Dead and Buried Read Online Free PDF

to the outhouse.
    He crossed back through the dressing room and the Viscount’s room and out to where Regnier waited in the hall. ‘Servants?’
    ‘Separate chambers on the fourth floor,’ the manager replied. January guessed that ‘fourth floor’ was the polite way of saying ‘attic’. ‘M’sieu Reeve refused to share a room with “Jones”, as they call him, and who can blame the man? M’sieu Droudge,’ he added drily, ‘was all for dismissing Reeve for his refusal, which would cost the party an extra fifty cents per day, or alternately taking the extra room charge from his salary, but M’sieu Derryhick insisted on paying. M’sieu Reeve looked after him as well as His Lordship.’
    ‘Do you happen to know where they were last night?’
    ‘I’ll find out,’ said Regnier. ‘I expect they were in the day room up there, playing cards. It’s where the bells ring for the rooms.’
    Up under the roof must be a jolly place to be stationed, at the end of a suffocating day . ‘Who heard the quarrel?’
    ‘Brun – the night-porter – and a woman named Liffard, a maid in one of the rooms above this one. Brun was on this floor but not close enough to hear more than the sound of shouting; the Liffard girl also heard only the raised voices. I myself was in the lobby when Mr Derryhick came through and went up the stairs two at a time. He was clearly beside himself with anger.’
    ‘Any idea where he’d been?’
    Regnier shook his head. ‘He and M’sieu le Vicomte had been out together earlier that evening, at the gambling-halls along Rue Royale: Davis’s, Hoban’s, Lafrènniére’s. I understand that M’sieu Derryhick could also be found on occasion at Madame Cléopâtre’s on the Court of the Tritons –’ he named one of the most elegant whorehouses in the American section of town – ‘or the Countess Mazzini’s on Prytania Street.’
    ‘Could he indeed?’ January walked back into the Viscount’s room. From the parlor he heard the business-manager’s sharp, nasal tones, complaining about something, broken now and then by Shaw, expertly leading him on.
    ‘And was M’sieu le Vicomte in the hotel when M’sieu Derryhick returned in such a rage?’
    ‘Of a certainty. At least his key was gone from the board, as was that of M’sieu Droudge. The uncle was out, I believe . . .’
    ‘But the rooms connect,’ said January. ‘And the keys are all the same, are they not?’
    ‘Oh, quite. Any one of them could have borrowed another’s key. One can only guess, at a hotel.’
    While at Quennell’s shop, January had ascertained the dimensions of the courtyard that lay behind the back parlor and the fact that all nine of the Blue Suite’s windows overlooked the roof of the stable where the undertaker’s four black carriage-horses were housed. Looking up from the undertaker’s yard – the gate of which bolted from the inside, but bore no lock – he had thought that there might have been an alley between the hotel’s rear wall and the wall of the stable, but looking down from the window he saw that this was not the case. The stable backed directly against the hotel. A body lowered from the window of any of the Blue Suite’s rooms via a sheet would come to rest directly on the sloping roof, and even the most casual glance through the windows would serve to show the location of the undertaker’s handcart at one side of the yard.
    When January stepped unobtrusively back into the parlor, the vulturine Mr Droudge was still carping. ‘I can’t say I’m the slightest bit surprised. Since our arrival at the beginning of the week the man has been forever in and out of gaming parlors. Of a piece with his behavior all of his life, of course: pitched out of one college for God knows what excesses, and bringing ruin upon everything he touched. And drawing others into his way of life.’ He shook a skinny finger at Shaw, but his glance cut sidelong at the Viscount, standing again beside the windows,