A Fragment of Fear Read Online Free PDF Page A

playing tennis, but they seemed filtered, like echoes from far away.
    I gently pushed the door open.
    In the sunlight which percolated through the half-opened jalousies I saw a bucket and a mop near the doorway, and guessed that the hotel management had decided, police or no police, Consulate or no Consulate, that the room should be cleaned. Sophia would be doing the cleaning. She cleaned my room, and all the others along the corridor, a plump, cheerful little dark-skinned woman of about thirty-five. Either she had left earlier than usual to have her mid-day meal, or she had forgotten some cleaning material, or had gone to fetch some more.
    I guessed I could handle Sophia, yet when I went in I trod as softly as my beach shoes would allow—perhaps because I had a slightly guilty conscience, knowing I should not be there; perhaps because of the associations of the room with the dead woman; perhaps a bit of both.
    Two vases of flowers were on the built-in dressing-table. The roses were dead, but the gladioli still had some red at their tips which had not yet quite faded.
    Two monogrammed Edwardian silver hairbrushes were set neatly beside the vases and two silver boxes with intricately worked edges, a glass powder bowl with a silver top and two ebony clothes brushes with silver initials. On the washbasin shelf were one or two medicine bottles, a bottle of aspirins and a small pill box.
    At the back of the door her beige-coloured tweed travelling coat was hanging. Over it hung one of her pastel-coloured chiffon scarves.
    Still laid out on the bed was her silk night-dress—old-fashioned, with inset lace and hand embroidery. Yet although it looked well worn the silk was still thick and strong.
    Outside, in the tiny anteroom, the wardrobe was full of her clothes; unexceptionable print dresses, blouses, and cotton skirts. Four or five pairs of sandals and neat walking shoes were placed in a row on the floor of the cupboard.
    I went into the tiled bathroom and noted her mauve silk dressing-gown, her toothbrush in its place, and a large tablet of bathsoap in the soap dish. I picked it up. Like her clothes the soap was unexceptionable. I think it was jasmine.
    I walked back into the bedroom and opened the dressing-table drawer. Face cream, lip-salve, a nail-case in mauve leather, some corn plasters, a pair of curling tongs, hairgrips and hairpins. Handkerchiefs in an embroidered sachet. On the night table there were three books—a biography of Edward VII, two Tauchnitz editions of modern novels, two maps and a guide to Naples.
    As I looked round the room, a slight wind moved the thick, blue woven curtains. The dust on the tiled floor and the faded flowers on the dressing-table spoke of neglect and loss, but the voices from the beach still filtered from another life, and through the windows I could see the waiters moving about behind the cactus hedge, under the pine trees, setting the tables for lunch. Their white coats made patches of light against the bright reds, the yellows, the greens and blues of the fringed tablecloths.
    I was eager now to be out of the room with its half-light and depression, even a little impatient with myself for entering, and I made for the door.
    As I did so, I passed a small table by the windows. On it lay a camera, a tin of English biscuits, her passport, a cheque-book, one of those imitation leather covers which hold travellers’ cheques and a most sumptuously produced book on Pompeii and Herculaneum.
    I could not resist picking up the book. It was beautifully illustrated, the photographs taken by a camera artist. At the back of the book, before the pages of the index and bibliography, was a slim Italian bookmark in tooled leather. It had been inserted at the map page showing the lay-out of each street and house in Pompeii. Almost automatically I looked for House No. 27 in Section 2. I found it fairly easily, for the simple reason that somebody, presumably Mrs. Dawson, had marked the site with a small