A tram came rattling round a bend. He crossed the Ring and walked into the Bristol.
No one stopped him when he entered. Surprisingly, there weren’t any porters in the lobby either. No one was standing by the lift, though a couple of staff came out of a side corridor and scurried up the stairs.
He followed them slowly. He turned left at the first floor. There was the shimmering marble corridor again, brightly lit, windowless, claustrophobic and hermetic, as in a dream. Or like the passageway between the cabins of a sunken liner, he thought. The lights were on because the electricity generator still hadn’t stopped working. The water couldn’t get to it. The compressed air kept it out. It’s a wonder the floor wasn’t sloping, he thought.
The air really felt as though it were actually under pressure, overheated by the central heating, dry and dusty as last night. He was breathing heavily. Farther on, he saw a group of people standing in front of a door, some entering, others leaving.
It was Mortimer’s room.
Ah, he thought, of course! I quite forgot. The police are already here. No doubt going through Mortimer’s luggage. Why though, if he’s dead, as they must know by now, do they still want to rummage through his belongings? And then he remembered that he had locked the door when he fled, and the Montemayors had been left locked inside for some time; he couldn’t help smiling at the thought.
He still had the key in his coat pocket. He’d hand it in before he was sent to prison, so the hotel wouldn’t be the loser. No one, of course, would pay the bill.
However, he realized the Montemayors would have been able to ring the bell or phone for the doorman, and someone would have come and unlocked the door. How in fact did they get out?
He was wrong, they were still there.
When he reached the door, he glanced into the entrance hall and saw Winifred. There she is again! he thought. She was making a statement which was being recorded by several people who were standing about; some hotel staff were also present, though not the night staff, who had been relieved. It was now already day, though the light was still on in the entrance hall. The door to the salon was shut.
Winifred was still in her evening gown, her brocade coat slung over it. In her left hand, hanging down by her side, she held her handbag, and rested her right hand on her hip. Funny, the way she stands there like that, Sponer thought, erect as if giving a speech. She seemed really proud of the fact that she had exposed the false Mortimer. She could at least have changed her clothes instead of parading around in her red and gold finery. She was being questioned, and replied in the way that prominent people do when answering several interviewers at once; everything that she said was being taken down. However, the men stood there with their hats on, not even bothering to remove them in the presence of a lady.
Now, Sponer thought, how embarrassing! She’s putting on airs, insisting on playing the prima donna, even though Montemayor may in the meantime have already woken a lawyer and started divorce proceedings. However, I’m number one here now.
He stepped into the hallway. Winifred looked up, while the others wrote down something she had said, and caught sight of Sponer. He could see from the expression in her eyes that she recognized him immediately, but surprisingly she ignored him as if he didn’t exist. Instead of shouting out, “That’s him!” she just looked at him for a couple of seconds and then turned away.
Sponer was, he had to admit, more than surprised. Had he simply imagined that she’d looked at him? But the others, too, ignored him completely. One of those taking notes, and another person who had just dictated the last statement verbatim in German, appeared to be from the police. And the others, Sponer wondered, who were also writing things down? Presumably reporters. There was also another man there, obviously someone from the hotel management to judge by his formal suit. The hotel staff stood there as if they were just doing their job, their hands by their sides, listening attentively to what was being said. They all looked at Winifred, and no one paid any attention to Sponer. One of the detectives was dictating, the others were writing, and the staff looked on.
He wanted to go up to them and say that here he was, that he’d come voluntarily, but a strange sense of unreality suddenly overcame him. None of the people bothered about him. It was also true that no one had bothered about Mortimer either when he lay dead in the car and the passers-by hurried past as if nothing had happened. But they had looked for him, Sponer; Marie Fiala hadn’t returned, she’d been detained… Or, he thought, maybe there was some other reason why she… What? It was conceivable, of course, that they still didn’t know that I… But Winifred knew, of course! Why was she behaving as if he weren’t there? He was overcome by the bizarre fancy that he actually wasn’t there, that he’d simply imagined that he had checked in at the Bristol…
Just then, the detective who had been dictating asked Winifred another question.
“When,” he asked in passable English, “did Montemayor leave you yesterday evening and when did he return?”
“He returned from the rehearsal at about five-thirty,” Winifred said. “We had tea in the lounge, but he left after a few minutes and said that he still had to attend to something. He took the lift to his room, but came down after a short while. I was still sitting there and saw him come out of the lift, walk past the office and the porter, and the leave the hotel. He returned just before seven o’clock. I was already in my room…”
“From where you had already called the Bristol in the meantime?”
“Yes. I then heard my husband enter the salon and go to his room.”
Every word was noted down. Sponer looked from one to the other. Winifred glanced at him again. She couldn’t have failed to notice him this time! However, after a brief moment’s reflection she glanced away. The detective asked her another question.
“When was it,” he asked, “that you entered the Bristol?”
“About one o’clock in the morning,” she said.
“And when did your husband come?”
“He came immediately after me.”
“I mean when did he enter here?”
“A quarter of an hour, half an hour later; I can’t remember that exactly anymore.”
The detective continued his questioning while all this was being written down, “Did you know Mortimer was a gangster?”
“No,” she answered.
“But your husband did.”
“He said he did.”
“And you? Did you think it was possible?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Yes,” she said. “It was possible. My husband said it was even common knowledge over there.”
“How then do you explain the fact then that the police didn’t take any action against him?”
“Against Mortimer?”
“Yes.”
“Which police? The American?”
“Yes.”
She laughed dismissively. “You don’t understand, here,” she said. “The police over there don’t take any action against gangsters. Against a petty band of crooks, maybe. But certainly not against people of Mortimer’s standing. The police are far too powerless for that. They can’t afford to expose public prosecutors, senators and possibly even their own people who may be gangsters. Besides, at any time Mortimer could have come up with the excuse that he was being protected.”