This Way for a Shroud
James Hadley Chase
MISS ARNOT IS IN THE SWIMMING POOL, MINUS HER HEAD…
The brutal murder of June Arnot, famous screen actress, and the massacre of all her servants is just the curtain raiser to this chill-a-page novel.
James Hadley Chase
THIS WAY FOR A SHROUD
CHAPTER ONE
I
THE telephone bell rang sharply as Janey Conrad came briskly down the stairs. She was wearing her new evening dress: a strapless, sky-blue creation, the bodice of which was covered with silver sequins. She was looking her best, and she was aware of it.
At the sound of the telephone bell she stopped in mid-stride. Her animated expression turned to exasperated anger: a transformation as swift and as final as the turning off of an electric lamp.
“Paul! Don’t answer it,” she said in the cold quiet voice that always came with her anger.
Her husband, a tall, loose-limbed, powerfully built man in his late thirties came out of the lounge. He was wearing a tuxedo and carried a soft black hat in his hand. When Janey had first met him he had reminded her very sharply of James Stewart, and the resemblance had been the main reason why she had married him.
“But I’ve got to answer it,” he said in his soft, drawling voice. “I may be wanted.”
“Paul!” Her voice rose a little as he walked over to the telephone and picked up the receiver.
He grinned at her, motioning with his hand for her to be quiet.
“Hello?” he said into the mouthpiece.
“Paul? This is Bardin.” The Lieutenant’s voice boomed against Paul’s ear and spilt into the quiet tense hall.
As soon as Janey heard the voice, she clenched her fists and her mouth set in a hard, ugly line.
“You’ll want to be in on this,” Bardin went on. There’s been a massacre up at Dead End: June Arnot’s place. We’re knee deep in corpses, and one of them is June’s. Brother! Is this going to be a sensation! How soon can you get out here?”
Conrad pulled a face and looked at Janey out of the corners of his eyes. He watched her walk slowly and stiffly into the sitting-room.
“I guess I’ll be right over,” he said.
“Swell. I’ll hold everything until you get here. Snap it up. I want you here before the press get on to this.”
“I’ll be right over,” Conrad said, and hung up.
“Goddamn it!” Janey said softly. She stood with her back to him, facing the mantelpiece.
“I’m sorry, Janey, but I’ve got to go…”
“Goddamn it, and you too,” Janey said without raising her voice. “This always happens. Whenever we plan to go out, this happens. You and your stinking police force!”
“That’s no way to talk,” Conrad said. “It’s a damn shame, but there’s nothing we can do about it. We’ll go tomorrow night, and I’ll make certain we do go.”
Janey leaned forward and with the back of her hand she swept the ornaments, photograph frames and the clock off the mantelpiece, to crash into the hearth.
“Janey!” Conrad came quickly into the room. “Now stop that!”
“Oh, go to hell!” Janey said in the same cold, quiet voice. She stared at Conrad’s reflection in the mirror, her eyes hostile and glittering. “Go and play cops and robbers. Never mind about me, but don’t expect to find me here when you get back. From now on, I’m going to have fun without you.”
“June Arnot’s been murdered, Janey. I’ve got to go. Now look, I’ll take you to the Ambassador’s tomorrow night to make up for this. How would you like that?”
“You won’t take me so long as there’s a telephone in this house.” Janey said bitterly. “I want some money, Paul!”
He looked at her. “But, Janey…”
“I want some money now: at this minute! If I don’t get it I’ll have to hock something, and it won’t be anything belonging to me!”
Conrad shrugged. He took a ten-dollar bill from his billfold and handed it to her.
“All right, Janey. If that’s the way you feel about it. Why don’t you give Beth a call? You don’t want to go alone.”
Janey folded the bill, looked up at him and then turned away. It was a shock to him to see how impersonal and indifferent her eyes were. She might have been looking at a stranger.
“You don’t have to worry about me. Go and worry about your silly little murder. I’ll get along fine on my own.”
He started to say something, then stopped. When she was in this mood there was no reasoning with her.
“Can I drop you anywhere?” he asked quietly.
“Oh, drop dead!” Janey said violently, and walked over to the window.
Conrad’s mouth tightened. He went across the hall, opened the front door and walked quickly down to his car, parked at the kerb.
As he slid under the driving-wheel he was aware of a tight feeling across his chest that restricted his breathing. He didn’t want to admit it, but he knew Janey’s and his sands were running out. How long had they been married now? He frowned as he trod down on the starter. Just under three years. The first year had been pretty good, but that was before he had become Chief Investigator to the District Attorney’s office. That was when he kept regular hours and could take Janey out every night.
She had been pleased enough when he had got promotion: overnight his salary had doubled, and they had moved out of the three-room apartment on Wentworth Street and had taken a bungalow on the swank Hayland’s Estate. This was a big move up in the social scale. Only people earning five-figure incomes and more were accepted on Hayland’s Estate. But Janey wasn’t so pleased when she began to realize that he was on call any time of the night and day. “For heaven’s sake,” she had said, “anyone would think you were a common policeman instead of a Chief Investigator.”
“But I am a policeman,” he had explained patiently. “I am the D.A.’s special policeman, and if a big case breaks I have to represent him.”
There had been quarrels which at first didn’t seem to Paul to amount to much: just natural disappointment when a sudden emergency call spoilt an evening out. It was understandable, he had told himself, but he wished she would be more reasonable. He had to admit that emergency calls always seemed to turn up just when they were going out, but that was something they both had to put up with. But Janey wouldn’t put up with it. The quarrels developed into rows, and rows into scenes, and now he was getting tired of it.
But this was the first time Janey had asked for money to go out on her own. This was a new development, and it worried Conrad more than all the rows, the breakages and scenes of the past.
Janey was far too attractive to go out by herself. Conrad was aware of the reckless streak in her. From some of the things she had let slip in off-guarded moments, he had gathered she had led a pretty hectic life before they married. He had decided that what load happened in her past was none of his business, but now, remembering some of the stories she had told him of wild parties, and the names of past boy friends she had sometimes taunted him with when she was in a rage, he wondered uneasily if she were going on the war-path again. She was only twenty-four, and sex seemed to mean much more to her than to him, and this surprised him, for he had the normal appetites of the male. Then there were her looks. With her forget-me-not blue eyes, her silky blonde hair, her perfect complexion and her cute retrousse nose she was a temptation to any man.
“Oh, goddamn it!” he muttered under his breath, unconsciously repeating her cry of exasperation.
He raced the engine, engaged gear and swung the car away from the kerb.
II
For the past three years June Arnot had been rated the most popular actress in motion picture
s, and she was said to be the richest woman in Hollywood.
She had built for herself a luxurious home on the promontory of the east arm of Tammany Bay, a few miles outside Pacific City and some ten miles from Hollywood.
The house itself was a show piece of luxury and blatant ostentation, and June Arnot, who was not without a sense of humour, had named it Dead End.
As Conrad pulled up outside the small creeper-covered guardhouse where all visitors had to book in before going on up the mile-long drive to the house, the bulky figure of Lieutenant Sam Bardin of the Homicide Bureau loomed out of the darkness.
“Well, well,” he said when he caught sight of Conrad. “You didn’t have to dress up like that for my benefit. Was that what kept you so long?”
Conrad grinned.
“I was about to take the wife out to a party when you called. This has put me in the dog-kennel for weeks. McCann shown up yet?”
“The Captain’s in San Francisco, worse luck,” Bardin said. “He won’t be back until tomorrow. This is a hell of a thing, Paul. I’m glad you’re here. We’ll want as much help as we can get before we’re finished.”
“Let’s make a start, then. Suppose you tell me what you know and then we’ll take a look around.”
Bardin wiped his big red face with his handkerchief and pushed his hat to the back of his head. He was a tall, heavily built man, ten years older than Conrad, which made him around forty-five.
“At eight-thirty we got a call from Harrison Fedor, Miss Arnot’s publicity manager. He had a business date with her for tonight. When he arrived here he found the gates open, which is unusual as they are always kept locked. He walked into the guard-house and found the guard shot through the head. He telephoned the house from the guard-house, but could get no reply. I guess he lost his nerve. Anyway, he said he was too scared to go up to the house and see what was wrong, so he called us.”
“Where’s he now?”
“Sitting in his car fortifying himself with whisky,” Bardin said with a grin. “I haven’t had time to talk to him properly yet, so I told him to stick around. I’ve been up to the house. The five servants have been wiped out: all shot. I knew Miss Arnot was somewhere on the estate as she had this business date, but she wasn’t in the house.” He took out a pack of cigarettes, offered one to Conrad and lit his own. “I found her in the swimming-pool.” He made a little grimace. “Someone ripped her wide open and hacked her head off.”
Conrad grunted.
“Sounds like a maniac. What’s happening now?”
“The boys are up at the house and at the swimming-pool doing their stuff. If there’s anything to turn up, they’ll turn it up. Want to have a walk around and see for yourself?”
“I guess so. Can Doc fix the time?”
“He’s working on it now. I told him not to move the bodies until you arrived. He should have something for us before long. Let’s have a look at the guardhouse.”
Conrad followed him through the doorway into a small room equipped with a flat-topped desk, a chair, a padded settee and a battery of telephones. On the desk was a big leather-bound Visitors’ book open at that day’s date.
The guard, in an olive-green uniform and glittering jack boots, lay half under the table, his head resting in a crimson halo of blood. He had been shot at close quarters, and one quick glance at him was enough for Conrad.
He moved over to the desk and bent to look at the Visitors’ book.
“The killer isn’t likely to have signed himself in,” Bardin said dryly. “Just the same, the guard must have known him or he wouldn’t have unlocked the gates.”
Conrad’s eyes took in the almost empty page.
15.00 hrs. Mr. Jack Belling, 3 Lennox Street. By appointment. 17.00 hrs. Miss Rita Strange, 14 Crown Street. By appointment. 19.00 hrs. Miss Frances Coleman, 145 Glendale Avenue.
“This mean anything?” he asked. This girl Coleman was here about the time of the killings.”
Bardin shrugged his shoulders. “I dunno. We’ll check on her when we’ve got the time. If she had something to do with it you can bet she would have ripped out the page.”
“That’s right: unless she forgot.”
Bardin made an impatient gesture.
“Well, come on; there are lots of other pretty sights for you to look at.” He moved out into the growing darkness again. “May as well run up in your car. Take it slowly at the second bend. The gardener was shot there.”
Conrad drove up the drive, flanked on either side by giant palms and flowering shrubs. When he had driven three hundred yards or so, Bardin said, “Just round this bend.”
They came upon a parked car by the edge of the drive. Doc Holmes, two interns in white coats and a couple of bored-looking patrolmen were standing in a group with the car’s headlights lighting up their backs.
Conrad and Bardin walked over and joined them. They were grouped around an old, shrivelled-up Chinese, who lay on his back, his yellow, claw-like fingers hooked in his death agony. The front of his white smock was dyed red.
“Hello, Conrad,” Doc Holmes said. He was a little man with a round pink face and a fringe of white hair to frame his bald head. “Come to see our massacre?”
“Just slumming,” Conrad said. “How long has he been dead, Doc?”
“About an hour and a half: not more.”
“Just after seven?”
“About then.”
“Same gun as killed the guard?”
“It’s probable. They were all butchered by a .45.” He looked at Bardin. “This looks like a professional job, Lieutenant. Whoever shot these people knew his business. He killed them instantly with one shot.”
Bardin grunted.
“Doesn’t mean much. A .45 will kill anyone whether it’s in the hands of a professional or an amateur.”
“Let’s go up to the house,” Conrad said.
A three-minute drive brought them to the house. Lights were on in every room. Two patrolmen guarded the front entrance.
Conrad and Bardin walked up the steps and into the small reception room and down into the inner well of the house, a mosaic-paved patio. The rooms of the house surrounded the three sides of the patio which provided a cool and sheltered courtyard in which to sit.
Sergeant O’Brien, a tall, thin man with hard eyes and a flock of freckles, came out of the lounge. He nodded to Conrad.
“Found anything?” Bardin asked.
“Some slugs, nothing else. No finger-prints that aren’t accounted for. It’s my guess the killer just walked in, shot down everyone in sight and then walked out again without touching a thing.”
Paul wandered to the foot of the broad staircase and stood looking up at it. At the head of the stairs lay the body of a young Chinese girl. She was wearing a yellow house-coat and dark blue silk embroidered trousers. A red stain made an ugly patch in the middle of her shoulder blades.
“Looks like she was running for cover when she was shot,” Bardin said. “Want to go up and look at her?”
Conrad shook his head.
“Exhibit number four is in the lounge,” Bardin said, and led the way into a lavishly furnished room with leather settees and armchairs that afforded sitting room for thirty or forty people.
In the centre of the room was a large fountain on which played coloured lights, and in its illuminated bowl tropical fish added their charm to the effect.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Bardin said dryly. “You should see my sitting-room, Paul. I must tell my wife about the fish. They might give her ideas: she could do with a few.”
Conrad moved farther into the room. By the casement windows leading to the garden, June Arnot’s butler sat huddled up on the floor, his back resting against the tapestry wall. He had been shot through the head.
“Spoilt the tapestry,” Bardin said. “Pity. I bet that stuff costs a whale of a lot of dough.” He dropped his cigarette into an ash-bowl, went on, “Want to see the kitchens? There are two more of them in there, a chink cook and a Filipino.
They were both running for the exit, but neither of them ran fast enough.”
“I guess I’ve seen enough,” Conrad said. “If there’s anything to find, your boys will find it.”
“I’ll put that little sentiment in my birthday book and show it to you the next time I pass up a clue,” Bardin said. “Okay, we’ll go down to the pool.”
He went over to the casement windows, opened them and stepped out on to the broad terrace. The full moon was rising and shedding its hard, cold light over the sea. The garden was heavy with the scents of flowers. In the far distance an illuminated fountain made a fairy-land scene below them.
“She went for lights and pretty colours, didn’t she?” Bardin said. “But it didn’t get her anywhere. It’s a pretty crude way to finish your life: having your head hacked off and your belly ripped open. I guess even all this display of wealth wouldn’t compensate me for an end like that.”
“The trouble with you, Sam,” Conrad said quietly, “is you’re class conscious. There are plenty of guys who would envy you your way of life.”
“Show them to me,” Bardin returned with a sour smile. “I’ll trade with them any day of the week. It’s easy for you to shoot off your mouth. You’ve got a glamorous wife, and she can take your mind off things. I’d put up with a shabby home and lousy meals if I’d got me a little glamour. You want to look over my garden fence when the washing is hanging out if you’re interested in female museum pieces. I bet your wife goes in for those nylon nifties that keep knocking my eye out every time I pass a shop window. That’s as close as I’ll ever get to them.”
Conrad felt a sudden wave of irritation run through him. He knew Bardin’s wife. She wasn’t anything to look at; she wasn’t smart, but at least she did try to run her home which was more than Janey ever did.
“You don’t know when you’re well off,” he said curtly, and walked down the gently sloping steps towards the swimming-pool.
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