The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (22 page)

Minutes later, Betty and Edna heard the distant click of the front door latch closing. It sounded for all the world like the closing of a tomb door or the first scattering of soil on a recently lowered coffin. Edna leaned forward and placed her face in her hands, and she began to sob, quietly and uncontrollably.

While Malcolm Broadhurst was greeting the two uniformed policemen on the steps of the Regal’s ornate front door, two things were happening, both of them personally involving the Merkinson twins.

For Harriet, the routine so cherished by her sister had been a chore. More than that, it had been the bane of her life.

Harriet had long wanted to get out of the repetitive drudgery of the existence she shared with Hilda, and Arthur Clark-dear, sweet Arthur, with his strange toilet habits – had been her ticket to salvation. Love was a new experience to Harriet: for that matter, she did not know – not truly, down in those regions of the heart and the soul where such things reside – whether she really loved Arthur, for she had never experienced such feelings, even as a teenager and a young woman. But she did see in him the means whereby she could attain a new life, a life of relative importance. “Harriet and Arthur”, “Arthur and Harriet” – she couldn’t decide which she preferred, but she preferred either to “The Merkinson twins” or “Hilda and Harriet”.

As she fished out the old clothesline from the kitchen cupboard, taking care to replace the various bottles and cartons of disinfectant and packets of soap powder, she felt a calmness come over her. Arthur’s death had effectively removed her last chance for salvation, and she had been destitute. But now, thanks to the clothesline, she saw a solution. It wasn’t the one she would have preferred but it was now the only one available. The only game in town. She could neither face life with Hilda nor life without the constant frisson of excitement she got prior to meeting Arthur, and she certainly could not face the comments and whispers around town when she walked down the high street or around the green. No, this way was best for all concerned. It was best for Edna – who might at least derive a little satisfaction when she heard – and it was best for Hilda, who would have to put up with her own share of her sister’s shame.

She climbed the stairs wearily and attached one end of the clothesline to the upstairs banister rail. Then, after ensuring that the line’s drop was sufficiently short to do the job, she fashioned a noose of sorts and slipped it over her head. With one final look around the landing she climbed over the rail and sat on the banister, staring down at the floor far below. As she jumped, in that fleeting but seemingly endless second or two before the line pulled taut without her feet ever touching the hall floor, she wondered where Hilda was . . . and what she would say when she came home.

“You’ve got something for forensics?”

Broadhurst nodded. “It’s inside. I didn’t want to be seen with it outside.”

They started to walk.

“I came up last Wednesday,” Malcolm Broadhurst explained to the two uniforms. “To check into the break-in down at the animal testing centre.”

“Oh, yeah?” one of the policemen observed. His name was James Proctor and he had perfected that same aggressive and questioning response to even the most innocent facts or snippets of information, seeming to require confirmation or substantiation to anything said to him.

“Yeah,” Broadhurst confirmed. They were now walking up the Regal’s steps and approaching the wide, oak-panelled revolving door. “Your Inspector Mishkin asked me up because there were a few things he wasn’t too happy about. I take it you two aren’t working on that case?”

“We didn’t know it was a case,” the second policeman said as they emerged from the revolving door into the hotel’s reception area. He said the word “case” with a heavy-handed touch of sarcasm. “Thought it was just a simple break-in.”

“Yes, well,” Broadhurst continued. “That’s the way it looked, and Inspector Mishkin and I decided to keep it that way until things made a little more sense.”

“And have they now?” the second policeman asked.

Broadhurst hit the bell on the reception desk.

“Look at it this way,” the policeman said, turning from the desk and looking the two uniforms in the eye. “Whoever broke in through the window managed to trash the place and then place all the broken glass on top of the wrecked office.” He nodded, smiling. “That’s a pretty good trick, don’t you think?”

“So—”

“So,” Broadhurst continued, watching the main staircase as a young man appeared and started down, “the ‘vandal’ clearly had access to the centre and wanted to cover up the fact that they had been there. Now that reason could be simply a matter of their wanting to fight the animal testing, kind of like a fifth columnist, or it could be another reason. I think we now have that reason-although the reason itself must have a reason – and that’s what I now bloody well intend to find out.”

“Yes, sir?” the young man said as he reached the bottom of the stairs and approached the three men at the desk. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Is Mister Poke around?” Broadhurst asked. “I gave him something to look after for me.”

The man nodded and moved around the desk. “I’ll give him a call, sir,” he said.

As Harriet Merkinson was swinging gently from side to side in the hallway of the house she shared with her sister, Hilda Merkinson slipped quietly into the back door of the Regal.

“Hello, Miss Merkinson,” Sidney Poke said. His tone was quite reverential, a tone he would use when speaking with anyone who had been at the previous evening’s party, and particularly those who had been closely involved with the tragic death of Arthur Clark.

Hilda nodded. “I wondered,” she said, “if you had found anything this morning. When you were cleaning up, I mean.”

Sidney frowned attentively. “Have you—” The ring of his mobile phone interrupted him. “Excuse me just a minute,” he said, pulling his phone from his side pocket. He pressed a button and said, “Yes?”

Hilda looked around as Poke listened on the phone.

“Right,” he said. “I’ll get it and bring it through.” He waited another few seconds and then said, “Very well, I’ll meet them on the way.”

“Now,” Poke said as he returned the phone to his pocket. “Where we were? Ah yes, have you lost something?”

They started walking slowly through the ballroom, which was now cleared. Tables were folded and leaning against the far wall; chairs were stacked in towering piles in front of the stage; and an army of young men and woman were busy with vacuum cleaners, criss-crossing the floor, their attention fixed on the carpet.

“My handbag,” Hilda shouted above the drone of the cleaners. “I think I must have left it last night.” Poke nodded and looked around absently. “In all the excitement,” Hilda added, suddenly wondering if “excitement” were the correct word to use under the circumstances.

“Ah!” Sidney Poke motioned Hilda towards a small occasional table set up by the door leading out to the toilets. The table contained a few jackets plus an assortment of bags.

“All those were left last night?” Hilda said in astonishment.

Poke gave an approximation of a laugh sounding more like a snort. “No, these belong to the cleaners,” he said, “but your bag – if you did leave it, and if it has been found-is most likely here as anywhere.”

As they reached the table, Hilda saw her bag. Her heart rose-or surfaced . . . or whatever it was that hearts did that was the opposite to sinking – and she reached out for it, careful not to appear too anxious. “That’s it,” she said triumphantly.

She picked up the bag and unfastened the sneck. She removed her purse, noting with grim satisfaction that the small bottle was still there, nestled in the bottom amongst Kleenex tissues, lipstick, comb and all the other rudiments of a woman’s handbag, and flipped it open. “There,” she announced, proudly displaying her library card, “just to show it’s mine.”

Hilda replaced the card and dropped the purse back into the depths of the handbag. Fastening the sneck, she said, “Well, I’ll get off then.”

Sidney Poke nodded. He took her arm and gently led her towards the main door that went on to the toilets and out to the reception area.

“How are you today? I mean, how are you feeling?”

Hilda made a face. “Oh,” she said, “you mean after—”

Poke nodded with the quietly attentive air of an undertaker.

“It was my sister. It was Harriet who collapsed. Not me.”

“Ah.” He pushed open the door and ushered her through ahead of him. “Well, I’ll leave you here, if that’s okay, Miss Merkinson.” Poke stopped at a desk in a small recess and shuffled in his pocket. He produced a set of keys and set about opening the desk’s deep drawer. “We’re running a little behind, what with-you know.”

Hilda nodded, watching Poke reach around into the drawer.

Somewhere far off, but coming closer, she could hear footsteps.

“Ah, here it is,” Poke grunted. “Must have pushed it further back than I thought.” His back to Hilda, Poke pulled out a small bundle and closed the drawer.

The footsteps were getting closer. Hilda tried to ignore the yawning staircase on her right, the fabled 45 steps that led down to the Gentlemen’s toilets. Deep in her mind, the footsteps belonged to Arthur Clark as he descended less than 12 hours earlier to empty his bowel and meet his end . . . except they seemed to be coming towards her rather than away from her. She shook her head and turned back to see the Hotel manager holding a toilet roll enclosed in a polythene bag.

“Right then,” Poke was saying, though his words sounded like rushing water in Hilda’s ears. Rushing water and footsteps, now getting very close-echoing-as though there were more than just Arthur coming back.

Poke moved the bag from one hand to the other as he returned the keys to his pocket. Hilda frowned at the bag, looked at Poke, smiled awkwardly, and turned around to face the toilet steps, half expecting to see Arthur climbing up to see her, to ask her why she had done what she had done, and bringing other people with him, friends of his, friends who-
wanted toilet paper . . .

– wanted to talk to her and smooth her troubled brow with grave-cold hands. She turned sharply, took a couple of steps in the direction of the reception area and then stopped. There were figures approaching, figures making footstep-sounds. Her initial relief at discovering that the footsteps didn’t belong to her sister’s fancy man quickly evaporated when Malcolm Broadhurst called out to her.

“Ah, one of the Misses Merkinson.” Broadhurst’s tone was cheery. There were two policemen with him. “Now which one are you?”

Hilda started to speak and then, clutching her bag tightly, she spun around. Behind her, Sidney Poke was still standing by the doors leading into the ballroom, the toilet roll in his hand.

“Miss Merkinson?”

Hilda looked all around, clutching the bag even tighter, willing it to disappear . . . willing it to be a week earlier, willing there to have been no rain so that Jack Wilson’s General Store had not been flooded and Harriet had not had to stay and so Hilda had not gone for the fish and chips and so met Arthur who believed that she was her own sister . . . willing herself, back seven years ago, not to take the job at the animal testing centre . . . so many things. So many opportunities for her to have avoided this single instant.

But it was too late.

The footsteps were growing louder and slightly faster, moving towards her along the polished floor.

“Miss Merkinson?”

Then it all became clear.

She could escape through the toilets somehow. Escape and find Harriet and they could run off together, start a new routine . . . just the two of them.

She turned and almost leapt forward.

The piece of slanted ceiling that descended with the steps stayed straight for a second or two and then tilted.

Just as she was wondering why that was, Hilda hit her head on the side railing. She felt something warm on her cheek, spun around, and smashed her shin on one of the steps. For a second, amidst the confusion and the pain, she thought she could see a figure standing at the foot of the 45 steps, a figure patiently waiting for her to come down. She heard a crack.

Hilda slipped backwards and to the side somehow, hitting the back of her head on another step before turning over fully and ramming her face into one of the rail supports. More warmth . . .

And then blackness.

Another step broke her nose and her pelvis, another her third and fourth ribs-sending a splinter of bone into her left lung and scraping a sliver of tissue away from the second and third ventricles of her heart.

Two more steps fractured her skull, broke her left collarbone and smashed the base of her spine. The final step on the first flight sent another piece of rib through her heart.

She rolled onto the first landing and then proceeded down the second flight. And then onto the third.

It was Betty Thorndike who found Harriet.

She had called around on her way back from Edna Clark’s house, just to see if Harriet was all right. Of course, she wasn’t.

By Monday afternoon, it was all over bar the shouting. And as far as Malcolm Broadhurst was concerned, there would be little of that. He had been to see Edna Clark on the Sunday afternoon, with both of the Merkinson sisters lying on metal trays in the cold and strangely-smelling basement of Halifax General.