At Bertram’s Hotel

‘Number fourteen,’ said Miss Gorringe. ‘I think you had fourteen last time, Colonel Luscombe, and liked it. It’s quiet.’

‘How you always manage to remember these things, I can’t imagine, Miss Gorringe.’

‘We like to make our old friends comfortable.’

‘Takes me back a long way, coming in here. Nothing seems to have changed.’

He broke off as Mr Humfries came out from an inner sanctum to greet him.

Mr Humfries was often taken by the uninitiated to be Mr Bertram in person. Who the actual Mr Bertram was, or indeed, if there ever had been a Mr Bertram was now lost in the mists of antiquity. Bertram’s had existed since about 1840, but nobody had taken any interest in tracing its past history. It was just there, solid, in fact. When addressed as Mr Bertram, Mr Humfries never corrected the impression. If they wanted him to be Mr Bertram he would be Mr Bertram. Colonel Luscombe knew his name, though he didn’t know if Humfries was the manager or the owner. He rather fancied the latter.

Mr Humfries was a man of about fifty. He had very good manners, and the presence of a Junior Minister. He could, at any moment, be all things to all people. He could talk racing shop, cricket, foreign politics, tell anecdotes of Royalty, give Motor Show information, knew the most interesting plays on at present—advise on places Americans ought really to see in England however short their stay. He had knowledgeable information about where it would suit persons of all incomes and tastes to dine. With all this, he did not make himself too cheap. He was not on tap all the time. Miss Gorringe had all the same facts at her fingertips and could retail them efficiently. At brief intervals Mr Humfries, like the sun, made his appearance above the horizon and flattered someone by his personal attention.

This time it was Colonel Luscombe who was so honoured. They exchanged a few racing platitudes, but Colonel Luscombe was absorbed by his problem. And here was the man who could give him the answer.

‘Tell me, Humfries, how do all these old dears manage to come and stay here?’

‘Oh you’ve been wondering about that?’ Mr Humfries seemed amused. ‘Well, the answer’s simple. They couldn’t afford it. Unless—’

He paused.

‘Unless you make special prices for them? Is that it?’

‘More or less. They don’t know, usually, that they are special prices, or if they do realize it, they think it’s because they’re old customers.’

‘And it isn’t just that?’

‘Well, Colonel Luscombe, I am running a hotel. I couldn’t afford actually to lose money.’

‘But how can that pay you?’

‘It’s a question of atmosphere … Strangers coming to this country (Americans, in particular, because they are the ones who have the money) have their own rather queer ideas of what England is like. I’m not talking, you understand, of the rich business tycoons who are always crossing the Atlantic. They usually go to the Savoy or the Dorchester. They want modern décor, American food, all the things that will make them feel at home. But there are a lot of people who come abroad at rare intervals and who expect this country to be—well, I won’t go back as far as Dickens, but they’ve read Cranford and Henry James, and they don’t want to find this country just the same as their own! So they go back home afterwards and say: “There’s a wonderful place in London; Bertram’s Hotel, it’s called. It’s just like stepping back a hundred years. It just is old England! And the people who stay there! People you’d never come across anywhere else. Wonderful old Duchesses. They serve all the old English dishes, there’s a marvellous old-fashioned beef-steak pudding! You’ve never tasted anything like it; and great sirloins of beef and saddles of mutton, and an old-fashioned English tea and a wonderful English breakfast. And of course all the usual things as well. And it’s wonderfully comfortable. And warm. Great log fires.”’

Mr Humfries ceased his impersonation and permitted himself something nearly approaching a grin.

‘I see,’ said Luscombe thoughtfully. ‘These people; decayed aristocrats, impoverished members of the old County families, they are all so much mise en scène?’

Mr Humfries nodded agreement.

‘I really wonder no one else has thought of it. Of course I found Bertram’s ready made, so to speak. All it needed was some rather expensive restoration. All the people who come here think it’s something that they’ve discovered for themselves, that no one else knows about.’

‘I suppose,’ said Luscombe, ‘that the restoration was quite expensive?’

‘Oh yes. The place has got to look Edwardian, but it’s got to have the modern comforts that we take for granted in these days. Our old dears—if you will forgive me referring to them as that—have got to feel that nothing has changed since the turn of the century, and our travelling clients have got to feel they can have period surroundings, and still have what they are used to having at home, and can’t really live without!’

‘Bit difficult sometimes?’ suggested Luscombe.

‘Not really. Take central heating for instance. Americans require—need, I should say—at least ten degrees Fahrenheit higher than English people do. We actually have two quite different sets of bedrooms. The English we put in one lot, the Americans in the other. The rooms all look alike, but they are full of actual differences—electric razors, and showers as well as tubs in some of the bathrooms, and if you want an American breakfast, it’s there—cereals and iced orange juice and all—or if you prefer you can have the English breakfast.’

‘Eggs and bacon?’

‘As you say—but a good deal more than that if you want it. Kippers, kidneys and bacon, cold grouse, York ham. Oxford marmalade.’

‘I must remember all that tomorrow morning. Don’t get that sort of thing any more at home.’

Humfries smiled.

‘Most gentlemen only ask for eggs and bacon. They’ve—well, they’ve got out of the way of thinking about the things there used to be.’

‘Yes, yes … I remember when I was a child … Sideboards groaning with hot dishes. Yes, it was a luxurious way of life.’

‘We endeavour to give people anything they ask for.’

‘Including seed cake and muffins—yes, I see. To each according to his need—I see … Quite Marxian.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Just a thought, Humfries. Extremes meet.’

Colonel Luscombe turned away, taking the key Miss Gorringe offered him. A page-boy sprang to attention and conducted him to the lift. He saw in passing that Lady Selina Hazy was now sitting with her friend Jane Something or other.

CHAPTER 2 (#u73b1a515-ee73-5c88-813c-36c051f715ca)

‘And I suppose you’re still living at that dear St Mary Mead?’ Lady Selina was asking. ‘Such a sweet unspoilt village. I often think about it. Just the same as ever, I suppose?’

‘Well, not quite.’ Miss Marple reflected on certain aspects of her place of residence. The new Building Estate. The additions to the Village Hall, the altered appearance of the High Street with its up-to-date shop fronts—She sighed. ‘One has to accept change, I suppose.’

‘Progress,’ said Lady Selina vaguely. ‘Though it often seems to me that it isn’t progress. All these smart plumbing fixtures they have nowadays. Every shade of colour and superb what they call “finish”—but do any of them really pull? Or push, when they’re that kind. Every time you go to a friend’s house, you find some kind of a notice in the loo—“Press sharply and release,” “Pull to the left,” “Release quickly.” But in the old days, one just pulled up a handle any kind of way, and cataracts of water came at once—There’s the dear Bishop of Medmenham,’ Lady Selina broke off to say, as a handsome, elderly cleric passed by. ‘Practically quite blind, I believe. But such a splendid militant priest.’

A little clerical talk was indulged in, interspersed by lady Selina’s recognition of various friends and acquaintances, many of whom were not the people she thought they were. She and Miss Marple talked a little of ‘old days’, though Miss Marple’s upbringing, of course, had been quite different from Lady Selina’s, and their reminiscences were mainly confined to the few years when Lady Selina, a recent widow of severely straitened means, had taken a small house in the village of St Mary Mead during the time her second son had been stationed at an airfield nearby.

‘Do you always stay here when you come up, Jane? Odd I haven’t seen you here before.’

‘Oh no, indeed. I couldn’t afford to, and anyway, I hardly ever leave home these days. No, it was a very kind niece of mine who thought it would be a treat for me to have a short visit to London. Joan is a very kind girl—at least perhaps hardly a girl.’ Miss Marple reflected with a qualm that Joan must now be close on fifty. ‘She is a painter, you know. Quite a well-known painter. Joan West. She had an exhibition not long ago.’

Lady Selina had little interest in painters, or indeed in anything artistic. She regarded writers, artists and musicians as a species of clever performing animal; she was prepared to feel indulgent towards them, but to wonder privately why they wanted to do what they did.

‘This modern stuff, I suppose,’ she said, her eyes wandering. ‘There’s Cicely Longhurst—dyed her hair again, I see.’

‘I’m afraid dear Joan is rather modern.’

Here Miss Marple was quite wrong. Joan West had been modern about twenty years ago, but was now regarded by the young arriviste artists as completely old-fashioned.

Casting a brief glance at Cicely Longhurst’s hair, Miss Marple relapsed into a pleasant remembrance of how kind Joan had been. Joan had actually said to her husband, ‘I wish we could do something for poor old Aunt Jane. She never gets away from home. Do you think she’d like to go to Bournemouth for a week or two?’

‘Good idea,’ said Raymond West. His last book was doing very well indeed, and he felt in a generous mood.

‘She enjoyed her trip to the West Indies, I think, though it was a pity she had to get mixed up in a murder case. Quite the wrong thing at her age.’