Showered, shaved and dressed I went down to breakfast the next day. I had decided this would do me good. I forced eggs, bacon and mushrooms down my throat and drank several cups of coffee.
I had made another decision. I was going to the nearest London police station. I was going to tell them everything, and make them listen. I would not mention the drugs I had given him, even so. Hopefully he wasn’t dead, and so no post-mortem would reveal their presence or their type.
But was he dead?
Was it just conceivable he was? What then?
He would be lying on the kitchen floor of my house, gradually decomposing, as so many had in so many abodes during my lurid tales. Who would believe I’d had nothing to do with it?
I went back upstairs to my room, leaving the Do Not Disturb light on. I thought through all of it carefully. It was very incriminating, but there would have to be some get-out. I was nearly an old man. And I had no record of violence. I wasn’t gay, had no record of that either. I paid my bloody rates and taxes – A model citizen, Roy Phipps. Never trust the quiet ones.
At twelve noon on the dot, as Ed would have exclaimed, I got up and went down to the hotel bar.
It was another sunny day. Some Americans without apparently a care on earth, were sitting laughing in a corner booth, drinking colas and what I took to be screwdrivers.
A smart woman and man, who looked what one used to call European, were consulting a street map in the corner of a maroon velvet banquette.
I asked for a whisky and soda and hastily added, “No ice, thanks.”
The man came back with the whisky as specified and set it on a small white mat.
I looked at that, then into my drink. I was going the same way as Ed. What else had I got?
Raising my glass I drank a healthy swallow, and then gazed through the green and brown bottles along the bar into the shadowy mirror on the wall. You could see the foyer reflected there, a surge of incoming people, luggage on trolleys, a giggling blonde in her fifties, and Joseph Traskul, seated idly and relaxed, in a chair beside a potted palm.