Shape of Fear (2 page)

Sullivan turned back from the window. He looked stunned, pleasantly stunned. “Thank you for your understanding and your courtesy,” he said.

Without another word he walked out of the office, closing the door softly behind him.

Chambrun sat down again and began gathering up papers on the top of his desk, including the dossier and file card on Sullivan. I stood where I was without speaking for a moment. Chambrun didn’t look at me.

Finally I said, “Is there anything else you want of me, Mr. Chambrun?”

He glanced up, his dark eyes dancing with humor. “You’ll do, Mark,” he said.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Only one man in a thousand could have resisted an avalanche of questions. And, incidentally, only one man in a thousand can do the job I’ve hired you for adequately. I have high hopes for you, Mark.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He laughed outright “Still no questions?”

“You’ll tell me what you want me to know,” I said. “May I send along the press release I’ve prepared on the arrival of Paul Bernardel tomorrow?”

“By all means,” Chambrun said.

I started for the door.

“Mark!”

“Yes, sir?”

“In the outer office files under G, you’ll find a folder on Monsieur and Madame Charles Girard. In it are clippings from French and American newspapers from the spring of nineteen sixty. Read them at your leisure. They’ll answer some of the questions I know you want to ask. After you’ve caught up on the story of Juliet Valmont and Michael Digby Sullivan and Paul Bernardel, come back and we’ll talk about it”

“May I ask one question in advance, sir?”

He cocked an eyebrow at me.

“How figurative was the talk of land mines here in the hotel?” I asked.

“A quite proper concern,” Chambrun said. “Let me say that the presence here in this hotel at the same time of Monsieur and Madame Girard, Sullivan, and Paul Bernardel has all the potential of high explosive. We have a great deal more to protect here than the steel, bricks, and mortar which Sullivan assures us are safe. The Beaumont is not just a building, Mark. It is a way of life.”

T
HAT THE BEAUMONT WAS
“a way of life” was a fact that had been hammered at me every day since I’d first come to work there in the public relations office about a year ago. Most of the hammering had been done by a charming girl named Alison Barnwell who was then the public relations director. About a month ago Alison had married a very nice guy and bid us all good-by. I expected Chambrun would hire someone for her job with long experience in the hotel business. Instead, he offered me the job.

“You may not have the experience, Mark,” he told me, “but in a year you’ve learned and absorbed more about the way we do things than a new man could pick up in an equal amount of time. I’d like to go along with you, if you’re willing.”

I was more than willing, but I was still wet behind the ears the day that Digger Sullivan went hunting for land mines in the Girards’ suite.

G for Girard.

I took the folder to my office which was down the hall from Chambrun’s. Charles Girard’s credit was excellent. His permanent residence was on the Avenue Kleber in Paris. He had visited the hotel twice before in the past five years, alone on each occasion. This current visit was the first time there had been a Madame Girard. There were no special notes about them except a reference to attached clippings. The clippings were in a manila envelope paper-clipped to the record card.

My French is of the high school variety which limited me to the clippings from the New York and London papers. They all had to do with the assassination of Colonel Georges Valmont in Paris in May of 1960.

Boiled down the story was this: Colonel Valmont—a dark, handsome man to judge from one or two photographs—had been a strong supporter of General de Gaulle, apparently an expert and adviser to the French President on the explosive situation in Algeria. It’s a matter of history that independence for Algeria was de Gaulle’s aim, violently opposed by the French living in Algeria and particularly by a clique of army officers stationed there with the French armed forces. A terrorist organization secretly directed by these army officers was making a bloody shambles of Algeria in 1960 and was reaching out into France itself to strike at key figures supporting the de Gaulle policy. Street riots, bombings, and assassinations were the order of the day in Paris.

Colonel Valmont was apparently high on the terrorists’ list of persons to be liquidated. An attempt was made on his life by the Secret Army Organization late in April which failed. Valmont went into temporary hiding. Ten days later his body, riddled with bullets, was found in a cheap flat somewhere on the Left Bank. His enemies had found him and murdered him. It was not an uncommon pattern, but what followed was most uncommon indeed.

Valmont, a widower, lived with his daughter Juliet. She had gone into hiding with him. At a hearing after the murder, Mademoiselle Valmont exploded a bomb of her own. She was a beautiful girl, taking her golden-blonde coloring from an American mother. At the time of her tragedy, she had been linked by the gossips with Digger Sullivan, famous race driver—a sort of American soldier of fortune, according to the British papers. Friends had assumed that Sullivan and the beautiful Juliet were very close to setting a date for a wedding.

When Valmont went into hiding after the first attempt on his life, Sullivan, according to Miss Valmont, was the only person outside herself who knew where the colonel had holed up. No one else—but no one—knew the secret, Juliet Valmont insisted, but Sullivan.

On the morning of Valmont’s murder, Juliet had gone down the street to do some shopping for food. She was less than a block from the shabby building where they were living when she heard a fusillade of shots. Instinctively she knew what it must be. She dropped her packages and started to run toward her apartment building. She saw a man dart out of the building, jump into a high-powered sports car, and race away. She insisted it was Sullivan, although she’d only seen him from behind. Not too many men, even at a distance, would have looked remotely like the handsome Digger. While Juliet didn’t get the license number of the car, she swore it was exactly like one owned by Digger.

Juliet ran upstairs to the apartment and found her father on the floor, ripped to pieces by expanding bullets, choking out a desperate cry for help. She knelt beside him and knew there was no hope. He spoke only one intelligible word to her. It was “Michael!” Her father was, Juliet Valmont insisted at the hearing, naming his murderer.

Digger had been arrested by the Paris police the day after the murder. They had been searching for him for nearly twenty-four hours when he walked into the prefecture and gave himself up. He refused to make any sort of statement. At the official hearing he listened to Juliet’s accusation—stony, without comment His lawyer, to the astonishment of the court, refused to cross-examine Juliet Valmont and made no effort to break down her story. It seemed that the famous American playboy was going to offer no defense.

But when the turn for the defense came, Digger’s lawyer called a witness. He was one Paul Bernardel, a distinguished French industrialist. The Bernardel family were manufacturers of a popular low-priced French automobile. They were interested in road racing as a sport and had entered cars in races all over the continent. It was natural that Bernardel should know and be a friend to Digger Sullivan. Bernardel’s testimony blew the case against Digger sky high. Digger had been at his country place the day of the murder, Bernardel said. He had been testing a new racing car for Bernardel at the exact moment of the murder. The testing had taken place two hundred kilometers from Paris. They had been involved for the full day with the car and had had no reason to listen to news flashes on the radio. They hadn’t heard of Colonel Valmont’s assassination until the next morning. Digger had promptly returned to Paris when he heard the police were looking for him and surrendered. Paul Bernardel’s integrity was beyond question. Digger Sullivan could not have been Valmont’s murderer.

The prosecution attempted to implicate him in another way. Only Digger and Juliet knew where Valmont could be found. The prosecution implied that Digger had betrayed the colonel to his enemies. But a motive was hard to manufacture. Digger had no interest in nor was he in any way involved in French politics. He was in love with, or, at any rate, deeply attached to Juliet, and a warm friend of the colonel’s. He was a moderately rich man. A simple betrayal for money was unthinkable.

In spite of all this, Juliet Valmont insisted that she had actually seen Digger running from the apartment and driving away in a car she had ridden in a hundred times herself. The alibi must be a fake. This was hard to substantiate. With French politics in their then state of upheaval, it could have made sense, except for the fact that Paul Bernardel was a de Gaullist and on the same side of the political fence as Colonel Valmont. They were, in fact, lifelong friends. Bernardel was the last man in the world to shield Valmont’s killer.

Digger Sullivan was completely exonerated.

Only Juliet Valmont refused to believe in his innocence. It was clear to her now, she told the press, that his whole courtship—because it had been a courtship, she said—had been no more than a blind to ingratiate himself with the Valmonts in order to set up the colonel as a pigeon for the terrorists. She refused to believe Bernardel’s testimony and announced, dramatically, that she would spend her life, if necessary, proving it false.

Featured in accounts of the hearing was the prosecuting lawyer who had attempted, and with some brilliance, to break down Bernardel’s story. After the acquittal he had also made it clear that he would go on attempting to prove the alibi a fake and bring Digger to justice.

The prosecutor’s name was Charles Girard.

The final clipping in the folder brought me up to date. Six months ago Juliet Valmont had married Charles Girard.

Out of this world of melodrama and conspiracy came the four principal characters to the quiet, smoothly operated world of Pierre Chambrun—the Hotel Beaumont.

“The potential of high explosive,” Chambrun had called it.

Well, it promised a little more interest, I thought, than the usual run of fashion shows, business banquets, and debutante balls.

The intercom burner on my desk sounded. It was my secretary, Shelda. Mason, who had been Alison Barnwell’s secretary before she was mine and who hadn’t decided yet whether she approved of me. I found her a little disconcerting because she was so damned beautiful. She belonged on a magazine cover, accentuating all shades of red, and not shut away in a fourth floor office. I felt I should be dating her, not giving orders. I would have liked it better. But there was some never-seen boy friend in the background somewhere who would probably have at me if I raised so much as a mildly flirtatious eyebrow. Men attached to girls like Shelda Mason are inclined to be violently possessive.

Shelda always seemed to be faintly amused by everything that went on in the Beaumont. “Mr. Murray Cardew’s compliments,” she said drily, “and would you join him in the Spartan Bar for a dry sherry, bringing with you any information you have on the reception for Monsieur Paul Bernardel to be held on Saturday night.”

“Tell Mr. Cardew yes,” I said.

“Mr. Cardew hasn’t waited for an answer,” Shelda said. “Mr. Cardew would drop dead of shock if the answer was anything but yes. I have the folder on the Bernardel reception ready for you.”

Shelda was at her desk, wearing a handsome green wool suit and looking mysteriously ready to go places—with someone else.

“I hate you,” she said cheerfully, passing the folder on the reception to me.

“What have I done?”

“You walked in here a while back as though I was part of the furnishings,” she said. “I’m not accustomed to being overlooked, Mr. Haskell. You know darn well I was bursting with curiosity.”

“About what?”

“Idiot!” she said. Which should give you an idea of our boss-secretary relationship. “What did the Great White Father do with Michael Digby Sullivan? The Bastille?”

“He’s thinking about it,” I said.

“Then I still have time,” Shelda said.

“For what?”

“My dear Mark, are you too obtuse to be aware that Digger Sullivan is every girl’s dream man? I hope to be able to persuade you to introduce me to him. Otherwise I propose to ambush him in the Trapeze Bar. I’m prettier than she is, don’t you think?”

“She?”

“Juliet Girard,” she said. She gave me her cat-and-canary smile. “I could have told you the whole story, Mark, without your bothering with those clippings. Someone in this office has to keep up on new arrivals.”

Actually it was her job to check on the daily list of new registrations and keep me informed as to who required special treatment from our office. She had reported nothing on the Girards when they checked in a few days back.

“I haven’t seen Madame Girard,” I said, “but my money is on you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“What are the Girards doing in New York?”

“United Nations,” Shelda said. “Charles Girard is a special prosecutor for the French government, with emphasis on treason trials. There is a matter of international law connected with the extradition from this country of men wanted by France for the attempted assassination of President de Gaulle. Mr. Girard would like to find a loophole in the international legal system that doesn’t permit extradition for political reasons.”

“Why are you working in a hotel instead of for the State Department?” I asked.

“Because you’re prettier,” she said, “and because I’m secretly working for Pierre Chambrun for President in sixty-eight. By the way, Murray Cardew will have chewed off—or is it ‘chawn’ off?—several of his well-manicured fingernails by now.”

Reluctantly—I am always reluctant to leave Shelda—I headed downstairs for the Spartan Bar and Mr. Murray Cardew. The Spartan Bar is an oak-paneled room reserved for male patrons only. It is patronized largely by the older clientele. It is a little bit like a club, with a special cigar humidor which also stocks esoteric pipe tobaccos. There is a rack for newspapers, and at corner tables you are apt to find elderly gentlemen playing endless games of backgammon.