Murder Goes Round and Round: A Pierre Chambrun Mystery Hardcover Read online

  There are two work shifts at the Beaumont—seven in the morning till seven at night, and seven at night till seven in the morning. There are some people who don't work that full night shift, and certain departments aren't functioning in the early hours of the morning —though it is a busy time in the hotel bars and nightclubs. But the people who had been working when Toby March left his friends, Colonel Watson and Millicent Huber, in the Blue Lagoon and went up to his suite to face whatever was waiting for him there, were not on duty now but were expected to return in about an hour. Chambrun gave me a list of key people to call at home. It couldn't be expected they were spending their time off listening to the radio and watching television. I found that most of the ones I reached hadn't been, and were shocked to hear what had happened. No one I talked to seemed to have seen or heard anything that seemed to be connected with a violence.

  Between the calls I was making from my office, my phone rang.

  "Haskell! What the hell is going on back there?"

  I felt my hand tighten on the phone. I had spent a lot of time recently making the arrangements for Toby March's engagement in the Blue Lagoon. There was no mistaking this bouncy voice. My caller was Frankie Pasqua.

  "Where the hell are you? The whole world has been looking for you!"

  "I just switched on the television and heard a special report," Pasqua said.

  "Why aren't you on your way here?"

  There was something a little chilling about Pasqua's laughter. "I've got some unfinished business where I am," he said. It said "woman" loud and clear.

  "You know your man has disappeared," I said.

  "Don't worry about Toby," he said. "He can take care of himself, whatever the situation."

  "You might wonder if you saw the shape his room was in and the gallons of blood spread around."

  "I think you can count on it not being Toby's blood," Pasqua said.

  "We've been wondering if it might be yours," I said.

  "Well, it's not! You thought Toby and I had a fight? I make that man's world work for him, Haskell."

  "The cops need you here," I said.

  "After breakfast in the morning," he said. "If I could contribute anything I'd come. But right now — "

  "Right now your girlfriend, Maggie, is here worrying about you."

  "Tell her to cheer up," Pasqua said. "When I explain it to her in the morning, she'll understand. Just let the cops know I'm okay, and that I'm of no use to them as far as this case is concerned. Don't worry about Toby. Hell probably be back long before I am."

  "When you show up here, Lieutenant Herzog will probably have a nice cell in the slammer waiting for you," I said.

  "You're a missing piece in his puzzle, and you're deliberately holding out on him."

  "Ill worry about that when the time comes," Pasqua said. He hung up on me.

  Herzog nearly hit the ceiling when I got to him with my account of Pasqua's call to me. I found him in Chambrun's office along with Chambrun, Jerry Dodd, and Colonel Watson, who seemed to have been accepted as an ally by the others.

  "Tomorrow morning after breakfast," Herzog fumed. "Who the hell does he think he is, obstructing justice?"

  "He says he doesn't have anything to tell you," I said.

  "I, goddamn it, have things to ask him!"

  "Wasn't he at all concerned about Toby March, his boss?" Jerry Dodd asked.

  "He said March could take care of himself."

  "Against a man swinging an iron poker at him?" Herzog asked.

  Chambrun broke his silence then, looking hard at me. "You have no doubt that it was Pasqua who talked to you, Mark?"

  "No doubt," I said. "You remember I spent a good part of a week negotiating March's contract for the Blue Lagoon."

  "What's so distinctive about his voice?" Herzog asked.

  "It's not so much the sound of his voice," I said, "but a kind of bright, bouncy way of talking."

  "That's quite true," Watson said. "It's a unique pattern, one you're not likely to forget when you hear it for a second time."

  "I think we mustn't forget one thing," Chambrun said. "We are missing a man who makes a profession of imitating voices."

  "Are you suggesting that what Haskell heard was Toby March imitating his friend?" Herzog asked.

  "When you have a master imitator on the loose, it's something to consider, isn't it, Lieutenant?"

  "But why?"

  "That phone call was designed to do two things, wasn't it?" Chambrun asked. "It was to assure us that Frank Pasqua was alive and well and in no trouble, and that Toby March was competent enough to take care of himself and also isn't in trouble."

  "We're supposed to think two cleaning women were fighting each other with an iron poker in 17C?" Jerry Dodd asked.

  "Something like that," Chambrun said.

  "Son of a bitch!" Herzog said.

  "We just have to wonder," Chambrun said.

  " 'Unfinished business.' Did he give you any idea what that might be?" Jerry asked me.

  "I got the distinct impression he was talking about a woman," I said.

  "What about that Maggie what's-her-name who is waiting around downstairs?"

  "He said he would explain everything to her when he sees her—after breakfast tomorrow," I said.

  "You honestly think he's going to turn up after breakfast tomorrow?" Herzog asked anyone who might answer.

  "If it was Pasqua on the phone, maybe," Chambrun said. "If it was Toby March, I'd say never!" He turned to Watson. "How bad is Toby March's face? I've heard it described as 'raw meat.'"

  "That's the way it was in the beginning," Watson said.

  "Pretty horrible. But no one I know has seen his face since the operation in London."

  "Then he could put on a hat, pull down the brim, and no one would give him a second look?" Chambrun asked.

  "I suppose that's possible," Watson said.

  "So he could have been coming and going here for the last day and nobody would notice him?" Chambrun asked.

  Id say that could be happening," Watson said. "I'd like to say one thing, Mr. Chambrun. I think perhaps I'd better not be sitting in with this group. You've gotten yourselves worked up to believing that Toby March is the villain of this story. I've known him too long and too well to believe anything like that for an instant. I don't propose to lend you a hand in proving that my friend is some kind of violent monster."

  "So help us prove that he isn't," Chambrun said.

  "Let's wait till after breakfast tomorrow morning," Watson said. "When Pasqua shows up, we'll probably get some missing answers."

  "If Pasqua shows up," Chambrun said. "God save me from a friend like him. I'm in deep trouble, and he has to solve his sex problems before offering me any help. I wouldn't need that kind of friend. And there's more to it than that."

  "More?"

  "Pasqua's financial security depends on Toby March's good health, doesn't it? Just for tomorrow's dollar, he wouldn't back away from helping Toby March in trouble."

  "Let's go over what we know for certain," Jerry Dodd said. "Toby finished his performance in the Blue Lagoon about one-thirty this morning. When it was finished, he joined you, Colonel Watson, and Miss Huber at your table for a sort of family reunion."

  "It wasn't much of a reunion," Watson said. "We were crushed by fans who wanted Toby's autograph. He was pretty exhausted from the night's doings and suggested we all retire and meet today when we were rested. He was to call us when he got moving later in the day. Of course, as you know, he never did."

  "But he did go up to his room after he left you," Jerry said. "The night elevator operator remembers him. Why not? Man in a black mask. I had one of my security men on the seventeenth floor to help ward off rubbernecking fans. He saw Toby let himself into his rooms at about three-thirty."

  "Where someone was waiting for him and the war started," Chambrun said.

  "With a security man just outside the door?" Watson asked.

  "The best soundproofing money c
an buy," Chambrun said.

  "My security man had one other item to report," Jerry Dodd said. "Pasqua's room adjoined Toby's suite on seventeen. There is a connecting door between 17C and 17D. That was unlocked on orders from Toby March. He wanted Pasqua to have free access to his rooms. They're built that way so that 17C can be enlarged for a big family."

  "So your man saw both Toby and Pasqua go into their rooms?" Watson asked.

  "Pasqua at two-thirty, Toby an hour later."

  "The important thing is, he never saw either of them leave," Chambrun said. "Until the maid discovered the wreckage in 17C, no one saw anyone come or go."

  "Your man stayed on duty all that time?" Watson asked Jerry.

  "No. Along about five o'clock, Toby's fans had stopped nosing around. My man was relieved and left the 17th floor."

  "So there is a stretch of about eight hours in which no one had a special reason to watch the rooms on seventeen?" Watson asked.

  "And in that time Toby March and Frank Pasqua have disappeared. The man who lost all that blood in 17C would have needed help to get out of there," Chambrun said. "Two men don't just walk away when one of them needs help without attracting attention. Unless they never left the hotel. The injured man, or dead man, whichever it is, could still be hidden somewhere in the hotel, Jerry. In the basement machinery areas, storerooms. The other man, who wasn't hurt, is long gone."

  "Well go over every inch of the place," Jerry said.

  "The whole thing may explain itself when Pasqua calls you tomorrow morning," Watson said.

  "If he calls," Chambrun said, "and if we haven't found his body hidden in one of the basement storerooms."

  3

  My assignment was to stay by my phone in case Pasqua or whoever was faking him should call. The hotel switchboard was alerted to be ready to trace any call that came my way. I waited in my office, and when the phone rang it wasn't from the outside. Jerry Dodd was calling from somewhere in the basement area.

  "We've found something down here, Mark," he said. "A dead man."

  "Oh, brother!"

  "It isn't Pasqua and it isn't Toby March," Jerry said. "No identification on him, and so far no one has been able to identify him. The boss wants you to have a look. You just might-"

  "How was he killed?" I asked. "I assume he didn't die a natural death."

  "Skull beaten in," Jerry said.

  "The poker in 17C?"

  "Possible. Possibly not. Coincidence if it was. Basement Two, north end, Mark. Step on it."

  The whole hotel army was congregated at the north end of Basement Two—Chambrun, Jerry, Doc Partridge, Lieutenant Herzog, and Larry Short, the security man who had been stationed on seventeen. The body was stretched out on a tool bench against the far wall.

  "Happy if you can tell us who this character is, Haskell," the police lieutenant said.

  It might be easy for you to say, "Yes, I've seen this man before" or "No, I've never seen him before." But my life is made up of daily encounters with hundreds of people moving through the hotel lobby and in the service departments. Unless I have personal contact with someone, I am surrounded by a blur of faces I have no reason to recall.

  This man was tall, dark-skinned—not black. I guessed Spanish, perhaps South American. The left side of his forehead and the hair on the left side of his head were matted with blood. He had on an expensive, well-tailored suit. That didn't suggest a tradesman who might have business in the basement.

  "No dice," I told Lieutenant Herzog.

  "You're sure?"

  "I'm sure I don't remember if I ever saw him."

  "No wallet or any identification," Herzog said. "But the wounds that killed him are the kind that could have been made by that poker up in 17C."

  "But I don't think this man bled enough to account for all the blood we found up there," Doc Partridge said.

  "There are dozens of tools down here in the basement that could have inflicted his wounds," Chambrun said. "Well keep looking."

  "I say his wounds were inflicted in Toby March's suite and he was brought down here later," Herzog said. "After the security man went off duty."

  "But how did he get into March's rooms?" Chambrun asked.

  "Not while I was on duty," Larry Short said. "I went on about midnight. Not after that. He didn't go in with Pasqua when he came up at two-thirty. He didn't go in with March an hour later. He wasn't among the people I hassled with who were after autographs."

  At that moment, another one of Jerry Dodd's men guided Watson and Millicent Huber down the basement corridor. Millicent Huber was hanging on to Watson's arm as if her life depended on it.

  "Sorry to put you through this, Miss Huber," Chambrun said.

  Watson disengaged himself from Millicent's clutch and went straight over to the bench where the murdered man was stretched out. He looked down at the man for a long time, bent down to look more closely.

  "I don't remember ever seeing him before," he said finally. He held out his hand to Millicent. She took it and moved reluctantly toward the body. She let out a little gasp when she saw the bloodied head.

  "No! No, I've never seen him before," she said.

  "I take it you think this is connected with what happened upstairs," Watson said.

  "Be something of a coincidence if it isn't, wouldn't you say?" Chambrun answered.

  "Of course, until they do an autopsy on this man," Doc Partridge said, "we won't know if he lost enough blood to account for what was found upstairs."

  "If he was just left to bleed?" Herzog asked.

  "If he was killed instantly, he wouldn't go on bleeding and bleeding," Doc Partridge said. "No heart action to pump it out!"

  "I had high hopes for you and Miss Huber, Colonel," Chambrun said. "The dead man's coloring suggests a Mediterranean country. Since most of March's early career was European, and you and Miss Huber were part of his life in those days, I had high hopes this man would be an old acquaintance of yours."

  "Not this one," Watson said.

  Chambrun turned to the woman, who was still trembling like a leaf. "If Toby would confide in anyone, it would be you, Miss Huber. Has he ever mentioned an enemy who might have threatened him, or whom he feared?"

  "No! When I first met Toby I was a nurse in the hospital where he came for repairs to his brutally damaged face. We ... we got to be friends. In time, that led to intimate conversations about our lives, our families, and eventually the business world into which he found himself launched. I never heard Toby mention an enemy whom he feared or distrusted."

  "Frank Pasqua?"

  "Most trusted of everyone," Millicent said.

  "The only people who might know of some kind of feuding in the music business are the musicians," Watson said. "Ben Lewis, Sam Callahan, Dan Potter, Dave Morton.

  They're all here in the hotel. If the dead man is someone in the music world, one of those boys might know him."

  "Get them down here," Herzog ordered Jerry Dodd.

  "It probably is just a coincidence," Watson said. "Not connected with what went on upstairs."

  Chambrun gave him a twisted little smile. "You go to your church and 111 go to mine," he said.

  Jerry Dodd's people produced the four young men who were the musicians for Toby March's extraordinary act. They had been told why they were wanted. They stared curiously at the dead man and then at each other. It was obvious they didn't know the man by sight.

  "None of us knows this guy," Ben Lewis said. He was the one I'd met. Sunday was their day off, and they were casually dressed —gaudy sport shirts, blue jeans, sneakers. It was almost like a uniform.

  "Could he be some kind of fan of March's whom you might have seen in your audience?" Chambrun asked.

  "We can't see anyone in the audience," Lewis said. "The stage lights are so bright and focused directly on us, we can't even see anyone in the front row."

  "I'd appreciate it if you four boys and Colonel Watson and Miss Huber would come up to my office," Chambrun said. "I'd like t
o talk to those of you who've had an everyday life with March and Pasqua."

  "Let me remind you, Mr. Chambrun," Lieutenant Herzog said, "that I am officially investigating this case."

  "Let me remind you, Lieutenant," Chambrun said, "that what has happened here was in my hotel and the people it has happened to were working for me."

  "The dead man wasn't working for you!"

  "But he was almost certainly killed by someone who was," Chambrun said, his voice as cold as a winter wind.

  "The murderer could be just a common hotel thief who managed to get into March's suite."

  "Then one of these people may be able to tell me what's missing," Chambrun said, motioning us to follow him to the elevator.

  When we got upstairs, I could tell that someone had come into the office behind me. I turned. It was Jerry Dodd.

  "I've got one for you, boss," Jerry said. "Registered in 1503 is a couple —Colonel and Mrs. Archibald Watson."

  "Colonel and Mrs. Watson?"

  "What's interesting about it is," Jerry went on, "that Mrs. Watson turns out to be Millicent Huber, who is supposed to be Toby March's lady."

  "My God!"

  At that moment, as if on cue, Watson, the lady we'd just been discussing, and the four young musicians crowded through the office door.

  "You wanted to talk to us?" Watson said in his clipped, British voice.

  "You are full of surprises," Chambrun said, "especially you, Mrs. Watson."

  The woman lowered her head, moving it from side to side. "You know?" she asked in an unsteady voice.

  "Not much fails to drift my way in this hotel," Chambrun said, "except the identity of that dead man in the basement. You still say he couldn't possibly be Toby March?"

  "No way," Millicent said.

  "The phony registration was Toby's idea," Watson said.

  "It was his idea that you should be living with his lady?" Chambrun asked.

  "Just a front," Watson said. "I'm actually staying at the University Club, a couple of blocks down the avenue."

  "If I stayed close to Toby," Millicent Huber said, "I'd be swarmed by people wanting me to point out Toby. His business, his career, depend on people not being able to identify him."

  "It occurred to me," Jerry Dodd broke in, "the man down in the basement might be a fan. One of you young fellows might recognize him from the audience."