The Disappearance
Day Four
Tuesday, 7 December 1926
I DONNED MY DRESSING gown and peered into the hall. Several other faces dotted the corridor, all belonging to women. I could hear the doctor’s voice inside a room not far from mine, presumably the origin of the scream, trying to calm someone down. Mrs Leech, I surmised. The door directly across the hall from me opened with an urgent, audible whoosh, bespeaking great confidence. There stood Miss Cornelia Armstrong, the young lady travelling on her own.
‘That was Mrs Marston’s room,’ she announced, for the whole hotel to hear. Miss Armstrong was barely nineteen, with impeccable posture and thick black hair spilling down her back in astonishing quantity. She had a way of lifting her chin as she spoke, daring the listener to contradict her.
‘Oh dear,’ I said.
‘I’m going to see what’s happened.’
There was no stopping her. Miss Armstrong marched down the hall towards Mrs Marston’s room. She had her dressing gown loosely belted and showing more of her décolletage than likely she intended. When she returned, her face was pale, and her voice shook as she reported: ‘Mrs Marston is dead. I saw the doctor pull the sheet over her face.’
By now more guests had gathered in the hall, including a painfully thin spinster who covered her mouth with one slim, freckled hand and gasped, ‘How dreadful.’
‘I suspect she died of a broken heart,’ Miss Armstrong announced to the bleary-eyed gatherers with an air of diagnostic expertise. She had delicate white skin and eyes almost as black as her hair. ‘They’d been star-crossed, you know, Mrs and Mrs Marston. Before they married.’
I wanted to say I was thankful I shouldn’t have to hear that phrase – star-crossed – ever again in my life. I wanted to say that if it were possible for a broken heart to kill, I’d have been dead long ago. Instead, I closed my door without another word. Given the situation, the usual manners did not apply.
Chilton was downstairs using the telephone to call Lippincott. He heard the scream but, muffled as it was, did not pay it particular notice. Perhaps one of the ladies had come upon a spider.
‘Will you be sparing a man to investigate?’ he asked Lippincott, referring to Mr Marston’s death.
‘There’s no man to spare, that’s why you’re here in the first place. Probably nothing to it. A heart attack, is my guess.’
Of course, this was likely right. Why would anyone want to harm the old Irishman?
Just as Chilton rang off, Mrs Leech came rushing down the stairs, looking most discombobulated.
‘Mrs Leech?’
She held up her hand, too weepy to answer, and rushed to the kitchen where her husband was overseeing breakfast preparations. After a moment, the doctor came downstairs, no more fully dressed than he’d been the previous night, sweat gathered on his brow despite the season. Chilton gave him a handkerchief. The two had chatted last night while they shared a cigarette and waited for the coroner to collect poor Mr Marston, and had already established battles in common.
The doctor mopped his brow. ‘Damn it all,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be on holiday.’
‘What’s happened now?’ Chilton asked.
‘Another death. The wife. Mrs Marston. What a honeymoon they’re having, eh?’
‘Gads. Well. Perhaps now they’re having the ultimate honeymoon. Reunited in the hereafter.’ Chilton didn’t believe this for a moment but he had an inkling the Marstons would have liked the idea. They had that look about them, a smug religiosity, like happiness was owed, in this life and whatever followed. He hadn’t had a chance to chat with Marston before the old man keeled over, but even though plenty of older men had signed up to do their bit, Chilton could tell Marston hadn’t been one of them.