Page 76 of Murder at the Mayfair Hotel
I didn’t think it was a watertight argument. Blank hotel stationery wouldn’t be easy to obtain outside the hotel, but it wasn’t impossible. “Pass me the keys to Mr. Hobart’s office again.”
“Why?” Peter asked.
“I want to make a telephone call to Mr. Hookly’s address. We can ask someone there when Mr. Hookly is expected to return home and if they know why he came back from Africa.”
“How will you discover that?”
“Lie, of course. I’ll pretend I’m working for the police on the murder case and am just following up on all the guests’ addresses. ” I put out my palm but Peter shook his head.
“No one will believe a woman works for the police. Let me make the call from here. There’s no one about now.”
There were a handful of people leaving the vestibule and heading to the lift, smoking room or billiards room, but none approached. Peter flipped the pages of his register until he came to Mr. Hookly’s entry.
After a few brief conversations as he was passed from one exchange to the next, he finally had a longer conversation with the person on the other end. His frown deepened. He thanked the other speaker then hung the receiver on the cradle.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Goliath said.
“That’s because I have.” Peter swallowed. “Mr. Hookly is dead.”
Chapter 11
“Igot through to the police station nearest Mr. Hookly’s address.” Peter looked down at the reservation book, open to Mr. Hookly’s entry. “They said he died two months ago.”
“Bloody hell,” Goliath murmured. “So who’s our Mr. Hookly?”
“And how did he get Lord Addlington’s letter?”
“Did the policeman say if the real Mr. Hookly died in suspicious circumstances?” I asked.
“Natural causes. His heart gave out.”
So our Mr. Hookly was not Mr. Hookly at all. “If he’s used a false name to check in here, it’s reasonable to assume his real name is associated with wrongdoing, and Mrs. Warrick knew it.”
“So we need to find out his real name and what he did,” Goliath said. “The maid who cleans his room can look through his things in the morning.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t prepared to put the maids in danger. If Mr. Hookly found out, we could have another murder on our hands. “I’ll inform the detective inspector in the morning. No one is to confront Mr. Hookly in the meantime. Is that understood? We’ll let Scotland Yard know and they can decide what to do next.”
“I’ll call the Yard now and ask for the inspector to come first thing tomorrow,” Peter said, reaching for the telephone again.
I didn’t sleep well that night. The turn of events had made me quite sure the poisoner was Mr. Hookly. Innocent people didn’t use a dead man’s name for good reasons. But two things didn’t make sense. First of all, Mrs. Warrick had been poisoned in the early hours, and there was no evidence of food or drink in her room. If Mr. Hookly had added the poison to her meal, she would have died earlier. If she’d returned with extra food or drink to her room and consumed it in the small hours, where was the cup or plate or leftovers?
Had the police made a mistake in determining the time of death? How accurate was their estimate?
Or had Mr. Hookly given her the face cream as a gift and she’d got up in the middle of the night and used it? It was an odd gift, but it was a little more feasible than him giving her a tube of toothpaste or a bottle of tonic.
Something else troubled me even more. Mrs. Warrick had not been frightened or outraged when she saw Mr. Hookly in the foyer that afternoon. She’d simply been confused and surprised to see him. So he was probably not a murderer or criminal. If so, wouldn’t she have alerted Mr. Hobart immediately? She’d spoken to him about Danny that afternoon, and she had not mentioned Mr. Hookly at all.
I fell asleep sometime during the night with a series of questions swirling around my head and no answers.
* * *
I founda message from Harmony slipped under my door the following morning to say she couldn’t do my hair, and she was having a short break at ten-thirty in the parlor if I wanted to talk. I got the feeling either Goliath or Peter had hinted that something was afoot but not given her more details and she hoped I would.
I waited in my room for detective inspector Hobart, but he didn’t come. At ten-thirty, I went downstairs to find the hotel undergoing a transformation. Floral garlands were being hung and four men carefully wheeled a flatbed trolley across the tiles, its large load hidden beneath a sheet of canvas. It was New Year’s Eve, the day of the ball, and every staff member seemed to have a task. No guests were allowed to dine in the dining room for breakfast or luncheon as the room was turned into a ballroom, and the adjoining vestibule was off-limits too. Mr. Hobart stood by the Christmas tree, clipboard in hand, directing staff. He looked exhausted as he spoke sternly to a delivery man for not using the rear entrance. He was doing the work of two men, thanks to me.
“May I offer some assistance, Mr. Hobart?” I asked.
“No, thank you,” he said without looking up from his clipboard.
