夜雨聆风in which the-incident oc-curred?”
“Yes.”
“And you should have seen it last night,” Miss Bunner exclaimed. “Sucha mess. Two little tables knocked over, and the leg off one-people bargingabout in the dark-and someone put down a lighted cigarette and burntone of the best bits of furniture. People-young people especially-are socareless about these things … Luckily none of the china got broken-”
Miss Blacklock interrupted gently but firmly:
“Dora, all these things, vexatious as they may be, are only trifles. It willbe best, I think, if we just answer Inspector Craddock’s questions.”
“Thank you, Miss Blacklock. I shall come to what happened last night,presently. First of all I want you to tell me when you first saw the deadman-Rudi Scherz.”
Rudi Scherz?” Miss Blacklock looked slightly surprised. “Is that hisname? Somehow, I thought … Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. My first en-counter with him was when I was in Medenham Spa for a day’s shoppingabout-let me see, about three weeks ago. We-Miss Bunner and I-werehaving lunch at the Royal Spa Hotel. As we were just leaving after lunch, Iheard my name spoken. It was this young man. He said: ‘It is Miss Black-lock, is it not?’ And went on to say that perhaps I did not remember him,but that he was the son of the proprietor of the Hotel des Alpes atMontreux where my sister and I had stayed for nearly a year during thewar.”
“The Hotel des Alpes, Montreux,” noted Craddock. “And did you remem-ber him, Miss Blacklock?”
“No, I didn’t. Actually I had no recollection of ever having seen him be-fore. These boys at hotel reception desks all look exactly alike. We had hada very pleasant time at Montreux and the proprietor there had been ex-tremely obliging, so I tried to be as civil as possible and said I hoped hewas enjoying being in England, and he said, yes, that his father had senthim over for six months to learn the hotel business. It all seemed quitenatural.”
