Trouble Brewing by Dolores Gordon-Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

have a tiresome habit of noticing that sort of thing. So they leave the hotel—’
    â€˜Or pub.’
    â€˜Or pub – and go where? And how? If Helston had his car, that could have been anywhere, but they’re limited to feet, the tube, buses or taxis.’
    â€˜I don’t know about a taxi,’ said Bill. ‘There was a real hue-and-cry about Helston. I can’t help thinking that any taxi driver who’d had Helston as a fare that night would have come forward.’
    â€˜The tube or a bus? Not completely out of court, but not my first choice. It’s awkward lugging a corpse around on the tube and I honestly don’t think bundling a dead body onto the luggage rack of a Number Eleven bus is on the cards. It’d take up so much space for one thing and the conductor would probably want to charge for excess baggage.’
    â€˜What if the victim wasn’t dead?’ suggested Bill, then stopped as he saw Jack’s smile. ‘What are you grinning at me like that for?’
    â€˜I thought that as proposals go, it’d be a lulu. Come with me to some lonely dockside wharf, some unfrequented alleyway or, possibly, Epping Forest or Wimbledon Common. Because, don’t you see, if our murderer is going to make his victim walk to his own grave, where he can hide the body so it defies detection, then you’re asking the victim to be awfully trusting about the whole process. Unnaturally so, you might say.’
    â€˜But . . .’ Bill stared long and hard at his half-empty glass. ‘
Either
the murderer finds a way of carrying the dead man to where he’s going to leave him,
or
the victim gets to the spot under his own steam where he gets knocked on the head. He could have been invited to come and see a friend. There could easily have been some ruse like that.’
    â€˜A friend,’ repeated Jack thoughtfully. ‘I’d like to know if Valdez really did have a friend, you know. And I’d love to know if Valdez and Helston really did quarrel at the meeting. We’ve only got Frederick Hunt’s word for it that they did.’
    Bill laughed. ‘Why on earth should he lie about it? Frederick Hunt can’t have bumped either of them off. He was at a Mansion House dinner that evening with dozens of witnesses. Besides, it’s not very likely, is it?’
    Jack conjured up a mental picture of the paunchy, self-satisfied, fluffy-haired figure and shook his head. ‘No, it isn’t.’ He picked up his glass and finished his beer with a sigh. ‘We need evidence, Bill. So far, all we’ve got to go on is two missing men. It’s not enough.’
    Jack didn’t know why he had come to the Montague Court hotel. He could tell nothing about Valdez from gazing at the outside of the hotel and Bill had investigated the inside thoroughly.
    Bill was very confident that any taxi driver would have come forward. Maybe Valdez had hired a car; maybe they had simply walked. But where to? Where, in this whole teeming city, could a body vanish? There were plenty of places where a man could be murdered but very few where he could remain undiscovered.
    Without any clear purpose in mind he set out from the Montague Court Hotel and wandered aimlessly through the maze of streets, coming eventually to Russell Square and Montague Place.
    He had no idea there were so many hotels in this part of London. He walked to the corner and turned into Gower Street. Bloomsbury was behind him, Tottenham Court Road, with its crowds and traffic, lay separated by a cluster of interlocking streets. On the right was University College, where the academic life of London went its ordered way. On the left was row after row of stone-fronted, railed-off houses. Some obviously belonged to whole families. Others had been split up into flats. He was in boarding-house London, where no man knew his neighbour.
    Isolated cards advertising vacancies caught his eye. He walked on. It