Murder on the Moor - C. S. Challinor [48]
“Why are you going to the hotel?”
“Less you know, the better. You may inadvertently give something away.”
“We’re ready, Mr. Graves,” the lad called out.
Cuthbert, arranged like a stuffed saddlebag across the horse’s back, moaned and groaned pitifully, complaining that he would never be able to get his boot off with all the swelling. Honey swished her long tail against the swarm of midges, lashing her human burden in the process.
Rex managed not to laugh, but had a hard time controlling a grin. He would have loved to take a picture on the cell phone to show Alistair. However, he did not wish to advertise the fact that he was in possession of a phone. He reminded Helen not to mention it.
“Rex, you didn’t tell me what the other thing was,” she whispered anxiously. “You know—when you said the murder could have been committed by any one of the guests, except for perhaps two things.”
“If you look closely, you’ll see it,” he said enigmatically. “You best get going now. They’re waiting for you.”
“You’re impossible,” she said in quiet exasperation.
“See you in a short while,” he called out, waving them off.
Donnie led the procession. Cuthbert’s winded protestations grew progressively muted as Rex continued in the opposite direction, bound for the Loch Lochy Hotel. What exactly he expected to find there, he could not say, but that was where five of his guests resided, and the others, with the exception of Helen, had spent time there at one point or another.
He had all but exhausted the leads at the lodge. The hotel might hold the key.
By the time Rex stumbled to within sight of the Loch Lochy Hotel, he was weary, dirty, and dying of thirst after his second and longest trek of the day through dense wood and steep corries.
The valley that harbored the hotel would have produced a pretty postcard had the sky been less cloudy and gray. The wide loch, situated ten miles southwest of Loch Ness along the Great Glen Way, stretched almost that same length again. It made his own loch look like a puddle.
At the northernmost end, the two-story, white-washed hotel squatted on a grassy shelf above the water’s edge. The building looked in dire need of a new coat of paint, the black letters of the hotel peeling off the façade. A pair of weather-bleached antlers heralded the front entrance, approached by a gravel forecourt and reached by a shallow flight of steps.
Slipping unobserved through the front door, Rex cast an eye around the lobby carpeted in olive tartan, relieved to encounter no one, although a medley of voices sounded from somewhere down the corridor. A pungent aroma of leek and carrot assailed his nostrils, spiking his hunger and serving to remind him that he had missed tea.
With an agility that belied his bulk, he darted to reception where a sprinkling of keys dangled from pigeon holes aligned on the wall behind the desk. Grabbing hold of the thick guest register, he thumbed backward until he found the entries from June of two summers ago, whereupon he tore out the relevant pages. Fully intending to return them to Mr. and Mrs. Allerdice in due course, he stuffed them into his anorak.
One of the pigeonholes contained a letter addressed to Mr. R. R. Beardsley, which he also pocketed. Swiping the corresponding key off its hook, he crept up the plaid-covered stairs and made his way along a narrow corridor, decorated with Victorian hunting scenes in cheap frames and grizzled deer heads staring at him through marble eyes. He stopped at room number nine.
With a glance over his shoulder, he unlocked the door and stepped into a room papered with faded roses and crammed with mismatched furniture that had seen better days two decades ago. The window afforded a view over the shawl of brown sand and shingle beach by the loch. An assortment of small pleasure craft roped to a short jetty bobbed over the sullen waves. Rex closed the curtains that suggested the dingy pink hue of garments run through too many wash cycles with non-like colors,