“After Laura was killed, what did Shirley tell you about her?”
“What she told Hardy. She didn’t believe Laura had been raped She’d have said ‘yes’ to anyone.”
“But she didn’t have any list of names for us,” Hardy said.
“That kind of scandal wasn’t Shirley’s dish,” I said.
“But she set out yesterday to get that kind of list for you, Walter,” Chambrun said.
“She had the contacts, if she wanted to tap them,” I said. “Like the Peyron woman in Paris.”
“The Peyron woman didn’t have anything immediate to give her,” Hardy said. “So she calls Claude Duval in Hollywood.”
“With how many local calls in between?” Chambrun asked. “She hadn’t heard Chester Cole’s statement that Duval and Laura were strangers, had she, Mark?”
“For God sake, boss, she was dead at the time Chester was telling me that—late yesterday afternoon.”
“So being a good reporter she just followed a natural lead,” Chambrun said. “She had started, through the Peyron woman, to try to delve into Laura’s past in Paris. Duval, a Frenchman, must have known the Paris swim in those days. I’d have asked him.”
“But she didn’t get to ask him,” Hardy said. “She got the mechanical answering service.”
Chambrun’s eyes were closed again. “He says,” he said.
“If we could only talk to Shirley, know who she called, what she was looking for,” I said. “Poor darling, she couldn’t have dreamed she was in any danger.”
“She went to her apartment to start digging for me about one o’clock in the afternoon,” Hardy said. “Bernice Braden found her dead only about three hours later. She must have struck a nerve somewhere very early on.”
Chambrun glanced at me. “You know who her friends are, Mark. Who would she have called for the kind of information she wanted? Other columnists? If we knew the kind of questions she was asking—”
“She always used to say the last person you’d go to for a story was a rival columnist,” I said. “ ‘Exclusive’ is the name of the game. Friends—?” I shrugged.
I think Chambrun understood. I didn’t really know who Shirley’s friends were. Our relationship, over a six-month period, had been so personal, so private. We hadn’t been concerned with anyone but ourselves. We hadn’t been party goers. She had to cover nightclubs, theater openings, high society wingdings. I didn’t go to any of those things with her. My job kept me anchored at the Beaumont until about three in the morning. We joined up after she’d done her job and I’d done mine. Sundays, our mutual day off, we might drive out into the country, or just stay shacked up in my apartment, enjoying each other. She often had jokes about people, but famous people, not friends. There was a curtain drawn over her life before me. No mention of any other men, and I never mentioned other women. I was in love forever.
“Who do you know in the French embassy here, Mark?” Chambrun asked.
I knew the PR men for most of the UN delegations and the foreign governments in town. “Henri Latrobe,” I said.
“See if Shirley called anyone there to ask questions,” Chambrun said. “She had Paris on her mind.”
I located Latrobe at his apartment, after persuading some gal at the embassy to give me his number. His day began in the early afternoon like most people who cover the night life in town. He had heard about Shirley. He was properly shocked. She had not called him and he thought she might have if she wanted something in his world. They had exchanged information in the past. He would check, but he was reasonably certain that, with the story of Shirley’s death public property since the day before, he’d have heard if she’d called anyone.
Dead end.
When I rejoined Chambrun and Hardy to report—I’d made the call from Ruysdale’s office—I found Frank Lewis, the FBI man, with them. He was just back from New Jersey.
“The cottage belongs to people named Hudson,” he told us. “They’re in Europe for the summer. They advertised their cottage for rent and the agent got a call from someone named Smith, of all things, wanting it. That was eight days ago. The agent, a busy man, never saw this Smith. The rent was delivered by hand when he was out of the office. A messenger service he thinks. One thousand and fifty dollars in cash.”
“For eight days?” I asked.
“For three months at three hundred and fifty a month,” Lewis said. “It’s a good rent for a weekend summer cottage.”
“All he wanted it for was to keep me out of sight for a day and a half,” Chambrun said.
“Seems like,” Lewis said. “Nobody saw him then or since. Neighbors didn’t know the place was rented until you found someone to drive you into Princeton.”
“Nothing in the cottage itself?” Chambrun asked.
“A pot of drugged coffee. Our department lab is checking out on it. This ‘Smith’ didn’t even bother to get rid of it. Two coffee mugs, both with what I suspect are your prints on them. Nothing else that doesn’t seem to relate to the owners.”
Chambrun studied the ash on his cigarette, as though the moment it would drop into the ashtray was fascinating. “Most interesting thing about all this,” he said, “is that they planned having me as a guest well in advance of the moment. Whoever or whatever I wasn’t to see was prepared for ahead of time.”
“And worth three months rent to cover who or what,” Hardy said.
The little red light winked on Chambrun’s phone. The call was for Hardy from his Hollywood police friend. The Hollywood cop had solved Hardy’s problem with one phone call. Duval had been in Hollywood since midmorning after the ball here in New York. He had worked all day yesterday and until late in the evening at the studio, filming. The Hollywood cops could do a more thorough check if Hardy wanted, but there was no way Duval could have been in New York in the last forty-eight hours.
“So we’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole,” Hardy said when he hung up.
Chambrun gave him a strange little smile. “It’s been done before, Walter,” he said. “As a matter of fact, we’ve done it.” He paused to light a fresh cigarette. “We only have Duval’s word that he didn’t talk to Shirley. He admitted there’d been a call, registered on his answering machine. He had to admit that because we knew she’d made the call to his number. The fact is, she may have talked to him, and asked him a question or suggested something to him that triggered him into action.”
“You’re saying he’s our ‘employer’?” Hardy asked.
“We’re just playing games, aren’t we, Walter? If he is our employer, then his next action becomes obvious. Shirley, whether she knew it or not, had made herself dangerous to him.”
“How, for God sake?” I asked.
“By suggesting to him, perhaps through a question, that if she continued her line of inquiry he was in trouble. So the ‘employer’ calls the ‘employee’ who is in New York and can get to Shirley in almost no time at all. Her inquiry is ended before she can make even a few more telephone calls.”
“And we can’t prove any part of it,” Hardy said. He sounded tired of games. “So we’re back at square one.”
“Humor me, Walter,” Chambrun said. “I’d like to play this out as far as it takes me.”
Hardy shook his head. “I’ve got a list of names I got from James Kauffman which is, like you said, as long as my arm. I’ve got to check out on them before they all die of old age. Have fun, maestro.”
When we were alone, Chambrun turned to me. “If I wasn’t supposed to see someone, someone I didn’t see was Duval,” he said. “That fits, doesn’t it? We have a man who won’t let pictures be taken of him. So I would like to see one.”
“But if there aren’t any—?”
“He made a public appearance at the ball, I believe,” Chambrun said. “There were all kinds of photographers in the press gallery. It may have been understood that no pictures of him be released, but for that very reason I’d like to bet someone has one.”
Knowing p
ress people and photographers is part of my job. I tried to remember who I’d seen in the press gallery the night of the ball. That night I’d been dancing with Shirley. For a moment I had that sick feeling, remembering what she’d felt like in my arms, the scent of her gold-blond hair. I pulled myself together and recalled Charlie Price, who takes pictures for International.
I got lucky. Charlie was at his office. I asked him if he’d taken any pictures of Duval at the Cancer Fund Ball.
“That’s a no-no, chum,” Charlie said.
“That doesn’t mean you didn’t take any for your memory book.”
“Why do you want one?”
“My boss wants to see what Duval looks like,” I said. “He’d consider it a favor, and you might be able to use a favor from him someday.”
“It can’t be released, Mark, or used for advertising or publicity,” Charlie said.
“Chambrun just wants to know what he looks like,” I said. “I told him Telly Savalas, but that isn’t good enough.”
“Not so funny you should say that,” Charlie said. “People stop him on the street, thinking he’s Savalas. If people ask him for autographs he signs Savalas’s name. Look, I’ll give you a print, but your boss has got to play by the rules or it’s my neck.”
At a little after two in the afternoon I presented Chambrun with a picture of Duval. It wasn’t a studio shot. He was standing on the platform at the end of the ballroom, tweed jacket, tinted glasses, a beret on his bald head.
“Made a nice little speech of thanks to everyone,” I said.
Chambrun stared at the picture for a long time. I thought he was disappointed. I don’t know what he expected to see, but what was there obviously didn’t forward his game.
Ruysdale appeared at the office door. “It’s Chester Cole on the phone for you, Mark.”
Chambrun switched on the squawk box and I picked up the phone. Someone was breathing hard, like in those horror movies on TV.
“Chester?” I said.
“Mark? For the love of God come up here—now!” he said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just hurry! And bring your cop friend with you if you can.”
I put down the phone.
“It’s caught up with him,” Chambrun said. “His panic.”
We hurried down the hall to the elevators and went up to the ninth floor. Like the first time, Cole didn’t answer his doorbell or a knock. Chambrun sent me down the hall for the maid’s passkey.
We let ourselves in. Cole wasn’t waiting for us. It was one of our French rooms, and a delicate little Louis XIV straight-backed chair was overturned on the rug. Not broken, just tipped over. Cole wasn’t anywhere. A cigarette was burning in an ashtray on the bureau. We’d missed him by only that much.
There are two ways off any floor in the Beaumont, the elevators and the fire stairs. There are four elevators that come to nine, all with operators at that time of day. One of them remembered bringing Cole up about fifteen minutes ago—just before he’d called me. None of the four operators had seen him leave.
By the time Security had been alerted by Chambrun, Chester Cole had time to go almost anywhere, up, down, or out on the fire stairs. Jerry Dodd took over and came up empty after about an hour. He reported to Chambrun in his office.
“Donovan on elevator number three took him up,” Jerry told us. “Nobody took him down. Fifteen minutes after he went up, you were there. You think he left on his own, or someone made him leave?”
“Who knows,” Chambrun said. “He was scared out of his wits.”
“People came up to nine and left it,” Jerry said. “I could dig up a partial list. But nobody left with Cole—on the elevators. Who are we looking for?”
“I wish I knew,” Chambrun said. “In a nonsensical game I’m playing it could be someone connected with Clark Herman’s film company. Man without a face as far as I’m concerned.”
There was a long and tedious search after that, much like the one that had been set in motion for Chambrun. I won’t try to describe it. It didn’t turn up Chester Cole anywhere.
I remember Chambrun, sitting at his desk, bringing his fist down hard on the polished surface.
“We don’t catch up with them and these people will go on and on and on!” he said. “I want to talk to Duval.”
“He’s in Hollywood, as you know. I can probably dig up a number for him.”
“I don’t want to talk to him on the phone. I want him here.”
“Not much chance of that, I’d think,” I said. “He isn’t likely to accept an invitation from you. What could the cops charge him with, and how could they get him back from California?”
“There has to be a way,” Chambrun said.
When Chambrun says there has to be a way there is a way, but only someone as devious as Chambrun can be could come up with it. The rest of that afternoon I was involved with two projects; trying to find someone who may have seen Chester Cole leave the hotel while at the same time trying to stay within reach of a phone in case Chester might call again; and working in my office with Bernice Braden, Shirley’s badly shaken secretary, calling people she suggested Shirley might have been in touch with in her quest for information about Laura Kauffman. I came up empty in all directions. There was just one thing that I could offer for the pot. The phone company told me that Shirley’s call to Duval in Hollywood had lasted less than two minutes. They had the charges on it. That seemed to back up Duval’s story that she had gotten the answering machine. A conversation with him, even an unfruitful conversation, must have lasted longer than two minutes.
I took this one fragment of information to Chambrun’s office about seven o’clock in the evening. I didn’t get to give it to him just then because he had company. Sitting comfortably in one of the green leather armchairs was Mrs. Victoria Haven, smoking a cigarette in a long jade holder, and cradling that nasty-looking little Japanese spaniel in her ample lap. She had on a black evening dress, a summer fur draped over her shoulders, and was decked out in enough jewelry to sink a tugboat She gave me an amiable smile and Toto growled at me.
The other guest was Henri Latrobe from the French embassy. Latrobe is a dark, handsome young man about my age, with a perpetual smile and laughing dark eyes. He was wearing a dinner jacket with black pearl studs in a very mod, lace-frilled dress shirt He looked pleased with himself.
“You have arrived just in time to be in on a deception, Mark,” Chambrun said.
“I should be clear to you, Mark,” Henri Latrobe said, “that my mother should never know about this. She is a good Catholic.”
Toto growled at me and Mrs. Haven said: “Do shut up, Toto.” Then to me, “I have never objected to lying in a good cause, Mark.”
I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. The red light blinked on Chambrun’s phone. He switched on the squawk box and picked up.
“I have Mr. Duval for you, Mr. Chambrun,” the operator said.
Chambrun nodded to Henri Latrobe. Latrobe winked at me and said: “Claude? Henri Latrobe here. I’m afraid I have some trouble for you.”
“Something wrong with my passport?” Duval asked. He sounded undisturbed. “I’m in the middle of shooting an important sequence, Henri.” I realized it would be about four in the afternoon on the coast.
“Nothing like that,” Henri said. “It’s trouble with the film, though.”
“What kind of trouble?” Duval asked.
“There is an elderly lady who lives here at the Hotel Beaumont,” Henri said.
“What elderly lady?”
“A Mrs. Victoria Haven.”
“I never heard of her,” Duval said.
“I’m afraid you will, Claude,” Henri said. The lady is about to make big trouble for you.”
“How would you like to come to the point?” Duval asked in a flat, cold voice. His British accent made it sound clipped.
“It has to do with the filming here at the Cancer Fund Ball, and later in the Trapeze Bar,” Henri s
aid. “Mrs. Haven was present on both occasions.”
I looked at the old girl, who was smiling happily. I remembered distinctly her telling us she hadn’t been at the ball, and I could swear she hadn’t been in the Trapeze. Shirley and I had been there when the film was being shot with Janet Parker and Robert Randle.
“So she was present,” Duval said. “What of it?”
“She is getting an injunction from a friendly judge to prevent your using any of that footage, Claude. She’s in both sets of film and she will not allow you to use them without her personal permission. Invasion of privacy. I think she’s got you over a barrel, Claude.”
“So get her permission,” Duval said. ‘There are hundreds of thousands of dollars involved.”
“Mrs. Haven is here with me,” Henri said “Perhaps you can persuade her.”
“Put her on,” Duval said.
Mrs. Haven cleared her throat and spoke in her husky, whiskey voice. “I don’t want to discuss matters on the telephone, Mr. Duval,” she said.
“I will have the producer’s lawyer call on you in the morning, madam.”
“I will only talk to you, and in person,” Victoria Haven said.
“That’s quite out of the question,” Duval said. “I am in the middle of a filming here.”
“Then you will be served with an injunction in the morning,” Mrs. Haven said. “Goodnight, Mr. Duval.”
“Latrobe!” Duval shouted.
“Yes, Claude.” Henri was grinning like a cat.
“Can’t you talk some sense into that woman?”
“I think you’re the only one, Claude. Before I called I looked up plane schedules. There’s a flight leaving Los Angeles International in about fifty minutes. Gets you into Kennedy about one o’clock. You could just about make it.”
“One o’clock!” Duval said. “Eight hours! What kind of flight is that?”
“Difference in time, Claude. Five-hour flight.”
“Will that old bitch see me at that time of night?”
“That old bitch, Mr. Duval, is a night person,” Victoria Haven said.
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