‘All right, Robert, lad, you can stand down now,’ said Armitage, dismissing him.

The girl shrugged her slim shoulders and jumped to her feet. She was wearing an evening dress of some pale grey silky fabric done up fashionably low on the hips with a silver belt. Silently Joe noted the bloodstains on the hem of her skirt just below her left knee.

She glared at Joe. ‘Can it possibly take thirty-five minutes to get here from Chelsea?’ she asked.

‘Good evening, Westhorpe,’ said Joe. ‘Perhaps you could explain what the devil you’re doing here? Not only what you’re doing here but how you come to be covered in gore and, as I believe, standing over a recently murdered Dame of the British Empire? I’m sure there’s some perfectly logical explanation but I would be glad to hear what it is.’

‘Do you know this young person?’ said Armitage, disappointed and mistrustful.

‘Yes, I do. This is Constable Westhorpe. She’s one of us. WPC number 142 – in, er, plain clothes – but I still want to know what she’s doing here.’

‘Are you taking a statement, sir? Because, if so, I would welcome the opportunity to correct the over-coloured assertions you have just made. I am neither covered in gore, nor am I standing over the body. The stains you have noted were acquired when, on discovering the body of Dame Beatrice, I knelt by her side to check for signs of life. I didn’t touch her – she was quite obviously dead.’

Armitage drew in a hissing breath at the girl’s challenging tone. ‘You should stand to attention, Constable, when you report to the Commander,’ he said repressively.

The girl collected herself and, handing her cigarette to Armitage, assumed the rigid policewoman’s stance, feet eighteen inches apart, hands behind her back and with what Joe guessed she thought was a demure expression. ‘I was having dinner here, sir,’ she said. Her affectation of subservience was so overplayed and so unconvincing that even Armitage was prepared to smile.

‘In the dining room?’

‘Yes, in the dining room. I wouldn’t be likely to be having dinner in the lift, would I?’

‘That’ll do!’ said Armitage, scandalized. ‘Remember you’re under arrest. You’re not in cuffs yet but you very soon could be! Just answer the Captain’s questions, miss,’ he added more gently. He had noticed, as had Joe, that the hem of her dress was quivering, betraying a pair of legs that were nicely shaped but shaking with tension.

‘He’s not a captain and when he asks me a sensible question I’ll answer it. As I say, I was having dinner here in the dining room. I’m the guest of Rupert Joliffe at his uncle Alfred’s birthday party. At about midnight I saw Dame Beatrice, who was also of the party, leaving. I wanted to see her. Rupert was so tight by then I don’t suppose he’s noticed yet that I’m not there.’

‘You wanted to see Dame Beatrice? Why?’

‘A personal matter,’ she said defensively.

‘You can’t leave it there,’ Joe said, ‘but that’ll do for the present. I shall need to know the nature of the personal matter. But, in the meantime – you saw her leave the dining room?’

‘Yes, there was something I wanted to ask her. It was important. I extracted myself from my dinner party. The dancing was under way so it wasn’t difficult. I helped old Lady Carstairs to find her way to the ladies’ room and then I went to the desk and asked for Dame Beatrice’s room number. I had to wait quite a while because the after-theatre crowd had just come rushing in. Then I followed her up the stairs.’

‘The stairs? You didn’t go in the lift?’

‘No. A mass of people had flooded out of the bar and were waiting to take the lift so I ran up the stairs to the fourth floor. This floor. To this room. As I arrived on the landing the lift went down.’

‘Did you see who was in the lift?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Right. Then what happened?’

‘The outer door was ajar. I pushed it open and stepped in. I was glad to think I’d caught up with Dame Beatrice.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, I had caught up with her. At least somebody else had caught up with her before me. Blood all over the place – as you see. But I was careful, sir! I disturbed nothing. Head bashed in. Fire irons scattered. The window had been broken open and I thought a burglar must have got in. From a fire escape or something because we’re sixty feet above ground here.’ She pointed to the casement swinging desultorily in the night air. ‘I didn’t go over and look out. Didn’t want to risk obscuring the footprints.’ She nodded at the carpet between the window and the body, presumably seeing traces which were so far invisible to Joe.

‘Well done, Westhorpe,’ Joe said, wishing he had managed to sound less like a schoolmaster. But, then, the girl was evoking this response in him by behaving rather in the manner of a schoolbook heroine. Dimsie Does Her Best perhaps?

‘Go on, will you?’

‘She’d obviously put up quite a struggle. Her hands and arms are injured too. She’d defended herself.’

‘She would have defended herself,’ said Armitage. ‘Very forthright lady, Dame Beatrice, I hear. Not one to stand any nonsense.’

Joe observed an affinity between Sir Nevil and Sergeant Armitage. To one, murder was ‘a little problem’; to the other a murderous assault was ‘a bit of nonsense’.

Tilly Westhorpe resumed her story. ‘Having established that she was indeed beyond any help I could immediately offer, I needed to notify the police and the hotel management. There was no one in sight and it seemed to me the quickest, most sensible thing to do would be to go down to reception.’

Sally Sees It Through? With a burst of irritation Joe wondered why the bloody girl couldn’t just have stood in the doorway and screamed her head off like any normal female. Or used the voice tube?

She caught his thought. Or his swift glance towards the bedroom perhaps. ‘I didn’t use the voice tube. You never can be quite sure who’s picking up at the other end. Even at the Ritz. Discretion, sir, I thought the situation called for discretion.’

‘Yes. A good thought. So you opened the door . . .’ He looked up sharply. ‘Prints, Westhorpe? Prints?’ he reminded her testily.

‘As you see, sir, I’m wearing gloves.’ With more than a touch of professional satisfaction, Tilly held up two evening-gloved hands of pristine white satin. ‘I took care not to touch the body. Alive or dead.’

Her eyes flicked sideways to Armitage and at last Joe understood. He reckoned that this calculated display of innocence and foresight was aimed not at himself but at the arresting officer.

‘I’d left the door ajar as I found it,’ she continued with her story, ‘so I pushed it open and went down in the lift to the reception desk. I informed the manager who rang the Yard from the rear office and they said they’d send someone. I must say the manager was calm about it,’ she added, wondering. ‘This is surely a major incident but if I’d been reporting a broken fingernail he couldn’t have been more undemonstrative.’

‘It’s part of the training. But go on.’

‘Then I came straight back up here to stand guard on the body until help arrived. Five minutes later I was joined by . . . er . . .’

‘Detective Sergeant Armitage, miss.’

‘The sergeant arrived and put me under arrest.’

‘A perfectly reasonable thing to do,’ said Joe. ‘Anyone would have done the same.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Tilly. ‘Quite proper in the circumstances.’

She turned to Armitage and smiled. The sudden intensification of the glow from her cornflower blue eyes would have lit up Tower Bridge for thirty seconds. Joe remembered that Armitage in France had had a reputation for susceptibility and a quick glance at the sergeant revealed that he was not unaffected. Joe was considerably amused by this. His own previous encounters with Constable Westhorpe had taught him the wisdom of looking the other way when she unsheathed her smile. Lucky for him, he thought, that in all their previous dealings she’d been wearing the thick and calculatedly unalluring serge uniform, its uncompromising skirt almost brushing the tops of her black boots, her pretty face all but quenched under a high-crowned wide-brimmed felt hat and chin strap. The trembling shoulders and the slightly heaving white bosom at present on view were beginning to have an effect on Armitage, Joe decided, and he took off his heavy police cape and held it out.