Not true, he told himself, rubbing the blood back into his hands. He took another look at the guests. Tourists, conference speakers, business delegates, couples celebrating wedding anniversaries, just people. Hotel life had changed. Anyone could come here now. To hell with it, he thought, all they can do is kick me out.
Well, they could, and therein lay the problem. Vince knew he would certainly not be able to enter the hotel's American Bar dressed the way he was, nor the restaurant, the scene of Madame Marie-Marguerite Fahhim's 'music' remark. He had no idea in which room she had shot her husband, although perhaps one of the staff knew. But the League would not be so obvious as to leave his next assignment in the room. Too easy. He had to remember that this was a test. There was hidden trickery here.
Sebastian had advised his members about setting the challenges. How much instruction had he given them? How did his mind work? How much – or little – had the pair of them discovered about each other in the short time that they had been friends?
Another timecheck. 7:51 p.m. At the corner a gang of dead-eyed youths turned to watch him pass, checking for a sign of weakness. Scrawny-necked skinheads barking and spitting beside the half-excavated road, black boys in Armani knock-offs making sucky-sucky noises at passing girls. The safety of the Strand – a comparatively recent novelty – was already becoming a thing of the past. Unsure how to proceed, he walked back to the top of the short street and looked out into the traffic.
The street was busy. Theatres were beginning their evening performances. As he was wondering what to do next, the telephone in the call box nearest to him started to ring. He seized the receiver without a second thought.
'Well, why aren't you going in?' asked Sebastian. 'You'll fall behind your schedule if you don't pick up the pace and solve the clue. You only have until 8:00 p.m. to find the answer.'
'Don't you have something better to do?' he asked, looking up at the dead office windows around him. 'Shouldn't you all be slipping into robes and fezzes, dancing about in circles, sacrificing goats?' Where the hell were they? How could they see him?
'How do you know we're not? Solve the clue, Vincent, solve it if you want to stay alive. You have about – oh, seven minutes.'
The line went dead. He threw down the receiver and paced angrily back to the corner. Think, damn you, he told himself. Think.
Something wasn't right. The poem. Details of the shooting scandal had been designed to lead him to the Savoy. So why bother to add the poem?
The W.S. Gilbert quote was meant to take him further. There could be no other reason to include it. He dug in his back pocket and pulled the remaining scraps of the disintegrated page from his jeans.
'- Horrible, social ghosts -'
It was no good. The streets were too boisterous. He couldn't think.
'- Speeches -'
'- Variety -'
He looked along the Strand again, to the Savoy Theatre – the original home of Gilbert and Sullivan, before they had moved up to the grandeur of Sir Richard D'Oyly Carte's Palace Theatre.
You'll find their names on the architrave… Not the Savoy Hotel at all, that was just a pointer. The architrave. Wasn't that the blank bit between a pillar and its roof? Theatres utilised such gaps to run favourable newspaper quotes along them.
He broke into a trot, pushing through the crowd that was filtering slowly into the Savoy Theatre. He tried to read what the critics had written about the play, something called Whoops, There Go My Trousers.
'A Laugh-A-Minute Trouser-Dropping Farce' - Sheridan Morley, Evening Standard. 'Does what Britain does best – makes a total fool of itself' - Irving Wardle – The Times.
That was what it said above the doors, and there, on a dropping-stained ledge above the lightbulbs was what looked like a bottle of champagne with an envelope tied around its neck – but how on earth was he supposed to reach it? He stepped back and examined the front of the theatre. There was no way of scaling the wall. Nothing else for it; he would have to climb out from one of the first-floor windows.
Entering the crowded theatre foyer was easy enough. Two young ushers were tearing tickets at the foot of the main staircase. There was no other way up. He picked the dopier-looking of the pair, a spidery-haired youth in an ill-fitting jacket, and waited until he was tearing the tickets of a group. As he slipped behind the backs of the waiting patrons, the usher spotted him and raised a hand.
'It's all right, I just forgot something,' he said, pointing vaguely ahead, and kept moving forward with his head down, waiting for someone to come after him. But when he turned around, he saw that the usher's attention had been seized by a coach-party impatiently awaiting entrance.
He hurried on, checking his watch. 7:57 p.m. There was no time left for indecision. At the first floor was an open carpeted area, the arched windows beyond standing floor-to-ceiling. Attempting to look as officious as possible, he marched over to the one he judged to be nearest the bottle, pulled it open and looked out. The envelope stood in a blaze of light, still several feet from the window, but this was the nearest point of access. There was nothing for it but to go out on the ledge.
If only he didn't have this thing about heights. Well, not a thing, exactly. As a child he had been taken on a funicular railway, and had howled through the journey. Looking down brought that familiar sickening sense of the earth dropping away.
Remember the old adage, he thought, then dropped to all fours and began to edge himself out. At his back, several playgoers turned and shot him disapproving looks, something Londoners did when they were irrationally annoyed by someone but hadn't the guts to say anything. The angled narrow sill was thick with black dust and covered in tangles of electrical cable. It was virtually impossible to establish a firm foothold. As he edged out, his vision firmly fixed on the nearest wall, someone – incredibly – shut the window behind him and dropped the bolt. What the hell were they thinking of?
Light bounced from his watch-face; 7:59 p.m. He was out of time. There was nowhere to go but forward. He was sure he could be seen from the street, but few people ever looked up. His right foot slipped, scattering pieces of cracked paintwork out over the bulbs. His duffel bag slid from his shoulder and swung down to the crook of his right arm. If he had wanted to attract attention to himself, he was certainly going about it the right way.
The envelope was less than a metre from him now. In the light from the display bulbs he could clearly read his name on the front. He shifted his left knee forward across a clump of wiring, but the clump moved and his leg went with it. Within moments his centre of balance had shifted badly and he was fighting to maintain his equilibrium. But it was no good; he could feel himself going over. His left foot thumped down on one bulb and smashed it, then another popped as the lower half of his body slithered off the ledge and out into space. Below him, someone shouted up in alarm.
It was his last chance to seize the letter. He threw out his right arm and grabbed the bottle as he slithered into the air and dropped towards the pavement below. Why he couldn't have landed on a fat woman in a fur coat, he didn't know; instead he crashed down on top of what appeared to be an emaciated crustie leading a mongrel on a piece of string, which yelped and promptly bit him on the leg. The crustie slid over onto his back, and Vince landed astride his chest.
'Shit!'