Murder round the clock : Pierre Chambrun's crime file

by Pentecost, Hugh, 1903-

  "Going out is against the rules," Sally Bevans said, a slightly wry note in her voice. "I'm instructed to ask you to have the hotel security officer search the premises. Mr. Saville thinks Mr. Geller may have had a nervous breakdown. He fears suicide."

  "And you?"

  "I think he just couldn't take it anymore," Sally said. "The point is, if he doesn't finish the script, he's out more thousands of dollars than I can estimate. He may be dead drunk somewhere in the hotel."

  "I'll turn the mice loose," I said. "If they come up with anything, I'll have Jerry Dodd call you. He's our security officer."

  "Thank you, Mr. Haskell."

  "Thank you, Miss Bevans. Would a very dry vodka martini in the Trapeze Bar about one o'clock interest you at all? Over a progress report?"

  "It would interest me," she said, "but I'm afraid I'm chained to the chariot wheels."

  I called Jerry Dodd and explained things. Norman was to be left unmolested. If Jerry was called by a vice-president or Miss Bevans or the great Saville or even T James Carson, he was to say he was still looking.

  I then called Johnny Thacker, the bell captain, explained the setup to him, and gave him a list of things Norman wanted from his room, with instructions to get them to my apartment as unobtrusively as possible.

  The Masked Crusader could now, I felt certain, crusade for the next two days in peace.

  Pierre Chambrun, resident manager of the Beaumont and my boss, is a real "original." As his name suggests, he is

  French by birth. He came to this country as a very young man, went into the hotel business, and reached the pinnacle as manager of New York's top luxury hotel. The Beaumont, he often says, is not a hotel but a way of life. It is, in fact, like a small town, self-contained, self-sufficient, with its own shops and restaurants, its own police force, and its own "mayor."

  Chambrun, short, dark, with very black eyes buried in deep pouches, has a genius for dealing with people, from the lowliest dishwasher to visiting royalty. His staff gives him an almost fanatical loyalty. He has the sense to delegate authority and the genius to be on hand in a crisis to shoulder the major responsibility. They say he has a special radar that tells him exactly where trouble is at the precise moment it happens. "When I don't know what's going on in my hotel," he has said, "it will be time for me to retire."

  He didn't know about Norman Geller when I went into his office, but I told him. Anything out of the ordinary gets told, or else.

  He was sitting at his carved Florentine desk in his very plush office, the walls decorated by two Picassos and a Chagall—not reproductions, you understand. He was sipping his inevitable demitasse cup of Turkish coffee. The coffee maker was on a sideboard and kept in constant operation by Miss Ruysdale, his indispensable secretary.

  He listened with obvious amusement to my account of Norman's problems.

  "Millions of dollars on the line for a piece of comic-strip literature. 'The Masked Crusader!"' He snorted, and then his eyes narrowed. "Saville is creating a problem, Mark. The lobby is a madhouse."

  "You could ask him to leave," I said.

  He frowned. "The network, the Hollywood crowd— important customers," he said. "If Saville wasn't such a vain ass—"

  "The funny thing is he comes and goes at will without those silly girls even knowing it," Miss Ruysdale said. "He puts on a gray hairpiece, black glasses, black hat pulled down over his face, and has someone push him right through the crowd in a wheelchair. Who notices an old cripple? I watched him go out this morning, and no one paid the slightest attention. Down the block off comes the hat, the wig, and the glasses, and the magnificent Robert Saville parades down the Avenue. He's made arrangements at the corner drugstore for them to keep the chair for him. When he's ready, he comes back—in disguise."

  "Loving every minute of it," Chambrun muttered. "I take it from your story, Mark, that we're going to have to put up with it until Monday?"

  "That's when Norman's supposed to be finished," I said.

  The buzzer on Chambrun's desk sounded. Johnny Thacker, the bell captain, was in the outer office. He was summoned into the Presence. He looked a little odd to me, as though he might have eaten something that didn't agree with him.

  "You get my friend taken care off?" I asked.

  "Yeah, I got the stuff to him," Johnny said. He moistened his lips. "There's something your friend didn't tell you, Mr. Haskell."

  "Oh?"

  "He didn't tell you there was a dead man in his clothes closet," Johnny said.

  Norman's room was a mess: ashtrays overflowing, crumpled pieces of paper tossed around the floor, soiled shirts and underthings lying on the unmade bed. Evidently Norman had told the housekeeper he didn't want the maid in his room. Writer at work—Do Not Disturb.

  Jerry Dodd, the Beaumont's security officer, was already in Room 1927 when Chambrun and I, with Johnny Thacker trailing, arrived. Johnny had done the proper thing, calling Jerry Dodd before he did anything else. Jerry is a slim, wiry man in his late forties, with dark eyes that are never still. He is another of the indispensables on Chambrun's highly efficient staff. The Beaumont has its problems like any other hotel—deadbeats, drunks, expensive call girls who appear from time to time in the Trapeze Bar, professional hotel thieves who seldom get caught and amateurs who always get caught, suicides, heart attacks suffered by elderly gentlemen in the rooms of young ladies who are not their wives. There are births and normal deaths. And on at least a half dozen occasions in my time as PR director there have been violent deaths. Murder.

  Jerry was standing by the open closet door when he came in. He looked around, his eyes bright and cold.

  "Better not touch anything," he said. "I've called Homicide."

  "That bad?" Chambrun asked.

  "That bad," Jerry said. "Broken neck. Looks like he might have been karate chopped." He stepped away from the door so that we could see into the closet. A man was crumpled there, his body twisted into an unnatural position. There was almost a surprised look on the dead face.

  "I know him," I heard myself say. "He lunches here three, four times a week. He's asked a favor or two of me on publicity releases. Talent agent name of Frank Hansbury. Handles actors, writers, directors—show-business people mostly."

  "Handle your friend Geller?" Jerry asked.

  "No idea. Hansbury's being here suggests—"

  "It sure does," Jerry said. He turned to Chambrun. "I have a man stationed outside Mark's apartment, just in case Mr. Geller decides to take off."

  "I think we better talk to your friend, Mark," Chambrun said.

  "I'll join you when I get a man here to cover this room," Jerry said.

  Chambrun and I went down to the second floor. Jerry's man was outside my door.

  "All quiet," the man said. "He's in there typing away like mad."

  I used my key to let us in. Norman, coatless, a cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth, was at the typewriter set up on the card table I'd provided. He looked up, frowning. When he saw Chambrun he groaned.

  "Now what?" he said.

  "Is Frank Hansbury your agent?" I asked him.

  "He is, and a damn good one," Norman said. He glanced at Chambrun. "You're the manager, aren't you? You're not going to tell me there's some reason I can't work in Mark's apartment?"

  "Are you on the outs with Hansbury?" Chambrun asked.

  "He is my rod and my staff, my comforter," Norman said. "I love Frank. But will you please get this over with, whatever it is, so I can get back to—"

  "Hansbury is in your room," Chambrun said.

  "Who let him in?" Norman said.

  "And he's dead," Chambrun said.

  That really got to Norman. He stared at us as though he hadn't heard right. "You have to be kidding," he whispered.

  "We think he's been murdered, Norman," I said.

  "God Almighty, how?" Norman said.

  "Our man thinks a karate chop to the back of the head," I said. "Broke his neck."

  The ash fell from
Norman's cigarette. He didn't notice it dribble down the front of his navy-blue shirt. "Geoffrey Cleghorn is a karate expert. Black belt," Norman said.

  "Who is Geoffrey Cleghorn?" Chambrun asked, his voice sharp.

  Norman started to laugh. There was an hysterical note to it. He waved at the page in his typewriter. "The Masked Crusader," he said.

  There were little beads of sweat on Normans forehead. "What a terrible thing," he said. "I talked to Frank only last night. He—"

  "Where were you last night, Mr. Geller?" Chambrun said. "According to Mark you were 'out on the town.''

  "It doesn't matter where I was," Norman said. "I went to see a friend—about six o'clock last night. I haven't been in my room since. When I came back this morning, I went straight to Mark's office."

  "Who is the friend you went to see?" Chambrun asked.

  "That's immaterial," Norman said.

  "You're going to need an alibi, Mr. Geller."

  "Now wait a minute—"

  "You do research on the karate skills of your character, the Masked Crusader?"

  "Well, sure. I had to know what I could expect him to be able to do. I took a few simple lessons—just to learn the basic techniques. But—"

  "You are certainly going to need an alibi," Chambrun said.

  Norman sat very still for a moment. Then he lit a fresh cigarette with hands that shook. "Is this official or am I talking to friends?" he asked.

  I glanced at Chambrun.

  "The police will be here shortly," Chambrun said. "That will be official. What would Hansbury be doing in your room, Mr. Geller? Did he have a key?"

  "Not unless he got it from you," Norman said. He had made the decision to talk. "Frank was a very good friend as well as my agent. He knows all about the hell I've been going through with this pilot. Most of it's money hell. I'm supposed to get paid for each rewrite. I told Mark there have been nineteen. But none of them was actually finished—so the network is claiming this is still the first draft. Frank has been fighting them tooth and nail. He's got the Writers' Guild on his side. We've been trying to bypass all the vice-presidents and Saville and get to Carson himself. He's the big wheel at the network."

  "So Hansbury came to your room to tell you he'd failed and you blew your stack and chopped him," Chambrun said.

  "Oh, cut it out, will you?" Norman said. "I'm the fiction writer around here, Mr. Chambrun."

  "So what did happen?"

  "I talked to Frank just before I went out last night—around six. He was still in his office. He told me Saville was trying to keep us away from Carson. Saville owns a piece of this package and was afraid if we got to Carson the network might junk the whole project. Frank said he was still trying to set up an appointment with Carson for today I told him I was going out—for the night. I needed a breather. I told him where he could reach me if it was absolutely necessary."

  "Where?"

  Norman leaned forward. "Look, Mr. Chambrun, I spent the night with a girl friend, and I'm not going to bring her into it."

  "You may have to."

  "Like hell I will!"

  "Hansbury knew you were going to be with this girl?"

  "Yes, and if it's necessary he can vouch—" Norman stopped, his mouth hanging open. Frank Hansbury wasn't going to vouch for anything.

  "You're on your own, Mr. Geller," Chambrun said quietly.

  Norman looked at me. "If I killed Frank in my room, why would I send you to get my things, Mark? You'd be bound to find the body. If I killed him—and I didn't—I'd make sure you didn't find the body for a couple of days."

  "Why a couple of days?" Chambrun asked.

  "So I could finish this damned script and get paid for it!" Norman said.

  Chambrun sighed. "Let's be realistic, Norman," he said. "You didn't see or hear from Hansbury after you talked to him about six last night?"

  "No."

  "He didn't call you at your girl's apartment?"

  "Not while I was there."

  "Which is where?"

  "No!" Norman said.

  "In this TV project might Hansbury have come to the hotel to see someone else?"

  "Sure, they're all here like vultures," Norman said. "Sa-ville, a hatful of vice-presidents like Hector Cross and Paul Drott, Karl Richter the director. Frank could have come to see any of them about the appointment with Carson or about money. He wouldn't have come to my room, though, because he knew I was out."

  "Could he have gone to your room to get the script? To make some point about it?"

  "He'd know better. He'd know I'd clobber anyone who touched my script without my permission."

  "Or karate chop anyone, Norman?"

  "Will you cut that out!" Norman said.

  Lieutenant Hardy looks more like a puzzled Notre Dame fullback than a Homicide detective. He's tall, square-jawed, a very tenacious and efficient police officer. We were lucky to have him on the case. He'd been in on a couple of other murders at the Beaumont, and he knew us—Chambrun in particular.

  "What's your theory about your friend?" Hardy asked me.

  We were in Chambrun's office. Hardy had been on the scene for about an hour, going over Norman's room with his technicians and their little vacuum cleaners, powders, brushes, cameras.

  "I think not," I said.

  "You, Chambrun?"

  "If Geller killed Hansbury," Chambrun said, "he certainly didn't mean us not to pin it on him. You could say he actually sent us to his room to find the body. I noticed that bedroom slippers were on the list of things he wanted. That would take us right into the closet."

  Hardy scowled at the notebook he was holding open in his big hand. "Preliminary report would indicate that Hansbury has been dead at least fifteen hours. Could be more, but not much less—an educated guesstimate by the medical examiner's man." Hardy looked at his wristwatch. "It's now five min-

  utes to noon. That means Hansbury was probably killed around eight, nine o'clock last night. If he came here to see some of the rest of these people it's time we found out." He put away his notebook. "My wife is going to drive me crazy," he said.

  "How so?"

  "Robert Saville and Cary Grant are my chief rivals," he said drily.

  It was the attractive Miss Bevans who answered our ring at the door of Robert Saville's suite. Her thinly penciled eyebrows rose in an expression of surprise when she saw us.

  "You have news of Mr. Geller?" she asked me.

  I introduced Chambrun and Hardy.

  "Police!" she said. "Then something has happened to Norman?"

  "I think we'd better come inside," Hardy said.

  "I'm sorry, but Mr. Saville is in conference. If it's a matter of raising bail or something—"

  "I'm sorry, Miss Bevans," Chambrun said. "A man named Frank Hansbury has been murdered. The lieutenant will have to talk to Mr. Saville, conference or no conference."

  "Hansbury!" she said. It was a whisper. "How perfectly awful!"

  We went into the suite's small foyer. In the room beyond we could hear excited voices, chief among them Robert Saville's pear-shaped tones projecting to the back row of the second balcony.

  "I will not have a double for my tricks," Saville was blasting. "I will not be subjected to jokes about my not doing my own stunts. Therefore the stunts are going to have to be things I can do, Karl, and that's that!"

  "You'd better let Norman in on the secret," a drawling voice said. "He's got a climbing sequence on the side of a building in the second scene that you just cant do, Bob. It's been agreed to from the very beginning. Maybe we'd better change the whole concept and call it 'Little Lord Fauntleroy Rides Again."

  "You cheap son-of-a—" Saville shouted.

  "Sticks and stones, Bobby," the other voice interrupted.

  "Hansbury was here last night," Miss Bevans said at my elbow. "I simply can't believe it."

  She opened the door, and we walked on stage.

  Whatever kind of a jerk he may be in private life, Robert Saville, in the flesh, wa
s impressive. He was tall, dark, with good character lines in his handsome face. His mouth had a weak, slightly pouting look to it, but all in all he exuded masculinity. In all honesty I think the Little Ford Fauntleroy crack was unwarranted. I knew he was an expert horseman, brilliant with fencing foils, and I'd heard he was beating the brains out of the squash pro each day in the courts on the roof of the hotel. He was tanned a beautiful bronze. Caught off guard, as he was when we walked into the room, he still managed an attitude of graceful elegance.

  "Would you be good enough to explain this invasion, Sally," he said, looking at Chambrun, Hardy, and me as though we were three cigar-store Indians.

  Sally introduced us. "Something dreadful has happened, Mr. Saville," she said. "They tell me Frank Hansbury has been murdered."

  "I always knew that jerk would do us in, some way or other," Saville said.

  I saw Chambrun's face go stony. He isn't fond of flippancy—unless he's responsible for it himself.

  "You'll have to forgive Bobby for exposing his warm human emotions so openly," the blond man by the windows said. He was, I took it, Karl of the Fauntleroy crack—Karl Richter, the director of Norman's opus. He had a Germanic crewcut, and his thin lips were twisted in a sardonic smile. Not a very nice guy, I thought. He gestured toward his almost total opposite—a young man with black hair, worn rather long, who sat deep in an upholstered armchair, his face a blank. "The robot in the armchair is Paul Drott, gentlemen, a vice-president."

  Hardy took charge. "Hansbury was found dead, his neck broken, in a closet in Norman Geller's room," he said. "Do the stunts you can do, Mr. Saville, include karate?"

  Saville ignored the question. "Sally, call Walter Cameron, and tell him he's going to have to finish the script. Get Hector Cross here. He'll have to know. And tell him to keep it from Carson as long as he can. We don't want Carson flying off the handle till we know where we're at. And send George in here."

  "Right away, Mr. Saville." Sally started for the next room.

  "Just a moment," Hardy said. "I'm giving the orders here. I heard you say, Miss Bevans, that Hansbury was here last night."

  "Of course he was here," Saville said. "He's Norman's agent. He's been in our hair ever since this project got under way. He was here last night before dinner, bellyaching about something or other." He made a sweeping gesture that took in the others. "I told you Norman was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I told you we shouldn't keep all our eggs in one basket. Wally Cameron should have been working on this script long ago." He turned to Hardy. "Why did Norman kill him?"