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By Root 540 0

what it was that seemed a little different about Bertram’s today. Perhaps it had been painted or done up in some way? He shook his head. That was not it, but there was something. It did not occur to him that it was the difference between a six foot commissionaire with blue eyes and dark hair and a five foot seven commissionaire with sloping shoulders, freckles and a sandy thatch of hair bulging out under his commissionaire’s cap. He just knew something was different. In his usual vague way he wandered up to the desk. Miss Gorringe was there and greeted him.

“Canon Pennyfather. How nice to see you. Have you come to fetch your baggage? It’s all ready for you. If you’d only let us know we could have sent it to you to any address you like.”

“Thank you,” said Canon Pennyfather, “thank you very much. You’re always most kind, Miss Gorringe. But as I had to come up to London anyway today I thought I might as well call for it.”

“We were so worried about you,” said Miss Gorringe. “Being missing, you know. Nobody able to find you. You had a car accident, I hear?”

“Yes,” said Canon Pennyfather. “Yes. People drive much too fast nowadays. Most dangerous. Not that I can remember much about it. It affected my head. Concussion, the doctor says. Oh well, as one is getting on in life, one’s memory—” He shook his head sadly. “And how are you, Miss Gorringe?”

“Oh, I’m very well,” said Miss Gorringe.

At that moment it struck Canon Pennyfather that Miss Gorringe also was different. He peeered at her, trying to analyse where the difference lay. Her hair? That was the same as usual. Perhaps even a little frizzier. Black dress, large locket, cameo brooch. All there as usual. But there was a difference. Was she perhaps a little thinner? Or was it—yes, surely, she looked worried. It was not often that Canon Pennyfather noticed whether people looked worried, he was not the kind of man who noticed emotion in the faces of others, but it struck him today, perhaps because Miss Gorringe had so invariably presented exactly the same countenance to guests for so many years.

“You’ve not been ill, I hope?” he asked solicitously. “You look a little thinner.”

“Well, we’ve had a good deal of worry, Canon Pennyfather.”

“Indeed. Indeed. I’m sorry to hear it. Not due to my disappearance, I hope?”

“Oh no,” said Miss Gorringe. “We were worried, of course, about that, but as soon as we heard that you were all right—” She broke off and said, “No. No—it’s this—well, perhaps you haven’t read about it in the papers. Gorman, our outside porter, got killed.”

“Oh yes,” said Canon Pennyfather. “I remember now. I did see it mentioned in the paper—that you had had a murder here.”

Miss Gorringe shuddered at this blunt mention of the word murder. The shudder went all up her black dress.

“Terrible,” she said, “terrible. Such a thing has never happened at Bertram’s. I mean, we’re not the sort of hotel where murders happen.”

“No, no, indeed,” said Canon Pennyfather quickly. “I’m sure you’re not. I mean it would never have occurred to me that anything like that could happen here.”

“Of course it wasn’t inside the hotel,” said Miss Gorringe, cheering up a little as this aspect of the affair struck her. “It was outside in the street.”

“So really nothing to do with you at all,” said the Canon, helpfully.

That apparently was not quite the right thing to say.

“But it was connected with Bertram’s. We had to have the police here questioning people, since it was our commissionaire who was shot.”

“So that’s a new man you have outside. D’you know, I thought somehow things looked a little strange.”

“Yes, I don’t know that he’s very satisfactory. I mean, not quite the style we’re used to here. But of course we had to get someone quickly.”

“I remember all about it now,” said Canon Pennyfather, assembling some rather dim memories of what he had read in the paper a week ago. “But I thought it was a girl who was shot.”

“You mean Lady Sedgwick’s daughter? I expect you remember seeing her here with her guardian, Colonel Luscombe. Apparently she was attacked by someone in the fog.