A Thrust to the Vitals Read Online Free PDF

rest of the team could make a start on contacting those named therein, Rafferty and Llewellyn settled down to a longer study of these documents. At the same time Rafferty didn’t fail to address his attention to the very superior sandwiches.
    By the time this study was concluded and the plate of sandwiches, but for a few crumbs, despatched, young Timothy Smales, the uniformed officer allocated the task of guarding the door where the late-staying guests were currently confined, passed along the message that they had now quietened considerably.
    For Rafferty, this quietude provided a welcome indication that their over-tired and alcohol-stimulated belligerence had died a natural death. Perhaps now he would be able to get on and question them to some purpose. Maybe, Rafferty thought, he might be lucky and get a straight answer or two.
    He had installed a couple of plain clothes officers in the newly-opened suite where the guests were sequestered. He hoped that Mary Carmody and her colleague DC Andrews, had, before the alcohol influence totally abated, overheard something else to his advantage other than the revelation that Superintendent Bradley had been present for the latter part of the evening. Though given such a juicy piece of information, Rafferty couldn’t believe he would be lucky enough to squeeze any more juice from the guests’ overheard chit-chat.
    Of course, once the removal of the alcohol had begun the sobering-up process and lessened the unwise confidences that it had encouraged, the presence of the two police officers had naturally inclined this revealing chatter to fade. But he couldn’t have it both ways. Neither could he delay much longer the necessity of interviewing them all. By now, they would all be tired, emotional, and ready for their beds, so they might yet be encouraged to spill some more beans of the revelatory, or even incriminatory, sort.
    But if he was honest with himself, Rafferty thought this last unlikely: even those who had had no hand in Seward’s early exit from the world, would, once relatively sober, feel a guilty complicity in his violent demise and be keen to keep their mouths shut.
    Fortunately, in such circumstances, in Rafferty’s experience, such wisdom usually came along too late. He was hopeful that one or more of these guests would, indeed, have blurted out something revealing in the interim.
    Before Rafferty and Llewellyn left the ballroom to speak to the waiting guests, Jonty Reynolds had pleaded with them that they conduct their investigation with as much discretion as the circumstances allowed.
    Too late for that, was Rafferty’s thought as he recalled his phone conversation with Mickey, which had revealed that news of the murder had already spread beyond the confines of the hotel itself. His reassurances sounded weak even to his own ears. Certainly, they must have sounded hollow to Jonty Reynolds, to judge by his drooping head as he slouched his way across the floor and out. Reynolds’ body language acknowledged that the Elmhurst Hotel was, all too soon, likely to be besieged by the media - if it wasn’t already. And, from the look of the manager, Rafferty could only surmise that the ladies and gentlemen of the Third Estate were hammering at the door - if they hadn’t already battered it down in their usual Genghis Khan-like desire for those career trophies that the violent death of a VIP brought to those sufficiently quick off the mark to be in almost at the kill.
     
     
    Constable Timothy Smales gave what he obviously presumed was a restrained, ‘one professional to another’ nod, as Rafferty arrived at the double doors leading to the suite holding the remaining guests, before he thrust open both the doors to the suite’s main living area, and invited the detective inspector, with a wide-flung arm, to enter the room.
    Rafferty would have preferred a more discreet entrance, one less likely to induce excitement in the already over-emotional occupants, but young