Madame had approved everything except the ashtrays. Instead of the heavy cut glass, she called for the lighter pressed glass which were easier to clean and, admitted Mr. George, less expensive to replace if any of the contestants had sticky fingers; so there had been a scurrying five minutes to change the ashtrays and then the doors were opened at seven-thirty and if Pernell Johnson had noticed anything suspicious after the room began to fill with five hundred cribbage players, Mr. George hadn’t heard of it.
“Who changed the ashtrays at Table 5?” she asked.
The steward’s brow furrowed. “I think it was Johnson.”
Except for that, Mr. George’s testimony was virtually a repeat of what he’d told them yesterday. It confirmed what each of the busboys had said as well. If Pernell Johnson had held anything back, no one had picked up on it. They would have to question the staff again, of course.
Sigrid returned to this morning.
Mr. George and his crew had stocked the hospitality table with urns of hot coffee and trays of light pastries at eight-fifteen. Play began at eight-forty-five. Almost nothing distinguished this morning from yesterday. Coffee and pastries again this morning, to be followed again by coffee, soft drinks, mixed nuts, and crudités in the afternoon. Pernell had performed as efficiently as ever, with nothing to make his movements remarkable.
There was a break for the cardplayers at ten-thirty.
“No matter how we try to corral them, they wander all over the hotel during the breaks,” said Mr. George. “The service doors are clearly marked for staff only, but there’re always a few that duck out that way. It’s a little shorter to the restrooms. Johnson could have been around during the break, but I don’t remember seeing him.” He turned in his chair and his voice carried to the next table. “Like I said before, the last time I definitely remember seeing him was about ten-twenty-five, talking to Ms. Baldwin here.”
Molly Baldwin looked startled. “Was that Pernell Johnson? I didn’t know. I was warning him about the ash stands in the lobby.”
Sigrid held up a forestalling hand. “Please, Ms. Baldwin, hold your comments for now until we can take your statement.”
But Mr. George had nothing more to add. Ten-twenty-five was the last time he had seen Pernell Johnson.
Alan Knight had been quietly taking notes throughout the interview and he detained Mr. George with one question: “Where in Florida did Johnson live before he came north?”
“Miami, I believe,” said the steward.
Ivanovich gave an interrogative rumble.
They released Mr. George with the request that he tell no one about Johnson’s death except Hester Yates. Madame Ronay told him to send Yates up to Harlem in one of the hotel’s cars and to instruct the driver to put himself at Miss Johnson’s disposal for the rest of the day.
As he left, several crime scene technicians entered with satchels and cameras. They looked around the opulent ballroom with quizzical eyes. “Lieutenant Harald? We heard you’ve got a body for us.”
Sigrid conferred with them briefly and as they began their professional routine, she returned to question Haines Froelick. The elderly club man continued to doubt if he could help them. He had arrived at the hotel about ten-forty-five that morning and came upstairs as the tournament break was ending.
Seeing the players stream back and forth from the left hall off the landing, he had become confused and thought at first that they were still using the room in which the explosion had occurred. He had even entered the Bontemps Room and almost walked its full mauve and purple length before he realized his mistake. As he left by the rear door, Mr. Flythe was calling for order. He had wandered through the back halls thoroughly muddled for several minutes—making a brief stop at one of the men’s rooms, he added, with a faint air of courtly embarrassment, avoiding Sigrid’s eyes, and eventually wound up back at the main landing again. It was there that he remembered how he and his cousin had turned right at the top of the grand staircase on Friday night, not left.
He finally reached the red and gilt d’Aubigné Room at perhaps ten past eleven, he told them. No, there was no one inside.
“Were the lights on?” asked Sigrid.
“Why, yes. Not as many as now but enough to see that the room was empty. I began to walk back and forth across the floor, working my way toward the rear, when it occurred to me that perhaps I should not be here without permission, so I went back out to the landing to see if I could find someone who could tell me if the schilling had been found or if anyone minded my looking.”
“And all this time, you saw no one?”
“Not in here. There were a few people passing back and forth at the foot of the stairs down in the main lobby—guests, of course—but I wanted a member of the staff and I couldn’t seem to find one until I crossed the landing and recognized this young lady from Friday night. I had only begun to inquire of her when you joined us.”
Sigrid glanced across at Alan Knight. He had entered a list of times on her note pad and was now doodling clock faces across the bottom of the sheet.
“Have you any questions, Lieutenant Knight?”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Harald,” he replied gravely. “Mr. Froelick, when you first opened the door to this room and looked in, was the service door back there open or closed?”
“Closed,” Mr. Froelick answered without hesitation.
“You didn’t see the body under the table?”
“I didn’t get that far.”
“And no one was over on this side of the landing either time you came along the hall?”
“Quite deserted, I assure you.”
Knight returned to his doodling. “No more questions from me.”
Sigrid thanked Mr. Froelick and said he might leave, adding that they would appreciate his discretion for the time being.
“You won’t forget about Zachary’s schilling, will you?” he asked anxiously. “The funeral is tomorrow.”
Sigrid promised they would not and Froelick made his adieux to Lucienne Ronay as if he were leaving a garden party that had unfortunately been rained out. Sigrid watched him thoughtfully. Was the courtly Mr. Froelick, she wondered, truly as color-blind as his account would appear to make him?
CHAPTER 20
While the forensic technicians photographed and made a minute examination of the body and its immediate surroundings, Sigrid and Alan Knight continued with their questions at the front of the room.
They tried to send Vassily Ivanovich back to the tournament but the big Russian refused to be dislodged. “First I am speaking to Molly,” he growled stubbornly. It was obvious to all that a tête-à-tête with Ivanovich was the last thing Molly Baldwin wanted. Or perhaps the next to last thing. She did not appear anxious to converse with her employer either and was patently relieved when Ivanovich was exiled to the loveseat and Madame Ronay was summoned for her testimony.
The volatile Frenchwoman moved lightly to the table and smiled up at Lieutenant Knight as he held her chair, but it was an automatic gesture. Her heart didn’t seem to be in it. Her lovely face had begun to show signs of strain and was pinched around the mouth and eyes.
“What is happening here?” she asked them sadly. “Cette bombe Friday night. At first I can think this is a crank. Someone who hates my poor Maintenon or who wants to make some big statement about the politics in his country, but this! Ce petit Johnson? Non!”
“No,” Sigrid agreed. She rested her elbows on the tabletop with her fingers tented together and watched Knight’s pen poised over the note pad as she gathered her thoughts. “Tell us please, Madame, of your movements this morning. When did you arrive on this floor? What did you see or hear?”
“When did I arrive? The first time it is perhaps ten or fifteen minutes past ten. On Sundays I am very lazy, you understand. I sleep late and I do not rush straight to my office below. It is a good day to poke around, to look in supply closets, to check the kitchens, to make certain all is as it should be, comprenez-vous?”
; They nodded. Interviews with the staff yesterday had given them both a clear idea of La Reine’s ways. Not a reign of terror exactly, but something more akin to l’ancien régime intimidation, surprise inspections and unexpected appearances at the most awkward moment.
“So, I enter through there,” she said, indicating the service door. Her right hand flashed with diamonds almost as large as the sapphire on her left finger.
Knight had sketched a rough floor plan of the area and he showed it to them now.
The grand staircase rose to a wide landing, at the rear of which were a bank of three elevators and the two wide halls leading off in either direction. On one side of the elevators was an inconspicuous door marked “No admittance,” which opened onto another spacious landing with two more elevators, a large one for freight and another for staff, that used the same shaft as the passenger elevators out front.
A maze of corridors led to various storerooms, pantries and the service entrances of both the d’Aubigné and Bontemps rooms.
“How very clever you are,” Lucienne Ronay told him. With a pink-enameled fingertip, she traced her route this morning.
“First, I come down on the staff elevator here, then I go through the halls here. I see no one on this side.”
“Were the lights on?” asked Sigrid.
“No, and this makes me tres agitée. I turn on lights as I come and when I push open that door là, I see all is as before. You have said we may begin to repair the damage and yet no beginning has been made! I look at all that must be done and then I come out the front door—”
“Was it locked?”
“Oui. I must turn the knob and push the buttons so. And before you ask, I will tell you that I left the door unlocked.”
Again her polished fingernail touched Knight’s sketch and her rings glittered.
“I come along the corridor here, and go down the stairs to Miss Baldwin’s office, but she is not there. Someone says she is upstairs at this card tournament, so back I come.”
“Immediately?” asked Sigrid. “About ten-thirty?”
“Perhaps. People are coming from the Bontemps Room as I ascend the stairs. I look all through the room, but no Miss Baldwin. I speak to Mr. George about a doughnut I see on the floor and then I give up and go to my office and try to concentrate on letters my secretary has left for me to sign, but my mind will not.”
She shrugged her slender shoulders and made a charmingly rueful face. “Never can I be tranquille when things are left undone. At last, I go and find some maids who are not very busy and I come myself to show them what must be done. The elevator stops, we get off, and there is Miss Baldwin with you and M’sieur Froelick. We speak and you know the rest, non?”
By now, more police officers had trickled into the room.
Sigrid saw that the medical examiner had finished with the boy’s body and was waiting to speak to her. Elaine Albee and Jim Lowry had arrived together and Sigrid motioned them over as she finished with Lucienne Ronay.
“We’ll try to be as unobtrusive as possible,” she promised.
“The body can go down in the freight elevator and out the back if one of your people will show them the way. Again, you’ll have to wait to begin clean-up on this room and we’ll want to talk to everyone who worked this floor today.”
“I am resigned, Lieutenant,” said Madame Ronay with a fatalistic sigh. As she stood, her eyes fell on Molly Baldwin and her face was stern. But the sight of so much misery seemed to soften her. “Poor Molly! Do not look so fearful, chérie. This time I forgive all your faults.”
“Thank you, Madame,” murmured Molly, but she seemed only partially relieved as Lucienne Ronay left the room almost as if she expected the police to have harder questions. From the way Molly braced herself apprehensively, Sigrid knew that the waiting must be getting to the girl, but there was no help for it. Joined by Lowry and Albee, she and Knight walked back toward the body to hear what the assistant M.E. had to tell them.
“Not much for now,” said Cohen in his usual breezy manner.
“The kid bought it between, oh, say ten and eleven, give or take a little. He was probably unconscious when the tie cut off his air supply.”
“Hit over the head first?” asked Sigrid.
“Now, Lieutenant, it’s too soon to tell. No obvious blow to the head, but no scratches around the throat as would’ve been if he was awake and fighting it. I’ll let you know more tomorrow, okay?” He unwrapped a stick of gum and cheerfully turned his back on them.
The ambulance attendants had already lifted the slight body onto the gurney and strapped a covering over it, and a hotel employee appeared to escort them out through the basement garage.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Ms. Baldwin,” Sigrid said as they passed the young assistant manager. “It won’t be much longer now.”
She assigned a uniformed officer to keep an eye on the girl and motioned for Vassily Ivanovich to accompany them to the Bontemps Room.
“No, I wish to stay here,” said the gray-haired Russian, who had seldom taken his eyes off Molly since entering the room.
“You can speak to Ms. Baldwin later,” Sigrid told him firmly. “Right now, I want all the players back at their tables.”
Reluctantly, the big man followed.
Three reporters were waiting outside in the hall. Sigrid made a brief statement and continued toward the Bontemps Room. The lunch break was scheduled for twelve-thirty and already a few early finishers were pushing through the doors.
Albee and Lowry had been joined by three other officers, who herded the players back inside while Sigrid and Alan Knight briefly apprised Ted Flythe of the current situation. The hotel grapevine had reached him a moment or two before, however, so they were deprived of his initial reaction. At the moment, he seemed totally exasperated.
“That does it! There’s no way we can finish now. You’re going to question everybody again, aren’t you? Get ’em all stirred up—”
Alan Knight began to bristle, and to stop him from alerting Flythe of their suspicions, Sigrid interrupted coldly. “I realize this tournament is important to you, Mr. Flythe, but we are investigating three murders here.”
Flythe immediately backed down and tried to repair the damage. “It’s just that there’re so many people and so much money involved, Lieutenant. Makes it complicated. But that’s not your problem, of course. Don’t worry. We’ll work something out.”
“I’m sure you will,” Sigrid said flatly. “Lowry, Albee, ask the staff to come in, please.”
The players listened in shocked silence as Sigrid spoke into the microphone and told them of the young busboy’s death. “We know you’ve had a long morning and that you’ll want lunch now. As you leave the room, please show some identification to the officers at the door. They’ll check you off the list and we’ll be talking to each of you after lunch.”
In an attempt to help the cardplayers remember, she asked the remaining busboys to come forward while she gave a brief description of the dead youth and then introduced Detectives Albee and Lowry, to whom most had already spoken.
“If any of you recall seeing Pernell Johnson during the break or if you spoke to him then, please tell one of these officers before you leave for lunch. Thank you.”
A dismayed babble of comments and exclamations arose from the crowd and Ted Flythe took over the mike to promise that he would have a statement for them at two o’clock, after lunch. He stepped down from the podium and called, “Lieutenant?”
He was too late. Sigrid had disappeared into the crowd to join Alan Knight and Mr. George with the busboys, who were having trouble believing that one of their own was so abruptly gone.
“Man, he was right here!” one protested incredulously. “We were jiving him about Terri Pratt.”
To Knight’s questions, they all shook their heads. As with Mr. George earlier, they were ready to swear that Pernell had seen nothing Friday night.
“We were tight, man,” said another. He held up cros
sed fingers. “Like that. No way he wouldn’t have told me. All he could talk about was how things were breaking right, how once Mr. George gave him a good report about putting out the fire, maybe he was gonna get to work the Emeraude Room like he’d been wanting ever since he got here.”
A different busboy said he’d seen Johnson enter the Bontemps Room after speaking with Miss Baldwin. That was immediately before the ten-thirty break, he thought. Once the break began and people were milling about, no one noticed Johnson again.
“What about Ted Flythe?” Sigrid asked. “Where was he during the break?”
More shrugs, this time punctuated with an undercurrent of knowing snickers.
“Mr. George?”
“Probably upstairs with one of his girls. Graphic Games has a suite on eighteen and the maids say he’s been keeping the sheets hot, if you’ll pardon the expression, Miss.”
“I thought Miss Baldwin was his current interest,” said Knight.
“The man’s a Baskin-Robbins freak,” quipped one of the busboys.
“Ice cream?” asked Sigrid as they moved away.
“Thirty-one different flavors,” Knight told her.
“Oh.”
To avoid the crush of people and reporters, they slipped out the rear service exit and walked along the deserted back corridors.
“Any suggestions?” Sigrid asked Knight.
“Nope. You seem to be covering all the bases. Want me to locate the girlfriends?”
The Right Jack (Sigrid Harald) Page 17