Deadly Joke

by Hugh Pentecost

  He disappeared into the corridor of the apartment.

  “Shall I keep an eye on him?” Nelson asked.

  “I don’t think it’s running time yet,” Chambrun said. He moved so that he was standing directly in front of Melody. She didn’t look up at him. “What’s happened to you?” he asked. “Have you stopped trusting me, Melody? What is Hyland holding on you?”

  Slowly, she raised her head and two large tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’m sorry, Pierre. Oh, God, I’m so very sorry.” She reached out to him. “You know what he said—about amorous techniques—you know that isn’t—”

  “Of course I know,” Chambrun said. “And you know that I’ll go all the way with you. Tell me what’s happened to you.”

  “I—I’m sorry, Pierre.”

  Hyland came back from his room, knotting a very gay red necktie. “As long as it’s going to be a party, Melody, perhaps you’d better come along with us. The great Chambrun might feel safer about you, knowing where you are.”

  She reached for a small handbag in the corner of the couch and stood up mechanically. It was as if Hyland had some kind of hypnotic control over her.

  Chambrun and I rode uptown in a taxi with Melody and Hyland. Nelson went back to his precinct house. Since Hyland was coming “voluntarily,” Nelson’s presence wasn’t required. It was a strange, brief journey. Hyland did all the talking: about the beauty of the city in the early-morning sunshine; about his peculiar fondness for smoked salmon and creamed cheese for breakfast, this brought on by the display in a delicatessen window; about his inability to break the cigarette habit; about God knows what else.

  Melody sat in a corner, staring out the car window as if she was in a strange city.

  At the Beaumont we went directly up to Chambrun’s office. I wasn’t surprised to find Miss Ruysdale at her desk. She had found time to change for the day. She looked as fresh as if she’d had a good night’s sleep, which none of us had.

  “Try to locate Lieutenant Hardy,” Chambrun instructed her. “And ask Mr. Maxwell if he will join us.”

  “Poor Doug has had kind of a rough night,” Hyland said cheerfully.

  “I think we could all use some coffee,” Chambrun said. “Perhaps a bite to eat to go with it.”

  “If you could stir up some smoked salmon and creamed cheese?” Hyland said to Miss Rusydale. “My favorite breakfast.”

  Chambrun led the way into his office. The curtains had been drawn, the ash trays cleaned, the Turkish coffee maker bubbling. Ruysdale had been on the job. Chambrun picked up his phone and asked the switchboard to locate Jerry Dodd. Jerry did most of the talking, which I couldn’t hear. Chambrun’s face told me that there was nothing new of any importance.

  Miss Ruysdale reported. “Lieutenant Hardy is going over last night’s guest list with Mr. Clarke. It’ll take him a little while longer. Mr. Maxwell is on his way down. He wasn’t sleeping.”

  Chambrun leaned back in his desk chair, his eyes hooded, facing Melody, who had appropriated a chair in the far corner of the room. I could see he was deeply puzzled by her. Hyland was examining the Blue Picasso, making little clucking sounds of appreciation. He never stopped acting, I thought. But I could tell that the silence in the room, the waiting, was eating at him. He turned, finally, from the painting.

  “There isn’t very much I can tell you about Charlie’s affairs,” he said. “Whatever is left after his rather substantial debts are paid goes to Melody.”

  Chambrun didn’t speak.

  “I, of course, have instructions about funeral arrangements and all that,” Hyland said. “Just how else I’m supposed to be able to help you, I can’t imagine.”

  Chambrun opened a folder on his desk and looked down at it. It was the folder Hardy had left with him much earlier. Hyland blotted at his scratched cheek. Then he shrugged.

  “So it’s to be the silent treatment,” he said. He turned back to the painting.

  Miss Ruysdale opened the office door and Douglas Maxwell came in. I saw the two guards behind him.

  “Bring in the coffee when it comes, Ruysdale,” Chambrun said. “I’m sorry to bring you down here, Doug. You know Hyland.”

  “Hello, Dicky,” Maxwell said without enthusiasm.

  “Hi, Doug.”

  “And Miss Marsh,” Chambrun said.

  Melody didn’t even look at Maxwell. He took the armchair by Chambrun’s desk. “I know that Miss Marsh was very close to Charlie,” he said. “What’s this all about, Pierre?”

  “I suspect that Mr. Hyland will insist that I spell it out, although I’m certain he’s aware of all the facts,” Chambrun said. “It’s about blackmail, Doug.”

  “Blackmail!” Hyland said. “That’s an interesting word to be tossing around so lightly.”

  For the first time Melody turned her head to look at Chambrun. There was panic in her wide eyes. I couldn’t tell whether he noticed or not. He went on, a rasping edge to his voice.

  “You are Charlie Sewall’s lawyer, Hyland. You drew up his will. You know about his debts. You would also know if he has a safety deposit box somewhere, and presumably, what’s in it.”

  “He didn’t have a safety deposit box,” Hyland said.

  “Then I assume he left in your care special instructions in case he came to a violent end.”

  Hyland laughed. “Poor Charlie, why on earth should he expect to come to a violent end?”

  “Because he was a blackmailer,” Chambrun said. “Because he lived on the proceeds of blackmail.”

  “Somebody’s filled you full of malarky,” Hyland said. “Charlie was a joker, but he never really hurt anyone in his life.”

  “He was a blackmailer,” Chambrun said. “A solid part of his income came from Douglas. Blackmail.”

  Hyland was really good. His eyebrows went up in an expression of amused surprise. “Blackmailing you, Doug? The Great White Father of Barstow College?”

  “I think the evidence that Charles Sewall used against Douglas is in your hands, Mr. Hyland,” Chambrun said.

  Hyland laughed, as though it was all too absurd to be discussed. “I simply can’t believe that Charlie ever—”

  “Believe it, Dicky,” Maxwell said, his voice hard. “For twenty-three endless years I’ve been buying silence from Charlie. I think what Pierre is trying to tell you is that I don’t expect to start paying you, now that you have the evidence.”

  “My dear Doug, I don’t have any evidence,” Hyland said. There was mischief in his eyes. “Boy, I’d like to know what it was Charlie had on you, Doug! The irreproachable Douglas Maxwell! Was it a dame, Doug? Was that it? It must have tickled Charlie pink to have something on you. Oh, I knew Charlie wasn’t close to you, like in the old days. I knew that when he told me about the joke tonight.”

  Chambrun’s heavy lids lifted. “He told you about the joke?”

  “Sure. He told lots of people. I’d have given my eyeteeth to have seen it.”

  “He should have cherished Douglas’s good will, not played jokes on him. He could have been killing the goose that laid his golden eggs,” Chambrun said.

  “Golden eggs?”

  “By my figuring,” Chambrun said, “fifteen thousand a year for twenty-three years comes to three hundred and forty-five thousand dollars. That must have made your mouth water, Hyland. Douglas can easily expect to live another fifteen or twenty years. If you could get on the gravy train now, your worries would be over.”

  “I think I’m beginning to resent your implications, Chambrun,” Hyland said, his smile evaporating. He looked at Maxwell. “I’d be careful about going along with Chambrun’s fantasy, Doug. A suit for slander wouldn’t do your political career much good. You make any kind of public charge against me and I promise I’ll sue you for every cent you have in the world.”

  “The safest thing for you to do, Hyland, is to turn over the evidence that you have against Doug, or burn it up in front of his eyes,” Chambrun said.

  “I think I will go home, gentlemen,” H
yland said, “unless you want to bring a charge against me. I almost wish you would. What I could do to you would be like shooting fish in a barrel.”

  At that moment the office door opened and Miss Ruysdale came in, followed by a waiter with a room service wagon. I saw coffee, rolls, jam, some sliced ham, and a plate hidden by a silver cover. Behind the waiter was a heavy-eyed Lieutenant Hardy.

  The waiter fidgeted with his wagon and then, getting no instructions from Chambrun, left.

  Hardy moved around beside Chambrun. He looked beaten. Chambrun looked up at him and pointed to the open folder on his desk. Hardy frowned down at it.

  “Whatever else I may think of you, Hyland,” Chambrun said, “I admire your taste in art. Would you mind taking a close look at that Picasso and telling me what you think the date on it is?”

  “What’s the gag?” Hyland asked.

  “No gag,” Chambrun said. “Lieutenant Hardy and I have had an endless debate over whether the last number on the date under the signature is a seven or a nine.”

  Hardy looked bewildered. Almost certainly he’d never had such a discussion with Chambrun. He didn’t get it. Neither did I. Neither did Hyland, but he shrugged and walked over to the Picasso. His back was to me. The angle from where Chambrun and Hardy were was slightly different.

  The photograph of Charlie Sewall’s pantless entrance to the Beaumont lobby was in Chambrun’s hand, and he pointed to it. Hardy looked at it, and then at Hyland. The Lieutenant looked as though he was suddenly coming alive.

  Hyland turned back to us, smiling. “It’s obviously a seven,” he said. “Who wins?”

  “Both the Lieutenant and I win,” Chambrun said. “We’ve just identified the man in this picture. Care to look, Hyland?”

  Hyland walked around behind the desk. As he looked at the picture, his face seemed to crumple.

  “The face in profile was impossible to identify,” Chambrun said, “until you stood over there earlier by the picture. The angle from here was almost exactly the same angle the camera had on you when this picture was taken. You’d given your eyeteeth to have witnessed Charlie’s joke? You were two feet away from him when he was murdered.”

  “You ran out!” Hardy said. “We’ve been looking for you and your friend with the opera hat all night. Who is he?”

  “I don’t think I’m required to tell you that,” Hyland said. He was shaken. He reached up with his finger tips and touched the scratch on his face. He tried a sickly smile. “What am I charged with, Lieutenant? Leaving the scene of an accident?”

  “Don’t play games with me, Counselor,” Hardy said. “I don’t have to explain the law to you. You’re a material witness to a homicide. You chose to conceal the fact. Shall I read you what it says in my rule book about your right to silence?”

  “Not necessary,” Hyland said. He was thinking hard, and breathing hard. “It—it was a bad moment, Lieutenant. My friend was lying there on the floor, dead. I panicked. I took off.”

  “Along with your friend in the opera hat?”

  “I can’t answer for him.”

  “But you were both in on Sewall’s joke from the start?”

  “Yes! Yes, I was in on it. Charlie couldn’t have strolled in alone—without his trousers. The joke would have been over before it started. He had to have a couple of us cover him until he was well inside the lobby. He had to get to the cameras, you understand. So it was a bad joke, and it turned into a tragedy. But there’s no crime involved. I mean, how could we have dreamed that somebody was waiting to kill Douglas Maxwell?”

  “If somebody was,” Chambrun said.

  “What do you mean, if somebody was? For God sake, man—”

  “I mean somebody may have been waiting to kill Charles Sewall,” Chambrun said. “A lot of people were in on the joke. You said so yourself. And you, Mr. Hyland, and your opera-hatted friend could have moved Charles Sewall onto an exact spot that suited the killer—if you happened to be in on it.”

  “You have to, for God sake, be out of your mind,” Hyland said. “Why should I want to have Charlie killed? He was my friend.”

  “Maybe you were greedy to take over his blackmail business,” Chambrun said.

  “Now look!” Hyland said. “Now look!”

  “You look, Counselor,” Hardy said. “I want to know who the man behind that opera hat is. I want to know every detail of your evening—before the shooting and after. I want to know the names of all the people you can think of who knew the joke was planned.”

  Hyland looked dazed. “You really think the killer meant to get Charlie?”

  “I think it’s possible.”

  Very slowly Hyland turned his head so that he was looking at Douglas Maxwell. It was quite clear what he was thinking, wondering.

  “I’ll save you some speculation,” Hardy said. “Mr. Maxwell has perfect alibis for both of tonight’s murders. Now, are you willing to help, Counselor, or do we go about this the hard way? I can hold you as a material witness. You know that.”

  Hyland drew a deep breath. “I don’t want to name names, Lieutenant, without some thought. But I’ll tell you this. The guy with the opera hat is an actor. He’s a friend of Charlie’s. He was chosen simply because he happened to own a full-dress suit. That’s the only reason he was chosen. When the shooting happened, I grabbed him and told him to get out of there. It wouldn’t help his career to be involved. There wasn’t anything he could do to help Charlie or the police.”

  “And you took off for the same reason?”

  “Yes.”

  “You took off, changed out of your own dress clothes, and came back.

  “You know I came back?”

  “You were in the Blue Lagoon room with Haskell,” Hardy said, impatient.

  “Ah, yes.” You could almost see the wheels going round in Hyland’s head.

  “So tell me how the evening was planned?” Hardy said.

  “Could I—could I have a cup of coffee?” Hyland asked.

  “Help yourself.”

  “If you look under that covered dish, Hyland, I suspect you may find some smoked salmon and cheese,” Chambrun said. “You may need some strengthening.”

  We watched Hyland as he poured himself a cup of coffee with hands that shook. He took the cover off the dish and wolfed down a mouthful or two of his request breakfast. He gulped some coffee, wiped his mouth with his handkerchief which had little bloodstains on it from his scratched cheek, and turned back to us.

  “The joke,” he said. “The joke started a couple of weeks back when Charlie saw the item in the paper about a fund-raising dinner for Doug Maxwell. We were some of us having some drinks at Charlie’s place. Melody will remember. You remember, don’t you, Melody?”

  She looked at him, her face blank. She was as far gone from him as she had been from Chambrun.

  “I remember Charlie said, ‘Can you imagine raising a few million bucks in one night for that pompous ass?’ He meant Doug. He was wondering how to make Doug look foolish. Like one of us should dress up as a waiter and go up to Doug during the banquet and throw a cream pie in his face. That would get a laugh, of course, but it wouldn’t do Doug any harm. It might do him some good. The first things we thought of were all like that. They’d get a laugh, but they’d outrage people into supporting Doug even more. ‘If we could only trick Doug into doing something absurd,’ I remember saying. Charlie gave me a funny look. ‘Did you ever think that I am Doug—if I want to be?’ he said. That’s when we thought along the lines of Charlie pretending to be Doug.” Hyland fumbled for a cigarette.

  “It wasn’t until several nights later,” he said, exhaling a lungful of smoke, “that Charlie came up with it. We’d arrive in the lobby a few minutes later. Two of us, in full dress, would walk right in front of him. He’d be there, but without his pants. When we got him right in front of the cameras and the news people, we’d step aside and let them see him. He would look down, be surprised to see that he didn’t have on his pants, and we’d hustle him ou
t. We’d take a powder, and a few moments later Doug would appear and walk into the middle of hysterical laughter. He would have a hell of a time explaining it, and half the world would never believe his explanation. That’s all there was to the joke. It worked to perfection until—until Charlie went down with a bullet in his heart. I saw he was dead. I ran, dragging the actor guy along with me.”

  “How did you know he was dead?” Hardy asked.

  Hyland wiped some beads of sweat from his face. “I fought in a war once, Lieutenant.”

  “So then what did you do?” Hardy asked.

  “Outside the hotel the kids were yelling and screaming. They didn’t know what had happened yet. The actor and me, because of our dress clothes, were the enemy. They yelled at us and threw garbage at us. I thought I wasn’t going to get away, but I did. I got a cab home as fast as I could. I turned on my TV set and got the word. They’d just discovered that it wasn’t Doug who’d been shot; that it was his look-alike cousin, Charlie Sewall. I got out of my dress clothes and changed into something less fancy. I went back to the hotel. It was a natural thing for me to do. I am Charlie’s lawyer. You wouldn’t let me see the body. I couldn’t get to Doug, who was Charlie’s only family.” This part began to sound memorized. “I waited around for a better moment. That’s when I ran into Haskell in the Blue Lagoon.”

  “You’ve left out something,” Hardy said.

  “So help me, Lieutenant.”

  “You’ve left out the fact that you saw Haskell and Miss Marsh walking down the block toward Madison. You told Haskell you didn’t want to talk to Miss Marsh because you thought he was the police.”

  Hyland moistened his lips. “That’s true,” he said. “I didn’t want to be stopped and questioned until—until I found out just how things were.”

  “And how were things, Mr. Hyland?” Chambrun asked.

  “The dinner was going on, just as though nothing had happened.” He sounded bitter. “Nobody cared about poor Charlie. All that mattered was raising a few million bucks for Doug.”

  “And you were in the Blue Lagoon, tossing five-dollar bills at Pat Coogan and listening to your favorite songs—as though nothing had happened,” Chambrun said.