1958 - Not Safe to be Free

by James Hadley Chase

  Jay suddenly smiled.

  Perhaps here was the way out. If he could strengthen this suspicion in some way, if he could convince the police that Kerr was the man they were looking for. . .

  This needed thought.

  He got to his feet and walked back to the hotel. By now it was after half-past ten and the activity of the day had begun. . .

  Press photographers had taken up their positions, waiting for someone worthwhile to photograph. Starlets were beginning to show themselves off in their brief beach shorts and halters, moving about the lobby on the off-chance that some producer or casting director would spot them. The hall porter’s desk was surrounded by people collecting letters, newspapers and asking for information.

  Jay paused just inside .the entrance and looked quickly around. There was no sign of any detective. He saw his father come out of the elevator with Harry Stone and he went over to him.

  “Sophia’s gone for a swim,” he said, after his father had greeted him. “She’ll be back in an hour.”

  Delaney nodded.

  “I’m going over to Nice. I’ll be at the Studios. If she wants to come, tell her I’ll be free about midday.” He started to move away, then paused. “What are you doing?”

  “I said I’d keep her company. I’m just going up for my swimsuit.”

  Delaney frowned, then shrugged his shoulders.

  “Well, okay. See you,” and beckoning to Harry Stone, he went out of the hotel with Stone hurrying after him.

  Jay walked up the stairs to the second floor. He paused at the head of the stairs and looked along the deserted corridor, then, moving slowly, he walked towards his suite, paused for a moment outside the door, then continued on down the corridor. He had only taken fifty or so paces when he came upon the concealed alcove and he stopped. He realized then that the alcove he had thought was an entrance to another corridor was a bay window and it offered a convenient hiding place. He guessed this was where Joe Kerr had hidden himself.

  His face set in concentrated thought, Jay walked back slowly to the door of suite 27, turned the handle and entered. He moved over to a lounging chair and sat down. For an hour he remained motionless, his mind active. He was still sitting there when he heard the door handle turn and he looked up to see Sophia come in.

  She shut the door and leaned against it.

  Jay saw that she looked pale under her tan and her eyes were very hard.

  “Where’s your father?” she asked, keeping her voice down.

  “He’s gone to Nice. There’s no one here.” Jay got to his feet. “Well?”

  She moved away from the door, opened her handbag and took out a soiled envelope. She handed it to Jay and then walked across the room to the window, turning her back on him.

  Jay’s hands were unsteady as he took the three photographs from the envelope. He studied them for some moments, then laid them on the table. He had been expecting something much worse than this. Looking at the photographs, he thought they didn’t appear to be anything like as dangerous as he had feared.

  Of course the clock told the story, but that wasn’t proof that he had murdered the girl. It was unfortunate that he had had the interview with the Inspector before he had seen these pictures. He would have told the Inspector a different story had he known there was a photograph showing the arrival of the girl at his father’s suite. Now, he was saddled with a lie and if the Inspector obtained further evidence against him, the lie might prove fatal.

  On the other hand, he could still withdraw his statement about not seeing the girl after she had left the beach. He could tell the Inspector the same story that he had told Sophia—that the girl invited herself to the suite, that he had been weak enough to agree and then, at the psychological moment, Sophia had walked in. When she had gone, he had got rid of the girl and that was the last he had seen of her. He would hint that Kerr, hanging about outside, in a drunken frenzy, had dragged the girl into an empty room and had strangled her. But before his story made sense, he would have to strengthen the evidence against Kerr.

  Turning, Sophia said, “Well?”

  “These aren’t so alarming, are they?” Jay said. “Of course the clock establishes that you and the girl and I were together in the suite around the time she was killed. But I should have thought it made things a little safer. No one would imagine that you would assist in a murder, surely?”

  Sophia made an impatient movement with her hands.

  “That’s interesting,” she said and moved over to a chair and sat down. “I think I would like a drink, Jay. Would you make me a very large martini?”

  As Jay crossed over to the cocktail cabinet, he asked, “Who is this woman?”

  Sophia rested her head against the chair back and closed her eyes.

  The shabby, sordid little hotel made a vivid picture in her mind. It was the kind of hotel she used to take men to when she had been walking the streets in Rome. Her suspicions had been confirmed when she entered the tiny, evil-smelling lobby and saw the enormously fat woman with rust-coloured hair sitting behind the reception desk: a woman Sophia recognized as a brothel-keeper.

  “Madame Delaney?” the woman had said and her thick, glistening red lips had parted to show white teeth. Her eyes had moved over Sophia’s face, probing and curious and her smile had widened. “I thought it would be more convenient for you to come here than for me to come to the Plaza. What a magnificent hotel! How fortunate you are to be able to stay there!” Her great fat evil face seemed to hover before Sophia’s eyes. “You like it there, cherie?”

  “You have something to show me?” Sophia said, her voice flat and cold.

  “Yes, I have something to show you.” Madame Brossette got to her feet and she walked with heavy, creaking steps to a door which she opened. “Come with me. In here, we won’t be disturbed.”

  Sophia followed her into a small, dingy office. She could smell the rancid smell of stale perspiration on the woman now she was close and she could even feel the heat that came from her great body. Sophia had reacted to this situation as very few women would have done. Her experience in the past stood her now in good stead. She had dealt with women like Madame Brossette in her past and she wasn’t sickened, as most women would have been.

  She sat down and watched Madame Brossette heave her body around the small desk, open a drawer and take out three photographs. These she laid in front of Sophia, then she sat down, showing her white teeth in a grin of triumph. Aware that her heart was beating quickly, Sophia examined the photographs. Her shrewd, quick mind saw that the clock in each photograph was the storyteller. Her face was expressionless as she looked at Madame Brossette.

  “You want to sell these?”

  “Yes. The man who took them was curious that the girl didn’t leave your apartment,” Madame Brossette said. “Anything odd interests him. He sat outside the door of your apartment until half-past three in the morning. Then he saw this young man carry the girl to the elevator. She was dead. With these pictures and his evidence, both of you could go for trial. Yes, I would be willing to sell them, providing the price is fair.”

  “How much?” Sophia asked as she arranged a loose strand of hair that had escaped from the ribbon around her head.

  Madame Brossette regarded her with unconcealed admiration.

  “You will appreciate that if my friend doesn’t tell the police what he knows, he will become an accessory to murder?”

  Sophia deliberately took out her cigarette case, selected a cigarette and then lit it. Her movements were unhurried, so that Madame Brossette could observe how steady her hands were.

  “How much?” she asked, blowing a cloud of smoke into Madame Brossette’s face.

  “Shall we say ten million francs now as an immediate payment?”

  “And after?”

  Madame Brossette lifted her dyed eyebrows.

  “For an immediate payment of ten million francs you would have my word of honour that the police wouldn’t be shown the photographs. Later, my fr
iend might need a little more money, but I assure you he isn’t interested in great wealth. He is a man of very simple tastes.”

  “How much for the negatives?” Sophia asked.

  Madame Brossette shook her rust-coloured hair.

  “The negatives are not for sale. I’m sorry, but my friend is anxious to have a sense of security. One never knows: money can be useful from time to time.”

  Sophia leaned forward and tapped the ash off her cigarette into the glass bowl on Madame Brossette’s desk.

  “I haven’t ten million francs,” she said.

  Madame Brossette lifted her fat, massive shoulders.

  “That I can understand. You have a very rich husband, but he doesn’t give you much money. The diamond necklace you wore at the opening night of the Festival would do very well. Your husband wouldn’t miss it and I could make use of it. Suppose we agree that the first payment should be the necklace?’

  Sophia drew in a lungful of smoke and let the smoke drift down her small, beautifully shaped nostrils.

  “That might be arranged.”

  Madame Brossette’s smile widened.

  “You are not without experience, ma cherie,” she said. “In the past, you have had a hard life. Girls in trouble come to me from time to time. I deal lightly with them because I am sorry for them. I too have been in trouble. I’m willing to wait until tomorrow, but after tomorrow the photographs will go to the police. From now until nine o’clock tomorrow morning I will wait. After then, I must go to the police. Is that understood?”

  Sophia got to her feet. She placed her small, beautiful hands on the desk and leaned forward so that her glittering eyes stared fixedly into the small, greedy eyes that looked up into hers.

  “Don’t confuse me with the other women you have had to deal with,” she said softly and the viciousness in her voice would have shocked her husband could he have heard it.

  “Don’t make the mistake that you can dictate to me, you fat old cow! Don’t imagine that, if I get the chance, I won’t make you pay for this!”

  Madame Brossette smiled. She had been often threatened in the past, threats had become meaningless.

  “I appreciate how you feel,” she said. “I’d feel the same way. Bring the necklace before nine tomorrow morning.” Her white teeth glistened in the sunlight. “After the luxury you have found, you would not like to spend years in prison.” She pushed the photographs across the desk. “Take them and show them to the boy. I have plenty more.”

  Sophia picked up the photographs, put them into the soiled envelope and the envelope into her bag. She stared for a long moment at the fat, evil face, then she walked out of the room, through the tiny lobby and into the sunshine.

  Without looking at Jay she recounted the story of her meeting with Madame Brossette.

  Jay sat opposite her, his hands folded in his lap, his face set and pale.

  When she had finished, she said quietly: “Well? This is only the beginning. If I give her the necklace, she will ask for something else. What are you going to do, Jay?”

  “We have until nine o’clock tomorrow morning,” Jay said. “I don’t think you will have to give her the necklace.” His pale lips curved into a meaningless smile. “Between now and nine o’clock tomorrow morning I will have arranged something.”

  “What?” Sophia’s voice was suddenly sharp.

  “Something. Try not to think about this, Sophia. Don’t worry about it. Thank you for seeing this woman. It was kind of you.”

  He made a move to the door.

  “Jay!”

  He paused, looking at her.

  “Wait a moment,” Sophia said. “I must know what you are planning to do.”

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t think so, Sophia. It is best that no one knows that except myself.”

  He opened the door and went out, closing the door behind him.

  Sophia sat motionless, her heart beating fast, a sudden sick feeling of fear gripping her.

  Chapter Eight

  I

  With the sun burning on his back, Jay walked slowly down Rue d’Antibes. The principal shopping street of Cannes was crowded. In his beach wear he blended with the crowd of tourists in their gay holiday clothes.

  He walked slowly, his hands deep in the pockets of his pale blue and white striped cotton trousers, his eyes hidden behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses.

  He reached Rue Foch and paused.

  La Boule d’Or stood at the corner, as Ginette had described and a little way down the narrow street was the hotel Beau Rivage, Madame Brossette’s establishment.

  Jay took out his cigarette case and lit a cigarette whilst he looked beyond the cafe at the small hotel.

  It was as Sophia had described it: small, sordid and dirty. The lace curtains, grey-white with age and dirt, that screened the windows gave it a poverty-stricken look.

  As he stood at the corner, feeling the hot sun burning down on his head, a girl in a clinging flowered patterned dress, a big handbag slung over her arm, a dark flashily dressed man at her heels, walked into the hotel.

  Jay crossed the street and paused outside La Boule d’Or.

  This was a gay, clean little cafe with five tables set out on the street and a blue and white sun awning, offering welcome shade.

  Four of the tables were occupied by young holiday makers, sipping orange juice and eating ices. They glanced casually at Jay as he took the vacant table.

  He looked into the dim cool interior of the bar.

  Behind the bar sat a thickset man, around fifty years of age. His general appearance, with his big fleshy face, heavily tanned, his close-cropped white hair, his pale bright blue eyes, suggested that for most of his life he had been at sea and this was true.

  Jean Bereut had been a master mariner until an accident had deprived him of both his legs. Now, he was forced to sit behind the bar of La Boule d’Or and serve drinks while his mind drifted away from time to time to the far oceans where he had spent the best years of his life.

  Seeing Jay seat himself, Bereut reached forward and struck a bell that hung within reach. A moment or so later, Ginette came out from the rear room and looked inquiringly at her father. He gave her a friendly grin as he jerked his thumb towards Jay.

  She came across the room and paused at Jay’s side, her back turned to her father. Jay looked up and he felt a surge of pleasure run through him to see the flush that mounted to her face as she recognized him.

  “Hello,” he said. “I was passing . . .”

  “Father mustn’t know,” she said, her voice an anxious whisper.

  He understood that. He wouldn’t want his father to know either. His eyes moved over her. She was wearing a simple light blue dress and her hair was caught back by a strip of blue ribbon. He thought she looked lovely and he felt blood mount to his own face.

  “Can I have a Vermouth, dry, with ice?” he said, then added quickly, “I’ll be down at the harbour at midnight. You will be there?”

  “Yes, I’ll be there.”

  She gave him a quick smile, then she went into the bar and he heard her ask her father for a Vermouth.

  Jay looked across at the Beau Rivage hotel. The place stood inactive in its dingy sordidness. Then, as Ginette brought the Vermouth to his table, a girl with dyed red hair, wearing a shabby grey coat and skirt, accompanied by a red-faced, anxious looking man in shorts and a flowered patterned enter the hotel. He knew what he had to do.

  “To tonight,” he said to Ginette, slightly raising his glass in her direction.

  ***

  Jay stopped in a specialty store after he left the café. He asked the clerk if they had a certain straight edge razor that he had often admire.

  Yes, they had one, but it took several minutes for the clerk to find it. He laid the razor, its blade glittering in the sunshine, on the counter.

  “Yes, that’s what I want,” Jay said.

  He paid and let the assistant put the razor into its leather case, then
, taking it from the man’s hand, he slid it into his hip pocket.

  Moving slowly, he again passed the Beau Rivage hotel. This time he noticed there was a young girl behind the reception desk: a thin slattern who was yawning over a newspaper, scratching her head as she read with a bored expression on her thin, suntanned face.

  It would be unwise, he thought as he passed the entrance and headed once more up the Rue d’Antibes, to do anything until it was dark. The back streets would be deserted soon after ten o’clock: then would be the time and he felt a quickening of his pulse as he thought what he had to do.

  While he was walking back to the Plaza hotel, the news of the murder exploded like a hand grenade among the pressmen haunting the Plaza lobby.

  For more than half an hour Inspector Devereaux was besieged in the assistant manager’s office. Then when the pressmen were satisfied that they had all the information he could give them, there was a mad rush to the telephones.

  Left alone with Guidet, Devereaux sat back and mopped his perspiring face.

  He had said nothing about Joe Kerr to the pressmen. He had given them the details of the girl’s death. He had given them permission to visit the morgue where she had now been taken. He had said that the investigation was proceeding but so far there were no clues.

  This was all very well for a few hours, but he knew before long pressure would be brought to bear on him for further information and a demand made for an arrest.

  “Still no sign of Kerr?” he asked Guidet.

  “Not yet. He’s not staying at any of the hotels here,” Guidet said. “We are extending the search further afield and I have every available man on the job. It looks suspicious. The hall porter tells me that Kerr always arrives before eleven in the morning and hangs about up to midnight. Today, so far, there has been no sign of him.”

  Devereaux dug his pencil viciously into the much-marked blotter.

  “He was up there at the time the girl died; he left at the time she was put in the elevator. Now he has vanished. It looks like he is our man. He’s got to be found!”