Bertrand sat back, running his hand through his hair.
“This is all a bit of a pickle, Harry. I don’t see any of them pushing some chap over the railing. I mean, Colonel Fitzpatrick would be capable, but that’s not the way he’d do it. He’d call the fellow out and run a sword right through him. I hate this, Harry. Remind me why I wanted to become a policeman?” He sighed. “At least we can rule the Edgewares out. They’re hardly going to murder someone with a couple of children in tow. They wouldn’t do that. Children change you, Harry. They’re such a delight.” A wistful smile settled on his face.
“You don’t actually have any children yet, Bertrand,” Harriet reminded him.
“Oh, they’ll be lovely. Any child of Amy’s has to be a delight.”
Only because you didn’t know Amy when she was a child, Harriet thought. She was eight years younger than her sister, but she still remembered how sneaky Amy had been.
“We need to know more about our suspects,” Harriet said. “Why don’t you see if the hotel has any old newspapers? Go through them and see if any of our suspects are mentioned. We need to know if they are who they say they are, and if so, if they’re keeping any secrets. Get some background on them.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I think I should go and search Strachan’s room,” Harriet said. “There might be some clues.” And maybe Strachan had hidden the package he was supposed to deliver to her there.
The staff accommodation was set at the back of the hotel. Here the elaborate photon-emission chandeliers were replaced by hand-wound friction-lamps and there were no windows onto the depths of the Valles Marineris. Harriet was relieved to see that they weren’t using gas lamps like many houses still did. A buildup of gas or a failure of the air supply… Just thinking about it made her chest feel tight. And that made her wonder how many millions of tons of water were pressing down on this structure of stone, steel, and glass.
The hotel has been operating for two years. It’s not going to fail now.
“What the devil are you doing here?”
Harriet’s head jerked up. Sir William was striding down the hallway toward her.
“Um… Deputy Chief Inspector Simpson asked me to examine the victim’s room.”
Sir William narrowed his eyes. “Are you a police officer?”
“No, but—”
“Simpson should do it himself. What’s wrong with the man?”
“He’s interviewing suspects and he doesn’t want to waste time.” Harriet tilted her head, as though an idea had just occurred to her. “Perhaps you could assist? You are a policeman.”
Sir William stepped back as though slapped. “I? I am the head of the Tharsis City Police Service. I am here to represent Tharsis City, not to… to solve crimes.” He stomped past her, shaking his head.
Harriet let a small smile touch her lips as she continued down the hallway. Pompous idiot.
The manager had given her a key to Strachan’s room, but the door was unlocked. She pushed it open.
Someone had been there already. The mattress had been tipped off the bed and slit down the side, its stuffing pulled free in handfuls. The small wardrobe had been flung open, emptied, and tipped on its side. Strachan’s trunk had been upturned and the base smashed in. Even the washstand and the chamber pot had been broken.
Hell! She’d been right, then. Someone knew about Strachan and the packet. Had they searched and, not finding it, murdered him? Or had they killed him first and then come here? And, she thought, looking over her shoulder, did they know about her?
There was no package in the room. Harriet leafed through Strachan’s papers. A couple of letters from a friend in Tharsis City and what seemed like a not very good poem. She pocketed them. Strachan’s information could be written in code. Still, they weren’t exactly a package. After a moment’s hesitation, Harriet gathered up all the blank paper, too. There were a dozen ways of passing invisible messages, and she didn’t have the equipment here to check. She cursed herself again. She should have been better prepared. Just because a mission seemed straightforward, that didn’t mean it was. That had been one of her first lessons after she’d joined the service. Lessons and Tharsis City seemed a long way away.
There was an auto-scribe on the small desk. Its speaking tube was lowered and the pen raised from its pad. Harriet frowned. Not something a hotel would provide for its staff, nor something a footman could afford, but something most gentlemen would own. Careless of Strachan to give himself away like that.
Harriet lowered the pen arm, opened the lid of the auto-scribe, remove the coiled spring, and carefully wound the mechanism backward. It was a useful trick. Often it would cause the last few dictated words to be rewritten. But not this time. The machine had been reset.
Strachan’s clothes were scattered across the floor. Harriet quickly checked them over. There was a fine red dust caught in the cuffs of his shirt, and the clothes were very lightweight. The manager had said Strachan had come here from Tharsis City, but even with the Spring warmth, it was too early in the year for clothes like this in Tharsis. The red dust spoke more of the Lunae Planum, the great desert to the north of British Mars. So, he’d come from the desert—probably Lunae City—to bring his information. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
She let herself out and locked the room behind her. Maybe Bertrand had picked something up, someone who had seen something, someone who had gotten to know Strachan while he worked here.
Two swift footsteps sounded behind her. Harriet spun, but too late. A blanket fell over her head, then was pulled tight. Someone kicked her legs away from under her.
She twisted as she fell, landing on her back with a thump that jarred her teeth. A weight landed on her, pinning her down.
“Where’s the package?” a voice hissed, muffled by the blanket.
Two of them. One holding the blanket over her head. The other sitting on her, hands searching her jacket. Even though she wanted to scream at the violation, Harriet forced herself to keep calm, keep still, listen to the breathing, visualize him. He was just above her. There.
She cupped her hands and brought them up, clapping as hard as she could over his ears.
The man screamed. He jerked back, and Harriet used his loss of balance to hook an arm around his neck and topple him to the side.
“Hey!” the second man shouted. He tugged on the tightened blanket. Harriet went with the momentum, rolling and sending a vicious kick toward her assailant. He let go of the blanket as he fell back.
Harriet struggled to her feet, pulling the blanket free. She shook her hair from her eyes just in time to see two figures disappearing around the corner. One was still clutching his ears, the other was limping. She watched them go.
Damnation. They didn’t have the package either, but somehow they’d identified her. Surely she hadn’t been so obvious, had she? Maybe they’d just been watching Strachan’s room. If not, her cover had been leaked, and that was a disaster. She could see Lady Felchester’s face even now. Contact dead, failed to retrieve package, cover blown…
The package hadn’t been on Strachan’s body and it wasn’t in his room. Where else? Where did he go? Where did he work? It had to be somewhere it wouldn’t be discovered.
Nursing her bruises, Harriet limped back to the dining room where she and Bertrand had questioned the guests and staff.
The room was in chaos. Bertrand stood on a chair at one end of the room, waving his arms wildly. A great crowd milled around the room, filling almost every inch, seemingly focused on something happening near a big glass window. Harriet elbowed her way over to Bertrand.