Death After Breakfast

by Hugh Pentecost

  “No,” Harkness said. “Her game was personal excitement She collected men like a hunter collects and stuffs the heads of the beasts he kills. She was eager to have everyone know who her conquests had been. Women hated her because their men weren’t safe if Laura got her hooks into them.”

  “You were one of them?” Chambrun asked.

  Harkness gave us a short, sharp laugh. “Not even close,” he said. “My wife happens to be the perfect partner for me. But there was someone whom I will simply refer to as my closest friend. School friend, college friend, and later in my department in the government. He was much younger than Laura, but that made him all the more desirable. He had no wife, no woman to whom he owed any loyalties. For him, Laura was a fascinating game to be played to the hilt. Somewhere along the way he fell in love with her, knowing all the while what she was. In that span of weakness—well, he talked too much.”

  “Secrets about his work?”

  “I think—I hope—not secrets about anything specific, but certainly what his work is. That was all she needed.”

  “For what?”

  “About a year went by and Laura had long since turned away from my friend to hunt in other areas. And then she sent for him. She had her eye on someone very high up in the government. This high-up is a very close friend of my friend. My friend must help her with this intrigue of hers or she would make public what she knew about him. My friend is caught in a bind. He must betray his friend or have his own career wrecked.”

  “This threat to your friend happened when?” Chambrun asked.

  “Ten days ago,” Harkness said. “Just before I was due to take off for New York.”

  “And you were supposed to do what?”

  “Try to persuade Laura Kauffman to turn off the heat,” Harkness said.

  “You were in trouble, too, weren’t you?” Chambrun asked. “If your friend talked about himself, and then sent you as an emissary, weren’t you in the same position as your friend? She had something on you, too?”

  “Yes,” Harkness said.

  “So you invited her to dinner. Did she agree to ‘turn off the heat’?”

  Harkness’s face was a hard, bitter mask. “She laughed at me,” he said. “She suggested that I might have better luck pleading my case if I would join her in her suite later in the evening.”

  “And did you?” Chambrun asked, quietly.

  “No, for God sake!” Harkness said.

  “Not even to save a drowning friend and yourself?”

  “No!”

  Chambrun took one of his Egyptian cigarettes from the silver case he always carries and lit it. His eyes were narrowed against the smoke.

  “You do need help, Mr. Harkness?” he asked.

  Harkness produced a handkerchief and blotted at the little beads of sweat that had appeared on his forehead.

  “I don’t quite know why you have told me all this,” Chambrun said. “Laura Kauffman is dead. Your friend is safe. You are safe.”

  “Because I cannot account for myself at the time she was murdered,” Harkness said. “The homicide people will keep probing and probing until—” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture.

  “We happen to know—” Chambrun hesitated. “We believe Laura Kauffman was alive at eleven o’clock, dead at twenty minutes to one.” His hesitation and rewording must have meant he was wondering about Mayberry’s story. Could she have been dead when Mayberry came out into the hall and found Chambrun there? According to the medical examiner it was possible. “But let’s take it back a little, Mr. Harkness. Where were you, say, between ten o’clock and twenty minutes to one that night?”

  “Laura came here to dine at eight o’clock,” Harkness said. “She left about nine-thirty, laughing, and saying she hoped I might decide to join her later. The ‘heat was off’ until I made up my mind about that.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “The innocent man’s inevitable alibi that won’t check,” Harkness said. “This place smelled of her scent. I had to get away from it. I went out into the park and sat there for God knows how long—hours I think—trying to decide what to do.”

  “Whether or not to go to her suite and keep the ball in play?” Chambrun asked.

  “I admit I thought of it,” Harkness said. “It was a repulsive idea to me. But if an hour in bed with this woman would save my friend and me, couldn’t I live with that? But I knew something. We were trapped forever, whatever I did. When she wanted something from either of us later on, we were hooked. I decided if the ship was to sink, it might as well be now as later. At least I could go back to my wife with a straight story.”

  “Did you think about killing her?” Chambrun asked, as casually as if he were asking about the weather.

  Harkness looked straight at him. “Yes, I did,” he said. “It’s not as absurd as it sounds, Mr. Chambrun. Sex with her would simply have been a delaying action, get me nowhere in the long run. But if she were dead, my friend and I would be safe; the jobs we were involved in would be secure.”

  “You decided against it? Why?”

  “I didn’t think I could get away with it,” he said.

  “Why not? You had no problem getting to her in private. She’d invited you. All you had to do was get out after you’d killed her.”

  Harkness put down his cold pipe. “I have killed men in my time, Mr. Chambrun,” he said. “In the army, once in my job. But somehow I couldn’t imagine killing a woman. Some sort of antiquated chivalry, I suppose. I couldn’t bring myself to think about it for more than a moment.”

  “A question or two,” Chambrun said. “Did you go to the Cancer Fund Ball the next night?”

  “Good God, no!” Harkness said.

  “What you said about women hating Laura Kauffman,” Chambrun said. “There must have been quite a few gals there, perhaps members of her own committee, who are happier today than they were two days ago.”

  “I don’t think Laura gave a damn,” Harkness said.

  “Perhaps she should have. You’ve opened up a line of thought for me, Harkness. The murder was so violent, so vicious that perhaps, as you suggested, some sort of antiquated chivalry has kept us from thinking of a woman as the killer. But a jealous woman—?” He raised his shoulders in a Gallic shrug. “Any vestiges of any beauty or sexual allure Laura Kauffman ever had were eliminated, slashed and jabbed beyond recognition.”

  “She was a very ripe, fine-looking woman just a little time before that,” Harkness said.

  Chambrun rubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. “So, Mr. Harkness, Lieutenant Hardy will come here to question you. He is a methodical man. Sooner or later he will come across the fact that you entertained Mrs. Kauffman here the night of the killing. Your story will be that you invited her, an old friend from London, to have dinner. She came about eight and left about nine thirty. At a quarter to ten you went for a walk in the park. You came back into the hotel about two.”

  “Unhappily, there’s no way to prove that,” Harkness said.

  “I think there will be,” Chambrun said. “Someone will have seen you leave the hotel and noted the time. Someone will have seen you come back, and noted the time.”

  “That would be a miracle.”

  “No miracle,” Chambrun said. “I will arrange it.”

  “Then you believe me?”

  Chambrun stood up. He smiled at the Englishman. “I can always change my mind later,” he said.

  THREE

  IT WAS NOT LIKE Chambrun to cross a friend, and Lieutenant Hardy was his friend. I felt uncomfortable at being in on a scheme to hide something from the homicide man. Chambrun evidently believed Harkness. I wasn’t sure I did. But it was unlike him to throw up roadblocks to obstruct a friend.

  I should have known better.

  Hardy was in Chambrun’s office when we returned there. He explained he was waiting for one of his men to bring James Kauffman down from the infirmary. Dr. Partridge had said he thought Kauffman could stand up under questioning th
is afternoon. It was afternoon, going on toward three o’clock.

  Chambrun sat down and gestured toward the Turkish coffee maker. I went over to it and poured his usual demitasse. He was looking very pleased with himself, I thought.

  “I’ve just finished planning to manufacture some false evidence for you, Walter,” he said.

  Hardy just grinned at him.

  “I’ve been talking with Jonathan Harkness who is occupying Penthouse Three on the roof, guest of the management,” Chambrun said.

  “He’s next on my list,” Hardy said. “Did you know he entertained Laura Kauffman for dinner in his rooms the night of the murder?”

  “I know that and a lot more,” Chambrun said. He then proceeded to tell Hardy the entire story. I should have known he would. When he came to the end he said: “I find I believe his story, at least for now. If you try to dig it out of him, it will go in your report to headquarters. The nature of his job should be protected, I think, until we have reason to assume he’s guilty. I suggest you accept his surface story. He dined the lady, she left, he spent a couple of hours on a warm summer evening in the park.”

  “I don’t know,” Hardy said, frowning.

  “I will arrange for Mike Maggio, our night bell captain, to have seen him go out and come in at the times he says he did. That will cover you in your report on Harkness.”

  “Faking an alibi?”

  “Everyone in this hotel knows what I’m doing every hour of the day and night,” Chambrun said. “Nobody else has that kind of coverage. Harkness needs protection at the moment. I’d like to give it to him. He may be helpful to us before we’re through.”

  “You know what would happen to you if the top brass finds out you’ve faked an alibi for him?” Hardy asked;

  “A couple of years in the slammer,” Chambrun said cheerfully.

  “I’ll go along,” Hardy said after a moment.

  Chambrun looked at me, his eyes dancing. “Feel better, Mark?”

  He’d been aware of exactly what I’d been thinking. I should have known that, too.

  Hardy brought his fist down on the arm of the chair he was lounging in. “I would never have made a good juggler,” he said. “Keeping two balls in the air at the same time doesn’t suit my style. Or my talents. Laura Kauffman is my job, but I find my mind wandering over to you, Pierre. Have you got even a smell of the reasons for what happened to you?”

  “Only the obvious,” Chambrun said. “Someone wanted me away from the hotel so that something could happen without my seeing or knowing about it. So far the only out-of-the-way thing that’s happened is your murder, and I was in the hotel when it happened! Whatever I wasn’t supposed to see is no longer here for me to see, so I was set free.”

  “In this hotel the only thing that comes and goes, that changes, is people,” I said.

  Chambrun gave me a long, steady look. “I think that’s bingo, Mark,” he said. He pressed a button on his desk and Ruysdale came in from her office. “Tell Atterbury I want a list of everyone who has checked in since I was carted off, and everyone on that list who checked out before I got back.”

  Ruysdale went off without a word.

  “How many would that be?” Hardy asked.

  “Not so very many,” Chambrun said. “We’re full up, booked well in advance. People don’t often come here for overnight, Walter. Too expensive. They book in advance, they stay for several days, a week, more. A one-night stand, which this must have been, shouldn’t be hard to spot.”

  Hardy shook his head. “But a thousand people come and go every day who aren’t registered,” he said. “People who use the bars, the restaurants, the shops, attend the special functions. How many people were at that Cancer Fund Ball? Seven hundred? Eight hundred? If someone wanted to circulate in the hotel without your knowing it, he wouldn’t, for God sake, register. It was important enough to him to have you out of the way to risk having to kill you, to risk a kidnapping charge, to have himself—or his hired professional—caught burglarizing your penthouse. If your seeing him was that dangerous to him, he surely wouldn’t sign his name for you to see later.”

  “A ‘John Smith,’ ” I said. It’s a slang phrase we use in the business for someone who registers under a false name. It’s not always in any way sinister. A movie star who wants privacy and no involvement with the press, a foreign diplomat who wants anonymity. There is another variety, of course, which every hotel knows about—the man who registers with a chick he shouldn’t be with signs “Mr. and Mrs. John Smith” or some other phony. A suspicious wife has no evidence that way. We screen that kind pretty well, but now and then one of them gets by us.

  “Maybe,” Chambrun said. He lit one of his flat cigarettes. “If we’re close, this person had to be here for some unhealthy reason. If I saw him—or her—I must know something that I could use against him. That’s why I had to be removed. That suggests a ‘John Smith’ or no registration at all. Where would I have certainly been the day or night after I was kidnapped? At the Cancer Fund Ball.” His smile was bitter. “Making sure my instructions were carried out and that everything went smoothly. It seems to me to be a very good bet that my enemy was attending the ball.”

  “And it’s very likely that Laura Kauffman’s murderer was there too,” Hardy said. “He—or she, as you put it—was someone close to Laura, someone she let into her rooms. Someone whose absence at the ball might be noticed. Could be, you know.”

  “A very long shot,” Chambrun said “Remember, the person who killed Laura was here in the hotel while I was still in circulation. I could have seen him. I was actually on the twenty-first floor close to the time of the murder. It was hours later that I was removed. I have to believe the murderer didn’t think my seeing him somewhere in the hotel was a danger. Someone else, someone who was to come on the scene later, did.”

  “We’ve got the haystack,” Hardy said, “but we don’t know what we’re looking for in it.”

  I went down the hall to my apartment. I hadn’t had a shave, or a shower, or a change of clothes since the night before. I expected, or rather hoped, to find Shirley there. She wasn’t. This time she hadn’t left me a note. Well, she had a column to do. I called her at her apartment and got no answer. She was probably somewhere you go to look for gossip.

  I was a little like Hardy when it came to trying to keep two balls in the air at the same time. I kept trying, in my mind, to link the kidnapping to the murder. It would be a hell of a lot simpler if we were only looking for one person. But things like this aren’t usually arranged to be simple.

  I couldn’t let go of one suggestion that had been made. The man who’d kidnapped Chambrun was a professional, a man who knew locks and combinations, a man prepared to kill if he had to. Was this masked and gloved man the person Chambrun might recognize? Somehow I didn’t think so. That left us with the professional’s employer, the real villain of the piece. When this setup was first suggested I had jumped eagerly at Mayberry as the most likely. He was a loud-mouthed phony who would go to extremes to get what he wanted. But there was no reason for him to have Chambrun removed except the silly business of the camera on the dance floor. Was he stupid enough to risk murder and a kidnapping charge just for that? And certainly Chambrun didn’t have to be kept out of sight so he wouldn’t see Mayberry. He knew Mayberry all too well, and his presence in the hotel was an unfortunate daily happening. After Mayberry I came up against a blank wall.

  Looking and feeling more human, I went down the hall to my office. My secretary wasn’t there and I realized it was quitting time for her.

  Well, I was still being the big detective. The vice chairman of the ball committee was a Mrs. Birdwell. I had her home phone number and I called her. She was eager to know if anything had developed in the Kauffman case. I told her there was nothing.

  “But that’s why I called you, Mrs. Birdwell,” I said. “Is there a list of the guests who actually attended the ball?”

  She said there was. “You had to have a ti
cket to get in,” she said. “The tickets were checked off at the door against the list of contributors. There are eight hundred and forty names on it. It’s at the Cancer Fund headquarters.”

  “What about gate crashers?” I asked her. “I mean, after people checked in they came and went, maybe to one of the bars outside the ballroom, to the ladies’ or mens’ rooms.”

  “You got a passout check if you left the ballroom,” she said. “You couldn’t get back in without it.”

  “What about buying tickets at the door?”

  “There may have been a few, but they would be on the list.”

  “So there was no one there who wouldn’t be on the list?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, there were others,” Mrs. Birdwell said. “The press, for example. The radio and television people. They had their own passes, I suppose. Perhaps someone has a record of them, I don’t know. They were, supposedly, kept in the press gallery. Then there were the movie people. They aren’t on the guest list, of course. Except Mr. Herman and Mr. Duval, both of whom made handsome contributions to the fund.”

  So that was that. There was an airtight list except it leaked at every pore. I wasn’t doing so well as a detective. Well, Chambrun and Hardy weren’t exactly balls of fire at this moment I told myself. They’d dug up some facts about a very gaudy lady who’d gotten herself slaughtered. From what Harkness had told us we knew she was up to blackmail for her own exotic reasons. She’d tried it once too often, one had to believe.

  At that moment I was so close to a central truth that it makes me sick to think of it now. If I hadn’t been trying to be a smart aleck and had thought it through I might have prevented a tragedy that has left a mark on me for the rest of time.

  I had a job, and, for all the balls in the air, I had to do it. That was the name of the game, working for Chambrun. Along about five o’clock, which it now was, people begin to swarm into the Beaumont’s bars for that drink or two between work and home. The Trapeze Bar is probably the most popular gathering place for this hour. It is at the mezzanine level, just above the lobby. Some artist of the Calder school had decorated it with mobiles of circus performers. The exquisitely made little wire figures of trapeze acrobats moved gently in the air stirred up by the air-conditioning system. It’s a smart room for smart people. The women are usually eye-catching, what society reporters have come to call “the beautiful people.” The men are well tailored, from conservative Brooks Brothers to the very mod designers. They all smell of money. They all have money or they wouldn’t be in the Beaumont.