Golden Trap (14 page)

Chambrun and I reached her, but only after his face had been ripped and was streaming blood. Martine abandoned the girl and came to his wife, taking her out of our grip, talking to her in a low urgent voice. I turned to look for Jeanette Arnaud. She had started out of the room but Miss Ruysdale had appeared in the doorway, blocking the girl’s retreat.

“Be good enough to take your wife back to your suite, Louis!” Chambrun said. “Miss Arnaud will stay here with us for a moment.” His voice was so cold it was like a blow.

“Jeanette will come with us!” Collette Martine cried.

“She stays here,” Chambrun said.

Martine almost carried his wife to the door. He paused to say something in a reassuring tone to the singer. Then he took his wife away. Jeanette Arnaud stood with her back to the wall, her hands spread out on either side of her. She appeared to be gasping for breath. Ruysdale, who had disappeared for a moment, came back into the room carrying a small metal first-aid box, went over to Lovelace and began to do something to the livid gouges on his face.

“You will be good enough to come over here and sit down, Miss Arnaud,” Chambrun said. He held one of the high-backed Florentine chairs for her.

The girl edged across the room toward him, never taking her eyes off Lovelace. She sat on the edge of the chair, gripping its arms. Chambrun moved around his desk to face her. His voice was coldly matter-of-fact.

“I still believe it is possible you are mistaken, Mademoiselle,” he said.

“No!”

“It’s possible. The time is seven years. The moment for you was a nightmare. Mr. Lovelace has no hump on his back, no scars or birthmarks that would make him unmistakable. He could be very like someone else.”

“No!”

“I would like more proof,” Chambrun said. “In the story I was told you went to the police the night it all happened.”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember the date?”

“How could I forget, Monsieur Chambrun? The fourteenth of October—seven years ago.”

“Do you remember the name of the police officer who tried to help you?” Chambrun asked, scribbling a note on the pad in front of him.

“Certainement,”
the girl said. “He was the
Commissaire
for the district. He was very kind to me. He was
Capitaine
Luis Santana.”

“So there is a complete record of the case?”

“A record of sorts, Monsieur. We never located the house, or the two men who carried me to it, or the third man—until tonight.”

Chambrun’s dark eyes looked at her sharply. “Were you given medical attention that night—after what had happened?”

“But yes, Monsieur. By the surgeon of police, and later by a private doctor supplied by the owner of the café where I was singing.”

“Do you remember their names?”

“Not the surgeon of police,” she said. “He only saw me the one time. The private doctor—his name was Manuel Fuentes.”

“This Captain Santana—he’s never been in touch with you since?”

“He told me he would if he found the men. He asked if I would come back to Spain to make the identification. But he never found them.”

“And until tonight it has been a forgotten matter?”

“Not forgotten, Monsieur!” she said.

“I should like to make something quite clear to you, Mademoiselle,” Chambrun said. There was none of the kindness in his voice I might have expected. Whether this girl was right or wrong about Lovelace, certainly the incident in Madrid must be for real. She wouldn’t be giving all the names of police and doctors if they couldn’t be checked out. The shock of seeing Lovelace who was—or who she thought was—the man who had so savagely manhandled her must be almost unendurable. I felt sorry for her, and doubtful about Lovelace. Chambrun seemed to be without pity. It puzzled me.

“This is not a legal matter at the moment,” Chambrun went on. “The crime was committed in Spain. The identity of the criminal is still, for me, in doubt. If you are mistaken—”

“I am not mistaken, Monsieur!” It was like a cry of pain.

“If you are mistaken,” Chambrun repeated, unmoved, “you will have done irreparable damage to Mr. Lovelace.”

“And he to me,” she whispered.

“I am going to prove out your story from start to finish, Mademoiselle,” Chambrun said. “Are there any details you wish to change before it’s too late?”

“None.” She looked past Chambrun at Lovelace, who stood ramrod straight, patting at his cheek with a piece of medicated gauze Ruysdale had given him. Her wide eyes were dark with fear and revulsion.

Chambrun studied her from under his hooded eyelids with what seemed to me to be open hostility. I couldn’t figure him. “I advise you, Mademoiselle Arnaud, not to leave the city,” he said. “You are a well known personality and you will easily be found. Now I will ask Miss Ruysdale to see that you are safely escorted to wherever you are living.”

“I wish to go to Madame Martine,” the girl said.

“Very well. Ruysdale, see that Miss Arnaud gets to the Martines’ suite without being bothered by the gentlemen of the press.”

Chambrun turned and went to his desk. He took one of his Egyptian cigarettes from a lacquered box and lit it. He kept his back to the girl until Ruysdale had escorted her out of the office. Then he turned on Lovelace, and his voice was a whiplash.

“You were in Madrid on that fourteenth of October!” he said.

“Why should you think so?” Lovelace asked.

“Because you didn’t instantly deny it. Because you didn’t say at once, ‘I was in Brussels, or Stockholm, or Vienna.’”

Lovelace let out his breath in a deep, shuddering sigh. “I was in Madrid,” he said very quietly.

“And you still say you have never seen Jeanette Arnaud before tonight?”

“I still say it, Pierre.” The awful weariness I’d been aware of earlier in the day seemed to come over Lovelace. His shoulders sagged. “But it doesn’t matter what I say, does it?”

“It matters a great deal,” Chambrun said, suddenly brisk.

“Why should it?”

“Because I can smell chicanery a mile away,” Chambrun said. “It’s part of my job to be sensitive to dishonesty. At the core of the girl’s story is a lie, too well acted, too melodramatically played. The question is, why?”

I
N LESS THAN AN
hour a solid portion of Jeanette Arnaud’s story had been verified. A transatlantic telephone call located Captain Luis Santana of the Madrid police. The case was seven years old but the Spaniard remembered it very well. A hysterical Jeanette Arnaud had come to police headquarters with her story of abduction and rape. Santana had at first been skeptical. False rape charges are often brought by women who wish to get even with some man for some reason or another. This was a little different because Jeanette Arnaud had not named anyone. She had been examined by a police surgeon and later by a private doctor. There was no question she had been severely beaten and sexually molested. Santana said he took the case seriously because she never named anyone.

“Did she describe the man?” Chambrun asked.

You could almost imagine Santana’s shrug. The description had been meaningless. White, middle-aged, athletically built. But nothing they could use to make a clear picture for themselves. The violence had been so sudden and overwhelming that the girl had come away without any detail that would help. She couldn’t be blamed, Santana told Chambrun. She had been overpowered, only half conscious from the beating she’d received. Nothing fake about that. The date, the names, everything checked out. So far, no lie.

The transatlantic lines buzzed again as Chambrun called an old friend, Inspector Claude Grizzard of the Paris police. He asked for a detailed history of Jeanette Arnaud. Grizzard would call back as soon as he could come up with detail.

Lovelace seemed to have lost all interest in the proceedings. A kind of hopelessness had come over him.

“What you need is a couple of sleeping pills and some rest,” Chambrun told him. “Take him upstairs, Mark, and see that he gets some sleep. It will be some time before we hear from Grizzard.”

“What good will the girl’s history do you?” Lovelace asked. “She believes it was me.”

“Nonsense,” Chambrun said cheerfully. “She believes no such thing.”

“You are the only one who thinks that,” Lovelace said.

Chambrun actually grinned at him. “Does anyone else matter?” he asked. He took a sip of Turkish coffee. “If I believed this girl’s identification of you, what would I do?”

“Turn your back on me,” Lovelace said.

“Precisely.”

Lovelace frowned his puzzlement.

“I think that is the answer to the ‘why’ I asked a little while ago,” Chambrun said. “I think I was supposed to turn my back on you. I would refuse you help. I would ask you to leave the Beaumont. And then you would be wide open to attack again. That, I think, is the ‘why.’”

“You’re saying she, Jeanette Arnaud, is the person who’s hunting me? It doesn’t make sense, Pierre. I’ve had no contact with her, ever.”

“You said it yourself, earlier today, George. ‘The relatives of people, the descendants of people, the members of organizations I helped to smash.’”

“A friend of Collette Martine’s,” Lovelace said.

“Let’s wait for Grizzard’s report,” Chambrun said. “Meanwhile, I’m not turning my back on you, George. I’m not deserting you. So go get some sleep. Take him away, Mark.”

Lovelace and I went up to the fourth floor. The brass polisher was still in the hall. As I unlocked the door to my apartment I saw Lovelace’s hand slide inside his jacket to the holstered gun. I’d almost forgotten there were no longer any inviolate locks in the Beaumont.

Inside, the apartment was as we’d left it. Lovelace didn’t wait for an invitation but went straight to the side table and poured himself another Scotch. I rarely need help to sleep, but I had some Seconal in the bathroom, just in case. I got Lovelace a couple of the little red capsules. He swallowed them without resistance.

“Marilyn,” he said. “She’s probably waiting.”

“You go to bed,” I said. “I’ll bring Marilyn up to date.”

His eyelids were heavy. “Chambrun is a true friend,” he said.

“And an implacable enemy—if it happens you’re not telling him the truth,” I said.

“I begin to wonder what is truth,” he said. “Could Chambrun be right? Could I be Jekyll and Hyde?”

“You better get some sleep, Buster, or you’ll have us all wondering,” I said. I wasn’t kidding. Chambrun might believe in this man, but I wasn’t so sure about him myself…

I called Jerry Dodd’s office. Jerry seems to be able to go days on end without sleep when there is some kind of crisis in the Beaumont. It was all right for me leave Lovelace. The brass polisher would make dead certain no one went into the apartment. So I went in search of Marilyn VanZandt.

Shelda, as I’ve indicated, is a young woman of surprises. When I got to the Blue Lagoon the customers had thinned out. Dr. Claus Zimmerman had gone somewhere else to sleep. Rogoff and his bevy of tarts had disappeared. The room had thinned out considerably since the main attraction of the evening, Jeanette Arnaud, would not appear for the late show either. But Marilyn was where I had left her, with Shelda as a companion. As I approached the table I saw that Marilyn had stuck by her guns. There was no sign of a drink. She and Shelda were sipping coffee. I was ready for a bourbon on the rocks, myself.

“Well, don’t sit there like an oyster on the half shell,” Shelda said, when I’d ordered. “Give!” When I hesitated she said: “I’ve told Marilyn. She had a right to know, I thought.”

That meant a lot of things. It meant Shelda believed in Marilyn among others. When it comes to judging women I bow to Shelda.

“Miss Arnaud insists Lovelace was the man,” I said.

“She’s lying,” Marilyn said quietly.

“Chambrun thinks so,” I said.

Marilyn’s face lighted up. “He caught her out?”

“It’s his woman’s intuition,” I said.

“This is all supposed to have happened two years before I met Charles—George,” Marilyn said. “Do you think I wouldn’t know if there was a trace of sadism in him? This is a tender, gentle man, Mark. No situation on earth could turn him into a subhuman animal.”

I told her Chambrun’s notion that Jeanette Arnaud was being used by someone to get us to turn our backs on Lovelace and leave him without protection. The problem now was to find a way to prove this. I told them Chambrun was waiting for a report from Inspector Grizzard in Paris.

“But we already know she’s close to the Martines,” Shelda said.

“What happened to your Mr. Dark?” I asked her.

“My Mr. Dark became Hilary Carleton’s Mr. Dark,” she said. “Some kind of diplomatic cables relating to the. unfortunate behavior of the Pakistani representative had to be coded and sent.”

Marilyn was staring out across the room. “I can tell you some things about Jeanette Arnaud,” she said. “I batted around Paris, you know, for some time before I met—George.”

Shelda and I were all ears.

“You have call girls here in the hotel, don’t you, Mark?”

“I would deny it with my last breath,” I said. “But for the sake of argument—”

“They are pikers alongside Jeanette Arnaud,” Marilyn said. “She has been kept, for short periods of time, by the most important men in France—cabinet ministers, writers, scientists, and soldiers.”

“But she’s a genuine talent; a real singer,” I said.

“Her hobby is sleeping with all the important men in France—for a price. I’d like to make you a small bet, Mark.”

“Such as?”

“Chambrun’s Inspector Grizzard will have a vague and meaningless report on Jeanette Arnaud. She could turn the French Republic on its ear if she chose to talk about some of her past relationships. If Grizzard is really a friend of Chambrun’s, he may hint, but he won’t have anything specific to report.”

“You’re repeating the sidewalk café gossip,” I said.

“Wait and see,” she said.

“She was in Spain,” I said. “She was manhandled. Lovelace was there on that very day. He admits it.”

Marilyn shook her head stubbornly. “It’s a fortunate coincidence that anyone interested in George could know. Jeanette Arnaud will do anything for money, including you-know-what in the window of Saks Fifth Avenue.”