Paul Temple: East of Algiers

Beside me I heard a click, and Steve’s bedside light flooded the room. I already had one foot out of bed and was reaching for my dressing-gown.

‘Something damned fishy is going on. I’m going to have a look and see if he’s all right.’

‘Then I’m coming too,’ Steve said firmly, and slipped out of bed.

We moved out into the corridor so fast that we cannoned into the young man who was at that moment passing our door. He too was wearing a dressing-gown and had apparently been roused from sleep just as we had.

‘Sorry,’ I said, and then remembering that we were in France I changed it to: ‘Pardon.’

‘It’s all right,’ the young man smiled. ‘I’m English too. My room’s on the floor below, and I came up to see what all the commotion was about. But if it’s only you two having a row…’

He was good-looking in a matinee idol sort of way, with side-whiskers just a shade on the long side and a frieze of early morning stubble round his chin. He was tall and well-made, and a dressing-gown of sheer, sky-blue silk was knotted round his middle. His voice was well educated and nicely pitched, his manner of speaking lazy and slow. But his eyes, as they appraised Steve, were obviously missing nothing.

‘It wasn’t us,’ Steve said quickly. ‘I was woken up by it, and my husband was just going to investigate. It came from in here.’

She pointed to the door of number twelve. The young man turned back and advanced towards the door. He gave a tentative knock; there was no answer.

‘Perhaps we should break in,’ he suggested unenthusiastically.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Steve stoop suddenly and pick something off the floor.

I said: ‘Try the handle first.’

The young man turned the handle and pushed. The door swung open into the pitch-dark room. The bulb in the corridor behind us sent a rectangle of light across the floor in which our two shadows loomed like elongated monsters. Someone had pulled the curtains in that room tight shut and the light behind us only served to accentuate the blackness of the rest of the room. We stood there for a moment, tense, as if expecting some nameless horror to burst out at us. Then the young man put a hand up and snapped on the light.

The room was still in a state of chaos, though all Sam Leyland’s things had been collected and moved. The only difference was that the curtains were drawn, which they had not been before, and the doors of the big built-in cupboard on the wall adjoining our room were closed. I thought I could see an impression on the bed where a recumbent body might have lain.

‘Nobody here,’ the young man said. ‘But what an extraordinary mess! I think we’d better let the management know.’

I said: ‘Hold on a moment.’

I was remembering the thump on the wall which had brought us out of bed. It must have had something to do with that cupboard. I crossed the room, turned the small key in the lock and opened the door. Behind me I heard Steve gasp and the young man utter an exclamation.

The body was lying on the floor of the cupboard, where it had been bundled hastily and unceremoniously. It was that of a girl, and she was wearing clothes which I recognized. Her legs were free, but her wrists were tied with a strip of cloth and a gag was still in her mouth. I lifted her face for a moment before letting it fall back on her chest. Her body was still warm, but there could be no life behind those eyes. My guess was that she had been forcibly brought to that room and then smothered with the pillow which still lay on the bed. Not a very pretty crime.

‘Don’t look, Steve,’ I said, and stood up to shield her from the sight. But Steve had already seen enough and was twisting away in horror. I closed the cupboard door and met the eyes of the young man. He was standing like a statue, trembling violently, every drop of colour drained from his face.

‘You’d better let them know downstairs about this,’ I told him. ‘I’ll stay here and look after my wife.’

He seemed glad to go, and vanished without a word. Steve, whose nerves have become harder than those of most women, had pulled herself together quickly.

‘Paul!’ she said in a low voice. ‘You saw who it was. I couldn’t mistake that hair and those clothes. It was Judy Wincott!’

I didn’t answer. A movement of the curtains had caught my eye, and I was very conscious of the fact that we had come into the room within a minute or so of the murderer completing his work. I pushed Steve back, stepped over to the curtains, and with a quick movement pulled them aside.

In front of me the open windows gaped out on to the night, and the faint sea breeze which had stirred the curtains fanned my face. The greeny light of the street lamps brought the dark walls and gables into ghostly relief. Down below a street cleaner was hosing the pavement and swishing the debris down the gutters with a long brush. From somewhere indeterminate came the smell of tomorrow’s bread baking.

I turned back to Steve.

‘This must be the way he went. We can’t have missed him by much. He may even have been watching us when we opened that cupboard.’

Chapter Two (#u0c448b10-fe91-5d96-85d0-0711b8b14d81)

THERE was little sleep in store for Steve and me that night. At my suggestion Mirabel was summoned and a cold-looking dawn was lightening the sky before we had made our statements and been given permission to withdraw.

We were awakened by a buzz on the house telephone at ten o’clock. A quarter of an hour later our petit déjeuner was brought up on a nice big tray. We had barely finished our coffee and croissants when the ’phone buzzed once more. Mirabel was in the hall below and wanted to see me again.

‘I’m just going to have a bath,’ Steve said. ‘You can tell him to come up here.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not dressed yet,’ I told the telephone. ‘Would you mind coming up to room number thirteen? Or if you’d rather I’ll get dressed and be down in about ten minutes.’

Mirabel decided to come up. Within a minute he was at the door. He had found time to shave and change his collar. Spick and span as he was, he looked very out of place in our chaotic bedroom. I pulled him up a chair and offered him a cigarette, which he refused. I thought, however, that his manner was more friendly than the previous night.

‘Are you any further on?’ I asked, trying to show the right amount of polite interest.

‘I have had time to communicate with our English colleagues and obtain some information about you, Mr. Temple. They tell me that though you have a gift for attracting trouble towards you, you are not usually the prime cause of it.’

I laughed, imagining Vosper’s wording of such a message.

‘Then I’m off your list of suspects?’

‘I think so,’ Mirabel said and smiled. ‘You will be interested to hear that we have solved the mystery of the same woman being murdered twice. It now appears that the girl found in the dustbin behind your flat was not Judy Wincott at all, though she was half American too and her name was Diana Simmonds. Our mistake was a natural one, since a letter found in her bag bore the name Judy Wincott and the murdered woman resembled her enough for the concierge to mistake her for the Miss Judy Wincott who had enquired for you the previous evening.’

Mirabel seemed prepared to dismiss the subject at that. I expected him to ask me a great many more questions and there were several that I would like to have put myself. But the Inspector limited himself to feeling in his breast pocket and producing a small object wrapped in tissue paper.

‘I am returning the glasses to you as I promised,’ he said. ‘Without the case, though. Our people soon reduced that to its elemental components.’

‘Did you find anything?’

Mirabel shook his head.

‘Nothing at all.’

‘Did you have the spectacles checked?’

‘Yes, of course. There is nothing unusual about them. They are a perfectly ordinary pair of spectacles.’

He unwrapped them from their tissue paper and inspected them casually before handing them across to me.

‘Genuine tortoiseshell, too clear to conceal anything. And the lenses – well, there is nothing, is there?’

I took the glasses reluctantly.

‘I can’t help wondering. All the trouble seemed to begin from the moment these spectacles came into my life…’

‘You can rest assured, Mr. Temple. If there were anything abnormal about those spectacles our experts would have found out about it.’

The Inspector rose to his feet and pulled his jacket down.