“Mrs. Jones? Mrs. Brenda Jones? My name is Paget.” He held up his card. “Detective Chief Inspector Paget. May I come in and talk to you?”
“Oh, yes, of course. Sorry about that, but …” She closed the door part-way and fumbled with the chain. “It’s just that my husband’s away—he’s a long-distance lorry driver—and I always keep the chain on when he’s gone.” She moved aside to let him in, then slipped the chain back on before leading him inside.
The house was small but tastefully furnished. Apart from a newspaper spread out beside a comfortable-looking chair, everything was neat and in its place. The woman gathered up the paper, folded it tidily, and offered Paget a seat. “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked. “It’s no trouble.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Jones,” he said, “but I shan’t be staying long. Just long enough to ask you a few questions.”
Brenda Jones folded her hands in her lap and settled herself more securely in her chair and eyed him apprehensively.
She was dressed neatly in a skirt and jumper; her legs were bare and she wore leather sandals on her feet. Probably somewhere in her middle thirties, he decided. A plumpish face beneath a halo of blonde hair made her look younger than she was.
“What can you tell me about Mr. Bolen?” said Paget. “I must admit I’m puzzled. He had meetings scheduled for Monday afternoon and Tuesday, and yet he booked into the hotel on Saturday, and I’m told he often stayed at the hotel on weekends. Do you have any idea why?”
Brenda looked down at her hands. “I’m not sure that I can tell you that,” she said. “I mean, they’re very strict about our talking about the guests, even among ourselves.”
“I don’t think you have to worry about that in this case,” Paget told her. “If we are to find the person who killed Mr. Bolen, we need to know as much about him as possible, good or bad.”
The woman looked up sharply. “Then you do know …” she began, then stopped.
“Know what, Mrs. Jones?”
“You said ‘good or bad.’”
Paget nodded, wondering exactly what was going through the woman’s mind. “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”
Brenda Jones moved uncomfortably in her chair. “It’s a bit like telling tales out of school,” she said hesitantly, “but then he is dead, isn’t he?”
Paget nodded encouragingly.
“Mr. Bolen … well, he’s been what you might call a regular,” she said slowly. “He usually comes on a Saturday. Sometimes he’d stay for just the one night; sometimes he would stay for two. Everyone in the hotel knew him and knew why …” Brenda Jones stumbled to a stop, and Paget thought he knew the reason.
“He had women in his room,” he said. “Prostitutes. Is that not right?”
“I didn’t like it, Mr. Paget,” the woman said earnestly. “You must believe me. I don’t like working with the man—not that he’s ever bothered me personally,” she added hastily, “but as long as I didn’t have to have anything to do with his … well, his other business, so to speak”—she looked guiltily at Paget—“I put up with it and said nothing.”
“Are you telling me that Quint supplied girls to Bolen?”
“Not just Mr. Bolen. It’s a sort of business on the side, you might say.”
“Does everyone in the hotel know this?”
“Some of them do, but not people like the manager, Mr. Landau. He’d go spare if he knew.”
“I see. Did Quint supply a girl to Bolen last night?”
Brenda frowned. “I’m not sure,” she said. ‘But something odd happened shortly after I started work at eleven. This girl—her name’s Stella; I don’t know her last name—came down in the lift and demanded to see Mr. Quint. She was upset about something, and when Mr. Quint came out of his office, she started going on at him about sending her up there and being told to—pardon my French, but it’s what she said—“piss off” by Mr. Bolen. Mr. Quint got her into his office straightaway, and they went at it for quite a while before Stella came out again.”
“Was she still upset?”
“I think she was, but not as much as when she went in. I can’t be sure, but I think Mr. Quint may have given her some money.”
“Did you see him give her money?”
“No, but she was putting money into her bag as she came out of the office, so I assumed Mr. Quint had given it to her.”
“I see. Can you describe this girl, Stella?”
“Oh, yes. She’s a regular at the hotel. She’s a big girl, quite tall, dark hair, plumpish face, and she wears a lot of red. I shouldn’t think she’d be hard to find. She’s been working the hotel for as long as I’ve been there.”
“Always with Bolen?”
“Oh, no. She goes with others as well.”
“So you’ve seen others going up to Mr. Bolen’s room as well?”
Brenda Jones nodded.
“Just one more question, Mrs. Jones, and I’ll be on my way. You say that Stella was a big girl. In your experience, did Mr. Bolen prefer smaller girls? Is that, perhaps, why he rejected Stella that night?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Paget. I don’t know why Mr. Bolen turned Stella away last night, but it wouldn’t be because of that. He liked the big ones. All the girls who went up to his room, at least while I’ve been working there, were a good size.”
Before calling it a day, Paget returned to Charter Lane, where he, Tregalles and Len Ormside, who had come in to begin the task of setting up an Incident Room, sat down to pool their information.
“If this girl, Stella, is a regular at the hotel, she’s probably in our records already,” Ormside observed. “Even if she isn’t, chances are that some of our people will recognize the name and description. I’ll get on it first thing in the morning. Or we could ask Quint. He must know where to find her.”
Paget shook his head. “For one thing, I don’t want to jeopardize Mrs. Jones’s position if I can help it, and for another, if we alert Quint, he may stonewall us long enough to have Stella do a runner. But I’m curious about this other girl as well. Obviously, she’s not one of Quint’s regulars or he would never have mentioned her to me. And according to Brenda Jones, she wasn’t Bolen’s type. But whoever she is, I want her found.”
Tregalles nodded. “I can have another go at the hotel staff,” he said, “but so far they’re all sticking together and deny any knowledge of Bolen or anyone else having girls in their rooms. One of the maids, a part-timer who works weekends, did mention a man who came to see Bolen fairly regularly, but she said that was usually on Sunday mornings. She didn’t know his name, but she described him
as middle-aged, clean-shaven, with sandy hair, but not much of it, and quite fat. Oh, yes, and he wore spectacles.”
Paget was suddenly alert. “Douglas Underwood,” he said, “and when I spoke to him this morning, he did his damnedest to distance himself from Bolen. I’d better have another chat with him. Anything else?”
“Reservations are required in the Elizabethan Room,” Tregalles said, “so I have the names and telephone numbers of everyone who was there last night, and we’ll be talking to them tomorrow.”
Paget stifled a yawn. “Any news on when the post-mortem will be?”
“Coroner’s office rang to say it’s been delayed until tomorrow,” said Ormside. “No one available.”
Which meant, thought Paget, that the chances of getting an accurate time of death were diminishing by the hour. “Has anyone inquired about Starkie?” he asked. He’d meant to phone the hospital himself, but it had slipped his mind till now.
“I spoke to Charlie this afternoon, and he tells me they’ll be operating tomorrow morning,” Tregalles said. “He was talking to Reg’s wife, and she told him the doctors are quite optimistic about his chances.”
“Thank God for that,” said Paget. He hoped the doctors were right. After seeing the pathologist, grey-faced and gasping for air as he slumped to the floor that morning, he had wondered whether Starkie would make it at all. Obviously he had, and they must think he had a decent chance if they weren’t planning to operate until tomorrow.
He rose to his feet. “Right,” he said, “then I suggest we all get a good night’s sleep, because tomorrow is going to be a very busy day.”
Something was plucking at her clothes, tearing at her skin. She fell against a hard surface; she couldn’t breathe. She tried to get up but she was being trampled by a herd of animals she couldn’t see. Hooves thudded into her chest, her face …
A blurred image appeared in front of her. A pair of eyes, a face … It was gone. She felt something pulling on her hair. It was being pulled out by the roots!
It was dark. Pitch-black.
“Feeling a bit better, then?”
Vikki opened her eyes and let out a long sigh of relief as she realized she’d been dreaming. Or was it a dream? That face … There was something about that face.
Joanna was there, holding her hand. “You’re looking better,” she said. “That sleep did you good. Feel like something to eat?”
Vikki nodded. She was hungry. In fact, she was famished. “What time is it?” she asked, and winced. Her whole face felt stiff and sore, and her chest felt as if it had been hammered by … what? She tried to capture the image from her dream, but the harder she tried, the faster it seemed to fade.
“Five o’clock.”
“Five … ?”
Joanna smiled. “Sunday afternoon. You’ve been asleep for almost eight hours. Best thing for you, considering the condition you were in. Think you can manage a wash by yourself, or would you like Bunny to help you while I make something to eat? It will have to be a sponge bath, I’m afraid. Bunny and I work at the pub, so they let us use the shower there, but I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to go over there in your present condition.”
Vikki eased herself off the bunk and stood up. “I’ll be all right,” she assured Joanna. “And thank you ever so much. I don’t know what I’d have done if you …” She blinked hard, fighting back tears. “I’ll pay you back, I promise.”
“Nonsense! Now, let’s see about that bath, and then we’ll look for something that fits you better than that awful dress you were wearing.”