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

"Now, about Mr. Beale—the gentleman who had occupied No. 14 that evening, had she ever seen him before?"

"Well, sir, I thought I had yesterday morning coming along the corridor with the manager, but the housekeeper said it was quite another gentleman, a Mr. Sikes she called him, but he certainly did look very like the American gentleman, as I said to him myself."

"Said to whom?"

"To the gentleman last night when I made up the room. He was sitting by the window, and I said to him that surely I had seen him earlier in the day—what I mean to say—"

"What did Mr. Beale say?" asked Pointer, feeling that flesh and blood could stand but little more of this damsel's conversation.

She could not remember what reply her remark had called forth, which was not surprising, since Mr. Beale, as a matter of fact, had received it in silence.

He could learn nothing more from her except that the hour when she had met the man whom she took to be Mr. Beale in company with the manager, had been some time during the lunch hour,—between one and two-thirty, in other words. All his skill in bringing the conversation around to the manager brought him no reward. She knew nothing of anyone's movements yesterday afternoon, so with a compliment on her clear way of stating facts she was dismissed.

Alone in the room, Pointer unlocked one of the two top drawers whose tidiness had struck him last night. He put his hand to the back and brought out a little box wrapped neatly in green and white striped paper. He compared it with the torn end which he had picked up in the manager's sitting-room. It was identical. The square in which a small box of pearl studs was folded was entire. It must have been from another piece this corner came. Had it also been wrapped around jewelery? He looked at the studs. They were small but good ones. Genuine as far as he could tell—at any rate the gold stems and general workmanship looked like a superior article. He took the little box from the drawer and promoted it to a resting place in his black bag, to be transferred on the morrow to his safe at the Yard. The piece of paper the manager had stepped on so promptly he put into an envelope beside it.

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POINTER had been certain from the first that Eames must have had some place not far from the hotel to which his correspondence was directed. Moreover, early that morning he had marked a small tobacconist in a poor street around the corner, quite out of the run of usual passers-by, as the most likely nook to which Eames would have had his letters sent. Since then he had learnt more. The paper, ruled in little squares—suggesting a foreign origin—the small, close writing like that used by Cox in the hotel register next door; Eames' eager interest on the last morning he had been alive, his whistling later in the same day, were all additional material for the mosaic the police had to fit together. Downstairs Pointer learnt that the only Mr. Sikes known to the hotel had been there a few times, but had never been seen to come in merely as a visitor. Neither the clerk nor the hall porter remembered seeing him yesterday. But as that had been an unusually strenuous time of welcoming coming and speeding parting guests, Mr. Sikes might have passed unnoticed, though both men thought this most unlikely. He certainly had not made himself known in any way.

On the register he was entered as a cycle-maker from Coventry. His description tallied with that of Mr. Beale as far as being a little, stout, reddish-haired, middle-aged man, though both clerk and porter ridiculed the idea of mistaking the one for the other.

The manager turned very sharply, almost as though with a start, when the Chief Inspector stopped him a little later with:

"I believe, sir, that a Mr. Sikes of Coventry often comes to your hotel. Was he here yesterday?"

The manager, as so often today, hesitated before answering the officer.

"I don't—I don't think so. No, no, I'm sure he was not. But why don't you look at the register?" This last in a tone of nervous irritation.

"Oh, he didn't stop in the house, but I thought he might have been in just the same."

"And what the devil has this Mr. Sikes to do with the affair which you are presumably investigating, Inspector?"

Pointer did not seem to hear the question, as with quick steps he passed on up the stairs and went at once in search of the housekeeper.

"Ah, I was on my way downstairs, but perhaps you can save me the trouble, Mrs. Green—" he beamed at her, and she beamed back at him, for he was a good-looking man.

"When Mr. Sikes was here on Saturday last, did you see him speaking to Mr. Eames at all?"

The housekeeper looked a little uncertain of her ground.

"Well, sir, I don't know the gentleman you're speaking of—Mr. Sikes—I haven't ever seen him."

"Not know Mr. Sikes?" Pointer's tone, though casual, showed his surprise.

"I've only been here two weeks, sir."

"Then you don't know the gentleman I mean even by sight?"

"I saw the manager and a gentleman whom he told me afterwards was a Mr. Sikes—but more than that I couldn't say, sir," and Mrs. Green, looking as though she would have preferred to say still less, tried to walk on, but he blocked the way.

"Just a moment. I particularly want to find out any friends of Mr. Eames, and I've reason to believe that he and this Mr. Sikes knew each other. The manager—I've just spoken to him"—Pointer was always glad to find even a crumb of truth which he could mix in with business—"doesn't remember whether Mr. Sikes went into Mr. Eames' room or not."

"You mean afterwards, sir?" Mrs. Green's suspicions of the police were again lulled. "The two gentlemen left Mr. Eames' room together and went on into the other balcony rooms. Mr. Sikes was looking for a room for his wife and family, but I had an idea—well, I thought the manager didn't want it talked about: you know he has to make special terms to some; but there, of course as he spoke to you about it, why, there can't be any harm in my referring to it—but whether the gentleman with him came back later and saw Mr. Eames or spoke to him downstairs is more than I can say; and now I must go, sir, or goodness knows what the girls will be up to in the linen-room." And go she did this time.

A message reached Watts on his return from rescuing the family hats from the monkeys which caused him to take the evening train to Coventry, there to learn as much as possible about its doubtless worthy citizen, Sikes.

Miller, who had been sent across to have a chat with the porters of the large block of flats opposite, brought back no grist for the official mill. But he had allowed it to leak out, in accordance with instructions, that there had been a robbery at the Enterprise, and that "the party interested" would pay for any information as to the thief who had escaped, possibly with a bag, either by way of the balcony or by the little side-door on Saturday afternoon.

"It's going to be a regular November Special," Pointer said to O'Connor on his return to his rooms, "or all the signs deceive me."

"D'ye mean to tell me that the criminal is still at large after all this time—close on twenty-four hours! Let me have the facts, Watson; sure Sherlock Holmes will give you a leg-up with pleasure," and "Sherlock Holmes" assumed a judicial attitude.

Pointer carefully went over the knotty points unearthed during the day. "There's Cox..." the Scotland Yard man was evidently telling over his pieces, "who takes a room at the Marvel and uses it for a couple of hours...he's in the center of the puzzle. Yes, he's that little gold ball you can just see." He glanced up at the Chinese puzzle above his head.

"Why d'ye place him there? Because you found that wax vesta in his room?" grunted O'Connor, who was for the moment a profound pessimist. His stamp had just slipped on a valuable piece of leather.