A Dark and Deadly Journey by Julia Kelly

Author:Julia Kelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

TWENTY-THREE

True to his word, Angelo sent Martim over as soon as I’d finished my tea to show me downstairs. I was still turning over what I’d learned about my father and Jessup’s meeting. If I had been skating on thin ice taking Mr. Fletcher’s secretive assignment to speak to my father, now I was in truly dangerous territory. Sir Reginald’s name had been connected to a murdered banker on a Lisbon, Portugal-bound aeroplane, a murdered jeweler in London, and a missing informant. To make matters worse, no one seemed to know where Sir Reginald could be found.

I needed to tell David what I’d learned, Mr. Fletcher’s warning be damned. David was my partner and he had a right to know that the case of a missing informant had just become more complicated than either of us could ever have anticipated.

But first, I wanted to follow the thread of Jessup’s trunk calls while I had the chance.

The basement had little of the glamour of the more public spaces like the lobby and the hotel bar, trading soaring ceilings for cramped corridors painted in functional white. These were the sorts of spaces guests were never meant to give a thought to if a hotel was well-run, and I suspected it was only my story about being worried about Jessup’s whereabouts that bought me access.

Martim stopped in front of a door with Mesa telefônica stenciled on it in blue paint. When he opened the door, I was hit by the sound of a half dozen women’s voices speaking in rapid Portuguese, English, French, and German. Just beyond the door, I could see an older woman lift her head and frown as she connected a call and then removed her headphones.

“Não permitimos convidados aqui, Martim,” the woman said in a sharp tone, her expression pinched.

Martim glanced back at me and, in English, said, “Angelo asked me to bring Menina…”

“Moore,” I supplied.

“Menina Moore here,” finished Martim.

“I’m very sorry to be a bother,” I said, doing my best to play the role of the polite English secretary I was supposed to be, “but I’m trying to find a friend who was a guest here at the Hotel Metrópol. It really is urgent that I locate him, and Angelo thought that you might help.”

The woman assessed me with a cool eye that told me she was no more impressed with my somber suit and prim blouse than I was. “Why do you think I might be able to help?”

“You or one of your switchboard operators. He placed a trunk call to London. I was hoping I might find out who the call was to.”

The woman sighed and reached for a book that sat next to her right hand. “What is your friend’s name?”

“Michael Jessup. I believe the call would have been on the thirty-first of October at five o’clock in the afternoon,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed. “You seem to know a great deal about this call already.”

“Angelo was very helpful,” I demurred.

She made a low noise in her throat and flipped open her book to page through it.

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