A Thrust to the Vitals by Geraldine Evans

praying that Nigel hadn’t spotted Mickey and was gratified at Nigel’s reply.
    ‘Me? No, certainly not. I didn’t see anyone — me included, before you ask — enter Sir Rufus’s bedroom, Inspector.’
    Briefly pausing to wonder whether Nigel might actually be lying in order to gain some future financial advantage from keeping quiet about Mickey’s presence, Rafferty was put on the back foot by this correction. Nigel, always looking for an edge over an adversary, hadn’t failed to put him in the wrong by drawing attention to his failure to use Seward’s recently-acquired title. Of course his cousin adored such outmoded and mostly undeserved trappings of rank. Doubtless, he aspired to a similar or even superior prefix to his own name one day. Such things were important to Nigel. He felt a title added a certain – what was the word Nigel invariably used? — cachet, that was it.
    Tonight, or rather this morning, Rafferty found himself even more irritated than usual by his cousin’s cringe-worthy and snobbish airs and graces.
    ‘You said you didn’t go into his bedroom yourself? Not even to talk about your proposed property deal with him?’
    ‘Certainly not.’ Nigel put on an air of affront at this suggestion and for once in his life he was remarkably frank. ‘I was busy networking for all I was worth, dear boy. Such occasions don’t come along so often, even for me, that I wasn’t going to make the most of it.
    ‘As I said, Sir Rufus disappeared into his bedroom during the latter part of the evening, I presume to make a private phone call. If he had wanted a discreet word or two, he would have let me know. I can only assume he was still considering my business proposition. But good manners required that I wait until I was invited into such an intimate domain.’ Effortlessly, for the second time in the course of a few seconds, Nigel managed to make Rafferty feel at a disadvantage, as he added, ‘One doesn’t simply barge into a fellow’s private bedchamber, my dear Inspector.’
    Oh doesn’t one? Rafferty felt like saying. He restrained himself. Besides, beyond being made to feel as if he, rather than Nigel, was the investigatory prey, this baiting of Nigel was getting him nowhere. It wasn’t as if his wretched cousin was likely to fall to his knees and confess even if he had murdered Seward. So, after, posing a few more searching questions that brought similarly unsatisfying responses, and with a reminder that he knew where Nigel lived, Rafferty let him go.
    And as he watched his cousin saunter out of the ballroom with an even more aggravating nonchalance than he had entered it, Rafferty reflected that it wasn’t as if he didn’t have other pressing things to do with the rest of the morning. Like sorting out somewhere to stash Mickey.
     
     
    The early part of the investigation was grinding along at the usual slow pace. By now, of course, if it hadn’t been for the fact it was midwinter, it would have been approaching dawn. Everyone was tired and frustrated. The team hadn’t been able to contact many of the big-wig party attendees, most of whom were far-flung and had hours since flung themselves and their partners back from whence they had come. And even when they were big-wigs of more local flavour, their business interests were often wide-spread, global and twenty-four-hour. Not for men such as they the luxury of falling into bed in a drunken stupor after a party. As Rafferty and his team had discovered during the hours after their arrival at the hotel, on telephoning the guests’ homes, a large number of these guests had quickly inserted their weary bodies into chauffeured limos and been whisked off to the airport for flights abroad, so they could attend yet more business meetings and drunken receptions.
    So, for whatever reason, Rafferty and his team had, thus far, been unable to interview the vast majority of Seward’s party guests.
    But at least, the single virtue shared by all those who