Coffee, Tea, or Murder? (11 page)

“Did you tell him about having found his prints on the murder weapon?”

“No. I thought I’d wait until seeing him in person. Let me see. Next? I had my team contact the major taxi companies to see whether any of their drivers took a fare from the Savoy to Stansted Airport last night during the hours between when your party arrived at the hotel and the estimated time of Silverton’s death. There were two who said they had.”

“Have the drivers been questioned?” I asked.

“Yes, by one of my staff. One said he drove a woman to the airport, the other a man.”

“Did they know their names?”

“No.”

“Could they ID them if they saw them again?”

“They both said they doubted it. According to the drivers, both passengers got in the back of their taxis, gave Stansted as their destination, and said nothing else during the ride.”

“When they paid?”

George shook his head. “They might be claiming to have nothing to offer in order not to become involved. I should point out that these drivers work for fleets. There are hundreds of independent drivers who might have picked up other passengers at the Savoy at that same time. Finding them will be impossible.”

Our cognacs were served in expensive crystal snifters, accompanied by glasses of water. We held up our glasses and touched rims. “To seeing you again, Jessica. If I haven’t already said it, you look wonderful.”

“Thank you, sir. I might say the same thing about you.”

“To looking good,” he said, smiling broadly. “To being the only two people on earth who never age.”

We toasted to that, too.

“You said that Mr. Silverton’s wife had told you something of interest,” he said, sitting back in his chair and crossing one long leg over the other.

“That’s right. As you know, I spent time alone with her after we’d broken the news about her husband’s death. According to her, he was quite a philanderer.”

George’s eyebrows rose. “I assume she was not happy about that state of affairs,” he said.

“Not at all. When I picked up her raincoat to put it in the closet, I noticed it was damp. And it looked like their four suitcases hadn’t been opened.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that she might not have been in the room very long. I’m obsessive-compulsive about unpacking the minute I get into a hotel room. I suppose I shouldn’t impose my own particular habits on someone else, but I found it strange, that’s all. She had hours to unpack—assuming she was in the room all that time. I don’t think she was.”

“Possibly one of the taxi fares to Stansted.”

“Possibly.”

“Well,” he said, “now that we’ve covered what we know to date about the murder, let’s get on to more pleasant things, namely us.”

“I suppose I should apologize for what’s gotten in the way of our having time together,” I said.

“No apologies necessary, Jessica. You certainly aren’t responsible for a murder having taken place, and as for your friends joining us tonight for dinner, I understand perfectly. But I must admit that spending so little time together is extremely frustrating. I realize that we live an ocean apart, and that we both lead busy professional lives. That’s good, of course, and I wouldn’t suggest that it be any other way. I’ve been content for all the years we’ve known each other to, as we say in Scotland,
Let the tow gang wi’ the bucket
.”

I laughed. “I love your Scottish expressions, George, only I never know what they mean unless you tell me. It’s a foreign language.”

“Then I shall translate. What I said means simply that I have allowed things to run their course.”

I sighed and extended my hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t think it’s any mystery that I am very fond of you, George Sutherland.”

“And I’m sure that you are aware that the feeling is entirely mutual.”

I nodded.

“Your Frank was quite a man from what you’ve told me.”

“Yes, he was. He was—Well, in many ways he was very much like you, George.”

“I’m flattered, of course.”

“As Frank got older, he often said that he’d become more liberal, not in a political sense, but in his acceptance of human frailties.” I laughed. “That was one of many things I loved about him, his willingness to change his outlook on life.”

“One of the few benefits of aging,” George said, “is the wisdom that comes with it. I share your departed husband’s philosophy. The more years I live, the more able I am to understand, even celebrate, man’s foibles. Lord knows, we have enough of them.”

“It must be especially difficult for someone like you, George, to practice that viewpoint.”

“Why?”

“Because of what you do for a living. Coming into contact every day with man’s baser instincts.”

“It was more difficult earlier in my career, but you learn rather quickly to compartmentalize such things. Despite the evil in the world, there is so much more good to focus on. A prime example is having met you, Jessica. Little did I dream when we first met here in London all those years ago that our friendship would sustain itself the way it has.” He lifted his snifter. “To my dear friend from across the pond.”

I touched the rim of his glass with mine. “And to you, Inspector George Sutherland. As the song lyric says, you light up my life.”

“Which brings up something I’ve been meaning to say to you for some time now, Jessica.”

“Yes?”

Suddenly, his cell phone rang. “Sutherland here. . . . I see. . . . Yes, of course . . . I’ll be there in a matter of minutes.”

He clicked his phone closed and replaced it in his jacket pocket.

“I take it we’re leaving,” I said.

“Immediately.”

He motioned for the barman, who brought us our check. George laid cash on the table. “The cognac was excellent,” he said as we left the bar, went outside, and climbed into the next available taxi.

“The Savoy Hotel,” he told the driver.

“What’s happened there?” I asked.

“The flight attendant Ms. Molnari has evidently attempted suicide.”

A
n ambulance and two London patrol cars were at the front entrance to the Savoy when we pulled up.

“The hotel didn’t know what it bargained for when it booked our party,” I commented as we left the taxi and went inside where Mort Metzger stood talking with Cabot Cove’s mayor, Jim Shevlin.

“We just heard about the flight attendant,” I said.

“Where is she?” George asked.

“In her room,” Mort said. “No, strike that. It’s the pilot’s room.”

“Captain Caine,” I said.

“Right,” said Mort. “Seth is up there with her. There’s a British doc, too.”

“I’d best join them,” George said.

He looked at me and knew what I was thinking. A nod from him said it was all right to accompany him.

After getting Captain Caine’s room number, George and I rode up in the elevator together. I asked why he had been called to the scene of an apparent suicide attempt by a hotel guest.

“I’ve made it known at my office that anything untoward having to do with the SilverAir passengers should be reported to me immediately. Whether this young lady’s act has anything to do with Mr. Silverton’s murder is purely conjecture, of course, but it can’t be dismissed out of hand.”

Two uniformed officers standing outside Caine’s door snapped to attention upon seeing George, who led me into the room where the flight attendant was on a couch in the sitting room portion of a small suite, a blanket covering her up to her neck. Seth Hazlitt, and another man I assumed was the British physician Mort had mentioned, hovered over her.

“How is she?” George asked.

The British doctor turned and frowned at this question from someone he didn’t know.

“He’s from Scotland Yard,” Seth said.

George spared Seth an explanation by introducing himself and me.

“She’ll be fine,” the British doctor said, returning his attention to Molnari.

Seth took George and me aside and whispered, “An overdose, although not much of one. Made her sick but wasn’t enough to kill her. The bottle’s over there on that table.”

“Seeking attention?” George asked.

“Possibly,” Seth replied, “but that doesn’t mean taking it less seriously.”

“Who reported it?” George asked.

“The fellow in the bedroom,” Seth said, “the airline pilot. This is his room.”

I moved away from them to gain a view of the bedroom where Captain Bill Caine sat in a flowered wing chair by the window, his attention directed outside. I returned to Seth and George.

“Did he say what prompted her to come here to his room and attempt to take her life?” I asked.

“He hasn’t said much since the doc over there and I arrived,” Seth said. “Those two officers out in the hallway were here before that.”

“She needn’t be taken to hospital?” George asked.

“Might not be a bad idea to have her spend a night there,” Seth offered, “and have a psychiatrist look in on her. Even if she was only calling out for attention, there’s got to be something pretty heavy weighing on her.”

“I think I’ll have a word with Captain Caine,” George said. “Jessica?”

I’d been looking around the room, my focus not on their conversation. “What?” I said. “Oh, yes, I’ll come with you.”

We entered the bedroom and George quietly closed the door behind us. Caine never looked up to acknowledge our presence. He continued to sit stoically, his eyes trained on something through the window—or perhaps on nothing.

“Excuse us,” George said. “I’m Inspector George Sutherland, and you know Mrs. Fletcher, I believe. We didn’t have the pleasure of meeting this morning at breakfast, although we did speak by phone earlier today.”

“Researching a plot for your next book?” Caine asked me.

George saved me from having to answer. “We’d arranged to meet tomorrow,” he told Caine, “but since we’re here, I wonder if I might have a word with you now.”

Caine, who wore a silky, dark blue warm-up suit with white stripes down the legs, and sneakers, shrugged. “Hell of a time for a talk, isn’t it?” he said. “Gina’s in there hanging on to life, and you want to talk.”

“According to the doctors with her,” George said, “she’ll be fine. However, if you prefer to wait until tomorrow to discuss Mr. Silverton’s murder, I’m willing to do that. But I do have a few immediate questions about this episode tonight. I understand it was you who called to report the young lady’s attempt to take her life.”

“That’s right. It’s a good thing I did or she might not have made it.”

“I don’t doubt that,” George said, not reiterating that whatever pills she’d taken would not have killed her. “This is your room, I believe.”

“That’s right.”

“What prompted her to come to your room intending to commit suicide?”

Caine managed a smile. He needed a shave, and his hair wasn’t as neatly combed as when he’d been in uniform and in command of our aircraft across the Atlantic.

“We’re crew,” Caine said. “Airline crews become close, like family. We’re always in and out of each other’s rooms.”

That was contrary to what Christine Silverton had told me not long ago. She’d said that in her early days as an airline stewardess—those days that were the basis for the mildly racy book,
Coffee, Tea or Me?
—there was a great deal of fraternizing between members of a flight crew. Christine had also said that the myriad changes in the airline industry had developed a wall between cockpit and cabin crews. Captains and first officers tended to avoid spending layover time with flight attendants, unless—unless there was a romantic interest between them, a relatively rare occurrence these days, according to her.

“How long had she been here with you before she took the pills?” I asked.

Caine fixed me in a stony stare and said, “I knew you were a novelist and private pilot, Mrs. Fletcher, but I didn’t know you were a cop, too.”

“Oh, I’m not,” I said, “but—”

“It’s a perfectly reasonable question,” George told Caine.

The pilot exhaled noisily, stood, and paced in front of the closed door. “Look,” he said, “I had no idea when Gina came here that she intended to pull some dumb trick like this. I took a shower, and when I came out she was there on the couch, a mess.”

“She seemed fine when she arrived?” George asked.

“Perfectly fine.”

“What happened to change things?” I asked, injecting as much concern as possible into my voice to take the edge off sounding like, well, a cop.

For a moment, it appeared that he wouldn’t answer me. But he sat in his chair again, shook his head, and gave forth a small smile. “We had an argument,” he said.

“About?” George asked with elevated eyebrows.

“It’s personal,” Caine said.

“Very well,” George said. “Tell me about the pills, Captain. You had them here, in your room?”

“No. She must have brought them with her.”

I believe George was thinking what I was thinking, that it would be highly unusual for a person contemplating suicide to bring her own pills to someone else’s room. People intent on taking their life generally prefer to do it alone.

George put that thought into words.

Another shrug from Caine. “How the hell am I supposed to answer that?” he growled. “It’s nuts enough trying to kill yourself. Why did she bring the pills here? I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“Has she been depressed lately?” I asked after a lull in the conversation.

“She’s a woman,” Caine replied. “Always up and down, happy one minute, unhappy the next. I don’t think she was any more depressed than the average person, whatever that is.”

I held my tongue.

“Well,” George said, “I appreciate your time, Captain. I would like to have our talk tomorrow concerning the murder.”

“Sure. You’re wasting your time. I don’t know anything about Silverton being killed, but ask all the questions you want.”