Murder Goes Round and Round: A Pierre Chambrun Mystery Hardcover Page 4

  "We told Mr. Chambrun earlier that we can't see the audience," Ben Lewis said. "The stage lights are focused directly on us. I couldn't recognize my own mother in the first row!"

  "Can you draw me a sketch of how March looks?" Chambrun asked Millicent.

  "I've made Toby a solemn promise never to do that for anyone. His career could depend on it," she replied.

  "His career may depend on our being able to locate him now," Jerry Dodd said.

  "You had better, all of you, look at the alternatives in this case," Chambrun said. "Two-thirty in the morning, Frank Pasqua goes into his room, which joins March's. At three-thirty, March goes into his room. Neither man has been seen again, but there was violence in which someone had nearly bled to death. March or Pasqua? Not the man in the basement. He didn't bleed enough, according to Doc Partridge, to account for what we found in 17C. So March or Pasqua.

  Why would either man take the other man away without asking for help that was right at the other end of a phone line in the room?"

  "Did either March or Pasqua have a personal doctor somewhere in New York?" Jerry Dodd asked.

  "I don't know of any doctor," Millicent Huber said. "Certainly Toby didn't have one."

  "So if Pasqua had one, why would he call in about 'unfinished business' that suggested a girl?" Chambrun asked. "He should have been deeply concerned if March was the person who was wounded. That phone call has to have been a phony."

  "And you think Toby made it, faking Pasqua's voice?" Watson asked.

  "Who else?"

  "That theory is pure guesswork," Watson said.

  "So give me a more intelligent guess," Chambrun said. "There isn't a reason I can see for anyone but March making that fake call."

  "Only you think it was faked," Watson said.

  "And you think Pasqua would leave his boss, his bread-and-butter, seriously hurt while he kept a date with a girl?"

  "He didn't take what he heard on the radio seriously."

  "Why not?"

  "Because he left him in 17C alive and well."

  "Your way, nothing makes sense," Chambrun said. "March was the last person seen by Jerry's man going into the suite on seventeen. Pasqua was already there."

  "In his room."

  "But able to walk into March's room without showing himself to the security man."

  "And there he finds the dead man in the basement, not yet dead. He knows who he is, or just takes it for granted he is a hotel thief, or a greedy fan of March's. They fight, and Pas-qua slugs the man with the fireplace poker, fatally. He waits for March to show up so they can decide together what to do with the corpse."

  "If the dead man is dead then."

  "If he is, they must decide how to dispose of him."

  "If he isn't and is just being held prisoner by Pasqua, what happens then?"

  Watson shook his head slowly. "So, the stranger gets possession of the weapon and severely beats one of the other two, causing the possibly fatal bleeding."

  "Pasqua or March?"

  "Has to be one of them."

  "So why does the one who is left take the wounded man away from the hotel?"

  "Because you haven't found him doesn't mean he isn't somewhere here in the hotel," Watson said.

  "We'll find him if he is," Jerry Dodd said. "We'll go through every room in the place, guests or not."

  "They didn't park the dead man in one of the guest's rooms," Watson said.

  "And who killed him?"

  "March or Pasqua in a second fight," Jerry suggested.

  "And why hide him?" Chambrun asked. "Why not call security?"

  "When you have the answer to that, you've got the case solved," Watson said.

  Chambrun turned to Jerry. "Get every inch of this place searched," he said. "Ill be up in my penthouse."

  "Giving up?" Watson asked.

  "Like most of us, I need a breather," Chambrun said. "The press and media people aren't going to ease up."

  There are three penthouses on the roof. Chambrun occupies one. The second one is kept ready for special and important guests. The third one is occupied and owned by a very special old lady, Victoria Haven. She has owned it since the days before Chambrun and his people bought the Beaumont. She was allowed to stay on and is certainly one of Chambrun's cherished friends.

  There was another reason for Chambrun's rather abrupt leaving of the scene. There was a lady waiting for him up in his penthouse; Betsy Ruysdale, his fabulous secretary. She has golden-blond hair, a sexy figure, and a marvelous sense of humor that makes her the only one able to get Chambrun to smile and laugh, a talent none of the rest of us has.

  At his desk, Chambrun dialed four numbers — an in-house call.

  "Sorry I left you hanging out to dry," he said when someone answered. It had to be Betsy. "If you have been listening to the radio or watching the tube, you'll know why. Well, 111 bring you up to date in a few minutes."

  The colonel, Millicent Huber, and the four musicians had no idea to whom he was talking.

  "Ill be back presently," Chambrun said to them.

  I knew later from Betsy what happened next. Chambrun went up to the penthouse where she had been waiting for him. She hadn't been watching or listening to the news, so he told her what they had found in 17C; the bloody disappearance of both Toby March and Frank Pasqua without any

  call for help; the dead stranger in the basement. While he was still telling it all to her, the phone rang. He was tempted not to answer. He wanted just a little time free of the mess. But the phone rang and rang. He answered.

  "Victoria!" he said.

  It was the octogenarian lady who lived in the penthouse across the roof from him. Victoria Haven's unsteady voice was shakier than usual.

  "I know what's been going on, Pierre. The radio. How horrible!"

  "Pretty ugly," he said.

  "But that isn't why I've called. There's a man out on the roof snooping around your penthouse, trying to look in the windows."

  "You recognize him?"

  "No, but you know my eyesight."

  "The woods are full of crazies tonight," Chambrun said. "Thanks for calling."

  He explained to Betsy and walked out onto the roof through a side door. She heard him call out, "Hey, you!"

  And then there were two sharp explosions. They sounded like what she imagined were gunshots. She ran to the door and called out, "Pierre, Pierre!"

  The phone rang. It was Victoria Haven again. "My God, what happened, Betsy? It sounded like shots. Pierre is lying face down outside your dining-room windows."

  Betsy ran out onto the roof. Chambrun was where Victoria had said he was, face down under the dining-room windows, motionless.

  "Pierre!"

  Betsy knelt beside him, touched his face. Her hand came away bloody. Old Mrs. Haven was stumbling across the roof toward her.

  "He's hurt!" Betsy called out. "Call Dr. Partridge, Victoria. Tell him Pierre's been shot. It's an emergency."

  She felt frantically for a pulse at his wrists. Either there was none, or she was being clumsy in her panic.

  The wound was in the side of his head, at his left temple. She took a handkerchief out of her pocket and tried to stop the bleeding with it. She felt herself shaking from head to foot. It was more serious than anything she could handle. There was no response of any kind when she spoke his name. Not even the twitch of an eyelid.

  Part Two

  1

  Dr. Partridge arrived with two bellhops carrying an emergency stretcher.

  "Oh, my God!" he said, after his first quick examination.

  "Is he — ?" Betsy asked.

  "He's alive," the doctor said, "but we've got to get him to the hospital in a hurry. It's a very near thing, Betsy. Who shot him?"

  "I have no way of knowing. Mrs. Haven saw someone snooping around out on the roof and warned Pierre. He went out on the roof to scare the person off. Then there were two shots."

  "Both of them hit him. It will be a miracle if—"

>   They loaded Chambrun onto the stretcher and hurried off with him. Mrs. Haven was standing by, clinging desperately to Betsy.

  "I—I sent him out there. I never dreamed — "

  "Of course you didn't."

  I got back into the situation live a little after that. When

  Chambrun had headed for his penthouse, I'd gone to my own office, which adjoins his, leaving Watson, Millicent Huber, and the four musicians to fend for themselves. There would be nationwide publicity to deal with presently, and there still was not a satisfactory story to tell about the disappearance of Toby March and Frank Pasqua, and the dead man in the basement. I was working on it when Betsy Ruys-dale got me on the phone with the grim news about Chambrun.

  In a state of shock, I headed for Dr. Partridge's office. He was there, looking a little shaken himself.

  "They've taken Pierre to St. Mark's hospital," he told me. "Dr. Horace Lockwood, the best brain specialist in the city, is taking care of him."

  "And-?"

  "Nothing positive yet, Mark. You may think it's good news if I tell you I'd guess Pierre's chances were about fifty-fifty. I don't feel optimistic."

  "I'm going over to St. Mark's to see him," I said.

  "Not much point. If he comes to, he wouldn't recognize you or speak to you. It will be a miracle if he ever gets back to anything like normal."

  "He'd expect me to stand behind him," I said. "Just on the chance he might know I was there — "

  "As far as I know," the doctor said, "there's no lead of any kind to the person who shot him. If someone else had been shot, searching for that gunman is what Chambrun would be doing, not holding hands with the victim."

  "I'm not Chambrun," I said.

  "You're part of him," the doctor said. "Betsy is part of him,

  Jerry Dodd is part of him, the whole damned staff is part of him. Put yourselves together and you've got the same talents working for you. Don't stall, Mark. You have a would-be killer to catch."

  He was right, of course. We should all be huddled together working out a plan of action. I headed upstairs for the penthouses. Jerry Dodd was already there with old Mrs. Haven. He hadn't needed anyone to tell him where to go.

  "I feel guilty, terribly guilty," Mrs. Haven said, for my benefit. "I told Pierre there was someone out there instead of calling Jerry. I should have known Pierre would try to handle things himself."

  "But you saw the man who shot him," I said.

  "Not really," Mrs. Haven said. "My eyesight is too poor."

  "Medium height," Jerry said. "Wearing a snap-brim hat which would have hidden his face."

  "You saw the shooting?" I asked the old lady.

  She nodded, her mouth muscles twitching. "I saw Pierre come out, move around toward the rear of the penthouse. Then there were two bright flashes and I knew-I knew. I saw Pierre go down —"

  "And the man?"

  "He came out from behind the penthouse and ran for the elevators."

  "Nothing memorable about him?"

  "Very quick, very agile."

  "But if you saw him down in the lobby or out on the street, you couldn't finger him?" Jerry asked.

  "I'm afraid not, Jerry. He was just a shadow."

  Jerry made an impatient gesture. "We seem to be caught up in a crazy game," he said. "We're looking for a popular musician who wouldn't be recognized if he walked out on the Palace Theater stage. We're looking for an assassin who could step up beside us at a bar and not be recognized, though he was seen. We've got a dead man on our hands who gives us no clue to who he is or where he comes from."

  "You connected all three things?" I asked.

  Jerry gave me a sour look. "We have a murder, an attempted murder, and a disappearance that involved much violence and that could mean another murder. All almost within shouting distance of each other, all in the space of an hour and a half or so. Are you innocent-minded enough to assume they have no connection?"

  "I guess that would be hard to swallow."

  "Bet on it," Jerry said. "I'd like to get Betsy to have a look at that guy in the basement. She may be able to connect him to Chambrun."

  "When Chambrun couldn't himself?"

  "All kinds of crackpots try to get to him, and it's Betsy's job to keep them out," Jerry said. "That guy might ring a bell with her."

  "You can be sure she followed Chambrun's ambulance to the hospital."

  "That figures. Well, the guy in the basement isn't going anywhere. When she gets back, tell Betsy I need to see her."

  "Will do."

  Sleep never crossed my mind as a necessity. My thoughts, my emotions were all at the hospital where Chambrun was, I hoped, fighting for survival. Downstairs outside my office, it appeared that half the press corps in the United States was waiting for some kind of answer from me, first as to what had happened to Toby March, and second, how was Chambruri doing. I had no positive information on either score. Cham-brun had still been alive ten minutes ago. March and Frank Pasqua had disappeared into limbo, without a clue as to where that limbo might be.

  There was a red-haired girl among the reporters who was trying to edge her way toward me. Maggie Hanson. Her face was the color of a white china plate. It wasn't reportorial curiosity but fear of some sort that produced that pallor. She finally got close enough to me to speak. "I need to talk to you, Mr. Haskell," she said. "Join the army," I said, gesturing to the crowd around us. "In private," she said. "My name is Margaret Hanson, Frank Pasqua's girlfriend." "Try that door over there and wait inside for me," I said. I made a brief speech to the reporters. There was no explanation as to what had happened to March and Pasqua. No one could identify the man who had shot Chambrun, who was just hanging on by a hair. When I had anything, I'd pass it on to them. Then I followed the Hanson girl into my office. She was sitting at my desk, clinging to the arms of my desk chair. Her whole body was shaking.

  "There's nothing I can tell you," I said. "I had a phone call I thought was Pasqua, but some doubt has been thrown on that." "What kind of doubt? Didn't he identify himself?" "Yes. And I'd had dealings with him. I thought I recognized his voice without any question. He said he'd heard on the radio or TV what had happened here. But he was certain Toby March could take care of himself. He had unfinished business' to take care of."

  "What kind of unfinished business?"

  "He was laughing when he said it. I thought he was talking about a girl."

  "Never! Not in New York. Here I'm the only girl in his life."

  "Did he have a date with you he hadn't kept?"

  "Yes and no," the girl said. "He has a date with me every night he's in New York. But on an opening night, with a specially curious crowd present, he stays with Toby until it's completely over."

  "But he didn't stay with him last night," I said. "He went up to the seventeenth floor at two-thirty. Our security man saw him. Toby March didn't go up until an hour later. He was also seen by security."

  "None of it makes any sense," the girl said. "He would have called me if he wasn't coming—and he didn't. Hasn't. And why would he call you?"

  "He knew me and that I would know exactly what was going on here. Chambrun thought March might have faked his voice on the phone to me. Possible?" I asked.

  "Toby could imitate him so well I couldn't have told the difference myself," the girl said.

  "Then the call could have been a fake —March for Pas-qua," I said. "We were meant to believe Pasqua was safe when he wasn't."

  "Frank has no reason to hide!"

  "But March does?"

  "Hiding is his life," the girl said. "Would you believe, I traveled around Europe with them for two seasons and I never -saw Toby without his mask. I wouldn't know him if he walked into this room now without his mask. It was Frank's job to help him keep his identity hidden."

  "So that's what he's doing? Keeping him out of sight?" I asked.

  "If Toby was recognized, identified by the police, his whole ball game would be over. His career would be over. Frank would do anythin
g to help Toby see to it that this doesn't happen."

  "We have to believe one of them is badly hurt," I said.

  "Frank would hide Toby," she said. "And Toby would hide Frank if Frank was hurt and might somehow expose him, by speaking his name or calling out to him."

  "Is there some place one of them would take the other in a crisis like that?" I asked.

  "If Toby has friends in this country, I don't know who they are. There's no one close to Frank that I know of. All their close contacts are in Europe."

  "The dead man in the basement. He might be someone they know of from abroad. Would you mind having a look at him?"

  "Anything that might help us find Frank," she said. "It's a very long shot, Mr. Haskell."

  "Long shots are all we've got," I said.

  The dead man in the basement was not without company. Herzog was there along with a fingerprint expert and a police photographer. They were getting ready to send out a request for help from police forces all around the country. I explained to Herzog why we were there.

  He gestured to the body on the bench. "Be my guest!"

  I led Margaret Hanson over and she stood for a minute, looking down. Then, suddenly, her hand closed over my wrist, so tightly I thought she would shut off the circulation.

  "My God!" she whispered.

  "You know him?" I asked.

  "I don't know him —but I've seen him before," she said.

  "Who is he?" Herzog asked.

  "I can't tell you that," the girl said. "London, England. Toby was playing a couple of weeks at the Russell Square Hotel. We were living around the corner at a small hotel called Brunswick House. One night—this is about a year ago— Frank and I had stopped somewhere for a late supper. As we walked into Brunswick, there was Toby, masked as always, talking to this man at the bar." She gestured at the body. "Frank didn't seem disturbed as he usually did when strangers glommed onto Toby. I asked Frank who the man was. 'No idea,' Frank told me, 'but Toby gave the all clear on him.' Toby, you understand, Mr. Haskell, never appeared in public with anyone. I suppose there had to be a first time for everything."

  "But Frank didn't tell you who he was?"