bandages in the car after leaving Emily, but her skin from eyes to lips was still a panorama of yellow, purple, and blue.
Treves led her up one flight of stairs and down a dim corridor. Nowhere was there much to indicate to Barbara that the Burnt House Hotel was a banner of delights just waiting to unfurl for her pleasure. A relic of long-ago Edwardian summers, it boasted faded carpets over creaking floor boards above which hung water-stained ceilings.
It was possessed of a general atmosphere of genteel decay.
Treves seemed oblivious of all this, however.
He chatted incessantly the entire way to Barbara's room, smoothing his sparse and oily hair up from a parting just above his left ear and across the gleaming dome of his skull.
She would find the Burnt House had every possible convenience, he confided: a colour television in every room with a remote control device and another large-screen telly in the residents' lounge should she decide to be sociable of an evening; tea-making facilities next to one's bed for a morning cuppa; bathrooms in nearly every room and additional toilets and baths on each floor; telephones with a direct line into the world upon the touch of a nine; and that most mystical, blessed, and cherished of mod cons -- a fax machine in reception. He called it a facsimile sender, as if he and the machine were still on formal terms with each other, and he went on to add, "But you won't be wanting that, I dare say.
Here for a holiday, are you, Miss Havers?"
"Sergeant Havers," Barbara corrected him, and added "Detective Sergeant Havers."
There was no better time than the present, she decided, to position Basil Treves where she needed him. Something about the man's sharp little eyes and expectant posture told her he would be only too happy to assist the police with information if given a chance.
The framed newspaper photo of himself in reception - celebrating his election to the town council - told her that he was the sort of man who didn't come by personal glory often or easily. So when the opportunity arose to garner a bit, he doubtless would be the first to jump at it. And what better glory than to be an unofficial part of a murder investigation?
He might prove to be quite useful, and with only a little effort on her part. "I'm here on business, actually," she told him, allowing herself a slight taffy-pull with the truth. "CID
business, to be more precise."
Treves paused outside the door of her room, its key dangling from his palm by an enormous ivory tag that was shaped like a roller coaster.
Each of the keys, Barbara had noted when registering, was identified in similar fun-fair fashion:
Other tags were shaped like everything from a dodge'm car to a miniature Ferris wheel, and the rooms they gave access to were named accordingly.
"Criminal Investigations?" Treves said. "Is this about . . . But of course, you absolutely cannot say, can you. Well, mum's the word at this end of things, I assure you of that, Detective Sergeant.
No one will hear who you are from these lips.
Here we are, then."
Swinging open the narrow door, he switched on the overhead light and stood back to let her enter ahead of him. When she had done so, he bustled past her, humming tonelessly as he set down her haversack on a collapsible luggage rack. He pointed out the bathroom with the proud announcement that he'd especially given her "the loo with a view." He patted his hands against the bilious green chenille counterpanes of both twin beds, saying,
"Nice and firm, but not too much, I hope," and he flicked the pink skirt of a kidney-shaped dressing table to rearrange it. He straightened both the prints on the walls -
matching Victorian ice skaters who glided away from each other, looking none too happy about taking the exercise - and he fingered through the teabags that lay in a basket waiting for morning. He switched on the bedside lamp, then switched it off. Then switched it on again, as if sending signals.
"You'll have all that you require, Sergeant Haveers, and if you need anything more, you shall find Mr. Basil Treves at your service day and night.
At any hour." He beamed at her. He held his hands folded at chest height and stood at a modified kind of attention. "As for this evening, any final requests? A nightcap?
Cappuccino? Some fruit? Mineral water? Greek dancing boys?" He chortled happily.