“Then there must be another key?”
“Wait a bit, Yardley. Suppose that murder was premeditated? The murderer would not have done it without making arrangements, and thinking out his plans and seeing that they were possible. You can’t walk blindly into an hotel and make certain that things will fall out so absolutely as you require them to, that you can let your safety and escape after committing a murder depend upon such a coincidence. The thing isn’t reasonable. The chambermaid thinks that murder must have been committed between two and three in the afternoon, because that is the only time during the day when there is no one actually on duty in the corridor. In the morning they are attending to the rooms, and they have to stay about till two o’clock to answer the bells of those people who come to their rooms to wash or change for lunch. About three o’clock people come to their rooms to dress to go out calling, then others change for tea, and again others change for dinner, and from two to three is the only slack time during the day.”
“How do you know all this, Mr. Tempest?” put in the inspector.
The barrister laughed. “I had a long and interesting interview with that chambermaid two days ago.”
“Then where was she during that time—from two to three on the day of the murder?”
“Yardley, I’ll make a real detective of you some day; you’re getting quite promising in the way you reason out things. Well, I’ll tell you. She was having her dinner, and had got the key with her. Now she says it is a regular thing that all the maids are at their dinner between two and three. The murderer probably knew that, and if so there you get premeditation again. The most likely way for that to be known would be for the murderer to have himself stayed in the hotel and found it out.”
“But how could he get the key?”
“That’s what I’ve been wondering, Yardley, and I can suggest one way. Suppose the man goes and stays in the hotel in that very room, and whilst the room is in his occupation, and the key legitimately in his possession, suppose he had a duplicate made of it? Then he can keep and use that duplicate when he likes.”
“But suppose all you say be true, Tempest. The girl was not staying in the hotel. How in the name of fortune could he lure a respectable girl up to his bedroom?”
“My dear Yardley, how was the girl to know it was his bedroom? There are always suites of rooms in a hotel. Take it, for example, that the man was an impresario, or said he was, and, deluding her into the idea that he wished to talk business, invited her to go to his sitting-room. The girl would go fast enough.”