"Hold everything," I said. "Maybe all this happened. But you're not going to say that Norman tried to throw himself out my window? Who was the man in the stocking mask?"
Chambrun's smile was wry. "The Masked Crusader," he said. "I suggested it once, not believing it. There was no one. A product of Norman's fiction writer's mind. Norman set the stage—overturned the furniture, opened the window. He cracked himself in the mouth. He clawed his own chest. Hardy's man has just taken some stuff from under Norman's fingernails to the lab. The result will almost certainly show bits of Norman's skin."
"I did it," Norman said. "I—I wanted to make absolutely sure you were convinced there was someone else."
"When the stage was set, Norman took the telephone off the hook and yelled for help," Chambrun said. He turned to Saville. "We came here in the hope that your sister just might have seen Norman coming in or going out or returning. It isn't too important, but Hardy likes to have his cases nice and tidy."
"If you could leave her out of it—" Saville said huskily.
"What about this mess?" Jerry asked, nodding toward the battered Richter. "Assault with something damn near like a deadly weapon."
Brimsek was on his feet. "Ask him," he said, always smiling. "Ask him if he'd like to bring charges. When I get through telling what I know about him in open court—"
"Forget it," Richter said in a voice that sounded as though it came from the bottom of a well.
Norman turned to me. "Would you try to explain to Gillian, Mark? I know she loved Frank. I didn't mean to kill him. But I couldn't bear it when he made those cheap cracks about her."
"I'll explain to her, Norman."
Saville moved forward. "Before you take Geller away, Lieutenant, could we talk to him a few minutes about the property—'The Masked Crusader'? I think we still want to use it."
Hardy looked at him, his eyes puzzled. "Don't you ever think about anything else, Saville?"
Saville's dark eyebrows rose. "Why should I, Lieutenant? It's my business."
I could no longer stand by, helpless, and watch this happen. He would make his appeal in person to the highest tribunal in the world, the UN. If they could not stop the war in Biafra, they could at least put an end to the hunger and sickness. As a result of this public appeal, spotlighted around the globe, Dr. Walbruck also hoped to raise several million dollars from private sources to restock and reequip his own hospital for his war against the horsemen of famine and pestilence.
The Walbrucks—Dr. Conrad and his wife Gretchen— arrived at the Beaumont at two o'clock on a Wednesday morning. Their journey had been carried out in relative secrecy, so there were no reporters. They were taken, without fanfare, to their suite on the tenth floor, and, I assume, they slept the sleep of the just. It must have been an exhausting journey for the doctor because he was approaching his eightieth birthday.
At twenty-two minutes after nine the following morning, I was where I always was at precisely nine-twenty-two— standing beside Pierre Chambrun's flat-topped Florentine carved desk in his luxurious office on the second floor of the Beaumont. Chambrun is a dark stocky man with black eyes, which, hidden in deep pouches, can twinkle with humor or turn as cold as newly minted dimes. The Beaumont, under the managing directorship of Chambrun, is a world in itself, a way of life. I am one of the cogs in a machine that operates with Swiss-watch efficiency under Chambrun's watchful eye. I have a nice brass plate on the door of my second-floor office that says that I am mark haskell, public relations.
Chambrun eats only two meals a day: a hearty breakfast consisting of steak or chops or brook trout or perhaps a Dover sole, and quantities of gluten toast with sweet butter and English marmalade, and coffee—three cups of American coffee followed throughout the rest of the day by Turkish coffee, prepared on a sideboard by his remarkable secretary, Miss Ruysdale; and a gourmet dinner at seven em., also served in the office, for which Chambrun dresses, whether he has a guest or not.
Chambrun, born in France, came to this country as a boy and has been in the hotel business all his life, starting as a shoeshine boy in an East Side hotel operated by an uncle. He has reached the top of the heap at the Beaumont, having made an art of the business of hotel management. He speaks seven languages fluently, can assume a Continental manner that would please a duchess or a queen, and can be frighteningly tough with anyone, employee or guest, who upsets the routines of the hotel.
It is a world of exact routines—which is why it works so well. At nine in the morning a waiter brings the breakfast to the office, accompanied by Monsieur Fresney, the hotel's head chef, who waits for a nod of approval. At nine-ten Miss Ruysdale comes in with the registration cards of guests who have arrived since the night before. At nine-twenty-two I enter Chambrun's office. Chambrun is then on his second cup of coffee and his first Egyptian cigarette of the day. He instructs me about the new arrivals—whether they are news, whether they need special attention or special watching.
On this particular morning he passed me a card, and I saw that Dr. and Mrs. Conrad Walbruck had arrived. I had known they were coming and that Chambrun had considered the famous doctor sufficiently important for the manager himself to be on hand to act as official greeter.
"The old man made the trip in satisfactory shape?" I asked.
"Amazing person," Chambrun said. "He looks like an Old Testament prophet. Long white beard, eyes almost hidden by bushy white eyebrows. Somehow like one's childhood concept of Moses on the Mountain."
"I don't think I've ever seen a photograph of him."
"One of his foibles," Chambrun said. "No cameras. This, by the way, becomes part of your job, Mark. The good doctor is to be protected from any and every kind of intrusion. No cameramen, no interviewers, no autograph hunters. No one is to be permitted to go to his suite without prearrangement and only then accompanied by Jerry Dodd or one of his boys to make sure no one else gets in."
Jerry Dodd is our house officer, the Beaumont's security chief.
"He's afraid of something?" I asked.
Chambrun's smile was thin. "He's afraid of wasted time,'' he said. "He's got so little left at eighty that he insists on being protected from anything trivial, anything purely social. He will make his speech before the UN General Assembly this afternoon, and he will fly back to his hospital tonight. He will have taken thirty-six hours out of his life to help fight the war for peace and to raise some much needed money. It took considerable persuading to get him to come here at all, according to his wife. Someone else should have been able to do the sales job. But he was finally convinced there would be a special magic to his being here in person. The UN is to be his only public exposure. When the time comes for him to leave for the UN, we take him down on a service elevator to the kitchens. There will be a limousine waiting for him at the rear door. He'll come back the same way and take off for the airport later the same way. No chance of any approach from anyone anywhere. You are not to give out the word that he is here to anyone until after he is gone. Understood?''
"Understood."
The office door opened, and Jerry Dodd, the house officer, came in. Jerry, a dark wiry man with the sharpest eyes you've ever seen, is one of Chambrun's most trusted people. A pleasant professional smile doesn't hide the fact that Jerry is reading the maker's label on the inside of your shirt collar. He is tough and efficient, created in Chambrun's mold. He is one of three employees who would dare walk into Chambrun's private office unannounced; Miss Ruysdale and I are the only others granted that privilege.
"Sorry to interrupt," Jerry said. "We've had a high dive. From somewhere well up on the Fifth Avenue side."
Jerry was reporting a suicide.
"Bounced off the steel awning at the front door and onto the sidewalk," Jerry said. "Young girl, so far unidentified. No handbag."
Sudden, even violent death is not rare at the Beaumont. The hotel is like a small city, with its own shops and restaurants, its own small hospital and medical staff, its own police force, its city manager
in the person of Chambrun, its own nightclubs and bars, its own brokerage office with ticker tapes and a miniature Big Board. Whatever can happen in a small city can happen at the Beaumont. People die of heart attacks; people fall and injure themselves critically; people take overdoses of sleeping pills or hang themselves from a coat hook in a closet or jump from a high floor. What is part of life in any community is part of life at the Beaumont.
Suicides outrage Chambrun but not for any moral or philosophical reason. They turn the unpleasant spotlight of publicity on the hotel, and what damages the hotel damages Chambrun.
"Why here?" he said that morning, his eyes bright with anger. "Why do it on my rug?"
Mystery is bad for the hotel, unknown girl leaps to death is designed to keep people focusing on the story, wondering who and especially why. Quick identification and burial of the story was what Chambrun would hope for.
I didn't have to look at the remains of the girl, thank God. However, we turned out to be lucky. When they undressed the body at the morgue, they found a little gold locket on a fine gold chain around the girl's neck. It gave her name— Karen Mosely. She was in the phone book. A horrified roommate told the police that she was a translator for one of the African delegations at the UN. She had spent two years in the Peace Corps—in, of all places, Biafra. That was coincidence Number One.
Coincidence Number Two was that Miss Mosely had told her roommate after breakfast that morning that she was headed for the Beaumont in the hope of seeing Dr. and Mrs. Walbruck, whom she had known—and loved—in Biafra.
A myth circulates among the employees of the Beaumont that Chambrun has a personal, built-in radar mechanism, or eyes in the back of his head, or secret peepholes into every room. The truth is that he knows the details of everyone's job down to the most inconsequential minutiae, so he knows who should be where and when and why. When he has a question, he knows whom to ask and why they should have an answer.
When the information came in on Miss Karen Mosely, I was with Chambrun in his office. We were about an hour away from the time when Dr. Conrad Walbruck would be whisked down a service elevator and taken to a waiting limousine for his trip to the UN.
Security had been set up around the Walbrucks, and Chambrun now checked it out. First there was Mrs. Veach, the chief operator on the hotel switchboard. There had been special orders about the Walbrucks. No incoming calls, house or outside. If anyone phoned, the caller would be asked his or her name and for a return number. Mrs. Veach would then relay the name and number to Mrs. Walbruck, and she could call back or not as she chose.
"Was there a call this morning for the Walbrucks from a Karen Mosely?" Chambrun asked.
Mrs. Veach checked her lists. There had not been such a call. There had been only three: one from the office of the secretary-general of the UN, one from the managing editor of the Times, and one from an airline official simply to report that the return journey was all arranged. Mrs. Walbruck had called back the secretary-general; she had ignored the other two calls.
Karen Mosely, whatever her intentions, had not announced herself to the Walbrucks.
"How would she know they were staying here?" I asked.
Chambrun shrugged. "United Nations," he said. "The girl is a linguist, a translator. She could have heard someone talking."
"But she didn't come after all."
"But she did," Chambrun said, "and jumped—or was pushed—from high up."
There is the right place to ask the right question. Cham-brun found it on the tenth floor in the person of Mrs. Kniffin, the housekeeper. Mrs. Kniffin had had a special assignment that morning—to watch the door of 10G, the Walbrucks' suite. If anyone seemed to be loitering around who had no business there, Jerry Dodd was to be notified at once.
"Did a young girl—mid-twenties—try to gain admittance to the suite, Mrs. Kniffin?" Chambrun asked.
"No, sir," Mrs. Kniffin said. "That is, not exactly."
"So what did happen, exactly, Mrs. Kniffin?" Chambrun asked quietly.
"A young girl went in with Mrs. Walbruck."
"Went in with Mrs. Walbruck? Mrs. Walbruck had gone out somewhere?"
"Oh, yes, sir. Shortly after room service had brought them breakfast. She came out, looking a little vague, I thought. I—I asked her if I could help. I—I thought that was the right thing to do, Mr. Chambrun."
"Of course, Mrs. Kniffin. And were you able to help her?"
"She wanted some things from the drugstore. I directed her to the one in the lobby, sir. I asked her if someone could do her errand for her. She said no, she'd rather enjoy going out. 'No one will bother me,' she said. So she went down in the elevator and came back maybe twenty minutes or so later. There was this young girl with her. She seemed excited like— laughing and gay. I heard her say she couldn't wait to see Dr. Walbruck. I took it they'd met in the drugstore or the lobby."
"Quite probable," Chambrun said. "And did you see the young girl leave 10G?"
"Well, not exactly, Mr. Chambrun."
Chambrun's patience was monumental. "What exactly did you see, Mrs. Kniffin?"
"There was a phone call from the main office, sir. They'd sent me the wrong towels. I had the towels for 14, and 14 had the towels for 10. I talked for perhaps a minute or two. When I got back to the door of my cubbyhole here, the girl and this man were just passing my door."
"What man?"
"Just a—a man, sir. They were walking close together. I remember noticing that the girl wasn't laughing or happy anymore. I thought she looked frightened, Mr. Chambrun."
"What did the man look like?"
"Nothing special, sir. Tall, grayish hair. I—I didn't notice too clearly."
"Clean shaven?"
"Oh, yes, sir. I mean, he might have had a little mustache. I didn't really notice. Clean shaven, I'd say."
"You'd never seen him before?"
"No, sir."
"And they came out of 10G together?"
"I couldn't say that for sure, sir," Mrs. Kniffin said. "Of course the girl must have come out of 10G because I saw her go in. But I didn't see where the man came from. He could have come from 10G, or he could have come from down the hall. You see, I was on the phone, sir."
"It would seem she didn't go out the window in 10G," I said.
Chambrun looked at me as if I were an idiot. "Of course she didn't!" he said. "The windows in 10G open on the side street, not on the Fifth Avenue front. I think we'd better talk to Mrs. Walbruck."
Gretchen Walbruck answered Chambrun's ring at the door of 10G. She was a surprise to me until I remembered that she was Dr. Walbruck's second wife, a nurse who had been working in his hospital at Biafra not long after he'd become a widower. She could not have been more than fifty, I thought, with a strong face, a tight, grim mouth, and hostile gray eyes. She seemed to relax when she recognized Chambrun.
"You are early, Mr. Chambrun," she said. "We're not supposed to leave for another half hour. Conrad isn't ready yet."
"I'm afraid it's something else I've come about, Mrs. Walbruck," Chambrun said. "This is my associate, Mr. Haskell."
She looked at me without warmth. Then she stood aside and we went into the living room of the suite.
"You know a young girl named Karen Mosely?" Chambrun asked when we were inside.
"Of course," Mrs. Walbruck said. "Conrad and I knew her in Biafra. A charming girl. As a matter of fact, she's only just left here a little while ago."
"She came to call?"
"Yes and no," Mrs. Walbruck said. "She came to the hotel for that purpose, but before she could get in touch with us on the telephone I happened to run into her in the lobby. I'd been getting some things at the pharmacy. I brought Karen back up with me to see Conrad. They visited for a few minutes, and then she left."
"Accompanied by—?"
"She left by herself."
"There was no one here except you and Dr. Walbruck?"
"Of course not. See here, Mr. Chambrun, what is this all about?"
"I'm afraid you must be prepared for a shock, Mrs. Walbruck. Karen Mosely jumped, or was thrown, from an upper-story window of the hotel very shortly after she left you. She is dead."
"Oh, my God!" Mrs. Walbruck said.
"We identified her and traced her to you through her roommate. What was her state of mind when she was here?"
"Gay and laughing, as always," Mrs. Walbruck said, her voice low. "She was to have been the translator for one of the delegations when Conrad makes his speech at the United Nations. I didn't let her stay long. Conrad is very tired and very much concentrated on what he's facing. He must sway the diplomats and the private philanthropists, or we are lost, Mr. Chambrun."
There was the sound of a door opening, and Mrs. Walbruck reached out and closed a strong hand on Chambrun's arm. "Please, do not tell Conrad what has happened—not till after he's made his speech. It will upset him dreadfully."
We all turned and watched Dr. Conrad Walbruck come slowly into the room. He was truly an extraordinary figure, tall, rugged, slightly stooped, with a mass of thick white hair, bushy white eyebrows, and a white beard that rested on his chest as he came vaguely toward us, head lowered.
"Is it time to go, Gretchen?" he asked in a voice that had distant thunders in it.
"Soon, Conrad."
The doctor had met Chambrun the night before, but he looked at him as though he were a stranger. He didn't look at me at all. He walked toward the windows, a man with the whole world carried on his bent shoulders.
"Conrad was so fond of Karen," Mrs. Walbruck whispered.
It was then that Chambrun gave me an unexpected order. "You will drive to the United Nations with Dr. and Mrs. Walbruck, Mark," he said. "Stay for the speech and come back with them. I don't want them out of your sight."
"There is danger?" Mrs. Walbruck whispered, glancing fearfully at her husband.
Chambrun's eyes had a hard, opaque look. "The world is sick with fanaticism, Mrs. Walbruck," he said. "I will feel easier if Mark is with you."
Murder round the clock : Pierre Chambrun's crime file Page 18