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WHEN ROSEMARY AND VERA returned to the hotel, Benjamin Marlowe was nowhere to be found, and neither was Max. “He must still be in with the inspector,” Rosemary commented.
Richard Wright, still appearing quite pleased with the fact that at least a few guests had checked out of the hotel, finished his breakfast and approached the reception desk. Rosemary checked her watch and realized the ordeal with Benny had taken less than an hour.
“Make certain you take down all my messages, girl,” Mr. Wright said in his usual brusque manner. “I’ve got some business in town, and I’ll be gone all afternoon.”
“Leaving us the perfect opening to snoop around his room,” Vera said under her breath. “Luck is on our side today.” They made for the lift and asked the operator to return them to their floor. After he’d gone back inside and closed the door, they made a beeline for suite 305.
With no shame whatsoever, Vera did the honors of opening Mr. Wright’s door using the stolen key from the front office. That poor Margaret had lost wages over the theft weighed heavily on Rosemary’s conscience. The only reason Gloria hadn’t let the woman go altogether was to save herself having to work round the clock. Once Cecily’s murder was solved, Rosemary vowed to tell Gloria the truth, providing Gloria wasn’t the culprit, of course.
The pair tiptoed inside and placed the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the outside of the door. “There, we ought not to be interrupted,” Vera said with satisfaction. The suite was a duplicate of their room, complete with a coat cupboard near the entrance door. “I’ll check the bedroom. You look around in here,” Vera suggested.
Rosemary nodded in agreement and went to work searching the myriad cupboards and drawers large enough to hold a typewriter. The room appeared to be in perfect order, though it seemed more likely due to Mr. Wright’s own efforts as opposed to Charlotte’s, given the limits of her expertise. Not one cushion was out of place; no speck of dust dared mar the surface of any desk, table, or bureau.
When Vera opened the clothes cupboard, she found more of the same: perfectly ironed garments organized first by occasion and then by color, and three cases piled neatly next to a row of meticulously shined shoes. In the bathroom, soaps and shaving things lined up like soldiers next to a stack of uniformly folded towels.
“There’s something wrong with this man.” Vera’s voice floated out to the other room, where Rosemary smirked at the observation.
“He’s certainly particular, but we already knew that.”
Vera lifted the covers to check under the bed and found the sheets tucked ruthlessly tight.
“What we need to find out is whether he’s also a violent psychopath with homicidal tendencies,” Rosemary mused.
“You sound like a psychology textbook, Rosie,” Vera laughed. “Unfortunately, I don’t see a typewriter.”
“Neither do I,” Rosemary replied absently. He traveled light, with only a few personal possessions dispersed throughout the room. On an end table lay a stack of old but gently worn books, each with its own bookmark. Rosemary stopped to examine two framed portraits that sat in a place of reverence on the desk. One, a family of three featuring a younger Mr. Wright and a woman holding a baby, was faded with time. The other, crisper and more recent, was of a little girl in a frilly dress with an angelic smile on her round face. Whoever else he might be, Richard Wright someone this was a husband, a father, and perhaps even a grandfather, if Rosemary’s assumptions were correct.
“There’s nothing suspicious here at all,” she finally had to admit. As soon as she spoke the words, she noticed a leather folder tucked beneath the desk. She hesitated, her fingers itching to take a peek inside, but her reluctance to further invade another’s privacy warred with the compulsion. They’d only wanted to know whether Mr. Wright kept a typewriter, and since the folio wasn’t big enough to hold one, their mission had ended.
A sound outside the door startled Rosemary out of her contemplation. “Vera,” she hissed. “Someone’s coming.”
Vera poked her head out of the bedroom, and the pair exchanged looks of panic.
“Come here,” Vera hissed and pulled Rosemary into the coat cupboard. They shut themselves inside in the nick of time and heard the snicking sound of the suite door closing.
“Maybe it’s just the maid,” Vera whispered hopefully.
“Shh,” Rosemary replied, though she wished the same thing. If Charlotte had come to take care of Mr. Wright’s room, she’d find little to do and would, perhaps, simply leave and allow them to escape this futile endeavor. She scooted slowly towards the back of the cupboard, her arms stretched out behind her for support. Something hard and sharp, most likely a nail, poked out of the carpet pile and took a swath of skin from Rosemary’s hand. She stifled the urge to cry out and wrapped her skirt around her hand to keep the blood trickling from the scratch from staining the floor.
Barely daring to breathe, they waited, listening as whoever was in the room walked to and fro as if searching for something. When he cleared his throat, they knew it was Mr. Wright himself, and Rosemary’s heart sank. There came a clicking noise and the shrill ring of the phone, followed by Mr. Wright’s impatient tones. “What are you doing calling me here? Leaving messages with hotel staff?”
He paused and waited for an answer, while Vera grabbed Rosemary’s arm and squeezed. Though Rosemary assumed the gesture had something to do with the dire situation they had got themselves into, in actuality, Vera felt a sneeze coming on and was trying desperately to remain quiet.
“No, I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to—” Mr. Wright paused. “Yes, I know the situation isn’t ideal, but you have to be patient.” He sighed.
“Yes, yes, I’m doing my best. What more do you want from me?” Apparently, dear had a long list because Mr. Wright was quiet for a few moments.
“How could I have predicted the family would request the body be sent back for burial and not send someone to attend the memorial?” Pause. “Yes, I know it has been weeks, but I thought I had a clear shot, and now I need to reassess. I assure you: I will find a way to close this deal so we can go home. Now, I was on my way to you when I got your message. Yes, yes, very good.” Mr. Wright set the receiver back with less delicacy than a man as particular as he was might normally have done and muttered under his breath.
He paced a few moments more and then opened the door to leave. Vera, unable to hold in the sneeze any longer, expelled one of her dainty squeaks and then clapped her hand over her mouth. Rosemary held her breath, but Mr. Wright stopped short and spun around to look for the source of the noise.
With trepidation because, after all, one person had been murdered and another one attacked within the week, he picked up a weapon and walked slowly back towards the cupboard. When he flung open the door, brandishing a bright-yellow brolly like a sword, his face screwed up into a scowl that was meant to appear formidable but was more akin to mortal fear, it was almost enough to make Rosemary laugh out loud.
“What on earth are you doing in my room?” he exclaimed once he realized he was in no immediate danger. “You two meddling women are trespassing. I’m calling the police!” He turned towards the telephone while Rosemary and Vera scrambled up from their spots on the floor.
“No, wait,” Rosemary pleaded, attempting to reach out and stop him. When Mr. Wright turned around and caught sight of the blood on her dress, his face went as white as the sheets on his immaculately made bed.
He backed away from her and asked, somewhat more gently, “Are you hurt? Is that why you were hiding in here?”
She could have lied, got away with the whole debacle, but instead took a more direct approach. “I’m hurt, yes, but it’s just a scratch. We...well, we thought you might be the murderer. Or, at the very least, the person who had been trying to blackmail Cecily DeVant.”
“Why that’s preposterous!” he retorted. His eyes rolled back when he caught sight of the blood for the second time.
This was not a man who was capable of murder, or at least not of killing someone the way Cecily had died. If he’d wanted her dead, he was far more likely to have slipped a bit of poison into one of her cocktails. Richard Wright simply didn’t have the stomach for the kind of brutality Cecily had endured.
“I didn’t want the woman dead, and I certainly didn’t blackmail her. I don’t know what you’re talking about. In fact, the whole idea is preposterous.” He seemed completely taken aback as he repeated the assertion. “Believe you me, Miss DeVant had no skeletons in any of her cupboards. So far as I’m concerned, the only secret the woman had was who actually owns this hotel, and that information she took to her grave. The public records list a business name that, for all intents and purposes, is a front.”
“Why are you so intent on buying a hotel that isn’t for sale?” Rosemary demanded. Her hand had started to throb now that the adrenaline rush of being caught snooping had drained, and she was both irritable and past ready to return to her suite, clean herself up, and take a rest. “The letters we found in Cecily’s handbag certainly sounded like they could have come from you.”
He had the decency to look somewhat contrite. While he might not have actually resorted to blackmail in this case, he’d certainly considered it and only kept his conscience clean because he hadn’t found anything incriminating enough to carry out his plan. Which begged the question who, if not a conniving businessman, would have known where exactly to press Cecily?
Mr. Wright’s forehead creased as he furrowed his brow, and suddenly he looked even older. “You young women these days think you can address your elders any way you like. Don’t forget I could call the police and press charges against you, or at the very least have you removed from this hotel,” he reprimanded. He might as well have shaken a finger at her.
“A course of action you would find more difficult than you think,” Vera huffed, “now that we have a better idea of what you’ve been up to. I’d say we have more ammunition than you do, so why don’t we just cooperate with one another?”
“You’re certain the hotel is not available?”
“I am, and I have it on very good authority.”
“Then I am sunk. Cecily DeVant’s death was a matter of great inconvenience to me.”
“Have you any idea who killed her?” Rosemary asked bluntly, thoroughly irritated by the events of the afternoon and no longer remotely scared of Richard Wright.
The man sank down into the desk chair and heaved an enormous sigh as though defeated. “How on earth should I know?” he asked.
“You must have seen something or heard something that makes you think it’s one person or another,” Rosemary said, still awkwardly holding her bloody hand against her skirt. She shifted her weight to her other foot and vehemently wished he’d invite her to sit, even though the circumstances of their presence in his room didn’t dictate that he was required to do so.
“I was given to understand Miss DeVant had stepped in to run the hotel because the owner was in ill health and that it would likely go up for sale in the event of his passing. When I looked into public records, however, I was unable to find the owner’s name.”
Pausing, he waved a hand towards the nearby sofa. “Sit, please.” Wright cleared his throat. “I thought if I could only talk with him, I could get him to sell sooner. Take the white elephant off his hands, as it were.”
Rosemary cocked a brow at him. “While working steadily to drive the price down by undermining the hotel’s reputation.”
A dull-red color crept up from beneath Wright’s collar as Rosemary pinned his motive with deadly accuracy.
“Say what you like, but I’ve seen a great many things during my stay at this hotel. Discovering the two of you in my coat cupboard isn’t even terribly shocking. Not, mind you, that I expect to find either of you poking around my room again.”
His reprimand had weight behind it, but Mr. Wright was still taking their trespassing with surprising aplomb, especially considering his usual churlish demeanor. He crossed his legs and determined himself to brave out the accusation.
“As to the murder, it could have been any one of them. Yes, I suspect it could have been. Miss DeVant made it a point to harangue every single one of her staff at one point or another. Is it any wonder they all seemed to despise the woman?”
Having seen Cecily taking Gloria to task, Rosemary offered no argument.
“But would a public dressing down be a motive for murder?” Wright mused. “A rather extreme reaction, what? There are plenty of places to work on this island. Maybe none of the other hotels hold the same status as the Aphrodite, but...” he trailed off. “Though I suspect the young maid will struggle to live up to higher standards than she’s been held to at this establishment.”
“You can’t possibly think Charlotte killed Miss DeVant,” Vera said incredulously. It seemed everyone wanted to point the finger in her direction. “Especially if Cecily’s death would put her in dire straits.”
“I shouldn’t think so, but as a seasoned traveler, I’ve stayed in hotels in every major European city, America, and the West Indies. Never have I seen the level of patience Miss DeVant showed that maid, with the exception of family ties. I don’t believe little Charlotte is related to Miss DeVant, but I do believe there was some deeper connection between the two. Murder is often committed for personal reasons, don’t you know?”
Having heard enough to know Mr. Wright hadn’t a clue, nor was he responsible for Cecily’s death, Rosemary stood to leave. “I’m sorry to have troubled you, and I’d like to thank you for being so patient with us after we invaded your privacy.”
“Quite all right, young lady. No harm done.” He graciously waved away the apology. “And you’re quite certain the hotel will not be sold?”
“As certain as I can be.” With that, Rosemary and Vera swept from the room with more information than they’d had going in, but also with more questions than answers.
