Murder round the clock : Pierre Chambrun's crime file

by Pentecost, Hugh, 1903-

  He looked at Jerry Dodd, his eyes cold enough to freeze one's blood. "Weapon?" he asked.

  "Not so far," Jerry said. "Looks like it was carried away."

  Those frightening eyes circled the ring of faces."Well?" he said.

  It was Lucy Morris, still clinging to me, who broke the silence. "I—I found her," Lucy said. "She—she had sent me to the drugstore for—for something, and when I came back I found her—like that!" Her body was still shaking.

  "What were you sent to get, and when did you go to get it?" Chambrun asked in a voice that was cold and flat.

  "Poor Marilyn!" Lucy said. "She suffered from migraine headaches. She felt an attack coming on and discovered she was out of the medicine she takes for it. It's a prescription, and she sent me to the drugstore in the lobby to get it refilled."

  "What time was that?" Chambrun asked.

  "It was exactly twelve fifteen," Lucy said.

  "Exactly?"

  "I know because Danny gave her the fifteen-minute call just as I was going out the door." She looked at Danny Haines, the stage manager, for confirmation.

  "I don't know where Lucy was at twelve-fifteen," Danny said. "But Marilyn was here. There's an intercom system between my control booth, where I handle the lights and other cues, and this room. For the second show, at twelve o'clock,

  Freddie takes the stage with his piano, and I give Marilyn the half-hour call. 'Half hour, Marilyn/ I say. And she always says, Thank you, Danny.' At twelve-fifteen I call again and tell her fifteen minutes. And she answers."

  "And she answered tonight, at twelve-fifteen?"

  "Yes. Perfectly normal, perfectly ordinary. Lucy could have been at the door, like she says, but I wouldn't know, of course. All I know is that Marilyn was alive and in no trouble then. But ten minutes later—"

  "What happened ten minutes later?"

  "I gave her a five-minute call," Danny said. "Sometimes she answers, sometimes she doesn't. Tonight she didn't. But, like I say, that wasn't unusual. She often goes out into the wings and waits for the music cue from Freddie."

  Chambrun looked down at the tragedy on the floor. "But she wasn't in the wings tonight," he said. He turned to Lucy. "You left for the drugstore at twelve-fifteen, you say. It takes two or three minutes to walk down the back corridor and into the lobby. The pharmacist had to fill your prescription."

  "It's just tablets, Mr. Chambrun," Lucy said. "He had to type a label, that was all."

  "And you came back here with the pills," Chambrun said. "In time to hear Danny give that five-minute call?"

  "Oh, my God, I don't know, Mr. Chambrun!" Lucy moaned. "I saw her. I don't know what I heard or didn't hear. It—it could have been after the five-minute call, because I knew she only had a minute or two to take a pill, get into her costume, and get on stage."

  "She's in her costume!" Chambrun said.

  Lucy twisted her head from side to side. "I know. That's another odd thing," she said.

  "Odd?"

  "She never dresses without me," Lucy said.

  "But the time was short, if she was to make her cue."

  Lucy pointed to something I hadn't noticed before. It was a metal frame, standing on four legs, made of tubing. "I hang

  the gown on that frame," Lucy said, "and raise the frame. She stands under it and I lower the dress over her head. It's for quick changes, and to keep from messing up her hairdo. When I left for the medicine, the gown was on that dressing frame."

  "Because you weren't there, she did it herself," Chambrun said.

  "No," Lucy said.

  "She must have."

  "She never did before. No, she wouldn't have. It only takes ten seconds for her to stand under the dress. I lower it and zip her up from behind. She'd have waited for me."

  "But she didn't," Chambrun said.

  Lucy looked puzzled.

  "How was she dressed before you left for the drugstore?"

  "Pantyhose, evening slippers, brassiere," Lucy said. "She'd done her makeup and her hair before I went to the drugstore."

  "So someone knocked on her door, and she got into her gown," Chambrun said.

  "Not anyone who had any business being here," Lucy said. "Not me or Freddie or Danny. We'd all seen her hundreds of times almost naked that way. It's show business. If—if it was one of the gentlemen, she might have slipped into a dressing gown." She pointed to a kind of negligee hanging over a chair next to the dressing table and its mirror.

  "What gentlemen?" Chambrun asked.

  "There are three men who have been in constant attendance," Cardoza said. "They're outside in the hall now."

  "But she wouldn't have got into the gown for them," Lucy said stubbornly "She'd have waited for me. The dressing gown, maybe, but not the costume."

  "Somebody came here and killed her," Chambrun said. "No one saw anyone who didn't belong here?"

  "I was at the drugstore," Lucy said.

  "I was on stage, at the piano," Freddie Lukes said.

  "I was in my booth," Danny Haines said. "I can only see the stage and the audience from there. It's a one-woman show, Mr. Chambrun. There are no stagehands, no other regular people backstage."

  "So there was no problem for the killer to come and go, unseen," Chambrun said.

  "Carrying a weapon," Jerry Dodd said. "Why didn't she scream for help?"

  "This room is soundproofed," Chambrun feminded him. "It was done so singers could vocalize without being heard. She could have screamed her head off, and only the killer would have heard it."

  The Beaumont is like a small city, with its own security force, its own shops, restaurants, bars, its own hospital, even its own bank. The nightlife time when Marilyn had been killed was one of the busiest in the hotel's schedule, which is why the drugstore stayed open so late.

  Like any small city, the Beaumont has suffered its share of crimes, including murders. Lieutenant Walter Hardy of Homicide was not a stranger to us. We were grateful to have the Marilyn Stark case assigned to him and not to some detective unknown to us. Chambrun and Hardy have worked together before, and they have a mutual respect for each other, even though their approaches to a problem are totally different.

  Hardy, a big slow-moving blond, travels the painstaking, detailed route, covering every possible angle, collecting every scrap of evidence, sifting every point for and against every possible theory. He must build an unshakable case for the district attorney, must have every doubt answered in advance before he makes an arrest.

  On the other hand, Chambrun is intuitive, a hunch player; he has done his rejecting and accepting almost before Hardy has picked up the first stone to look under it. Chambrun's approach might seem almost frivolous to a stranger—he looks

  like a man in a hurry to get his hotel running normally again. Those of us who know him well are aware of how invariably right his intuition and his hunches are. Hardy had learned over the years to listen to and follow the leads Chambrun gives him.

  The inquiry had shifted to Chambrun's office on the second floor, while the crew from the medical examiners office, the fingerprint men, and the police photographers had taken over the grim scene in Marilyn's dressing room.

  I was there with Cardoza and Jerry Dodd as Chambrun laid out his preliminary findings to Hardy.

  "The timing is the most unusual factor in the case," Chambrun said. He was smoking one of his flat Egyptian cigarettes and sipping at a demitasse of Turkish coffee, which was always kept brewed in a samovar on the sideboard. "We are dealing with something like twelve minutes. She was alive and untroubled at midnight and at twelve-fifteen, when Danny Haines gave her the first two warning calls. Lucy Morris was with her when she got both those calls. Everything normal, Lucy comes back in about twelve minutes and finds Marilyn dead. That's the crucial period—those twelve minutes."

  "Probably even less," Hardy said. "The killer had to wait for her to be alone—and had to be gone before Lucy came back from the drugstore. Ten minutes at most, I'd say."

  Chambru
n nodded. "Okay—ten minutes in which the following takes place. The killer arrives—knowing the schedule backstage, by the way, knowing that when Freddie Lukes started his warmup that the backstage area would be clear."

  "How could he know Lucy Morris would be sent to the drugstore?" Hardy asked.

  "Perhaps Lucy just got lucky," Chambrun said. "Perhaps the killer had counted on having to deal with Lucy, too. So— the killer arrives, carrying with him a weapon of some sort— an iron wrecking bar, a fireplace poker, something of that sort. Marilyn wasn't killed with a toothpick! An awkward weapon to carry in—and out. It's summer. Overcoats are not in order."

  "A raincoat," Hardy suggested.

  "Possible," Chambrun said. "Absolutely no threat of rain, but possible. So he comes in, carrying his weapon, slips backstage, and knocks on Marilyn's dressing room door. Eight minutes left? And what does Marilyn do?"

  "Lets him in," Hardy said.

  "No, no, no," Chambrun said. "She asks him to wait a moment. She knows him, of course. She goes and stands under the dressing frame, lowers the dress over her head—an awkward procedure, according to Lucy. She zips up her gown. The zipper is at her back—another awkward procedure. She manages, however, taking at the shortest a minute. She goes to the door, fully dressed in her handsome gown, and lets the caller in."

  "Seven minutes left," Hardy said, making a note in his little book.

  "At most," Chambrun said. His face had become a cold hard mask. "The killer had come prepared to kill, not to converse. Right? This was a crime motivated by an almost unbelievable rage, certainly. No talk. The door is closed, all sound from the rest of the world shut out. The onslaught begins before Marilyn can speak a word. A dozen blows with that wrecking bar or poker—to the head, across the face. Nothing in the room is touched, which is why you wont find any fingerprints."

  "The doorknob?" Hardy asked.

  "Perhaps gloves, perhaps his hand protected by the raincoat or his suit jacket when he had to let himself out," Chambrun said. "The whole horror could have taken as little as a couple of minutes. He came to kill—Marilyn is dead—he still has two or three minutes left in which to walk away before Lucy came back with the medicine from the drugstore."

  "Rage, I buy," Hardy said. "But what could drive a man to such uncontrolled fury?"

  Chambrun shrugged. "A rejected lover," he said.

  "So we have three gents outside who might fit that bill," Hardy said. "It's time we talked to them, isn't it?"

  Cardoza broke in. "If you're talking about Richard Loring the sportsman, George Canaday the tycoon, and Peter Sebastian the artist, I would have to swear under oath that not one of them could have been backstage after midnight when Freddie Lukes started his warm-up. Each one of them was at his table in the Blue Lagoon the whole time."

  "You're sure of that?" Hardy asked.

  "Positive. It's the kind of thing I notice, it's part of my job," Cardoza said.

  "Well, one of them or all of them may know something about other lovers, other rejected suitors," Hardy said. "Let's have the first one in."

  The first one was handsome Richard Loring, the playboy sportsman. I had a feeling his shock and grief were genuine. He listened to the rejected-lover theory, frowning.

  "Were you Marilyn's lover, Mr. Loring?" Hardy asked. The subtle approach was not in his arsenal.

  "I'm not a kiss-and-tell boy, Lieutenant," he said. "Let us say that at one time Marilyn and I were close—but that was some time ago."

  "And yet you came nearly every night to hear her sing?"

  "I was fond of her, and she was a great artist," Loring said.

  "You weren't prepared to prevent anvone else from having her?"

  "You have to be joking, Lieutenant," Loring said.

  Chambrun lifted his heavy eyelids. "Are you married, Mr. Loring?"

  "Lord, no," Loring said. "There are too many lovely women in the world to anchor oneself to one."

  "How about Sebastian and Canaday? Are they married?"

  "Sebastian, no," Loring said. "And a thirty-year marriage has just ended in divorce for the Canadays. I think George dreamed that he could buy Marilyn for himself. But George didn't kill her—if she'd turned him down. I was sitting at the table next to him the entire critical time. I can alibi him, he can alibi me—and Sebastian, too, for that matter. I wish I could help. I would do anything in my power to catch the maniac who did this dreadful thing."

  "Thank you, Mr. Loring," Chambrun said.

  When Loring had gone, Hardy said, "Let's have the next one."

  "Let's wait a moment, Walter," Chambrun said. His eyes were narrowed, almost closed. "I think I have been an idiot."

  We all waited for him to go on.

  "There is a famous play of Frederick Lonsdale's," he said, "in which a sophisticated man-about-town says something like: I've been dealing with women all my life and do you know what I've found out about them? Nothing!' From the very beginning I've been refusing to look at the obvious clue in this case."

  "Nothing's obvious to me," Hardy muttered.

  "Why did Marilyn go through the awkward business of getting into her costume gown before admitting her visitor—the killer? Professional glamor was her business, but sexual glamor was, I daresay, her life. Think for a minute, gentlemen. A lover or an ex-lover calls. She has on only pantyhose and a bra. If it were someone she had been intimate with, she could receive him that way—not unheard of in the theater. She could slip on her dressing gown, and a man would find that intriguing. But for her actual performance she would have waited for Lucy to dress her.

  "But, gentlemen—and I don't pretend to know more than Lonsdale's character about women—I suggest that it a. woman was calling on her, a woman who was her enemy, Marilyn would have chosen to receive her only with all the exterior glamor she could provide—in full stage costume. Semi-nudity or the dressing gown covering it would not have impressed another woman. In full costume Marilyn would have been showing a jealous woman how unbeatable, how truly glamorous she was."

  "Are you saying it was a woman who could have delivered that beating?" Hardy said.

  "A desperate, enraged woman, yes. A woman who came prepared to do it, yes. A woman from whom Marilyn expected nothing but tears, or pleadings—yes." Chambrun punched out his cigarette in the ashtray on his desk. "From the beginning I have overlooked the obvious. It had to be a woman. It explains why Marilyn chose to appear at her very best for her caller. Her best for a man and her best for a woman were two different things. If I were you, Walter, I would take off for the Canaday house on Fifth Avenue and ask Mrs. Canaday to provide you with an alibi for the critical time. And I would look around in the Canaday house for a weapon that might still reveal traces of blood at the police laboratory. Smashing a thirty-year marriage could drive a woman into a homicidal frenzy."

  Those of you who followed the Marilyn Stark case in the media will know that Clarissa Canaday confessed to killing her husband's mistress backstage at the Blue Lagoon. It appeared that Marilyn, approaching fifty, had decided that Canaday's great wealth could give her the security she suddenly felt she needed. Perhaps I am running Canaday down. Perhaps he had charms I couldn't recognize. At the trial he tried to aid his wife by claiming his cruel affair with Marilyn had driven her to insanity. The jury agreed, and Clarissa Canaday is living out her life in a mental hospital.

  And Chambrun? Well, as he has said so often, there was a hotel to run, and we got back to it.

  In addition, Chambrun knows all there is to know about every guest—their credit ratings, their love lives, their political affiliation, their habits, good and bad. It might have embarrassed some of them to know how much intimate information we had about them. The information wasn't difficult to collect with an efficient front office, with a security service and housekeeping staff, with maitre d's, bartenders, and sharp and observant bellmen.

  It might have surprised the staff even more to know how much Chambrun knew about those who worked for him, their home lives,
their children, their special problems. This was in no way a method of checking up on employees for security reasons. It was his way of being a friend. It equipped him to offer help before anyone had to ask him for it. These people, hundreds of them, were his family. It was his concern for one of his "family" that projected Chambrun, one summer day, into a terrorist plot to commit a murder that threatened to shake the power centers of the world.

  General Achmed Hassan, the Middle Eastern diplomat, had come to New York for negotiations at the United Nations. He came from an area dominated by terror and confusion. His goal was some kind of peaceful solution of the problems of oil and the Western economy. His enemies—fanatics for the most part—were as numerous as his friends and supporters. Every moment of his life was threatened by terrorists who would gladly assassinate him given an inch in which to maneuver.

  I can't tell you much about the outside forces set up to protect General Hassan. I suppose the FBI, the CIA, and certainly the New York police, covered every move he made in the city and at the UN. They had in the past protected Sadat, a friend, and Castro, an enemy, with calm efficiency. Protecting the general in the Beaumont without turning the place into an armed fortress that would frighten its regular guests was Chambrun's job, and Jerry Dodd's, our security chief, and mine, and every other employee of the hotel.

  The general had four personal bodyguards who shared his suite on the twenty-first floor. Jerry Dodd's men patrolled the hallways. I, Mark Haskell, kept the press away. When times came for the general to leave the building, an elevator was reserved for his private use, which took him to the basement garage where a car, surrounded by police, waited to take him to the UN.

  The general had all his meals in 21A. The food was prepared by the generals own special chef, watched over by an FBI man. The meals were served by a waiter, chosen by Chambrun, who had been with the Beaumont for more than twenty years. "I would trust my own life to Luigi Cantora," I heard Chambrun say when he selected the waiter to serve the general. "And I care quite a bit more for myself than I do for our guest."