At Bertram's Hotel - Agatha Christie [40]
He resumed his impersonation of a bumblebee with a rendering of “Let’s All Go Down the Strand.”
The two detective officers went off together, Campbell looking smart in a lounge suit (he had an excellent figure), and Chief-Inspector Davy carrying with him a tweedy air of being up from the country. They fitted in quite well. Only the astute eye of Miss Gorringe, as she raised it from her ledgers, singled out and appreciated them for what they were. Since she had reported the disappearance of Canon Pennyfather herself and had already had a word with a lesser personage in the police force, she had been expecting something of this kind.
A faint murmur to the earnest-looking girl assistant whom she kept handy in the background, enabled the latter to come forward and deal with any ordinary inquiries or services while Miss Gorringe gently shifted herself a little farther along the counter and looked up at the two men. Inspector Campbell laid down his card on the desk in front of her and she nodded. Looking past him to the large tweed-coated figure behind him, she noted that he had turned slightly sideways, and was observing the lounge and its occupants with an apparently naïve pleasure at beholding such a well-bred, upper-class world in action.
“Would you like to come into the office?” said Miss Gorringe. “We can talk better there perhaps.”
“Yes, I think that would be best.”
“Nice place you’ve got here,” said the large, fat, bovine-looking man, turning his head back towards her. “Comfortable,” he added, looking approvingly at the large fire. “Good old-fashioned comfort.”
Miss Gorringe smiled with an air of pleasure.
“Yes, indeed. We pride ourselves on making our visitors comfortable,” she said. She turned to her assistant. “Will you carry on, Alice? There is the ledger. Lady Jocelyn will be arriving quite soon. She is sure to want to change her room as soon as she sees it but you must explain to her we are really full up. If necessary, you can show her number 340 on the third floor and offer her that instead. It’s not a very pleasant room and I’m sure she will be content with her present one as soon as she sees that.”
“Yes, Miss Gorringe. I’ll do just that, Miss Gorringe.”
“And remind Colonel Mortimer that his field glasses are here. He asked me to keep them for him this morning. Don’t let him go off without them.”
“No, Miss Gorringe.”
These duties accomplished, Miss Gorringe looked at the two men, came out from behind the desk and walked along to a plain mahogany door with no legend on it. Miss Gorringe opened it and they went into a small, rather sad-looking office. All three sat down.
“The missing man is Canon Pennyfather, I understand,” said Inspector Campbell. He looked at his notes. “I’ve got Sergeant Wadell’s report. Perhaps you’ll tell me in your own words just what occurred.”
“I don’t think that Canon Pennyfather has really disappeared in the sense in which one would usually use that word,” said Miss Gorringe. “I think, you know, that he’s just met someone somewhere, some old friend or something like that, and has perhaps gone off with him to some scholarly meeting or reunion or something of that kind, on the Continent—he is so very vague.”
“You’ve known him for a long time?”
“Oh yes, he’s been coming here to stay for—let me see—oh five or six years at least, I should think.”
“You’ve been here some time yourself, ma’am,” said Chief-Inspector Davy, suddenly putting in a word.
“I have been here, let me think, fourteen years,” said Miss Gorringe.
“It’s a nice place,” repeated Davy again. “And Canon Pennyfather usually stayed here when he was in London? Is that right?”
“Yes. He always came to us. He wrote well beforehand to retain his room. He was much less vague on paper than he was in real life. He asked for a room from the 17th to the 21st. During that time he expected to be away for one or two nights, and he explained that he wished to keep his room on while he was away. He quite often did that.”
“When did you begin to