A Fragment of Fear Read Online Free PDF

cross in pencil. She had done more. She had traced the route, lightly in pencil, from the Porta Marina, past the Forum, to Section 12 and right up to the house.
    She knew where she was going all right.
    She had carefully marked the way to her own death. Almost certainly, then, she knew whom she was to meet, which would have made things easier for whoever adjusted her scarf; if you could call it adjusting her scarf.
    I am amazed now at the importance I attached to these piffling details at the time and how clever I thought I was.
    The evening before I left for London I went to the reception desk and asked for my bill. Alfredo, an olive-skinned Sicilian, was on duty, a pleasant, affable young man of good family, I should say, who was gaining experience in the hotel business by working in various departments. All Italian hotel bills, presented in lire, look like calculated distances in light-years to some distant star. I joked with him about State tax and local tax and service charge, and added a facetious remark, in rather poor taste, which I instantly regretted:
    “I hope for Signor Bardoni’s sake that poor Mrs. Dawson had paid her bill.”
    “I could not say,” said Alfredo. “Mrs. Dawson always paid her money direct to Signor Bardoni. It was an eccentricity. Perhaps she did not quite trust our mathematics,” he added a little tartly.
    “Elderly English ladies sometimes develop these odd habits,” I said soothingly.
    I glanced down at the bill with its astronomic-looking total. The details meant nothing to me, and never do, especially those on the little chits attached to the bill, written in indecipherable hieroglyphics, and dealing with items such as wines, bar drinks, soda water, laundry, car hire, room service, etc., most of them long past and uncheckable.
    I looked through the chits in a dazed kind of way, but I was not thinking about them. I was finally facing the fact that I wanted to build up Mrs. Dawson as a person. I wanted to know more about her.
    She had become my pet victim. The one who was killed but not robbed, either of her jewellery, her money, or her virtue.
    “Can you give me her address in England?” I said, suddenly.
    Alfredo’s mind was on other things.
    “Whose address, sir?”
    “Mrs. Dawson’s.”
    Signor Bardoni had a light tread. I did not know he was behind me. He said:
    “I can give you her address, Mr. Compton, if you come into my office.”
    I followed him into his little office, with its tiled floor, modern desk and chairs and filing cabinets.
    “Sit down, Mr. Compton.”
    I sat down and offered him a cigarette, but he refused it. He did not need to refer to any papers. He knew her address. He said: “In England she lived at the Bower Hotel, Burlington-on-Sea, Sussex. If you had asked me that I would have told you. It was not necessary to go into her room to try to find out, Mr. Compton.”
    His chair behind the big desk was higher than mine, which can be annoying if one knows one is in the wrong. He lit a cigar, pulling at it vigorously. Through the blue smoke I saw his eyes watching my face from their wooden sockets.
    For the first time in this affair I caught a whiff of hostility. It was something more than that of a hotel proprietor gently reproving a guest for a misdemeanour. I am very sensitive, not merely to atmosphere, but to shades of atmosphere.
    “I was not looking for her address, Mr. Bardoni. I was—”
    He cut me short.
    “It could have been very embarrassing for me—and for you, if the police had heard about it.”
    “I happened to be passing her room, and saw the door ajar.”
    “Many guests leave their doors ajar, Mr. Compton. It is not usually regarded as an invitation to look round their rooms.”
    The rebuke was open and undisguised.
    “This guest is permanently away from her room,” I said coldly.
    “Mr. Compton, her possessions are still in my care. I am responsible for them.”
    I got up out of my chair.
    “I am not suggesting anything, Mr.