Page 38 of Murder at the Mayfair Hotel
“The tests will prove which.”
Someone must have added poison to the bottle, tube or pot, either when Mrs. Warrick wasn’t there or directly under her nose. If she wasn’t there, then someone must have let themselves in with a key, and that pointed to one of the staff. If Mrs. Warrickwaspresent, but turned her back on the poisoner, then almost anyone could be guilty. They didn’t need a key. They simply needed to know her so that she would allow them into her room.
“Did Mrs. Warrick have friends at the hotel?” I asked.
He frowned as he thought. “She dined alone and sat in the sitting room by herself. I don’t recall her speaking to any of the other guests.”
So the only person she did know was the man she’d recognized in the foyer on the day of her death. That narrowed the list to three suspects.
I rose. “Thank you, Mr. Hobart. You’ve given me some things to think about.”
He put on his spectacles and peered over the top of them. “If you think of something that might be relevant, you will tell my brother, won’t you?”
“Of course. If I learn something that would be of interest to him, I most certainly will.” No doubt the inspector wouldn’t be interested in learning something that would incriminate his own son, so I wasn’t precisely lying.
“And Miss Fox? Don’t ask anyone else questions about the murder. It’s possible the killer has checked out of the hotel, but it’s equally possible he has not. Trust only Sir Ronald, myself and Harry if you have anything else to ask.”
“Thank you for your concern, Mr. Hobart. It’s very kind of you.” I closed the door behind me, and touched my tingling nose. His fatherly words had brought tears to my eyes. Clearly I was still feeling raw from Grandmama’s death.
Peter signaled for me to approach as I passed his counter. “Harmony wants to speak to you,” he said. “She’s in the parlor with some of the others.”
The “others” turned out to be Victor and Edith. Victor hadn’t yet started his shift for the day, and Edith had just finished cleaning some of her allocated rooms and was waiting for more to be vacated before she returned to work. Harmony didn’t explain her presence there. Either she was finished altogether and didn’t want Edith to feel bad, or she shouldn’t have been in the parlor at all.
“Did you discover anything further?” Harmony asked as she closed the door behind me.
I told them how the police found mercuric cyanide in Mrs. Warrick’s body. “They’ve taken away a few items from her toilette for testing. The poison must be in one of those.”
“What does mercuric cyanide taste like?” Victor asked.
“How would any of us know?” Harmony cried.
He drummed his fingers on his thigh and shrugged.
“Metallic, I imagine,” I said.
“Probably not very pleasant,” Edith added with a shudder.
Victor continued to drum his fingers, as if he needed to do something with his hands. He would probably like to be handling one of the knives housed in the belt slung around his waist, but it was likely Harmony had already scolded him for doing so before my entry. “It causes vomiting, that much we know,” he said.
“Victor,” Harmony hissed with a jerk of her head at Edith.
Edith had gone quite pale. “It was a horrible scene,” she whispered through trembling lips. “I hope never to witness the like of Mrs. Warrick’s face again.”
Harmony took her hand and clasped it between both of hers. “We’ll just have to wait for the results of the tests to know if the poison was in her personal items.”
“What else could it be in?” I asked.
“Her dinner?” Edith suggested.
I shook my head. “She ingested the poison between three and six AM.”
Harmony perched on the edge of the table and her gaze met mine. “That would imply the poison was in the tonic. Nobody puts on face cream or cleans their teeth in the early hours of the morning.”
“Unless they just returned to their room,” Victor added.
Harmony frowned. “Did Mrs. Warrick seem like the type to have a midnight rendezvous?”
Victor shrugged.
