Gilded Nightmare (13 page)

“I think she may be the most evil woman on the face of the earth,” Sam said, his voice unsteady. “Is there no way to stop her from killing people at will?”

“We’ll stop her,” Hardy said. “She’s not on her island now.”

“Let us pray,” Chambrun said. …

P
ETER WYNN LOOKED LIKE
a man in a trance when he was brought into Chambrun’s office by Jerry Dodd. It was almost four in the morning. Wynn had been sitting in Jerry’s office on the main floor for hours, under the watchful eye of Sergeant Dolan. He was haggard. He needed a shave. All the elegance and youthful bounce that had been his trademark when Shelda and I had talked with him in the Trapeze in the early evening was gone.

“You know what happened to Heidi?” he asked, looking from Chambrun to Hardy. “That big baboon downstairs wouldn’t tell me a thing. And I’ve run out of cigarettes.”

Chambrun slid the lacquer box that contained his Egyptian variety across the polished desk top. Wynn took one, lit it, and inhaled hungrily.

“We hope you can help us,” Chambrun said.

“How, for Godsake?”

“The truth would be a useful commodity.”

“What truth?”

“When we suggested to you that Masters might be responsible, you reacted hard and shut up like a clam,” Hardy said.

“Masters is a machine, not a man,” Wynn said. “You press a button, if you are Helwig or Charmian, and Masters goes into action. He’s a gun, not a man. If Masters killed Heidi he did it because somebody pressed a button.”

“Charmian?” Chambrun asked.

“Or Marcus,” Wynn said. “He runs our world.”

“You’re not in your world now,” Hardy said.

Wynn’s smile was thin. “Persuade Marcus and Charmian of that,” he said.

“Let me put our cards on the table, Mr. Wynn,” Chambrun said. “What has happened here relates to what you call ‘our world’—the Zetterstrom world, the Island world.”

“The man in the lobby this afternoon wasn’t from the Island,” Wynn said.

“His brother was a part of that world. Do you know the story of Bruno Wald?”

“Naturally. He was drowned in a yachting accident—or so they believed. I understand he turned up ten years later, delirious, out of his head.”

“You know the story he told?”

“Yes. Completely out of his head.”

“That story doesn’t frighten you?”

“Why should it?”

“Because aren’t you in exactly the same position he was?” Chambrun asked. “The truth, Mr. Wynn. Weren’t you hired to take care of the Baroness’ sexual whims?”

“Good Lord, no!”

“Would you like to tell us how you happened to be on the Island—eighteen months, I understand?”

Wynn crushed out his cigarette and reached for another. “I’ve never had any money of my own,” he said. “My talents are limited strictly to sports. I’m a good tennis player, a better than fair golfer, I play squash, I swim, I’m good with boats. I got along in my late teens and early twenties by being the ideal house guest. I dance well. I play several musical instruments, including a pretty good jazz piano. I made a business of making myself attractive at parties. I was on a yachting trip with some people from the south of France who got invited to the Island. The Island is something you wouldn’t believe. There’s everything there; fresh- and salt-water swimming pools, the sea itself, squash courts, tennis courts, a nine-hole golf course. Wish for something and it’s there. The Baron didn’t overlook anything to satisfy the slightest whim.

“The party I went with stayed for a week or ten days. I made myself popular by playing at the different sports. I’m a better than average bridge player. Made myself some pocket money that way. I ingratiated myself by playing tennis with Charmian, and with Heidi.

“When it came time for my party to leave, Helwig summoned me into his presence. He offered me a job, at an incredible wage. I would stay on the Island as a sort of director of sports, help entertain Charmian’s guests, and act as an escort for her when she needed one.”

“I thought she never left the Island,” Hardy said.

“She didn’t. But people came—often. There were endless dinners, and picnics, and balls. I was to be her partner at these wing-dings.”

“No sex?”

“I wouldn’t have minded,” Wynn said, “but no sex. It was the cushiest job you can imagine for a man of my temperament and gifts. And Heidi? Well, I fell in love with her. Simple as that.”

“You knew the Baron was her father?”

“I knew it—when things got serious.”

“Serious?”

“When we talked of marriage,” Wynn said. “That was a few months ago.”

“Did you find you were a prisoner on the Island?” Chambrun asked.

Wynn frowned at the end of his cigarette. “You’re thinking about Bruno Wald’s wild story,” he said. “Will you believe it if I tell you I never had reason to find out? I never wanted to leave the Island. I had no family to go back to, no real friends. I was perfectly content to stay there and I never suggested leaving.”

“Haven’t we had enough of this travelogue?” Hardy said.

“Let’s get back to Masters,” Chambrun said, ignoring Hardy’s complaint. “When you were here before, I asked you if Masters was interested in Heidi. You did a take and said ‘Oh, my God!’ You left us thinking that he might have been.”

Wynn didn’t speak for a moment. His face had gone hard. There was a curious ambivalence in this young man. One minute he seemed weak and shallow; the next, there were signs of an unexpected strength.

“There’s nothing simple about any of us on the Island,” he said slowly. “I’m the easiest to understand, I guess. I’m lazy. I like luxury. I don’t have any particular goal in life except the next day’s pleasures. I—I’ve sold myself out all my life because it was easier to get what I enjoyed that way. But the others, God! It all goes back to Baron Zetterstrom. He must have been a monster.”

“In spades,” Chambrun said.

“Helwig and Clara and Masters all go back to a time when the Baron was some kind of prime sadist in the Nazi picture. None of them has a shred of conscience about those days. Most of what I know about it comes from Masters. He loves to talk about the tortures, the murders, the violence. He comes alive when he talks about the mutilations, like Clara’s. He’s described to me a hundred times what happened to the prisoners who’d worked over Clara.” Wynn shuddered. “You’d have to hear him to believe that he’s like a hungry man describing a gourmet dinner. He’s a classic voyeur.”

“What the hell is that?” Hardy asked.

“A peeping tom,” Chambrun said, drily.

“I think he had my job—Charmian’s escort—before I came to the Island. He—he evidently had responsibilities that I don’t have.”

“Her love-life?”

“So he says. He’s told me in detail what she’s like in bed. And yet I could swear that in the eighteen months I’ve been a part of the scene there’s been nothing between them.”

“He resents you? Does he know that you’re not involved in that aspect of the lady’s life?”

“He teases me about it. Tells me what I’m missing.”

“Had he turned to Heidi for his pleasures?”

“No! Heidi hated him; was afraid of him.” Wynn reached for a fresh cigarette in the lacquer box. He didn’t light it. “Heidi loved Charmian. They were friends, as though there weren’t more than twenty years’ difference in their ages. They were like two schoolgirls together. Heidi was convinced that someday Masters would do Charmian some harm.”

“Because he’d been shoved out of the lady’s bed?”

“Perhaps. When you asked me about him before, the thought crossed my mind that Heidi had caught him out in something. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill if someone got in his way.”

“Had Heidi confided in you what she feared?”

“No. It was very vague. A kind of premonition.”

“What about the party Charmian is planning to give?” Chambrun leaned forward in his chair.

“The dinner for Mr. Culver?”

“Yes.”

“What about it? Mr. Culver is an old friend.” A tiny-smile twisted Wynn’s mouth. “I’ve heard the story. How he drove her out of Hollywood. Ironically, she fell into a pot of gold. Culver actually did her a favor. It’s typical of Charmian’s sense of humor that she’d give him a party to thank him for it, though he meant to do her harm.”

Chambrun reached out and took from its envelope the note that had been left at the desk for Sam Culver. He showed it to Wynn. “
If you value your life don’t go to the Baroness Zetterstroms’s dinner party.
” Wynn stared at it, his eyes widened.

“Do you recognize that handwriting?” Chambrun asked.

“No.”

“Is it Heidi’s?”

“Good God, no.”

“The Baroness’?”

“No. Of course it could be disguised, faked.”

“It has occurred to us,” Chambrun said, “that Heidi may have learned of some plan to kill Sam Culver; that she left this note at the desk to warn him; and that she was killed for meddling in the matter.”

“Did she leave the note at the desk?”

“We don’t know. Did she suggest to you that there was something about the planned party that worried her?”

“No. I can’t remember that we ever talked about the party. Do you believe there is a plan to murder Mr. Culver?”

“It’s easy to believe almost anything about your crowd, Mr. Wynn.”

“About that fancy-dress suit of yours,” Hardy said.

“I told you. I left my clothes on a chair in my room. I assume Clara took them to be cleaned and pressed.”

“She says not.”

“Then I don’t know what happened to them. The hotel valet?”

“We’re checking,” Hardy said. “We think they may be stained with the girl’s blood.”

Wynn’s mouth dropped open. “You think I—?”

“Like Chambrun said, it’s easy to believe almost anything around here.”

Wynn shook his head. It wasn’t the action of a guilty man. He was brushing away the suggestion as an absurdity. “What about the man in the lobby—Stephen Wood?” he asked.

“We’re trying to pick him up,” Hardy said.

“He struck me as a dangerous psychotic,” Wynn said. “He obviously believes the wild story his brother told him. He’s crazy for revenge.”

“But not against Heidi Brunner,” Hardy said.

“Any of us on the Island,” Wynn said. “If Heidi caught him snooping around—”

“I’d like to discuss one more thing with you, Mr. Wynn,” Chambrun said. Stephen Wood didn’t seem to interest him. “You’ve been involved with the Zetterstrom picture for eighteen months. How do you account for Charmian Zetterstrom?”

“Account for her?”

“Her youth. The failure of time to do anything to her physical appearance.”

“It’s a miracle,” Wynn said. He shook his head. “Oh, she works at it. Careful diet, exercise, massage. God knows what else. And there’s Dr. Malinkov. He’s got some kind of magic, I guess. He was a plastic surgeon, you know. Heidi has mentioned a thousand tiny face-liftings. They don’t wait for the signs of aging to appear. They keep pace with Nature, you might say.”

“If there are repeated operations there must be days at a time when you don’t see her.”

“Right.”

“Clara Brunner and Malinkov take care of her during those periods?”

“Yes. I mean, who else?”

“Heidi?”

“Oh, I think so. I mean we never discussed it much. It was a part of the routine on the Island that you just took for granted. Every three or four months Charmian would disappear into her wing of the house for several days. We knew Malinkov was doing his job.”

“Being as close to her as you are you must notice the tiny changes, the tightening of her skin here and there.”

Wynn laughed. “She’s an artist with makeup. You can bet your life she wouldn’t put in an appearance after one of her sessions with Malinkov until she could hide every trace of what he’d done for her.”

“There is a rumor,” Chambrun said, “that the Island was a safe harbor for German war criminals. What about that, Wynn?”

Wynn shook his head, slowly. “Many people visited the island in my time,” he said. “I was never aware that any of them were wanted.”

Hardy made a growling noise. “We aren’t getting anywhere with this,” he said. “You’re free to go back to your room, Mr. Wynn, but not to leave the hotel without my permission.”

Wynn and Hardy left.

Chambrun sat at his desk, his heavy lids lowered. He had retrieved from his ashtray the little ball of paper which Charmian had crumpled; he began tossing it up and down again. I wasn’t sure he knew I was still there, but he hadn’t dismissed me so I waited. The first gray light of dawn was beginning to seep through the office windows.

It wasn’t a normal time to have a drink, but I felt I needed one. I went over to the sideboard and poured myself a slug of Scotch in a four-ounce shot glass.

As I turned back toward the chair I’d been occupying, I saw that Chambrun had unrolled the little ball of paper and spread it out flat on his desk, evidently interested in Charmian’s unsuccessful attempt to imitate the handwriting on the Culver note. He looked up at me slowly.

“Have a look,” he said.

I walked over behind his chair and looked down over his shoulder. There were four words written on the wrinkled paper. They were in no way an imitation of the handwriting on the other note. The handwriting on the Culver note was small and precise. These four words were written boldly, hurriedly:

Please, please help me.

C
HAMBRUN SAT, MOTIONLESS, STARING
at the scrawled plea for help on the desk in front of him.

It didn’t make sense to me. “She was playing games as usual,” I said.

“I wonder,” Chambrun said. He picked up the phone on his desk and got Mrs. Kiley, the night chief operator on the hotel switchboard. “Good morning, Mrs. Kiley. Will you locate Lieutenant Hardy for me and ask him to join me on the nineteenth floor, please.” He took an envelope from his desk drawer, put the crumpled note in it, and slipped it into the inside pocket of his Oxford-gray jacket. “Let’s find out,” he said.

He stood up, checked the contents of his silver cigarette case, refilled it from the lacquer box, and took off.

On the nineteenth floor we waited for Hardy. At the far end of the corridor one of the lieutenant’s men stood watch, and grinned at us.