"While the hotel itself is also known as the meeting place of the
Surbiton Harmonic Society and other associations."

"What happened?"

"Among the more prominent of the guests of the hotel has been
numbered during the present Parliamentary session Mr. Llewylln Ap.
Jones, M.P., for South Llanfydd. Mr. Jones apparently came to his
room last night at about ten P.M., and put on his carpet slippers
and his blue dressing gown. He then seems to have gone to the
cupboard and taken from it a whisky bottle which however proved to
be empty. The unhappy gentleman then apparently went to bed . . ."

At that point the American reader probably stops reading, thinking
that he has heard it all. The unhappy man found that the bottle was
empty and went to bed: very natural: and the affair very properly
called a "distressing incident": quite right. But the trained English
reader would know that there was more to come and that the air of
quiet was only assumed, and he would read on and on until at last the
tragic interest heightened, the four shots were fired, with a good
long pause after each for discussion of the path of the bullet
through Mr. Ap. Jones.

I am not saying that either the American way or the British way is
the better. They are just two different ways, that's all. But the
result is that anybody from the United States or Canada reading
the English papers gets the impression that nothing is happening:
and an English reader of our newspapers with us gets the idea that
the whole place is in a tumult.