‘The stairs? You didn’t go in the lift?’
‘No. A mass of people had flooded out of the bar and were waiting to take the lift so I ran up the stairs to the fourth floor. This floor. To this room. As I arrived on the landing the lift went down.’
‘Did you see who was in the lift?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Right. Then what happened?’
‘The outer door was ajar. I pushed it open and stepped in. I was glad to think I’d caught up with Dame Beatrice.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I had caught up with her. At least somebody else had caught up with her before me. Blood all over the place – as you see. But I was careful, sir! I disturbed nothing. Head bashed in. Fire irons scattered. The window had been broken open and I thought a burglar must have got in. From a fire escape or something because we’re sixty feet above ground here.’ She pointed to the casement swinging desultorily in the night air. ‘I didn’t go over and look out. Didn’t want to risk obscuring the footprints.’ She nodded at the carpet between the window and the body, presumably seeing traces which were so far invisible to Joe.
‘Well done, Westhorpe,’ Joe said, wishing he had managed to sound less like a schoolmaster. But, then, the girl was evoking this response in him by behaving rather in the manner of a schoolbook heroine. Dimsie Does Her Best perhaps?
‘Go on, will you?’
‘She’d obviously put up quite a struggle. Her hands and arms are injured too. She’d defended herself.’
‘She would have defended herself,’ said Armitage. ‘Very forthright lady, Dame Beatrice, I hear. Not one to stand any nonsense.’
Joe observed an affinity between Sir Nevil and Sergeant Armitage. To one, murder was ‘a little problem’; to the other a murderous assault was ‘a bit of nonsense’.
Tilly Westhorpe resumed her story. ‘Having established that she was indeed beyond any help I could immediately offer, I needed to notify the police and the hotel management. There was no one in sight and it seemed to me the quickest, most sensible thing to do would be to go down to reception.’
Sally Sees It Through? With a burst of irritation Joe wondered why the bloody girl couldn’t just have stood in the doorway and screamed her head off like any normal female. Or used the voice tube?
She caught his thought. Or his swift glance towards the bedroom perhaps. ‘I didn’t use the voice tube. You never can be quite sure who’s picking up at the other end. Even at the Ritz. Discretion, sir, I thought the situation called for discretion.’
‘Yes. A good thought. So you opened the door . . .’ He looked up sharply. ‘Prints, Westhorpe? Prints?’ he reminded her testily.
‘As you see, sir, I’m wearing gloves.’ With more than a touch of professional satisfaction, Tilly held up two evening-gloved hands of pristine white satin. ‘I took care not to touch the body. Alive or dead.’
Her eyes flicked sideways to Armitage and at last Joe understood. He reckoned that this calculated display of innocence and foresight was aimed not at himself but at the arresting officer.
‘I’d left the door ajar as I found it,’ she continued with her story, ‘so I pushed it open and went down in the lift to the reception desk. I informed the manager who rang the Yard from the rear office and they said they’d send someone. I must say the manager was calm about it,’ she added, wondering. ‘This is surely a major incident but if I’d been reporting a broken fingernail he couldn’t have been more undemonstrative.’
‘It’s part of the training. But go on.’
‘Then I came straight back up here to stand guard on the body until help arrived. Five minutes later I was joined by . . . er . . .’
‘Detective Sergeant Armitage, miss.’
‘The sergeant arrived and put me under arrest.’
‘A perfectly reasonable thing to do,’ said Joe. ‘Anyone would have done the same.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Tilly. ‘Quite proper in the circumstances.’
She turned to Armitage and smiled. The sudden intensification of the glow from her cornflower blue eyes would have lit up Tower Bridge for thirty seconds. Joe remembered that Armitage in France had had a reputation for susceptibility and a quick glance at the sergeant revealed that he was not unaffected. Joe was considerably amused by this. His own previous encounters with Constable Westhorpe had taught him the wisdom of looking the other way when she unsheathed her smile. Lucky for him, he thought, that in all their previous dealings she’d been wearing the thick and calculatedly unalluring serge uniform, its uncompromising skirt almost brushing the tops of her black boots, her pretty face all but quenched under a high-crowned wide-brimmed felt hat and chin strap. The trembling shoulders and the slightly heaving white bosom at present on view were beginning to have an effect on Armitage, Joe decided, and he took off his heavy police cape and held it out.