Shape of Fear (6 page)

What did it mean? Ì hadn’t the faintest idea. He’d wanted it passed on to Chambrun because he didn’t think he could stay awake till Chambrun got back from the theatre.

“Doesn’t sound so damned urgent if he planned to go to sleep on it,” Hardy said.

“He was a very old man,” Chambrun said. “He also had an old-fashioned way of speaking. Something ‘rather urgent’ to him could have been to remember to add a name to the guest list; or he could have remembered something that might make his revised seating arrangement inappropriate; or, for example, that Monsieur Delacroix is allergic to fish. This might mean substituting something for the stuffed clams as an hors d’oeuvre with the cocktails. All these things would have rated as ‘urgent’ with Mr. Cardew.”

Hardy didn’t strike out on that particular curve, and I felt better about him somehow.

“I think more urgent than that,” he said, scowling like a small child over a jigsaw. “Something you could handle, Chambrun. He called you first. But also something the French Ambassador could handle. That takes it out of the area of hotel business, wouldn’t you say? I mean—not stuffed clams!”

“Probably not,” Chambrun said. “But I have no idea what it could have been, Lieutenant.”

This all took place in Cardew’s room after his body had been removed to the city morgue.

“So it had something to do with the people involved in his little seating problem,” Hardy said. He glanced at his notebook. “The Ambassador and his wife; Michael Digby Sullivan; the Princess Baragrave and her sister Miss Eileen Grovesnor; Mr. and Mrs. Charles Girard; and Mr. Paul Bernardel, who is somewhere over the Atlantic at the moment. Nothing to do but talk to each one of them. Any of them guests of the hotel?”

“The Girards and Sullivan,” Chambrun said. “Bernardel will be when he arrives in the morning.”

“Well, let’s get the ones who are in the hotel and start asking,” Hardy said.

“Separately, I suggest,” Chambrun said. “The Girards and Sullivan don’t mix, you may recall.”

It was at that point that this story of a chain of violence at the Beaumont split onto two quite different, but often paralleling, paths. One path involved the story of the police investigation: the story of Lieutenant Hardy, moving slowly, methodically, tenaciously until at last he reached out and put his hand on a murderer’s shoulder. The other the story of people, their private emotions, their private fears, and the web of evil that nearly destroyed them all. The identity of the murderer was almost of secondary importance. Almost the key issue was the survival of people we never saw—people without names, without faces, without identities.

The Hardy story is in the newspaper files for you to read; the details about alibis and physical clues and the efforts of the police to put a stop to a crime in which the unfortunate death of Murray Cardew was only a way station.

My story—the story that for a time had Pierre Chambrun at its center—is only recorded here. I kept very full notes at Chambrun’s request. I was a witness to some of the most dramatic moments; others I got second hand from Chambrun and from Digger Sullivan who knew more than anyone else about the shape of the fear that had a paralyzing grip on so many people.

This much of the Hardy story I give you here.

Digger Sullivan was not in the hotel at one-thirty that morning, so it was the Girards who were summoned to Chambrun’s office for questioning.

But only one Girard made an appearance.

“My wife is not well, extremely tired,” Charles Girard said as he came into Chambrun’s office. Chambrun introduced him to Hardy and to me. Steel gray eyes rested on me, and I knew he was remembering that he’d seen me in the Trapeze with Sullivan, classifying me as Sullivan’s friend.

Close up, Girard was a formidable personality. The penetrating eyes, the square jaw, the thin, hard mouth must have made him a frightening opponent in a court of law. His body was lean and well muscled, in extraordinarily good shape for a man of forty. I could imagine that in moments, of relaxation he might be able to turn on a very real charm. He wasn’t playing for charm at the moment.

He spoke English without a French accent, but I imagined he had learned it at school or college in Britain.

“If this has to do with your fear that our rooms were ransacked by some sneak thief,” he said to Chambrun, “I can only repeat that nothing was taken. I can’t help you. Surely questions could have waited till a less ungodly hour.”

“This has nothing to do with the search of your room, Monsieur,” Chambrun said. “At least, we don’t know of any connection. There’s been a murder in the hotel tonight. Were you acquainted with Mr. Murray Cardew?”

“Never heard of him,” Girard said promptly.

“Did your wife know him?”

“Not to my knowledge. This Cardew—he is the one who was killed?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Beaten to death—violently,” Chambrun said, anger stirring him.

“I repeat, I have never heard of him,” Girard said. “My wife’s mother was American. Juliet has spent a great deal more time in this country than I have. She may have known a Murray Cardew without my being aware of it” The gray eyes narrowed. “A young man?”

“He would have had his eightieth birthday next month,” Chambrun said.

I could almost see Girard relax. He was, I realized, capable of fierce jealousy. “My wife and I spent the evening in the company of Monsieur Delacroix, the French Ambassador,” he said. “We went to a concert at Lincoln Center and then on to a night club after that. We returned to the hotel about a half an hour ago.” The gray eyes moved my way. “I believe Mr. Haskell saw us when we came in.”

This cookie didn’t miss much.

“We’re not asking you for an alibi, Monsieur,” Chambrun said. He went on to explain Cardew’s connection with the upcoming reception for Bernardel. He mentioned the seating problem as a matter of course. Girard listened, his face rock-hard. Chambrun went on to tell him that Cardew had sent for me to tell me something “urgently important” connected with the people involved in that seating problem, not the seating problem itself.

“I have already made it quite clear to Monsieur LaCoste, the Ambassador’s social secretary, that my wife and I do not wish the normal protocol to be upset for personal reasons,” Girard said.

“That isn’t the point, Monsieur,” Chambrun said. “What could Mr. Cardew have known about one of you, so urgently important that he was killed to keep from passing it on?”

“It seems to me you’re jumping at conclusions,” Girard said. “What proof have you that he was killed for that reason? It may well have been your sneak thief at work again. I know of nothing ‘urgently important’ connected with my wife or me or anyone else who is supposed to sit at the Ambassador’s table at the reception.”

“We’d like to ask your wife if she knew Cardew,” Hardy said.

“I repeat, my wife isn’t well,” Girard said. “She’s already in bed. The evening was a little too much for her. Let me ask her if she knew this Cardew. If she did, then I’m sure she’ll make the effort to answer your questions. If she didn’t, then I beg you to let her alone—at least until morning.”

“Fair enough,” Hardy said.

Girard played it straight enough. He picked up the phone on Chambrun’s desk and asked to be connected with his suite. The hard voice was suddenly soft and deferential. He spoke to his wife in French, and there was real concern in his manner. He mentioned Cardew’s name. Then he put down the phone.

“My wife has never heard of a Murray Cardew,” he said flatly. “There’s no way she can help you.”

“We’ll talk to her in the morning then, if that’s agreeable,” Hardy said.

At that point we were suddenly projected into drama. The office door opened and Jerry Dodd, the security officer, came in followed by Digger Sullivan.

“I picked up Mr. Sullivan just now as he came in,” Jerry said. “I thought …” He stopped there, suddenly aware of Girard’s presence.

Girard and Sullivan faced each other. Sullivan froze in one of those characteristic stillnesses of his, pale, motionless. Girard’s face went a dark, angry red. He started to speak, checked himself, and then he walked straight toward the door, which was also straight toward Sullivan. He stopped, and they stood “eyeball to eyeball,” as the current political slang goes.

“I warn you,” he said, his voice shaken, “stay away from her!”

T
HE OFFICE WAS SILENT
for seconds after Girard went out, closing the door hard behind him. Then Digger Sullivan reached for a cigarette in the pocket of his dinner jacket. A tight smile moved the corners of his mouth.

“Awkward moment,” he said. He snapped his lighter into flame and took a deep drag on his cigarette. He came forward into the room. “I’m shocked by what Dodd has just told me. Poor old Cardew. I knew him quite well—in a casual way. He spent a lot of time abroad, eight, nine years ago.” The tight smile widened a little. “It had to be casual because my father was the son of an Irish revolutionary, and my mother was an actress and her old man sold nuts and bolts. From Murray’s point of view, that left me in the peasant class. He thought of actresses as ‘not quite the thing.’ But he was generous, amusing, and he didn’t talk about a great many things he must have known that would have been seventh heaven to a gossip columnist. I liked him. Am I here to tell you whether or not I killed him? I didn’t—but I haven’t any alibi. Not offhand, at any rate.”

“Offhand?” Hardy said.

Digger glanced at me. “I had a disturbing experience in the late afternoon—around six. I wanted a chance to do some thinking. I got out my car—this the hotel garage will confirm—and drove up into the country, way the hell up in Connecticut. I just got back. Didn’t stop anywhere or talk to anyone. My car is noticeable, though. White Ferrari sports roadster—makes a bit of noise. Someone on the Thruway may have noticed it.”

“I hadn’t asked you for an alibi,” Hardy said.

Once more the seating story was gone into and Cardew’s words to me. Digger listened, frowning.

“When I heard about that seating problem I instantly offered to stay away—move off the head table,” he said. “I didn’t want to go to the goddam party anyway. I called Bernardel in Paris last night just before he took off. He wouldn’t hear of my withdrawing. Said it might make my position more awkward than it already is.”

“What makes it awkward?” Hardy asked.

“My dear fellow, there are a great many people who still think I killed Juliet Girard’s father, including the lady herself. If I ran away from a public meeting, it might look like panic to some fatheads. That I wouldn’t mind, but it might also look as if Paul Bernardel had asked me to drop out. He doesn’t want that. He stood by me and he doesn’t want it to look as though his attitude toward me is changed. It’s a sinker.”

“And you can’t guess what it was Murray Cardew wanted to tell Chambrun?”

“Not the foggiest notion. You think he was killed to keep him from passing it on?”

“Could have been.”

Digger’s eyes narrowed. “Yes—he could have been,” he said. “The usual detective story out is a tramp, isn’t it? But then the only tramps in Mr. Chambrun’s establishment are of the female variety.”

“A woman could have killed him,” Hardy said.

“That was meant to be a joke, son,” Digger said.

“So you cant help us?”

“Not at the moment, Lieutenant.” That nerve twitched high up on Diggers cheek. “I’d like to, though. Murray had a right to go quietly when his time came. He never did anyone any harm.”

Hardy shook his head. All dead ends so far. He turned to Chambrun.

“I’m going to run down to the Waldorf and have a word with the Ambassador,” he said. “He’s my only chance left to find out what Cardew had on his mind. Jerry’ll still be checking out here on the chance a staff member saw someone or something that might be useful.”

“I’ve been over it once lightly without any luck,” Jerry Dodd said. “I’ll keep at it.”

Hardy and Dodd went out together.

I was instantly conscious that Digger Sullivan had something he wanted to say to Chambrun without my being present. I started to follow the two detectives out.

“Wait, Mark,” Chambrun said. He walked over to a sideboard where a little pot of Turkish coffee was always kept warm on an electric plate. His back was to Digger and me when he spoke again. “I take it you’re ready to dispel some of the fog, Mr. Sullivan.”

“I might be,” Digger said quietly.

Chambrun turned back to us, balancing a small coffee cup in the palm of his left hand. “I’ve gone along with you in the dark so far, Mr. Sullivan,” he said, his hooded eyes on Digger’s handsome face. “I can’t any longer for a number of reasons. I don’t choose to play games with Hardy. I depend on the police time and time again. I don’t choose to sit quietly by and do nothing for Murray Cardew, who was my friend. And I don’t choose to be confronted by further violence with my eyes blindfolded. Clear?”

“Quite clear,” Digger said.

Chambrun walked over and put the coffee cup down on his desk. “Now, if I’m going to keep secrets of yours, Mr. Sullivan, I don’t choose to keep them alone. I’m responsible to Mr. Battle, who owns this hotel, and to thousands of other people—employees and guests of the hotel. If I play some sort of game with you and anything happens to me, I want the reasons for my actions to be on record. So I’m going to make it a condition that any confidences made to me be shared by Mr. Haskell here. If you don’t want to go along with that, Mr. Sullivan, I call Lieutenant Hardy back here; I tell him that you were caught searching Girard’s room and that I let you get away with it because I’m a romantic, and because I’m also a slob whose actions are largely guided by instinct.”

Well, that answered the question that had been bugging Jerry Dodd and me—why no action had been taken when Sullivan had been caught red-handed in the Girards’ suite: Chambrun had acted out of the very special instinct he had for his own special world. Or had he? Was that simply the explanation he chose to give Sullivan?

Digger looked at me. His smile was pleasant but very tired. “If I hesitate, Haskell, it’s not because I have anything against you. Could I try some of that coffee of yours, Chambrun?”