The Best of British Crime omnibus (11 page)

Mrs Clarke, of course, was the most obvious suspect. She'd not merely been around – she'd been intoxicated, and she'd been heard squabbling with Mullett, and she'd been seen to follow him. It was quite possible that she had pursued him into his room and continued the quarrel. But nobody seemed to have heard her in the corridor and it was equally possible that she had gone straight to her own room. Besides, neither of us could seriously believe that, even in her cups, she would have gone to the length of hitting Mullett with a bottle. She had succumbed to Russian hospitality, but she was essentially a respectable woman, not a slum brawler. It was of those things that physically could
just
have happened, but that simply didn't carry any conviction.

What about the others? I thought back over the long journey I'd made with the delegation, and all the little animosities that had revealed themselves, then and since. No one had really liked Mullett, of course. Bolting had been fairly neutral, but Schofield had been contemptuous, Joe Cressey had resented him, and Perdita – yes, Perdita had loathed him. Hurt vanity – that could lead to a lot of trouble. But Perdita with a bottle… ? Thomas hadn't been able to stomach him, either, and Thomas was a hot-head – but not that hot, surely?

We were still considering the position of each delegate in turn when the bald, stocky little man who had questioned us knocked at the door.

‘Gospodeen
Verney?' he said, as Jeff opened up.

‘I'm
Verney,' I called. ‘What is it?'

‘Could you oblige me, perhaps, by lending me the key of your room and permitting me to enter?'

I was a little surprised. ‘Of course,' I said, getting up and handing him the key. ‘What's the idea, though?'

‘It is a question of what can be heard through the walls of
Gospodeen
Mullett's room,' he explained. ‘We could make tests here, but we do not wish to disturb you and as your room is empty… '

I shrugged. ‘That's all right with me. Do what you like.' He thanked me politely and departed.

Jeff grinned. ‘I reckon you're high up on the list of suspects! Gee, I'd like to know what they're up to. Why didn't we ask that guy if they've found any clues yet?' Suddenly he gave an exclamation. ‘Say, we're a couple of boneheads… What about that note you picked up?'

In all the excitement it had completely slipped my mind. Now I produced it and we had another look at the envelope.

‘Let's steam it open,' said Jeff.

That took a little time – it was an operation that neither of us was used to and it had to be done carefully. When we did finally extract the contents, they proved to be very disappointing. I think we'd both been hoping for some heart-throb, though the official-looking typing should have told us. The note was simply a message from the Radio Centre asking if the following Thursday at 8 p. m. would be a suitable time for Perdita to do a ten-minute broadcast to England on Soviet culture.

‘So that's all it is,' said Jeff disgustedly. ‘Hell! Well, I suppose we'd better seal it up again and shove it under her door.'

‘Half a minute,' I said. ‘We still don't know how it got into Mullett's room.'

‘Isn't that pretty obvious? He happened to be over at the Radio Centre so they asked him to bring it back with him, and he was careless and dropped it on the floor.'

‘That could be it, I suppose.' I didn't feel so sure – somehow, I couldn't see them doing it. This was official business, and from their point of view important business. Russian bureaucrats didn't take chances, and Mullett was hardly a messenger boy. ‘I'd have thought one of their own people would have brought it. They could easily have given it to that chap they sent along with the recording… '

Jeff's interest suddenly revived. ‘Holy smoke, I believe you've got something there. Maybe he
did
bring it – maybe he did the job. Don't you remember Waterhouse telling us the other day about some guy at the Radio Centre who knew Mullett? This could be the guy. Didn't he have a grudge of some sort?'

‘Easy, Jeff!' I protested. This fellow didn't arrive until after the body was found. I saw him join the crowd.'

‘Maybe you did,' said Jeff, ‘but you didn't see him come into the hotel. He may have been around for quite a time before you noticed him. I agree it's a long shot, but I'd sure like to hear what he has to say.'

‘That shouldn't be too difficult.' I went to the phone and looked up the Radio Centre number. I'd remembered now that the man's behaviour
had
been a bit odd.

There was the usual bother with the Exchange, but the connection was made at last and I asked for the English Talks Section. An American voice answered me – a woman's voice.

‘This is George Verney of the London
Record
,' I told her. ‘I was talking a little while ago to a man from your outfit who brought a recording to the Astoria Hotel for Mr Mullett. Can you tell me if he's around – I don't know his name.'

‘Hold the line,' said the voice. There was a slight commotion at the other end, and then a man's voice said quickly, ‘This is Arthur Gain speaking, Mr Verney. Did you want me?'

I recognised the cockney accent and the faintly sycophantic tone. ‘Yes,' I said. ‘I wondered if by any chance you'd lost a letter.'

There was a long silence – so long that I began to think he must have left the receiver. But he was there all right. ‘As a matter of fact, I have,' he said, much more slowly. I could almost hear him thinking. ‘It's – it's a bit awkward. Have you got it?'

I shot Jeff a swift glance. ‘Yes, I've got it.'

‘Oh.' I thought I detected a note of relief in the monosyllable. ‘I suppose … I suppose you couldn't send it along to the right quarter for me, could you?'

Considering everything, I thought the request pretty cool. ‘Certainly not until I've seen you,' I told him. ‘It was found in a rather peculiar place.'

There was another pregnant silence ‘All right,' he said at last, ‘I'll come round to you. I can't come tonight, though – I'm on duty. I'll come tomorrow morning at ten o'clock, Mr Verney, if that suits you.'

'That's okay.'

‘You won't… ?' he began hesitantly, and then stopped. He was in a spot, of course, with people in the room listening.

‘I won't tell anyone about it till then, if that's what you're trying to say.' I hung up.

Jeff got to his feet and stretched. ‘It looks like this case is going to be a short one,' he said. ‘I guess I'll go to bed.'

Gain turned up the following morning on the stroke of ten. The acute nervousness which he showed as he slipped into my room was not unconnected, I felt, with the watchful interest of the plain-clothes man posted outside Mullett's door. The fact that he had come at all was a sign of his desperation. He was slightly out of breath and very pale, as though he hadn't had much sleep.

‘Better take your coat off,' I said. ‘We may be here for some time.' I studied him with a good deal more interest than on the previous evening. He was a man of about forty, thin and hollow-cheeked, with unkempt hair and dark, restless eyes and a sullen, downward-drooping mouth. Not, on close inspection, by any means a prepossessing character.

I went to the phone and told Jeff our visitor had arrived. Gain stiffened with fright. ‘You said you wouldn't tell anyone, Mr Verney.'

‘Clayton was here last night when I phoned you,' I told him shortly. ‘He heard everything.'

I turned away, not wanting to look at the man. He seemed a pitiful, nerveless creature, and I wasn't feeling very happy about the

interview. I had no
locus standi
in the matter except that I had happened to pick up the letter, and little more than academic interest in who had killed the egregious Mullett. Getting a story was one thing, but personally hounding a creature like Gain was quite another. I was almost sorry we hadn't let the letter lie, and felt glad when Jeff came in to share the burden.

He gave Gain one quick look, said ‘Howdy,' and dropped into a chair. ‘Okay, George, shoot!'

I produced the letter, which by now was carefully sealed up again, and showed it to Gain. He looked at it with undisguised relief. ‘Yes, that's it, he said. ‘Where did you find it, Mr Verney?'

‘Don't you know?'

His eyes flicked from me to Jeff and back again. ‘Was it in Mr Mullett's room?'

‘It was.'

‘I thought I must have dropped it there,' he said. ‘Gosh, I'm glad it was you that found it. When the phone rang at the office last night, I felt sure it must be the police. If they'd spotted it, it would have been all up with me.'

I couldn't understand him at all. In the circumstances, his manner struck me as being confidential to the point of naïveté. ‘Mr Gain,' I said, ‘you gave the impression last night, to the police and to us, that you arrived on the scene after Mr Mullen's body had been found. You may think it's no business of ours, but we would be interested to know just how and when the letter got into Mullett's room.'

‘Of course, I'll tell you,' he said with an ingratiating smile that was worse than the scared look. ‘You're English – I can trust you. I've nothing to hide, Mr Verney, not from you, or from Mr Clayton. I know what you're thinking – you're thinking it was me that killed Mr Mullett. I didn't, though – you're quite wrong.'

‘How did the letter get there?' asked Jeff.

‘I'll tell you – from the beginning. You see, just after Mr Mullett left our place the record was brought in wrapped up and ready for him, and as I hadn't to announce for a bit Mr Kolarov asked me to slip over here with it and to bring the letter for Miss Manning at the same time. I got here just after Mr Mullett, and I asked at the desk downstairs for the numbers of the rooms, and then I came up here and knocked at his door.'

‘See anyone else about?' Jeff inquired.

Gain hesitated. ‘No, the corridor was empty. The room wasn't, though. I heard voices inside – people talking. Two people, I think. I couldn't hear very well, but they were English voices, I can tell you that. Probably Mr Mullett and whoever did him in.

Anyway, I knocked twice but it didn't seem as though they wanted to be disturbed, because no one answered the door.'

‘Were they quarrelling?'

‘I – I couldn't say, really. I suppose they must have been.'

Jeff snorted.

I said, ‘So what did you do?'

‘Well, I thought I might as well deliver the letter to Miss Manning and come back to Mr Mullett afterwards, so I went along to her room. I'd been told to deliver it personally, so I knocked, but she wasn't in.'

‘You mean she didn't answer,' Jeff said.

Gain looked puzzled. ‘She wasn't there, Mr Clayton. I'm sure she wasn't. I knocked twice.'

‘You couldn't have knocked hard enough,' I said. ‘I think you're lying. Miss Manning says she was in her room all the evening.'

Gain cringed. ‘I swear I'm telling you the truth, Mr Verney. I did go there, and I knocked very hard, and I listened, too. It's very quiet there, round the corner at the end of the corridor, but there wasn't a sound.'

Jeff said, ‘It wouldn't have been a woman's voice you heard in Mullett's room, would it?'

‘It might have been, Mr Clayton. I couldn't be sure, though.'

I looked hard at him. He was a slippery, evasive customer, if ever there was one.

‘Well, go on,' I said, ‘finish your story. What did you do next?'

‘I came back to Mr Mullett's room,' Gain said, with gathering fluency, ‘and this time his door was open a little and there didn't seem to be anyone about. I knocked, and when I still didn't get any answer I put my head inside and there was Mr Mullett lying on the floor with blood all over him. I went right in and saw that he was dead. I was too ruddy scared to tell anyone and I felt like dashing out of the hotel but I couldn't leave just like that because I'd got the package to deliver. I rushed out of the room and went along to the cloakroom to think out what to do. After I'd been there a few minutes I suddenly noticed that the letter was missing – I'd tucked it under the string of the package, and it must have dropped out. I got in a real panic then, because I thought I might have dropped it in Mr Mullett's room and that would show I'd been there. I was in such a sweat I couldn't face going back to look for it, not right away. I – I just didn't know what to do. Anyway, in the end I did see I'd simply got to risk it and I was just going to leave the cloakroom when I heard an awful shemozzle along the corridor, and I knew that the body had been discovered. After that, I simply couldn't think at all – I was just dithering, Mr Verney, and that's a fact. I joined in with the crowd and looked around for the letter, but I couldn't see it anywhere, and I felt sure the police would get hold of it. And that's all – you know the rest.' He mopped his forehead with a grubby handkerchief and looked anxiously at us in turn.

Jeff stirred. ‘I don't get it, Mr Gain. It's a slick story, but what did you have to be so scared about? You find an open door and a corpse – okay, that's unpleasant, but why panic about it?'

‘I thought they might think I'd done it as I was there.'

‘Because you've known Mullett back in England and had a grudge against him?'

The scared look crept back into Gain's face. ‘It wasn't just that, Mr Clayton. You see, there'd been a bit of trouble at the Radio Centre that evening. I'd – I'd said something to Mr Mullett that he didn't quite like and he'd complained to Mr Kilarov. I thought they might find out about that and think that I'd tried to get my own back on Mr Mullett.'

I nodded. ‘How did you come to know Mullet in the first place?'