Heather nodded. “And they got in the wine and spirit store and gave away the whole lot. Just gave it away. Handed it out.” Her voice was husky with horror.
More people were coming through from the stricken hall. “Can we get to the buses this way?” timidly inquired a pair of old ladies. One wore no shoes; the other carried an unopened bottle of cherry brandy, holding it before her by its neck as if lighting herself to bed.
Amis beckoned the junior cook and one of the kitchen hands. “Go and help look for Mr Hatch,” he told them. “Try his office and anywhere else you can think of. See if Mrs Shooter knows where he is, but don’t go into the motel area without asking her first.”
There was a distant clang. The members of the band had repossessed themselves of their instruments’ and were now testing them for damage by the light of an auxiliary lamp in the minstrels’ gallery that had not been switched on during the bombardment.
Amis surveyed the scene in the Wassail Hall, which even the conscientious Peter had deserted at last (to seek out his two colleagues for an over-all debriefing in regard to that particular point in time). Then he called lounge, gaming-room and bar on the house telephone. Every member of staff who could possibly be spared, he said, should come to the club kitchen at once. It was an emergency. Mr Hatch, when he arrived, would undoubtedly confirm this request.
Amis had just completed his third call when Hubbard, grey-faced and shaping soundless words with lips the colour of dead violets, stepped falteringly through the doorway. The young cook was beside him. He looked terrified and sick, but held Hubbard’s arm in what support he could give.
Hubbard groped for a chair. Someone pulled it round to receive him. He sank heavily down, his head bowed. A glass was held before him, but he seemed not to see it, not to see anything. “Oh, Christ!” he said. Then again, “Oh, Christ!”
They waited, listening to him breathe. The cook, appealed to by glances, just shook his head and stood leaning against a table, silent.
Hubbard roused himself at last. He raised his eyes slowly and looked from one to another, as upon strangers in a crowd. His lips had begun to move again.
“He’s dead. The poor old sod’s dead. Somebody’s blown half his bloody head off.”
Chapter Seventeen
Purbright and Love and a levy of five other policemen entered the Floradora Club within less than ten minutes of Hubbard’s discovery of his slain employer, but the news of the death had already invested the place with silence and bewilderment. No one made any attempt to leave. Roulette, chemmy and blackjack ceased as promptly and with as little argument as if they had suddenly become work. Both bars were left untended, but no one seemed inclined to commit the irreverence of helping himself. Only the banqueting hall remained isolated from the sobering chemistry of shock. Its occupants, strewn in disorder, were either utterly insensible or else grappled and grunted in semi-comatose bliss with partners half flesh and half dream.
Inspector Purbright surveyed the scene.
“Looks like Belshazzar’s Feast.”
Two constables were detailed to get some lights restored and to take an inventory, as far as proved possible, of those present.
Detective Burke, returned in deep disgrace after his chase of Joseph Tudor’s hat, was instructed very sharply to conduct a personal and unremitting search for Giuseppe Turidu and to detain him for questioning. He set off with a torch lent him by a more provident colleague and began working his way along the rows of tables in the banqueting hall like a stretcher bearer checking for survivors after a battle.
A fourth policeman was set to guard the entrance to the corridor which led to Hatch’s office and sitting-room and to the small washroom in which Hatch had been found.
The inspector gave the body a cursory examination from the doorway. There was a lot of blood about. He took care not to tread in any. The police surgeon and the squad from the forensic science laboratory would be properly equipped for closer dealings.
The washroom door bore no sign of damage round the lock; presumably it had been ajar or simply latched when Hubbard had come in search of his employer. In the upper part of the door, at about the level of Purbright’s head, was a roughly crescent-shaped area of perforation and splintering. Most of the glass had been smashed out of the small square window opposite the door. The inspector saw several whitish fragments on the floor. A thin, cold breeze flowed past him. Its freshness only emphasised the steamy, overheated air of the cubicle, smelling of soap and hot towelling and now charged with the sickly-sweet scent of blood.
Purbright pointed to the window and touched Love’s sleeve. “Go round the outside, Sid, and see what you can find before anybody gets trampling around. I’m going to set up shop in the office next door.”
Love hurried off. A few moments later his careful step could be heard on gravel. An unpromising material, Purbright well knew, but had there ever really existed a murderer so considerate as to prance around on a flower bed?
Before he left, he looked down once more on the sprawled body of Hatch, jacketless, one shirt sleeve rolled up. The cuff of the other, unbuttoned, sodden with darkening blood, was plastered flat to the floor. A comb lay in one corner. The wash basin was still half full of water, rimmed with grey soap scum. The water depths were pink, the white porcelain of the basin slashed with scarlet rain. As Purbright saw these things, he felt the pity and the anger that murder unfailingly stirred in him. The waste, the indignity, the loneliness of such a death—these were appalling enough, whoever and whatever the victim, but that they had been exacted coldly and ruthlessly in pursuance of profit (and here, Purbright told himself, was a money crime if ever he saw one) utterly defied rationality.
With the arrival of a pair of patrol cars, in one of which Mrs Hatch had been brought from “Primrose Mount”, Purbright’s forces of occupation were increased by four. More methodical deployment was not possible.
The inspector gave instructions for all guests and customers to be assembled in the gaming-room, where he would talk to them briefly. They would then be allowed to go home after their names and addresses had been recorded. There was no point, said Purbright, in trying to intern a crowd of tired and resentful people.
Members of the club staff, though, would have to be prepared for a slightly longer stay so that he and Sergeant Love might question them personally and in turn. They could make themselves comfortable in the lounge.
Two patrolmen were sent to make a round of the motel chalets and ensure that none contained a guest, whether officially or unofficially. Purbright gave the order flatly, as if on an afterthought. It would not do, he reflected, to betray to conventionally-minded policemen his tenuous private hope that they would stumble upon one or two of those elusive nuns, profanely transformed. Nunnae in flagrante delicto.