Gilded Nightmare

by Hugh Pentecost

  He might be American, but there was the faint quality of the professional Irishman in his speech; cultivated, not a thug.

  “I want to see your gun,” Hardy said, without preamble.

  Masters’ potential smile remained potential. His hand moved quickly inside his jacket. I saw that his fingers were neatly manicured. But he didn’t produce his gun. Instead, he came out with a thin, alligator-skin wallet. He flipped it open and showed it to Hardy.

  “My permit to bear arms,” he said.

  “I didn’t ask for your permit. I asked for the gun,” Hardy said.

  Masters’ smile was still a shadow in the background. He produced the gun, a black, shiny automatic, spun it around by the trigger guard, and handed it, butt end outward, to the Lieutenant. Hardy took a handkerchief out of his pocket, wrapped it around the butt end, and dropped the gun in his pocket.

  “Now, just a minute,” Masters said, quietly.

  “The butt of a gun would make an excellent tool for smashing in the skulls of dogs and women,” Hardy said. “I’d like the police lab to look at it.”

  “You’re joking,” Masters said. His hands hung at his sides and I could see he kept flexing his fingers.

  “The Lieutenant rarely jokes in the face of murder,” Chambrun said.

  Masters turned his pale eyes toward the Florentine desk. It was quite obvious he considered Chambrun more formidable than the Lieutenant. Perhaps he was remembering that Chambrun had faced him down earlier that day in the lobby.

  “I like a man who doesn’t flinch in the face of danger,” Masters said. “Did you know that gun of mine was hair-trigger ready when you walked into it this afternoon?”

  “I knew it wouldn’t be fired by accident,” Chambrun said.

  “How right you are.” Masters turned back to Hardy.

  “Just what is it you want to ask me, Lieutenant? I don’t like to be away from the Baroness for too long. Is it possible you believe I might have killed Puzzi and the girl?”

  “It crosses my mind,” Hardy said.

  “Or at least the girl,” Chambrun said. “ ‘An eye for an eye—.’ ”

  “Ah, yes. The Baroness’ impulsive reaction to the news that her little dog had been slaughtered.”

  “So?” Hardy said.

  “So I was instructed to forget that outburst. I forgot it.”

  “Let’s go back to that time,” Hardy said. “Chambrun brought the news about the dog. What happened after he left?”

  Masters shrugged. “We considered the question of who might have done it.”

  “Conclusions?”

  “There’s been a great deal of coming and going,” Masters said. “Bellhops with luggage, room service with drinks, the housekeeper to take the linen sheets off the Baroness’ bed and replace them with the silk sheets the Baroness had brought with her. Sometime during those comings and goings Puzzi must have slipped out into the hall. None of us was aware that he was missing. There are eleven rooms in the setup on the nineteenth floor. There are so many places he could have been.”

  “Did it occur to you that Sam Culver might have killed the dog?” Hardy asked.

  “Oh, yes. I asked him.”

  “And he said—?”

  “He said no, of course. I thought I’d ask him again sometime when I could be alone with him.”

  “Arm-twisting?” Chambrun asked, quietly.

  I thought the smile would come to the surface, but it didn’t. “Something like that.”

  “Did you think it might have been Stephen Wood?”

  “I thought it possible.”

  “So the Baroness was upset and she sent Heidi Brunner out to get a prescription for sleeping pills filled.”

  “My dear fellow, you don’t know the Baroness,” Masters said. “She doesn’t need sleeping pills. She doesn’t have nerves. She doesn’t have a conscience that bothers her. The pills were for Dr. Malinkov. He has all the things the Baroness doesn’t have.”

  “Why didn’t he get the pills for himself?”

  Masters’ pale eyes seemed to get brighter. “He didn’t want to go out on the street alone.”

  “Why not?”

  “In the old days of the war the good doctor performed some rather interesting experiments on human guinea pigs,” Masters said, as though he remembered it with pleasure. “He’s afraid someone who resented it might recognize him. It took a great deal of persuasion to get him to leave the Island. I suspect he needs the pills because he has nightmares about the old days.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “No. It was all part of an interesting social experiment.”

  “I’ve never heard it called that,” Hardy said, anger in his voice.

  “At the time it seemed justified in terms of a long-range future that didn’t come off.”

  “But there was no reason to think it was dangerous for the girl to go out on the street alone?”

  “There was no reason to suppose it. As it turned out, of course, there was.” Masters sounded completely indifferent.

  “You didn’t follow her out?”

  “No.”

  “Proof?”

  “The Baroness, Helwig, Madame Brunner—they all know I didn’t leave the suite.”

  “At any rate, they’ll all say so.”

  “They’ll certainly all say so.”

  “How do you usually react to being turned down by a young lady to whom you offer your unusual physical charms?” Chambrun asked. His eyes were narrowed against a curl of smoke from his Egyptian cigarette.

  “The nature of my job doesn’t give me much opportunity for sexualizing—if that’s the word for what you mean,” Masters said.

  “But Heidi Brunner did give you the brush-off, didn’t she, Masters? What happened? Did she complain to the Baroness about your passes?”

  Masters seemed to freeze for a moment. “Peter’s been at it, I see.”

  “He told us nothing, but he reacted to a question,” Chambrun said.

  I could almost see Masters making a mental note to do something about Peter Wynn. “Heidi was born on the Island,” he said. “I was in the next room with the Baron when they spanked her behind and she let out her first squawk. She was a little child, running around underfoot. I never thought of her as anything but a child. Hell, she’s—she was—not quite twenty!”

  “It has been called the Lolita fetish,” Chambrun said.

  “You’re a cool sonofabitch,” Masters said, without anger. He grinned. “I’ve never run across a man I was afraid of, Chambrun. But Clara Brunner is something else! Throw one off-color glance at her child and you’d face one of the original Furies. It wouldn’t have been worth the risk, interesting as Heidi might have been. Clara was one of the Baron’s favorites. I’d have lost my job.”

  “Clara Brunner didn’t object to the prospect of Heidi’s marrying Peter Wynn?”

  “Marriage made everything all right for Clara. She never had it herself.” Masters smiled as he saw the question in Chambrun’s eyes. “Didn’t you know? Heidi was Baron Zetterstrom’s illegitimate spawn. Oh, Clara was a handsome woman twenty years ago.”

  “Let’s get back to tonight,” Hardy said. “The girl was sent out to the drugstore. She didn’t come back. Were none of you concerned?”

  “My dear Lieutenant, the local fuzz is so wonderfully efficient that there wasn’t time for us to miss Heidi before your boys came charging in with the news that she’d been liquidated.”

  I don’t think I ever heard anyone talk so without emotion about the death of another human being who’d been remotely close. Hardy had had it.

  “Well, hysterics or no hysterics, I’m going up to talk to the two women,” he said.

  Masters actually laughed. “If you anticipate hysterics, Lieutenant, you’re in for a disappointment. Hysterics are not in the Baroness’ nature, and Clara, the old battle-axe, is hard as a rock.”

  “Helwig told us they were in no condition to be questioned.”

  “Then Marcus was
stalling for time,” Masters said.

  “Time for what?”

  Masters shrugged. “There’s no way to guess what that most devious of humans is up to at any time,” he said.

  Hardy’s slow burn was reaching the explosion point. “We’ve pussyfooted around long enough,” he said. “Let’s get up to the nineteenth floor.” He started for the door.

  “Just a minute, Lieutenant,” Masters said. “My gun. If you’re taking it to the police lab, what do I do about a gun? I can’t do my job without one. Feel naked, as a matter of fact.”

  “Then wrap yourself up in something,” Hardy said, and was gone.

  2

  WHEN CHAMBRUN, HARDY, MASTERS, and I reached the nineteenth floor we were greeted outside the elevator by one of Hardy’s men, a Homicide detective by the name of Molloy. He looked at Masters, uncertainly, then took Hardy by the arm and led him a few steps down the hall. Chambrun and Masters and I couldn’t hear the conversation at the time, but a few minutes later Chambrun and I knew that Molloy and his men had come on something. The service elevator at the end of the hall had been checked out as a matter of routine, and fresh bloodstains were found on the floor of the car. It was possible they had no connection with the murder, but a sample had been rushed off to the police lab to check the blood type against the dead girl’s.

  It was possible, Molloy told Hardy, for the body to have been taken down in the service elevator and carried, through a maze of back alleys, to the spot where it had been found without its ever being taken out onto the street. It would explain something that had been bothering the Homicide men—how, at eleven o’clock at night when the area around the Beaumont was still pretty busy, the girl could have been attacked out in the open without anyone seeing or hearing a thing. The risk to the murderer would have been enormous. The cops were not even considering the possibility of some lunatic purse-snatcher. The M.O., as Hardy had described it, were identical in the cases of the dog and the girl—separated by several hours. It suggested someone hanging around with a very specific plan in mind.

  Molloy wanted everyone out of the Zetterstrom rooms so his men could fine-tooth-comb the place. No matter how carefully the evidence of a bloody killing had been cleaned up, a scientific search should reveal evidence of it. Hardy bought Molloy’s idea. He came back and gave us the story. I saw Masters purse his lips in a sort of silent whistle.

  Helwig answered Hardy’s bell-ring at the door of 19-B.

  “I want everyone out of these rooms for a while,” Hardy said.

  The gray man’s face was marble-hard. “I think that’s out of the question,” he said. “Why do you want us out?”

  “Search,” Hardy said. “You can come away willingly or I’ll place all of you under arrest on suspicion of murder and take you down to headquarters.”

  “My office?” Chambrun suggested.

  “All right with me,” Hardy said. “Only we move now.”

  “I’ll ask the Baroness,” Helwig said. He started to close the door, but Hardy’s broad shoulder pushed it back inward and we all went inside to the foyer.

  “Don’t ask her—tell her,” Hardy said.

  “It’s all right, Marcus.” Charmian’s voice was clear and cool.

  We trailed Hardy into the living room. Charmian was there, flanked by the Amazon, Madame Brunner. Both women were dressed in black, as though they might be on their way to a funeral service, but I swear there was no sign of hysteria, past or present. There was no suggestion that there had ever been tears. For the first time I began to think there was something inhuman about this whole collection of people.

  “What is it you want to search for, Lieutenant?” Charmian asked.

  Somehow she had changed. The youthful enthusiasm I’d sensed when she talked to me about her dinner party, the genuine shock I thought she’d felt at the news of Puzzi’s death, had suggested a normal, attractive, vulnerable young woman. What I saw now was a cold, beautiful mask—a mask that hid the older, sophisticated, cruel woman who’d been described to us by Sam Culver in his tales about Bruno Wald and his own father. She was formidable and a little frightening. Someone incapable of feeling scares the hell out of me, I don’t mind saying. I’ve run across a few others in my time at the Beaumont.

  “Evidence of a crime,” I heard Hardy say. I couldn’t take my eyes off Charmian.

  “You think Heidi was killed here, in these rooms?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “It’s absurd,” Charmian said. “But if you’ve made up your mind to search, you will search.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Where do you suggest that we cool our heels while you paw over our belongings?” Charmian asked.

  “Mr. Chambrun has suggested his office,” Hardy said. “The time won’t be wasted. I need formal statements from you and Mrs. Brunner.”

  Charmian turned her head ever so slightly toward Helwig. “He has the legal right to do this? It’s an incredible invasion of privacy.”

  “I think we don’t have much choice, Baroness,” Helwig said. “He has the right to question us. He has not charged us with anything as yet, but he could and make it a great deal more uncomfortable for us.”

  “Then let’s get it over with,” Charmian said. She hadn’t looked at me once, or Chambrun. “Will you get my mink jacket for me, Clara, and something for yourself. The hotel corridors may be drafty.”

  The Amazon disappeared into one of the bedrooms and returned with a three-quarter-length mink coat for Charmian and a black-cloth job for herself. Charmian slipped the fur coat over her shoulders and walked straight out into the hallway, looking neither right nor left.

  “Where is Dr. Malinkov?” Hardy asked Helwig.

  “In his bed—ill,” Helwig said.

  “Get him.”

  “But I tell you—”

  “It’s all right, Marcus. I’m here,” a voice with a thick Slavic accent said, and Dr. Malinkov came through the connecting door to the next room. He was a fat, flabby little man with frightened black eyes. He was wrapped in a heavy overcoat with a sheepskin lining. He looked as though he was suffering from a malarial chill. The whites of his eyes had a yellowish tinge to them.

  We trailed after Charmian to the elevators. It was as though she were in charge. We went down in the noiseless car to the second floor. In the outer office we found Miss Ruysdale, along with Sam Culver and a police detective named Dolan. Charmian stopped in the doorway when she saw Sam.

  “You too?” she asked. “Do they think you may have murdered Heidi?”

  Sam turned away. Evidently he had changed his mind about a walk. Chambrun had crossed to the door of his private office; he held it open for Charmian. She breezed past him into the luxurious room beyond. A few steps across the thick Oriental rug and she stopped.

  “A genuine Picasso,” she said. “How extraordinary.” She looked around. “Where do you want me to sit? I don’t see any bright lights. Don’t you make murder suspects face the glare of bright lights?”

  “One at a time,” I heard Hardy say. I looked back and saw he was closing the door in the faces of Masters, the Amazon, and Dr. Malinkov. Helwig was allowed to come in. He was Charmian’s lawyer.

  “Choose whatever chair you like,” Chambrun said to Charmian. “I suggest this one by my desk. May I get you some coffee—or a drink?”

  “How civilized,” Charmian said. She sat down in the big carved armchair and tossed the mink coat back from her shoulders. “I should be screaming demands at you to produce the killer of my friend Heidi. Instead, you’re wasting priceless time arranging an inquisition for me. It would be laughable if it wasn’t infuriating. Coffee, I think.”

  Chambrun moved over to the Turkish coffee-maker and came back with a demitasse, which he placed on the corner of his desk beside her chair.

  “I don’t think the lieutenant has an inquisition in mind, Baroness,” he said, sitting down opposite her behind the desk. “Your legal adviser, Herr Helwig, has made it quite clear to us
that he feels you may be in danger.”

  “Marcus is an old woman,” she said, glancing at Helwig.

  “Perhaps. But a very shrewd old woman,” Chambrun said. His eyes were half hidden behind their heavy lids and the deep pouches. “We have reason to think that Heidi Brunner was killed in the hotel—possibly in your rooms—and carried, by way of the service elevator, to the place where she was found just off the street. The purpose in searching your rooms is to make certain whether or not it happened there. The reason for talking to you is in the hope of getting some sort of hint from you as to motive. Killing your dog would seem to be aimed at causing you pain. Killing your maid—I’m not so sure. It could be aimed at you. It could be part of some sort of internal combustion in your private world. We understand the girl hasn’t ever been off the Island before; you haven’t been away for twenty years. The others have been away rarely, if at all. The whole thing could be the result of some sort of spontaneous explosion. We have no way of guessing at it. We can only ask you. You must know every detail of every relationship on that private island of yours.”

  She looked at him coolly, but with a suggestion of respect for the questions he’d put to her.

  Before she could answer we were interrupted by the noiseless entrance of Miss Ruysdale. She crossed over to Chambrun’s desk and put a note and a small envelope down in front of him. He glanced at the note, then opened the envelope and took out of it a folded sheet of paper. His eyes widened. Then he held the sheet of paper out to Hardy. Hardy scowled at it and handed it back.

  “This note,” Chambrun said to Charmian, “was delivered to Sam Culver’s letter box earlier this evening. He stopped at the desk a little while ago on his way out to take a walk, and it was handed to him.” He shifted his glance. “Do they say who delivered it to the desk, Ruysdale?”

  “Mr. Nevers is checking. It was handed in before he came on duty.”

  Chambrun looked back at the note. “This note, delivered to Sam Culver, says: ‘If you value your life don’t go to the Baroness Zetterstrom’s dinner party.’ That’s all it says. It’s not signed.”