‘If it wasn’t murder,’ she persisted, ‘why haven’t they taken the police seal off Jacob’s room?’
‘They have.’ Nicholas looked up from his paperwork, exasperated. ‘We’re putting someone in there today.’ He checked his watch. ‘In about fifteen minutes.’
Jerry wasn’t sure why, but it suddenly became important for her to see the room. Removing the passkey from the wall compartments behind her, she slipped away from the desk and took the elevator to the fourth floor. The room at the end of the corridor had been sealed along the doorframe to prevent anyone from entering. Now the seals had been removed, and the maids had been allowed to make up the beds.
There was nothing left in the room to reveal anything of its previous occupier. Had she honestly expected there to be? The police would have removed Jacob’s belongings and forwarded them to his family. The room would have been searched, but their forensic team would have had no reason to examine it. After all, it wasn’t the murder site. Instead they had concentrated their efforts on the ground-floor men’s washroom.
Jerry walked into the bathroom and flicked on the light. Her pale reflection stared back at her, auburn hair flopping in cobalt eyes. She drew back the shower curtain and checked the ceramic soap holder. Max Jacob had risen and showered on Monday morning, not knowing that this was to be the last day of his life. Why had he come to London? How had he spent his final hours? Presumably the police already knew the answers to those questions. Could she call the detective and ask him? Wouldn’t he think it odd that she wanted to know?
She could hear rain hitting the windows in the bedroom. The morning had begun as dimly as last Monday had ended. She knew there was something wrong with the way she felt; that something had been triggered by witnessing an act as private as dying. It all felt so sudden and unfinished. Jacob could have suspected nothing. He had come to the front desk earlier that day and chatted pleasantly to Nicholas. He had certainly not been in fear of his life then.
Jerry reentered the bedroom and searched through the desk drawers. The hotel stationery had already been replenished, and lay neatly arranged for the next resident. If Jacob had left behind any sign of his occupation, it had since been removed by the police and the maids.
She pulled open the bedside drawer, and was about to close it again when she noticed the Bible. Her eyes traveled down the bookmarked page to find a passage heavily underscored.
John 3.19. . . . and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
A scrap of notepaper had been folded inside. It bore a number: 216. She flicked back through the pages, noting other marked passages.
Psalms 139.11. . . . Even the night shall be light about me.
John 12.35. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you . . .
Genesis 1.16. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night . . .
There were dozens of penciled references, all of them offering advice on matters of light and darkness. Presuming Max Jacob had marked the passages himself, he obviously believed in practising his religion. But that made no sense. Surely the name Jacob was Jewish? She was about to check that there was nothing more of interest when she heard the lift arriving. The room’s new occupant could well be checking in. She slipped the Bible into her jacket, closed the door behind her, and kept walking to the end of the corridor.
John May rang the doorbell and stepped back.
A constable stood guard beneath the large sycamore at the end of the front garden. Water was running from his jacket, soaking the knees of his trousers. There was no sound save that of the rain falling into the trees in the deserted Hampstead avenue. Bryant trudged through the bushes at the side of the house, pushing aside the wet leaves to peer in through dirt-spattered windows.
Finally there was a sound from within, footsteps thumping and stumbling in the hallway. The gentleman who laboriously unlocked the door was a little younger than his brother, but in every other way the dead man’s double. The heavyset face, with bulbous crimson nose and pendulous lower lip, recalled to mind any number of Hogarthian caricatures. Peter Whitstable’s heavy winter brown woollens were barely of the present era. He seemed to have trouble opening the door. Finally he managed to pull it wide, whereupon he looked up at May, stumbled on the step, and fell into his arms.
‘Good God,’ said Bryant, returning to the doorstep, ‘he’s completely drunk.’
‘Help me get him into the kitchen.’ May hooked his hands under the Major’s arms and hauled him across the hall, enveloped in the sour reek of whisky. ‘He’s no use to us like this.’