“Find out who murdered him, idiot. Arrest them.”
Bertrand straightened. “Sir.”
Sir William turned away with a snort, bullying his way back through the crowd. Bertrand slumped and panic overtook his face.
“Harry…”
“It’s all right,” Harriet said. “You’ve solved a murder before, remember? And you found the Glass Phantom. No one else ever managed that.”
Of course it had been Harriet who had done both of those things, but now was not the time to remind him of it.
“Right. Right.” Bertrand’s breath slowed. “Um…”
“Start questioning people. Ask the hotel staff who he was. Maybe he had an argument with someone. I’m going to search for clues here. And you should probably get rid of this crowd. Give the man some dignity.”
“Excellent. Yes. Right.” He puffed out his breath. “Good.”
The moment Bertrand started to shepherd the guests and hotel staff away, Harriet knelt beside the body and ran her hands over the man’s jacket and trousers. All she knew was that he had a package for her. She didn’t know how big it was or what it contained.
The dead man had nothing in his pockets. Harriet ran her fingers over the seams of his clothing, then removed his shoes. Still nothing. She sat back on her heels. So. He’d either left the package elsewhere, or whoever had killed him had taken it. If that were the case, how had they known he was making contact with the British-Martian Intelligence Service? Had someone in the service leaked the information, or had her contact made a mistake and given himself away?
She looked over her shoulder and met the eyes of Reginald Pratt, Viscount Brotherton, her supervisor. He was smirking at her. She felt cold. Could he have done this just to make her fail? Could he have been in on it? Surely not. Even Reginald Pratt wouldn’t betray his country. Would he?
A straightforward mission. That was what Lady Felchester had said. She’d failed it already.
No. She’d never been one to give up. Her contact might be dead, but she could still retrieve the package. If the dead man had hidden it, she could discover it. If it had been taken, she could find out by whom and get it back. She wouldn’t be beaten like this. Not so easily and not so quickly.
“I’m going to look on the balcony,” Harriet said. “Search for clues.”
She stepped past the body, trying not to look into the man’s dead eyes, then made her way up the stairs.
The balcony was wide. A hallway stretched away to more bedrooms. Harriet made a mental note to find out which guests were in those rooms. In one corner, an immobile automatic servant stood awaiting orders from the guests.
“Shame you can’t be a witness,” Harriet muttered. But it was only a machine. A complicated one, but a machine nonetheless. It couldn’t remember what it had seen.
The balcony was higher than Harriet’s waist, almost up to her chest. There was no way the victim could just have fallen or slipped over. He must have been pushed, and by someone strong. And there. A scuff mark on the polished marble. Not something the staff would leave for long. From the victim or his assailant. But that just confirmed what she’d already guessed. Her contact had been murdered.
She joined Bertrand at the foot of the stairs.
One of the hotel footmen was covering the body in a blanket. Then, a couple of automatic servants carried it into a storeroom. The hotel manager, a Mr. Ellis, followed them in.
“His name’s James Strachan,” the manager said. “He’s not been with us a week. Recommended, though. Came to us from Lord Barton in Tharsis City, apparently.”
“Thank you,” Bertrand said. “We’ll want to talk to you later.” He indicated the door. “If you please?”
“Ah. Yes. At your convenience, of course.”
Bertrand and Harriet escorted the manager out. Harriet’s gaze lingered on the body. Should she have found him first, before he was killed? Would Lady Felchester have expected that? Would he still be alive if she had? Would she be dead instead? She shivered. She hadn’t expected any of this. A straightforward mission.
Bertrand closed the door, locked it, and pocketed the key.
“Did you notice his socks, Harry?” Bertrand said, as they made their way to the dining room where the guests had been gathered.
“His socks?” Harriet frowned. “I saw the initials. J.S. James Strachan. That doesn’t really tell us anything.”
“Not that.” He waved a hand dismissively. “The pattern.”
Harriet racked her brains. The pattern. Diamonds, hadn’t it been? With a green stripe. She hadn’t paid much attention other than to assure herself there was nothing hidden within.
“What about it?”
“They’re Queen Anne Academy socks. You know, the big school on the western edge of Tharsis City? Only Queen Anne boys or masters wear those socks.”
Harriet nodded, impressed despite herself. Why hadn’t she known that? It wasn’t important, but she still should have noticed. It was her job.
“It’s an expensive place.”
Bertrand nodded. “So why is a Queen Anne boy working as a footman in a hotel?”
That one was easy. It was a cover to get him close to her unnoticed so he could hand over the package. Only if she told Bertrand that, she would be betraying her role and her oath of secrecy.
“I shouldn’t bother about that,” Harriet said, trying to make her voice sound casual. “I don’t think it’s important. Let’s question people and leave it.”
Bertrand chewed his lip. “I… don’t think I will, Harry, if it’s all the same with you. This feels like a clue.” He grinned. “I am a police inspector, you know. We have a nose for these kinds of things. Maybe there’s someone else from his school here. There might be a motive there.”
Hell. Hellfire and damnation! Harriet was messing up his investigation. She should come clean. But she couldn’t. Where do your loyalties lie? With your family, the people who helped raise you? Or with the service? Or are you just being selfish, more interested in playing spy than helping your brother-in-law? She didn’t know the answer, but she knew she wasn’t sharing her secret. Not yet, anyway.
The next two hours saw Bertrand and Harriet interviewing the staff and guests as to their whereabouts at the time of the murder and their relationships with the victim. Harriet hadn’t realized there were so many people in the hotel, but fortunately, most were able to provide alibis. By the end, they were left with only a dozen people who were unaccounted for or only able to rely on family to confirm where they had been. Fortunately, most of the hotel was run by automatic servants, with human staff only being used to interact with the guests, so, with the exception of the hotel manager, all had alibis for when the death had occurred. Even the young maid who had seen James Strachan fall to his death had, of course, been in sight of an elderly couple at the time. Both the elderly couple and the maid had heard a strange, discordant whistling just before the event, but further questioning of the staff revealed that Strachan was prone to whistling terribly as he went about his work.
They were left with the Edgeware family; Colonel and Mrs. Fitzpatrick; the angry student from the train, whose name was Sebastian Davies and who was trying to write a monograph on the ruins; the exiled Comte d’Arcy, fled from Napoleon’s forces on Earth; guests the Reverend and Mrs. Asheville; the hotel manager, Mr. Ellis; and, satisfyingly for Harriet, Reginald Pratt, Viscount Brotherton.
At the end of it, Harriet was ready to leap out of her seat and go tearing around the hotel in frustration. None of them seemed to have a motive and all claimed to have been far from the incident. There was nothing to contradict their claims either.