At Bertram's Hotel - Agatha Christie [62]
“If it interests you to know, she’s an ex-actress. A good one. Gets a better salary here than she ever drew on the stage.”
“But—why?”
“Mainly, as part of the décor. Perhaps there’s more than that to it.”
“I’m glad to be leaving here,” said Miss Marple. She gave a little shiver. “Before anything happens.”
Chief-Inspector Davy looked at her curiously.
“What do you expect to happen?” he asked.
“Evil of some kind,” said Miss Marple.
“Evil is rather a big word—”
“You think it is too melodramatic? But I have some experience—seem to have been—so often—in contact with murder.”
“Murder?” Chief-Inspector Davy shook his head. “I’m not suspecting murder. Just a nice cosy round-up of some remarkably clever criminals—”
“That’s not the same thing. Murder—the wish to do murder—is something quite different. It—how shall I say?—it defies God.”
He looked at her and shook his head gently and reassuringly.
“There won’t be any murders,” he said.
A sharp report, louder than the former one, came from outside. It was followed by a scream and another report.
Chief-Inspector Davy was on his feet, moving with a speed surprising in such a bulky man. In a few seconds he was through the swing doors and out in the street.
II
The screaming—a woman’s—was piercing the mist with a note of terror. Chief-Inspector Davy raced down Pond Street in the direction of the screams. He could dimly visualize a woman’s figure backed against a railing. In a dozen strides he had reached her. She wore a long pale fur coat, and her shining blonde hair hung down each side of her face. He thought for a moment that he knew who she was, then he realized that this only a slip of a girl. Sprawled on the pavement at her feet was the body of a man in uniform. Chief-Inspector Davy recognized him. It was Michael Gorman.
As Davy came up to the girl, she clutched at him, shivering all over, stammering out broken phrases.
“Someone tried to kill me…Someone…they shot at me…If it hadn’t been for him—” She pointed down at the motionless figure at her feet. “He pushed me back and got in front of me—and then the second shot came…and he fell…He saved my life. I think he’s hurt—badly hurt….”
Chief-Inspector Davy went down on one knee. His torch came out. The tall Irish commissionaire had fallen like a soldier. The left-hand side of his tunic showed a wet patch that was growing wetter as the blood oozed out into the cloth. Davy rolled up an eyelid, touched a wrist. He rose to his feet again.
“He’s had it all right,” he said.
The girl gave a sharp cry. “Do you mean he’s dead? Oh no, no! He can’t be dead.”
“Who was it shot at you?”
“I don’t know…I’d left my car just round the corner and was feeling my way along by the railings—I was going to Bertram’s Hotel. And then suddenly there was a shot—and a bullet went past my cheek and then—he—the porter from Bertram’s—came running down the street towards me, and shoved me behind him, and then another shot came…I think—I think whoever it was must have been hiding in that area there.”
Chief-Inspector Davy looked where she pointed. At this end of Bertram’s Hotel there was an old-fashioned area below the level of the street, with a gate and some steps down to it. Since it gave only on some storerooms it was not much used. But a man could have hidden there easily enough.
“You didn’t see him?”
“Not properly. He rushed past me like a shadow. It was all thick fog.”
Davy nodded.
The girl began to sob hysterically.
“But who could possibly want to kill me? Why should anyone want to kill me? That’s the second time. I don’t understand…why….”
One arm round the girl, Chief-Inspector Davy fumbled in his pocket with the other hand.
The shrill notes of a police whistle penetrated the mist.