Adler came on grouchy. He must have backed the wrong team.
“I’m Simon Drake,” Simon said. “You may have heard of me. I do a lot of business with a colleague of yours—Jack Keith.”
“Keith I know,” Adler said. “Why don’t you call him? This is Thanksgiving.”
“I’d like to call him but he’s gone off on a vacation and can’t be located.”
“Smart man.”
“I do his income tax returns and so I know that he uses your services on occasion. I need some information urgently.”
“Thanksgiving,” Adler repeated.
“I know. But tomorrow isn’t Thanksgiving. Will your office be open?”
“Nine to five,” Adler said.
“Good. I’ll be in to see you. In the meantime, I’ll give you something to think about. I need information on a woman named Alverna Castile. She figured in a court trial about ten years ago. Police scandal.”
“Alverna Castle.” Alder repeated the name slowly as if he might be writing it down. “A.m. or p.m.?” he asked. “What do you mean?”
“Are you coming in tomorrow a.m. or p.m.?”
“A.m. if I can make it. Early as I can make it.”
“Okay,” Adler said. “I’ll be there.”
It was chilly on the balcony for nothing but Mandarin pyjamas. Simon completed the call as the sun gave up in disgust and slid behind an oily yellow cloud. He took the telephone inside the room again and selected the other telephone directory to find a second number. The movie was still in progress. The whole cast was screaming with delight because they had just discovered Alverna’s father was an oil tycoon who would finance the Broadway production of their show before the boys went overseas. Wanda leered at Simon as he retreated to the balcony again.
He dialled the home number of Mary Sutton.
She was slow answering. When she did respond her voice sounded flat and far away as if she had difficulty in co-ordinating her vocal cords with her brain. Simon introduced himself and received no greeting of delight.
“I’m sorry, Mr Drake,” she said. “I gave a little party here last night and I’m not too sharp this morning.”
“Afternoon,” Simon said. “Almost three o’clock.”
“Really? It looks earlier—or maybe later. Where are you calling from?”
“The Century Plaza. I plan to go back to the beach tomorrow, Miss Sutton, and there’s something I must talk to you about. I wonder if I could come over to your apartment for about half an hour.”
She didn’t answer for several seconds. “Must you?” she asked. “The place is a mess. I’m a mess.”
He could hear her moving about the room. The telephone must have been on a long cord because the sound of her footsteps changed from soft carpeting to something harder like wood or tile. A door closed.
“I’m a mess, too,” Simon said ruefully. “At the moment I’m wearing canary-yellow pyjamas. I haven’t showered or shaved and I have to dress. I could make it at four o’clock if it’s all right with you.”
“Why should it be all right with me?” she demanded. Her voice was louder now as if she wasn’t worried that anyone else would overhear.
“Because it concerns Barney Amling and we both want to know where he is. I’ll give you a clue. Do you know a Miss Verna Castle?”
He could hear her breathing. That was all.
“She owns a hotel and a restaurant and a yacht—God knows what else. I think she may have done business with Barney.”
“Oh, that Vcrna Castle,” Mary Sutton said.
“Bells ringing?”
“Only in my head. Yes, Miss Castle took out a loan with Pacific Guaranty about two years ago. A large one.”
“Through McClary’s office or through Barney’s?”
“Both. McClary okayed the loan first and then Barney—I don’t think I should discuss business over the telephone, Mr Drake.”
“Aren’t you alone?”
She hesitated. “That’s not the point,” she said. “I have no records here. I can’t recall the details. There was some sort of disagreement between Ralph McClary and Mr Amling about the interest rates—but it was such a long time ago.”
“No recent business?”
“No.”
“Then why has Barney been meeting with Miss Castle at her hotel several times within the last two months?”
The thin, disinterested voice came alive then for an instant. “I don’t believe that,” Mary Sutton snapped.
“But it’s true. I have proof and I’ll bring it to your apartment at four o’clock. By that time you may remember the details about that other loan.”
“Mr Drake, please don’t—” she began.
“Four o’clock sharp,” Simon said and concluded the call.
As soon as Wanda learned Simon was going out of the hotel, she insisted on going with him. He explained that it was business and that he would be gone less than an hour, and she explained that she was his wife and that she would sit in the car and wait for him while he talked to Mary Sutton. It was easier to agree than to argue. Simon showered and dressed and returned to the bedroom to find her decked out in a burnt-orange knit suit and a brown suede jacket. She could dress in a dark closet in three minutes and come out looking smarter than any woman in the hotel. There was still some Champagne in the bottle. She had poured two glasses and was standing beside the table examining the two photos that had spilled out of the envelope. She handed Simon a glass of Champagne and said:
“One for the road.”
“If you drink don’t drive,” Simon said by way of a toast.
“Where did you get the pictures of Barney Amling?” she asked.
“Classified information,” Simon said.
“Who is the woman?”
“If you’re caption-minded you might call her ‘The Mystery Woman’.”
“Is she the one you’re going to see?”
“How did you know I was going to see a woman?”
“Because you asked me to wait in the car.”
Simon drained the glass and returned it to the table. He picked up the photos and took Wanda’s arm. “I don’t think the lady will wait,” he said.
He had never spoken a truer word.
It was a short drive to the quiet residential street on which Mary Sutton’s apartment was located. Simon parked opposite the building at five minutes before four. It seemed later. The sky was darker and most of the windows in the stylish new building were already lighted. One thing was different about the street. No black and white police car hugged the curb and it seemed a little lonesome without Lieutenant Wabash.
“Which apartment is it?” Wanda asked. “I want to know where to go if you call for help.”
“I’m not sure,” Simon admitted. “It’s on the fourth floor.”
Their eyes climbed upward. Only one set of windows on the fourth floor showed light and that was a wavering, flickering light as if someone might have a fire going in the fireplace.
“Psychedelic light show,” Wanda said. “If that’s the apartment you must be calling on a pot smoker. Take me along?”
“To smoke pot?”
“To see the freaks—Simon—” Wanda’s light banter worked its way up into a near shriek. Her eyes were still on the window. Simon, who was then climbing out of the car, looked upward just as the drapes at the flickering window were enveloped in flames.
“It’s a fire!” Wanda cried.
Simon reached inside the car and grabbed the telephone. He had time to dial the operator and ask for the fire department but that was all. Suddenly the entire window shattered outward and through it, hurtling like an exhibition diver executing a backward swan, came a woman wearing a long green housecoat laced with a fringe of orange flame. A shutter snapped in Simon’s brain. For an instant that grotesque plummeting figure seemed to hold in space as if the law of gravity had been found unconstitutional. During that instant Simon failed to see the open convertible creeping along the opposite curbing
as if the driver was searching for a house number. The outward thrust of the woman’s leap took her clear of the sidewalk. She fell, still blazing, into the rear seat of the car. There must have been screaming. Simon was never sure about that. The terrified driver slammed his foot down on the accelerator instead of the brake and the ensuing rush of air fanned the flames.
Simon shoved the telephone into Wanda’s hand. “You talk to the firemen!” he shouted. He sprinted after the moving car and it must have been his own voice he heard yelling. The driver made a second try for the brake, hit it, and the convertible leapt the curb and crashed into a row of privet hedges before it stopped. Simon reached the car and yanked open the door before the shocked driver could pry his hands off the steering wheel. Pulling off his car coat, Simon flailed at the flames on the woman’s clothing until the fire was out. Blackened and broken, her body twisted in a cruelly unnatural position, she lay motionless and silent on the back seat of the car.
He reached forward and brushed away the remnant of burned hair that covered her face. The woman was Mary Sutton.
Someone—perhaps Wanda—completed the call to the fire department. Within minutes the street filled with sobbing vehicles: a police car first, then the fire trucks, finally the ambulance. Everybody was alert, efficient and dedicated but they were all in vain except for the firemen who did put out the blaze in apartment 422. In vain because, in spite of emergency treatment at the hospital, Mary Sutton died at nine minutes past nine that same evening.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AT SOME TIME during the five hours that elapsed before Mary Sutton died, Simon put Wanda into a cab and sent her back to the hotel. That much he remembered even when every other incident was being lost or pulled out of context in the emotional storm that followed the fiery catapault from Mary’s apartment. There was a lot of noise—he remembered that: shouts, screams, sirens, horns and screeching brakes. There was confusion and paralysis; there were also the unleashed energies that explode in action when man, usually oblivious to any needs but his own, becomes suddenly aware of tragedy and the compulsion to do something about it. Centre of the stage for Mary Sutton, 25, beautiful, burned and battered by the fall. It was Simon who beat out the flames on her body, but he didn’t move her from the back seat of the convertible. Her neck was twisted in an unnatural angle and one arm was bent backward under her body. He waited for the ambulance.
The police were the first to arrive, followed quickly by the fire fighters. By the time the ambulance came the police were busy herding spectators away from the car that was still stuck in the hedges and trying to get a coherent statement from the terrified driver. Mary Sutton’s still-breathing body was lifted carefully on to a stretcher and whisked into the ambulance. Moments later it screamed off into the darkening streets with a motorcycle escort. Simon managed to extricate himself from the mêlée, call a cab for Wanda on the telephone in his car, and then take up pursuit of the ambulance. Sinai was the closest hospital: that was where Mary was taken. By the time Simon arrived she was in the emergency room and it would be almost an hour before the first report issued indicated the seriousness of her condition. In the interim Simon located a telephone and tried to reach Paul Corman at the number listed in the directory. He made three calls in all without getting an answer. It was sad. It seemed that somebody should know that Mary Sutton, who was so young, was fighting for her life. Returning at last to the corridor outside the emergency room he was hailed by a familiar voice.
“Hullo, Drake,” Captain Reardon said. “I heard via channels that you saw this thing happen. I’d like to get your story.”
Reardon, as usual, was sartorially splendid. Dark-grey suit, silver-striped tie and a grey waterproof folded over one arm. He wore no hat but did wear lightly tinted glasses which he removed as he spoke. “Need them for night driving,” he explained. “They cut the glare of headlights.”
“They wouldn’t have cut the glare of the fire,” Simon said.
“What were you doing at Mary Sutton’s apartment?”
“I had an appointment. There was something I wanted to talk to her about before I go back to the beach tomorrow.”
“Something concerning Amling?”
“In a way.”
“How did the fire start?”
“I don’t know. I never got into the apartment. I had just parked across the street from the building when a window on the fourth floor burst into flame. Seconds later she came hurtling out with her hair and clothes afire.”
Reardon’s bland expression didn’t change. He looked almost bored. Horror was as commonplace as breakfast cereal to a policeman who had reached the status of captain. “The report states that she landed in the back seat of a speeding car,” he said.
“Wrong,” Simon corrected. “The car was barely moving. It accelerated into the nearest shrubbery when the driver saw what happened.”
“Anybody else see the girl fall?”
“My wife was waiting in my car at the time.”
“Where is she?”
“At The Century Plaza. We have a room there. But can’t you postpone questioning her at least until tomorrow? She was pretty shaken up. I told her to take a sedative and go right to bed.”
Reardon took a breath mint from his coat pocket and popped it into his mouth. He nodded. “No sweat,” he said. “I can get her story any time. I’m just wondering why you aren’t with her.”
“I beat out the flames with my coat,” Simon said. “I’d like to know how Mary Sutton makes out.”
“Curiosity or friendship?”
“I could hardly call it friendship. Until two days ago I wasn’t aware that the girl existed.”
“But she’s pretty, isn’t she? It always seems worse when they’re so pretty—and so young. Hey, look. We’ve got company.”
The door at the far end of the corridor had opened and a man was walking towards them. He didn’t come briskly and he didn’t look athletic. He walked slowly as if he had lived in his body too long and was tired of carrying it about. Then he looked up and saw Simon and Reardon and made a feeble attempt to pull himself together. It was Ralph McClary steeling himself for the inevitable questions. No, he hadn’t seen Mary Sutton since the previous afternoon when she left the office. No, he hadn’t talked to her on the telephone. Pacific Guaranty wasn’t scheduled to re-open until Monday morning. With such a long weekend he was sure Mary would be in the mountains skiing. He had come to the hospital in response to a message from the police who could find no next of kin listed in any of the credentials found in Mary’s apartment.
“I—we were so shocked. Mrs McClary and me,” he said. “Mrs McClary wanted to come to the hospital too, but she’s been fighting off an attack of Hong Kong ‘flu and I wouldn’t let her get out of bed.”
Simon remembered something Mary Sutton had said when he called her. “I did telephone Miss Sutton today. She mentioned that she had a party in her apartment last night. I take it you weren’t invited.”
McClary’s face wrinkled in a sick smile. “I’m not a member of the jet-set,” he said. The words must have sounded harsh to his ears because he added, apologetically, “I mean there is a generation gap. You might call Paul Corman. He was probably there. He and Mary dated—I guess they still call it dating nowadays.”
“The police have already done that,” Reardon said. “He isn’t at home.”
McClary seemed surprised. “No? Well, perhaps he went to the mountains alone. He’s a ski buff too. Is that what they call it—buff? Sometimes I’m not sure I speak the same language as the youngsters. You might try Mammoth. I heard Paul talking about the good snow up there.”
“Do you know where he stays?” Reardon asked.
“Sorry. No idea. But Paul should know about this—this frightful thing. Do you think she has a chance?”
“She’s still breathing,” Reardon said. “That’s about all.”
“That’s what the officer who telephoned me said. I can’t tell you how terrible I feel. Miss Sutto
n was so vital and such an asset to the association. How did the fire start?”
“We think it was from a cigarette. She was smoking—there were ashes and stubs in an ashtray near the chair where the fire apparently started. It spread to the drapes. Some of those new fabrics are highly inflammable.”
“No gas?” McClary asked.
“I was parked outside the building,” Simon said. “I didn’t hear an explosion.”
“Neither did any of the people in the building who we interviewed,” Reardon added. “Why did you think of gas, Mr McClary?”
It wasn’t warm in the corridor but McClary was sweating. He rummaged through his pockets until he found a handkerchief and mopped his brow. “I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I thought there might have been a leak. Mary wasn’t a careless type.”
“She might have had a hangover after the party.”
“I suppose so. I really don’t know about such things at all. But it is terrible—especially after this other mess.”
“I think Mr McClary means the additional publicity won’t enhance the image of Pacific Guaranty,” Simon observed.
McClary’s eyes were too guilty to make a denial worth the effort. He located a chair and sank down morosely to stare at the closed doors of the emergency room like a condemned criminal awaiting sentence. The press had given him a bad time with the Amling disappearance. They would be back full force as soon as somebody realized the identity of the fire victim. It was seven o’clock when the reporters began to arrive. By that time word had filtered out that Mary Sutton wasn’t responding to treatment. Some kind of complications the medics hadn’t identified, except to admit they were wholly unrelated to the burns. What hard information came out of that room was given to Captain Reardon and he spoke to the press as tersely as if he were dictating telegrams at a day rate. Brushing them aside, he beckoned to Simon to follow him into another corridor. The passage led to an exit door into the parking-yard where the world had turned dark except for the floodlights that hung like pale halos in the fog. As soon as they were outside the building Reardon dug out a package of cigarettes from his pocket and offered them to Simon.
The Brink of Murder Page 11
