Murder Round the Clock

by Hugh Pentecost

  Wilson was mopping sweat off his face, although the room was air-conditioned. "A lot of people in high places are going to be in big trouble if we don't get that stuff back fast," he said.

  "I'm sick of people in high places who are so concerned with their own power that they have to operate forever undercover," Chambrun said. "I don't care who gets into big trouble."

  "Since we have no idea who it is, what's to stop him from just checking out of the hotel with my documents in his luggage?" Wilson asked. "Will you subject everybody to a search before they leave the hotel?"

  Chambrun's cold eyes seemed to be buried in their deep pouches. "I don't think that will be necessary," he said. He turned to Nevers. "However, Carl, let me know if anyone tries to check out before the normal time this morning. If anyone tries, stall until I get to them."

  "Yes, sir."

  Chambrun gave Wilson a thoughtful look. "You're a professional, Mr. Wilson, at this sort of thing."

  "I don't follow you," Wilson said.

  "Spy and counterspy, all perfectly legal, of course. Suppose you knew an enemy agent had important documents in our vault, how would you go about getting them?"

  Wilson shrugged. "This fellow knew his job pretty well," he said. "I don't know that I could improve on it."

  "Probably not," Chambrun said. "There's just one thing this man didn't know when he was planning."

  "Oh?" Wilson said.

  "That when the alarm was turned off in the vault a certain way, it set off another alarm, a silent one, that warned us the vault was being robbed. He couldn't have anticipated that. He thought he had plenty of time, with Nevers and Mrs. Paradine locked inside the vault. He'd planned his escape by way of the northwest fire stairs and unexpectedly he ran into Schooley. So he had to kill."

  "In my experience," Wilson said, "there's always something unexpected happening. You have to be trained to act without hesitation in any emergency."

  "But this man must have had an escape plan as well as his plan to get into the vault, wouldn't you say?"

  Wilson nodded. "They'd be equally important," he said.

  "So this man planned to make his escape by way of the northwest fire stairs," Chambrun said. "He only had to walk a

  few yards across the lobby to the stairway door, carrying the briefcase, of course. He assumed there had been no alarm, so he didn't have to move so fast that he'd attract attention."

  "Sounds logical," Wilson said.

  "He must have checked out the ground pretty thoroughly, wouldn't you say?" Chambrun sounded almost casual.

  "As I've said, he was obviously a professional."

  Chambrun put out his cigarette in an ashtray on the telephone table. He actually smiled at Wilson. "Since he knew the hotel so well," he said, "why do you suppose our man headed up the northwest stairway instead of down? There's no escape from the upper levels. He must have known that."

  "That's pretty obvious, isn't it?" Wilson said. "He started down, found the way blocked by someone alerted by the alarm he didn't know about, and had no choice but to head up in the hope of escaping somewhere into the upper levels of the hotel."

  "And ran into Schooley?'*

  "Must have," Wilson said.

  Chambrun seemed to consider this for a moment. "There could be another explanation," he said. "He always meant to go up—to his room."

  "Could be," Wilson said, "if he had a room."

  "I'm inclined to think he does have a room," Chambrun said. He smiled again. "You know, I've had some experience with crime, Mr. Wilson. I always try to put myself in the criminal's mind and think as he might have thought. I assume these documents he stole would be worth a great deal of money to the thief—perhaps blackmail money?"

  "You can say that again," Wilson said.

  "Being a professional, this man must have recognized the danger of being caught with the documents in his possession. He'd want to get them off his person just as fast as he could, in case anything went wrong."

  "You mean, hide them?" Wilson asked.

  "Something like that," Chambrun said. "Of course, if he was caught, he'd have some difficulty getting back to the hiding place."

  "A confederate?" Wilson suggested.

  "Would you share a big financial bonanza with someone else, Mr. Wilson?"

  Wilson shrugged. "There might not be any other choice. Not in advance, I wouldn't. If I was caught I might get help from my lawyer, for example. But I wouldn't cut anyone in ahead of time."

  "And he would know we'd search the hotel from top to bottom," Chambrun said, "so he'd have prepared a safe hiding place."

  "Yes, he would."

  I could see Jerry Dodd champing at the bit. Chambrun's theorizing wasn't getting us anywhere, and Schooley's killer was still at large somewhere in the hotel.

  "And that hiding place would have to be somewhere not far from this vault room if he was to dispose of the briefcase quickly." Chambrun turned to Jerry Dodd. "Let's walk over what must have been his escape route, Jerry. He'd walk from here through the outer office. He stopped there to take off his mask and then his raincoat—"

  We walked into the outer office, Chambrun pausing by the old-fashioned hat rack. He looked around the office.

  "No place to hide a briefcase here," he said.

  We went out into the lobby. It was buzzing with people, mostly staff, who knew what had happened. Ordinarily there would only have been the cleaning crew there at four-thirty in the morning. Chambrun headed toward the northwest fire-door exit, Wilson, Jerry, and I following him. He stopped at the door. Just to the left of it was a large mailbox, with slots for letters and larger packages. Chambrun looked at Jerry.

  "Can you open that mailbox, Jerry?" he asked.

  "At the risk of spending the rest of my natural life in jail," Jerry said. "That's a federal offense."

  "Let's risk it," Chambrun said.

  "What's the idea?" Jerry asked. He didn't like it.

  "I'm trying to think like our man," Chambrun said. "I'd have come prepared to get rid of that briefcase quickly. It would not be easy to hide. But if I had a large envelope prepared that would hold it, all I'd have to do would be to drop it in a mailbox, addressed to some prearranged post office box, and let Uncle Sam protect it for me.

  "He'd been over the ground. He knew this mailbox was here, only a few yards from the vault room. He probably put the briefcase in his prepared, stamped envelope when he discarded his coat and mask in the outer office. He walks, innocent as you please, across the lobby to this box and mails his package, quite openly. Open it up, Jerry."

  Jerry produced some kind of kit from his pocket and went to work on the mailbox lock. It evidently wasn't very complicated, because he got it open almost at once. The big box was half full, and Chambrun fumbled around with the contents. Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat, he produced a large manila envelope. He read us the address.

  P.O. Box 1724

  Grand Central Post Office

  New York, N. Y. 10017

  Chambrun handed the package to Wilson. "I don't think we should compound our federal offenses by opening it, Mr. Wilson, but would you guess from the feel of it that we might have your briefcase here?"

  Wilson took the envelope and felt it carefully. "By God, I think you've found it, Mr. Chambrun," he said.

  Chambrun almost snatched the package away from Wilson, and he wasn't smiling anymore. "Check this for the fingerprints Mr. Wilson just made, Jerry," he said. "I think you'll find that the prints on this package match the one you took off the electronic device on Mr. Wilson's phone."

  Jerry opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. Chambrun turned to Wilson.

  "You were headed upstairs for your room when you ran into Schooley, weren't you, Wilson? Your fingerprints on that package have blown the ballgame. You bugged your own phone, to make us think someone else was involved. You had to stage the robbery so that the people in Washington would never think of you as the thief. The subsequent blackmailing of higher-u
ps would appear to be the work of the man who robbed you."

  Wilson was sweating again. He looked around like someone trapped, then made a quick move away from us.

  "Hold it right there, Wilson!" Jerry Dodd shouted. He'd produced a gun. "Your body will look like a hunk of Swiss cheese if you take one more step."

  A couple of Jerry's security boys took charge of Wilson. We stood, watching him being taken away. He would be charged with homicide and robbery.

  "Those CIA boys are taught all kinds of things, including karate," Chambrun said, then sighed. "It was mighty bad luck for Schooley."

  "I damn near blew it," Jerry said. "You know there was no fingerprint on that telephone gadget. It was too small to take a clear print."

  Chambrun's smile was grim. "But Wilson didn't know that," he said. "I wanted him to make a move, just to be certain."

  The security staff at the Beaumont consists of about twenty-five men and five girls under the efficient command of Jerry Dodd, a former FBI agent, a wiry, energetic, and very tough little cop. Chambrun assigned Ted Springer to Jerry Dodd's force. It was the ideal post from which to see and learn everything that went on in the hotel, from the penthouses to the cellars. The Beaumont is like an isolated city within a city, with its own restaurants and bars, its shops, hospital, communications systems, police force, and mayor or city manager. We have all the problems of a city including the problem of crime.

  About the time Ted Springer came to work for us, we were in the throes of being victimized by a highly skillful hotel thief. There had been a rash of robberies in some of the best hotels in the city. The M.O. was simple: a knock on the door, a couple of thugs barged in, slugged the unhappy guest or guests, stole whatever wasn't nailed down, and took off.

  Nothing like that had happened to us. Jerry Dodd had some kind of personal, built-in radar system that could smell out the wrong kind of person on the premises. Our man was a much slicker operator. He never burglarized a room when anyone was in it. He had a way with locks. He seemed to know exactly when a guest was out and exactly which guests were worth robbing. This meant a very close and constant surveillance. It suggested that our man was a guest himself, probably smiling at us cheerfully as he passed us in the lobby.

  Jerry Dodd had gone over the list of some twelve hundred guests and boiled down his list to six—five men and a woman. After three weeks of watching those six and having four more robberies pulled off right under his nose, Jerry had pointed the finger at one man. His name was Wilson McVey. He was an attractive man in his middle thirties, blond, rather stylish in his style of dress, and said to be an art expert for a West Coast museum. I say "said to be," but it checked out. He was just that, with a first-class reputation on the Coast. Jerry had nothing positive on him, but he was convinced.

  "There are two things we can do," Jerry told Chambrun. We were in Chambrun's second-floor office.

  "We can tell him his room is needed and kick him out," Chambrun said, "or we can wait to catch him red-handed and send him up for a long time."

  "And risk another robbery," Jerry said.

  "I want him. I want him badly," Chambrun said.

  So Mr. McVey was in for it, I thought. Chambrun and Jerry would get him sooner or later.

  Jerry had gone a good deal farther than trying to identify the thief. He had drawn up a list of the most likely victims for McVey, trying to think like McVey himself. On that list was a Mrs. Framingham on the fourteenth floor—1407. She was a middle-aged, not unattractive woman, alone, and clearly on the make. She wore valuable jewelry in public and, as far as Jerry knew, kept none of it in the hotel safe. Mrs. Framing-ham, out on the town, undoubtedly left most of her jewelry in 1407. There were others, but they are not important to this story. Men were assigned to cover each of the possibilities, and Ted Springer, unluckily for him, drew Mrs. Framingham.

  About six-thirty on the evening when it happened, Ted Springer checked in with Jerry. Mrs. Framingham had just left her room, dolled up for the evening.

  "Stay under cover," Jerry ordered Springer. "If McVey—or anyone else—lets himself into the room, don't try to nab him. Call me. I want to take him myself."

  Springer was a management student, not a cop. Caught, McVey might turn out to be dangerous, and Jerry didn't want a green kid confronting him.

  I was aware of the stake-out, and I knew, as the evening wore on, that none of the men watching had reported any action on the part of Wilson McVey.

  As public relations director of the hotel, I had other things to do beside stalking our hotel thief. On that particular night there had been a private banquet in one of the special dining rooms for the French ambassador to the United Nations. It broke up a little before eleven, and I made a point of putting myself in the ambassador's path to inquire if everything had been satisfactory.

  "I'm Mark Haskell, sir," I told him. "Mr. Chambrun will be anxious to know how the dinner was."

  It had been perfect, the ambassador told me. The Beaumont's wine cellar is unsurpassed, particularly in imported French wines.

  "There was one small disappointment, however," the ambassador said. "My old friend Jacques Dubois had promised one of his fabulous ice sculptures as a table decoration. He never brought it. I know he's a temperamental devil, so I can only assume I must have offended him in some fashion."

  I told the ambassador I didn't think that was likely. Only that afternoon Jacques had told me, with pride, that he was preparing something very special for the ambassador. I would try to find out what had gone wrong.

  Jacques Dubois, in his late fifties, is the pastry chef at the Beaumont. He is a flamboyant and volatile Frenchman. More than that, he is a personal friend of Chambrun's. Back in the 1940s they had fought, side by side, in the French Resistance. It was hard for me to imagine Jacques Dubois, whom I'd never seen except in his white clothes and chef's hat, strangling Nazis in a Paris alley, but Chambrun remembered him as a man of courage and was fond of him.

  As a sideline to his chef's duties, Jacques Dubois had become an expert in the almost forgotten art of ice carving. From a 300-pound block of ice he could carve a battleship, a bird, a rabbit, a deer, or any kind of special figure required by the customer. What a sculptor could do with stone, Jacques could do with ice, and he was enormously proud of his product. I suspected that the ambassador might also have been one of the old Resistance group, and I wondered why Jacques had let him down.

  I had nothing else pressing to do, so I went down to the kitchens to see if Jacques was still there. No one had seen him since about seven o'clock, when he had gone to deliver an ice sculpture for the ambassador's dinner.

  Puzzled, I decided to go down to the basement where Jacques did his carving. The area consists of a small outer room backed by a large walk-in freezer like a butcher shop's. The first thing I saw, resting on what looked like a butcher's carving block, was a slightly drooping swan carved out of ice. It must have stood where it was in the outer warmish room for some time, because there was a pool of water under the block and on the surrounding floor.

  On the block beside the melting swan was some of Jacques's equipment—a carpenter's wooden yardstick, a piece of graph paper with the design of the swan drawn on its squares, a six-pronged ice shaver, and a V-shaped chisel. Jacques is usually as careful with his tools as a diamond cutter. It was out of character for him to leave them lying around, even if he had taken off in a temperamental pique.

  I felt suddenly that something was wrong. I turned to the freezer, anticipating the chill, and walked in. The first room inside is kept at just below thirty-two degrees. That is where Jacques, wearing a sheepskin-lined coat, does his carving. In the back room Jacques keeps his 300-pound blocks of ice, and the temperature there is kept at five degrees Fahrenheit.

  That's where I found Jacques, frozen rock-solid.

  I took him by the heels and dragged him out, through the first room and out onto the floor beside the melting swan. I think I knew he was dead, but I found myself running around
looking for something to cover him. Finally I made sense and called Dr. Partridge, the house physician, Chambrun in his penthouse, and Jerry Dodd. Then I knelt beside the frozen man, rubbing a hand that was a block of ice, hoping inanely that it might do some good.

  Chambrun, Jerry, and the old doctor arrived almost simultaneously, the doctor grumbling over having been dragged away from a backgammon game in the Spartan Bar. Chambrun, his eyes glittering slits in their pouches, Jerry, and I

  watched the doctor make his preliminary examination. Finally the old man stood up, muttering about his arthritic knees.

  "No use," he said. "He's long gone, Pierre."

  Chambrun seemed almost not to be listening. He had picked up the carpenter's yardstick and was idly measuring the swan's delicately curved neck.

  "Terrible thing for a man to get locked in his own freezer," Doc Partridge said.

  "Nonsense!" It was like an explosion from Chambrun. "There are no locks, just to make certain such a thing is impossible. There's no way to get locked in. Could he have had a heart attack and frozen after he died?"

  "It's slippery in there," Jerry said. "He could have fallen, hit his head, and frozen before he came to."

  "I want the answers, Doctor," Chambrun said. "Was it his heart? Was he knocked unconscious by a fall—or by someone?"

  "Have to thaw him out first," Doc said.

  The doctor had called for a stretcher on his way down. It should have arrived by now. We heard someone pounding on the door of the service elevator.