1958 - Not Safe to be Free (13 page)

“Yes.”

“You saw Monsieur Delaney at nine and explained the girl had gone to Monte Carlo and you couldn’t find her?”

“Yes.”

“This is a very unfortunate thing for you, monsieur.”

“Yes.” Thiry’s face was bitter. “It was her great chance and mine too. The man who did this must be caught and punished.”

“Certainly, but I must have as much help as possible,” Devereaux said. “First, can you tell me if she made a practice of carrying a handbag with her? When she was found in the elevator she had no handbag and this strikes me as curious. Usually, a girl never moves without some kind of handbag.”

“Yes, she had one. It was one I gave her. It was small. She only carried a powder compact, handkerchief and lipstick in it. It was a narrow, lizard-skin bag with her initials on it.”

“She could have left it at her hotel, of course. I must have a search made for it.”

“She wouldn’t have left it at her hotel. I’ve never seen her without some bag or other.”

Devereaux made a note on the sheet of paper lying in front of him.

“There is another thing also,” Thiry went on. “She had a habit of wearing bead necklaces. I suppose the doctor removed her necklace when making his examination. I didn’t notice it when I saw her.”

“A bead necklace? She wasn’t wearing any necklace when she was found in the elevator. I’ll check that. There is nothing else you can tell me? She had no lover?”

“No. She was a serious girl. All she thought about was her career. She knew it was too soon to think of getting married.”

When Thiry had gone, Devereaux gave instructions that a search should be made for the handbag and then he went out into the lobby and crossed over to the hall porter’s desk.

“Do you remember if Mademoiselle Balu was wearing a bead necklace when you saw her come into the hotel?”

The hall porter thought for a long moment, his face tight with concentration, then he nodded.

“Yes, she was. I remember I thought how well the blue beads looked against her tan: a necklace of big sapphire blue beads, about the size of walnuts.”

“Your memory is remarkable,” Devereaux said. “I congratulate you.”

The hall porter inclined his head, gratified.

Watching, Jay wondered who this man who had come out of the office and was now speaking to the hall porter could be. It was obvious that he was a police officer and there was an air of importance and authority about him. Perhaps he was the man in charge of the investigation.

He studied him.

A hard, shrewd man, he decided and again he felt the chill of excitement run through him.

He became aware that the hotel detective whom he recognized had come into the lobby and had given him a quick, hard stare. Then the hotel detective crossed over to the police officer. Jay, interested, watched the men talk together in low tones, then both of them suddenly turned their heads and looked directly at him.

Jay had been so curious and interested in what had been going on that it hadn’t occurred to him that he was the only non-member of the hotel staff in the lobby nor had it occurred to him that he was in any way conspicuous. Until these two men suddenly turned to stare at him he had considered himself as an invisible spectator, enjoying what was going on without being noticed himself.

With a sudden quickening of fear, he glanced away from the two men and, as casually as he could, he pretended to be reading the newspaper he was holding. Perhaps he had been rash to come here so early in the morning, he thought, his heartbeat quickening. Perhaps he was drawing attention to himself; not, of course, that it could matter. The police had no reason at all to connect him with the dead girl. All the same it might be safer to leave now. He would take a stroll along the promenade and return when there were more people in the lobby.

Casually, he folded the newspaper, and, behind the screen of his dark glasses, he glanced quickly at the two men, then his heart skipped a beat and he stiffened as the police officer suddenly moved away from the hotel detective and came directly towards where he was sitting.

Jay watched him come, sudden panic gripping him. He remained motionless, his cigarette burning between his fingers, aware of a cold dampness breaking out all over his body. The police officer’s face was expressionless, his small black eyes probing as he stopped in front of Jay.

“Monsieur Delaney?”

“That’s right,” Jay said and his voice was husky.

“I am Inspector Devereaux, Cannes police. I would like you to give me a few minutes of your time, if you please.”

Jay found it necessary to touch his lips with the tip of his tongue before saying, “Why? What is it? “

“Will you be good enough to come with me where we won’t be interrupted?” Devereaux said. “In this office, over here.”

Turning, he started across the lobby, not looking to see if Jay was following him.

For perhaps ten seconds, Jay remained in the chair. What did this mean? Fear tugged at his heart. Had something gone wrong? Had he done something unbelievably stupid and they were now on his track already? Was this man going to arrest him? Then, pulling himself together, he got to his feet and sauntered across the lobby.

This was the test he had deliberately invited, he was thinking.

How can they prove anything?

But the cold fear that gripped him made him feel slightly sick. He didn’t like the feeling and his heart was hammering as he walked into the office where the Inspector waited for him.

Chapter Seven

I

W
henever Joe Kerr came to report on the Cannes Film Festival and this was his third visit, he stayed at the Beau Rivage hotel because it was extremely cheap, because he was allowed to use the bathroom to develop his films and because the owner, Madame Brossette, allowed him from time to time to share her bed.

After so many years as a widower, Joe grasped at any crumb of feminine kindness and although he was a little frightened of this woman because of her size, strength and outbursts of temper, he eagerly looked forward to his yearly visits.

A few minutes after half-past nine a.m., he slid the prints he had finished into the toilet basin for their final wash. He bent over the toilet basin and examined the prints.

There were three of them. One showed Jay Delaney unlocking the door to suite 27; the second one showed Lucille Balu knocking on the same door and the third one showed Sophia

Delaney, her hand on the door handle, an impatient frown on her face. The three pictures were linked together by the wall clock that showed plainly in each print. It showed that Jay Delaney had arrived at the door a few minutes to four, that the girl had arrived exactly at four and Sophia had arrived at seven and a half minutes past four.

Joe blew out his cheeks as he studied the prints. If they got into the hands of the public prosecutor, the boy would be a dead duck, he thought and what was more, Delaney’s wife would face an accessory rap.

He changed the water, then, lighting the butt-end of a cigarette, he began to clear up the mess he had made in the bathroom. As he was tipping the hypo down the W.C., he heard a tap on the door. A little startled, he went to the door, unlocked it and opened it a few inches.

Madame Brossette stood in the narrow passage, her arms akimbo and looked at him, her green eyes probing, her small red mouth set in a hard line.

Madame Brossette was forty-five. She had buried two husbands and wasn’t anxious now to take on a third. Her last husband had left her the hotel, the main business of which was to let out rooms by the hour to the girls who walked the back streets of Cannes during the early afternoon and far into the night. Apart from this source of income, Madame Brossette worked hand-in-glove with the tobacco smugglers of Tangiers and also she had important connections in Paris for the disposal of stolen jewellery.

Her appearance was impressive. Close on six feet tall and massively built, she always reminded Joe of a character out of a gangster picture. Her face was heart-shaped, her hair was the colour of rust and she was enormously fat.

“Hello,” Joe said feebly. “Did you want me?”

Madame Brossette moved forward like a steam roller and Joe hastily gave ground. She came into the bathroom, closed the door, then settled herself with ominous composure on the

toilet seat.

“What have you been up to, Joe?” she demanded, her eyes as hard as emeralds.

“Up to? What do you mean?” Joe said, leaning his back against the toilet basin to hide the prints from her sight. “I’ve been up to nothing. What’s wrong?”

“So long as you haven’t been up to anything, then it’s all right,” she said, settling her massive buttocks more comfortably on the toilet seat. “I’ll tell them then you’re here and they can talk to you.”

Joe felt a tug at his heart. His raddled face lost some of its colour.

“They? Who?”

“Who do you think? The police have just been here asking for you.”

“For me?”

Joe suddenly felt so bad he sat down abruptly on the side of the bath.

“The police? For me?”

“Don’t keep saying that!” There was an impatient note in her voice. She had never been afraid of the police and she had no patience with those who were afraid of them. “I told them you weren’t here, because I thought you might have got yourself into some kind of trouble last night.” Her eyes were accusing. “You were late enough back here.”

Joe ran his fingers through his thinning hair and opened and shut his mouth without saying anything.

“It’s the homicide men on the job,” Madame Brossette went on, watching him closely. “They told me if you did come here, I was to call them. What have you been up to?”

Joe hadn’t been a crime reporter for nothing. He suddenly realized the danger he was in. That damned hotel detective must have told the police he had seen him in the corridor around the time the girl had died. The night clerk must have told them the time he had left the hotel. They would want to know what he had been doing in the hotel all those hours and what he had seen. He felt another tug at his heart. They might be crazy enough to imagine he had killed the girl!

Madame Brossette, watching him, saw his raddled face turn slightly green. So he had been up to something, she thought and she began to grow anxious, for she liked Joe. She was a woman who needed a lover. When Joe wasn’t in Cannes, she found a variety of substitutes, but Joe’s lovemaking was something special. He was the only man who was tender with her and to a woman who had lived hard, who trusted no one and who was becoming sharply aware of her advancing years, tenderness from a man meant a great deal.

“You’d better tell me, Joe,” she said, her harsh voice softening. “Come on: get it off your chest. You know you can trust me. What have you done?”

“I haven’t done a thing,” Joe protested violently. “Don’t look at me like that! I swear I haven’t done a thing!”

She lifted her massive shoulders.

“All right, don’t get so excited. Then it’s all right for me to call the police and tell them you’re here?”

Joe winced.

No, it wouldn’t be all right to tell them he was here. Once they got him down to headquarters and that cold fish Devereaux started to work on him he would either have to tell them the truth and give up the idea of putting the bite on Delaney or he would have to lie and that would make him an accessory to murder.

He had to see Delaney before the police got at him. If Delaney refused to part with the money, then he would go to the police and tell them what he had seen. If Delaney gave him the money, then he would have to risk lying to the police: to have that amount of money would be worth any risk.

He had hoped to have handled this thing himself. He knew that, once Madame Brossette knew about it, she would take charge. She would control the money he got from Delaney. She would buy the villa for him and heaven help him if he invited any other woman to the villa and she got to hear about it.

But he knew enough of her background to be satisfied that she was much more capable of handling this thing than he was, and, weakly, he decided to shift the responsibility onto her fat, massive shoulders.

“There’s nothing wrong,” he said, leaning forward and lowering his voice, “but . . .”

Then the whole story poured out of him.

Her big red hands in her lap, her emerald-green eyes fixed in a stare of concentration, Madame Brossette listened. The story told to her made her breathe quickly and when she breathed quickly her enormous bosom was agitated.

She said nothing until he had finished, then she held out her hand and said briefly: “Let’s have a look.”

He gave her the wet prints and watched her examine them.

She handed them back, then, scratching the side of her neck, she said: “Give me a cigarette, Joe.”

He gave her one and lit it and one for himself.

“What do you think?” he asked anxiously.

“What do I think?” she repeated and her small, red mouth moved into a smile. “I think we have a gold mine here, Joe. What were you going to ask for the negatives? Five million francs?”

“Something like that,” Joe said. “He can afford it.”

“So you were going to Delaney?”

“Of course. Who else has the money? Of course he’s the one to go to.”

“You’re wrong, Joe. I’ve seen him. A man with a face like his doesn’t pay blackmail. He’d hand you over to the police before you knew where you were. The one way go to is the woman. I know something about her. Do you know where she was born?”

Joe stared at her.

“Born? What does it matter where she was born?”

Madame Brossette showed her even white teeth in a humourless smile.

“A lot, Joe. She was dragged up in the back streets of Naples. She’s not going to lose what she’s gained. She’s the one we’ll deal with. Maybe she hasn’t much cash, but she’s got plenty of jewels. Her diamonds alone are worth fifty million francs I took a look at them when she wore them at the opening night. We’ve got a steady income for life here, Joe. We’ll let her down gently at first. I’ll get her to part with some small stuff around twenty million first, then gradually we’ll put on the pressure. This could be a gold mine if we handle it right.”