The Corpse of St James's (30 page)

‘Even if it existed,' said Alan drily, ‘it couldn't move any faster in this mess.'

We crept up Bond Street, with me pushing the cab every foot of the way, nearly dancing with impatience as we were stopped again and yet again by the heavy traffic.

‘You'd get there quicker on foot,' the driver called back to us.

‘Our friend can't walk that far,' Alan shouted back. ‘Otherwise we'd have taken the Tube.'

‘No good for business, all this traffic,' the driver grumbled, beginning to move and then braking sharply for a messenger on a bicycle who cut in ahead of him.

I thought it was probably a good thing that I couldn't quite make out the stream of broad Cockney that followed.

It didn't take us more than fifteen minutes after that to make the five-minute drive to Claridge's, and the driver managed to reach the kerb, behind a Bentley, a Mercedes and a luscious burgundy-coloured Rolls. Suddenly my Sunday dress and hat didn't seem quite so elegant.

‘
Courage, ma chérie
,' murmured Alan, and the French – good French, too – so surprised me that I forgot to be nervous. It's amazing how much I don't know about my husband, after several years of marriage.

We walked in and found a house phone with no trouble. ‘You or me?' I asked Alan.

‘I suppose I'd best do it. If we do manage to reach him, he might recognize your accent. But I'm not sure what to say to him.'

‘Don't worry about that,' said Jonathan quietly. ‘Don't say anything. Just give me the phone when he answers.'

I swallowed hard. Alan picked up the phone. ‘Yes. Be so good as to ring Robert Hathaway for me, please.'

W
e waited. I could hardly breathe. Alan nodded. The phone was ringing.

First hurdle passed.

Then he handed the phone to Jonathan, who spoke into it. ‘Yes, sir. Room service here. I have your order, but no one answers at the room number you gave us. May I verify your room number, please?'

A pause. ‘I see, sir. Yes, I'm terribly sorry to have disturbed you. I will double-check with Reception. Thank you, sir.'

Jonathan hung up and grinned at us. ‘He's in suite 329, and he didn't order anything from room service. He's slightly annoyed.'

‘Well done, Jonathan!'

‘Indeed,' said Alan, but he didn't sound entirely happy. ‘But now what? We've found him. We still don't know if Jemima is with him. And he may become suspicious. He's hiding out, after all, and is undoubtedly nervous. If he realizes he just gave his room number to an unidentified voice on the telephone, he may be checking right now to see if someone did ring up from the kitchen.'

‘You think he'll try to leave?'

‘I think there's too much we don't know about the situation. I'd like to find Jemima.' He ran a hand down the back of his head in his typical gesture of frustration. ‘We need to talk about this, think about it, but there may not be time. If Bert has taken fright . . .'

‘All right, look. Let's go up to the third floor. There's almost bound to be some sort of lounge, some chairs, anyway, in the elevator – sorry, Jonathan, the lift lobby. We can position ourselves where we can see room 329, and meanwhile we can talk.'

It wasn't an especially brilliant plan. Depending on how much traffic there was, we might not have much privacy, and at lunchtime there was apt to be a good deal of coming and going. But nobody had a better idea, so we found the elevators and went up to the third floor.

There we hit our first major snag. Room 329, or rather suite 329–331, was at the end of a corridor, as far away from the elevators as it was possible to get, and around two corners from them. It was impossible to keep an eye on the door, or doors, without lurking in the corridor looking extremely conspicuous.

Worse, the suite was directly across the hall from a fire exit. We looked at each other in silent dismay, and retreated to the elevator lobby.

‘We'll have to divide up,' said Alan.

‘Yes.' Jonathan nodded. ‘If you two can stay here at the lifts, I'll keep watch at the fire door.'

‘But Jonathan.' I hesitated. ‘I hate to mention it, but suppose Bert does try to get away, down the fire stairs. You might not be able to follow him, or . . .' I didn't want to say,
You can't run after him. Stairs are difficult for you. You might lose him.

His smug grin broadened. ‘You're being very tactful, Dorothy. But you see, I have a secret weapon.' He reached into his pocket and pulled out . . .

‘Your whistle?' Alan's voice was full of both amazement and amusement. ‘You've kept your whistle, all these years?'

‘My pride and joy,' he said. ‘It was the first piece of equipment issued to me when I joined the force. It got me out of trouble more than once when I was still doing foot patrols, and I wouldn't give it up for any price anyone could offer.'

He disappeared, limping slightly, but moving pretty well.

‘I can't believe this is the same man who was ready to end it all just a few days ago,' I said in that low voice that is so much less carrying than a whisper.

‘He was pining for want of something to do,' said Alan in the same tone. ‘That old fire horse you've cited before has heard the bell again, and he's ready to run. Now, do we have any plans worthy of the name?'

‘Not really,' I admitted. ‘The trouble is that there are too many scenarios. Jemima may or may not be with him. One or both of them may be our culprit. Or they may be hiding from Jarvis, if he's the villain of the piece, or if they think he is. Or even, if he's alone in there, Bert may simply be taking a little holiday, living in luxury. And the circumstances determine what we need to do.'

‘Mmm.' Another of those non-committal sounds. They don't always convey disapproval, and sometimes I can interpret them.

‘You think?' I asked.

‘Don't you?'

‘Yes, actually I do. It's time.'

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and pushed a single button. ‘Chief Superintendent Carstairs, please. Yes, I'll wait, but this is Alan Nesbitt calling. The matter concerns the St James's Park murder and is extremely urgent.'

My nerves tightened again.

‘Then call his mobile, or his home, or whatever you need to do. Now, please!'

I had never heard that tone of voice from Alan. Even I was intimidated; I could only imagine the effect on the person at Scotland Yard.

‘Carstairs. Nesbitt here. We have located Bert Higgins. He's at Claridge's, room 329. Jonathan is watching the door, but there is a fire escape . . . Yes, right away, if you please. Thank you, sir.' He put the phone away. ‘He's coming, with men. It's a bit tricky, you know, this being Claridge's. One can't simply storm—'

Jonathan's whistle sounded, shrill and urgent.

I looked at Alan in panic. ‘He's getting away!' I started to go to Jonathan's rescue, but Alan grabbed my arm and held me back. ‘No! This time I'll keep you safe even if I die for it!' Then, with great presence of mind, he did what I would never have dared: took the little hammer, broke the glass and pulled the fire alarm.

‘You think there's a fire?' I asked, terrified. A fire in a hotel, an old hotel . . .

‘No. But that'll fetch help faster than anything. If we're lucky, there'll be someone at the bottom of the fire stairs before Bob gets there.'

‘But we don't want them to . . . do we?'

‘It should work. I haven't time . . . ah.'

The approaching sirens sounded clearly over the internal fire alarms and the babble of voices. Doors along the corridor opened, heads popped out. Alan said, ‘I think the time has come for us to make a discreet exit. Yes, madam,' he said, raising his voice, ‘I believe it's a false alarm. No need to worry. Disgraceful, the way these systems fail even in the best hotels. No, I'm afraid the lifts aren't working, but I'm sure they will be soon. I'm going down to demand an explanation and an apology.'

He hurried me along. I was going to have a bruise on that arm. ‘Where are we going really?'

‘To help Jonathan. I pulled the alarm because, in any well-run hotel, there is a designated gathering place in case of fire, and the staff have the duty of making sure the guests go there instead of wandering off on their own. So we may be lucky enough to have Bert, possibly with Jemima, nicely penned up where we can have a talk with them. And if Jonathan is with them, so much the better. Can you run?'

‘I'll try!'

The best I could manage was a sort of trot (running on artificial knees isn't easy), but we made it down the long corridors and round the corners at reasonable speed, and paused at the fire door.

‘We may not be able to get out until we get to the bottom,' said Alan. ‘Will you be able to cope?'

He was referring to my claustrophobia. I gritted my teeth. ‘Lead on, Macduff.'

He went ahead of me, to cushion my fall in case I slipped, I supposed. I went as fast as I could, but three flights is a good many, and I was panting by the time we reached the exit door.

It stood wide open, and a considerable fracas was going on outside.

‘. . . an outrage! I am paying a king's ransom for accommodation here, and I do not expect to be treated—'

‘. . . sure we can work this—'

‘Don't be an ass, Bert, I'm only—'

‘I told you we should have—'

Alan stepped through the door and uttered the words I have longed for years to hear from an English policeman:

‘Now, then, what's going on here?'

S
ome hours later, I still wasn't sure. We were gathered in an interview room at Scotland Yard, that being the only space big enough to hold us all: Alan, me, Jonathan, Bert and Jemima, along with Chief Superintendent Carstairs and a couple of other police officers, whose names I never did catch.

It had taken us a while to get to this point. Alan and Carstairs had first had to apologize to the Claridge's management, who were, to a man, irate to the point of fury. This sort of thing simply Did Not Happen at their establishment. There was No Excuse for such behaviour. They obviously wanted to Refer This Matter to the Police (the phrase was trembling on the manager's lips), but were thwarted by the fact that the police, active and retired, were not only present in force, but were largely responsible for the situation in the first place. The discussion went on for some time, and it took all the diplomacy Alan and Carstairs could summon to soothe the ruffled feathers.

And now we were trying to sort out just what was ‘going on', and were having a rough time of it.

‘If a man can't take a bit of rest, a few days off at a nice hotel . . .' said Bert wearily, for perhaps the seventh time.

‘Certainly, sir,' said Carstairs genially, as he had said again and again. ‘But we're wondering about the devastation at your shop and flat, and what part that played in your decision to “rest”.' His tone put clear quotation marks around the last word.

‘How many times! I do not, repeat, do not know what you're talking about. I know nothing about any “devastation”, and would very much appreciate being allowed to go and see for myself.'

I kept still, with some difficulty, but I wondered if anyone uttering similar words to the police had ever, in the history of time, been telling the truth. What would I say, if the police were questioning me and I literally didn't have a clue? I thought I would be less worried about defending myself and more concerned about getting to the bottom of the mess. I would also, probably, cry. I hate it, but I do tend to cry when I'm extremely angry, and the tears make me angrier still.

Absorbed in my own thoughts, I missed part of the conversation, which had become repetitive and extremely tiresome. I was brought back to the present by a sudden silence, a distinct change in the atmosphere of the room. Everyone was looking at Jemima.

‘I've said so from the first.' Her tone was defiant.

‘But, my dear—'

‘I'm not your dear, Bert Higgins, and I'm going to tell the truth.' She turned to Alan. ‘I don't know why Bert is being so stupid about this. It's perfectly simple. He came to see me at the palace. I didn't want to see him. Why would I? But he insisted, so I came out, and he told me he knew who the father of Melissa's baby was.' She lost control of her voice for a moment, pressed her lips together, and looked down until she could speak again. ‘He said we should go to the police and tell them, and I agreed to go with him. He wanted to stop at his shop first. He wanted to give me back the other dog.'

She looked up to see if we knew what she was talking about, and Alan and I nodded. Alan murmured something to Carstairs, who seemed satisfied and gestured to Jemima to go on.

‘But when we got to the shop, it was a wreck. Everything smashed, even the . . . the dog.' Another pause.

I gave Alan a worried look. He exchanged glances with Carstairs.

‘I'm all right,' said Jemima, who plainly wasn't. ‘I want to get this over and go home. So then Bert told me he'd seen a man coming to the shop just before he left, and thought he'd wrecked the place. The man was the one Bert said was the father. He said it was too dangerous now to go to the police, that this man was a killer and now he was after Bert. I didn't understand, but he said we had to go into hiding so this man couldn't find us. I just kept saying we had to go to the police, and now here we are, and not before time, either.'

‘And who, Mr Higgins, is this man you believe to have fathered Melissa's child and ruined your shop?'

‘And killed my daughter, don't forget that! The name he's using now is Anthony Jarvis, but his real name is Andrew Welles. He's a paedophile, though he's never been convicted, and he's dangerous as hell, and Jemima and I will be bloody lucky if he doesn't kill us before it's all over, thanks to all of you!' His glare took in all of us.