At Bertram's Hotel - Agatha Christie [81]
“She notices a lot,” said Chief-Inspector Davy, speaking to Bess Sedgwick as though Miss Marple was his pet performing dog.
Bess Sedgwick turned on him sharply.
“What did you mean when you said this place was the headquarters of a Crime Syndicate? I should have said that Bertram’s Hotel was the most respectable place in the world.”
“Naturally,” said Father. “It would have to be. A lot of money, time, and thought has been spent on making it just what it is. The genuine and the phony are mixed-up very cleverly. You’ve got a superb actor manager running the show in Henry. You’ve got that chap, Humfries, wonderfully plausible. He hasn’t got a record in this country but he’s been mixed-up in some rather curious hotel dealings abroad. There are some very good character actors playing various parts here. I’ll admit, if you like, that I can’t help feeling a good deal of admiration for the whole setup. It has cost this country a mint of money. It’s given the CID and the provincial police forces constant headaches. Every time we seemed to be getting somewhere, and put our finger on some particular incident—it turned out to be the kind of incident that had nothing to do with anything else. But we’ve gone on working on it, a piece there, a piece here. A garage where stacks of number plates were kept, transferable at a moment’s notice to certain cars. A firm of furniture vans, a butcher’s van, a grocer’s van, even one or two phony postal vans. A racing driver with a racing car covering incredible distances in incredibly few minutes, and at the other end of the scale an old clergyman jogging along in his old Morris Oxford. A cottage with a market gardener in it who lends first aid if necessary and who is in touch with a useful doctor. I needn’t go into it all. The ramifications seem unending. That’s one half of it. The foreign visitors who come to Bertram’s are the other half. Mostly from America, or from the Dominions. Rich people above suspicion, coming here with a good lot of luxury luggage, leaving here with a good lot of luxury luggage which looks the same but isn’t. Rich tourists arriving in France and not worried unduly by the Customs because the Customs don’t worry tourists when they’re bringing money into the country. Not the same tourists too many times. The pitcher mustn’t go to the well too often. None of it’s going to be easy to prove or to tie up, but it will all tie up in the end. We’ve made a beginning. The Cabots, for instance—”
“What about the Cabots?” asked Bess sharply.
“You remember them? Very nice Americans. Very nice indeed. They stayed here last year and they’ve been here again this year. They wouldn’t have come a third time. Nobody ever comes here more than twice on the same racket. Yes, we arrested them when they arrived at Calais. Very well-made job, that wardrobe case they had with them. It had over three hundred thousand pounds neatly stashed. Proceeds of the Bedhampton train robbery. Of course, that’s only a drop in the ocean.
“Bertram’s Hotel, let me tell you, is the headquarters of the whole thing! Half the staff are in on it. Some of the guests are in on it. Some of the guests are who they say they are—some are not. The real Cabots, for instance, are in Yucatan just now. Then there was the identification racket. Take Mr. Justice Ludgrove. A familiar face, bulbous nose and a wart. Quite easy to impersonate. Canon Pennyfather. A mild country clergyman, with a great white thatch of hair and notable absentminded behaviour. His mannerisms, his way of peering over his spectacles—all very easily imitated by a good character actor.”
“But what was the use of all that?” asked Bess.
“Are you really asking me? Isn’t it obvious? Mr. Justice Ludgrove is seen near the scene of a bank holdup. Someone recognizes him, mentions it. We go into it. It’s all a mistake. He was somewhere else at the time. But it wasn’t for a while that we realized that these were all what is sometimes called ‘deliberate mistakes.’ Nobody’s bothered about the man who had looked so like him. And