Murder in High Places Read online

  Chambrun hesitated a moment. He reached for his Tbrkish coffee, which, for the first time ever, wasn't there. "Right out of a spy novel," he said.

  Welch smiled his bright smile. **Isn't it?" he said.

  Chambrun, who never fidgets, was fidgeting. His mind was on Ruysdale, who was now more than two hours late. **Ijet me tell you how it is, Mr. Welch," he said. **I don't run a sanctuary against violence here at the Beaumont. I provide the best in service, in food, in wine, in entertainment. And I promise privacy for famous people who don't want to be bothered by reporters, cameras, autograph hounds, and just plain rubbemeckers. I can provide you with all those things plus the rather special seclusion of Penthouse Three. But I cannot supply you with bodyguards, and I am loath to have would-be assassins stalking my corridors. I am obligated to all my guests, not just one with special problems. Under normal circumstances I would do just what you suggested—tell you to go peddle your papers somewhere else."

  *'But?" Welch asked, still smiling.

  **A long, long time ago," Chambrun said, his eyes narrowed, **the Nazis had a price on my head in Paris. I would have died then, slowly and very unpleasantly, if it hadn't been for Claude Perrault. He has asked me to help and protect you, Mr. Welch, a friend of his. I owe him that much and more. So, Mark will install you in Penthouse Three, explain the routines to you, and I will instruct our security people to keep a special eye out for you. And now, if you will excuse me, I have a somewhat understaffed hotel to run."

  'Tm more than grateful, Mr. Chambrun," Welch said.

  "Thank Claude Perrault," Chambrun said.

  I TOOK Larry Welch down the hallway and rang the special bell for the roof elevator. Welch wouldn't let his precious briefcase out of his hands, so I carried his bag, which seemed to weigh a ton. As we waited for the elevator, Welch remarked that he had somehow expected a warmer, more outgoing person in Chambrun than he had found.

  "'You turned up on a bad day," I told him. '*His secretary, who is his right arm, hasn't turned up this morning, and without explanation or any word."

  "Boyfriend?" Welch suggested.

  "Maybe, but I think not," I said. "We've been checking police, hospitals, the works. Nothing."

  The elevator door opened and we were confronted by Dick Berger, the day operator. Dick, a blond boy of German extraction, has a rather stiff, professional smile. He is more than just an elevator operator. He is enrolled in Jerry Dodd's security force and gets paid a salary that would have made the other operators green with envy if they'd known.

  "This is Mr. Lawrence Welch," I told Dick. "He's going to be in Penthouse Three for a few days."

  "Good morning, sir," Dick said.

  "Mr. Welch is to get Treatment A," I told Dick.

  We got into the car and started the noiseless climb to the roof. **Has Mark explained to you how Treatment A works, Mr. Welch?" Dick asked.

  '^Sounds like a massage under a sunlamp/' Welch said, laughing.

  *'See this little phone here in the car?'* Dick asked, pointing to the instrument. The phone has three buttons on it, one, two, and three. It connects with the three penthouses on the roof. Dick went on to explain. **There is an instrument just like this next to your regular phone in Penthouse Three. It connects only with this phone in the car. If someone asks to be taken up to the roof to see you, Mr. Welch, I call you on this phone. I give you the name your caller has given me. If you say yes I bring him up. If you say no, I turn him away."

  '"Anybody can give you any name," Welch said, his smile gone.

  "You will describe the person for me if you have any doubts. If you want, I will ask him for an ID. I don't bring him till you say yes."

  "'You aren't on this car twenty-four hours a day," Welch said.

  "There are three of us in eight-hour shifts," Dick said, "Lucky Lewis, Bob Ballard, and me. Always someone who will handle visitors just the same way."

  "Someone who asks for Mr. Chambrun, or the lady in Penthouse Two—"

  "Mrs. Haven," Dick said.

  "Someone who asks for them would have access to Penthouse Three once they got up to the roof, wouldn't they?"

  "Yes, but neither one of them receives strangers they don't know," Dick said.

  "Fire stairs?" Welch asked. "Couldn't someone take one of the other elevators to the forty-fourth floor and then come up the fire stairs?"

  "The fire stairs lock on the inside," I told Welch. "Let people out, not in. It's about as foolproof as you can make it, Mr. Welch, unless you don't trust Chambrun or Mrs. Haven."

  "I guess I have to, don't I?" Welch said.

  The view of New York and its mammoth skyscrapers and its guarding rivers from the roof of the Beaumont is pretty spectacular on a day like this. Welch and I had only taken a few steps toward Penthouse 3 at the far end of the roof when we were greeted by a small but hostile sound.

  "I forgot to mention another source of protection," I said. "We call him Mrs. Haven's Japanese gentleman friend."

  At that moment from around the corner of Penthouse 2 came a small, black and white Japanese spaniel, snubnosed and about as unfriendly as a gargoyle.

  The lady was right behind him, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and gardening gloves. Victoria Haven grows flowers of every conceivable variety in the fenced-in space behind her penthouse. If I told you I have a kind of crush on Victoria Haven, you might be inclined to laugh. She admits, without hesitation, that she was born in the year 1900, and Chambrun suggests she may be cheating a little. She is tall, stands very straight, and has a mass of henna-colored hair, a color that God never intended for humans. Her face is wrinkled, but her high cheekbones, wide, generous mouth, and bright blue eyes are remnants of very great beauty. Many years ago when parts of the Beaumont were co-op apartments she had bought Penthouse 2 and lived there ever since. ''With my Japanese friend," she would tell anyone who asked. The spaniel's name is Toto, and there must have been five or six of them over the years, identical in appearance and disposition. It indicated some kind of special drag Victoria Haven has with Chambrun, because pets are not allowed in the Beaumont. Toto not only lives on the roof with his mistress, but every afternoon at five o'clock he goes down to the Trapeze Bar with her, where he sits beside her on his own red satin cushion and looks with contempt at the people who crowd around his great lady for conversation and old-world charm—and very modem wit.

  ''Toto, do go somewhere and be silent!" Victoria said.

  I introduced my companion to her. "Mr. Welch will be staying in Penthouse Three for a few days."

  *'You're Larry Welch, the writer, aren't you?" the lady said. "I read your book on the assassination of President Sadat with interest and, I must admit, confusion. What a tangled web!"

  'Im flattered if you found it good reading, Mrs. Haven," Welch said.

  "If we're to be neighbors, you might as well call me Victoria. I should tell you I've never liked it shortened to Vicky. There's always a drink in my place, Larry, if you get lonely. Perhaps you can unlock the mysteries of the Middle East for me.'^

  Welch gave her a quick, sharp look and then smiled again. "I just might be able to do that," he said. "You can depend on it. I'll come knocking, Victoria—if Toto doesn't take my arm off."

  "Like most men," Victoria said, "Toto threatens a lot, but he isn't much for real action. Well, I must get back to my tulips."

  She turned and left us, Toto giving us a snort and following behind.

  Watching her, Larry Welch shook his head. "Did I understand Chambrun to say 'octogenarian'?"

  "Most popular chorus girl on Broadway, just after World War One," I told him.

  "She's still got a great pair of legs," Larry Welch said.

  "And wants you to notice them," I said. We'd reached the front door of Penthouse 3. I'd brought keys from Chambrun's office and I opened up what was to be Welch's hide-out for the next few days.

  'This the only way in—this front door?" he asked.

  'There's a back door. You've got an awninged terrace
out there, view of the East River. Running hot or cold martinis can be arranged."

  Larry's light mood had gone. ''Lx)cks like this?" He was pointing at the double snap locks and the chain on the inside of the front door.

  ''Back door like this, too," I said. "It makes some of our guests feel secure. They can be left unlocked and you'll be just as safe."

  "Maid service? Room service?" he asked.

  "When you want the maid to do her thing, ask for her. You want meals or drinks served, all you have to do is pick up the phone."

  "Anyone can pose as a maid or a waiter," he said.

  "We've had some pretty nervous people who were just as hot or hotter than you staying here," I said. "Nothing's ever happened to any of them."

  "There's always a first time," Larry said, frowning.

  I didn't take that as a prophecy, not then.

  When Td given Larry the guided tour of the three-bedroom penthouse with its three baths, kitchen, and well-stocked liquor cabinet—drinks were on the house if you stay in this place—and showed him his two phones, the one to the outside world and the one to the

  private elevator, I left him. If Ruysdale hadn't been beard from, Chambrun was going to be sky-high. He would have discovered in the first three hours of this working day how many things Ruysdale did to keep things running smoothly without his really knowing she was doing them.

  Dolly Malone was still at Ruysdale's desk when I got back to the second floor.

  *'The Man is on the move somewhere/' she told me, ** checking on everyone who might possibly have seen Betsy somewhere. I suggested family, somebody suddenly sick, but Mr. Chambrun says she doesn't have any family."

  "He is her family," I said.

  "He's asked for a dozen things Fve never heard of," Dolly said. "You wouldn't believe the things she must do for him, have ready for him before he asks. I think you have to be some kind of genius to work for him."

  "You have to know him," I said. "Betsy's had years to learn."

  "You know something, Mark? If she doesn't show up soon, he may have to close down the hotel!" She was only half kidding.

  I started circulating down on the lobby level, looking for Chambrun. It was getting on toward noon, and the early lunch crowd was beginning to sift into the hotel. Those so-called three-martini lunches begin in the Trapeze Bar on the mezzanine, the Spartan Bar, the Grill Room, and the main dining room at the lobby level. I sensed a kind of tension among the staff. Johnny Thacker, the day bell captain, said it best for all of them.

  '"Betsy would never not show without letting the Man know. Something bad has to have happened to her.^'

  There were things I should be doing, but I wasn't. There was a luncheon for Republican Women Voters in one of the private dining rooms. I should have been checking to see if everything was in order. I left that to chance. I had to find Chambrun. If he needed help, I wanted to be there to help him.

  I got on his trail a few minutes later through Waters, the doorman on the Fifth Avenue side of the hotel. Waters is a big, pleasant, gray-haired guy who has worn the Beaumont's doorman's uniform forever.

  "He went out of the hotel, Mr. Haskell, about forty minutes ago," Waters told me. ''Not like himself."

  ''How do you mean?"

  "You know how he is. Always stops to say hello, asks me about my family, my kids, my grandchild. Even remembers their names. This time he just walked by me. I asked him if he wanted me to get him a taxi. He didn't answer, just walked on north up the avenue."

  Leaving the hotel in the middle of the day was a rarity for Chambrun. That was the time when guests, m^nbers of the hotel's board of directors, and just friends would be looking for him. With Ruysdale missing, I couldn't imagine him leaving, in case there might be some word from her or about her.

  From the front desk I called Dolly Malone up in Ruysdale's office. "Did he say where he was going, Dolly?"

  "'No. He just walked out."

  "Was there any phone call?"

  "The police called him just before he walked out," she said.

  "Did you listen in on the call?"

  "He didn't tell me to."

  Ruysdale would have known, without being told, that kind of call should be monitored, probably recorded, at least notes taken. I called the police precinct and talked to the captain there. As far as he knew, no one had called Chambrun.

  "'Unfortunately, we have nothing to call about," he told me. "Not a sniff of the missing lady. We've got a general alarm out on her. Some cop out on the beat might have called Chambrun, but if it was anything important, he'd also have checked in here."

  About an hour later, twenty past one to be exact, I was at the front desk talking to Atterbury when I saw Chambrun come in the Fifth Avenue entrance. He looked straight at me—or anyway through me, because he didn't speak—and headed toward the elevators. Several people tried to speak to him, but he was like a runner in a marathon, concentrating on the last few yards to the winning tape. He just kept going, stepped into the roof car with Dick Berger, and was gone.

  Fifteen minutes later somebody flagged me down to tell me that Chambrun wanted to see me in his penthouse. Jerry Dodd reached the roof car at the same time I did. He'd also been sunmioned.

  "He's heard something about Ruysdale, or he has some plan of action," Jerry suggested.

  Dick Berger didn't have to go through any of his telephone routines with us. Jerry and Ruysdale and I didn't have to get permission from anyone to go up to the penthouse level. You could say we had season passes.

  I rang the doorbell of Penthouse 1 when we got there, and there was a clicking sound, which meant that Chambrun was pressing the trip-lock button by his desk in the living room. Jerry and I went in and then down the short foyer to the living room.

  Chambrun was standing with his back to us by the French windows that looked out onto his terrace. In the distance I could see Victoria Haven working among her brightly colored tulips. Chambrun didn't turn to greet us.

  "Thank you both for coming," he said. It was a voice I'd never heard before, flat, cold, colorless. Jerry and I glanced at each other. **I wanted to tell you that I've heard from Ruysdale."

  "Oh, great!" Jerry said. *'Is she okay."

  "She's fine/' Chambnin said. He still didn't turn to look at us. "A personal emergency that will keep her away for a few days."

  "Without letting you know in advance?" I asked.

  "She'd asked someone else to get to me, but there was some kind of slip up. What I want you two to do is spread the word among the staff that the emergency is over. The lost is found."

  "I don't mind telling you, boss, this will relieve a lot of us," Jerry said.

  "'So, get to it, please," Chambnin said, still not turning.

  Jerry and I started for the door.

  "Wait!" It was almost a shout from Chambnin.

  He had turned and I almost didn't recognize him. His face was like a gray rock in which deep grooves had been etched. His mouth was a thin knife slit.

  "'I can't do it," he said.

  "'Do what, boss?" Jerry asked.

  Chambnin sank down in the armchair near the windows. For a moment he lowered his head and covered his face with his hands. In all the years I've worked for him and with him I'd never seen a moment of weakness like this. I saw his shoulders heave, as if he'd actually been choking off a sob.

  Then he lowered his hands, stood up, and faced us. '^Ruysdale is not safe, is not involved in some personal business," he said. "She has been kidnapped."

  It was too far out to make sense to me for a moment, but Jerry Dodd was right on the ball. "Ransom?" he asked.

  "You might call it that. I am instructed to do certain things if I want to see Ruysdale alive again. If I do what they tell me to do, I will become an accessory to murder. If I don't do what they tell me to do, I will also become an accessory to murder, Ruysdale's murder!"

  TWO

  It had begun with that call Dolly Malone had mentioned from the "police/'

 
''Voice I never heard before," Chambrun told us. "Not a typical American speech pattern. English, Irish, a foreigner educated in England. This voice sunply told me that if I wanted to see Ruysdale alive again, I should leave my office, say nothing to anyone, leave the hotel, walk a block north on Fifth Avenue, and then east toward Madison. In a bar and grill on the northwest corner of Madison I would find a glassed-in phone booth. I would wait for someone to call in on it. I had, this voice told me, a half an hour, no more."

  Chambrun took a cigarette from a lacquered box on the table and lit it. I thought his hands weren't quite steady.

  "I wanted to think it was some kind of a crank call," he said. "Everybody in the hotel knew Ruysdale was missing. Somebody trying to be funny? Instinct told me it was for real, so I followed instructions. Tom's Bar and Grill is the name of the place I went to. Took me twenty minutes, I suppose. The minute I reached that public phone booth the phone rang. Too early for me, I thought, but I answered it. It was for me. That told me something, Jerry. I had been watched, followed; the minute I reached that booth someone was signaled and the call made."

  "And so, the message?" Jerry said.

  "It was the same voice that had made the earlier call," Chambrun said. ''He had Ruysdale, he told me. She had been picked up shortly after eleven last night on her way from the hotel to her apartment. She would be all right as long as I did exactly as I was told. She would be released unharmed, he told me, 'provided you do as I tell you, Chambrun, and we don't run into bad luck.' I asked him what kind of bad luck. *There are always unexpected turns in the road in this kind of venture,' he said. 'It won't be my fault if Miss Ruysdale doesn't make it back to you.' I asked him what he wanted me to do.''

  "And?..." Jerry Dodd asked. He was impatient for facts.

  "It all related to Larry Welch, over there in Penthouse Three," Chambrun told us. "The minute he walked into my office I sensed that he was bad luck. But I owe my Ufe to the man who sent Welch to me."

  "And what are you supposed to do?"

  "Primarily, nothing," Chambrun said. He punched out his cigarette in a brass ashtray on the table and promptly lit a fresh one. "This charter on the phone knows exactly what our routines are, Jerry. He knows about the phone in the roof car. He knows that anyone who wants to see Welch will have to get Welch's approval over that car phone. What I must not do is change that routine in any way. I must not add any extra security. I must, above all, not let Welch know what is going on. It could frighten him off, send him out of the hotel and into some other hiding place. The man on the phone wants Welch where he is, with nothing changed. 'I know every detail of your operation, Mr. Chambrun. Change anything, and I will be aware of it in a matter of minutes. You will be watched every second, right around the clock. Not just you, but your whole staff.'"