The Cherry Blossom Corpse (20 page)

“Did she take a long time?”

“Too bloody long. But that's that woman behind the bar. She doesn't approve of people drinking, even though
she makes enough money out of it, and she goes slow when she's getting the drinks, so you can sober up between. It's a bloody scandal.”

Now I came to think about it, I realized that Martti was right. He had a drinker's perspicacity in matters affecting his drinking. Stein said: “What about the Kenyan?”

“Wes, his name is,” said Martti, the first time he had used it. “Bloody silly name. What's it short for? Westminster? He went out . . . yes, he went out.”

“He went out to the lavatory,” said Stein, gently prodding.

“Yes, he did. . . . But he went out for something else too . . . What was it? . . . He came back with something too . . . Books, that's what it was . . .”

“We know that.”

“His own books, because he started showing them round . . . Wouldn't be much good me showing
my
books around, would it? . . . But there was something funny . . . something funny . . .”

We kept very quiet, as Martti's brain struggled.

“Where did he get the books from? Eh? Where did he get them from?”

“From his room, I suppose,” said Stein quietly.

“But he didn't! Because when you go out of Lorelei's sitting-room, his room is five doors down to the right. And he didn't go off to the right. He went to the left, and came back from the left. Where did he get them from, then?”

Stein handed him his half-bottle of Smirnoff.

W
E FINISHED WITH MARTTI
and left him with his bottle. Stein expressed some satisfaction: “It often happens like that,” he said, with the wisdom born of experience. I left them to various routine jobs that for once I felt I could keep away from, and I took myself off downstairs in search of food. Unfortunately I got no further than the lounge, where I found the suspects—even unto Cristobel and Bernard—assembled and deep in
sotto voce
talk. Some held drinks and some held pens and paper, and it was obvious that they had been collectively doing something or other which they conceived as of great importance. It was Cristobel who spoke, and I suspected that she had been deputed to do so.

“Perry,” she said, “do you think we could all have a talk with you?”

“All of you? At once?”

“Well, yes, actually,” said Bernard.

“Ah—well, I have to scavenge in search of food. I haven't had anything to eat since breakfast.”

“Dinner is over,” said Cristobel, with that ruthlessness which is one of her fortes, and one of her inheritances from our loathsome family. “You won't be able to get anything now.”

“Fru Tønnesen is as anxious as any of you to get this business sorted out,” I said. “I'm sure she won't want the inner man of one of the investigators to be crying out in hunger all night.”

“Well, you can bring your meal
up here,”
said Cristobel, in that voice which, if I had been Bernard, would have held ominous warnings for me.

“I will come up after I have eaten,” I said firmly. Food and the exercise of the razor-sharp intellect do not go together.

Fru Tønnesen was behind the bar, but she closed it down with the greatest of readiness—confirming Martti's dire suspicions—in order to put together something for me. We went into the kitchen, and she carved great slices of beef, ham and chicken, and served it with potato salad, tomatoes, cucumber and bread and butter. In my famished state it seemed like a feast, and I ate it in the deserted dining-room—a more comfortable meal than I had ever had there hitherto, what with the looming presence of Lorelei and all the other embarrassments. As I ate I was turning over in my mind all the little hints and indications which I had been storing up in all the interviews I had had since Amanda died. I even made, for my own satisfaction, a list of possible suspects: I included all the other guests at the
Kvalevåg Gjestgiveri,
including the Bavarians and the American family; of the hotel staff I included Fru Tønnesen and her nephew Gorm, since I knew the rest had gone home before the
crucial time; there were Everard Manning and Bernard Palterton, who were there as guests; and at the end I added Robyn Harben and Ragnhild Sørby. By these last two names I wrote: “Could they?” then, after thought, I added: “Yes.”

I was not particularly anxious, you notice, to go upstairs. I suspected they had been cooking something up—indeed the smell of cooking penetrated even down here to the dining-room.

“Perry, we've been thinking,” said my sister, when at last, with evident reluctance, I went up again to the lounge. Typically, she said it at the moment I set toe within the lounge area. Beating about the bush is frowned upon in the Girl Guides.

All the possible replies to her attack seemed to smack of the obvious, so I merely raised my eyebrows.

“In fact, we've been making out a time chart,” said Arthur Biggs, who was sitting with wife and friend in the familiar triangle, but who this time was clearly also part of the bunch. “A time chart of our movements on the evening of the murder.”

That seemed not altogether a bad idea, but I was loath to express appreciation of anything Biggs had a hand in.

“Are your memories precise enough to make that worth while?” I asked, with an appearance of scepticism.

“We think so,” said Biggs, “though obviously you have to allow for a few minutes either way much of the time.”

“And we remember rather less than the rest,” said Bernard, with what I took to be scrupulous honesty, his arm around Cristobel to show he meant him and her.

“I've got the table here, if you'd like to take a look at it,” said Patti Drewe. “It covers the period from the time Amanda came down to the bar, to the time we heard your sister—”

“Doing her nut,” said Bernard, looking at her affectionately.

“Fair enough,” I said, taking it. There were in fact two sheets, one of which dealt with the crucial time chronologically, the other of which noted the movements of most of the hotel's guests who were part of the Romantic Novelists' Conference. I had to admit it seemed a sensible and methodical way of proceeding. And when I studied the first page, I had to admit that on the surface they seemed to have done a good and convincing job.

TIMETABLE

They all looked at me expectantly.

“Excellent,” I said heartily. “Couldn't have been better done. How reliable is it?”

They all started talking at once. It was absolutely reliable, they'd worked at it, and checked and counter-checked, and I could be sure it was completely spot-on.

“Ah,” I said. “So when I read here that Maryloo Parker went to the ladies' room at 9:25 and was back by 9:30, I can be quite sure that that is what happened?”

“Yes, truly!” said Patti Drewe. “Mary and I both remember that she wasn't gone more than five minutes
at most,
and Everard Manning passed her as she was on her way back.”

“And when Mary Sweeny went to the ladies' later on, I can be quite sure she was only there for five minutes?”

“Oh, absolutely,” said Maryloo Parker. “Patti and I are quite certain. Five minutes at the outside.”

“Funny. I was down in the bar then, but I can neither remember her leaving the room, nor how long she was away. You must all have remarkably good memories.”

“Some people
do
have better memories than others,” Mary Sweeny protested.

“Yes. Policemen, to name but one group. Good to
know that romantic writers train themselves to an even greater accuracy. But now Mr. Manning, I see, was away for all of
seven
minutes.”

“But certainly not longer, Superintendent,” said Arthur Biggs, in his university-lecturer voice. “That I can vouch for, and so can my wife—”

“Oh yes, absolutely,” fluted Mrs. Biggs in concert.

“—and anyway seven minutes is not long enough to . . . to do what was done, is it?”

“It might not be,” I admitted. “On the other hand, it is quite a long time for a man to spend in the lavatory.”

“I have an upset stomach,” said Everard Manning, trying to maintain his minor-but-mildly-distinguished-author look, though in fact it was much more an upset-tummy look, when I came to think about it. “I've had it since I got here. I don't think the food agrees with me. Or maybe it's the water.”

“The water is about as pure as you're likely to find anywhere in the world,” I pointed out. “Is it the lack of chlorine that affects you so badly? And I really can't imagine pork chops or boiled fish playing havoc with anybody's tummy.” I added, rather sharply: “Come off it. You're not in bloody Marrakesh . . . Actually, that sequence of visits to the loo strikes me as a little odd.
While
Mr. Manning is still away, Mr. Biggs also goes, leaving his wife alone at the table.”

Arthur Biggs looked at me mystified.

“Wouldn't one usually wait till the other person at the table returned?” I suggested. “So that your wife had someone to talk to?”

“But I wanted to go,” said Arthur Biggs, uncomprehending.

“I didn't mind at all, really,” twittered Mrs. Biggs.

“Oh well, let it go,” I said. It was too late in the day to try and teach Arthur Biggs drinkers' manners. “And
who is it who remembers that Mr. Biggs was only away two minutes?”

“Well, actually me,” said Selina Biggs, a little confused. “Because I do remember I was alone only for a
terribly
short time.”

“Hmmm,” I said. “One thing does strike me about this beautiful catalogue of events. That is that all those of you who were down there in the bar do put each other beautifully in the clear. It's quite touching how much notice you all took of each other. Whereas none of you seems to have noticed Felicity Maxwell's visits to the bar or how long they were. And out in the garden Cristobel and Bernard—”

“You mustn't blame them for that,” Cristobel protested. “It's our fault. We were just . . . wandering around.”

A sort of galumphing coyness came over Cristobel at this point, and I almost felt she exaggerated her ignorance of where they were at any point in the evening to underline the romantic nature of their long interview.

“She's right,” said Bernard, just as bad. “We were going from place to place. And apart from going to talk to the boy who was standing waiting at the road, and then later telling you about the accident, we don't actually remember where we were at any one time.”

“The trouble with fall guys,” I said, “is that they are usually all too pathetically ready to fall.”

“That's absolutely uncalled for,” said Arthur Biggs hotly—or at any rate vaguely pepperishly. “In fact, you'll find that the other sheet sets it all out perfectly fairly.”

“Ah—no doubt,” I said. And there, indeed, it all was.

MOVEMENTS