“There was another time?” Daisy said hopefully.
“I was going to make up his bed,” explained the chambermaid. “The door hadn’t been closed all the way. I stopped to knock, and I heard him talking to someone he called Willie. He said he couldn’t help him. Well, this Willie, he gets excited and says he could if he would. He says he has no loyalty to his family and he always was a bully. I remember that. ‘You always was a bully,’ he said.”
“That’s William speaking?”
“Yes. This Willie called Mr. Carmody a bully. Then Mr. Carmody, he said, ‘And you were always a little tick. A real pest you were, when we were kids, and you still are. Just like a burr under a saddle. I can’t do anything for you. Go away, do.’”
“You’ve remembered that very well,” Daisy commended her.
“Well, when I thinks back on it, it all kinda comes back to me. Anyways, when Mr. Carmody told him to go away I thought as he’d be coming out, this Willie, so I went and did the bed in the next room, not this one, the other side. But he didn’t leave right away, ‘cause I heard him shouting, only I couldn’t make out the words. Did I oughta tell the police about this Willie, ma’am?”
“Certainly. I suppose you didn’t see him, either?”
“No, but I reckon he must be a relative, don’t you, ma’am? Talking about family loyalty and all?”
“It certainly sounds like it,” Daisy agreed. “I expect the police will track him down. You’ll want to get back to work now, won’t you?”
“Yes, ma‘am, and thank you, ma’am. Telling you, I’ve got it all straight in my head for when the police come.”
Bridget left, and Daisy contemplated what she had learnt.
A relative, she thought, now that was was more in her line. An amateur sleuth hadn’t much hope of solving a political assassination. Not that she was an amateur sleuth! It wasn’t her fault she kept getting mixed up in murders, whatever Alec said.
When it happened at home, Alec always ended up in charge of the investigation. The Met’s Assistant Commissioner for Crime considered him the only person capable of reining in Daisy once she had the bit between her teeth, not that he had much evidence for that comfortable conclusion. In fact, Alec’s involvement tended to lead to Daisy’s further involvement.
Here in New York, however, he would be a bystander, and when he arrived he’d make sure she played her role as a witness and nothing more.
That was not likely to be much of a role, since she was a witness whom the police did not hold in high regard. Daisy sighed. She would have liked to prove her mettle to them. Perhaps she could at least find out who William was.
If he was a resident of the hotel, Kevin probably knew all about him. So, of course, did the manager, who had already yielded his lists to the police. If he was not a resident, Daisy hadn’t the slightest idea where to start looking. Blast! That was a dead end.
What about Mrs. Carmody and her presumed lover? Was there anything she might discover or deduce about them?
Her ruminations were interrupted by the ring of the telephone bell.
It was the hotel doorman. “Mrs. Fletcher, ma‘am, ge’man to see you. A Mr. Thorwald.”
“Please tell him I’ll come down at once.”
So poor Mr. Thorwald had escaped from Sergeant Gilligan’s clutches. Daisy hoped he had fully recovered from his encounter with the bottle of rye whiskey. As she powdered her nose, she wondered what, if anything, he had told the police. Had he observed something he had not mentioned to her? He couldn’t have seen much after he tackled Lambert and lost his pince-nez, besides which the alcohol might well have achieved its intended function of blotting out unpleasant memories.
For a moment, the memory of Carmody’s body was unpleasantly clear in Daisy’s mind. Dismissing it with a shiver, she patted her curls into place and went to the door.
Out in the passage, a disconsolate Lambert awaited her. “Gee whiz, I was hunting for you for ages,” he said. “Where did you go?”
“When you went off to enquire about a back exit? Really, Mr. Lambert, you may have a duty to follow me, but I have absolutely no obligation to keep you informed of my movements,” Daisy pointed out a trifle tartly, continuing towards the lifts.
The young agent kept pace, his lips pursed in a sulky near pout. “It’s for your safety,” he reminded her. “And now you’re a vital witness to homicide, anything could happen.”
“How reassuring! The police don’t seem to think I’m a vital witness. I couldn’t give them a good description of the man who ran away.”
“No, buthedoesn’t know that.” Lambert pressed the button to call an elevator. “And you said you would recognize him if you saw him again.”
“I think so.” Again Daisy wondered whether “this Willie,” Carmody’s presumed relative, was a hotel guest. If she had seen him about, it would explain why she had thought the fugitive vaguely familiar—if he was the fugitive.
If, if, if. The “if” phase of a murder investigation was always a lengthy and frustrating one, in Daisy’s experience.
If you can keep your head when all about you
