Murder in Luxury Read online

  PART ONE

  Looking back at the many stories I've written about murder and violence at the Beaumont, New York's top luxury hotel, people might get the notion that that gracious and elegant establishment is not a place to stay in safety. Actually you would be as safe there, perhaps safer, than in your own home. Which, in an age of violence and terror, of vandalism and sen$eless brutality, is how safe?

  The Beaumont is, you could say, a city within a city. It has its own security force, hospital facilities, bars, restaurants, meeting places, a shopping mall. It houses a branch of one of the country's largest and most prestigious banks. It has everything a small city has except schools. I could go cute, I suppose, and say that it houses a school in expert management, presided over by a master executive. He is Pierre Chambrun, the Beaumont's legendary manager. Some of us who work for him think he has some kind of magical radar system behind his bright, black eyes. It seems as if he can sense a malfunction in the Swiss-watch operation of the world over which he presides before it happens. Unfortunately he can't change human nature. He can't eliminate greed, or jealousy, or a passion for revenge, or the impulse to treachery or betrayal in the individual man or woman. And so, as in every other place on earth, these ugly psychoses disrupt men's efforts to live peaceful and orderly lives.

  It was one of these dark and twisted passions that brought Valerie Summers into our world—the Beaumont. She brought with her a trail of murders that baffled even Chambrun, who is usually way ahead of the police. To me she brought something personally disturbing. Was I to fall in love with a charming and gentle girl who needed affection and understanding and care, or with a monster hiding behind a lovely face?

  But, to the beginning.

  The day that Valerie Summers came on stage was like any other day. Routines at the Beaumont are fixed. At eight-thirty every morning Chambrun is served an elaborate gourmet breakfast in his office on the second floor. At nine o'clock I, his public relations man, put in an appearance, along with Betsy Ruysdale, his fabulous secretary. She brings with her the registration cards of the people who have checked into the hotel since the morning before. Our guests might have been somewhat surprised had they known the information that appears on those cards. There is, not unexpectedly, a credit rating. But there are other symbols that indicated whether a man—or a woman-is an alcoholic, a man or a woman chaser, gay, lesbian, a husband double-crossing a wife or a wife double-crossing a husband. We are close to the United Nations and many of our guests are from other parts of the world. The cards reveal where they are from, their politics, their business in our city. There is sometimes a special symbol which indicates that Chambrun knows something about the guest that is not to be made available to the rest of the staff. Hundreds of people sleep under our roof each night and Chambrun knows more about them than most people know about their children.

  The reason for my presence at these morning sessions is to be able to handle anything special in connection with a new guest. We may have a movie star or a foreign dignitary who wants the world to know that he is here, or he may want privacy and perhaps to remain incognito. It's my job to handle the press and the media, whichever way the wind blows.

  There was nothing that morning that needed special attention and I was just about to leave when the little red light on the phone on Chambrun's desk blinked. Betsy Ruysdale answered. After listening she covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

  "Gardner Fails is at the front desk," she said. "It's something of an emergency. Can he come up?"

  "Of course," Chambrun said.

  Gardner Fails is one of the trustees of the corporate entity that owns the Beaumont. He's a lawyer, a "man of distinction" in his late fifties. Chambrun signaled to me to wait. If Fails wanted some sort of special service I might be the agent the Man would use.

  Chambrun's office is more like a gracious living room than a place of business. His desk is carved Florentine, the rug a priceless oriental, and there are books, paintings, in particular a blue-period Picasso, a gift from the great artist himself. Not long ago a film company was considering one of my stories about Chambrun. I was asked to suggest an actor who might play the role of the Great Man. Unfortunately the perfect choice is no longer available—the late Claude Rains. Chambrun is short, stocky, but elegant in his manner and movements. His dark eyes are buried in deep pouches. They can twinkle with humor, glow warm with compassion, or turn as cold as a hanging judge's. His clothes are custom tailored, his shirts, ties, and shoes made to order. He is something of a Beau Brummell, but he handles it without affectation.

  I could sense a resistance stiffening in him as we waited for Gardner Fails. The trustees, as a rule, don't make sensible requests or suggestions. Chambrun, I knew, would listen with courtesy and patience, but if his answer was no, no one would override him.

  Miss Ruysdale ushered in Gardner Fails. He had a mane of carefully styled gray hair and bushy, black eyebrows. I suspected that his tan came from a sunlamp and not outdoor exposure. He and Chambrun greeted each other with smiles.

  "You know Mark Haskell, my public relations genius," Chambrun said.

  I had met Fails several times but evidently I hadn't made an impression. He shook hands cordially with a stranger.

  "Small problem, Pierre," he said, turning back to Chambrun.

  "Small problems are always easier to handle than big ones," Chambrun said. He leaned back in his desk chair and lit one of his flat, Egyptian cigarettes.

  "Business is apparently good," Fails said. "I went to the front desk to get a room for a client and they tell me there is nothing available."

  "If they tell you that, it's so," Chambrun said.

  Fails' smile widened. "It occurred to me you might know something that they don't know at the desk," he said.

  If you are a theatergoer you know that most managements hold out what they call "house seats." These are seats kept in reserve for famous people, old friends who want to get into a hit show at the last minute. We've adopted the phrase at the Beaumont—house seats. A couple of single rooms, a suite, are kept available for an unexpected movie star, a political or diplomatic bigwig, or an old friend. They are not made available to anyone without Chambrun's approval. It wasn't my business to mention them. Chambrun knew about them and if they were still available. It was up to him.

  "You listen to the news on television or the radio this morning?" Fails asked.

  "I never listen," Chambrun said. "I count on Mark to let me know if there's a tidal wave approaching."

  "I have a radio in the bathroom while I shave," I said.

  "You hear an item about a lady who came home from the theater last night and found a man murdered in her apartment?"

  "Down in the Village somewhere," I said.

  "West Tenth Street," Fails said. "The lady, Valerie Summers, is my client."

  Chambrun's eyes were narrowed against the smoke from his cigarette. He looked only mildly interested.

  "A mess," Fails said. "Val had been to see that musical with Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller—what is it, Sugar Babies! Went by herself, which is part of the story. Came home. It's a ground-floor garden apartment in a remodeled brownstone. No sign of trouble. Let herself in with her key and found a dead man, shot through the head, soaking in his own blood in the middle of her living room rug."

  "I didn't pay much attention to the story," I said. "Murders are a dime a dozen these days. I seem to remember your lady didn't know the dead man."

  "Never laid eyes on him before in her life," Fails said. "Complete stranger. You can imagine, she was pretty well shaken up; called the police. They gave her a hard time until she had the opportunity to call me."

  "Why?" Chambrun said.

  "Why what, Pierre?"

  "Why d
id they give her a hard time?"

  "There was no sign of a break-in," Fails said. "No sign anyone had tried to rob the apartment. Homicide cop who was called in just didn't believe Val. Cops have sort of black-and-white categories when they look at a crime. Apparently not a robbery, no forced entry, no evidence of a missing person who might have been the killer. So this Homicide man, a Lieutenant Keegan, fitted it into the slot that reads 'lovers' quarrel.' He chose not to believe Val when she said she'd never seen the dead man before, anywhere."

  "Dead man identified?" Chambrun asked.

  "Not as of now," Fails said. "No wallet, no papers, no keys, no credit cards. They're checking out fingerprints."

  "Your Miss Summers must have friends who would know if the dead man was someone she knew or saw," Chambrun said.

  "It's 'Mrs.' Summers," Fails said. "Her story didn't help convince Keegan. You see, she doesn't have friends who are that close to her. You have time for me to fill you in a little, Pierre?"

  'Til take time," Chambrun said.

  "Val is thirty years old," Fails said. "Beautiful girl—woman. She is—was—the daughter of Jeb McCandless. You remember him, Pierre?"

  "I never knew him," Chambrun said, "but I remember who he was. Oil, steel, anything that turns to gold."

  Fails nodded. "Married several times. No children until the last time when he married a girl forty years his junior. She died in childbirth, bringing Valerie into the world. Valerie became the center of his late years. Brought up with nurses, tutors, finally a fine education—Vassar. It's a girls' college, or was. Nowadays they mix the sexes everywhere. Val met a young man there, Richard Summers, fell in love with him, married him after graduation."

  "Over Papa McCandless's dead body?"

  "No. Jeb liked Dick Summers. I was Jeb's lawyer, you know. My father before me. I know he was pleased. Dick went on to law school and Jeb helped keep the young couple afloat till Dick was ready to take on his responsibilities as a husband. He came from a small town in Ohio; he and Val went to live there, where he set up in private law practice. He was a winner, that boy. He bought a small house and they settled in there, forever I guess they thought. Jeb died about five years ago and left Val one of the richest young women in America. That didn't change her and Dick's life style. I think she saw the money as a means of doing good things for other people—cancer research, that sort of thing, supporting the arts, theater, music, dance. They lived, basically, on what Dick earned, and he was doing damned well."

  "You keep saying 'was,'" Chambrun said.

  "Unfortunately. About eight months ago Dick went to the county seat to defend a client in a lawsuit. He stayed in a hotel there. He talked to Val on the phone the first night he was there. She hadn't gone with him because she was involved in some kind of community project. There was a fire in that hotel later that night— and Dick didn't make it. They brought him home—a charred, unrecognizable corpse."

  "Rough," I heard myself say.

  "It was more than Val could take," Fails said. "They had been so much, so perfectly, in love. She couldn't bear to stay in the house where they'd lived together, she couldn't stand the sympathy of friends who had been their friends. All she wanted to do was get away from the place that was haunted by Dick's ghost."

  "She could afford to go anywhere," Chambrun said.

  "Yes. She called me. She thought New York would be an ideal place. She could be anonymous here; nobody would know who she was; there'd be no smalltown neighbors who knew her story. She needed time to be alone—'to beat the heat,' she told me. So, I found her the apartment on Tenth Street and she came East. I urged her to make friends, offered to introduce her to young people I knew. She wanted none of that—not yet. So, I kept in touch with her from time to time. It seemed wrong to me for her to be so alone, but in the end, I thought, time would take care of it. Then last night she called me. There had been a murder, and there was a suspicious cop who had read her her rights and given her her legal phone call. ,,

  Chambrun put out his cigarette in the brass ashtray on his desk. "You say her story didn't convince this Lieutenant Keegan. Why not?"

  The lawyer's face turned hard. "Because he's determined to make everything fit his Covers' quarrel' category," Fails said. "He read me his scenario when I got there. Young beautiful widow living alone in the big city, no friends, no regular man in her life. Probably sex starved, he said to me. The Village is full of bars and clubs where a lonely woman might go. She picks up a likely looking man, brings him home. Something goes wrong and she shoots him dead."

  "Weapon?" Chambrun asked. "A gun?"

  "If there had been Val would be under arrest," Fails said. "Cops are combing the Village for places where she might have gone and been recognized, where the dead man might have been known. Meanwhile she can't stay in the apartment, cops in and out. It will take a massive cleanup job to make the place livable again. I brought her to my office, which you know is just a couple of blocks from here. I thought the Beaumont would be a sanctuary for her."

  Chambrun, I saw, had made up his mind. "It happens there is a small suite available on the fifth floor," he said. "Living room, couple of bedrooms, couple of baths, kitchenette. It's expensive."

  "If money was the answer she could rent five suites," Fails said. "She needs friends without asking for them, help without asking for it. Here, I thought, there would be you, Miss Ruysdale if she needed a woman's understanding, Haskell here if she needed someone in her own age bracket who might buy her a drink, or a dinner, or help her to laugh a little—if that's possible."

  Chambrun leaned back in his chair. "I guess you've sold me, Gardner," he said. ''We'll be glad to welcome your Mrs. Summers."

  TWO

  Sometimes, when it comes to women, I am not an entirely admirable character. I am reminded of a remark by the late George Kauffman, witty playwright, about someone he didn't like too much. "Down deep I think he's rather shallow."

  Glamorous women are very much a part of our world at the Beaumont—movie stars, famous actresses, the cream of the crop in the social swim, mysterious beauties from the far ends of the earth. My job brings me into closer touch with them all than any other member of the staff. The result, I have said somewhere else, is that I tend to fall in love forever every few months. That may not suggest a very solid person, but I have to say that it's provided me with more sheer pleasure than I would care to have missed for the sake of a more rock-ribbed image.

  I was assigned by Chambrun to be ready for the arrival of Valerie Summers. I waited at the front desk for Gardner Fails to produce his client. Beautiful, rich, lovely, and in trouble; those ingredients don't add up to the worst prospect in the world.

  The word beautiful gets overused when it's applied to women. There are millions of them with handsomely boned faces and elegant, lush figures. Real beauty comes from some kind of inner electricity, some special supply of energy. Without that internal magic they don't light up, are no more interesting than an expertly painted clothes dummy in a store window. Conversely, women who do have it but lack the classic mold and measurements can still take center stage. As if you didn't know if you have an eye for women!

  I have seen Hollywood glamor queens sweep into the lobby at the Beaumont, surrounded by bellboys with luggage, gentlemen with dreams, other women with a tight-lipped look of envy on their faces. It can be a production, with all eyes turned their way.

  Valerie Summers' arrival was a nothing. She walked in from the street with her lawyer, he carrying a small, insignificant suitcase. The lady was something of a disappointment. She was wearing a plain, navy-blue summer dress, trimmed with a little white stuff at the neck and the cuffs of the long sleeves. Figure? Good, but you wouldn't turn to look again or whistle at her from the front of the corner drugstore. Her hair was gold, worn shoulder length—her most notable feature. I couldn't tell much about her face because she was wearing large, dark-tinted sunglasses. Her mouth was set in a firm, straight line, like someone about to walk with courag
e into the lion's den. Wounded, I thought. When you can't see a woman's eyes you can't tell what's cooking.

  Fails introduced us. "Mrs. Summers, Mark Haskell."

  "Hello," she said. It was a low, almost husky voice. Scared out of her wits, I thought. Well, you don't stumble on a dead man in your apartment, lying in a pool of blood, and find a tough Homicide cop suspecting you of murder, and laugh your way out of it.

  "My pleasure to take you up to your suite, Mrs. Summers," I said. I beckoned to a waiting bellboy to take the lone suitcase. "Mr. Chambrun has already registered you so we can go straight up."

  "I'm going to leave you to Mark, my dear," Fails said. "I'm already very late for a business appointment. If there's any problem don't hesitate to call. I'll arrange for you to be put straight through."

  I found myself jabbering like an idiot as I walked Valerie across the lobby toward the south bank of elevators. Like a tour guide, I thought afterward, pointing to the shops, the bars and restaurants, the entrance to the Blue Lagoon, the popular nightclub that isn't, of course, open in the late morning.

  That firm, almost forbidding mouth of Valerie's relaxed in the tiniest of little smiles. "You're not obliged to try to entertain me, Mr. Haskell," she said.

  "It's not an obligation, Mrs. Summers. It would be a pleasure if I had a clue to what would amuse you."

  She and I and the bellboy were on the self-service elevator. The boy pushed the right button. The doors closed, noiselessly. The car started up—noiselessly. I glanced at Valerie and at the same moment she glanced at me. Both our heads were tilted back, looking up; not that we could see where we were going. I smiled at her.

  "Symbolic," I said. "Off into the wild blue yonder."

  She looked away. It hadn't struck her as so damned witty. I realized that after what she'd been through in the last hours even Groucho Marx goosing Margaret Dumont wouldn't produce a laugh. I remembered the haughty Miss Dumont saying to Groucho, "Do I make myself plain?" and Groucho replying, "Well, certainly somebody did." The quiet girl standing next to me had to be thinking about a man lying in his own blood with a hole in his head. Not a laughing matter.