Murder round the clock : Pierre Chambrun's crime file

by Pentecost, Hugh, 1903-

"Only between you and your typewriter," I said.

  "Maybe somebody brought him there and stuffed him in the closet after he was dead," Norman said. He looked at me, his eyes widening. "Maybe somebody is trying to frame me!"

  "I think you can classify that suggestion with the Gettysburg Address for sheer literary clarity," I said. "Norman, you're up to your neck in trouble."

  I left Norman and went down to see Chambrun. What I wanted to tell him and ask him had to wait because Lieutenant Hardy was there.

  We have a private card file at the Beaumont that lists special information about our guests—their financial status, marital situation, any personal habits worth knowing like whether the guest is an alcoholic or a patron of call girls or an addicted gambler or troublemaker of a special sort. This information is handled by a simple code—A for alcoholic, D for diplomat, O for over-his-head, meaning the guest can't really afford the Beaumont's prices and mustn't be allowed to get in too deep. MX after a man's name means he's a woman chaser double-crossing his wife. WX after a female guest means she's a man-chaser, double-crossing her husband. N stands for general nuisance, a complainer who has no basis for his complaints.

  Hardy was going through a little collection of cards that covered Saville and his entourage. That, I guessed, would include Norman.

  Chambrun sat at his desk, his hooded eyes half closed. "You will notice," he said, "that the network is paying the bills for everyone. Saville's company may be sharing the cost, but that's not our concern."

  "These people just turn on the money faucet and watch it go down the drain," Hardy said.

  "The world of expense accounts," Chambrun commented wryly.

  Hardy looked at me. "How close are you to your friend Geller?" he asked.

  "Not close at all. I haven't seen him since college, and we were just nodding acquaintances there."

  "Then you don't really have any reason to believe in him?"

  "Not on a buddy-buddy basis," I said. "But the whole thing so far is just too pat for me to swallow, Lieutenant. I've just been talking to him. I'd swear he was innocent—too damned innocent."

  "Meaning?"

  "That he's been set up as a prize pigeon. These people would do anything to keep Saville off the hook. You heard Richter. My guess is somebody got in a row with Hansbury— maybe Saville, maybe his muscular lawyer. Both of them play karate games. Maybe Hansbury took a swing at somebody and was chopped down. Not planned, not intentional—but murdered. So what to do? If it was me I'd go to the police, admit I had a row with Hansbury, tell them he took a swing at me and that I clobbered him. Self-defense. The worst that would happen would be a manslaughter charge. I might get away with it.

  "But Saville can't risk that. Juries sometimes have a way of being rough on a celebrity. The notoriety could cost a lot of people a lot of money. So Saville and Company take the first out that comes to mind. They know Norman isn't in his room down the hall—they'd been trying to reach him. They drag the dead man down there and stuff him in the closet—and leave Norman to face the music when he gets back."

  "So answer me three questions," Hardy said.

  "Try me."

  "This had to be before eight-thirtv in evening."

  "Why?"

  "That's when Saville and Miss Bevans and Brimsek and Drott came back upstairs from dinner. Are you suggesting all four of them would be covering up a murder?"

  "It's not impossible."

  "Five of them, to be exact," Hardy said. "The tootsie was in the Saville suite too."

  "I still say it's not impossible."

  "Busy time of night in the hotel. People coming and going. Have you figured the risk involved in earning a dead man even a few yards down the corridor?"

  "They had to risk it."

  "Nobody pays much attention to a couple of men handling a drunken friend," Chambrun said, his eyes closed.

  "Okay," Hardy said drily. "So we have five people in on a conspiracy. The body is moved by acting as though he's a drunk. Now, your friend Geller says he spent the night with a girl. He'll produce her if he has to. How do these conspirators know he hasn't got a perfect alibi?"

  "They have to risk that too," I said.

  "Boy, they sure do!" Hardy said. "If he doesn't have an alibi what would his motive be? Hansbury, he says, was his best friend."

  My mouth felt dry. I knew what the motive could seem to be, and I knew Norman might not be able to produce an alibi without simultaneously producing a motive.

  "They've been trying to set it up for you," I said. "Nervous breakdown. Unendurable work pressures. They quarreled over Hansbury's failure to get Norman paid for the work he'd done. Another slight case of manslaughter."

  "Why don't they let friend Norman in on it, then?" Hardy asked. "Pay him a nice chunk of dough to take the rap— maybe a year or two in jail. From what I hear, that would be an easier way to make a big hunk of money than writing television pilots."

  "And let Norman blackmail them for the rest of their lives?"

  Hardy's eyes were cold. "Is your friend the blackmailing type? No, don't answer me, Haskell. You don't know. You'd only be guessing." He stood up and started for the door. "The more I try to involve an army of people in this murder, the better I like my chances of pinning it on one single guy—on your friend Geller. His room, he had the know-how, and we'll find the motive. See you around."

  Chambrun sat motionless in the big armchair behind his desk. He didn't lift his heavy eyelids when Hardy had gone. But one corner of his mouth moved in a wry smile.

  "You are perhaps the worst actor I have ever seen in my life, Mark," he said. "Only a Hardy could have missed the fact that you're bursting with information that will do your friend Norman's case no good at all."

  "You mind if I pour myself a drink?" I said. "I missed my usual midday martini."

  "Help yourself."

  I went over to the sideboard and poured myself a stiff Scotch on the rocks. Chambrun lit one of his Egyptian cigarettes and looked at me through a haze of smoke, as I swallowed most of my drink at one tilt. I came around to the chair beside his desk and sat down.

  "This is how it is," I said.

  I told him that Norman had spent the night with Gillian Hansbury, Frank Hansbury's ex-wife. That Hansbury knew he was planning just that. If Mrs. Hansbury came forward to supply Norman with an alibi, she would also supply Hardy with a twenty-four-carat motive.

  "Maybe not," Chambrun said slowly. "Your friend Norman told us he took off from his room about six o'clock. We know Hansbury was alive at seven, or a little after. He was in Saville's suite making phone calls. If Norman was already at Mrs. Hansbury's—"

  "He wasn't. A call came there from Hansbury before Norman arrived."

  Chambrun flicked the ash from his cigarette. "Why do you care what happens to Norman?" he asked.

  "I'm the chump of all time when it comes to lost causes and underdogs," I said. "And I hate power plays from modern monsters like Saville and Company."

  "You're a nice boy, Mark," Chambrun said. "Why not go have a chat with Mrs. Hansbury?"

  "Norman would never forgive me."

  "Would you care—if it cleared him?"

  Mrs. Gillian Hansbury was listed in the phone book. She lived on the East Side in the Eighties. I debated calling her to ask if I could talk to her, but then it occurred to me she might get in touch with Norman in some fashion and they'd be ready with a prepared story for me. I wanted to talk to this woman without her being too well balanced.

  I don't recall now that I had any particular picture of what Gillian Hansbury might be like as I rode uptown in a taxi. The woods are full of youngish divorcees living on generous alimony who take love where they can find it. It takes a while for a suddenly single girl to develop a whole new social circle. I realized I'd forgotten to ask Norman how long the Hans-burys had been separated. If it was fairly recent, Hansbury's reaction to Norman's teaming up with Gillian could be quite unpredictable.

  I think I expected an attractive,
probably chic, somewhat hard-boiled gal to answer my ring at the doorbell.

  I was accurate about part of it. Gillian Hansbury was rather special to look at: natural red hair, almost violet eyes, a lush figure. She was wearing a shift that stopped about five inches above her knees. A sophisticated, expensive girl-executive type, possibly a former model or an actress. Frank Hansbury had been a talent agent. They could have met professionally.

  Before she spoke, after opening her front door tentatively, I saw that she had been crying.

  "Yes?" Her voice was pleasantly husky.

  "Mrs. Hansbury?"

  "Yes."

  "My name is Mark Haskell," I said. "I'm a friend of Norman Geller's."

  "You're the man at the hotel," she said. She opened the door a little wider. "Come in if you like, Mr. Haskell."

  I stepped into a small attractive living room with a wood-burning fireplace. There were many books and a few undistinguished oil paintings that might, I thought, be her own work. On a low table in front of the orange-covered couch was a stale-looking cup of coffee. A silver ashtray was overflowing with butts. The place smelled nice—like a woman.

  "Norman sent you?" she asked. "Please sit down."

  "He doesn't know I'm here," I said.

  Her bright red mouth tightened slightly.

  "I want to help Norman," I said. "He's in grave difficulty, and he won't help himself."

  "Poor Norman," she said. She sat down on the couch, and I found it difficult not to look at her lovely legs. "I told him he wouldn't be able to retain his sanity if he kept on writing that television script. I've seen writers go into that Waring Mixer too often."

  "His troubles at the moment aren't primarily concerned with the TV script," I said.

  She looked rather intently at the ashes in the fireplace. "It's been a rugged day for both of us," she said. "Norman and Frank were very close. And I—" Her voice shook a little. She reached for a cigarette in a lacquered box on the table. I held my lighter for her. Her long lashes were faintly damp. She was fighting tears again.

  "Norman's in a kind of a two-way bind," I said. "I take it you could provide him with an alibi for last night. He may need it,

  Gillian. On the other hand, if you give it to him, you may provide the police with the one thing they need—motive."

  She looked back at me, her eyes widening. "Motive for what?"

  "At the moment Homicide looks at Norman as their number-one suspect," I said.

  "They think he killed Frank?"

  "They think he may have. They don't know yet about Norman's relationship with you. That would just about sew it up for them."

  "How utterly ridiculous!" she said.

  "I hope so."

  "As far as the alibi is concerned, of course I'll provide it if he needs it," Gillian said. "He got here a little after eight last night, and he left here after breakfast this morning."

  I reached for a cigarette of my own. I felt little needles along my spine. "I understood Norman left the hotel around six o'clock last night," I said.

  "I suppose he may have," Gillian said. "He's staying at the Beaumont because the TV people insist on his being available twenty-four hours a day. But he has an apartment of his own just off Gramercy Park. He went there to pick up mail and get some clean clothes before he came here."

  "He told you that?"

  "Of course. He phoned me that he'd had it up to his ears and was going to take the night off. That was around six o'clock. He told me he'd get here when he caught up with whatever he found at his apartment. It was a little after eight when he got here." She shook her head. "I don't understand why Norman's relationship with me would supply the police with a motive."

  "You were Hansbury's wife," I said. "Hansbury may have objected to Norman's being here. He evidently knew Norman was coming here last night. The police will assume they quarreled about it, and Norman, who has been doing research on karate, chopped him down. Hansbury did know Norman was

  coming here. He tried to phone Norman here, didn't he?"

  "Yes. About an hour before Norman got here."

  "Was he angry?"

  "Frank?" She laughed, and it had a hurt sound to it. "He was angry because he couldn't find Norman, but not because Norman might have been here. He couldn't have cared less."

  I took a deep drag on my cigarette. "How long have you and Hansbury been divorced, Gillian?"

  "Three years," she said.

  "Did he have another girl?"

  "Girls," she said, tight-lipped. "Girls—plural."

  "That was the difficulty? Other women?"

  "Frank's business brings him into constant contact with a long stream of glamour," she said. "He should never have married me or anyone else. I should have known it, but I—"

  "You were in love with him?"

  "God help me."

  "But it was all over."

  "For Frank," she said.

  "And you, too. I mean, there is Norman—"

  "Norman is a very sweet guy," she said. She put out her half-smoked cigarette with rather elaborate punchings into the ashtray. "He became a client of Frank's about six months before we were divorced. Norman sympathized with me. He knew I was the one who was hurt. He used to drop around once a week or so for almost a year—just to see how I was. A good friend. He took me to dinner or the theater once in a while. That was all. Then—"

  She drew a deep breath and went on. "Then one night we went to an opening and sat around with friends at Sardi's waiting for the reviews. It was a hit, and we all got a little high. Norman brought me home early in the morning and— well, I was grateful to him, and it was about time I—I started to think about living again. That's when it began. Not a love affair, but a pleasant sort of now-and-then thing. That's all it's ever been, Mark."

  She looked around the room. "It's saved me from being mauled and clawed and slobbered over by half the wolves in town. Norman has supplied me with what I needed to stay on some kind of an even keel. And I think I've supplied Norman with something that's made him happy without any chains, rules, or obligations."

  "And Hansbury didn't care?"

  "He didn't care," she said, her voice unsteady. "I see him— I've seen him from time to time. He invites me to lunch, all very gay, very casual, very civilized. He teased me about Norman. Three or four times—" She stopped.

  "Yes?" I said.

  "Frank had to keep all the bases touched," she said bitterly. "I think he went back to every woman he'd ever made love to, periodically, just to reassure himself that he was irresistible. Three or four times he came back to me, and God help me, I played his game. I helped to reassure him. I guess I'm the kind of nitwit who can only fall really in love once. I guess I used to dream that I'd be so fantastically wonderful that he'd come back to me and stay."

  She looked away. "I must not have been." Then she looked straight at me. "You must have noticed that I'd been crying just before you came in. You see—you see, in spite of everything, I loved that miserable two-timer. Only three nights ago—oh, God, Mark!"

  She broke down into uncontrolled weeping. She got up and hurried into what I assumed was the bedroom. I felt a little uncomfortable, as though she'd told me more than she meant to. I found myself thinking of the late Frank Hansbury in just the terms she applied to him—a miserable two-timer. You didn't play put-and-take with a girl like Gillian. How what she'd told me affected Norman's position, I wasn't quite sure. Certainly Hansbury hadn't given a damn what happened to Gillian, except as it satisfied his own ego. If she had to, Gillian could make it quite clear that Hansbury would have had no reason to be jealous of or to quarrel with Norman over her.

  She came back from the other room, the ravages of tears skillfully repaired. She held her lovely head high and proud.

  "I apologize, Mark," she said. "I told you things I couldn't even tell Norman because I—I had to, somehow. I had to tell someone, just once. But now lets think how we can help Norman. If he needs the alibi, of course 111 provide it. And
I think I can convince your policemen that I'm the last thing in the world they'd have quarreled about. You and I know that Norman couldn't possibly kill anybody. He's a gentle, sweet nice guy. But there are other people in the picture who aren t.

  "The fantasy world of Robert Saville," I said.

  "Which is also the fantasy world of Thomas James Carson and his vice-presidents and George Brimsek and Karl Richter. The other night, when Frank was here—" She hesitated, color coming into her pale cheeks, then went on. "The other night Frank told me a good deal about things. We always used to talk shop in the old days. I know things about the great T James Carson and his vice-presidents and Bob Saville and Brimsek and all the others that would curl your hair.

  "And Frank knew a great deal more than I do, Mark. He once said to me, joking, that if he found himself doing badly as a talent agent, he could turn blackmailer and become a millionaire." She frowned and reached for a cigarette. "Frank was in a real mess with all of them over this job of Norman's. They were blandly trying to cheat Norman out of a lot of money. The first thing I thought, when I heard about Frank, was that in the heat of an argument he'd threatened someone with one of his special little tidbits and there'd been an explosion."

  "What kind of things do you know about them?" I asked.

  "My things are nothing," she said. "Gossip about affairs, who's queer, who's virile, who's not. What Frank had was real stuff—business deals that won't bear scrutiny, blacklistings that would outrage the public if they became known, tax dodges that wouldn't stand investigation, under-the-table bribes to city officials, stuff in the small print of contracts that quietly crucifies decent people. If Frank aimed one of those guns at someone in an argument—" She shrugged.

  The telephone rang, and she reached out to the side table and answered it. She looked at me.

  "For you," she said.

  Only one person in the world knew where I was. Cham-brun's voice sounded cold-angry.

  "Any luck?" he asked.

  "Maybe."

  "You'd better get back here on the double," he said. "Someone tried to throw your friend Norman out the window of your apartment."