Free The Tick of Death by Peter Lovesey Page A

an hotel foyer, but it was difficult to account for in the servants’ quarters.
    He reached the stairs and mounted as noiselessly as he could to the second floor, where he made his way along a passage similar to the one he had first come through, and found himself in a linen-room stacked with bedding. He listened at the door, and hearing nothing, pulled it open and stepped on to the carpet of the second floor corridor, not without a flutter of self-congratulation. Perhaps, after all, there was a future to be had in the Secret Service.
    The corridor was as deserted as the rest of the hotel. He stepped boldly along it, counting the numbers on the doors until he came to 206. To be quite sure it was locked, he tested the handle; a pity his training at Woolwich had not included the forcing of locks. Short of sitting down to wait outside the door for Malone’s return, there was one other expedient left to him. It called for the kind of heroics he would normally have entrusted to Thackeray, but this afternoon he had to take the initiative himself. He walked to the end of the corridor, pushed up a window, and peered out.
    Thirty feet below, a pigeon was crossing Arundel Place. From Cribb’s position, its waddling progress looked awkward in the extreme. Strange how a change of perspective altered the appearance of everyday things . . . He looked left along the side of the building, on a level with the second floor. More pigeons were clustered there, perched proprietorially along a ledge projecting some nine inches from the wall. It provided exactly what he required: a means of reaching the window of suite 206.
    He removed his jacket and placed it neatly out of sight with the silk hat behind the folds of the curtain. He folded his shirt-sleeves and lowered himself from the window to the ledge without another glance downwards. He hoped anyone who chanced to see him would suppose him a window-cleaner or house-painter going about his lawful employment. The square was deserted, so far as he could tell. He flattened his palms against the wall and began to move sideways. The pigeons did not disdain to leave the ledge as his feet appeared among them, but contrived to find a way around the invading shoes, grumbling chestily at the inconvenience. A small stone was dislodged and he heard it hit the pavement below. He wondered whether anyone was down there by now, looking up at him. He thought of Malone, and pondered how long it took to complete a shot-putting contest. He began to move with more urgency.
    The window of 206 was partially open, and easy to push up far enough for him to climb inside. Secure again, he looked down into Arundel Place to satisfy himself that his manoeuvre had not been observed. The pigeon was still in sole occupation.
    Devlin had been right when he said Malone lived in style. The bedroom in which Cribb found himself was half as large again as any hotel-room he had been in before. He felt the pile of the carpet respond to the weight of his feet as he got up from the window-sill and crossed to an enamelled ash tallboy. The drawers contained clothes—collars, shirts and under-garments—and nothing to interest Scotland Yard. He tried the wardrobe and found two suits and an overcoat. The pockets were empty except for handkerchiefs.
    He crossed to the bathroom. The luxury extended there in a gleaming chrome and enamel hot water geyser and a flawless white galvanised bath, but Cribb’s attention was claimed at once by a bottle on the shelf over the wash-basin. It contained a purple-coloured liquid. He removed the top and sniffed it: methylated spirit, without any doubt at all. He sniffed it again for pure relish—the virtual confirmation that Malone was the man Thackeray had met in The Feathers in Rotherhithe. And beside it on the shelf was a box containing an ivory-handled manicure-set.
    There was one more room to examine: the sitting room. It bore more traces of its tenant than the others, a pile of copies of The Irish