‘GOOD JESUS CHRIST, MY BUM!’

‘I don’t like this hotel! I want to go home!’

‘N-o-n-e o-f y-o-u b-e m-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i…’

Rosemary was about to put her hands over her ears to shut out the deafening tumult when the door opened and all the residents immediately fell silent. When they saw it was only Dorothy Davenport, one or two started up again half-heartedly, but they broke off when they saw the expression on Dorothy’s face.

‘What is it?’ cried Rosemary, hurrying over to her friend. ‘What’s happened, Dot?’

Dorothy stopped just inside the door, pale and trembling.

‘I… I saw…’

Rosemary took her arm.

‘What? What is it?’

Dorothy burst into tears.

‘Oh Rose,’ she sobbed, ‘there was blood everywhere! His clothes ripped to shreds and great gashes all over his face and hands!’

She shivered.

‘God knows what they can have done to him, poor man.’

To whom?’ asked Rosemary.

Dorothy looked at her friend dully.

‘George Channing,’ she said. The corned beef millionaire.’

CHAPTER 2

‘And what do you make of this interesting development?’

The two friends were sitting side by side in their usual places. Dorothy’s hands and lips were still quivering and her eyes sightlessly scanned the opaque screen of the window. The other residents, exhausted by their recent outbursts, had resumed their stupor.

‘I suppose it was something we should really have foreseen,’ Rosemary went on. ‘Nothing is more usual, after all, than for the principal suspect to become the next victim. Indeed, my reluctance to consider such an eventuality was perhaps at least partly due to a feeling that the device had become rather hackneyed.’