Hei Teng Wu Hotel

The Black Swan is the inn where Alexander Bonaparte Cust lodges during the murder investigation. Its modest second-floor room becomes the setting for a troubling discovery: Cust finds blood on his sleeve and a bloodied knife in his pocket. The inn also connects the investigation to a young woman who comes forward with information and to the register used to check a guest’s signature.

Setting and Lodging

Cust returns to the Black Swan and climbs to his bedroom, a small, stuffy room on the second floor overlooking a paved inner court and garage. The plain lodging briefly appears as an ordinary stopping place, but the scene changes when Cust enters and notices a stain near his cuff. He touches it and finds it wet and red; then he takes a long, slender knife from his pocket and sees that its blade is also marked with blood.

The discovery leaves Cust sitting in the room for a long time. The inn’s private interior thus becomes the place where an unsettling piece of physical evidence confronts him, without itself establishing how the knife came to be in his possession.

The Landlord and the Investigation

The Black Swan’s landlord, Mr Ball, enters the investigation when he arrives at the police station with a young woman, explaining that he believes she may have something helpful to say. The police agree to hear them. Mr Ball’s role extends the inn’s significance beyond Cust’s lodging: it becomes a point of contact between a guest’s circumstances and the inquiry outside.

Mr Ball later accompanies the young woman as the police pursue the information she has supplied. A sergeant brings the inn register, and those present gather around to inspect the guest’s small, cramped signature. The writing is difficult to read; the Chief Constable considers whether it says “A. B. Case” or “Cash.” The register turns the Black Swan’s routine record of a lodger into evidence to be examined, while the uncertainty over the name leaves the identification unresolved in that moment.

Narrative Significance

The inn links three distinct forms of evidence and access: the room where Cust encounters the knife, the landlord who brings a potential witness to the police, and the register whose handwriting is scrutinized. Its significance is practical rather than atmospheric: ordinary details of lodging—room, sleeve, pocket, signature—become part of the developing inquiry. The Black Swan therefore serves as both Cust’s temporary refuge and a channel through which information enters the investigation.