Выбрать главу

“I told Mr Castle. It was up to ’im to pass it on, if he’d a mind to, and I s’pose ’e did.”

“Would Castle be the caretaker?” asked Laura, with a vivid recollection of the fermenting John at the end of the Town Hall rehearsal of The Merry Wives of Windsor.

“Yes, it would. John Castle, ’im as lives in Brocklebank Way, off the ’Am.”

“What about the keys?”

“Well, it bein’ an evenin’ do, I comes in at ’arpast four and has a look round to see as everythink’s as it should be, leavin’ me keys in this door, same as I allus does, not to lose ’em, you see, or forget ’em, and so’s to be all ready for when I comes to tidy up the next mornin’. Well…”

“You mean you left your keys in this lock all night?”

“That’s what I’m a-sayin’, ain’t it? Well, when I comes in in the mornin’ I looks for me keys and they isn’t there, so I goes to find Mr Castle and I says to ’im, “ ’Ere, John,” I says, “what you done with me keys? I can’t get in to clean them rooms, not without no keys I can’t,” I says.”

“Oh, so this isn’t the only room you keep clean?”

“Gawd, no! I does all the rooms this end. There used to be a time when us cleaners swopped the jobs around, but Councillor Mrs Skifforth, she put a stop to all that. “The way things is,” she says, “you don’t know who to blame if the place is a pigsty,” she says. “Hin my opinion,” she says, “each cleaner did ought to ’ave ’er own part of the premises to be responsible for, and to take a proper pride in,” she says, “and then if things is left in the disgraceful way the ante-room to the Council Chamber was—all cigarette ends in dirty ashtrays and a half-ate macaroon underneath the table, not to speak of two coffee-cups as I washed up with me own hands,” she says, “well, we’ll know where we stand”, she says.”

“So none of the other cleaners would be likely to walk off with your keys?”

“Not no good to nobody ’ceptin’ me. So I goes to Mr Castle…”

“Who hadn’t got them, either?”

“That’s what ’e says. “You must of left ’em at ’ome,” ’e says. “That’s just like you women,” ’e says. So I up and informs of ’im as I never takes no keys ’ome, there bein’ nothink worth burglin’ in the rooms ’ere as I ’aves to see to, so I borrers a lend of ’is master-key and ’ands it straight back as soon as I’d unlocked, and there you are. And a nice bit of box-fruit them dressing-rooms was, I don’t mind tellin’ you.”

“And the keys have never turned up?”

“That’s exactly what they never ’aven’t. Mr Castle ’ad all the locks changed and a noo set of keys to go with ’em. That’s what ’e thought would be best, and I ’as to ’and ’em back to ’im each time.”

A good deal of clatter from outside the door of Bouquets was sufficient evidence that Henry VI had concluded his anti-scrofula campaign and that the stage was to be re-set as the principal room at an inn.

“Only one more thing,” said Laura. “When you did get this room unlocked with the master-key, was it in the state you expected to find it?”

“It was the only clean and tidy room in the place.”

“Yes. You didn’t notice anything which struck you as being different, or out-of-place, or anything? Just some small point that perhaps no-one but yourself would notice?”

The cleaner scowled thoughtfully before shaking her head.

“There wasn’t nothink at all. It was only them keys bein’ took like that as was hodd. Somebody done it for devilment, p’raps. You never know what kids ’ull get up to, do you, and there was a hundred on ’em ’ere that night, so Mr Castle told me, and chewin’ gum all over the place.”

Laura was back in her seat in time to see the curtain go up on a room at The Leopards and Lilies, the feasting begin, and the raising of two gentlemen of the neighbourhood to the status and rank of the Knighthood of the Garter. When the curtains had come together for the last time, she went in search of the caretaker and found him on the front steps of the Town Hall standing at the salute as the Mayoress was driven away by the Mayor’s chauffeur in the Mayor’s official Rolls Royce.

“A word with you, Mr Castle,” she said. “You remember me, I expect? Yes, well, the police, as you probably know, are still interested in the deaths of Mr Luton and Mr Spey, and as I’m, so to speak, connected with them through my husband, who is in the C.I.D., I want to know what happened to Mrs What’shername’s keys—the cleaner who looks after the dressing-rooms, you know.”

“Councillor Perse told me about your husband, ma’am. What’s more, the police are in the right of it. There wasn’t no horseplay where Mr Luton was concerned. After all, they wasn’t a lot of College lads, or nothing of that, to go fooling around with swords and stabbing each other to death. What I says is as what was done was done deliberate. As for Carrie Busby’s keys, well, I did think at first as how she must ’ave left ’em at ’ome, but when they never turned up no more—and her swearing as she’d left ’em in the lock outside the door—I ’ad another think about it.”

“I wonder whether your thought was the same as mine?”

“Well,” said the caretaker slowly, “things being as they was that night—by which I mean no bookays, so no need to use that room at all—why shouldn’t Mr Luton ’ave been done to death in there, and the body locked up in there till the ’All was cleared and everybody gorn ’ome?”

“And then the murderer sneaked back and put the body and the basket in the river?”

“No, I reckon he hid in Bookays with the body. I’ve thought about it and that’s how I size it up, ma’am.”

“But wouldn’t somebody—probably you yourself—have done your last rounds and locked that side door which gives on to Smith Hill—the only door he could have used to get the body out of the Town Hall and down to the Thames?”

“He’d only have to turn the ’andle from inside. It’s a Yale lock, you see. And then, when he’d done the job, all he’d have to do would be to pull the door shut behind him. We don’t never bolt it for the simple reason it don’t have no bolts. It wasn’t never meant as nothing but an emergency door, you see, in case there might be a conflagration backstage like.”

“Which way did the people taking part come in?”

“Oh, by the front door and then down the passage to the dressing-rooms.”

“So this door on to Smith Hill wasn’t opened until the two comedians left the hall, and again when some of the actors went across to the pub, I suppose.”

She joined Kitty at Julian Perse’s rooms, and at a quarter past four Mr Perse came in, ate a great many sandwiches in an incredibly short time, drank a scalding cup of tea and then tore out again to superintend the revels in the Butts.

“I suppose we’ll have to go,” said Kitty, “Look here, Dog, don’t you bother. I’ll see the thing through on my own. You’ve done your whack this afternoon. I’ll give you the keys to my flat, although I think there’ll be somebody in…”

“I’m not going to miss an eighteenth-century election, Kay. I feel that Julian would be wounded were I not among those present.”

“You’ll probably be wounded if you are among those present. The whole thing will be a free-for-all for the local mods and rockers, you see if it isn’t. I still think Julian is absolutely mad! There’s sure to be no end of trouble.”

“It sounds like a melee of a sumptuous kind. Count me in on it. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. How long does he propose to keep it on?”

“I’ve no idea, but I suppose he’ll pack it up before sunset. It’s not the kind of thing you’d want to carry on in the dark.”