Dorothy Fielding - Chief Inspector Pointer's Cases - 12 Golden Age Murder Mysteries

"I see. Yes, I see." But obviously it took the manager some effort to focus his mental gaze. "Well, I was all over the place." He named his various movements.

The Chief Inspector's pen flew over the paper.

"That's all, thank you, sir. Will you send me the booking-clerk—unless I'm taking up this room?"

The manager's one desire was that the Chief Inspector should stay in seclusion. Once let a suspicion get about in the hotel that the police were turned loose in it—he thought of them as he might have of the elements of fire or water—and gone would be the hum and stir as of a prosperous hive which rose from all around them.

The story told by the booking-clerk was equally simple.

"Eight days ago—on July twenty-fifth,—about noon, a young man carrying a bag had come into the hotel and asked for a single room on the first floor facing the front. None of these were free for the moment. He had refused to take another, had deposited ten shillings, and asked them to keep him the first one that should be free, giving his name as Reginald Eames. He was back about six o'clock. Meanwhile one had fallen vacant—number fourteen. He took it without looking at it, and registered."

"All your rooms are the same price, I believe?"

"Yes, all. Here's his entry."

The Chief Inspector read, "Reginald Eames. Dentist. Manchester." He compared the writing carefully with the letter found on the dead man.

"I shall want to have that signature photographed," was his only comment. "Well?"

"Well, that's all. I saw him about a bit. He spent all his time in the lounge. This morning I met him at lunch in the restaurant. Seems funny that a man should bother with a meal a few hours before he intends to chuck the whole thing."

The Chief Inspector was not interested in philosophic abstractions. "When did he lunch?"

"I entered at half-past one, just as he was leaving. That's everything I know about the chap except that someone 'phoned up at five o'clock to say that Mr. Eames, of room number fourteen, wished to let us know that he wouldn't be back till Monday morning, as he was spending the week-end in the country with a friend."

"Are you sure of the time?"

The clerk shook his head. "Only there or thereabouts. It wasn't much past, for the five o'clock post hadn't come in, nor much before, for I come on duty at five after my tea, and I had just got back."

"The manager was talking to you when the message came, I understand?"

"Was he? Possibly. I don't remember."

"You think he wasn't?"

"I thought he came up after the post got in. But, of course, I may be wrong. One day's so like another."

"But I understand that he, too, heard the 'phone?"

"He might have done that—the 'phone is to one side of the desk—but I didn't see him."

"Did Mr. Eames give any reason as to why he was determined to have one of the first floor rooms looking into the street?"

"None whatever."

"Were the rooms you offered him instead as good?"

"One was better."

"Has he ever stayed in the hotel before?"

"No."

"Sure?"

"Quite. I came here when the hotel opened."

"Isn't there a balcony running all along your front rooms on the first floor, and also along the rooms of the Marvel Hotel next door?"

"Yes. Both hotels belong to the same management." The Chief Inspector seemed plunged in thought for a moment. "By the way, before I forget it, from which direction did the manager come when he spoke to you after Eames' 'phone had been taken? I want to get the whole scene clear in my mind."

"From the direction of the stairs."

"And now about the voice over the 'phone—it wasn't Eames himself, you think?"

"Sure it wasn't. This sounded like an old chap with a cold in his head."

"Wheezy?"

"More than that. Funniest voice—sort of muffled—I should know it again anywhere."

"A disguised voice," wrote the Chief Inspector.

"Had Eames any friends?"

"Never saw him speak to a soul."

"Did any letters come for him?"

"Not a card."

"How would you say that, generally speaking, he spent his time in the hotel?"

"Smoking cigarettes in the lounge. Of course we've had rotten weather, but I don't think Mr. Eames was out of the house for more than ten minutes at a stretch."

"Did he go out often?"

"Always after each meal. Acted as though he intended to live to be a hundred. And to think that all the time he meant to commit suicide! Why, he might have had any kind of a bust-up." The booking-clerk evidently considered that Eames had wasted a rare chance.

"Now about Mr. Beale's arrival?"

But there the booking-clerk could tell the Chief Inspector nothing fresh.

"And now I want to know what luggage, however small, left the hotel after mid-day today. I'm afraid I'll have to have the day-porter routed out, too."

"I can tell you from the books that there were no departures today after twelve o'clock. As a matter of fact, not a bag left the hotel after a quarter-past eleven. It's one of our strictest rules that nothing leaves a room without first 'phoning down to the clerk to find out if it's all O.K."

"But what about the people in the hotel taking out their bags themselves?"

"Oh, that,—of course—but not this afternoon." The clerk thought back, "You see it's a small hotel, and I'm paid to keep my eyes open. Nobody took out any bag bigger than a woman's wrist-bag after one o'clock. There's no business doing of a Saturday afternoon. The day-porter's gone home and won't be visible till Monday."

"What about when you're off duty, Mr. Page?"

"The manager relieves me for two hours at noon, from one to three, but as the dining-room opens out of the hall, and my table is just by the glass door, I'm as good as in the hall. At seven o'clock the hall-porter takes my place till seven-thirty. But, as I say, I've my eyes on the hall all the time, and if there's any crush I'm out in two twos."

The clerk yawned dismally, and Pointer, with a laugh, let him go, after having him write down the names of any of the occupants of the five balcony rooms which were not known to the management from other visits. There were only two. Numbers eleven and twelve; and of these, number eleven was "expecting to leave" daily.

"Now, who do I see about the service-stairs—who is supposed to keep an eye on them?"

"The housekeeper. She's still up; I'll send her to you."

The housekeeper assured him that at noon by Saturday the service-door just beyond the manager's suite was duly locked and bolted. After that hour it could only be used with her consent and approval. The lower door in the basement—the delivery door proper—was, of course, another matter. The key of the upper door hung in the maids' sitting-room just opposite,—a small room used especially by the maid who waited on the manager.

"That door leads to the maids' sitting-room and to the service-stairs, doesn't it?"

The Chief Inspector pointed to a door opening out of the manager's little lobby. He opened it as he spoke—not for the first time that night.

The housekeeper looked surprised. "Bless me, sir, it doesn't take you police gentlemen long to find your way about."

"And that is the door leading into the street, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

"It's not locked now."

"Oh, yes, it is, sir." She laid a confident hand on it to turn in bewilderment as it opened easily.

"Why—why—someone must have undone it!"

"Just so," agreed Pointer dryly. "And the key?"

She opened a door facing the street entrance, and switched on the light. "There it is, hanging where I put it at twelve o'clock."

Pointer raised a weary eyebrow, but he said nothing, and made his way to the lounge, where, after asking both the manager and Mr. Beale to hold themselves in readiness for any possible further questions tomorrow morning, he joined Watts upstairs and spent a strenuous hour with him.