At Bertram’s Hotel
An old-fashioned London Hotel is not quite as reputable as it makes out…When Miss Marple comes up from the country for a holiday in London, she finds what she’s looking for at Bertram’s Hotel: traditional decor, impeccable service and an unmistakable atmosphere of danger behind the highly polished veneer.Yet, not even Miss Marple can foresee the violent chain of events set in motion when an eccentric guest makes his way to the airport on the wrong day…
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First published in Great Britain by Collins, The Crime Club 1965
At Bertramâs Hotel⢠is a trade mark of Agatha Christie Limited
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Copyright © 1965 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.
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This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008196615
Ebook Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 9780007422159
Version: 2017-07-26
Table of Contents
In the heart of the West End, there are many quiet pockets, unknown to almost all but taxi drivers who traverse them with expert knowledge, and arrive triumphantly thereby at Park Lane, Berkeley Square or South Audley Street.
If you turn off on an unpretentious street from the Park, and turn left and right once or twice, you will find yourself in a quiet street with Bertramâs Hotel on the right hand side. Bertramâs Hotel has been there a long time. During the war, houses were demolished on the right of it, and a little farther down on the left of it, but Bertramâs itself remained unscathed. Naturally it could not escape being, as house agents would say, scratched, bruised and marked, but by the expenditure of only a reasonable amount of money it was restored to its original condition. By 1955 it looked precisely as it had looked in 1939âdignified, unostentatious, and quietly expensive.
Such was Bertramâs, patronized over a long stretch of years by the higher échelons of the clergy, dowager ladies of the aristocracy up from the country, girls on their way home for the holidays from expensive finishing schools. (âSo few places where a girl can stay alone in London but of course it is quite all right at Bertramâs. We have stayed there for years.â)
There had, of course, been many other hotels on the model of Bertramâs. Some still existed, but nearly all had felt the wind of change. They had had necessarily to modernize themselves, to cater for a different clientele. Bertramâs, too, had had to change, but it had been done so cleverly that it was not at all apparent at the first casual glance.
Outside the steps that led up to the big swing doors stood what at first sight appeared to be no less than a Field-Marshal. Gold braid and medal ribbons adorned a broad and manly chest. His deportment was perfect. He received you with tender concern as you emerged with rheumatic difficulty from a taxi or a car, guided you carefully up the steps and piloted you through the silently swinging doorway.
Inside, if this was the first time you had visited Bertramâs, you felt, almost with alarm, that you had re-entered a vanished world. Time had gone back. You were in Edwardian England once more.
There was, of course, central heating, but it was not apparent. As there had always been, in the big central lounge, there were two magnificent coal fires; beside them big brass coal scuttles shone in the way they used to shine when Edwardian housemaids polished them, and they were filled with exactly the right sized lumps of coal. There was a general appearance of rich red velvet and plushy cosiness. The arm-chairs were not of this time and age. They were well above the level of the floor, so that rheumatic old ladies had not to struggle in an undignified manner in order to get to their feet. The seats of the chairs did not, as in so many modern high-priced arm-chairs, stop half-way between the thigh and the knee, thereby inflicting agony on those suffering from arthritis and sciatica; and they were not all of a pattern. There were straight backs and reclining backs, different widths to accommodate the slender and the obese. People of almost any dimension could find a comfortable chair at Bertramâs.
