Death in Autumn Read Online Free PDF Page A

had been in vain. Two and a half hours of questioning had produced little enough useful evidence, but at least the woman now had an identity.
    Hilde Vogel had been born in Germany and was forty-eight years old, slim, artificially blonde, unostentatiously well-dressed. She sent a registered letter to Germany once a month and took a trip abroad approximately once every two years, booking her flight through the receptionist who had repeated to the Captain that he knew there was something, he could always tell, but that it was really the manager's place to identify the body. She had last been seen at dinner eight days ago. Nobody had seen her leave the hotel, not even Querci, the night porter, despite his position in the entrance hall, and there was no other exit. The back of the hotel overhung the river.
    Both the Captain and the Marshal were tired and hungry. When they emerged from the office into the reception area they were reminded of their hunger by a faint but delicious smell coming from the main dining-room where some guests were still eating, judging by discreet noises of cutlery.
    Mario Querci was at his post, advising a middle-aged couple about a day trip to San Gimignano and Siena. 'If you like I'll telephone the bus station for you . . .'
    He looked up and smiled as the two carabinieri appeared. 'All finished?'
    'I'm afraid not,' the Captain said. He didn't like to add that they were about to join the men who were examining the dead woman's room, because of the presence of the guests who, anyway, were too busy trying to translate the price of the coach tickets into dollars to take any notice of the uniformed men.
    'That receptionist, Monteverdi . . .' said the Captain as they went up the blue-carpeted stairs because the lift had just started up.
    'Hmph.' The Marshal refrained from further comment.
    They trod silently along more blue carpet looking for Room 209. Silk-shaded lamps were lit on low, half-moon tables all along the corridor. 209 was halfway along facing the lift doors.
    'It's going to cost us a lot of time and manpower to check the backgrounds of all the staff, but I suppose we can be thankful that she had no contact with any of the other guests.'
    'So they say—' the Marshal sounded unconvinced—'and I suppose it's true since they were all agreed about it. But as for the rest ... It won't do. It won't do at all.'
    'I must say I had the feeling that the manager had something to hide.'
    'And he wasn't the only one.'

CHAPTER 4
    209 was a small suite with sitting-room, bedroom and bathroom. In the sitting-room, which was furnished in yellow and white, the fingerprint technician was already packing his things to leave.
    'Pretty much a waste of time,' he remarked, looking up as the Captain entered with the Marshal following behind. 'The room's been cleaned and there's hardly a clear print in the place. The manager had said, "Of course the room was cleaned, there was no reason to think anything was wrong." '
    Well, nothing could be done about it now.
    Two of the Captain's men were at work in the bedroom, one of them going through the pockets of the clothes in the wardrobe, the other sorting and packing the documents he had found in the smaller drawers of the dressing-table.
    'I'll take the documents. Put them in an envelope.' The Captain was looking about him. After a while he muttered a curse under his breath. Not only had this room, too, been cleaned, but anything that had been out of place had been put away. They had nothing but the chambermaid's vague description to help them reconstruct what might have happened there, and she had little to say other than that the bed had been unmade and a few clothes strewn about, a normal enough state to find a bedroom in at that hour of the morning.
    'What time was it exactly?' the Marshal had asked her.
    'Nine o'clock. I always took her breakfast up at that time.'
    'And you didn't think of telling anyone that she wasn't there?'
    'Who should I have told? There was