David Dickinson - Death in a Scarlet Coat

‘Maybe the old boy forgot about Carlton, sir. Maybe he didn’t even know he’d gone.’

‘It’s possible. But think about it. If he had mentioned a hotel but with no name and a theatre with no name we could never have checked anything at all. London has too many hotels and too many theatres.’

‘Maybe they had worked out that we would come and ask for the names of the hotel and the theatre. Maybe that was the whole point of the trip to London, to give themselves an alibi.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald darkly. ‘I don’t like it one little bit.’

Twenty minutes later they were inside White’s Hotel, one of the newest and grandest in the capital. A short walk across an enormous entrance hall and halfway down a long corridor lined with hunting prints led them to a door labelled General Manager, James Thomas. The bearer of the title was remarkably young, scarcely over thirty, Johnny thought. He heard their request for information very seriously and without interruption, making a few notes with a gold pen in a small black notebook.

‘A murder case,’ he said quietly, ‘and the key events all some time ago. I do hope none of our guests were involved. Now then, I am going to send for the people most likely to have had dealings with these Lawrences.’ He rang a small bell and a very young man with ginger hair appeared, dressed in the regulation white shirt and dark red uniform. Johnny thought he might be even younger than Constable Merrick, if such a thing were possible.

‘Tom,’ said the hotel manager, ‘can you bring the following people here to my office: the reservations manager with his ledgers for the last couple of months, the head waiter who was on duty on the evening of Wednesday the sixth and Thursday the seventh of October together with the waiter who served the Lawrences those two evenings, the same for the waiter at breakfast the following morning, the chambermaid who made up their rooms and the head porter who was on duty the evenings they were here. He may remember ordering a cab.’

Tom duly departed. ‘Can he remember all that, your young man Tom?’ asked Johnny incredulously. ‘Without taking a note?’

‘He can remember a lot more than that,’ the hotel manager smiled. ‘He has what they call a photographic memory and great ability in mathematics. He’s more than helpful with the accounts. Tom came to us from Hoxton, where his father is a successful bookmaker. Maybe that has something to do with it. I have just engaged a tutor to see how great his potential is. If he is as promising as we think, I hope to persuade the directors to pay for him to be educated up to the point where he can go to university.’

Constable Merrick was having one of the best days of his life. He was to give his parents a limited account of the hotel personnel: the bent old man with a tiny white beard and a twinkle in his eye who divulged the facts about the Lawrence reservations; the waiters, one French with a moustache, one Italian with a beard, at dinner and at breakfast who reported them as a perfectly normal family; the chambermaid who had made up their beds and reported that all the beds the Lawrences were meant to be in had been slept in on both nights; the head porter who had indeed booked them a cab. All had recognized the Lawrences from the wedding photograph. All, except the head porter, recognized the middle Mr Lawrence as being present on all occasions, though the head porter who had ordered the cab couldn’t be sure as it was dark. The one curious thing was the booking. That had originally been made for the Wednesday night only. The rooms were booked some six days before. Then the second night was added the day the party arrived. Constable Merrick wrote it all down, wishing he had young Tom’s powers of recall.

James Thomas brought them to a quiet corner of the reception area when the evidence had been presented and ordered them some coffee. ‘You may wish to think about what the staff just told you. With most people this kind of detail can take a while to sink in. And you may well think of one or two other people you wish to talk to or a question you wish to ask. Just come back and knock on my door if you do.’

The porters performed their arabesques across the carpet, with trays and cake holders and glasses. The clientele wandered in and looked as if they owned the place. Dotted about the huge room, usually in corners, were enormous potted plants with flowers of green and red.

‘Let’s pretend, young Andrew, that the purpose of this trip was to provide an alibi for somebody, almost certainly Carlton Lawrence, the middle one. Why did they add an extra day to their stay in the hotel? What made them change their mind? Something in London? Something in Lincolnshire? And what was Carlton Lawrence doing back in Boston station on the Thursday? How do we find out if our man could have got back to London in time to sleep in his hotel bed?’

‘I’ve thought of that one, sir. Somebody else could have slept in their bed for half the night and Carlton could have slept there for the other half. But I’ve got the train times. I took them down in the station while we were waiting for the express earlier today.’

Constable Merrick consulted his notes and appeared to be carrying out some powerful calculations in his head. ‘How about this, sir? There’s a train from London to Boston that arrives at three ten. There’s a train from Lincoln to Boston that comes in at three fifteen – Oliver Bell could have seen Carlton Lawrence at the station while one got on and the other got off. There’s a train back to London, leaving Boston at four fifteen, arriving at eight thirty. That’s pretty slow – it must have stopped everywhere. So he could have done it, gone up and down to London, I mean, our man Carlton Lawrence. But why would he want to go back to Boston or Candlesby for an hour or so? And another thing, sir. We don’t have any definite proof that Carlton Lawrence came back to White’s at all. Various witnesses, including Oliver Bell, report seeing him at the station. Nobody reports him leaving Boston on a London train.’

Johnny had a different thought. It was a question for hotel manager James Thomas. Had the Lawrences received any telegrams while they were staying at the Ritz? Yes, they had, came the answer: just one, at five fifteen on the first evening, despatched from Boston, Lincolnshire.

Their last request at White’s Hotel was for a further word with the head porter about the Thursday evening. Johnny showed the Lawrence photographs once more. ‘I know it’s a long time ago,’ he began, ‘but do you remember Mr Carlton Lawrence, this gentleman here, coming into the hotel on his own during the evening?’

There was a pause while the head porter scanned through his memory. Johnny Fitzgerald and Constable Merrick waited patiently. An ordinary porter walked past them with a small briefcase in his hand.

‘That’s it!’ said the head porter. ‘He was carrying a briefcase, rather larger than the one that’s just gone by. Your gentleman, Carlton Lawrence I think you said he was called, came into the hotel about a quarter to nine in the evening in question, the Thursday, I’m sure of it. He went out again about five minutes later without the briefcase. He must have dropped it off in his room.’

John Galsworthy’s Strife was still playing at the Savoy Theatre. The staff, accustomed perhaps to watching detective plays on the stage, were quick to grasp the nature of their inquiries.

One usher reported that she had taken the Lawrences into the theatre and directed them to their box on the first floor. Another remembered bringing them the programmes and making sure they were comfortable.

She was able to recognize about half the party from the photographs. She said her memory for people wasn’t as good as some of the girls who could recall faces they had shown to their seats the year before, but she thought there had been one empty seat in the box at the start of the play. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought all the seats were full at the end. That was all. Carlton Lawrence, when pointed out in the photograph, could have been there or he could not. She couldn’t be sure. That was all she had to say.