I had one more call to make, long distance to Toano, Virginia.…
“Bonner residence.” It wasn’t Curt and it wasn’t Gilbert. It was a voice I had never heard before.
“Hello, this is Mr. Hauser,” I said, “the baggage master of Trans-Canada Airlines at Washington International Airport. Something extremely embarrassing has happened. You see, on our weekly check of unclaimed incoming luggage we found a piece of outgoing luggage. Investigation determined that it was checked aboard on your Mr. Bonner’s recent flight to Montreal and we’d like to send it right on to him but have been unable to find a forwarding address.”
“How sure are you it belongs to Mr. Bonner?”
“We’re positive.”
There was a pause. Then: “I’m not. Mr. Bonner’s luggage isn’t marked.” I didn’t know why he was suspicious. Probably, because he was paid to be suspicious. He added, “Better describe the piece to me.”
“I don’t have it here in my office,” I said in a slightly annoyed tone. “All I have is the report.”
“Well, go take a look at it and call me back. Or better yet I’ll give you fifteen minutes and call you back at Trans-Canada. Mr. Hauser, huh?”
And the phone went click in my ear.
I stared at the wall across my living room. A Gauguin reproduction showing two nude Polynesian girls wading in a stream hangs there, but the wall I had reached looking for Bobby was a blank one.
With death on the other side.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE telegram came just before midnight.
MEET ME MT. TREMBLANT POST OFFICE, MT. TBEMBLANK P.Q. CANADA, THREE TOMORROW AFTERNOON.
DOROTHY BONNER
I smiled at the little sheet of stiff yellow paper and read it again. She had never told me her first name, but I didn’t need her first name to know that Mrs. Judson Bonner was sending for her ally.
A phone call to Trans-Canada got me a reservation on the ten A.M. Viscount. After that I cleaned, oiled and loaded my Magnum .357 and felt somewhat melodramatic doing it Then I thought of Bobby and the feeling went away while I paced around the apartment, made a drink and left it standing. I read the telegram a third time. A day’s work, much of it on the phone but still the kind of work a detective does, had narrowed the trail and left me with a couple of hundred square miles of Quebec Province. Mrs. Bonner’s telegram had made the day’s work superfluous—or had it? I felt ready and reasonably sure of myself again, for the first time since they’d lifted my license. That was important. Telegram or no, I’d have flown up to Canada in a funk otherwise. Just hang on, Bobby, I thought. Hang on.
Cocky bastard, I told myself. I went to sleep.…
The Viscount put down at Montreal International Airport shortly after one the next day. It was a cold day with a lead gray overcast and the smell of snow in the air. With three ski-buffs I was directed across the field to a small twin-engined plane. As soon as a baggage cart brought our luggage and it was loaded aboard the engines were started with explosive spurts. Moments later we were winging across the field and toward the snow country to the north.
Ten minutes this side of Mt. Tremblant, the view far below of white-mantled hills and clumps of spruce and hemlock was obscured by a swirling snowstorm. “Gonna be perfect skiing tomorrow,” someone said happily.
“If it stops snowing.”
“Hell, man. I only have four days. It better stop.”
We landed bumpily at Mt. Tremblant’s small airport. The runway was very close to the town itself, on the only flat ground I could see. Great soft feathers of snow were falling in the cold, almost windless air. I turned up the collar of my trenchcoat, pulled my hatbrim down and carried my suitcase over to the postoffice, passing through half of Mt. Tremblant to get there. The town was Swiss Chalet style, the buildings made of logs with high peaked roofs and ornate half-timberling and colorful exterior wall murals. Despite the snowstorm, the skiers were out in force, thrusting ahead on the powdery snow in the streets or carrying their skis on their shoulders or riding in horse-drawn sleighs with jingling bells and skis racked behind. I reached the post office at ten after two, went inside, stamped off my shoes and waited.
An hour later, I was still looking at the wanted-posters. It grew dim outside and the snow still came down. The post office wasn’t busy. A couple of tourists in heavy ski boots clomped in for their mail. At about four-thirty a man wearing a plaid mackinaw brought in the sack of mail that had come up on the plane from Montreal with me. At five the clerks began to put on their outer clothing and I heard a clanking as one of them opened the fire door and spread the embers in the pot-bellied stove that heated the small post office.
“We close now, monsieur,” one of them said apologetically as he headed for the door. “There was something …?”
I looked at my-watch. Five o’clock. But the clock on the wall had already told me that.
And no Mrs. Bonner.
THE door rattled and opened before the clerk reached A stout, bespectacled French-Canadian wearing a floppy knitted toque hat, a double-breasted overcoat with a fur collar and a bright ceinture flechee sash around his ample middle came into the post office and looked around myopically. He squinted at me.
“M. Drum?” he asked.
I nodded.
“S’il vous plait?”
He led the way outside. A small horse-drawn sleigh was waiting. The stout French-Canadian waited in the snow while I climbed aboard. He followed me, almost tipping the sleigh. He smiled, blew his white breath in my face, and flicked the reins. Its harness bells jingling, the horse began to trot through the snow, the sleigh-runners hissing.
We went to the end of town and up a little hill. You couldn’t see the road bed because it was covered with new snow, but the towers and cables of a ski-lift followed the road up the hill to a large, Swiss chalet-style building. There was a small parking lot with a dozen cars almost hidden under their burden of snow. More sleighs, unharnessed, were waiting in the driveway. The gay music of an accordion playing Alouette drifted out into the snow and the night.
“The Grand Hotel Hemlock,” my driver said with a flourish, and climbed down with my suitcase. “Monsieur stays long?”
“Mrs. Bonner sent you?” I asked.
“Ah, oui, oui, Mrs. Bonner.” He made a long face. “The tragedy, monsieur. The tragedy of it.”
I followed him inside. We went through a lounge where skiers in slipper socks and furry mukluks were seated sipping hot drinks and listening to a man with the reddest face and biggest smile I had ever seen playing Alouette on the accordion.
At the desk I was given a registration slip to sign. The clerk smiled at me. “Of course a room with bath on such short notice we could not give you,” he said.
“What about Mrs. Bonner?” I said.
“Yes, yes. They have the grand suite.”
“She in now?”
“But of course.” The clerk gave me a sad smile. “And with all this—how you say?—gaiety in the lounge.” He turned and snapped his fingers. He was a precise little man in a suit so dark gray it looked black. Maybe it was black. “Boy!” he called in “French. “Show M. Drum to his room.”
“No. I want to see Mrs. Bonner now,” I almost yelled.
The clerk gave me a searching look. Then he shrugged. “Show monsieur to the grand jsuite, then take his bags.”
The bellboy turned out to be a middle-aged man wearing a satin-backed vest and a green apron. I went with him to an open-cage elevator and up in it to the second floor. We walked down the hall and he stopped and knocked at a door, then stepped diffidently back.
A homely young woman I had never seen before opened the door. She gazed at us blankly. I began to think the plane, had set me down in the wrong world. “Oui?”
“This is M. Drum,” the man in the green apron said.
THE woman looked at me distastefully. “You are late,” she said severely in English. “Well, it does not matter. He lingers. He—just—lingers. You are a rel
ative?”
“I want to see Mrs. Bonner. She sent for me.”
“Naturally. Come in, please.”
She stepped back so that I could enter a large French provincial living room. Three closed doors led off it. On one wall big logs burned on a bed of ash in an enormous fireplace. The door closed behind me. The woman left the living room through one of the other doors, opening and shutting it softly. I lit a cigarette. There was a tray of whisky and glasses on ah end table, and I made myself a Scotch and water and waited. Presently the door through which the homely young woman had disappeared opened and shut again. Mrs. Bonner came out.
She wore a flannel shirt and slacks which made her hips look too big and too low. Her hair was not combed. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying.
“He just sat down and said he wanted water,” she said after a while. “Just a little water. Then he clutched his chest. The doctor is with him now.” She spoke in little confused fits and starts, as if she had lost all touch with time sequence. “He is in an oxygen tent. They brought it up from Montreal this afternoon. The doctor won’t leave him.”
All I had for her was a blank stare.
“Judson,” she said. “It is Judson. This morning they had an argument. Judson. And Ernie Dygert. When he cracks his whip even Gilbert jumps now. Even Curt.” She paused. “They don’t come out and say it, but I can see it in their faces. The doctor. The nurse. Judson. He’s going to die. Judson is going to die.”
She made a stiff drink for herself. I took it away from her and gave her a cigarette instead. “Get hold of yourself,” I said.
“Judson had a coronary,” she said.
The nurse came out. “Madame Bonner.” She pronounced it, Bone-ay.
Without another look at me Mrs. Bonner followed her through the doorway. The door closed. I finished my drink and walked in front of the fire to stare at the flames. Judson Bonner was dying. It didn’t mean anything to me one way or the other. But it did mean delay. At least I knew that Dygert was here or had been here this morning. I saw a phone on a table in one corner of the room. I picked it up.
“S’il vous plait?”
“Is a Miss Hayst registered here?”
“Yes, sir.”
I let out a long breath. “Connect me with her room.”
“She is out, monsieur. She left this afternoon.”
“With her baggage?”
“No. No, of course not.”
“The minute she comes back, tell her I’m here. This is Mr. Drum. Send her to me. No, keep her down there and call me. I’ll be here or in my own room. You got it?”
“Of course, sir.”
I hung up. Mrs. Bonner came into the room, followed by a tall man carrying a satchel. He looked dignified and grave. “There is nothing, madame,” he said in French. “Nothing we can do that we have not done. In such cases, you wait with God. I will be in the hotel tonight. If there is a change … if I am needed …”
“His face,” Mrs. Bonner told me. “As if he must fight for every breath he takes. As if he is in great pain.”
“There is no pain whatsoever,” the doctor assured her in English.
“Oh, get out!” Mrs. Bonner screamed at him suddenly. “Get out, get out! You talk of pain. He is dying. Dying! What does a little pain matter—if he could live?”
“Madame, under the circumstances, I would like you to take a sedative.”
“Get out!” Mrs. Bonner cried. “I don’t want a sedative. I don’t want … oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout at you. I just don’t want …” She began to cry.
“Monsieur?” the doctor said to me, heading for the hall door.
Mrs. Bonner looked up. “No. I want him to stay. You’ll stay, won’t you, Chester?”
I said I would stay. The doctor went out. “If only he had listened to me,” Mrs. Bonner said softly. “Then this wouldn’t have happened.” She picked up the drink I had taken away from her a few minutes ago. She drank it and sat down on the carpet in front of the fireplace. “I ought to be in there with him,” she said. I didn’t say anything. “Give me a cigarette.”
I GAVE her one, and lit it. She smoked for a while, then threw the butt in the fire and turned to look at me.
“The argument began last night,” she said slowly. “I can’t go in there now. I want to tell you about it. Even Judson, by then, had begun to treat me like a useless little girl.” She stood up. When she spoke again her voice had come down in pitch and she was no longer crying. She seemed to be talking about, something that had happened a long time ago, perhaps to someone else or in another life. “The man’s name is Goheen. He’s an Assistant Secretary in the Canadian Foreign Office and the new Canadian liaison man to the U.S. on atomic energy. He is here on vacation before reporting to his new post. At least Judson and Dygert agree on that: Why should there be any liaison on atomic energy? Why should we give our secrets to foreign powers, even Canada? But Judson’s usual investigations hit a blank wall. Goheen had led an exemplary life. We had hoped that if he had been discredited after he came to Washington, then …”
“Tell me about Dygert,” I urged. “But don’t expect me to jump on your ideological bandwagon.”
“This much we found out about Goheen. He’s an ambitious career man. If we could get something on him, threaten him with what we had—”
“There would be a payoff,” I finished for her.
“Well, all right. All right, it was Dygert’s idea. Goheen, you see, comes from a rich family. Dygert tried to convince my husband they could put Goheen in the same sensitive situation they tried to put Duncan Lord. But I don’t have to tell you there’s a basic difference. Because Lord would have been in a policy-making position, while Goheen is only a liaison officer. But since Dygert had managed to discredit, me and Judson had learned … well, not to think for himself, he went along with Dygert.
“A few days ago, Dygert sent Curt up here. Not to this hotel. To the Hotel St. Laurent, where Goheen is staying—with instructions to become friendly with Goheen. Curt’s a skier—and charming. He was successful. Do you begin to see?”
“Bobby Hayst,” I said, without thinking. “Setting him up for her.”
“How did you know about her?” Mrs. Bonner asked.
“Okay. I know. She’s the main reason I’m here.”
“But you said—”
“Never mind what I said. Now I’m telling you that still puts us on the same side.”
She laughed. It was not a happy sound. “Even you,” she said. “Even you don’t take me seriously. You only pretended to want to help me.”
“To get Dygert or to help Bobby Hayst, what difference does it make?”
She sighed, then looked at her empty glass and went over to the liquor tray to fill it. I got in the way. “That’s enough,” I said. “I want you to talk.”
“You have no right—”
“None at all,” I said, and smiled at her.
“All of you,” she said with self-pity. “Every last one of you, while he lies dying in there.”
“Just talk.”
The door to Judson Bonner’s room opened and the homely nurse came out. “He’s resting comfortably for the first time,” she said. “I think, with God’s help, he is going to be well.” The nurse smiled at us, a hopeful, optimistic smile which lit up her homely face, then returned to the sick room.
“Then if he’s going to be all right, all I have to do is wait,” Mrs. Bonner said without logic.
I grasped her shoulders and shook her. “They never trusted Bobby Hayst, did they?”
“I don’t have to say anything now. Leave me alone. “Get out of here.”
I let her go. I thought that was her vanity talking. I went to the door.
“Wait.”
I turned around. “All of it,” I said. “The works.”
“You lied to me. You tried to trick me.”
“I love you too, Mrs. Bonner. Sure, I lied to you. What difference does it make?”
&nb
sp; SHE turned and spoke to the fire. “I knew it would happen like this. I knew it. It wasn’t good enough for Ernie Dygert to be an investigator. If he couldn’t find what he was looking for, he’d manufacture it. That’s what he was going to do—here. That’s what the argument was about. Last night. This morning. Judson wouldn’t be a party to anything like that. I don’t have to tell you with Duncan Lord it was different. He made his own bed. What he did he did of his own free will. But this would be—”
“Dygert’s had plenty of experience as a divorce detective. Go ahead.”
“You’re right, they never trusted your little whore. They tried to find something that could tie her to you. They even went through her place. From what I overheard, they took it apart. They couldn’t find a thing, but that didn’t change what Dygert thought. He didn’t trust her. Still, as long as she played along, he could use her. If she stopped playing along, if she tried to make trouble … anyway, Judson wouldn’t hear of it. They argued and Judson—was stricken.” She turned around. Her eyes were bright with fear and hate. She was almost crying. “The girl was supposed to go over there tonight. It would be easy for Curt to drug Goheen. They, became friends. Skied together. Drank together. Then, in his room, they would undress him and take pictures of him in bed with the girl.”
“He married?”
“Curt found out. His wife is pregnant, or she would” have joined him here. Curt mentioned it this morning. It seemed to amuse him.” She added in self-defense: “I never knew he was like that. Anyway, you know what happened to Judson.”
“What about tonight?”
“In the confusion after Judson was stricken, the girl got away. I don’t know what she was planning to do, originally. I think she would have gone along with Dygert for her own purposes—whatever her own purposes were. But when Curt mentioned the pregnant Mrs. Goheen, that was a mistake. She changed. You could actually see it. She went over there early this afternoon. To the St. Laurent.”
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