At Bertram's Hotel - Agatha Christie [41]
“Well, I didn’t really. Of course it was awkward. You see, his room was let on from the 23rd and when I realized—I didn’t at first—that he hadn’t come back from Lugano—”
“I’ve got Lucerne here in my notes,” said Campbell.
“Yes, yes, I think it was Lucerne. Some Archaeological Congress or other. Anyway, when I realized he hadn’t come back here and that his baggage was still here waiting in his room, it made things rather awkward. You see, we are very booked up at this time of year and I had someone else coming into his room. The Honourable Mrs. Saunders, who lives at Lyme Regis. She always has that room. And then his housekeeper rang up. She was worried.”
“The housekeeper’s name is Mrs. McCrae, so I understand from Archdeacon Simmons. Do you know her?”
“Not personally, no, but I have spoken to her on the telephone once or twice. She is, I think, a very reliable woman and has been with Canon Pennyfather for some years. She was worried naturally. I believe she and Archdeacon Simmons got in touch with near friends and relations but they knew nothing of Canon Pennyfather’s movements. And since he was expecting the Archdeacon to stay with him it certainly seemed very odd—in fact it still does—that the Canon should not have returned home.”
“Is this Canon usually as absentminded as that?” asked Father.
Miss Gorringe ignored him. This large man, presumably the accompanying sergeant, seemed to her to be pushing himself forward a little too much.
“And now I understand,” continued Miss Gorringe, in an annoyed voice, “and now I understand from Archdeacon Simmons that the Canon never even went to this conference in Lucerne.”
“Did he send any message to say he wouldn’t go?”
“I don’t think so—not from here. No telegram or anything like that. I really know nothing about Lucerne—I am really only concerned with our side of the matter. It has got into the evening papers, I see—the fact that he is missing, I mean. They haven’t mentioned he was staying here. I hope they won’t. We don’t want the Press here, our visitors wouldn’t like that at all. If you can keep them off us, Inspector Campbell, we should be very grateful. I mean it’s not as if he had disappeared from here.”
“His luggage is still here?”
“Yes. In the baggage room. If he didn’t go to Lucerne, have you considered the possibility of his being run over? Something like that?”
“Nothing like that has happened to him.”
“It really does seem very, very curious,” said Miss Gorringe, a faint flicker of interest appearing in her manner, to replace the annoyance. “I mean, it does make one wonder where he could have gone and why?”
Father looked at her comprehendingly.
“Of course,” he said. “You’ve only been thinking of it from the hotel angle. Very natural.”
“I understand,” said Inspector Campbell, referring once more to his notes, “that Canon Pennyfather left here about six thirty on the evening of Thursday the 19th. He had with him a small overnight bag and he left here in a taxi, directing the commissionaire to tell the driver to drive to the Athenaeum Club.”
Miss Gorringe nodded her head.
“Yes, he dined at the Athenaeum Club—Archdeacon Simmons told me that that was the place he was last seen.”
There was a firmness in Miss Gorringe’s voice as she transferred the responsibility of seeing the Canon last from Bertram’s Hotel to the Athenaeum Club.
“Well, it’s nice to get the facts straight,” said Father in a gentle rumbling voice. “We’ve got ’em straight now. He went off with his little blue BOAC bag or whatever he’d got with him—it was a blue BOAC bag, yes? He went off and he didn’t come back, and that’s that.”
“So you see, really I cannot help you,” said Miss Gorringe, showing a disposition to rise to her feet and get back to work.
“It doesn’t seem as if you could help us,” said Father, “but someone else might be able to,” he added.
“Someone else?”
“Why, yes,” said Father. “One of the staff perhaps.”
“I don’t think anyone knows anything; or they would certainly have reported it to me.”
“Well, perhaps they might. Perhaps they