The Second Fletcher Flora Mystery Megapack

by Fletcher Flora

  On schedule, the black car passed the intersection shortly after six. Gaspar wheeled in behind and followed at a discreet distance. La Roche made his way across town, avoiding the congested trafficways, and turned onto the entrance to a turnpike and stopped obediently at the tollgate. He accepted his ticket, properly punched, and was immediately off again, while Gaspar was forced to wait for what seemed an interminable time until his own ticket was delivered. Meanwhile, he watched the other car uneasily and saw that it took the ramp which would send it onto the turnpike eastbound. He was soon nicely spaced behind La Roche’s car, and it was apparent that the pace was going to be a judicious sixty-five.

  At this speed, just below the level of terrifying rattles and threatening tremors, he was even able to consider comfortably the man he was pursuing. Rudolph La Roche was, indeed, a rather unusual personality. Even Gaspar, who was not especially sensitive to such things, had felt it immediately. In the first place, his appearance was somehow arresting. Neither tall nor short, he was erect in bearing and decisive in his movements. His body was slender and supple. His hair was gray above the temples but otherwise dark. His eyes were lustrous, his nose was straight, his lips were full and firm. He was, in fact, a handsome man, and there was about him a disconcerting impression of agelessness. He might have been thirty or fifty or any age between, but he would be, one felt, the age forever that he was at the moment, whatever that age might be.

  In the second place, with no more to go on than a queer prickling in the lard along his spine, Gaspar had the feeling that La Roche was a man who might be up to something extraordinary. He felt that here, at last, might be the miraculous jackpot.

  After a couple hours of steady driving, Gaspar was paying his toll at the last exit and cursing bitterly at the delay as he strained to keep the receding red taillights of the black car in view. Under way again, he managed to close the intervening distance at the risk of violating the speed limit, now sharply reduced on the freeway running on for several miles into the city. The downtown traffic created serious problems with intruding cars that were unconcerned with Gaspar’s mission, but the black car turned abruptly into a parking garage, and Gaspar, with one intruder preceding him, turned in after it. As he waited briefly for service, La Roche, having deposited his car and received his claim check, passed by so closely, carrying his bag, that Gaspar could have reached out and touched him. Gaspar cursed again, silently and bitterly, and implored dubious gods to prod the attendant.

  A minute later he was on the street, peering with wild despair in the direction La Roche had taken. At first the elusive barber was nowhere to be seen among the pedestrians. Then by the sheerest good luck, by the accidental course of his frantic gaze at the last instant, Gaspar saw him turning into the entrance of a fashionable hotel on the far corner. When he entered the large and ornate lobby of the hotel, however, he discovered that La Roche had again vanished.

  Gaspar looked behind pillars and potted palms and even took a quick tour of a long arcade between expensive little shops, now closed. No La Roche. Forced by his failure to consider the improbability of incredibly fast service, Gaspar approached the desk and invoked the attention of the clerk, an indolent and elegant young man who did not look as if he could be forced to hurry by prince or bishop or even a congressman. Gaspar thought it best to present his problem directly and candidly.

  “I’m looking,” he said, “for a gentleman who just came into this hotel. Rudolph La Roche. Could you tell me if he registered?”

  The clerk said coldly that Mr. La Roche had not, and his tone implied that even if Mr. La Roche had, the truth would be considered far too sacred to be divulged to a seedy transient with frayed cuffs and a shiny seat. Gaspar retreated behind a pillar, in the shadow of a potted palm, and sat down to brood and consider his position and tactical alternatives.

  His attention was caught by the soft neon identification of a cocktail lounge. Of course! La Roche had simply developed a big thirst during his long drive, and he had stopped first thing to slake it. Gaspar had, now that he had time to recognize it, developed a considerable thirst himself. With the dual intention of nailing La Roche and having a cold beer, he crossed to the lounge and entered. But he was still out of luck. The barber was not there, and Gaspar, afraid of missing him in the lobby, returned with his thirst to the potted palm.

  Then, after another extended period of brooding, his dilemma was solved. He was staring at a bank of elevators, and one of the elevators, having just descended, opened with a pneumatic whisper, and there in the brightly lighted box like a magician’s pawn in a magical cabinet, was Rudolph La Roche.

  Rudolph La Roche transformed. Rudolph La Roche, elegant and polished as a brand new dime, in impeccable evening clothes.

  And on his arm, staring up at him with a candid adoration that promised an exciting night, was the slickest, sexiest blonde bomb that Gaspar had seen in a long, long time. He stared, entranced.

  * * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Gaspar was installed in a room on the eleventh floor. It was a relatively cheap room assigned by the supercilious clerk as being appropriate to Gaspar’s frayed cuffs and shiny seat. Gaspar had rejected the idea of attempting to follow La Roche and his gorgeous companion on their apparent excursion of nightspots for two sound reasons. The first was that he would almost certainly lose them along the way. The second was that the excursion would certainly make greater demands on the Vane expense account than the account could bear. Indeed, it was already obvious that the fifty dollars extracted from Hershell Fitch was going to be woefully inadequate.

  Anyhow, since it was necessary to spend the night somewhere, it had seemed a good idea to spend it at the hotel which would clearly be his base of operations, whatever those operations amounted to. Fortunately, he was at the moment, in addition to Hershell’s fifty, in possession of funds, so to speak, in another pocket.

  Inventory disclosed that these funds came to approximately another fifty, and if necessary he could pay his hotel bill with a rubber check that he would have to cover by some device before it bounced. He considered this no reckless expenditure, but rather a sound, if somewhat speculative, investment in prospects that were beginning to glitter. Therefore, his inventory completed, he called room service and ordered ice and a bottle of bourbon.

  While he waited for delivery, he thought about Rudolph La Roche, who was currently looking like the most remarkable barber since Figaro. Imagine the ingenious devil carrying on a sizzling affair within a hundred miles of home in a flagrantly open manner which practically invited detection! After all, other citizens of the old home town certainly stayed at times in this hotel and it was by no means a remote possibility that one or more of them would know La Roche there and recognize him here. The man must have monstrous assurance and vanity to think that he could get away with it indefinitely. The whole affair was all the more remarkable because it was clearly conducted on some kind of schedule with apparent stability. What kind of cock-and-bull story did he perpetuate about his weekly excursions to keep his wife chronically deceived? In addition to his other manifest talents, he must be, surely, a superb liar. Gaspar, indeed, was becoming almost violently ambivalent about the astounding barber. He was admiring on the one hand; on the other he was filled with envy and malice.

  There was a knock at the door of his room, and he got up and opened the door to admit a bellhop, who was carrying a bottle and a thermos bucket full of ice cubes.

  “Put them on the table,” Gaspar said.

  Following the bellhop back into the room he took a five-dollar bill out of his pocket and sat on the bed. He smoothed the bill on one knee and laid it carefully beside him. The bellhop was a very small man with a puckered and pallid face that made Gaspar think wildly of an improbable albino prune. As he turned, the bellhop’s eyes passed over the fin on their way across the bed to a spot on the wall behind it.

  “Will there be anything else, sir?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” said Gaspar, “unle
ss you could give me a little information.”

  “That’s possible, sir. What kind of information?”

  “I’m wondering if you could tell me how long Mr. Rudolph La Roche has been coming to this hotel.”

  “Mr. Rudolph La Roche, sir? I’m afraid I don’t know the gentleman.”

  “A slender man. Not very tall. Dark hair with a little gray over the ears. Military bearing. Appearance rather distinguished.”

  There was a flicker in the bellhop’s ancient eyes as he raised them from the wall to the ceiling, closing them in transience.

  “I know a gentleman who fits that general description, sir, but his name is not La Roche. A coincidental similarity, perhaps.”

  “Let’s get down to cases. La Roche came into this hotel tonight and went directly upstairs without registering. Later he came down again, dressed fit to kill, with a beautiful blonde hanging on his arm. Since he changed his clothes upstairs, I assume that he has a room or has the use of the lady’s.”

  “Ah.” The bellhop’s eyes descended slowly from the ceiling. As they crossed the fin on the bed, they opened briefly and closed again. “You must be referring to Mr. and Mrs. Roger Le Rambeau.”

  Gaspar was silent for a moment, scarcely breathing. “Did you say Mr. and Mrs. Roger Le Rambeau?”

  “Yes, sir. They have a suite on the fifteenth floor. Permanent residents. Mr. Le Rambeau is out of town during the week. He returns every Friday night.”

  “Oh? And where does Mr. Le Rambeau go during the week?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know, sir. I assume that he goes on business.”

  “How long have Mr. and Mrs. Le Rambeau been residents here?”

  “Approximately three years. They moved in, I understand, immediately after their marriage.”

  “They must be well-heeled to afford this kind of setup.”

  “They appear to be quite affluent. It’s my understanding, however, that Mrs. Le Rambeau has most of the money.”

  “I see. Do you happen to know if they were married here in the city or elsewhere?”

  “I’m not sure. Wherever they were married, it should be a matter of record.”

  “Yes. So it should.”

  “I hope I have been helpful, sir.”

  “You have. You bet you have.”

  “In that case, sir, if there is nothing else, I had better get on with my duties.”

  “Sure, sure. You run along, son.”

  The bellhop, who was at least as old as Gaspar, flicked the fin off the bed with practiced fingers and went out of the room. Gaspar, left alone, continued to sit on the edge of the bed with his fat body folded forward over the bulge of his belly. A toad of a man, ugly and scarred and poor in the world’s goods, he was nevertheless lifted by soaring dreams into the rarefied air of enlarged hopes.

  Gaspar wasted no more time in spying personally on the astounding barber whom he still thought of, in order to avoid confusion, as Rudolph La Roche. After three stout highballs, he rolled into bed in his underwear and slept soundly for a few hours, rousing and rising early the next morning, which was Saturday. With the help of a clerk he spent the morning checking the file of photo-stated marriage licenses at the county courthouse, which turned out not to be such a tedious task as he had feared, inasmuch as he knew, thanks to the bellhop, the approximate time when La Roche had taken his bride. The only question was whether or not the marriage had been performed in the county and was there recorded. Happily, it had been and was.

  Gaspar returned to the hotel, got his bag, paid his bill, claimed his car at the parking garage, and drove home. He was feeling so pleased with himself and the turn his affairs were taking that he had only the mildest pang of envy when he thought of Rudolph La Roche with his blonde bomb in their fifteenth-floor suite.

  He spent Sunday with pleasant anticipations, and the following morning, with the resumption of workaday affairs, he investigated more records and satisfied himself on a critical point. Rudolph La Roche was married, all right. In fact, being married twice at once, he was excessively so. And if a philandering husband is a patsy, to make a riddle of it, what is a bigamist?

  Gaspar drove by the two-chair barber shop, which was located in a small suburban shopping area, and there at the first chair, sure enough, spruce in a starched white tunic and plying his scissors to a head of hair, was the errant Mr. La Roche. Smiling wetly and humming softly, Gaspar drove slowly on. He parked in the alley behind the building in which his office was located, and heavily climbed back stairs, still smiling and humming between puffs. In his office, without delay, he dialed the number of Hershell Fitch, who was at home and came to the telephone at the summons of Mrs. Fitch, who had answered.

  “Gaspar Vane speaking,” said Gaspar. “Can you talk?”

  “Yes,” said Hershell. “There’s no one here but Gabriella. Don’t you think, however, I had better come to your office for your report?”

  “You are welcome to come,” Gaspar said, “if you want to waste your time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there isn’t any report. None, that is, worth mentioning.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He went to Kansas City.”

  “What for?”

  “He went to see a woman.”

  “A woman! That sounds to me like something worth mentioning.”

  “I guess it is if you see something wrong with seeing an eighty-year-old woman who happens also to be his mother.”

  “He goes to Kansas City every weekend to see his mother?”

  “That’s right. She’s in a nursing home there. Our friend is devoted to her, it seems. His visits are practically a ritual.”

  “Excuse me a minute.”

  There followed a brief period during which Hershell talked aside, apparently to the hovering Gabriella, and then his voice came through the receiver again, thin and a little petulant with disappointment.

  “I guess you’re right, then. I guess there’s no use in my coming down.”

  “None at all.”

  “Since there wasn’t really anything to report, I hope the fee won’t be excessive.”

  “I’ll send you a bill,” Gaspar said.

  He hung up and leaned back in his chair. On the other hand, he thought, maybe I won’t. Truth is, he ought to send me a bill.

  Mindful of the old adage that one should strike while the iron is hot, Gaspar consulted his directory and found the telephone number of the shop of Rudolph La Roche. He dialed the number and listened to distant rings. Then, the third ring being chopped off in the middle, he was listening to the voice of Rudolph himself. The voice, true to Gaspar’s imagination, was modulated and suave and unmistakably urbane.

  “Rudolph La Roche speaking,” the voice said.

  “I must have the wrong number,” Gaspar said. “I thought I was calling Roger Le Rambeau.”

  There was a pause, almost imperceptible, and Rudolph’s voice, when he spoke again, was as impeccably suave as before.

  “Who is this, please?”

  “Never mind. We’ll get better acquainted in good time.”

  “I’m sure I shall be delighted. Would you care to make an appointment?”

  “What’s wrong with this evening?”

  “Nothing whatever. Shall I name the place?”

  “You name it. If I don’t like it, I’ll change it.”

  “There’s a small tavern a few doors east of my shop. I sometimes stop in there for a beer or two before going home. If that’s acceptable, I shall be pleased to see you there.”

  “That sounds all right. What time?”

  “I close my shop at five-thirty.”

  “See you then,” said Gaspar, and gently cradled the phone.

  A cool customer, he thought. A real cool customer. But after all, any guy who could deliberately marry two women and practically keep them next door to each other was bound to be.

  * * * *

  The tavern was a narrow building compressed between an
appliance store on one side and a loan office on the other. It was clearly a place that exploited an atmosphere of decorum and respectability, making its appeal to the solid citizen whose thirst, while decently inhibited, could be counted on to recur with some regularity. Of the patrons present when Gaspar entered, the one who was the most respectable in appearance and the least so in fact was Rudolph La Roche.

  He was sitting alone in a booth along the wall opposite the bar. A beaded glass of beer, untouched, was on the table before him. As Gaspar approached, he slid out of his seat, stood up and made an odd, old-fashioned bow from the hips.

  “Rudolph La Roche,” he said. “I’m sorry that I don’t know your name.”

  “It’s Vane,” Gaspar said. “Gaspar Vane.”

  “How do you do, Mr. Vane. Will you join me in a beer? I’m afraid nothing stronger is sold here.”

  “Beer’s fine.”

  They sat opposite each other with an air of cordiality and waited in silence while Gaspar was served by a waitress. After she was gone, Rudolph lifted his glass in a small salute, to which Gaspar responded uneasily. It was strange that Gaspar, who held all the cards, was far the more uneasy of the two.

  “May I ask,” said Rudolph, “how you became aware of Roger Le Rambeau?”

  “You can ask,” said Gaspar, “which is not to say I’ll answer.”

  “It would do me no good, I suppose, to deny anything?”

  “Not a bit.”