Murder Goes Round and Round: A Pierre Chambrun Mystery Hardcover Page 6

  "That's hard to accept," I said.

  "He'd found a way to build himself a million-dollar future. He didn't want to chance any kind of slip-up."

  "What did you and he talk about?" I asked.

  "Music—when he talked," Watson said. "I didn't see him very often after he was launched, unless I went to the nightspot where he was working."

  "But you came from London to New York to see the opening here. Not very casual, I'd say."

  "The booking here at the Beaumont was the top of the ladder to Toby. He wanted us here. And, besides that, I could be helpful. I could register Millicent as my wife, so there would be no way of associating Millicent with him."

  "That important?"

  "To Toby," Watson said.

  "And this last evening?"

  "Bing Crosby," Watson said. "You know what a huge send-off he got."

  "You didn't see him after the show Saturday night?"

  "Only with an army of fans." Watson said. "We made a dinner date because we couldn't talk then."

  "So you don't know why it took him so long to go upstairs after he was finished?"

  "He could have stayed down until breakfast if he chose to answer all the questions fans wanted to ask him."

  "And no clue as to who could have been waiting for him in 17C?"

  "Not a clue," Watson said.

  The phone on my desk rang. It was Betsy Ruysdale, calling from the hospital.

  "It's slow but moving along," she said. "Pierre is able to answer questions by squeezing out a yes or a no with his hand. No speech yet, but the doctor says it's only a matter of hours."

  "Great!" I said.

  "The trouble is, I'm not asking him the right questions. I thought if you could come over—"

  "Of course. I'm taking off right now."

  "Pass along my best wishes," Watson said. "Not that he will care. But everyone is the friend of a man who's been attacked by a would-be assassin."

  What Betsy had told me on the phone made me feel better, but a look at Chambrun made me feel a hell of a lot better. His facial color was almost back to normal. His dark eyes were bright when he saw me. I sat down beside him and held out my hand. He covered it with an almost firm grip.

  "You look as though you are coming along," I told him.

  His hand tightened on mine. I told him what I'd been doing—my conversations with Millicent Huber, Ben Lewis, and Watson.

  "But they all lead down blind alleys," I told him.

  Pierre shook his head from side to side, a feeble motion.

  "Are you still thinking that phone call from Pasqua was a fake?" I asked him.

  One squeeze of his hand.

  "That would mean you think Toby March may be behind some of the violence?"

  Again the "yes" squeeze.

  "You think March may have taken those shots at you?"

  Another single squeeze.

  "But you wouldn't have known him if you'd seen him."

  Pierre pointed to his stomach.

  "But you wouldn't have known him."

  He actually jabbed his finger into his stomach.

  "You have had a gut feeling about it?"

  An almost firm "yes" squeeze.

  "But if that's so, Millicent and Colonel Watson could be playing along with him."

  A vigorous "yes."

  "So I should warn Herzog and Jerry to keep them away from you?"

  The single squeeze was almost firm.

  "And any strange male should be kept away from you?"

  His lips moved. I almost thought he was going to speak, but instead he lay back on his pillow and something very like a smile moved those lips.

  "You asked the right questions, got on the right track," Betsy said to me.

  Pierre's smile was for real. I couldn't have felt better. We had told ourselves that as a team, Betsy, Jerry, and I would have to try to think his way. I'd made it.

  "Ill pass this along to Herzog and Jerry," I told Pierre, giving his hand a last pressure as I stood up.

  Betsy followed me out into the hall.

  "God knows who to be afraid of," she said.

  "Any strange male who tries to get to him. The hospital will be wide open to strangers," I said. "We need to get him back to the hotel to keep him completely safe."

  "Let me see if I can find Dr. Lockwood for you," Betsy said, and took off.

  Even as I waited, two male orderlies went into Pierre's room. I followed them in and waited for whatever they had to do. Medical supplies, clean towels. Pierre could be poisoned if one of those men was a phony —was even March himself, perhaps? That's how helpless we were if he stayed in the hospital.

  Dr. Lockwood, a pleasant-looking gray-haired man, heard my story, his good-natured face changing to a dark hardness.

  "He shouldn't be moved from here," he said. "It's still pretty touchy. But if the situation is what you say it is — "

  "It is. We're all playing blindfolded."

  "I can find a young doctor whom I trust and know can't be your Toby March; I can assign him to go back to the hotel with you."

  "We'd all breathe easier," I said. "And you might be saving Pierre's life."

  "Give me half an hour," Dr. Lockwood said.

  He was as good as his word. He turned up with a young doctor named Eric Frost.

  "I'll need about an hour to bring Eric up to date on what he needs to know," Lockwood said. "Then we'll send Mr. Chambrun over to the hotel in an ambulance. You'll have that much time to set up shop for him there."

  "Thank you, Doctor. I'm sure Pierre would thank you if he could."

  "Don't imagine I'd be letting him go if I didn't think it was sound medically, in spite of your ten-twenty-thirty melodrama. Mr. Chambrun may do better for himself in his own bed and with his own people around him."

  "You treated his wounds. You know this isn't any fake melodrama," I said.

  "Of course I know," Dr. Lockwood said. He and Frost went into Chambrun's room, and I headed back for the Beaumont.

  "If the boss is well enough to come back here, we should begin to feel better," Jerry Dodd said when I'd brought him and Lieutenant Herzog up to date.

  "I'm not sure Chambrun will be safer here," Herzog said. "This is the crossroads of the world at the moment."

  "Ill put every man I have around his penthouse if it is necessary," Jerry said.

  "You really think the Huber woman and Colonel Watson are in the act?" Herzog asked me.

  "Chambrun does and so do I," I said. "Won't the London police tell you what they can find out about them — if they have records?"

  "Ill get on that at once," Herzog said. "How do you keep them away from Chambrun without letting them know what you suspect?"

  "Medical explanations," I said.

  "Ill have them covered," Herzog said. "If they know where March is, they may lead us to him sooner or later."

  "I hope you're not dreaming," Jerry said.

  "That means we must keep them from guessing that we're on to them," Herzog said.

  That was put to the test almost at once. As I was leaving my office to head for the roof and the penthouse, I came face to face with the colonel and Millicent in the lobby. I'd had no particular emotion about those two before now. Now I felt a deep rage at the sight of them. If Chambrun was right, they were in cahoots with Toby March.

  "What's the news at the hospital?" Watson asked me in a relaxed tone.

  "Not speaking. Not communicating in any fashion," I said, lying my head off. I could almost feel the squeeze of Cham-brun's hand.

  "If there was anything we could do to make things easier for him," Millicent said.

  "I don't think he'd know you if he saw you," I said.

  "But he knew you?" Watson asked.

  "I think so. And Betsy. But we are the closest people in the world to him," I said.

  "Nothing about the man who shot him?" Watson asked.

  "Wouldn't have been even if the guy had missed," I said. "It was still dark when the shots were
fired. The shape of a man, perhaps, but nothing by which to identify him."

  "Bad break," Watson said.

  I didn't mention Chambrun's finger pointing at his stomach—his "gut feeling."

  "Let us know if there is anything new," Millicent said. "If there is nursing help needed, that has been my life, you know."

  2

  London turned lives upside down a few hours later. Lieutenant Herzog came charging into my office in the late afternoon.

  "We got lucky," he told me. "I sent the fingerprints of the dead man in the basement to Scotland Yard. The dead man is a London cop — Inspector Jason Claridge."

  "So what was he doing here?"

  "Terrorists," Herzog said.

  "Meaning?"

  "Half a dozen Britishers in high places were taken hostage a few months ago. The price of a release for them was the turning free of some characters the British are holding. As I understand it, it has something to do with Iran and the war there. Inspector Claridge's job was to find the kidnapped Britishers and free them. The trail brought him here to New York."

  "So he had information that could lead you to his killers?" I asked.

  "If he had, he hadn't passed it back to his headquarters."

  "So all you have is a reason for his being here?"

  "All I have on the dead man," Herzog said. "Your friends — Colonel Watson and Miss Huber—are real enough. They both worked at the London hospital at the time Toby March was brought there with a smashed face. They both quit their jobs shortly after March was released. London thinks they cared for March while he was there and were persuaded to take on the job of caring for him privately when he left."

  "What has that got to do with hostages?" I asked.

  "Maybe nothing, maybe everything. Enough to cost Inspector Claridge his life!"

  "So what's next?"

  "I've ordered my men to get Watson and Miss Huber up here so we can talk with them."

  "They should be bringing Chambrun here any time now," I said.

  "He can hear what they have to say, even if he can't question them," Herzog said. "Watson and the woman smell too fishy not to be involved in Chambrun's theory about Toby March."

  "Doesn't it occur to you, Lieutenant, that the reason Chambrun was shot was because he was pushing the idea that Toby March is the villain of the piece?"

  "It has occurred to me," Herzog said. "It also occurs to me that Watson and Miss Huber can tell us exactly where March and Frank Pasqua are hiding."

  Five minutes later, two uniformed cops brought Watson and Miss Huber into Chambrun's penthouse.

  "I'd like to know just what the hell this is all about," Watson said. "I was told if we didn't come up here voluntarily, Miss Huber and I would be placed under arrest."

  "Did you think of not coming?" Herzog asked him.

  "Of course I thought of it," Watson said. "I don't like being shuffled around like a piece in a puzzle by cops who don't know which end is up."

  "Oh, come off it, Colonel. Miss Huber is Toby March's girl. You are his friend and her friend. March has disappeared, leaving behind him a scene of violence. The dead man we found in the basement turns out to be a London cop, Inspector Jason Claridge. Name mean anything to you?"

  "Never heard of him," Watson said.

  "You, Miss Huber?"

  "I have never heard of him," Millicent Huber said, "and I never saw him before the view we had of him in the basement."

  "What is this English cop doing here?" Watson asked.

  "Looking for someone involved in the kidnapping and holding as hostages of some British bigshots," Herzog said.

  "Let the British cops handle it," Watson said. "As you Americans would say, it's their ball game."

  At that moment, the door to the penthouse opened and two uniformed policemen walked in at the front end of a stretcher on which Chambrun lay, flat on his back. Another two uniformed men brought up the rear.

  "We can't have any strangers in here without searching them for weapons," Herzog said. He ordered one of the cops to search the colonel.

  Watson backed away. "Now wait a minute!" he said. "You can't search me without a warrant."

  "If it's necessary, handcuff him," Herzog ordered his man.

  The colonel shrugged and stood still. The cop felt him, front and back.'

  "All clear, Lieutenant," the cop said.

  "Fine. Now the lady. Hand over your purse, please, Miss Huber."

  "Then one of your men gets a free feel. Is that it?" Watson asked.

  "Dirty-minded son of a bitch," a clear voice said behind me.

  I turned. Chambrun was leaning up on one elbow, looking as surprised as I was. He let himself down to lay flat again, his eyes closed.

  "I owe you a debt of thanks, Colonel," he said, in a perfectly normal voice. "Your surliness seems to have restored my power to speak."

  There was something a little pornographic about watching the cop go over Millicent Huber's very feminine curves feeling for a gun.

  "Don't you search Haskell?" Watson asked.

  "I'm not a stranger," I said. "You want to take Mr. Chambrun to his bedroom? It's just down the hall here. Follow me."

  Betsy Ruysdale was already in the bedroom turning down the bedclothes. The uniformed cops lifted Chambrun off the stretcher and put him gently down on the bed. Chambrun glanced up at Betsy and me. "I don't understand what unbuttoned me," he said. "I feel as though someone had drilled a well in my head."

  "You'd never have let the colonel get away with that kind of ugly implication under normal conditions," I said. "I like to think that was a sign that things are getting back to normal."

  "I hear you are talking," a voice at the door said. It was Dr. Lockwood from the hospital. "Something scare you, Mr. Chambrun?"

  "Something made me angry," Chambrun said.

  "We never know what will start things moving," the doctor said. "We are grateful for anything that does."

  "Can I talk with Lieutenant Herzog?" Chambrun asked.

  "Why not? It might speed you along. If you have the impulse to get up and walk to the John, or look at the view from your windows, it's okay. I'm leaving a nurse, Miss Caldwell, here to pick you up if you fall."

  Victoria Haven came in from the front rooms. "Thank God you are coming around, Pierre," she said. "When I saw that man trying to look in your windows, I should have called security, not you. I should have known you wouldn't take a threat to yourself seriously enough. I'd never forgive myself if it had turned out worse."

  "We couldn't have waited for someone to come up from the lobby level, love," Chambrun said.

  "Not if you wanted to risk getting yourself killed."

  "We should cherish that hat I was wearing," Chambrun said. He turned his head to look at Herzog, who had joined us. "I could hear before the colonel released my speech ducts, Lieutenant. The dead man was a British cop?"

  "Inspector Claridge, Scotland Yard," Herzog said. "It seems the British arrested about a dozen Iranians who were guilty of bombing some allied ships in the Persian Gulf. The Iranians retaliated by snatching six high-up Britishers —not in the Gulf, but on English territory. They are the price for the Iranian prisoners. The British don't want it that way, but they want their own people back. That was Claridge's job."

  "But what was Claridge doing here in New York?"

  "He evidently thought the Britishers had been brought here, or he had a lead to someone he thought was responsible for snatching them."

  "Who did he talk to here?"

  "We're trying to track that information down," Herzog said.

  "Not you, Mark?" Chambrun asked me.

  "I never saw him until I saw him dead in the basement," I replied.

  "Why would you think he might have been talking to Haskell?" Herzog asked.

  "If he was trying to locate someone he thought might be staying at the Beaumont, Mark would be the one to ask," Chambrun said.

  "We've had a solid English group here, or people who have lived importa
nt parts of their lives in England," Herzog said. "Toby March, Frank Pasqua, Colonel Watson, and Miss Huber."

  "You think Claridge was killed in March's suite?" Chambrun said. "We can't ask either March or Pasqua about him until you find them. Watson and Miss Huber have already denied ever having seen the inspector before, which certainly means they didn't talk to him."

  "If you can believe them," Herzog said.

  "Can you?"

  "I don't believe anyone who can be a suspect in a murder," Herzog said.

  The phone rang on Chambrun's bedside table. Betsy answered it.

  "It's for you, Lieutenant," she said to Herzog. "London calling you."

  Herzog took the phone and listened to a long conversation from overseas.

  "Thanks for calling," he said finally. "At this point, the man is missing." He put the phone down. "Scotland Yard," he said. "A friend of Claridge's reports that he was looking for Toby March overseas. That he came to New York because he heard March was opening here at the Beaumont."

  "On the basis of that, we could make a guess," Chambrun said.

  "So guess," Herzog said.

  "Claridge came here looking for Toby March," Chambrun said. "Why, we don't know. When he got here, March had already started his evening performance in the Blue Lagoon. Claridge found out where March was bedded down, came up to 17C and let himself in. No problem for an experienced cop, picking a lock. Along around two-thirty, Pasqua came up to his room, which adjoins 17C and had been set up so he could walk into 17C from his room. He goes in and finds Claridge there. Pasqua knew who Claridge was, or found out from talking with him. Maybe Pasqua tried to get away and Claridge tried to stop him, an act in which Pasqua was badly hurt and left to bleed to death on March's bed. March walks in on that bloody violence, and he and Claridge have a go at it."

  "Does no one have a gun?" Herzog asked.

  "Not handy, apparently. My recollection is that British cops don't walk around armed."

  "So keep guessing," Herzog said.

  "Whether March had a gun or just used a fireplace tool, he managed to put Claridge out of business permanently. What next? March must get rid of Claridge's body so it won't be found in 17C. The security men are no longer in the hallway outside. The press and March's fans are long gone. The elevators are self-service after midnight. March drags the body out to an elevator and takes it down to the basement. Then he goes back to 17C to help his friend. Whether Pasqua can help at all to get away, we still have to guess."