Page 60 of Murder at the Mayfair Hotel

He must have confronted Mr. Hobart immediately after I told him.

“I don’t understand,” Floyd said, shaking his head.

“Quiet!” Uncle Ronald snapped without taking his gaze off Mr. Hobart. “Tell him, Hobart. Tell him that I would never have employed him if I’d known he was a thief.”

Mr. Armitage dragged a hand down his face, muttering something into it. When his hand came away, he looked stricken. “I’ll leave immediately and quietly as long as my uncle is allowed to stay.”

“No. He is disloyal.”

“He has given his life to this hotel! He made one mistake in employing me, many years ago. Have some sympathy for your old friend, sir.”

“He is not my friend. He is my employee. Now he is nobody to me.”

“Please, sir, don’t act hastily. I will go, if that’s what you want, but let him stay.”

“Get. Out.”

Mr. Armitage put up his hands. “I’ve given years of loyal, honest service to this hotel. Despite that unfortunate situation when I was arrested, I’ve done nothing criminal before or since. My father the detective inspector will vouch—”

“I said get out of my sight!” If I’d ever doubted my uncle had a temper, I knew it to be true now. His face had gone a deep red, ridged with purple veins. He was fierce, and we all cowered before him.

Everyone except Mr. Armitage. “Have some sympathy. I was just a boy then.”

“Once a thief, always a thief!”

“Thief?” Floyd echoed. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

My uncle stabbed a finger at Mr. Hobart. “This man appointed his nephew to a position here knowing he was a convicted thief.”

“He was just a child,” Mr. Hobart said, voice trembling. “The situation he found himself in was very difficult.”

There was that familiar twist in my gut again, for the boy who’d been orphaned about the same age as me. I felt an affinity with him, and knew partly how lonely he must have felt.

But I had to remember that he was most likely also a murderer.

I remained near the door, not moving, hardly daring to breathe, hoping everyone had forgotten I was there.

“I don’t care if he had to beg on the street for food,” Uncle Ronald snarled. “His very presence here could have destroyed this hotel. Our reputation hangs by a thread after the murder, and if this got out too, it would bury us beneath a pile of cancelled reservations.”

“You’ve made your point,” Mr. Armitage said. “I’ll leave. But tell me, how did you find out?”

“A loyal member of the family with a nose for ferreting out the truth made me suspicious that I’d hired a criminal. I asked Hobart if it was true, and which staff member it could be, and he admitted everything.”

Mr. Armitage’s hard gaze settled on Floyd. Floyd quickly put up his hands in surrender. “It wasn’t me!”

Uncle Ronald signaled to me to step forward. “It was Cleo.”

I wanted the floor to swallow me up. I wanted to disappear and hide from their shocked and severe glares. But I found myself stepping closer as if a noose were tied around my neck and my uncle pulled the rope.

Mr. Armitage huffed out an ominous, humorless laugh and shook his head.

Mr. Hobart pressed a hand to his stomach. “Miss Fox? How…?”

“It doesn’t matter how she discovered it,” Uncle Ronald growled. “Thank God she did. She’s got a brain, this one.” He looked directly at Floyd as he said it.

Floyd crossed his arms and studied the floor at his feet.

I wanted to put my arm around him and tell him I was sorry. I hadn’t intended for him to get hurt by this.