Girl Watcher's Funeral (6 page)

“Someone who was willing to wait a reasonable length of time—to inherit,” I suggested.

“Oh, God,” she said, “what a line-up! Do you know how Nikos planned things for the people he cared about?”

“Well in advance—with the thought of dying in mind, according to Gallivan.”

“That was Nikos,” Rosey said. “Max Lazar stood to make a fortune if this promotion worked. But if something happened to Nikos before the big play was made, there is money—like in six figures—for Max to carry on his own affairs. Tim Gallivan is one of the chief heirs in gratitude for twenty years of loyal service. Jan Morse, the current flesh in Nikos's life, will be rich. Monica Strong, who served him well until she got a little too old, will have a wad to carry on her business. Others, in varying substantial amounts—Suzie Sands, Morrie Stein, Zach Chambers. All taken care of in case something happened.”

“The Faradays?”

Rosey laughed. “Mike is so rich they don't need help from anyone,” she said.

“What about you, Rosey?”

She put out her cigarette on the edge of the wash basin. “The last thing Nikos ever said to me—early this afternoon—was, ‘Don't sweat, Rosey. If anything happens to me before you make it big, you'll still eat for a while.' I suppose he made some sort of arrangement for me—like the others.”

“What do you mean when you call Jan ‘the current flesh' in Nikos's life?”

A strange little smile moved her wide lips. “Nikos was the king of the girl watchers,” she said. “I think it must have begun after his first attack of angina. He stopped being an active sexpot and became a watcher. I think that's why he went into the fashion racket. But he was old-fashioned in his tastes, Haskell. Nakedness didn't appeal to him. He was outraged by the topless waitress. Almost moral about it. But when he wanted to look at a girl wearing something suggestive, he wanted it badly—like a thirsty man needs a drink. So he had someone to put on the clothes that gave him a bang. For ten years it was Monica, and then she lost her thing for him. She began to be a little long in the tooth for excitement. But he didn't just throw her out in the dust heap. He set her up in business. She's good at what she does. She learned while she was with him. Now it's Jan; a sort of idiot child, but exciting to Nikos.”

“She guessed about the pills—wrong like you, but she guessed,” I said.

“It's all over that room out there, like a forest fire,” Rosey said. “They think he was poisoned. No one has guessed how it really was. What is your Chambrun doing about it?”

“The police have been notified, but they're staying out for a bit,” I said. “Cops on the scene would have everyone covering up, we thought. I'm supposed to be trying to find out who could have switched the pills.”

“There's an army of possibles,” Rosey said. Her smile was wry. “I think you'd better ‘take me to your leader,' Haskell. If I'm to sit on this story, I think I'd better have some sort of guarantee from your side.”

C
HAMBRUN EATS JUST TWO
meals a day—a hearty breakfast at a quarter to nine in the morning, served in his office, and, twelve hours later, a dinner designed to satisfy his gourmet palate, with wines from the Beaumont's incomparable cellar. The breakfast he eats alone, with the day's business at his elbow. Dinner is something else again. He dresses for the occasion, in a dinner jacket made for him by Kilgour, French, and Stanbury of London. This is not the swank of the Englishman who dresses for dinner even in the African jungle. Immediately after his dinner Chambrun makes the rounds of the Beaumont's night spots: the Blue Lagoon Room and its nightclub entertainment, the Trapeze Bar, the Spartan Bar, the Grand Ballroom where there is inevitably a function. I have described this nightly routine as being like Marshal Dillon checking out Dodge City after dark. The dinner jacket is as much a part of his business uniform as is the television marshal's gun belt.

Chambrun's dinner is not something you interrupt. He often has a guest or two—some important personage staying at the hotel, a friend from some other part of the world, a Hollywood star who hopes to avoid the autograph scramble that will take place if he appears in one of the public rooms. There are a few old cronies around town whom he knows from other times and other worlds. Sometimes the guest will be a nobody like me. Chambrun can be a delightful companion in this one time of the day which he insists must be relaxed and divorced from business. We who know him and his every whim would sooner be shot than interrupt this dinner hour.

That night I felt I had no choice. My watch told me that he would be about halfway through dinner when I arrived at his second floor office with Rosey Lewis in tow.

Unless there is a special reason for her to stay, Miss Ruysdale has gone her own mysterious and private way long before the dinner hour. A French waiter named Jacques serves the great man and stands guard outside the inner office door. The hall door to Miss Ruysdale's office is kept locked so there can be no casual drop-ins. I have the key to that door, but I used it that night for only the second time in my five years at the Beaumont.

Jacques, a dark little man, ageless, with long sideburns, was sitting on a straight-backed chair outside the sanctum. Lifted eyebrows showed his surprise at seeing Rosey.

“Company?” I asked him.

“He is alone tonight, Monsieur Haskell. He expects you.”

“Expects me?” I said, startled. He hadn't told me to report back at any special time.

“He told me you would come, monsieur.”

I heard Rosey Lewis giggle. “Sees all, knows all,” she said. “Did he say he was expecting me?”

“He did not mention you, m'am'selle.”

Chambrun's dinner was served on a round table placed under the Chagall on the north wall. The cloth had a lace edge. The silver was exquisitely not the hotel's regular service. There were candles, which flickered gently in the draught from the door as I opened it and led Rosey in.

The Great Man was involved in removing the spine from a brook trout with surgical skill. He looked up at me and nodded.

“Good evening, Miss Lewis,” he said. “Please join me. Will you have wine, or perhaps after those block-busting martinis you would prefer something stronger?”

“Coffee when it's available,” Rosey said.

“Turkish or American?”

“I once tried to gather the material to do a piece on you, Mr. Chambrun, and about all I was able to gather was that you drink Turkish coffee all day. I'd like to try it.”

“You'll regret it,” I said.

“Mark's tastes in food and drink are grossly undereducated,” Chambrun said. He gestured to Jacques, who had followed us in, and who now headed for the Turkish coffee-maker on the sideboard. Rosey and I sat down on either side of Chambrun at the round table.

“You'll forgive me if I continue to attack this trout while it's still edible. How was it you were able to gather so little material about me, Miss Lewis?”

“You wouldn't see me,” Rosey said.

Chambrun's eyes twinkled in their deep pouches. “The curse of having a protective secretary,” he said.

“She was right, of course,” Rosey said. “I was trying to exploit myself, not you or the hotel.”

Chambrun nodded. “We should get along,” he said. He looked at me. “Well, Mark?”

“Jacques says you expected me.”

He smiled faintly. The trout was deboned and Jacques carried away a side plate with the fish skeleton on it. “You would have to find out something in an hour or so, Mark. The next step would then need discussing.”

I gave it to him from top to bottom. He ate unhurriedly while I talked. He looked up at Rosey when I'd finished.

“How did this poison rumor start?” he asked.

“I tried to trace it,” Rosey said. “Everybody heard it from somebody else. I hadn't gotten anywhere when I saw Haskell and decided I'd better latch onto him.”

Chambrun savored a mouthful of trout. “It could be pure coincidence,” he said. “Someone starting something for the excitement of it. The pills didn't work. Maybe they were poison. Chatter-chatter. It grew from the pills didn't work to the pills killed him. Somebody hit on a part-truth without knowing it. It must be giving the murderer fits. No one was expected to dream of such a thing.”

Rosey helped herself to one of the flat Egyptian cigarettes from the silver box on the table. I held my lighter for her.

“The thing that puzzles me about it,” she said, “is the casualness of it. It could have been months before Nikos had any reason to take the pills. These angina attacks didn't come on schedule, you know. The person who switched the pills was evidently willing to wait an indefinite time for results.”

“Long-range capital gain,” Chambrun said. He touched his lips with a white linen napkin. “Someone looking to a future security.”

“It's so damn cold-blooded!” Rosey said.

“And maybe not so casual,” Chambrun said. “I need you out of the way. You have angina. The wrong, but harmless, pills would do the job if you had an attack in time to suit my needs. It would be nice for me if that happened, because it would be almost impossible to pin anything on me. But if it
didn't
happen on schedule—well, then I would have to try Plan Two, whatever that may be.” He shrugged. “I need money next month. I have that much time to hope Plan One will work. If it doesn't, then I will have to go to Plan Two.”

“It should be fairly simple to narrow the field,” I said. “Get Tim Gallivan to produce a copy of Nikos's will. Your killer is one of the heirs.”

“It wouldn't surprise me to find there were a hundred people mentioned in Nikos's will,” Rosey said. “Including me! And Nikos was constantly changing it—adding new friends, subtracting others who no longer needed his help, or who had displeased him.”

“Who had displeased him?” Chambrun asked.

“I couldn't begin to guess,” Rosey said. “He was surrounded by court jesters, and leeches, and people who stroked his ego for the profit in it. Oh, there are plenty of people he's walked on in the past. He was a ruthless enemy in the business world. But none of those obvious people have been close enough to him, here at the Beaumont, to get at that pill bottle. That had to be someone close; someone who could take the bottle from the bedside table, empty the nitro pills down the john, replace them with soda mints, and get the bottle back before Nikos missed it. He would miss it very quickly, because his life depended on it. But if someone like Suzie or Jan was modeling one of the new Lazar collection for him, or one of those long-haired rock singers was doing a number for him, or Zach Chambers was in the middle of one of his long shaggy dog stories with a sexy twist—well, Nikos's attention might be held long enough for the bottle to be taken to the john and brought back.”

“Or while he slept,” Chambrun said.

Rosey's healthy face clouded. “There are only two people who could get to him while he slept,” she said. “Tim Gallivan has a connecting room on one side of his suite. Jan Morse has one on the other.”

“With the keys on Nikos's side of the door,” I said.

“They were unlocked at night,” Rosey said. “For all his apparent calm, Nikos was afraid. If something happened to him, he wanted Tim or Jan to be able to get to him without having to send downstairs for a passkey and the house dick.”

“They couldn't hear him if he called for help,” I said. “The rooms are soundproofed.”

“It was their job to check on him at regular intervals,” Rosey said.

“You're really up on the intimate details, Miss Lewis,” Chambrun said.

Her bright blue eyes looked at him, unflinching. “I traveled with Nikos last spring—Rome, Paris. When Tim was away on a couple of business trips, I took his place in an adjoining room. Jan and I shared the job of checking on Nikos every hour.”

“So the night shift could have played games with the pill bottle without too much difficulty,” Chambrun said.

Rosey nodded slowly. “It was always there on the bedside table within reach of his hand.”

“What about Gallivan and Miss Morse?” Chambrun asked. “I understand from Gallivan himself they are two who stand to benefit most handsomely from Nikos's death.”

“I'm only guessing, but I'd say top of the list,” Rosey said. “Nikos was a realist. There had to be a couple of people he could depend on without question. All Jan and Tim had to do if they wanted something was ask for it and they got it. No questions asked. Nikos didn't want them waiting for him to die. He had to trust them, so he gave them no reason to be in a hurry.”

“How did Nikos feel about Jan's outside sex life?” I asked. “With someone like Mike Faraday, for instance?”

Rosey gave me a wry smile. “You weren't wasting your time in there, Haskell.”

“It's a thing, isn't it?” I said, still feeling unaccountably angry about it.

“It's a thing, according to the grapevine,” Rosey said.

“Doesn't Mrs. Faraday object?” Chambrun asked.

“Mike Faraday is so rich it would take a lot for Dodo to make trouble. She's too comfortable the way things are. And,” Rosey said, her smile turning hard, “she's free to do what she likes with her life.”

“I find the New World rather indigestible,” Chambrun said. His eyes were almost hidden behind their hooded lids. “It's been very pleasant talking to you, Miss Lewis, but you haven't come to the point.”

“Point?” she said.

“You obviously want something from me in return for not producing headlines for tomorrow morning's papers.”

Rosey threw back her head and laughed. “I wouldn't like to be married to you, Chambrun,” she said. “I don't like having my mind read, and I don't particularly like this Turkish coffee.”

“You want a hot line to the center of things,” Chambrun said.