Moriarty Returns a Letter (23 page)

Reggie backed the Jaguar up toward the man, narrowly avoiding a shallow ditch on the side of the road.

The man in the rain did not move, but just remained standing with his hands behind his back.

Laura began to roll her window down.

“Don’t,” said Reggie, but too late. The window was down. Laura’s face was clearly visible and exposed, to this man whose face was hidden by the hood of his bulky coat and who was obviously holding something behind his back.

“Cheers,” said Laura to the man. “Do you need assistance? Is there anything that we can—”

The man leaped forward, across the little ditch, landing with his feet planted directly in front of Laura’s door. His shoulders moved suddenly, his right arm swung from one side, his left from the other, and both hands came together, centered, to point a device directly at Laura’s face.

The flash went off, then another, and then another, as the camera fired in rapid automatic bursts.

Reggie put the car in gear and floored the accelerator. The front wheels spun for a moment and then got traction; the rear wheels fishtailed, but luckily did not go into the ditch—and the Jaguar screamed down the road, leaving a spray of mud and water in its wake.

Laura rolled up her window. For about thirty seconds they drove in silence.

Then:

“Well,” said Laura. She wiped a couple of residual muddy water drops from her face.

Reggie said nothing.

“Go ahead,” said Laura. “Say it.”

“I will not,” said Reggie.

“Last chance,” said Laura. “You don’t get to put it in the bank and use it later.”

“All right,” said Reggie. “If you insist.” He waited, tried to keep it in anyway, but couldn’t: “I told you so.”

Laura nodded affirmatively and looked straight ahead.

“Yes,” she said. “You did.”

They drove on for another hour. It was still daylight, but rain was hitting the windshield in sheets, and visibility was almost nil. For a long stretch, there were no lights visible anywhere—not in the moors to either side, not on the now-invisible horizon, and not in the overcast sky above.

They were, Reggie estimated, still almost two hours from the castle.

Laura dozed. Reggie blinked.

And then the engine rattled.

The sound was faint. Reggie hoped he had only imagined it.

And then it happened again. He checked the temperature gauge.

The red needle was past the midway point—and climbing.

Reggie began to wonder whether he should wake Laura and warn her—or just let the impending car disaster unfold.

But then, mercifully, in the distance ahead and just to the left, there were points of light. A neon sign.

THE DARTMOOR DELUXE.
Just as the hotel people had promised.

Reggie took the first turnoff he saw, and hoped he had guessed right.

He had. Over the next mile the sign grew closer. And now he pulled off the main road and onto the drive toward the hotel.

The sound of the tires on asphalt changed to the sound of the tires on a gravel-paved roundabout in front of the hotel, and it woke Laura.

She sat up.

“Oh,” she said. “A break, then?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Reggie. “I need to see about the car. I’m sure we can still make it to your aunt’s place by seven—but I guess we’re lucky the hotel set something aside for us.”

This was clearly just a small hotel, a converted farmhouse of some eight or ten rooms, and probably with limited staff.

“I suppose,” said Laura, “that the kitchen will be closed?”

“I’ll be happy if they just have a room, as they said,” said Reggie, “but I’m glad you brought the crisps.”

They got out and shut the car doors, and the desk clerk, a man of about forty, came out to meet them.

“Ahh,” he said. “You’re Laura Rankin, aren’t you?”

Laura acknowledged that, as Reggie opened the boot to get their bags.

“Your room is all ready for you, and if you need something from the kitchen, just ask,” said the clerk, and then he offered to carry Reggie’s briefcase.

“I can manage it,” said Reggie, “but you’re welcome to bring what’s in the boot if you like.”

“Yes, of course,” said the clerk. He grabbed the two bags out of the boot. And then he said, pointing at the briefcase:

“I can put that in the safe, if you like.”

“Thanks, no,” said Reggie. “We’ll only be an hour or two, I expect, and then we’ll be on our way.”

“Is your car all right?” said the clerk. “I thought I heard something.”

“I think it just needs to cool off,” said Reggie. “But can you get a mechanic out to take a look?”

“Absolutely,” said the clerk. “I’ll arrange it.”

“My, it looks warm and cozy in there,” Laura whispered to Reggie, as they walked up to the main entrance. “We must be running on my hotel luck now, not yours.”

“This way, then,” said the clerk, and Reggie and Laura both looked back over their shoulders.

The man wasn’t following them up to the entrance. He had both their bags in hand, and he was motioning in another direction.

“You’ve got the special suite,” he said, pointing the bags toward a small stone-and-mortar structure some fifty yards to the back and side of the main building. “It used to be a shepherd’s hut. Very private. Specially designed and appointed, for the newly wed or new to bed, and other special occasions for special people. Right this way.”

Reggie and Laura turned reluctantly away from the main entrance.

“We’re running on my luck after all,” said Reggie.

They walked on across the crunching gravel. The rain had taken a short break, but the air had turned bitterly cold.

The desk clerk opened the door of the former shepherd’s hut, and turned on the inside lights for them.

“Well,” said Laura, looking about. “Indeed, it has been renovated, hasn’t it?”

And it had. Reggie looked about and nodded. All the modern conveniences were present, just as if someone had taken the interior of an en suite mid-range London hotel room and plunked it down inside old stone walls.

“This is really not bad at all,” said Laura. Then she added, “It’s a bit chilly though.”

“Yes,” said the clerk, already on his way out. “But it will warm up right enough when you turn the furnace on. The thermostat is right there on the wall. Cheers.”

Laura opened a bag and began to unpack.

Reggie went to the thermostat and increased the setting to something closer to normal room temperature.

Several shivery minutes went by.

The furnace—not a forced-air built-in, but a gas-fueled after-market unit, attached to the wall in the front room—made no sound or acknowledgement of any kind. Reggie knelt down for a closer look to be sure, and then he picked up the phone and called the front desk.

“The pilot doesn’t appear to be on,” said Reggie.

“Oh, not to worry,” said the desk clerk. “You’ll see the pilot switch at the bottom right. You can’t miss it. It’s completely safe, and so easy a child could do it. Just push in, then turn, and it will come right on, and then you set the furnace as toasty as you like.”

“But,” said Laura, “I think I smell gas.”

“We think we smell gas,” said Reggie into the phone.

“Nonsense,” said the desk clerk. “That’s just the aroma from the peat bog. People always make that mistake and think they smell something. But no need to worry. Just get down next to the furnace and follow the instructions I gave. Don’t be afraid of it.”

“I’m not afraid of it,” said Reggie. “I just think that you should—”

“The furnace engineer came all the way out from Marylebone Grand Hotel headquarters and checked it just this afternoon,” said the night clerk. “So it’s in perfect working order. And it’s easy. My grandmother could do it.”

“Then I suggest you send your grandmother right over, because we can’t make it work, and we’re bloody freezing!”

There was a short pause, and then:

“Right then,” said the night clerk. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. It might be a few, because we just had a sudden influx.”

“Make it soon,” said Reggie, not bothering to ask what sort of influx that could be, “or we’ll be camping in your lobby.”

“Oh, can’t do that, I’m afraid. Company rules. But we’ll get your thermostat squared away, right enough.”

Reggie went back to the furnace, got down on all fours, and tried to peer inside.

“You’re not going to try to do it yourself, are you?” said Laura.

“I can turn on a furnace,” said Reggie.

“I think this is one of those special portable kinds,” said Laura. She was putting her coat on as she said it.

“Where are you going?” said Reggie.

“Either I’m going back to the car to get my small bag or I’m stepping out for a moment so that when you blow yourself up I won’t be standing next to you.”

“You’ll be singing a different tune,” said Reggie, “when you come back and see how warm and toasty I’ve made the place.”

Reggie crouched down, peered in at the dark inner workings of the furnace, and prepared to push and twist the pilot switch one more time.

Laura stopped short of the door. She had hoped that Reggie would actually step away from the furnace and come with her outside to get her bag and then she could maneuver him into the lobby until a professional arrived.

But Reggie had called her bluff.

And so she couldn’t possibly leave. She remained standing there within a few feet of him and what she felt in her gut was going to be a disaster.

She held her breath and said a silent prayer.

“Reggie,” said Laura, having finished her silent prayer.

“Reggie,” she said again.

“What?” he said, looking up from the pilot.

“I swear that I smell gas. I am leaving right now,” she said, “and you are coming with me.”

26

At the lobby, the clerk was trying to settle back into his nap after the conversation with Reggie, because there truly was no influx of customers.

And then he jumped up suddenly from his chair and came to attention.

Someone unexpected had just entered, and she was much more important than a customer.

It was Helene Redfern herself. The clerk recognized her from the corporate training videos, from a photo hung on the wall just behind him—and from the attitude with which she approached.

She seemed more than a little annoyed, and she did not bother with pleasantries. He knew he was in trouble.

“When guests pull up in this weather, I expect you to go out to meet them,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry. I … I wasn’t expecting anyone else this evening.”

“Do you mean that all the reserved guests have arrived?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Including the special ones I told you about yesterday on the phone—Laura Rankin and Reggie Heath?”

“Yes, just a few minutes ago. And I did come right out to meet them.”

“Did you offer to help with their bags?”

“Of course.”

“Did you offer to put his briefcase in the safe?”

“I did, ma’am, but he wouldn’t turn loose of it.”

“I see,” said Helene. She stood in the lobby for a moment, considering what to do, as the chauffeur brought in her own bags from the limo.

“Have any reporters checked in?” she asked.

“Reporters?”

“Are there any media people hanging about?”

“I … I don’t think so. Why?”

“Never mind,” said Helene. “How did Laura Rankin and Reggie Heath seem when they came in?”

“I … I’m not sure what you mean,” he said.

“Were they talking about anything in particular? In a hurry to get to a phone, anything like that?”

The desk clerk hesitated, then said, “He seemed cranky and worried about his car, and she seemed anxious to get someplace warm. I escorted them to the shepherd’s hut, and I explained to him how to light the pilot, though he seemed rather dense.”

“So they still have the briefcase in their possession? With them in the hut, not in the car?”

“Yes, ma’am. He took it out of the vehicle and into the hut with him. He wouldn’t let me touch it. I saw it in the hut.”

Helene nodded and turned away.

And then she turned back.

“Why was the pilot out?” she said. “Isn’t the furnace working properly?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. When the engineer you sent this afternoon checked it, he said it was fine.”

“I didn’t send an engineer this afternoon,” said Helene. She stared at the desk clerk. “I sent no one out at all.”

The desk clerk shrugged. “A man showed up in a Marylebone Grand Hotel truck, and he said he came to fix the furnace.”

“But no one here made a call for him to come?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Odd. Well, did you light the furnace for them?”

“No, ma’am. The engineer said it was new company policy—that all guests light the pilot themselves.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “We would never—”

And then she stopped.

“He only worked on that one furnace? The one in the shepherd’s hut?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Helene turned from the clerk, exited the hotel lobby, and stepped outside into the cold air.

The wind coming from the direction of the hut brought a whiff of gas.

She paused. She didn’t want to think it was so, but she had a suspicion of what was about to happen.

For a brief moment, what ran through her mind was that it was too late now to turn things back anyway. It was her brother’s doing after all, not her own. He was responsible for it, not her, and her doing nothing now would ultimately rebound in her favor. It would be to her own advantage right now to just turn around and walk back into the lobby, collect her limo driver, and leave the premises immediately.

She decided to do that. She stepped back into the lobby. She approached the intimidated clerk, and she was about to tell him to get her bags back into her vehicle.

And then, in her direct line of sight, over the clerk’s shoulder, was that photograph again—from the bombed-out pub in 1944. Apparently it had been distributed to all the hotel branches for the centennial.

She stared at the photo. Even since she had seen it in the hotel earlier, it had been bothering her.

Not just the fact that, if you looked closely, you could see a glimpse of a body behind the fallen snooker table.