The Best of British Crime omnibus (10 page)

Presently Jeff came back, looking a little the worse for wear. ‘I can't drag her away,' he said. His speech was slurred and he was evidently feeling sorry for himself. ‘Type-writer's red-hot – won't stop for a second – never saw such boloney.' He seized a blonde. ‘Baby, let's dance.'

It was a quick foxtrot, and we let ourselves go. The girls knew some of the words and sang them. Vera had woken up and was dirging the tune about half a bar behind. Every now and again there were uncontrollable collisions and much loud laughter. We were all pretty buzzed. When the record ended I could just hear Mullett moving into his peroration.

Suddenly there was a loud hammering on the door and an agitated cry. I was nearest, so I opened it. Nikolai was standing there, wringing his hands and almost incoherent with distress. ‘
Gospodeen
Verney,' he gasped, ‘please come – oh, it's terrible,
terrible.
His old face was as white as his apron.

‘What is it – what's happened?'

‘
Gospodeen
Mullett – he's had an accident, a shocking accident. In his room. Oh,
bozhe moi
, I think he's dead.'

I knew there must be some mistake, but that wasn't the moment to argue. Mullett's door was open and I rushed in, with Jeff at my heels and the others crowding behind.

Well, it was Mullett all right! I thought at first that I must be having hallucinations, but there was no mistake. He was lying crumpled up near the table, and on the carpet beside his head there was a huge patch of blood. I bent over him and saw that he was quite dead. Strewn beside him were the shattered fragments of a mineral-water bottle. A wallet protruded from his inner breast pocket as though it had been hastily stuffed back, and papers were strewn beside him.

‘My God,' I said, ‘he's been bashed with a bottle. He's been murdered!' At that moment, the radio voice outside suddenly stopped. It was uncanny.

‘That broadcast must have been a recording,' said Jeff. He was looking rather white, and the shock had sobered him completely. ‘Well, bud – we've got a story at last!'

There was a brief moment of quiet after that. The girls had rushed out of the room, Waterhouse had gone off to get the manager, and Potts to knock up a doctor who lived on his floor. The agency fellows were questioning Nikolai in the corridor and momentarily Jeff and I were left alone. Jeff gazed around and suddenly said, ‘What's that on the floor? Quick, grab it!' I pounced. It was a sealed envelope, unstamped, and it was addressed in Russian typing to ‘Miss Perdita Manning, Astoria Hotel.' I showed it to Jeff and on impulse slipped it into my pocket. He nodded approval.

Then everything started to happen at once. People were appearing from all directions and in a few moments pandemonium had broken loose. A chambermaid looked in and went out screaming and Schofield shot across the corridor from his room opposite and Tanya burst in wanting to know what on earth was happening and took one look at Mullett's head and collapsed in a faint. The floor manageress arrived and Waterhouse with the manager and presently the doctor turned up and Islwyn and Bolting and hordes of Russians. Perdita came in and said ‘Oh my God how horrible!' and went out looking as though she were going to be sick. The babel was unspeakable both inside and outside the room. In the middle of all the confusion a man arrived from the Radio Centre with of all things a packet for Mullett.

I took advantage of the temporary chaos to have a look round the room and try to fix the scene in my mind. The room itself was practically a replica of mine except that everything was the other way round. There was a tray on the floor by the door – Nikolai's tray – with a full bottle of mineral water on it. There was a screwed-up hand towel lying near the body and when I looked in the bathroom I saw that Mullett's hand towel was missing. I glanced automatically at the balcony windows but of course like everyone else's they were sealed. There were no clues that I could see unless you counted a soaking-wet two-day-old copy of
Pravda
and an empty tin with a trace of water at the bottom which I unearthed from the waste-paper basket and put back there. Apart from a framed picture of Stalin that hung slightly askew on the wall and looked as though it might have been jerked out of place there were no indications of a struggle. I'd have liked to go over the room with a fine comb but in a few moments a couple of militiamen arrived and after some noisy argument we were all drummed out into the corridor. The door was closed on Mullett and whatever secrets his room held, and one of the militia-men mounted guard over it. The other instructed us not to leave but made no attempt to question anybody. Higher authority was evidently being invoked.

The newspapermen were trying to get as much information as they could while the opportunity lasted. Nikolai had already told his story. He had, it seemed, been crossing the fourth floor landing soon after nine o'clock on his way to the kitchen when Mullett had stepped from the lift and called to him to bring a fresh bottle of mineral water to his room. Nikolai had collected the mineral water and some vodka for two other rooms and had taken it along the corridor. Mullett's door had been ajar. He'd knocked, and as he'd received no reply he'd gone in, intending to leave the new bottle and take away the old one. He'd seen Mullett lying on the floor soaked in blood, and had come straight along to tell us. He was asked if he'd seen anyone else in the corridor at the time and he said he didn't think so, but he was evidently badly shaken and not in the best condition to remember.

It was almost impossible to get anything like a clear picture of events because of all the chatter and confusion, but the floor manageress, who had been sitting at her desk near the lift, made an interesting contribution. It was actually to the manager she was talking, but we hovered on the edge of the conversation and they were both too knocked off-balance to bother about us. It seemed that Mullett had stopped to collect his key from her in the usual way and that as he'd turned to leave, Mrs Clarke had appeared on the landing in a rather noisy state. Mullett had rebuked her for her behaviour and Mrs Clarke had been extremely abusive in reply. She'd followed him and continued to abuse him as he went off to his room.

I looked around for Mrs Clarke, but she was one of the delegates who hadn't put in an appearance. It seemed worthwhile to find out what had happened to her, so I slipped along to her room to see if she was there. She was, but she evidently wasn't in a condition to come to the door. All the reply I got was a slurred ‘Lemme alone, can't you?' I called through the door and told her there'd been an accident, but even that didn't register. Finally I gave it up and returned to the throng in the corridor.

The man from the Radio Centre was still clutching his package and looking as though he didn't know what to do about it. I stopped to talk to him, thinking that perhaps he could clear up the mystery of the Mullett broadcast. He turned out not to be a Russian, except by adoption – he was actually, judging by his slight cockney accent, a Londoner.

‘Oh, yes,' he said, in a quick, rather ingratiating voice, ‘I can tell you about Mr Mullett. You see, he came along about seven to rehearse his talk, but his Russian was so bad that we didn't dare let him go on the air 'live.' He was meant to, but Mr Kolarov wouldn't risk it. It was a good thing he didn't, too, because we had to make three recordings before we got a passable one.' He gave an agitated glance in the direction of the crowd. ‘It's a terrible thing about Mr Mullett, isn't it?'

I agreed that it was.

He tapped the package. ‘I brought this record for him – his talk, you know. Mr Kilarov thought he'd like it, so I was sent after him. I'm really the assistant announcer. I suppose the only thing is to take it back when the police'll let me.' He shot another quick glance to his right and left and licked his lips.

I thanked him for his information and passed on. Jeff was back in the corridor, busily trying to piece things together, but he hadn't been able to find out much. Apparently none of the delegates had seen or heard anything that threw any light on the murder. Perdita, Bolting, Thomas and Schofield had been in their rooms all the evening. Cressey who had turned up in the middle of all the confusion, had been taking a solitary walk round the Kremlin walls. Of Tranter there was still no sign, and nobody seemed to have any idea where he was.

In about fifteen minutes higher authority began to arrive, and thereafter kept on arriving in a steady stream. First came a bunch of obvious plain-clothes men whom I took to be the equivalent of our C.I.D. I'd have given a lot to watch them at work, but they disappeared into Mullett's room with cameras and little attaché-cases and an Iron Curtain closed down behind them. Meanwhile, high officials were arriving in droves, all very grave and anxious – the president of VOKS and Mirnova to soothe and shepherd the delegation, and several chaps from the Soviet Foreign Office, and the head of the Sovinformburo, and others whom none of us knew and who were probably ‘big-shot' security officers from the M.V.D. After a while a stocky little man with a bald head and shrewd grey eyes and an air of authority started to sort us out and ask questions. He did it in the smoothest way, and seemed most anxious not to offend. The questioning took a long time, but as far as I could see nothing of any value emerged. What he mainly wanted to know, of course, was whether anyone had seen anyone go into or out of Mullet's room at the material time, but no one had. Nikolai repeated his story, but couldn't add to it. The floor manageress mentioned Mrs Clarke, and was discreetly taken aside. Jeff was asked if Mullett's door had been ajar when he'd taken the drink to Tanya and when he'd returned from her room, and he said he couldn't be sure but he didn't think so. The man from the Radio Centre explained his business on the fourth floor and left his package with the police. A lot of Russians were questioned, a shade more brusquely, but to no effect, and that was about all. The hotel residents were asked to return to their rooms, and the VOKS people went along to Bolting's room with the delegates to talk over the terrible occurrence. Gradually the hotel quietened down.

I typed out a cable for my paper and rang for my messenger to take it across to the censor. There was little one could say at this stage, and in any case the Russians would almost certainly hold up our stories until they'd had a chance to investigate the crime. When the cable was out of the way I walked past Mullett's guarded door and went in to talk to Jeff.

In the next hour or so we discussed the murder from every angle. The time of it, fortunately, could be narrowed to a very short period. Mullett hadn't come in until well after nine – about ten-past nine, Nikolai had told the police, and the floor manageress had confirmed that – and his body had been found just before 9.25, when the broadcast had stopped. Fifteen minutes. But it must have taken a little time for Mullett to walk along the corridor and get rid of Mrs Clarke, and for the murderer to approach; and a little more time at the end for the murderer to get clear. Say ten minutes. Whoever had followed Mullett in, or been admitted by him, had evidently acted with speed and decision.

The fact that the wallet and its contents had obviously been tampered with suggested theft as a motive – but theft of what? Neither of us could believe that Mullett had been killed on a sudden impulse for the money he was carrying – he was most unlikely to have had much, and anyway the Astoria was an improbable setting for that sort of robbery. You could expect to have your linen filched but not your head cracked. Dark alleys were the place for small-time ‘hit-and-grab.'

If, on the other hand, the motive had been theft of something more important than money – something that we didn't know about but the murderer did – then at once there was a snag. Theft of that sort spelt premeditation. Yet a blow with a bottle that happened to be lying around suggested sudden anger or fear, rather than premeditation. It was a dangerous weapon for the user, even if a towel
had
been wrapped round the neck of the bottle, for the murderer could easily have been badly cut and that would have given his identity away. It didn't even strike us as a very efficient weapon. People had often been hit with bottles and recovered.

Of course, all that disarray of wallet and papers might have been a blind – theft might not have been the motive at all. The murderer might have stepped in and had a quarrel with Mullett, and that would have accounted for the unpremeditated appearance of the killing. All the same, it seemed hardly possible that a fortuitous quarrel could have blown up and been so violently settled in so short a space of time.

There were other puzzling things – loads of them. We both found it quite impossible to imagine the circumstances in which a murderer could have been let in by Mullett and could somehow have managed to get through into his bedroom and bathroom and collect the bottle from his bed-table and wrap it in a towel and strike a blow with it, all without apparent objection or resistance from his intended victim. It didn't make sense – not even if he'd been well-known to Mullett and trusted by him.

It was odd, too, that the murderer had left the door open behind him. If he'd shut it, surely he'd have more time for a clean getaway?

If the motive hadn't been theft at all, but something more personal, the choice of suspects seemed narrow. It was, of course, just conceivable that Mullett might have made some enemy during one of his earlier visits to Russia, and that this was the pay-off, but it was rather more conceivable that one of the delegates had done it. Several of them had had the opportunity. Mrs Clarke, certainly. Schofield, certainly. There was no corroboration that Bolting and Thomas and Perdita had been in their rooms, as they had said. Cressey was in the clear if he'd really been walking round the Kremlin, but Tranter's story was still to be heard.