The Bee's Kiss(6)

Hastily doing up his tie, grabbing his Gladstone bag and picking up an old police cloak he kept behind the door, he ran down the stairs to the taxi stand on the Embankment.

The Ritz was wearing its usual air of dignified calm. The street lamps under the arcade swung gently to and fro and were reflected from the wet pavement. The foyer lighting was discreet and taxis were standing by; various parties were just breaking up amidst bibulous faces, female laughter and male guffaws, flirtatious farewells. Evidently the news had yet to break but somewhere in that refined interior lay the body of a distinguished public figure, ‘bludgeoned to death’ as Sir Nevil had put it.

Such was the efficiency with which the Ritz closed ranks, the atmosphere was entirely normal. Staff were at their posts or moving at an unruffled pace. The night receptionist, outwardly calm, was, however, Joe judged, secretly a-quiver, both awed and delighted by his responsibility. Joe advanced on the desk. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said, keeping his voice low, ‘I could claim to have an appointment with Dame Beatrice Jagow-Joliffe. Here’s my card.’

The Ritz smelled strongly of fitted carpet with a faint overlay of scent and cigars and somewhere in the background – but discreetly a long way in the background – expensive food. The receptionist crooked a finger and summoned a page boy and he led Joe to the gilded cage of a lift. They got out at the fourth floor and stepped into a silent corridor. A figure posted by the fourth door along acknowledged them with a nod and Joe dismissed the page boy, to his grave disappointment. As Joe approached he noticed that the door of Room 4 stood a fraction open and lights were on inside.

Joe guessed that the guard was part of the hotel security staff. The tall, slim figure, the smart black coat and striped trousers were at odds with the severe police face. Joe looked at him and looked again, encountering a jaw dropped in disbelief, disbelief which rapidly turned to happy recognition. It was a face last seen leaving the mud and misery of a French battlefield on a stretcher.

‘Just a moment,’ Joe said. ‘I know you, don’t I?’

‘Yessir. Detective Sergeant Armitage, sir. With the Met. Was Sergeant Armitage, C Company when we last met.’

‘That’s right! Cambrai, Bill?’

‘Cambrai it was, sir. And if I may say so, sir, you look a good deal smarter now than you did when I last saw you,’ he added, eyeing Joe’s dinner-jacketed elegance.

‘I could say the same, Bill,’ said Joe. ‘We were none of us looking too sharp then. But I’m really glad you got out of that all right. We must have a talk and a pint. But in the meantime perhaps you can tell me what’s been going on here?’

‘Murder, sir, is what’s been going on here.’

‘Perhaps we should view the body? Take a look at the crime scene?’

Armitage led Joe through into a small lobby. Three closed doors faced them. Joe opened the door on the right and stepped into an opulent Ritz bedroom. The furnishings reflected the taste of the court of Louis XVI as perceived by Waring and Gillow of Tottenham Court Road. The main illumination was supplied by a chandelier; bedside lights were in the manner of Pompeii. The carpet was the best that Wilton had to offer and each of the two bedside tables carried a cargo of carafe, biscuit barrel and ashtray. A voice tube was clipped to the wall. There seemed to be something missing.

‘I see no body,’ said Joe.

‘Next door, sir. Next door,’ said Armitage. ‘This is the Marie Antoinette suite and it has a separate sitting room. That’s the door on the left – there’s a private bathroom between the two.’

He stood back as Joe stepped into the sitting room.

The first impression that hit Joe was the unmistakable metallic smell of freshly spilled blood. He realized he must have made an involuntary movement of revulsion as Armitage stepped forward and put an arm under his elbow murmuring, ‘Steady, sir. I should have warned you . . .’

‘That’s all right, Bill. We’ve seen worse.’

And on the battlefield they had, but this small room with its pastel walls, its gilt, its brocades, seemed to Joe to be frozen in horror and reverberating still with echoes of the murderous violence which had so recently erupted in its calm interior. The eighteenth-century elegance threw into shocking relief the chaotic scene before him. The walls were spattered with a rich tapestry of blood and at the centre of the spray, in front of the marble fireplace, lay a sprawled corpse, its head battered and resting in a pool of thickening blood.

‘Definitely dead by the time I got here, sir. First thing I did was check her wrist for a pulse. A gonner. But not long gone. I touched nothing else, of course.’