The Cherry Blossom Corpse (11 page)

“No, it didn't,” agreed Arthur Biggs.

“Or—turning the telescope round—the sort of intelligence she showed when she took on this Sørby creature didn't gell with the kind of woman who made all sorts of appalling howlers in her books. If
that
Amanda hadn't known when the railways came in, she'd have gone away and looked it up. A lot of people aren't sure when photography was invented, but they tend to put it later than it was rather than earlier, unless they are the historical equivalent of illiterate. And that I am quite sure Amanda wasn't. She would
not
have a Regency heroine clutching a snapshot. So, if Biggs is right we can now recognize all the contradictions for what they were—bad coordination—and start building up a picture of the real Amanda.”

We all thought about that for a moment, and then Svein, the sergeant, said: “If it was the
real
Amanda who got herself killed.”

I thought this was a brilliant remark, and shot him an appreciative glance. But I didn't want to indulge in any really vital discussion so long as the inquisitive and self-important Arthur Biggs was there. I turned to him.

“Right. Well—is there anything further you can tell us about Amanda Fairchild?”

He thought, conspicuously.

“I don't think so. We met now and then, at conferences such as this one. We had no social contacts beyond that, though we may have talked at the odd publisher's party, I think . . . No, I can't think of anything else I could tell you.”

“We shall in any case be talking to you, probably tomorrow,” I said, escorting him to the door.

“I have told everything I know to the chap downstairs,” he protested.

“Quite,” I said calmly. “And we'll be going over it again with you in due course. Just a matter of routine. Thank you for your help. Oh, and Mr. Biggs—this time stay down there in the lounge as you were asked to, eh?”

He slunk off, and I watched him down the main stairs. No doubt the policeman at the bottom would find a few well-chosen words to say to him in one or other language before he would be allowed to get down to writing his think-piece on Amanda Fairchild for the
Sunday Express.

“Are they all like that?” asked Stein.

“There is infinite variety—you'll see,” I promised. “One in particular . . .”

“The lady with the name like a siren?” enquired Svein.

“Quite. Known to her readers as Lorelei le Neve, which has a double implication of
femme fatale.
Whether, and in what sense, she has been
fatale
in this case—”

We were interrupted by a tap on the door, and a young constable handed over a sheaf of papers. I gathered it was notes from the preliminary interviews downstairs.

“Are they finished?” I asked, surprised.

“All but about three or four,” said Stein. “I suspect the constable is trying to tell us that the people in the lounge are beginning to complain. He is a foolish young man. He should realize that they are foreigners, and can't stand on their rights since they don't know them. They will have to wait. In any case, the interviews are not finished yet. I gather they are having trouble with a Finn.”

“That figures,” I said. “He's a drunk of world class. I suggest that what you'll have to do if you want to get any sense out of him is lock him in his room overnight. And don't do like the BBC did with Brendan Behan.”

“Who was he?”

“A playwright in his spare time. The BBC managed to lock him in a room, accidentally on purpose, for a
couple of hours before he was due to be interviewed. They thought it would make sure he was sober. Innocent little things they must have been at the BBC in those days. They should have frisked him before they locked him in. That interview was one of the best things the BBC ever put out, but sobriety had nothing to do with it. So frisk the man before you lock him in, and go through the room beforehand with spare halves of vodka very much in mind. Because he could just be a key witness.”

“Why?”

“I suspect that for much of the vital period that we're interested in, there were four together in one room—or one suite. So there will probably be a question of their alibi-ing each other.”

“Would he have been sober at the time?” asked Stein.

“No,” I admitted.

“Then I doubt if he will be of any use,” Svein said. “I have much experience of drunks.”

Judging by what I had seen of Bergen, even early in the afternoon, he spoke no less than the truth.

“Still, at some stage he has got to be interviewed when he's sober,” I protested. “You might try him sober, then let him have two or three and try him again. A comparison of the two interviews might be instructive—might even provide material for an article in the
Norwegian Police Gazette,
if there's any such thing.”

Stein stirred. He felt we should be working.

“Right! Now let's try a lightning tour through the other bedrooms. I'll get as many of my men as I can from downstairs, and we'll do all the obvious things and then let them go to bed.”

I think we would have been less solicitous at the Yard about the suspects getting a good night's sleep. Still, I went along with him, because he was in charge. We all
left and locked Amanda's room, and began a fast but systematic going-through of all the other bedrooms. I left Stein and Svein to do mine and Cristobel's. All the others I assisted in—looking for “paper” evidence more than anything else, but obviously not shutting my eyes to other things as well. At the end of an hour and a half's gruelling labour, the points I had thought worthy of inclusion in my notebook were:

Three books by Amanda in Lorelei Zuckerman's room, all apparently bought at the conference stall.

No clothes wet around the sleeves or knees, as might be expected after drowning someone.

Every single author brought with him copies of his own books, even (Stein told me) Cristobel.

Every single romantic writer had his quota of duty-free grog stashed away in or on top of his wardrobe.

We gathered at the top of the stairs, and by a mere nod of the head we decided to call it a day. I looked down over the banisters to where the assembled guests and some of the staff were sitting round on the peasant sofas and peasant easy chairs. Every one of them was aware of our presence on the landing; not one of them looked up at us. They were all very quiet, some reading, a couple writing, some just sitting there. Cristobel and Bernard were the only ones who had any contact with each other. They were in adjacent chairs, holding hands.

Before we descended I said to Stein in a low voice:

“When you get back to the Bergen Station, I think you should telex her publishers. Tamworth, the name
was. Say something like: ‘Amanda Fairchild murdered. Will ring her editor ten a.m.' We need to find out if what Arthur Biggs suggested is anything more than a conjecture.”

Stein nodded, and we proceeded down into the lounge. When he said “You are all free now to go to bed,” his announcement acted as a catalyst. Everybody started talking at once, there was nervous laughter, Arthur Biggs collected his little knot of supporters around him to bolster him up, and only Lorelei Zuckerman began at once to act on Stein's permission, heaving herself painfully from her chair, and being helped gradually up the stairs by Felicity Maxwell.

Stein had one thing to do before leaving. As Lorelei toiled step by step upwards, he spoke to his toughest-looking sergeant. When he had done, the man went over to Martti Whatever-it-was, the Finn, comatose in his corner chair. He rapidly and efficiently frisked him as he lay there, and handed to a waiting constable an empty half of vodka. Then he heaved the man to his feet, and, satisfied that Lorelei was by now in her suite, he began the laborious process of getting him upstairs. Eventually we heard, from a distance, the sound of protesting bedsprings as Martti was thrown on to them, and then the locking of a door. I hoped they'd been damned thorough in their search of his room.

Stein left two of his men on guard, and I went out on to the porch to see him off.

“We'll discuss all the forensic stuff tomorrow,” he said in his laconic way. Then they drove off.

When I went back into the lounge, people were beginning to disperse upstairs. The proprietress and the boy-in-waiting were standing around, obviously willing everyone to stand not upon the order of their going but go at once. I went over to Cristobel, who was standing by the bottom of the stairs.

“Are you all right now, Chris?”

She nodded.

“Yes, I'm much better . . . But I still feel awfully frightened.”

“That's all right,” I said reassuringly. “There's still a camp bed in my room left over from Jan's stay. You can sleep there with me.”

Cristobel said, “Oh, thank you, Perry.” Was it my imagination, or did she say it with rather less warmth than I had expected? Bernard, like Everard Manning, was being accommodated in one of the rooms prepared for the new arrivals of that evening. Could it have been that she had been intending to spend the night with quite another male protector?

No doubt I had blundered again. But really—could I be expected to know the sexual habits of renegade monks?

B
REAKFAST NEXT MORNING
was a curious meal. Cristobel and I were down early, neither of us having slept well. We sat at the end of one of the long tables, but as others came down in ones and twos they all sat some way away from us—further down, or at the other table. Even Maryloo Parker avoided us. When we went up to the serving table for refills—and Cristobel went very frequently, since the murder seemed to have done nothing to satisfy that Girl Guide's appetite—they smiled nervously at us, then bent down to look intently at the cold pork or the little tins of pickled herring. Well away from us they conversed very differently from their usual high-voiced mode of communication—they leant forward and used hushed tones, occasionally looking down the table
at me. They might have been Victorians discussing the private life of the Prince of Wales. I had no doubt that it was I rather than Cristobel who was the problem. Later they would no doubt milk Chris for all she was worth (and she was highly milkable). But I had changed, for all of them—no matter how innocent they knew themselves to be. I was on the other side.

Eventually Bernard came down and sat with us. Apparently he hadn't slept well either, and he looked ragged. He said he had difficulty coping with death, which suggested he was right to leave the monastery. He toyed with a slice of wholemeal bread and a sliver of pseudo-Swiss cheese, and I rather guessed that he and Chris would rather I was gone. I downed my second cup of coffee and went. As I closed the door, the volume of noise from conversation inside rose appreciably.

Upstairs everything was quiet. I had rather thought the Finn might be howling for spirituous liquor, but all was still. “Sleeping it off,” said the sergeant outside his room, winking knowingly. He pointed to a room further along the corridor, where he said Bjørhovde and Jernsletten were already at work. From the other direction I could hear that the technical boys were still going over Amanda's room. It was all comfortingly familiar in the midst of strangeness, like tuning into the BBC in a Moscow hotel.

Stein had not much to tell me, but he said he hoped to have something from the scientific mob in the course of the morning. In the meanwhile, he presumed that I would be the one to ring Amanda's publisher. There was a room at the end of the corridor which was empty, and which he had commandeered: it was for VIPs, and its telephone had an automatic line out independent of the guest-house exchange. He had arranged that all calls from there would be charged to the police. Would there be anybody at the publisher's office yet?

“Nobody of any consequence, I should imagine,” I said. “Britain is an hour behind, remember. But I can at least try to make contact.”

“I'll show you where. Then Svein and I will interview the Finn.”

We located the bedroom together, and I paused in the doorway as Stein and Svein went back to the Finn's room. Stein took out the skeleton key, but as he inserted it in the lock there arose from inside the room the sound of a bass-baritone voice. What it was singing I did not know, but it sounded like the nearest approach to an aria in one of those gigantic Finnish operas based on the
Kalevala.
It certainly boded no good for Stein.

“If you keep him there long enough under supervision,” I pointed out comfortingly, “he's just got to run out.” I tactfully refrained from pointing out that they could try brushing up their techniques of room-searching.

Stein had researched the number, and I got straight through to London. As usual with international calls, I got a line much clearer than anything one was likely to meet with on day-to-day business within the London area. There was someone in at the Tamworth offices, though she was breathless, as if she had just arrived. She told me that Amanda Fairchild's editor would be Auberon Lawrence, who did all the Romance, but she did very much doubt whether he would be in yet. She'd ring around and get back to me. Ringing from Norway, did I say? Well, she wouldn't be a moment.

“It's very odd,” she said, when she came back on my line, “but he seems to be on the way to Norway himself.”

“Good God,” I said, “that was quick.”

“Apparently he came in last night after a party, to get something he'd forgotten. He's a little bit—well—fey. He left a note in the Chairman's office, or rather on the door. It's not too coherent, I'm afraid, but it seems that
he found a telex message from Norway—would that be from you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Anyway, it seems that he got straight on to the airports and found there was a charter flight to Oslo at eight-thirty, with a spare seat. He's on that, will change planes there, and fly on to Bergen. Does that make sense to you? If the connection holds, he will be there by about eleven-twenty.”