Yolles wiped his hands on a paper towel. "What happens to the garbage when it leaves here?"
"It goes to our central incinerator," Peter informed him. "By the time it gets there, it's in big trolleys, with everything from the whole hotel mixed up together. It would be impossible to identify any one source. In any case, what was collected from here is probably burned by now."
"Maybe it doesn't matter," Yolles said. "All the same, I'd like to have had that note."
The elevator stopped at the ninth floor. As the detectives followed him out, Peter observed, "I'm not looking forward to this."
Yolles reassured him, "We'll ask a few questions, that's all. I'd like you to listen carefully. And to the answers. It's possible we might need you as a witness later."
To Peter's surprise, the doors of the Presidential Suite were open. As they approached, a buzz of voices could be heard.
The second detective said, "Sounds like a party."
They stopped at the doorway and Peter depressed the bell push. Through a second, partially opened door inside, he could see into the spacious living room. There was a group of men and women, the Duke and Duchess of Croydon among them. Most of the visitors were holding drinks in one hand, notebooks or paper in another.
The Croydons' male secretary appeared in the interior hallway. "Good evening," Peter said. "These two gentlemen would like to see the Duke and Duchess."
"Are they from the press?"
Captain Yolles shook his head.
"Then I'm sorry, it's impossible. The Duke is holding a press conference.
His appointment as British Ambassador was confirmed this evening."
"So I understand," Yolles said. "All the same, our business is important."
While speaking, they had moved from the corridor into the suite hallway.
Now, the Duchess of Croydon detached herself from the group in the living room and came toward them. She smiled agreeably. "Won't you come in?"
The secretary injected, "These gentlemen are not from the press."
"Oh!" Her eyes went to Peter with a glance of recognition, then to the other two.
Captain Yolles said, "We're police officers, madam. I have a badge but perhaps you'd prefer me not to produce it here." He looked toward the living room from where several people were watching curiously.
The Duchess gestured to the secretary who closed the living-room door.
Was it imagination, Peter wondered, or had a flicker of fear crossed the Duchess's face at the word 'police'? Imagined or not, she was in command of herself now.
"May I ask why you are here?"
"There are some questions, madam, that we'd like to ask you and your husband."
"This is scarcely a convenient time."
"We'll do our best to be as brief as possible." Yolles' voice was quiet, but its authority unmistakable.
"I'll inquire if my husband will see you. Please wait in there."
The secretary led the way to a room off the hallway, furnished as an office. A moment or two later, as the secretary left, the Duchess re-entered, followed by the Duke. He glanced uncertainly from his wife to the others.
"I have informed our guests," the Duchess announced, "that we shall be away no more than a few minutes."
Captain Yolles made no comment. He produced a notebook. "I wonder if you'd mind telling me when you last used your car. It's a Jaguar, I believe." He repeated the registration number.
"Our car?" The Duchess seemed surprised. "I'm not sure what was the last time we used it. No, just a moment. I do remember. It was Monday morning.
It's been in the hotel garage since then. It's there now."
"Please think carefully. Did you or your husband, either separately or together, use the car on Monday evening?"
It was revealing, Peter thought, how, automatically, Yolles addressed his questions to the Duchess and not to the Duke.
Two spots of color appeared on the Duchess of Croydon's cheeks. "I am not accustomed to having my word doubted. I have already said that the last occasion the car was used was on Monday morning. I also think you owe us an explanation as to what this is all about."
Yolles wrote in his notebook.
"Are either of you acquainted with Theodore Ogilvie?"
"The name has a certain familiarity . . ."
"He is the chief house officer of this hotel."
"I remember now. He came here. I'm not sure when. There was some query about a piece of jewelry which had been found. Someone suggested it might be mine. It was not."
"And you, sir?" Yolles addressed the Duke directly. "Do you know, or have you had any dealings with, Theodore Ogilvie?"
Perceptibly, the Duke of Croydon hesitated. His wife's eyes were riveted on his face. "Well. He stopped. "Only as my wife has described."
Yolles closed his notebook, in a quiet, level voice he asked, "Would it, then, surprise you to know that your car is at present in the State of Tennessee, where it was driven by Theodore Ogilvie, who is now under arrest? Furthermore, that Ogilvie has made a statement to the effect that he was paid by you to drive the car from New Orleans to Chicago. And, still further, that preliminary investigation indicates your car to have been involved in a hit-and-run fatality, in this city, last Monday night."
"Since you ask," the Duchess of Croydon said, "I would be extremely surprised. In fact it's the most ridiculous series of fabrications I ever heard."
"There is no fabrication, madam, in the fact that your car is in Tennessee and Ogilvie drove it there."
"If he did so, it was without the authority or knowledge either of my husband or myself. Furthermore if, as you say, the car was involved in an accident on Monday night, it seems perfectly obvious that the same man took the car and used it for his own purposes on that occasion."
"Then you accuse Theodore Ogilvie . . ."
The Duchess snapped, "Accusations are your business. You appear to specialize in them. I will, however, make one to the effect that this hotel has proved disgracefully incompetent in protecting the property of its guests." The Duchess swung toward Peter McDermott. "I assure you that you will hear a great deal more of this."
Peter protested, "But you wrote an authorization. It specified that Ogilvie could take the car."
The effect was as if he had slapped the Duchess across the face. Her lips moved uncertainly. Visibly, she paled. He had reminded her, he realized, of the single incriminating factor she had overlooked.
The silence seemed endless. Then her head came up.
"Show it to me!"
Peter said, "Unfortunately, it's been ..."
He caught a gleam of mocking triumph in her eyes.
19
At last, after more questions and banalities, the Croydons' press conference had ended.
As the outside door of the Presidential Suite closed behind the last to leave, pent-up words burst from the Duke of Croydon's lips. "My God, you can't do it! You couldn't possibly get away with ..."
"Be quiet!" The Duchess of Croydon glanced around the now silent living room. "Not here. I've come to mistrust this hotel and everything about it."
"Then where? For God's sake, where?"
"We'll go outside. Where no one can overhear. But when we do, please behave less excitably than now."
She opened the connecting door to their bedrooms where the Bedlington terriers had been confined. They tumbled out excitedly, barking as the Duchess fastened their leads, aware of what the sign portended. In the hallway, the secretary dutifully opened the suite door as the terriers led the way out.
In the elevator, the Duke seemed about to speak but his wife shook her head. Only when they were outside, away from the hotel and beyond the hearing of other pedestrians, did she murmur, "Now!"
His voice was strained, intense. "I tell you it's madness! The whole mess is already bad enough. We've compounded and compounded what happened at first. Can you conceive what it will be like now, when the truth finally comes out?"
"Yes, I've some idea. If it does."
He persisted, "Apart from everything else - the moral issue, all the rest - you'd never get away with it."