The Package Included Murder (2 page)

The Hon. Con blew her nose in a loud resounding clarion call. It was one way of putting a stop to Lewcock Senior's disgusting innuendoes. She had already pigeon-holed both the Lewcock brothers as a couple of foul-mouthed oafs as soon as she'd laid eyes on them, but she had another reason for butting in and putting a spoke in Jim Lewcock's wheel. The Hon. Con's finely chiselled nostrils had caught an intriguing whiff of mystery in Penelope Clough-Cooper's remarks – a whiff that other, less sensitive noses might have missed.

Ella Beamish shivered. ‘ I'm getting quite cold,' she complained. ‘Norman, go and get my white cardigan, will you? It's in the blue suitcase.
Norman
!'

‘Just a minute, dear!' Norman Beamish was looking at the Hon. Con. ‘Were you going to say something, Miss Morrison-Burke?'

‘Have got a couple of questions I'd like answering,' admitted the Hon. Con with a quasi-embarrassed laugh. She could behave quite tolerantly towards the male sex if only they showed a bit of respect. She turned to the young woman on the bed. ‘You believe that an attempt was made to murder you tonight, eh?'

‘I
know
an attempt was made to murder me!' snapped Penelope Clough-Cooper. ‘ How many more times? Look,' – she held up the murder weapon – ‘this is the very pillow he tried to smother me with. If I hadn't all but screamed the …'

‘And you suspect that this somebody – let's call him Mr X – is not a Russian?'

‘Yes.'

The Hon. Con narrowed her eyes shrewdly. ‘Because this is not the first attempt that's been made on your life, eh?'

Penelope Clough-Cooper's face suddenly crumpled. ‘They've tried to kill me twice before!' she wailed, her voice cutting through the murmurs of consternation that arose round her bed. ‘That's how I known it must be one of us.'

All hell broke loose. Those who weren't heatedly disputing the logic of Miss Clough-Cooper's deduction were loudly objecting to having the finger of suspicion pointed at them. One or two even found time and breath to label Miss Clough-Cooper a stupid bitch of a trouble-maker who should go and get her head examined. Such were the passions aroused that the honeymooning Smiths actually stopped mauling each other for a full thirty seconds.

The Hon. Con was experiencing difficulty in making herself heard. ‘Hey, steady on, chaps!' she bawled in a voice that was probably audible in Outer Mongolia. ‘Quiet, please! Oh, come on, you rotters, put a sock in it!'

Her appeals eventually produced the desired effect and gradually the howls toned down into sullen mutterings.

Mrs Beamish was still very bitter. ‘I do think the least she could do is apologise,' she said angrily before transferring her wrath to her husband. ‘And, if you were anything of a man, Norman, you'd see to it that she did! Most husbands would be ashamed to stand idly by while their wives were being insulted.'

Norman Beamish was too sensible to answer back, and allowed Desmond Withenshaw to take the centre of the stage again. ‘ I'm afraid this changes the whole complexion of the problem,' he announced loudly, ‘ and I, personally, don't go much on our chances if we ourselves are going to be the object of the Soviet police's investigations. They will almost certainly insist on detaining us all until they have discovered the guilty party, and God only knows how long that might take. We could be held on suspicion for months. Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but my time happens to be extremely valuable. I work to a very tight schedule and I've got commitments back in England that I simply can't afford to miss. The last thing I can contemplate is sitting locked up in some godforsaken prison while some Russian bobby decides which one of us to pin the crime on.'

Desmond Withenshaw's mode of expression might have verged on the pompous but his sentiments found an echo in many hearts. It seemed that everybody had pressing engagements back home in England and it was imperative that their sojourn in the Soviet Union should not last one second longer than the prescribed fourteen fabulous days. This consensus of opinion emerged with quite remarkable clarity and speed. Hard luck on Penelope Clough-Cooper and all that sort of thing but nobody – but,
nobody
! – had any intention of tangling with the Russian police on her behalf. No, thank you very much! If somebody was trying to murder Miss Clough-Cooper, Miss Clough-Cooper was just going to have to grin and bear it.

A gleam came into the Hon. Con's eyes. She leaned forward to give the disconsolate looking Miss Clough-Cooper another encouraging pat. Miss Clough-Cooper, taken by surprise no doubt, jerked her arm away as though she had been stung but the Hon. Con didn't appear to notice. ‘You're in luck, m'dear,' she said with a grin. ‘It just so happens that I am not inexperienced when it comes to the successful investigation of murders. You ask old Bones, here! She'll tell you how many times the police have come round, hammering at my door and begging me to …'

We shall never know to what extent the Hon. Con was prepared to imperil her immortal soul (to say nothing of Miss Jones's) because it was at this precise moment that the hotel floor maid chose to fulfil Desmond Withenshaw's predictions.

The floor maid had been fast asleep, curled up on an old chaiselongue behind a screen, when Penelope Clough-Cooper's blood-curdling screams had rent the night air of Alma Ata. The poor woman had exploded into wakefulness with all her worst fears about foreign tourists confirmed. As she fought her way out of the sheet in which she had been enfolded, she heard doors opening and voices raised in querulous complaint. Before she could get free she'd seen one of those accursed capitalist blood-suckers actually standing over her and shouting. She didn't know what he was saying and she didn't much care. She could recognise danger when she saw it. The man went away and the floor maid realised that the hotel corridor had emptied. It would appear that they had found the room of the screamer and entered it. Gradually the screams died down into heavy sobs.

The floor maid seized her chance and made her get-away. There was only one thing to do with an emergency like this, and that was shove it onto somebody else's shoulders as soon as possible. The Siberian prison camp, the floor maid reminded herself grimly as she headed for the stairs, was never nearer than when you'd got your quota of bedrooms full of double-crossing, double-dealing enemy agents from the accursed West.

Unfortunately, this was an attitude of mind that others shared and none of the hotel's administrative staff (including the statutory KGB man) seemed at all willing to help out and there was much metaphorical washing of hands and passing on of the baby. Eventually the hotel director's wife came up with the solution. ‘Why don't you let Ludmilla Stepanovna deal with it?' she had asked and the entire Kazakhstan Hotel collective had sagged with relief. Of course! Why hadn't they thought of Ludmilla Stepanovna before? Who better than the Intourist guide herself to deal with these bloody foreigners? They were all so delighted with the hotel director's wife's brilliant idea that they overlooked the fact that it was half past one in the morning and that Ludmilla Stepanovna lived right on the other side of the town. With the best will in the world, Ludmilla Stepanovna couldn't get to the hotel in under three-quarters of an hour – and who said Ludmilla Stepanovna would have the best will in the world, anyhow?

The hotel director resolutely put these quibbles right out of his mind and reached for the telephone. Provided he could raise the night operator, they were home and dry!

‘What happens, huh?' Ludmilla Stepanovna who, in spite of a certain florid charm, looked as though she could spit nails, was a great one for asking questions. She was notably less able, though, when it came to listening to the answers but she recognised that this was no time to change one's spots. She made a quick head count. Thirteen! That meant – slava borgu! – that nobody had escaped. She looked round the room. No signs of drinking or gambling. They must be having a protest meeting. Of all the cheek! The sooner Ludmilla Stepanovna put a stop to that kind of subversive nonsense, the better!

Now, what was all this they were babbling about? Nightmare? Nightmare? What in the name of all the Supreme Soviet was a nightmare? Ludmilla Stepanovna scowled. Even the best linguists have their off days and for the moment she couldn't for the life of her remember what a nightmare was. Not that she was going to let a little thing like that throw her.

‘To your beds!' she barked and then, recollecting that she was addressing her country's honoured and paying guests, added in a slightly modified tone, ‘ Tomorrow is a hard day.'

The windows stopped rattling.

‘Er – yes,' said Desmond Withenshaw, avoiding everybody's eye. ‘Well, I don't think there's anything else we can do here, is there?' He pushed his wife ahead of him. ‘Well,' – he smiled ingratiatingly at Ludmilla Stepanovna – ‘ spakoyni nochi!'

If he had addressed her in Swahili she couldn't have displayed less comprehension, and Desmond Withenshaw took his departure in an embarrassed silence. The other Albatrossers didn't linger. They trooped out of Penelope Clough-Cooper's bedroom and tried to look as though the word ‘police' had never quivered on anybody's lip. Only the Hon. Con stood her ground.

Ludmilla Stepanovna glanced at the distressed woman on the bed and summed up the situation in one shrewd, experienced and probably actionable sniff. She also curled her lip.

It was lucky that these subtleties went clean over the top of the Hon. Con's eton-cropped head. ‘Think I'll just hang on for a couple of secs,' she explained blandly. ‘Miss Clough-Cooper's nerves are shot to pieces, don't you know? I'll stay and do a bit of the old hand holding.'

Ludmilla Stepanovna nodded all too understandingly. The one in the bed was quite pretty, she supposed, but far too thin for her taste. Anyhow – Ludmilla Stepanovna stiffened her back-bone – this was no time for dalliance. She had bigger fish to fry and – chestnoye slovo! – those uncultured hotel imbeciles were going to rue the day they were born. By the time Ludmilla Stepanovna had finished with them they'd think twice before rousting a full colonel in the Secret Police out of her bed in the small hours of the morning for nothing.

She opened the door. ‘ I wish you a good night!' she proclaimed formally before closing the door with a bang behind her on a widely grinning Hon. Con and a somewhat apprehensive Penelope Clough-Cooper.

Down the corridor in the double room which for reasons of economy she shared with the Hon. Con, Miss Jones struggled to stay awake. On the face of it she shouldn't have had much difficulty, motivated as she was not only by jealousy and loyalty but by abject terror as well. Miss Jones had not one carefree moment since she had set foot in the Soviet Union. The Hon. Con might laugh (indeed, the Hon. Con had laughed) but Miss Jones stuck to her guns. Nobody was safe in that dreadful country and, as a clergyman's daughter, Miss Jones was doubly at risk. Everybody knew what the communists had done to the Church since the Revolution and it was not the kind of record that permitted an unmarried lady of nervous disposition to rest easy in her bed at nights.

In these circumstances and taking one thing with another, Miss Jones should have had no trouble in tossing and turning until she was satisfied that the Hon. Con was safely tucked up in the other twin bed. The flesh, however, is weak and the flesh of reluctant tourists is perhaps weaker than most. After a mere two and a half days of relentless sight-seeing, Miss Jones was frankly worn out. Mentally, physically and emotionally. She fought a gallant rearguard action but gradually sleep overcame her. She'd just, she told herself, rest her eyes for a couple of minutes and …

Russian plumbing is pretty noisy at the best of times.

The Hon. Con emerged from the bathroom and gave a startled Miss Jones a friendly nod. ‘That ball-cock thing's gone for a Burton again,' she announced. ‘Hope I didn't wake, you Bones!'

Miss Jones gradually relaxed her grip on her heart. No doubt the beating would steady down to something approaching normal. Eventually. ‘What time is it, dear?'

The Hon. Con consulted Big Ben – her jocular and not entirely inappropriate nickname for her wristwatch. ‘Twenty-five past three.'

Miss Jones stifled her groan. ‘ Have you been with Miss Clough-Cooper all this time, dear?'

The Hon. Con stripped off her dressing-gown and stood revealed in all the glory of blue-striped, army surplus pyjamas. She did a couple of perfunctionary physical jerks and then dived into bed. ‘Had to get all the gen, old fruit. And Penny had quite a tale to tell!'

‘Miss Clough-Cooper struck me as a rather excitable young woman,' observed Miss jones sourly, noting the familiarity of that ‘Penny' but forbearing to comment on it. She plumped her pillows up with some vigour.

‘Can you blame her?' asked the Hon. Con reasonably. ‘ I had the dickens of a time gaining her confidence, I can tell you. Had to tell her all about my experience in the investigating of murders. Must say, she seemed quite impressed.' The Hon. Con smirked a sort of deprecating smirk. ‘Said she hadn't realised I was a kind of unofficial adviser to our local CID.'

‘You're not, dear!' Miss Jones's affection for the Hon. Con was not allowed to blind her entirely to the latter's faults.

‘Near as damn it!' protested the Hon. Con. ‘Is it my fault that the police force is so hide-bound and pig-headed? And I did solve two murders, Bones! Even you've got to admit that.'

Miss Jones wasn't, actually, prepared to admit anything of the sort, which was a wee bit naughty of her as the Hon. Con's claim was not without some justification. Instead, she tried to change the subject slightly. ‘ Why don't you just concentrate on writing your book, dear?'

‘Book?' The Hon. Con looked genuinely bewildered. ‘What book?'