At Bertram's Hotel - Christie Agatha - Страница 34

Chief Inspector Davy went down on one knee. His torch came out. The tall hish commissionaire had fallen like a soldier. The left-hand side of his tunic showed a wet patch that was growing wetter as the blood oozed out into the cloth. Davy rolled up an eyelid, touched a wrist. He rose to his feet again.

"He's had it all right," he said.

The girl gave a sharp cry. "Do you mean he's dead? Oh no, no! He can't be dead."

"Who was it shot at you?"

"I don't know… I'd left my car just round the corner and was feeling my way along by the railings- I was going to Bertram's Hotel. And then suddenly there was a shot-and a bullet went past my cheek and then-he-the doorman from Bertram's-came running down the street towards me, and shoved me behind him, and then another shot came…. I think- I think whoever it was must have been hiding in that area there."

Chief Inspector Davy looked where she pointed. At this end of Bertram's Hotel there was an old-fashioned area below the level of the street, with a gate and some steps down to it. Since it gave only on some store rooms it was not much used. But a man could have hidden there easily enough.

"You didn't see him?"

"Not properly. He rushed past me like a shadow. It was all thick fog."

Davy nodded.

The girl began to sob hysterically.

"But who could possibly want to kill me? Why should anyone want to kill me? That's the second time. I don't understand… Why?"

One arm round the girl, Chief Inspector Davy fumbled in his pocket with the other hand.

The shrill notes of a police whistle penetrated the mist.

In the lounge of Bertram's Hotel, Miss Gorringe had looked up sharply from the desk.

One or two of the visitors had looked up also. The older and deafer did not look up.

Henry, about to lower a glass of old brandy to a table, stopped poised with it still in his hand.

Miss Marple sat forward, clutching the arms of her chair.

"Accident!" a retired admiral said decisively. "Cars collided in the fog, I expect."

The swing doors from the street were pushed open. Through them came what seemed like an outsize policeman, looking a good deal larger than life.

He was supporting a girl in a pale fur coat. She seemed hardly able to walk. The policeman looked round for help with some embarrassment.

Miss Gorringe came out from behind the desk, prepared to cope. But at that moment the elevator came down. A tall figure emerged, and the girl shook herself free from the policeman's support, and ran frantically across the lounge.

"Mother," she cried. "Oh Mother, Mother…" and threw herself, sobbing, into Bess Sedgwick's arms.

21

Chief Inspector Davy settled himself back in his chair and looked at the two women sitting opposite him. It was past midnight. Police officials had come and gone. There had been doctors, fingerprint men, an ambulance to remove the body; and now everything had narrowed to this one room dedicated for the purposes of the Law by Bertram's Hotel. Chief Inspector Davy sat one side of the table. Bess Sedgwick and Elvira sat the other side. Against the wall a policeman sat unobtrusively writing. Detective Sergeant Wadell sat near the door.

Father looked thoughtfully at the two women facing him. Mother and daughter. There was, he noted, a strong superficial likeness between them. He could understand how for one moment in the fog he had taken Elvira Blake for Bess Sedgwick. But now, looking at them, he was more struck by the points of difference than the points of resemblance. They were not really alike save in colouring, yet the impression persisted that here he had a positive and a negative version of the same personality. Everything about Bess Sedgwick was positive. Her vitality, her energy, her magnetic attraction. He admired Lady Sedgwick. He always had admired her. He had admired her courage and had always been excited over her exploits; had said, reading his Sunday papers: "She'll never get away with that," and invariably she had got away with it! He had not thought it possible that she would reach journey's end and she had reached journey's end. He admired particularly the indestructible quality of her. She had had one air crash, several car crashes, had been thrown badly twice from her horse, but at the end of it here she was. Vibrant, alive, a personality one could not ignore for a moment. He took off his hat to her mentally. Some day, of course, she would come a cropper. You could only bear a charmed life for so long. His eyes went from mother to daughter. He wondered. He wondered very much.

In Elvira Blake, he thought, everything had been driven inward. Bess Sedgwick had got through life by imposing her will on it. Elvira, he guessed, had a different way of getting through life. She submitted, he thought. She obeyed. She smiled in compliance and behind that, he thought, she slipped away through your fingers. "Sly," he said to himself, appraising that fact. "That's the only way she can manage, I expect. She can never brazen things out or impose herself. That's why, I expect, the people who've looked after her have never had the least idea of what she might be up to."

He wondered what she had been doing slipping along the street to Bertram's Hotel on a late foggy evening. He was going to ask her presently. He thought it highly probable that the answer he would get would not be the true one. That's the way, he thought, that the poor child defends herself. Had she come here to meet her mother or to find her mother? It was perfectly possible, but he didn't think so. Not for a moment. Instead he thought of the big sports car tucked away round the corner-the car with the number plate FAN 2266. Ladislaus Malinowski must be somewhere in the neighbourhood since his car was there.

"Well," said Father, addressing Elvira in his most kindly and fatherlike manner, "well, and how are you feeling now?"

"I'm quite all right," said Elvira.

"Good. I'd like you to answer a few questions if you feel up to it; because, you see, time is usually the essence of these things. You were shot at twice and a man was killed. We want as many clues as we can get to the person who killed him."

"I'll tell you everything I can, but it all came so suddenly. And you can't see anything in a fog. I've no idea myself who it could have been-or even what he looked like. That's what was so frightening."

"You said this was the second time somebody had tried to kill you. Does that mean there was an attempt on your life before?"

"Did I say that? I can't remember." Her eyes moved uneasily. "I don't think I said that."

"Oh, but you did, you know," said Father.

"I expect I was just being-being hysterical."

"No," said Father, "I don't think you were. I think you meant just what you said."

"I might have been imagining things," said Elvira. Her eyes shifted again.

Bess Sedgwick moved. "You'd better tell him, Elvira," she said quietly.

Elvira shot a quick, uneasy look at her mother.

"You needn't worry," said Father reassuringly. "We know quite well in the police force that girls don't tell their mothers or their guardians everything. We don't take those things too seriously, but we've got to know about them, because, you see, it all helps."

"Was it in Italy?" Bess Sedgwick said.

"Yes," said Elvira.

Father said, "That's where you've been at school, isn't it, or to a finishing place or whatever they call it nowadays?"

"Yes. I was at Contessa Martinelli's. There were about eighteen or twenty of us."

"And you thought that somebody tried to kill you. How was that?"

"Well, a big box of chocolates and sweets and things came for me. There was a card with it written in Italian in a flowery hand. The sort of thing they say, you know, 'To the bellissiina Signorina.' Something like that. And my friends and I-well, we laughed about it a bit, and wondered who'd sent it."