Above Suspicion

CRIME SHORT STORY BY TERESA ASHBY

In this crime short story, set in the late 1990s, If a murder occurred at this hotel, who would be Doreen’s first suspect?

A piercing scream from room 104 stopped Doreen in her tracks.

She parked her laundry trolley and hurried to knock on the door.

She had her pass key, but would only use that if the screaming didn’t stop.

The door flew open and a red-faced woman with wild curly hair glared at her.

“There’s going to be a murder!” she yelled.

“Going to be?”

“When I get my hands on my husband, he’ll wish he’d never been born!”

“Can I help?”

“Not unless you can come up with hair straighteners toot suite!” She glowered at Doreen. “He told me he’d packed them!”

“Maybe you should have done your own packing,” Doreen muttered, and the door slammed shut just as the door opposite opened.

A young blonde woman in heels tottered out.

She was clutching her phone and mascara tears stained her face.

I’ll kill him

she said before noticing Doreen. “What do you want?”

“Housekeeping,” Doreen replied, waving her hand towards the laundry trolley.

“I don’t suppose you know which room Matthew Bennett is in?” the young woman asked.

“No, sorry,” Doreen said.

The young woman returned to her phone.

“No, it’s just the cleaner,” she said. “I can’t believe he turned up with his wife.”

The door slammed shut and Doreen glanced across at number 104.

She had a pretty good idea which room Matthew Bennett was in.

No wonder he was hiding.

Grabbing her trolley, she continued to her next room.

The hotel was extra busy with the convention.

“Anyone seen Matthew?” a man asked as he joined a group of others by the lift.

“Not since we got here,” another replied.

“Typical! We do all the work while he gets the bonus. I’ve had enough.”

“You can’t fire him – he’s married to the boss’s daughter,” a woman pointed out.

“There are other ways to get rid of him,” the man growled as the lift opened.

Doreen carried on, filling up her trolley as she went from room to room.

She imagined being called as a witness if Matthew Bennett’s body turned up.

“Did you see or hear anything, Doreen?”

She’d provide a list of quotes to keep them busy.

Doreen had watched all the detective shows.

There was nothing about crime that Doreen didn’t know, and she usually guessed who the killer was long before anyone else.

It wasn’t usually the ones who had been issuing death threats or seemed the most horrible characters.

More often it was the most pleasant and helpful person who was the villain.

She waited at the end of the corridor for the other rooms to empty.

The wife and the red-eyed mistress went towards the lift chatting together.

Matthew would get a shock if he was waiting for one or other of them.

Finally, along came the person who would be Doreen’s chief suspect.

He was smiling and deferential, insisting everyone else should get into the lift in front of him.

He was the sort of person a man like Matthew Bennett would enjoy bullying.

A good egg who would be most helpful to the police.

Once the corridor was quiet, Doreen resumed her duties.

Just one floor today.

She headed for the staff lift with a smile on her face.

She didn’t see the body inside until her trolley bumped into it.

Doreen screamed and everything went black.

She came round surrounded by people.

Someone had thrown a sheet over the body.

The police are on their way.

“No,” she whispered. “I have to go!”

“I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” a young woman in a housekeeping tunic said.

Of course she hadn’t.

No-one noticed a grey-haired, middle-aged woman going about her business.

She glanced at her trolley, which was full of jewellery, cash, laptops and a few choice items of clothing underneath the dirty sheets.

Doreen was an equal opportunities thief.

She spread herself around all the hotels in the city and was much admired among the criminal fraternity.

The police blamed organised criminal gangs for the hotel robberies.

Doreen was coming up to retirement, but planned to keep her hand in to pay for essential little extras, like her villa in the Algarve and the annual Caribbean cruise.

The detective turned up.

He’d looked in her trolley, but he’d got it all wrong.

“Matthew Bennett caught you in the act of burgling the hotel rooms and you hit him over the head.”

“I’ve never killed anyone.”

Doreen couldn’t believe it as they slapped her in handcuffs and put her in the back of a police car.

Caught out by a corpse!

The worst of it was, apart from a prison sentence and the loss of her reputation, that Doreen would never find out “whodunnit”!

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