boy with a full head of hair.’ Her forehead creased. ‘It’s funny that we didn’t hear anything, though. I can’t understand it. After all, I’ve just come from the Maids’ Room now and we all heard that car backfiring as plain as plain.’

‘Was there any other noise? Perhaps men digging up the street or something?’

Mrs Gledburn shook her head. ‘No, there was nothing. If there were men at work outside, we’d have known. This is a very quiet hotel, sir. You can hear a pin drop, particularly in the afternoons.’

‘I wonder when he was shot, then? If you didn’t hear it, I mean.’

Mrs Gledburn looked perplexed. ‘D’you know, that’s a puzzle, that is. We must have just missed it, but I don’t know how. There’s always someone around at this time of day. I don’t care what was said in the papers about tea-leaves and suchlike, we didn’t hear a thing.’ There were the sounds of footsteps on the stairs and she regretfully stepped back. ‘Well, I must be off. I hope you’ve got everything you want, sir. I’ll be along with your shaving water later.’

The next morning Jack woke up slowly, nudged out of sleep by the hushed but unfamiliar noises in the corridor outside. After the excitement of the chambermaid’s revelations about The Man, the evening had passed without further ado. Whoever The Man was, he couldn’t be Gerard Carrington, as Gerard Carrington had been in the lobby before the chambermaid started her rounds. That was something but it wasn’t enough.

What about the damn gun? Jack put his hands behind his head, lay back on the pillow and stared unseeingly at the bedroom ceiling. Mrs Gledburn had been very sure that no one had heard the shot. It wasn’t, thought Jack, remembering the sleepy somnolence of the Marchmont yesterday afternoon, as if there was any background noise to drown out the sound.

Mrs Gledburn had referred to it as a puzzle, and, thinking back to his experiment of yesterday, he wholeheartedly agreed. A silencer fitted to the gun was the obvious answer, but that raised as many questions as it answered.

Dunbar might very well have had a gun, but he’d hardly have a gun and a silencer. A silenced gun was a real assassin’s weapon. Gerard Carrington could have used a silenced gun perfectly easily, but if he had thought it through enough to buy a silencer, then he surely would have made a better fist of the job. The supposed suicide had been clumsy enough for Sergeant Butley to see through it right away. Carrington was such an obvious suspect Bill had tracked him down only hours after the crime. And yet . . . It all hung on what a reasonable man would do and a man who was gripped by panic wasn’t reasonable. It wasn’t
enough
, thought Jack in disgust.

A brilliant shaft of sunlight lanced a spear across the bed, catching thousands of gilded, dancing dust-motes. They were unexpectedly beautiful and he watched, his senses stilled. The curtain flapped and the dust-motes abruptly vanished. A brief dance and then into darkness, he thought, chilled.

He knew there was something he had missed. Think! But no thoughts came. It couldn’t be suicide. The angle of the bullet, the missing key, the wrong colour of ink on the note. Nothing there.

He snuggled back further into the crisp pillows. The noises in the corridor grew closer; comfortable, start-of-the-morning, cup-of-tea-soon noises with the chink of crockery and discreet knocks on doors. He could hear the shrill young voice of the post-boy following the chambermaids. Tea, plain biscuits, letters.
Post, sir!
There wouldn’t be any letters for him, of course. Bullet, key, ink . . . He sat bolt upright. Ink, pen . . .
Post!
That was it,
surely
that was it. He needed to telephone Bill and then he had to post a letter. The chambermaid knocked and with a broad smile he called, ‘Come in.’

He had an idea.

It was quarter past four that afternoon when Bill Rackham knocked on the door of Jack’s hotel bedroom. ‘I got the information you wanted,’ said Bill, pulling out a chair and sitting down, after Jack had relieved him of his coat and hat. ‘I’ve spoken to that precious chambermaid of yours, too,’ he added. ‘I’d have liked to have been here when you fired off that gun, I must say.’

‘I feel a bit guilty about that,’ said Jack, offering him a cigarette. ‘It gave her the dickens of a fright, poor woman.’

‘Poor woman be blowed,’ said Bill heartlessly. ‘It serves her right. Why on earth she couldn’t tell us she’d seen a man in the corridor, I don’t know. How did you get her to come clean? I thought you reserved your devastating charm for real lookers, not stout grey-haired ladies in their fifties.’

‘I appealed to her motherly instincts,’ said Jack with grin. ‘Devastating charm, indeed! It makes me sound like Gigolo Joe. I got more out of her than you did, though.’

‘Don’t be so smug,’ said Bill. ‘At least she’s amended her statement, which is something. What I hadn’t really taken on board is how odd it is that no one seemed to hear the shot.’ He lit his cigarette and looked at Jack with a puzzled frown. ‘Could the gun have been silenced?’

‘Now that’s an interesting question,’ said Jack. He opened the desk drawer and brought out a small, stout, blue-covered book. ‘This is the
Text Book of Small Arms
. I knew I had a copy somewhere. I went home and dug it out this morning. This is what it says about the Webley.’ He opened the book, ran a finger down the index, then flicked through the pages. ‘Here we are. Webley .32 automatic. First produced in 1906 – it’s astonishing they’ve been around for that long – weight, twenty ounces, length, six and a quarter inches, magazine capacity of eight rounds and – listen to this – a muzzle velocity of nine hundred feet per second. What d’you think of that?’

‘Nothing much,’ said Rackham. ‘You’d still have to be pretty nippy to dodge it, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

‘Idiot,’ said Jack impatiently. ‘Don’t you see, Bill? With a low muzzle velocity like that, a Webley, unlike most guns, can be effectively silenced. You can’t silence a revolver and you can’t silence the crack of a high velocity bullet – although, come to think of it, if you stand close enough to your target you don’t have to – but you can silence this. There’d be some noise but it’d sound like a flat
whiz
rather than a shot.’

Bill smoked his cigarette in silence for a few moments. ‘All right. It could have been silenced, I grant you, but that’s not to say it was. Silencing a gun isn’t something that would occur to most people, is it? I’ve used a Webley myself. It was the standard pistol issued to the Metropolitan Police, but it never crossed my mind it could be silenced. That’s pretty technical knowledge.’ He frowned unhappily. ‘Silencing the gun doesn’t seem to square with the clumsy way in which the suicide was arranged. I can’t work it out. We would have bought the idea of suicide, you know. All it needed was a little more care in the details and Dunbar would have been chalked up as dead by his own hand.’ He looked up. ‘You spoke to Carrington. Could he be the sort of person who would look up all the technical guff about the gun and then make a complete hash of the actual carrying-out of the plan? That seems to me the sort of mistake a clever person might make.’