Juliet and I were due to be married on October 16th, and it might seem odd that we were separated. The reasons are simple enough. I was in Italy because I had had a bit of a battering in a car accident. There was no permanent damage, but a couple of weeks in hospital while the bits and pieces mended had left me pale and under the weather. I was not sleeping very well for one thing. So the doctor had recommended sun, swimming, and all the rest of those things which trip so easily off the medical tongue.
Juliet, on the other hand, had to go to America as a secretary attached to a government delegation and attend conferences. So we separated for a month, with moans and sighs, and all the appropriate agony.
As a result of conference delays she was not now able to return before October 11th, which would mean a hectic few days before the wedding. I stayed in Italy till October 2nd.
During the last few days I developed my “thing” about old Mrs. Dawson. I was writing up the odd descriptive paragraph based on my notes, and kidding myself that I was doing some work. But of course I wasn’t. Not really. I was swimming and sunbathing, and strolling along the little roads, peering in at cottages among the vines and lemon trees, and reading, and breakfasting late in my pyjamas on the balcony overlooking the sea. I hadn’t a care in the world, but plenty of time to think.
Everybody knows that when everything is going well, and there is not a cloud in the sky, then that is the time to watch out, because such conditions are not normal in this troubled life, and can’t last. One pays lip service to such platitudes, but that is about all. As far as Juliet and I were concerned, we were both healthy, in love, and solvent, and I had no morbid premonitions.
I had no firm plot for my next book, but I knew that would come. I was not worried. My mind was, in a way, a sort of vacuum, and into the vacuum seeped this “thing” about Lucy Dawson.
What kept worrying me, as I am sure it did the Italian police, was the fact that she had not been robbed. Every explanation I invented could easily be faulted.
The man had planned to rob her, but suddenly thought he was about to be disturbed and had left hurriedly. (But he could have returned.) Or he had had an inhibition about robbing a dead body, thinking it might bring ill luck. (Then why kill her? Murder is not for sensitive souls.) So it went on.
Meanwhile her room remained locked on the instructions of the Italian police, and pending action by the British Consulate to remove her belongings; which I expect annoyed Bardoni because he couldn’t let it.
Two days before I left the hotel to fly back to London I had what I then thought, in my ignorance, was a stroke of luck. I wandered back from a mid-morning swim in my towelling wrap. It was somewhere about eleven o’clock, and I thought I would change and do an hour or so’s work before the pre-lunch drink.
I trudged up from the sandy beach and through the hotel vestibule, my leather bathing shoes slapping on the gleaming tiled floor, then up the uncarpeted wooden staircase to the first floor, and along the corridor to my room.
On the way, I had to pass Mrs. Dawson’s room. I remember I was thinking about the malarial conditions which had finally caused the Greek settlements to abandon the temples at Paestum when I noted that her door was ajar.
I paused and listened.
There was no movement inside the room. I heard faint voices from below in the hotel, and from outside the cries of swimmers and people playing tennis, but they seemed filtered, like echoes from far away.
I gently pushed the door open.
In the sunlight which percolated through the half-opened jalousies I saw a bucket and a mop near the doorway, and guessed that the hotel management had decided, police or no police, Consulate or no Consulate, that the room should be cleaned. Sophia would be doing the cleaning. She cleaned my room, and all the others along the corridor, a plump, cheerful little dark-skinned woman of about thirty-five. Either she had left earlier than usual to have her mid-day meal, or she had forgotten some cleaning material, or had gone to fetch some more.
I guessed I could handle Sophia, yet when I went in I trod as softly as my beach shoes would allow-perhaps because I had a slightly guilty conscience, knowing I should not be there; perhaps because of the associations of the room with the dead woman; perhaps a bit of both.
Two vases of flowers were on the built-in dressing-table. The roses were dead, but the gladioli still had some red at their tips which had not yet quite faded.
Two monogrammed Edwardian silver hairbrushes were set neatly beside the vases and two silver boxes with intricately worked edges, a glass powder bowl with a silver top and two ebony clothes brushes with silver initials. On the washbasin shelf were one or two medicine bottles, a bottle of aspirins and a small pill box.
At the back of the door her beige-coloured tweed travelling coat was hanging. Over it hung one of her pastel-coloured chiffon scarves.
Still laid out on the bed was her silk night-dress-old-fashioned, with inset lace and hand embroidery. Yet although it looked well worn the silk was still thick and strong.
Outside, in the tiny anteroom, the wardrobe was full of her clothes; unexceptionable print dresses, blouses, and cotton skirts. Four or five pairs of sandals and neat walking shoes were placed in a row on the floor of the cupboard.
I went into the tiled bathroom and noted her mauve silk dressing-gown, her toothbrush in its place, and a large tablet of bathsoap in the soap dish. I picked it up. Like her clothes the soap was unexceptionable. I think it was jasmine.
I walked back into the bedroom and opened the dressing-table drawer. Face cream, lip-salve, a nail-case in mauve leather, some corn plasters, a pair of curling tongs, hairgrips and hairpins. Handkerchiefs in an embroidered sachet. On the night table there were three books-a biography of Edward VII, two Tauchnitz editions of modern novels, two maps and a guide to Naples.
As I looked round the room, a slight wind moved the thick, blue woven curtains. The dust on the tiled floor and the faded flowers on the dressing-table spoke of neglect and loss, but the voices from the beach still filtered from another life, and through the windows I could see the waiters moving about behind the cactus hedge, under the pine trees, setting the tables for lunch. Their white coats made patches of light against the bright reds, the yellows, the greens and blues of the fringed tablecloths.
I was eager now to be out of the room with its half-light and depression, even a little impatient with myself for entering, and I made for the door.
As I did so, I passed a small table by the windows. On it lay a camera, a tin of English biscuits, her passport, a cheque-book, one of those imitation leather covers which hold travellers’ cheques and a most sumptuously produced book on Pompeii and Herculaneum.
I could not resist picking up the book. It was beautifully illustrated, the photographs taken by a camera artist. At the back of the book, before the pages of the index and bibliography, was a slim Italian bookmark in tooled leather. It had been inserted at the map page showing the lay-out of each street and house in Pompeii. Almost automatically I looked for House No. 27 in Section 2. I found it fairly easily, for the simple reason that somebody, presumably Mrs. Dawson, had marked the site with a small cross in pencil. She had done more. She had traced the route, lightly in pencil, from the Porta Marina, past the Forum, to Section 12 and right up to the house.
She knew where she was going all right.
She had carefully marked the way to her own death. Almost certainly, then, she knew whom she was to meet, which would have made things easier for whoever adjusted her scarf; if you could call it adjusting her scarf.
I am amazed now at the importance I attached to these piffling details at the time and how clever I thought I was.
The evening before I left for London I went to the reception desk and asked for my bill. Alfredo, an olive-skinned Sicilian, was on duty, a pleasant, affable young man of good family, I should say, who was gaining experience in the hotel business by working in various departments. All Italian hotel bills, presented in lire, look like calculated distances in light-years to some distant star. I joked with him about State tax and local tax and service charge, and added a facetious remark, in rather poor taste, which I instantly regretted:
“I hope for Signor Bardoni’s sake that poor Mrs. Dawson had paid her bill.”
“I could not say,” said Alfredo. “Mrs. Dawson always paid her money direct to Signor Bardoni. It was an eccentricity. Perhaps she did not quite trust our mathematics,” he added a little tartly.
“Elderly English ladies sometimes develop these odd habits,” I said soothingly.
I glanced down at the bill with its astronomic-looking total. The details meant nothing to me, and never do, especially those on the little chits attached to the bill, written in indecipherable hieroglyphics, and dealing with items such as wines, bar drinks, soda water, laundry, car hire, room service, etc., most of them long past and uncheckable.
I looked through the chits in a dazed kind of way, but I was not thinking about them. I was finally facing the fact that I wanted to build up Mrs. Dawson as a person. I wanted to know more about her.
She had become my pet victim. The one who was killed but not robbed, either of her jewellery, her money, or her virtue.
“Can you give me her address in England?” I said, suddenly.
Alfredo’s mind was on other things.
“Whose address, sir?”
“Mrs. Dawson’s.”
Signor Bardoni had a light tread. I did not know he was behind me. He said:
“I can give you her address, Mr. Compton, if you come into my office.”
I followed him into his little office, with its tiled floor, modern desk and chairs and filing cabinets.
“Sit down, Mr. Compton.”
I sat down and offered him a cigarette, but he refused it. He did not need to refer to any papers. He knew her address. He said: “In England she lived at the Bower Hotel, Burlington-on-Sea, Sussex. If you had asked me that I would have told you. It was not necessary to go into her room to try to find out, Mr. Compton.”
His chair behind the big desk was higher than mine, which can be annoying if one knows one is in the wrong. He lit a cigar, pulling at it vigorously. Through the blue smoke I saw his eyes watching my face from their wooden sockets.
For the first time in this affair I caught a whiff of hostility. It was something more than that of a hotel proprietor gently reproving a guest for a misdemeanour. I am very sensitive, not merely to atmosphere, but to shades of atmosphere.
“I was not looking for her address, Mr. Bardoni. I was-”
He cut me short.
“It could have been very embarrassing for me-and for you, if the police had heard about it.”
“I happened to be passing her room, and saw the door ajar.”
“Many guests leave their doors ajar, Mr. Compton. It is not usually regarded as an invitation to look round their rooms.”
The rebuke was open and undisguised.
“This guest is permanently away from her room,” I said coldly.
“Mr. Compton, her possessions are still in my care. I am responsible for them.”
I got up out of my chair.
“I am not suggesting anything, Mr. Compton, naturally not, except perhaps to point out that to meddle in matters in which the police of this country are already engaged, either now or even in the future, can perhaps lead to trouble, and even pain for innocent people.”
He was on his feet, too, now, and moving to the door to open it for me. He said:
“Real life people are real life people, and story-book people are story-book people. Better and easier to keep the two apart, is it not?”
His voice suddenly dropped, and he spoke softly and persuasively, and none can do this better than the Italians:
“Better to allow this poor English lady to rest at peace. Her life has run its course, Mr. Compton, with all its trials and tribulations. Her soul has departed, and her body sleeps in our Italian soil which she loved so dearly. Do not create from her sad ghost some distorted character for a book. Agreed?”
He was hammering it up, of course, though to some effect. I hesitated. But he couldn’t leave well alone. As he opened the door he added:
“Let her be, Mr. Compton, let her be! If not for her sake then for your own, for sometimes the dead can hit back!”
It was the cheap threat in those corny words about the dead hitting back which destroyed the earlier effect of his words. As I went out, I said:
“While she was alive her affairs were her own. But now the manner of her death has made her, in some measure, the concern and even the property of us all.”
As a rejoinder it was pretty corny, too, though at the moment, as an off-the-cuff retort, it seemed a nicely rounded phrase.
But like Bardoni, I could not leave well alone. The temptation was too much and I had to have another crack at him.
“I took some flowers to the grave yesterday. The wreath from the hotel staff and guests must have faded, and been removed, since it was not there.”
He stood by the door, soft persuasiveness gone, his entire face now looking as though it had been carved out of wood, not just his eye sockets.
“None of our flowers left on the grave?” he said. “How sad. How unfortunate the sun has been so hot.”
“There was one wreath, from England, from some people called the Stepping Stones,” I murmured indifferently. “And now I will go and pay your bill.”
He bowed. I bade him good night. He did not respond. I did not care. I didn’t like him enough to care. In fact, I cordially disliked him for the way he had reproved me about the room. In fact, for two pins I would have had a damned good row with him.
If I had been listening acutely, I might now have heard the first faint rustle in the undergrowth, even caught the first glint of green eyes. But I wasn’t. I ascribed his attempt to dissuade me from taking an interest in Lucy Dawson to some vague idea of circumventing bad publicity for his hotel. I was, if anything, more determined than ever to find out further details about the woman, and even to write an article or two as soon as possible, mentioning his hotel in a disparaging though non libellous way.
So the peasant quickened his steps, poor optimistic ignoramus, and within a few days of my return to England I went down to Burlington, Sussex.
There is nothing unusual about the Bower Hotel, Burlington-on-Sea. It stands as it has stood for eighty years, gazing mournfully at the Channel across the narrow promenade.
To the right and left of it other grey buildings were dripping in the rain when I went down there. Some of them were small and did not aspire to the title of hotel. All of them, with one or two exceptions, provided a bed and food of a sort for those who wished to live or stay at Burlington. There was a surprising number of such people. Some came voluntarily there to spend their holidays, because it had a strip of sand for children, at least when the tide was low, and a short pier, a few cinemas and two dance halls.
Others, elderly people, lived in the hotels and boarding houses for as long during the year as they were permitted to do so. Most of them curried favour with the proprietors and thought they were popular with them, and so they were to some extent, particularly in winter, since they paid the running costs of the establishment. Had it not been for the permanent residents, as they were politely called, the proprietors would have had to close each autumn, and engage fresh staff each spring, which is no small problem.
But when spring and summer arrived, the love of the proprietors for their permanent residents wore thin. Most of the residents couldn’t afford to pay high summer prices for their rooms. Most of them weren’t allowed to stay on, even if they could.
Elderly residents can only pay rent while they are alive. They don’t live for ever. If they hang around occupying their rooms all the summer how does the place get known? What about fresh blood, and particularly holiday-makers’ blood?
Thus argued Miss Constance Brett, I learned, who ruled the Bower Hotel like an eastern potentate, and wasn’t much tougher, some said, than an old bayonet scabbard.
So every Easter or Whitsun there was an exodus from Burlington. It consisted of the old, the frail, the lame and the impoverished; and all over the country relatives prepared spare rooms, and proprietors of crumby places inland partially aired the damp beds in preparation for the Burlington refugees.
In the autumn the residents were allowed to come back and sometimes even occupy their old rooms. In return for the privilege of paying out good money, they could forget the worries of the summer. They had been taken back.
Familiar rooms, surroundings, and faces made it seem like home. They were grateful, and often said so, which was more than the proprietors ever did, because it is bad policy to unbend too much with subject races such as permanent residents.
The Bower Hotel, owing to the grey stones of which it was built, and its architecture, must have looked sad from the moment when the first Victorian customer crossed the threshold. It gave the impression of a hotel which never wanted to be there. In this it was deceptive, like some of the staff, and some of the residents. For unlike its seedier neighbours, which were mere converted houses, the Bower had been built as a hotel in the first place. So had the George Hotel, further along the promenade, and the Cliff Hotel, above the town, but they were giants, with American Bars and orchestras, and in a different class altogether.
Nevertheless, the Bower had class, too, of its kind. It lay back a few yards from the road and there was a short drive with an entrance for cars marked IN, and another marked OUT.
Inside the metal-studded front door, there was a reception-desk on the right, where a grey-haired, bespectacled woman, called Miss Banks, appeared to pore over ledgers from eight o’clock in the morning until six o’clock at night, with an hour off for lunch. Framed on the wall above Miss Banks’ head was an embroidered sampler which those arrivals who had only known the exterior of the hotel regarded with some astonishment:
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A BOWER quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
John Keats
On the left of the entrance hall was the hall porter’s desk, with railway time-tables and brochures, and behind the porter’s stool a series of pigeon-holes for letters and keys.
The hotel was heavily carpeted throughout, and comfortably furnished, and most of the rooms had central heating. Even the food was reasonable. So that despite its melancholy exterior it was snug inside. Miss Brett, who had been running it for nineteen years, knew her job. Most of her residents were allowed to stay during the summer if they could afford the increased seasonal prices, though not all, and she saw to it that their creature comforts were well attended to.
Above all, she kept them warm. Too warm for a casual visitor like myself. My mother lived in a very different type of hotel near Brighton, friendly and cheerful, on the outside as well as inside, with plenty of daylight flooding in through the big windows, and here, too, I have found the heat somewhat overpowering. But then elderly people have thin blood.
Food is taken seriously at these hotels, and though hardly any of the residents take any exercise, most of them eat four meals a day and have a tin of biscuits by the bedside to keep them going till dawn. During the two nights and three days I spent at the Bower I learned that the only bad mistake Miss Brett ever made in her early days was to try to economise on food. The complaints nearly cost her her job.
The Bower Hotel, with its overheated rooms and sombre exterior, was not merely a home for many. It was a kind of club where each member treated the others with politeness and dignity, where each had a secure niche of greater or lesser importance.
It was easy for me to feel patronising about this little community but I tried not to. The club was a refuge from loneliness and despair for a vanishing generation ill suited to modern conditions.
It was an enclave in which there were smooth waters, where sails were easily trimmed to any light breezes which might from time to time arise. Such thunder as was heard came only distantly, from the noisy, brash, modern hinterland, and any lightning was of the harmless, flickering summer type.
The Bower Hotel was not fitted to withstand forked lightning of the killer variety.
I arrived in time for lunch, and sought an interview with Miss Constance Brett immediately after the meal.
She was a heavily built woman of about fifty, with iron grey hair cut in an old-fashioned bobbed style, a muddy complexion, a square face, and pale blue eyes. She was dressed in a brown blouse, a dark grey cardigan, a skirt of a lighter grey, thick beige stockings, low heeled shoes, and wore a single row of large, cheap, pink, artificial pearls.
The big square ashtray on her desk by the window was half filled with cigarette stubs. I judged her a woman whom no man had loved. The hotel was her empire. Her living-room, which was half-office, and the bedroom, which I glimpsed through a partly opened door, was her home. The respect of her staff and the flattery of the residents were her substitutes for affection.
I explained to her my purpose, adding for good measure that in my view the case was unlikely to be solved, and I wished to write about it for criminological interest and record, perhaps in a book of unsolved murders, under the heading of The Pompeiian Murder.
“I knew Mrs. Dawson only slightly, but she told me how happy she had been at the Bower,” I said, to try and soften her up. I could have saved myself the trouble.
“This is very irregular you know,” Miss Brett said abruptly.
“She’s dead, Miss Brett. I understand she had no family left. Who can object?”
She did not reply at once. Then she said:
“I’ve answered many questions already for the police. I’m depressed and tired of it all.”
“I can understand that. Signor Bardoni, manager at the Sorrento hotel, felt the same. When he confirmed this address he said he was sure you would do your best,” I lied.
“Did he indeed?”
She was looking at me with her pale, emotionless eyes. I noticed a slight flush at the lower part of her neck, and how it was spreading slowly up her throat.
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“No, I don’t know him. I met him once, but I don’t know him. A few years ago, after Mrs. Dawson had booked a room at his hotel, and had been unwell, he apparently wrote to her and said that he was coming to England and would be returning to Italy at about the same time as she was going there. He would pick her up here and look after her on the journey, which he did. I just met him briefly.”
“That was kind of him.”
“Yes, it was.” There was no enthusiasm in her voice. “You’re not a private detective, are you?”
“A private detective? Good God, no! Why should I be? Who would employ me, and why, for heaven’s sake?”
“I just wondered.”
“Why should I be a private detective?” I persisted.
She stubbed out her cigarette in the square ashtray, and looked out of the window across the grey Channel.
She was an ugly, ungracious woman, and difficult to talk to. I felt an appalling pity for her, encased and protected as she was by her impenetrable unattractiveness. I could not understand why she had flushed when I mentioned Bardoni, but I knew that nobody, and certainly not a worldly Italian, was likely to have had a brief whirlwind flirtation with her. She did not reply directly to my question.
“You are just an author-well, what do you want to know?”
Before I could pose a question she said:
“Mrs. Dawson was a very remarkable woman.”
“I’m sure she was. How long had she been living here?”
“About seventeen years.”
“Perhaps you could tell me something of her background?”
“It is not my business to inquire into the background of a resident.”
I got up from my chair and walked over to the window. I looked down at the promenade, allowing time for my irritation to die. I wasn’t going to get far with this one.
“What happened to her husband?” I asked perfunctorily.
“He died many years ago. There was some tragedy.”
“What sort of tragedy?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. It is not for me to pry into personal tragedies.”
“Had she any family left?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Had she any close friends in the hotel?”
She hesitated. I suppose she knew I could find out, anyway. She said:
“Well, there was Mrs. Gray, who came here at about the same time. And Mrs. Dacey, I suppose, because she has been here almost as long, though she keeps herself to herself.”
“Had she any hobbies or eccentricities?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Is there anything interesting about her at all which you can tell me?”
“Nothing.”
I paused.
“Then why was she a very remarkable woman, Miss Brett?”
I stared at her as I spoke, and saw the pink flush start again in her throat and spread painfully upwards.
“She just was. She was more active than most of our elderly residents.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes, that’s all.”
I thanked her. As I moved towards the door, she said:
“Why ferret about in the past, Mr. Compton?”
She had risen to her feet and stood by her desk, sturdy, ugly, and in some odd way defiant. Once again I felt a wave of pity, as one does sometimes for unlovable or unlikable people. It’s not that one wants to love them or even like them. There are only twenty-four hours in the day. You can’t take them all on.
“It won’t do any good, will it?” she added.
I repeated my earlier reply:
“What harm will it do?”
She walked heavily toward the windows. She was not particularly masculine but she had no feminine appeal. She was a lump of humanity mechanised into the hotel business.
“Delving into the past-what good will it do?” she said helplessly, without looking round.
“What harm?” I said yet again. “I don’t understand-what’s the harm?”
The change from hostility to something akin to a plea had caught me by surprise.
“None, I suppose,” she muttered, and drew her handkerchief out of her cardigan pocket.
With a woman of her type it is difficult to know whether such an action is due to hayfever, catarrh, or tears.
As I closed the door, I could not help thinking of Signor Bardoni’s words, “Let her be, Mr. Compton, let her be!” In his case, the words had been accompanied by a remark about the dead hitting back, a blatant appeal to superstition. Constance Brett’s stumbling appeal had been to the heart.
Both were directed to the same end.
The following is a brief record of my interview with Mrs. (Caroline) Gray, as written on the evening of October 8th:
Interviewed Mrs. (Caroline) Gray this afternoon in hotel garden, on bench. After wet morning, warm and sunny. Dahlias, some tall some dwarf, made fine colour in borders….
Mrs. Gray is a dumpy woman in late sixties. Round podgy face, heavily powdered, muffin-like. Small brown eyes almost hidden by fat cheeks. Small slit for mouth. Lipstick. Sometimes seems to be sucking imaginary sweet in front of mouth. Has odd habit of repeating parts of sentences.
Myself: The manageress tells me you were her closest friend in the hotel.
Mrs. G.: I was, indeed I was. It is a great shock to me, a very great shock. She was a very remarkable woman. I said she was a very remarkable woman.
Myself: Why was she remarkable?
Mrs. G.: She just was. Everybody agreed about that.
What are you writing in that notebook?
Myself: Just a few shorthand notes.
Mrs. G.: Why?
Myself: I have a bad memory.
Mrs. G.: The ways of the Lord are strange.
Myself: I beg your pardon?
Mrs. G.: Her father lost a great deal of money to a crook. Her husband was in the Army. He was killed a couple of years after they were married.
Myself: In what war?
Mrs. G.: In no war. He was killed by a burglar. I said he was killed by a burglar.
Myself: By a burglar?
Mrs. G.: He went down and disturbed a burglar, and was killed. And now this awful tragedy. Strange, the ways of the Lord. Some families seem to attract trouble. I said they seem to attract trouble, some families.
Myself: It sometimes looks like it. Who were these people called the Stepping Stones?
Mrs. G.: What people called the Stepping Stones?
Myself: Well, I don’t know. That’s why I am asking you.
Mrs. G.: I don’t wish to go on talking to you, if you are going to be rude.
(N.B. It was certainly a rude remark. But she had begun to irritate me. She was twittery and nervous, her little currant eyes were fixed on my face to note the impression she was making. Her voice took on a tone like a schoolmistress or a prison wardress. Some of these cosy-looking, muffiny-faced old ladies can be proper Tartars.)
Myself: I apologise, if I sounded rude. I did not mean to.
Mrs. G.: Very well, then. Everybody can be misunderstood. I said everybody can be misunderstood.
Myself: Quite.
(N.B. A fairly long silence. Decided to try again.)
About this Stepping Stones business, Mrs.
Gray, you were her best friend, surely you-?
Mrs. G.: I didn’t say I was her best friend. I was her best friend in the hotel. That’s different, isn’t it?
Myself: Well, do you know of any other close friends not in the hotel?
Mrs. G.: No. No, I don’t.
Myself: Had your friend Mrs. Dawson any eccentric habits?
Mrs. G.: No, of course she hadn’t! She was a perfectly normal woman, perfectly normal.
Myself: You said she was a very remarkable woman. So she was normal but remarkable, is that it?
(N.B. She was chewing imaginary sweet rapidly.)
Mrs. G.: Why are you trying to trip me up? Like a lawyer or a detective or something?
Myself: That’s what I am-a detective or something, as you call it. I am a writer. I am going to record her case. I need to know about her. I can’t just write, “Mrs. Dawson was murdered at Pompeii on September 11th and the Italian police have so far made no noticeable headway.” Presumably the Stepping Stones, whoever they are, knew her well, since they sent a wreath-the only wreath, incidentally “in memory of happier times,” as they put it.
Mrs. G.: Well, I cannot help you further, I must go indoors, I said I must go indoors now.›
Myself: You have helped me already, thank you. You have told me she suffered twice at the hands of criminals. Now she had suffered a third time. It is a remarkable story.
Mrs. G.: No good is served by recalling tragedy. Why not let poor Mrs. Dawson rest in peace? I said, why not-
Myself: I know what you said. Two people have said the same thing already.
Mrs. G.: Then why not have the decency to heed them, Mr. Compton?
Myself: I am not convinced that she is resting in peace. On the other hand I am conscious of deliberate obstruction. I do not know why, and I cannot describe it, but I feel it. I am an old newspaper man, and senseless obstruction makes me obstinate. I am going to do a most exhaustive study of her and her past life, the tragedies in it, and her own awful end.
(N.B. I thought, mistakenly, that I had nothing to lose by being outspoken; nor had I any scruples. The hard insulting voice issuing from the pale muffiny face made me feel that this dumpy old bag merited no more courtesy than she gave, which was little or none.)
Mrs. G.: I shall now go indoors and rest for an hour before dinner, Mr. Compton, since your mind seems made up.
Myself: Two points before you go. Had she any special interests? How did she spend her days?
Mrs. G.: She spent her time like most of us do-going for short walks, talking, looking at television, and reading.
Myself: Had she many friends outside those in this hotel?
Mrs. G.: Hardly any. Probably none.
She got up and crossed the lawn to the hotel side entrance. Slow, deliberate steps. Thick ankles. Slightly bandylegged.
Illness is an operational hazard when seeking information in these hotels. I had to wait two days before a stomach upset which had befallen Mrs. Dacey allowed her to come down from her room. She was a very elegant old doll indeed. She looked about eighty, to judge from the texture of her skin. But she was slim, beautifully dressed in a plain black dress, with a simple patent leather belt, and wore elegant shoes, probably Italian. Her hair was dyed blonde, yet this, so blatantly artificial, looked decorative rather than incongruous.
She was the widow of a minor diplomat, and in the course of our conversation she told me quite frankly that she spent her time reading biographies and historical works, playing patience, and waiting for death. She was coolly philosophical.
I enjoyed talking to her, and in this sense the delay was worthwhile. It is always pleasing to meet somebody who is determined to be elegant, intelligent, and unperturbed, right to the end of the road. Such people think they are no longer of use to the world. They are wrong. They are no longer leaders, they are no longer even tillers of the soil, but they provide nourishment for those who come within their range, and thus, so long as their spirit holds firm, their life is worthwhile.
In all other ways, except one, Mrs. Dacey was a disappointment. She could fill in very little of the picture of Mrs. Dawson which I was trying to visualise. But she gave me four snippets of information which I noted as of possible use.
First, she said that, as in Italy, so at the Bower Hotel, Mrs. Dawson paid her hotel bill direct to the hotel manageress, an eccentricity which neither Miss Brett nor Mrs. Gray had mentioned.
Secondly, she said that Mrs. Dawson always spent a holiday abroad: not always in Italy, occasionally in France or Switzerland, or Holland, or some other country.
Third, her life, though aimless as described by Mrs. Gray, was not entirely so, since she was interested in the International Seamen’s Widows and Orphans Fund; in connection with this she wrote and received a fair amount of mail, and made occasional trips to London. She knew this because Mrs. Dawson had said so herself, though reluctantly, not wishing her charitable activities to be widely known.
Four, Mrs. Dawson’s friendship with Mrs. Gray was such that Mrs. Gray was to all intents and purposes her devoted slave. She helped her to undress at night, and dress in the morning, she brushed her hair, packed when Mrs. Dawson went away, unpacked when she returned, and waited on her hand and foot.
This I found extraordinary.
This fascinated me more than anything I had yet heard.
Caroline Gray was an unpleasant old bag, physically and mentally tough, unsentimental, unyielding, and self-sufficient.
If Mrs. Gray was like that, and Lucy Dawson could dominate her, what did that make Lucy Dawson beneath her gentle frail exterior?
I could find no answer to the question before I left the Bower Hotel.