Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

“We didn’t know it was a case,” the second policeman said as they emerged from the revolving door into the hotel’s reception area. He said the word “case” with a heavy-handed touch of sarcasm. “Thought it was just a simple break-in.”

“Yes, well,” Broadhurst continued. “That’s the way it looked, and Inspector Mishkin and I decided to keep it that way until things made a little more sense.”

“And have they now?” the second policeman asked.

Broadhurst hit the bell on the reception desk.

“Look at it this way,” the policeman said, turning from the desk and looking the two uniforms in the eye. “Whoever broke in through the window managed to trash the place and then place all the broken glass on top of the wrecked office.” He nodded, smiling. “That’s a pretty good trick, don’t you think?”

“So-”

“So,” Broadhurst continued, watching the main staircase as a young man appeared and started down, “the ‘vandal’ clearly had access to the centre and wanted to cover up the fact that they had been there. Now that reason could be simply a matter of their wanting to fight the animal testing, kind of like a fifth columnist, or it could be another reason. I think we now have that reason-although the reason itself must have a reason – and that’s what I now bloody well intend to find out.”

“Yes, sir?” the young man said as he reached the bottom of the stairs and approached the three men at the desk. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Is Mister Poke around?” Broadhurst asked. “I gave him something to look after for me.”

The man nodded and moved around the desk. “I’ll give him a call, sir,” he said.

As Harriet Merkinson was swinging gently from side to side in the hallway of the house she shared with her sister, Hilda Merkinson slipped quietly into the back door of the Regal.

“Hello, Miss Merkinson,” Sidney Poke said. His tone was quite reverential, a tone he would use when speaking with anyone who had been at the previous evening’s party, and particularly those who had been closely involved with the tragic death of Arthur Clark.

Hilda nodded. “I wondered,” she said, “if you had found anything this morning. When you were cleaning up, I mean.”

Sidney frowned attentively. “Have you-” The ring of his mobile phone interrupted him. “Excuse me just a minute,” he said, pulling his phone from his side pocket. He pressed a button and said, “Yes?”

Hilda looked around as Poke listened on the phone.

“Right,” he said. “I’ll get it and bring it through.” He waited another few seconds and then said, “Very well, I’ll meet them on the way.”

“Now,” Poke said as he returned the phone to his pocket. “Where we were? Ah yes, have you lost something?”

They started walking slowly through the ballroom, which was now cleared. Tables were folded and leaning against the far wall; chairs were stacked in towering piles in front of the stage; and an army of young men and woman were busy with vacuum cleaners, criss-crossing the floor, their attention fixed on the carpet.

“My handbag,” Hilda shouted above the drone of the cleaners. “I think I must have left it last night.” Poke nodded and looked around absently. “In all the excitement,” Hilda added, suddenly wondering if “excitement” were the correct word to use under the circumstances.

“Ah!” Sidney Poke motioned Hilda towards a small occasional table set up by the door leading out to the toilets. The table contained a few jackets plus an assortment of bags.

“All those were left last night?” Hilda said in astonishment.

Poke gave an approximation of a laugh sounding more like a snort. “No, these belong to the cleaners,” he said, “but your bag – if you did leave it, and if it has been found-is most likely here as anywhere.”

As they reached the table, Hilda saw her bag. Her heart rose-or surfaced… or whatever it was that hearts did that was the opposite to sinking – and she reached out for it, careful not to appear too anxious. “That’s it,” she said triumphantly.

She picked up the bag and unfastened the sneck. She removed her purse, noting with grim satisfaction that the small bottle was still there, nestled in the bottom amongst Kleenex tissues, lipstick, comb and all the other rudiments of a woman’s handbag, and flipped it open. “There,” she announced, proudly displaying her library card, “just to show it’s mine.”

Hilda replaced the card and dropped the purse back into the depths of the handbag. Fastening the sneck, she said, “Well, I’ll get off then.”

Sidney Poke nodded. He took her arm and gently led her towards the main door that went on to the toilets and out to the reception area.

“How are you today? I mean, how are you feeling?”

Hilda made a face. “Oh,” she said, “you mean after-”

Poke nodded with the quietly attentive air of an undertaker.

“It was my sister. It was Harriet who collapsed. Not me.”

“Ah.” He pushed open the door and ushered her through ahead of him. “Well, I’ll leave you here, if that’s okay, Miss Merkinson.” Poke stopped at a desk in a small recess and shuffled in his pocket. He produced a set of keys and set about opening the desk’s deep drawer. “We’re running a little behind, what with-you know.”

Hilda nodded, watching Poke reach around into the drawer.

Somewhere far off, but coming closer, she could hear footsteps.

“Ah, here it is,” Poke grunted. “Must have pushed it further back than I thought.” His back to Hilda, Poke pulled out a small bundle and closed the drawer.

The footsteps were getting closer. Hilda tried to ignore the yawning staircase on her right, the fabled 45 steps that led down to the Gentlemen’s toilets. Deep in her mind, the footsteps belonged to Arthur Clark as he descended less than 12 hours earlier to empty his bowel and meet his end… except they seemed to be coming towards her rather than away from her. She shook her head and turned back to see the Hotel manager holding a toilet roll enclosed in a polythene bag.

“Right then,” Poke was saying, though his words sounded like rushing water in Hilda’s ears. Rushing water and footsteps, now getting very close-echoing-as though there were more than just Arthur coming back.

Poke moved the bag from one hand to the other as he returned the keys to his pocket. Hilda frowned at the bag, looked at Poke, smiled awkwardly, and turned around to face the toilet steps, half expecting to see Arthur climbing up to see her, to ask her why she had done what she had done, and bringing other people with him, friends of his, friends who- wanted toilet paper…

– wanted to talk to her and smooth her troubled brow with grave-cold hands. She turned sharply, took a couple of steps in the direction of the reception area and then stopped. There were figures approaching, figures making footstep-sounds. Her initial relief at discovering that the footsteps didn’t belong to her sister’s fancy man quickly evaporated when Malcolm Broadhurst called out to her.

“Ah, one of the Misses Merkinson.” Broadhurst’s tone was cheery. There were two policemen with him. “Now which one are you?”

Hilda started to speak and then, clutching her bag tightly, she spun around. Behind her, Sidney Poke was still standing by the doors leading into the ballroom, the toilet roll in his hand.

“Miss Merkinson?”

Hilda looked all around, clutching the bag even tighter, willing it to disappear… willing it to be a week earlier, willing there to have been no rain so that Jack Wilson’s General Store had not been flooded and Harriet had not had to stay and so Hilda had not gone for the fish and chips and so met Arthur who believed that she was her own sister… willing herself, back seven years ago, not to take the job at the animal testing centre… so many things. So many opportunities for her to have avoided this single instant.