A Thrust to the Vitals Read online

  This black Christmas theme, teamed with golden baubles to relieve the depressant effect, continued throughout the hotel, according to the manager, who seemed excessively proud of it. It was to be found in the hotel’s four bars, its two ballrooms and its three restaurants. Rafferty hadn’t enquired about the decor in the annexe. Talk about Christmas at Dracula’s castle, he thought. Part of him half expected the count himself to appear from behind the thickly-branched black tree and set about adding to his problems.

  Such an appearance would do nothing for the anxieties of the hotel’s night manager; Rafferty was already tired of listening to the man’s worries about the likely downturn in their profits once news of the murder spread. Besides, he thought the manager might be pleasantly surprised by the reaction of his clientele; in Rafferty’s experience, there was nothing like murder for attracting the paying customers.

  Rafferty was relieved that the late Sir Rufus Seward, when consulted by the manager about his preference in Christmas décor, had declined the fashionable nonsense of a funereal black Christmas tree in the suite hired by the local council for their reception, and had insisted on a traditional theme. Death black décor in the murder suite itself would be more than a tad macabre. Thankfully, the scent of the ten-foot- high Scottish pine he had instead selected, brought with it the glorious waft of Highland mornings and was a welcome breath of fresh air for Rafferty after he and Llewellyn had left the lobby, been whisked up to the penthouse and first entered the murder scene. It had helped, too, to mask the unpleasant aroma of hate, envy, revenge or whatever other negative emotion had brought about Seward’s murder, and which, like a spectre at the feast, had added its unwelcome ambience to the suite’s atmosphere.

  Uniform had been quick to organise the removal of the remaining guests from Seward’s suite. They were now penned in another one, hastily opened up by the manager, and well away from the scene

  Once installed there, Rafferty was told, they had grumbled, drunk the management’s complimentary alcohol and grumbled some more, while they awaited Rafferty’s arrival.

  But, at least for now, they were out of his hair. Rafferty, grown canny over the years, had no intention of subjecting himself to a barrage of questions from people by now more than well-watered and who were probably inclined to be disagreeably intemperate in their demands to be allowed to go home. He was already tired after a busy day, so he preferred to wait till they were relatively sober before he attempted to question them.

  To this end, he had instructed the manager to remove all the complimentary alcohol and bring copious quantities of black coffee instead. Clearly, judging by the reports that filtered back to him, and the increased volume issuing from their gilded cage after this instruction was carried out, he was unlikely to be voted police officer of the year in any popularity contest amongst the VIP guest stragglers. Doubtless he’d get Superintendent Bradley at full throttle later in the day when the guests, who sounded a pretty self-important lot, made their assorted, vociferous, and hung-over complaints. But that prospect, mercifully, was still some hours’ distant. It was the here and now he had to get through first.

  It wasn’t as if he was short of things to do while he waited for relative sobriety to kick in amongst the last remaining guests.

  The hotel manager, on Rafferty’s arrival and request for somewhere quiet to question Seward’s assistant, Marcus Canthorpe, had offered the use of his office. Canthorpe quickly produced the requested guest list as well as Sir Rufus’s address book and diary. Rafferty would take a close look at all of them shortly, but before he studied the scene, Rafferty questioned Seward’s assistant closely.

  Canthorpe, a thirtysomething of middling height and slim build, was, thankfully, as sober as his dark suit. Rafferty was relieved to discover there was one party attendee able to coherently explain the evening’s events.

  But, although coherent, quietly articulate and impressively efficient given the circumstances, Rafferty surmised, as he took in the man’s disordered, collar-length fair hair, that the subdued Marcus Canthorpe was worried about his future. His hair gave every appearance of the distracted Canthorpe spending the waiting time running his fingers through it. Rafferty, unused to such clear-headed competence from a person who found himself present at a murder scene, was surprised Canthorpe had been able to supply him with his late employer’s diary and address book so promptly and had commented on it.

  Canthorpe had given a weary shrug when questioned about it and explained, ‘Sir Rufus does – did – business 24/7. He pays me well enough to be able to insist that I’m 24/7, too. And as his business interests are global, he needs to be able, at a moment’s notice, to contact his various business associates around the world.’ He paused, blinked, and then said, ‘Did, I suppose I mean.’

  ‘I see.’ Even the technophobic Rafferty knew there were such things as computerized diaries and address databases, so he asked why Sir Rufus’s apparently more than capable seeming assistant had made do with such old-fashioned methods of record keeping.

  Canthorpe smiled wanly. ‘Of course we use modern methods as well — or rather, I do. But Sir Rufus is — was surprisingly maladroit with technology. He preferred to have the means to get in touch with people himself, hence the old-fashioned diary and address book. He was a hands-on boss, who preferred to be hands-off with technology. That was my area of expertise.’

  Rafferty nodded and thanked Canthorpe for the concise explanation, though he was a little put out at the discovery that he shared any trait, even an aversion to technology, with a man like Seward, whom he had known and disliked. They each even had their own tame computer geeks at their beck and call: Seward had Canthorpe and he, of course, had Llewellyn.

  ‘I understand you found the body, Mr Canthorpe?’ Rafferty questioned.

  Canthorpe nodded.

  This was always suspicious in Rafferty’s book. Silently, as he studied Canthorpe’s fair good looks, he mused on the possibility that this could be his first inquiry where the murderer dunnit from motives of sleep deprivation.

  ‘Tell me, ‘Rafferty asked after this silent observation, ‘is it normal for you to interrupt your boss when, from what you told the uniformed officers, he had retired to his bedroom for a brief space of privacy during a socially-demanding evening, and had presumably indicated that he didn’t want to be disturbed?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ Canthorpe replied. ‘Yes, in that, if he was waiting for something urgent to be couriered over, he always instructed me to disturb him. Otherwise, no. But this evening was different. It was a very special occasion, of course, and I knew it meant a lot to him. Sir Rufus was very proud that his home town had chosen to honour him in this way, especially in the same year he received his knighthood. Besides, Ivor Bignall was one of Sir Rufus’s business partners. Not only that, he’s the local councillor in charge of the evening’s reception. And he and his wife wanted to say their goodbyes and go home. Mrs Bignall doesn’t enjoy the best of health — I was surprised they stayed as late as they did. I simply didn’t feel I could deny him access for the minute or two that would take and I didn’t think my boss would be pleased with me if I did so. Which is the reason I intruded on him in his bedroom and found — and found—’

  Rafferty raised a hand to stop Canthorpe’s attempt to continue with this description. He’d already had this more than adequately described by the uniformed officers who had been first on the scene and who had to provide such descriptions as part of their jobs. Besides, he and Llewellyn had already seen the body for themselves. He thanked the late Seward’s assistant and added, ‘You’ve made the sequence of events very clear.’

  After a few more questions, he asked Llewellyn to escort Marcus Canthorpe back to the commandeered suite where the rest of the late-lingering guests were still sequestered. And after he had informed the hovering manager that he could have his office back, Rafferty returned to the penthouse murder scene to study it further himself.

  From where Rafferty stood, with his sergean
t, Dafyd Llewellyn, at the entrance to Rufus Seward’s suite, it was clear the alcohol had flowed with a bacchanalian abandon at his celebratory civic reception. The Elmhurst Hotel’s cleaning staff hadn’t of course been allowed admittance and the debris left at the end of the extravagant spending of council tax-payers’ funds indicated that a good, free-loading time had been had by all.

  There were numerous bottles of what Rafferty learned were jeroboams of vintage champagne. Big buggers, anyway, thought a Rafferty unfamiliar with both the term and the extravagance. Stint me not on my big day, Sir Rufus must have said. And stint they hadn’t.

  Nice of them to be so generous with my money, thought the sober and begrudging council tax-paying Rafferty. Especially when police stations that had once been open all day and all night, were now mostly restricted to office hours. That would be fine, of course, if criminals followed suit and adopted a nine to five working day.

  Some of these big bugger bottles were lying on the floor like so many drunken sailors. If they’d had heels, they’d have kicked them up, for sure. The only wide and round thing that was no longer rolling around was Dr Sam Dally, who had departed after he had viewed the body, though the forensics team would be kept busy for some time yet.

  Seward had been killed in the suite’s main bedroom. Rafferty had, of course, already studied this bedroom and Seward’s corpse while it had still been in situ. But, to give the forensics team room to move, he hadn’t lingered longer than necessary to absorb the details, preferring to take in the suite as a whole.

  The victim’s bedroom was located down a short passageway lined with floor-to-ceiling closets near the entrance door to the suite. A large and ornate gilt mirror was on the wall opposite this corridor; Rafferty paused in front of it to tidy what he saw was thoroughly windswept hair. It seemed Seward had been seated at the desk the hotel provided in the largest of the three bedrooms, with his back to the door, when someone had crept up on him and plunged the chisel into his back. This creeping had certainly been made easier by the luxurious thickness of the carpet, the fact that Seward had, reportedly, been far from sober, and that the short passageway that housed the en-suite bathroom before it led into the bedroom itself, would have absorbed any warning draught from the opened door.

  Rafferty forced his concentration back to the scene in the main reception room. Several of the celebration’s remaining buffet canapés of what looked like smoked salmon and caviar lay abandoned in the centre of vast silver platters, though, by now, these looked rather less appetising than they must have been at the start of the evening. More bottles, mostly three quarters empty, were fixed into the optics behind the specially set up bar in the left-hand corner of the suite’s main room. These bottles’ earlier companions, now drunk dry, stood in crates stacked behind the bar, awaiting collection. There was a well-spread stain of what Rafferty assumed was red wine on the once crisp white cloth that covered the long buffet table facing the door. Someone had also crushed one of the canapés underfoot on the pricey- looking carpet.

  All in all, it looked much as Rafferty imagined a room must look the morning after one of those Roman orgies when the participants were all nursing sick headaches and saying, ‘Never again, Nero.’

  In his head, Rafferty could hear his Ma tut-tut ting in disapproval at the self-indulgent and careless excesses of these new Romans. Of course they, like their ancient predecessors, could make as much mess as they liked, sure in the knowledge that some other, much poorer, bugger, was going to get the job of cleaning up their mess. It was ever thus.

  But Rafferty, left with the job of cleaning up an even bigger, more bloody, mess, was only too aware that he had no time to indulge in a bout of self-righteous moralising. He didn’t have time, either, to enjoy the Edwardian splendours of one of the more pricey of the Elmhurst Hotel’s enormous suites, even though he felt like a round-eyed urchin with his nose pressed against the glass of an upmarket toy shop and with no hope, unless he was prepared to get himself hopelessly in debt, of ever playing with what was behind the glass.

  The plush penthouse suite had, of course, been hired, at vast expense, by the local council for Seward’s shindig, the usual town hall accommodation having been pre-booked for another, even higher status, VIP. With its glittering Tiffany crystal chandeliers, and its Sicilian Carrara marbled bathrooms with the Jacob Delafon bathware and its giant-sized, carved, African walnut beds, the suite gave a whole new meaning to the word ‘ostentatious’.

  Rafferty, who wouldn’t have known a Tiffany chandelier if one had crashed down on his head, had gained this sophisticate’s vocabulary after he had requested and been given one of the Elmhurst’s promotional brochures by the manager on his arrival. It was from this slim but triumphalist piece of literature that he had learned of the hotel’s self-proclaimed class and style. He had gained a knowledge of the hotel’s prices, too, of course. They made him shudder. Of course, such swank didn’t come cheap: the quoted price for one night’s stay had rendered him goggle-eyed in nose-pressed urchin mode. It had also sent up a warning signal to make sure he didn’t take the brochure home with him in case Abra found it on her return from Dublin. It might give her ideas that would make his bank account, rather than his body, shudder.

  With the thought of the prices still at the forefront of his mind, Rafferty was moved to comment, ‘I wonder what Elmhurst’s council tax-payers would have to say about this extravagance if they ever got to know how much it must have cost especially when they get their next inflation-plus increase on their bills.’

  Dafyd Llewellyn, a sternly brought-up Welsh Methodist, gave a Puritan’s sigh for such excess and told him, ‘As I’m one of those council tax-payers, I’m sure I can provide you with enlightenment.’

  Rafferty smiled tautly. ‘Don’t bother, Daff. I’m one as well, as you know. All this high on the hog stuff at our expense makes me sick. I’ve a good mind to write the Elmhurst equivalent of the “”Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells”” letter to the local rag — especially as our free-spending representatives have decided to put the tax up again next year.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Llewellyn murmured. ‘I can see that writing such a letter to the local newspaper might ease some of the pain, but I doubt it would be wise.’

  Rafferty snorted – the effects of this snouts in trough business seemed to be spreading. ‘Probably not. I’ll have to wait till I retire before I can voice my protest at the way they spend my hard-earned money.’

  ‘There’s that too, of course, though I was thinking more of the fact that Superintendent Bradley was one of this reception’s attendees.’

  Rafferty turned and stared at Llewellyn. ‘Old Snout-in-Trough-in-Chief? Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?’ Given Bradley’s propensity for high-hoggery, this revelation wasn’t that unexpected. Still, the thought of Bradley finding himself numbered amongst the murder suspects brought Rafferty a little shiver of delight. Then he protested as memory provided a reminder. ‘But old ‘Long Pockets’ wasn’t on the guest list.’

  ‘No, but I gather that’s only because he had an earlier engagement this evening and said he would have to cry off on this one. It seems the other one ended sooner than he expected and he had kept his invitation to this reception just in case.’

  ‘Trust Bradley to manage to get his snout in two troughs in one night.’

  Although Llewellyn had no comment to make on his superintendent’s trough-finding skills, he told Rafferty, ‘I only know he was here because DS Mary Carmody overheard one of the guests mention his name as being present and she questioned the man about it. Although, I gather the superintendent and his wife weren’t at this function for very long — an hour at most. They left shortly before Sir Rufus’s body was discovered.’

  Better and better, thought Rafferty.

  ‘This particular guest, the local mayor, Idris Khan, seemed to think the presence of a heavyweight policeman like the superintendent would provide him with alibi enough.’

  In spite of his rumbling stomach, the an
ticipated long night ahead and the worry about his brother, this information brought something approaching a grin to Rafferty’s lips. ‘Who knows? It might at that especially if I’m able to prove our esteemed super was the chisel-wielder. After all, it wouldn’t be unprecedented. He’s shown plenty of previous form in plunging sharpened implements in backs. Even if it is more in the meta – meta—’ Rafferty frowned and Llewellyn prompted, ‘Metaphorical?’

  Rafferty nodded. ‘That’s the bugger. Plenty of metaphorical knives in backs. Proves capability of the crime to my mind.’

  ‘Mmm… You might like to know that several – more than several – of Seward’s other guests are also reputed to have such a predilection.’ Llewellyn gave a discreet cough. ‘In fact, I noticed a certain Nigel Blythe was numbered amongst the guests. That wouldn’t be the same Blythe—?’

  Rafferty gave a weary nod. ‘The very same.’ Llewellyn, of course, remembered this Rafferty family cousin from a previous case.

  Llewellyn wisely said no more on the subject.

  Rafferty recalled himself to duty. Now, beckoning Llewellyn to follow, he walked back down the suite’s chandeliered hallway to the main bedroom, the scene of the murder. He stood in the doorway, and, although Sir Rufus Seward’s body had now been removed to the mortuary, the vivid picture of his fleshy-girthed and well-fed body slumped over the gilded desk in front of the curtained windows in the bedroom, the thin chisel thrust deep in his back, was unlikely to leave him any time soon. But then, neither were his worries about Mickey.

  Rafferty recalled Dr Sam Dally’s comment as he viewed and examined the corpse of the late Sir Rufus: ‘At least you won’t be short of suspects for this cadaver, Rafferty. From what I’ve heard of the man, he was one of those types who smarms all over those he regards as his social superiors – though, I suppose, since his knighthood, only royalty would be so regarded – and saves his bile for those not in a position to answer back. Not a likeable man, by all accounts.’