The Package Included Murder (21 page)

The director acknowledged the master stroke with a slight bow. He knew, of course, that British married women frequently travelled on their husbands' passports and, when they did, no details of their profession were required or given. Oh, you had to get up very early in the morning if you wanted to catch the Hon. Con bending!

The director was, of course, perfectly well aware that, whatever had set Miss Clough-Cooper's bed on fire, it was not a carelessly dropped cigarette. Even the most inexpert eye could see that the bed had been ignited at several points round the edges. Few people in positions of responsibility in the Soviet Union are fanatics for the truth, and the director of the Intourist Hotel in Sochi was no exception. All he wanted was a quiet life, and a long one. He rubbed his hand thoughtfully over his chin. So – somebody had tried to burn this female, Western tourist alive in her bed. Very uncultured. Nasty, too. And it would be even more nasty if the powers-that-be found out about it. There would be endless investigations and interrogations and all kinds of unpleasantnesses. The hotel director knew all about the ways of the Soviet police and had absolutely no desire to extend his experience in that respect. Whatever the outcome, his job wouldn't be worth a candle. No Albatrosser, therefore, was more anxious to cover up what had happened to Penny Clough-Cooper than the hotel director himself was.

The hotel director looked the Hon. Con slowly up and down, and it can be said without any equivocation that there was nothing lickerish in his glance. It was a look of purely financial speculation. Having reached a decision, the hotel director turned on the now subdued but ashen-faced floormaid and spat a mouthful of Russian at her. She gulped, moved away and began driving everybody back into their own rooms. Most of them went quite willingly, no longer interested in a scene which hadn't even got a drop of blood to liven it up. Soon only the Hon. Con, Miss Jones, the Lewcock brothers, Messrs Beamish, Withenshaw and Frossell were left. Mrs Beamish and Mrs Withenshaw, ably abetted by Mrs Frossell, were ministering to that perennial victim, Penny Clough-Cooper, while of the Smiths there was no sign at all.

The director, taking the Hon. Con as the natural leader of the group, addressed himself to her. ‘Some person will be required to pay for this.'

The Hon. Con tried to make herself invisible.

‘The damage,' explained the director, indifferent to the cruel body blows he was inflicting. ‘In this hotel, smoke in bed is totally forbidden. Is against regulations, copy of which is in my office room and available to seekers.'

With the Hon. Con attempting to fight her way through to the rear ranks, it was left to Mr Beamish to ask the question which no self-respecting haggler should ever allow to pass his lips. ‘ How much?'

The director pretended to calculate, though he had already done his sums. ‘ Fifty,' he said.

Nobody cared much for the sound of this.

Jim Lewcock licked dry lips. ‘Fifty roubles is a touch on the stiff side, isn't it, old man?'

‘Not fifty roubles,' said the director with a sweet smile. ‘Fifty pounds. English pounds.'

‘Jesus!' The shock went straight to Jim Lewcock's stomach. ‘Here, Tone,' – he turned urgently to his brother – ‘ don't let 'em start fixing anything till I get back!' He rushed off down the corridor.

The Hon. Con was sidling away, too. ‘Must just go and see how poor old Penny's getting on,' she whispered to Mr Beamish. ‘Leave you chaps to deal with all this sordid stuff, eh?' She grabbed Miss Jones by the arm. ‘Come on, Bones! We've got work to do!'

A few moments later Miss Jones was peering apprehensively under the Hon. Con's arm into the Withenshaws' bedroom and experiencing a twinge of remorse. Miss Clough-Cooper, stretched prone on the bed nearer the door, did look distressingly like a corpse.

‘How is she?' The Hon. Con's hushed whisper roused Miss Clough-Cooper and for a flickering moment she opened her eyes.

Zoë Withenshaw stood aside. ‘Why don't you come in?'

The Hon. Con and Miss Jones tip-toed into the bedroom.

‘She looks a deuced odd sort of colour,' observed the Hon. Con in the voice she used for talking in church. ‘She didn't get burned, did she?'

‘No, thank God! said Mrs Withenshaw, who was looking pretty peaky herself. ‘The flames didn't actually reach her though she must have breathed in a fair amount of smoke.'

Mrs Beamish replaced the damp face-cloth on Miss Clough-Cooper's forehead while Mrs Frossell stood by and looked sympathetic.

‘Why didn't she wake up?' asked the Hon. Con. ‘ Was she drugged?'

Zoë Withenshaw shook her head. ‘She'd been knocked out.'

The Hon. Con's jaw dropped. ‘Knocked out?'

Zoë Withenshaw nodded across the bed at Mrs Beamish. Mrs Beamish obliged by bending over the still figure once more and removing the face-cloth. Then she pushed aside a lock of Penny Clough-Cooper's hair and the very ugly bruise was revealed in all its purpling glory.

‘It's a wonder,' chirped Mrs Frossell admiringly, ‘that her head wasn't split right open!'

In her more unbuttoned moods, the Hon. Con was wont to claim that, once she'd got the bit between her teeth, wild horses couldn't pull it out again. If Penny Clough-Cooper had a grievance, it was perhaps that it had taken six murderous attempts on her life before the Hon. Con would even admit that the bit was there.

The Hon. Con rejected this criticism with some heat and pointed out that she had been Penny Clough-Cooper's staunchest supporter right from the start. ‘And never wavered!' she boomed, through and above Miss Clough-Cooper's somewhat sceptical sniff. ‘I was just lying doggo – see? Playing possum or whatever. Pretending I thought it was all in your mind on the off-chance that the murderer chappie would betray himself.'

‘And did he?' asked Miss Clough-Cooper with rather unnecessary sarcasm.

The Hon. Con realised that Penny Clough-Cooper had been through some dashed hair-raising experiences recently and so she made due allowance for the old frayed nerves. ‘ You feeling warm enough?' she enquired with a solicitude that would have had Miss Jones gasping with shock.

Miss Clough-Cooper adjusted the Hon. Con's duffle coat across her knees. ‘No, not really,' she said.

The Hon. Con gazed round the deserted bathing beach and out across the steely grey sea. A sudden gust of wind whipped up a generous handful of sand and dashed it across their faces. ‘Didn't think foreigners had weather like this,' she commented gloomily. ‘Holy cats, we might as well be in England.' She held out an enquiring hand. No, her eyes had not deceived her – it was raining.

Miss Clough-Cooper rose to her feet and handed the duffle coat back. ‘ There is absolutely no point in staying out here,' she said.

‘But we've got an unencumbered field of fire here!' wailed the Hon. Con. ‘ We could see anybody approaching for simply miles.' She struggled up out of the deck chair and scurried after her charge. ‘You going to sit in the hotel?' she asked.

‘No.' Miss Clough-Cooper forged even further ahead. ‘I think I shall go down into the town. I've got some shopping to do, too.'

It was Hobson's choice. The Hon. Con trailed down to the shops in Miss Clough-Cooper's wake and reflected that, all in all, she'd had a jolly frustrating morning. She'd been trying to get to the bottom of this latest attack but old Penny Clough-Cooper was being far from cooperative. No matter how many times the Hon. Con asked her, the dratted girl would keep saying that she'd been fast asleep and had neither heard nor seen anything.

‘Oh, come on!' she had expostulated rather crossly. ‘You simply can't say that the first thing you knew was when you came round and found yourself lying on the flipping bed with Mrs Withenshaw bending over you! You must have spotted something! You must …'

Miss Clough-Cooper's face had been as steely grey as the sea. ‘I didn't!' she said flatly.

And, in spite of all the Hon. Con's efforts, Penny Clough-Cooper maintained this pig-headed attitude all the way on the long walk down the hill to the centre of Sochi. Indeed, if the Hon. Con hadn't had a bit of a soft spot for the girl, she might have washed her hands of the whole business there and then.

Although the sea-side town of Sochi had its full quota of shops, only the handful within easy walking distance of the port area were of much interest to foreign visitors. Penny Clough-Cooper and the Hon. Con had, therefore, little difficulty in running down the rest of their party. The Hon. Con, automatically keeping a weather eye open for one-eyed lascars and sinister Chinese, strolled over to Miss Jones.

‘How you getting on, eh?'

Miss Jones, to whom the tedious task of buying such presents as the Hon. Con intended to take home with her had been delegated, was in the middle of pricing some Matrushka dolls. Was five for four roubles seventy-three copeks in this shop a better bet than the seven for six roubles fifteen copecks in the other shop when the five for four roubles seventy-three copecks had prettier faces? ‘Oh, quite well, thank you, dear,' said Miss Jones, knowing that the Hon. Con didn't like a grumbler. She recollected an earlier problem. ‘You did say you didn't want to spend more than fifty pence on your cousin, Lady Emily, didn't you, dear?'

‘Didn't want to buy her a flipping present at all,' admitted the Hon. Con gloomily, ‘but she did bring me that potty little lace hanky from Malta. Useless thing it was, too. One blow and it was finished.'

‘I was wondering about one of those little clay figurines,' said Miss Jones. ‘ They're so nice and bright aren't they? The tiniest costs well over a pound, though.'

With an unerring instinct, the Hon. Con's eye fell on the least expensive item in the entire shop. She indicated a tray full of highly unattractive, plastic key rings. ‘Get her one of those, Bones!'

Having cut that Gordian knot, the Hon. Con strolled masterfully out of the shop. On the other side of the road, seated at a pavement cafe and consuming a large ice-cream, was another of nature's delegators – Ella Beamish. Although the weather was still cool and blowy, it had stopped raining and the Hon. Con ambled across the road to join her. Blenching slightly at the thought of what it was going to cost her, she too ordered an ice-cream. Well, she was supposed to be on holiday.

‘I gave Norman a list,' confided Mrs Beamish between mouthfuls, ‘and told him to get on with it. I can't' – she leaned confidentially across the table – ‘do much standing, you know. Not with my complaint.'

‘Blooming boring business, anyhow,' grunted the Hon. Con. ‘And expensive. It all adds up, you know.'

‘What about the Smiths?' asked Mrs Beamish.

‘What about 'em?'

‘Do you know how many presents they've got to buy? Thirty-five! Think of that!
Thirty-five
! And you should have seen what they were buying, too. None of your cheap stuff for them, oh dear me no! Caviar, those silver holders for glasses of tea, enamelled spoons and I don't know what. The money they were spending! Really, young people these days …'

The Hon. Con reckoned she'd got enough troubles of her own without worrying her head over nationwide sociological problems, so she just stopped listening. When eventually she spoke again to Mrs Beamish, her question was something of a non sequitur.

Mrs Beamish was, happily, a shrewd and clear-headed woman and she had no difficulty in switching onto this new track. ‘Well, I wouldn't say we exactly lived
near
Miss Clough-Cooper, Miss Morrison-Burke. Wattington must be a good fifteen or twenty miles away from us. By the way,' – Mrs Beamish showed that she could do the grasshopper bit too – ‘is she going to pay that fifty pounds?'

‘Don't reckon she's got much choice,' said the Hon. Con. ‘Fearful swindle.'

‘That manager's up to some fiddle, if you ask me.'

‘Penny was sort of dropping the odd hint that the rest of us might care to help share the burden,' said the Hon. Con idly.

Mrs Beamish was highly indignant. ‘Huh, I like that! Why on earth should we?'

‘She said the only reason she didn't kick up a fuss and call in the cops was because she was thinking of the rest of us,' explained the Hon. Con. ‘Still, I managed to talk her out of it. Said I didn't think it was fair on people like the Smiths, who obviously haven't got two ha'pennies to rub together.' She averted her eyes from the sight of the Smiths, mari et femme, emerging from the souvenir shop opposite. Loaded down with parcels, they unconcernedly hailed a taxi to take them back to the hotel. ‘Jolly good ice-cream, this,' said the Hon. Con quickly.

Mrs Beamish gave the Soviet ice-cream industry her accolade. ‘I've tasted worse,' she said.

The Smiths departed in a cloud of low octane fumes and the Hon. Con returned to her muttons. ‘This latest attempt on Penny Clough-Cooper's life,' she said. ‘What I can't fathom is how this brute manages to get into her room. This is the second time, you know. Penny says she's frightfully careful about keeping her door locked but – well – there were no signs of a break-in, were there?

Mrs Beamish out-glared a Russian family party who were sitting at a nearby table and gawping. Obviously they had seen nothing like this down on the collective farm. With a mixture of grotesque grimacing and over-dramatic gestures, she ordered another icecream. The Russian family party nodded their appreciation of this performance. ‘I don't see your problem, I'm afraid.'

The Hon. Con, ice-cream moustache and all, looked up. ‘You don't?'

Mrs Beamish shrugged her shoulders. Her manner was really rather insulting and, if the Hon. Con had been at all sensitive, she might have taken exception to it. ‘These hotels are all the same,' she said, dabbing her lips with a tissue, ‘wherever you go. Any key will open practically any door. It's my theory that they put the locks on the bedroom doors just for window dressing – to reassure the guests. From a security point of view, they're virtually useless.'