Calamity in Kent, A British Library Crime Classic (5 page)

Chapter VI

In Which I Visit a Strange Hotel

It was good to feel that I was now working with Scotland Yard. Even though the arrangement was strictly unofficial, and would doubtless be forcefully repudiated by Shelley if I claimed to be doing anything on behalf of police headquarters, the fact remained that an understanding of this sort was about as valuable as anything which could be possessed by a journalist in my position.

Shelley had suggested that the best thing that I could do as a first move on his behalf (as well, incidentally, as my own) was to visit the Charrington Hotel and see if there was any clue to the identity of John Tilsley there—or, for that matter, if there was any kind of background information about the man to be picked up.

I wasn't at all sure where the Charrington Hotel could be. The name was slightly familiar to me, so that I had probably seen it somewhere in my wanderings about Broadgate; but I couldn't make up my mind just where it was.

I went up to a policeman who was lazily waving slow-moving cars around a corner.

“Excuse me, officer,” I said.

“Yes?” There was something sleepy about the way he spoke, almost as if life in a seaside resort did not make for any kind of briskness.

“Can you tell me where the Charrington Hotel is?”

He looked at me for a moment, almost as if he thought that there was something infinitely suspicious in such an enquiry.

Then he said: “Top of St. Peter's Street.”

“Over there?” I asked, indicating what I thought I remembered to be the street of that name.

“That's right.”

“Thank you very much,” I replied.

“You're welcome,” he said with what I thought was a rather surprising touch of humanity.

The Charrington, indeed, was only about a hundred yards from the spot on which I stood. From the outside it looked normal enough, the average small hotel in a small seaside resort. The open door led to an entrance hall in which stood a tall palm. I glanced in. There seemed no sign of life. Not a single human being was in sight. It was peculiar, it seemed to me, though there might well be an explanation.

Anyhow, there seemed to be no reason why I shouldn't go in and explore. I strolled carelessly into the hotel, more or less as if I had come there to meet someone. Then I stopped, irresolute. I thought I had better put on an act, in case someone was watching me through a peep-hole somewhere. That probably sounds a bit melodramatic; but I had got more than a trifle worked up over this business, and I don't mind admitting that at that moment I was prepared for anything to happen, no matter how fantastic it might seem.

At first nothing fantastic did happen, however. Indeed, nothing happened at all. The hotel lobby was silent, dead silent. I was just able to detect the ticking of a clock in some distant corner, out of sight. The general atmosphere of that hotel lobby was oppressive, almost eerie. There was something about it that I strongly resented; yet I was not at all sure what it was that I disliked, save the fact that there was no one to whom I could talk, and I had come prepared to talk in plenty.

Then I sensed, rather than saw, that someone had come in. I glanced around me, and at first couldn't see anybody. Then, behind the glass front of the small reception kiosk, I saw the woman.

She was more or less what I might have expected in this odd place. Yet I felt a sense of surprise as I looked at her. She was sitting down there, apparently more or less in a daze. Her face was dead white, and against that white the sleek blackness of her hair showed up with a sense of vivid contrast. Her mouth was a slash of scarlet across the white background of her countenance. Everything about her was contrasted. Her dress was of some kind of silky material, black, but with a sash of the same scarlet as her lipstick.

Suddenly the still lady came to life. She looked towards me, as if she had only just become aware of my existence on earth.

“Can I help you?” she said. And her voice completed the surprise. It was a musical voice, which seemed to belong to some attractive girl from the countryside—a dairymaid, perhaps—and certainly did not seem to be in the picture with this woman, sophisticated and blasé.

“I'm looking for a friend, whom I heard was staying here,” I said. I had decided that this was the best method of attack.

“What is his name?” she asked. “I know most of the guests here, and even if I do not know him I can look up in the register and see if we have any record of his visit—tell you, indeed, if he is still here.”

“His name is Tilsley, John Tilsley,” I said watching her face with extreme care, to see if this name appeared to strike a familiar chord.

“John Tilsley,” she repeated thoughtfully, her face expressionless. “I think that he has been a guest here; but whether he is still here I cannot for the moment recall. You see, we have about twenty-five letting bedrooms here, and one doesn't always remember who is still here and who may have left, to go on somewhere else. You will forgive me, while I go to look up our records, which are inside.”

In a flash she was gone. There must have been some inner door, leading from the back of the reception kiosk into the inner recesses of the hotel. Again that eerie quietude descended. Again I was the sole inhabitant of that strange lobby. I looked around me now with added interest, however. I couldn't make up my mind what there was about the strange woman in the reception kiosk which seemed to me to strike a false note. It was not that she was unnecessarily polite. After all, if I was the friend of a guest in the hotel, it was only good business to speak to me in friendly fashion. No; it was no good. I shrugged my shoulders. Just what there was that was in some way out of the picture in that hotel I could not decide.

Then she was back. It seemed that she glided rather than walked. I did not hear her return. At one moment she was not there; at the next moment, when I happened to glance at the kiosk, there she was, as impassive and still as ever.

“You were enquiring after Mr. John Tilsley, I think,” she said.

“That is so.”

“Could you be so kind as to inform me what is your business with Mr. Tilsley?”

I paused. This was an unexpected check. Then I thought that before I gave in I would see if I could manage to get the better of the woman in a verbal encounter.

“Before I tell you that, could you be so kind as to tell me whether Mr. Tilsley is still in the hotel?” I asked.

“He is not in the hotel at the moment,” she said. “But he is still on our books. His luggage is still in his room.”

“Did he sleep here last night?” I asked. And now for the first time I saw a slight trace of emotion pass over the woman's impassive features.

“I am unable to answer that question,” she said.

I snapped: “Do you mean you don't know, or you won't tell?”

“I mean that I do not know. We are not in the habit of keeping a watch on our guests, save to ensure that they pay for all the food and attention that they receive,” she remarked. “If a guest desires to stay out for a night, that is no business of this hotel.”

“Not even if he gets into trouble when he is out?” I said meaningly.

“What do you mean?” There was no doubt now about the tone of alarm. There was something that this woman was scared about. And yet her countenance was impossible to read. The heavy make-up disguised the emotions that must otherwise have become obvious in it.

“Even if a man gets killed when he is out?” I persisted. And this time it was clear that the thrust had gone home. The woman swayed slightly on her chair, as if she thought that she had almost lost her balance in the momentary shock.

“John murdered?”
These words came in a horrified whisper. I complimented myself on the way in which I was handling the business. I didn't know how much of this stuff I should be able to use in
The Daily Wire;
certainly if I tried to suggest the sinister, eerie air of the Charrington Hotel I should probably have a libel action on my hands. But, even though I was able to use nothing of what I was now finding out, I felt no less interest in what I was doing.

“You knew him, then?” I said slowly.

She nodded.

“When did you see him last?”

“At teatime yesterday.”

“In the hotel?”

She nodded again.

This was a useful piece of information, anyhow. Last seen at the hotel where he was lodging at teatime on the day of his death. That was the sort of concrete evidence that newspaper readers like. I thought that Shelley would like it too. There seemed to be no doubt that I was ahead of the police here. That surprised me a bit, I must admit.

Still, there is something to be said for leading a freelance existence. You do get hold of things that the plodding official, working within the limits of his job, may well miss.

“He had tea here yesterday?” I pursued, wanting to have careful confirmation of the information that I was getting hold of.

“Yes.”

“In the dining-room?”

“No, in the lounge. We serve a fairly light afternoon tea in the lounge here, you see. And I actually had a cup of tea with him yesterday.”

I thought that she was going to break down. She had looked hard-boiled enough in an odd way, but now she seemed to be on the verge of tears. The thought suddenly came to me: this woman had been very fond of Tilsley. Perhaps she had been in love with him. That might go some way towards accounting for the alarm she had shown at the news of his murder—not that the murder of someone that one knows is likely to be exactly ordinary news for any of us.

“You liked him?” I said.

She nodded, her face a picture of silent misery. I felt an urge of sympathy with the woman. This affair had obviously knocked her sideways. Still, I told myself, I should not help things along any by allowing myself to be overcome with sympathy. My job was to get at the bottom of the whole affair as best I could.

“Perhaps you were very fond of him?” I added quietly, studying her face closely to see what was her reaction to this suggestion.

She admitted it readily enough. “Yes, I loved him very dearly,” she said simply. “I just don't know what will happen now. I feel as if the bottom of the world had dropped out.”

“Then,” I said, seeing that this was my chance to get in my spoke, “you would do anything you could to see his murderer brought to book?”

“Of course I would.” Her face took on a look of earnestness that was almost savage. “John was, as I said, very dear to me. I'd do anything I could to see his murderer hang!” There was something that almost frightened me about the woman—a kind of controlled hatred that was more impressive than any hysterics would have been. I thought that she was a rather remarkable woman. Even more remarkable, in fact, than she appeared to be on the surface.

“Might I have your name?” I asked. “You see, I am a newspaper man, and my paper has given me the job of investigating this case. I have friends among the police, too, and I am working in with them on it.” I thought that there was no harm in telling her where I stood. After all, I had a kind of semi-official standing that might tend to impress.

“My name is Skilbeck, Mrs. Skilbeck,” she said. “I am a widow. John Tilsley and I were planning to get married within a month or two.”

“I see.” I nodded solemnly. I understood that to this odd woman the death of John Tilsley was a very real tragedy, which would have struck her down as if by a literal blow of a club.

“And you presumably know quite a lot about Mr. Tilsley's affairs?” I said.

“A certain amount,” she admitted.

“What did he do?”

She looked a little taken aback at this. “What did he do?” she repeated after me.

“Yes.”

“You mean, what was his job?”

“Exactly.”

“Well,” she said, speaking slowly and deliberately, “I didn't know much detail about his job, but he was a sort of commission agent. He represented various manufacturers of engineering apparatus and machinery. He used to travel around the country a good deal seeing buyers and other agents.”

“I see,” I said once again. This was the sort of vague job that might well tie up with a criminal background. I knew that there were various commission agents, tied up in the black market and concerned with defeating the various controls which governments had introduced in the effort to effect a sensible distribution of goods that were in short supply. This might, perhaps, provide the motive for the murder, which I was first of all looking for.

“You don't know the details of the job which he was doing?” I said.

“No.”

“And therefore, I suppose, you wouldn't know if he had made any bad enemies in the course of his work?” I knew that this was likely to lead nowhere, but, nevertheless, it was a question that had to be asked.

“You mean,” she said, and paused, as if she found it difficult to put her thoughts into words. “You mean”—and now the words came out with a rush—“that I wouldn't have any real suspicion of anyone likely to have murdered him.”

I nodded.

“No,” she said. “I really knew little about the details of his job. He wasn't the sort of man to talk much about what he was doing, you know.”

“Then you have no ideas to put forward, which might help in leading us to the criminal?” I said.

“Not a notion,” she said. Her face was still a picture of the most abysmal misery. Again I felt that sudden urge of sympathy. It might be that John Tilsley had been a crook. He might have been the worse kind of skunk, but the fact remained that this woman had been truly in love with him, if I was any sort of judge. And his sudden death had been the greatest tragedy that could possibly have come to her. Of that I was well assured.

“Is there any way in which you think that you could help us in our work?” I asked.

“I don't see that there is much really that I can do,” she answered.