An Air That Kills (28 page)

The head nodded.

‘I understand you registered here as Mr James.'

‘Who might you be?'

‘My name's Thornhill.' He slid his warrant card across the table.

Carn took his time examining it. ‘There's no law against changing your name. Not that I have, of course.'

‘Did I say there was, Mr Carn?' Thornhill paused. ‘What are you doing in Lydmouth?'

‘It's a free country, Inspector. Can't a man have a little holiday?'

‘I thought you'd just had a long holiday with free board and lodging.'

Carn laid down his spoon. ‘I've paid my debt to society. That episode's neither here nor there.'

‘Charlie Meague is in Lydmouth, isn't he?'

‘Who?'

‘Don't come the innocent. Rather an odd coincidence, I'd have thought. Perhaps you plan to combine business and pleasure?'

Carn shrugged. He picked up his spoon and took a small mouthful of his pudding.

‘We'd like you to take your holiday somewhere else, Mr Carn.'

‘And why should your wishes influence me, Mr Thornhill?'

‘Two reasons. First, I'll have a word with the manager, and I doubt if he'll want your custom once he's heard what I've got to say. And that goes for any other hotel or lodging house in this town. Second, we're going to be keeping an eye on you – and on Charlie Meague.'

‘That sounds like harassment to me, Inspector. Perhaps I should have a word with my solicitor.'

‘You can do whatever you want as long as it's within the law and as long as you're out of Lydmouth by tomorrow.'

Carn's eyes dropped back to his book. ‘Is there anything else?'

Thornhill pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘I'm going to see the manager now.'

The manager was thirty-five going on fifty, a portly fellow with a vague expression and an RAF handlebar moustache. He greeted Thornhill's news with a mixture of fascination and horror.

‘Don't worry, old man, he'll have his bill with his coffee. Bloody cheek, eh? I say, do you think he'll try and do a flit?'

‘I don't think he's that stupid,' Thornhill said. ‘But let us know if he does.'

When he had finished with the manager, Thornhill walked slowly down the hall to the front door. There was nothing to prevent him going home now, but he felt restless. Nor was there much to draw him home: the children were asleep and he and Edith were still wary of each other after the previous evening.

As he was passing the door of the dining room, he glanced inside. Carn was no longer at his table. Coming towards the door was the tall man he had seen with Jill Francis. The man's foot caught in the edge of the threadbare carpet running down the hall. He stumbled and would have fallen if Thornhill had not put out an arm.

‘Terribly sorry,' he said loudly, clinging to Thornhill's arm. ‘It's a damned deathtrap, that carpet.'

‘Are you all right?'

The man straightened up and leant against the wall. ‘Not particularly,' he said in that voice which was so irritatingly familiar. ‘Still, I would have been even less all right if you hadn't caught me. In my book, that deserves a drink. Come and have a brandy.'

Thornhill would usually have declined an invitation to help a drunk get drunker, even when the drinking was to be done at the drunk's expense. But he allowed the man to take his arm and propel him across the hall and into the lounge. His motives were mixed. Although he didn't particularly want to go home, there was nothing else he wanted to do. He had a professional excuse for staying in that his continued presence at the hotel might encourage Carn to believe that the police were serious. He was curious, too, about this man who didn't belong in Lydmouth any more than he did. But the real reason, which Thornhill made himself admit as his host waved him towards an armchair, was that he wanted to discover the nature of the man's connection with Jill Francis.

‘My name's Oliver Yateley, by the way. Coffee and brandy?'

‘That's very kind of you. I'm Richard Thornhill.'

Yateley blinked at him as if he'd forgotten why he'd asked him for coffee and brandy. He struggled forward in his chair and held out his hand. ‘How do you do? I should warn you, go easy on the coffee. You could probably strip paint with it.' A waitress came to take their order. ‘Large brandies, mind,' he told her, articulating each syllable with precision. ‘No point in your having two journeys where one will do.' He turned back to Thornhill. ‘You're not staying here, are you?'

‘No.'

‘So you live in Lydmouth?' Yateley frowned. ‘Don't take it personally, old chap, but I couldn't stand
living
here. I'd be dead from the neck upwards within a week.'

‘I've only just moved here, so I'm not a good judge.'

‘I mean, look at this place.' Yateley waved his arm around the lounge. ‘It's so damned dreary.'

The waitress brought them their coffee and brandy.

Thornhill poured the coffee while Yateley went through the complicated procedure of finding his cigar case. He offered it to Thornhill who refused.

‘Still,' he said between puffs as he tried to get his cigar drawing properly. ‘It can only get better, even in Lydmouth. Just wait till the next election. Yes, there'll better times coming. You mark my words.'

There'll be better times coming
– the phrase jogged Thornhill's memory. ‘I've heard you on the radio, haven't I? Talking about politics?'

Yateley frowned slightly and then nodded. Smoke billowed round his face giving him the appearance of a pantomime demon. On the whole he did not seem displeased to be recognised.

‘I thought there was something familiar about your voice.'

‘The wireless – yes – goes with the job. Nowadays, if you're in politics, you can't just sit on your backside between elections. You have to reach out to your voters. Next thing we know it'll be television. It's a harsh mistress, politics, believe you me. I sometimes think I've had to sacrifice everything to it.' He leaned closer to Thornhill and sucked deeply on the cigar. His cheeks were pink and his eyes gleamed; he displayed all the symptoms of a man approaching the confidential stage of a maudlin evening. ‘And I mean everything.' He hesitated, but only for a second. ‘For example, if I hadn't gone into parliament, I'd have made a fortune by now. And then there's the effect it has on one's personal relationships.'

Yateley flung out an arm and picked up his brandy, jogging Thornhill's coffee cup as he did so. He appeared not to notice the spillage and swallowed the contents of his glass.

Thornhill knew almost immediately that something was wrong. Yateley put down the glass and had another suck of his cigar. But his eyes were pleading as they gazed at Thornhill, and he swallowed three times in quick succession. Nature, Thornhill guessed with a hint of malicious pleasure, was exacting its price for overindulgence.

Yateley struggled to his feet. ‘You'll have to – um – excuse me a moment.'

He dropped the cigar in the general direction of the ashtray, but his aim was poor and it fell on to the table instead. He blundered across the room, pushed his way through a knot of men who had congregated in the doorway and stumbled out of sight. Thornhill picked up the cigar and stubbed it out.

Somewhere in the hall, a man started shouting. The words were indistinguishable, but the outrage was obvious. Another man replied; the voice was Yateley's.

Suppressing his reluctance to get involved, Thornhill got up and joined the group of men in the doorway. Yateley was leaning against the wall near the dining-room door and muttering angrily. Facing him was the building contractor, Cyril George. There was a dark stain on George's trousers and pieces of glass on the carpet.

‘I expect an apology,' George was saying, and he jabbed his forefinger repeatedly into Yateley's chest to emphasise his words. ‘Barging around like a storm trooper – who do you think you are?'

George was very nearly as drunk as Yateley, but far more aggressive. He was with friends, one on either side of him, both with flushed faces, whose very presence no doubt encouraged him to take umbrage. They were all big men, plump and prosperous in their dinner jackets. The three of them had probably come down from the Masonic dinner upstairs.

‘Well?' George said. ‘I want an apology, sir. I want some more brandy. And I don't want to see your face in this hotel again.'

Yateley licked his lips which were very pale; he swallowed and said in a strangled voice, ‘Why don't you bugger off?'

Thornhill slipped into the hall. Forbin was standing in the dining-room doorway and Quale was watching the encounter from his desk; neither man was likely to intervene. George took a step closer to Yateley. Thornhill put a restraining hand on the building contractor's right arm.

‘Let go of me,' George snapped, showing his jagged yellow teeth. Then his cloudy, bloodshot eyes widened as he recognised Thornhill. ‘Sergeant, you can bloody well make yourself useful for once. This man's causing a public nuisance. I want him off the premises. Can't you arrest him?'

‘I'll deal with this,' Thornhill said.

‘A night in the cells would do him the world of good. Look at him. Drunk as a lord.'

‘I'd like you gentlemen to move along now.'

No one moved.

‘Listen, Sergeant,' George said. ‘Do I have to spell this out? Superintendent Williamson is a personal friend of mine. In fact, he's upstairs at this very moment.'

Thornhill had met this sort of pressure many times in his career and once or twice he had buckled under the strain. He said in a tight, controlled voice, ‘Then I suggest you go back and join him, sir.'

He stepped forward and took Yateley's arm. Taken by surprise, Yateley followed docilely when Thornhill began to tow him down the hall.

‘Mr Quale,' Thornhill said. ‘May I have this gentleman's room key?'

Quale passed the key across the desk. His face was alive with interest and he was smiling, revealing a set of gleaming false teeth.

Thornhill urged Yateley towards the stairs. His attention strained towards the men behind him. You could hear their voices murmuring, but they hadn't moved. He thought it would be all right. He hated situations when there was a threat of physical violence and he doubted his own ability to control them. There was also the small matter of how Williamson would react to the incident.

Yateley grasped the banisters and Thornhill urged him upstairs. When they reached the top of the stairs, he and Yateley zigzagged arm and arm down the landing, twice colliding with pieces of furniture, to Room 15. Thornhill propped him up against the wall while he unlocked the door.

‘Lavatory,' Yateley said. ‘Oh, Christ.'

Thornhill guided him to the bathroom on the opposite side of the corridor. Thornhill saw him collapse on his knees in front of the bowl. Oliver Yateley coughed once and moaned softly. He rested his arms on the porcelain rim of the lavatory, exposing the heavy gold links on his shirt cuffs. As Yateley began to vomit, Thornhill closed the bathroom door.

He was tempted to walk away. All the signs were that Yateley's life was in a mess. If Cyril George made good his threat of telling Williamson, then the mess would envelop Thornhill too, whatever he did now.

On the other side of the bathroom door, the retching continued. Thornhill crossed the landing and stood in the doorway of Room 15. The sagging brass bedstead, the shapeless armchair and the faded curtains were all familiar: he had seen them before in a dozen bedrooms in provincial hotels past their prime. The air smelled of leather and cigar smoke. He advanced a yard or two into the room. In front of him was the dressing table and on it was a leatherbound writing case. It was closed, but the zip had not been fastened; the corner of a photograph protruded from the top.

The bathroom was silent. Thornhill took the print between finger and thumb and gently eased it halfway out of the writing case. He found himself looking at Jill Francis. She was wrapped in a fur coat and smiling at the camera, or rather at the person, probably Yateley, behind the camera. The photograph had been taken in a street which Thornhill knew at once was not English. A second later, he registered the fact that the signs on the shops were in French. It occurred to him, belatedly, that Yateley and Jill might well be husband and wife. He was almost certain that there had been a wedding band on the third finger of Yateley's left hand.

Thornhill hurriedly pushed the photograph back into the case. Near it, beside a pair of silver-backed brushes, was a small pile of letters. The one on the top was addressed to Oliver Yateley, Esq., MP at the address in Dolphin Square.

The lavatory flushed. He moved away from the dressing table and pretended to examine a picture on the wall near the door – a painfully inept oil painting of bluebells and sheep in a forest glade. The sound of running water came from the bathroom. A moment later, the door opened and Yateley emerged, his face ashen. He crossed the landing and came into the bedroom.

‘I thought you might have gone,' he said, slurring the words more than before. ‘Thanks.' He sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands. ‘Made a bit of a fool of myself.'

‘Is there anything I can get you?'

‘I could drink a gallon of coffee. On second thoughts I'd better make it tea. Do you think one could find some aspirin in this place?'

Thornhill went downstairs to find out. Encouraged by a second half-crown, Quale promised to arrange a pot of tea and some aspirin.

‘The gentleman had a drop too much, eh?' he said. ‘It does happen.'