Murder in Luxury

by Hugh Pentecost

  We got off at the fifth floor and the bellboy let us into Five A, the suite Chambrun had pulled out of his hat for Valerie. No two suites in the Beaumont are decorated exactly alike. Five A was better suited for a British diplomat than a young American woman. There were a couple of paintings of scarlet-coated riders following a pack of hounds; there was a seascape of waves breaking against a rugged coastline somewhere; the furnishings were elegant Victorian.

  On the center table in the living room was a bouquet of spring flowers, a small envelope propped against the vase. Valerie made no move toward the envelope.

  "Mr. Fails?" she asked.

  "Fresh flowers and a bottle of champagne in your kitchen cooler are standard welcomes from the Beaumont's management," I said.

  "How very nice," she said, without enthusiasm.

  The bellboy returned from leaving her bag in one of the bedrooms down the corridor. He stood there in the doorway. It was tip time but she didn't seem to notice. I signaled to him to take off. I'd handle it later.

  The sound of the outer door closing as the boy left seemed to bring Valerie back into the world. She turned to me, reached up, and took off those dark glasses. I actually felt my legs go wobbly. She had the most extraordinary, violet-colored eyes I've ever seen. The word beautiful suddenly fitted her, with all it's supposed to mean.

  "Don't ever put on those glasses again," I said.

  "I don't understand."

  "With those eyes?"

  She turned away. I didn't seem to know how to play it right with her. Then she turned back and those eyes were deep, tragic wells. I wanted to reach out to her, to protect her.

  "Is it Mark... your first name?" she asked.

  I said it was.

  "You've tried so hard to be cheerful and friendly, and I... I'm such a clod!" she said.

  "I've just been trying to find the right tune to play," I said.

  "Mr. Fails has told you why I'm here?"

  "Yes. There's nothing much one can say to make that experience less shocking."

  "That's all he told you? About last night, and the police, and all that?"

  "He told us why you are living in New York," I said.

  "'Us'?"

  "Mr. Chambrun and me."

  "Chambrun. I hear he's some kind of a god who runs the hotel."

  "Some kind of a god... and a very decent, compassionate man."

  She turned to the flowers again, her back to me. I thought I saw a little shudder move along her shoulders. "I don't seem to be able to learn how to function alone," she said. "My husband and I... well, we were two parts of one person. With him I could have faced the ghastly business last night without turning a hair. Alone..." She shook her golden head from side to side. "Do you know that policeman thinks I'm some kind of a whore out looking for sex in the local saloons?"

  "Fails mentioned it," I said. "Policemen tend to try to make each new crime fit a standard pattern. When that one doesn't prove out for your man he'll try to fit it into some other familiar category. Then he'll go away and let you be."

  She looked around the room. She sounded a little desperate when she spoke. "I had to change myself around, find some new approach to living each day, after Dick was killed. The apartment downtown is my place, my things, a little piece of my world. This—" and she gestured around "—this isn't mine. It's strange. It's just not mine."

  "People with troubles like yours—and I'm talking about your husband, not this other mess—often travel, go to different and new places, try a cruise, perhaps. They don't have friends when they start, but they make them along the way. Maybe not forever, but just to pass the time." I smiled at her. "Well, here I am, a presentable young man-—thirty-eight years young. There's Chambrun, a charming gent if you want to talk about the arts, or music, or the fascinating guests at the Beaumont. There's Betsy Ruysdale, his secretary, an exceptional gal if you want someone for woman-talk. We're all ready if you'll give us a chance."

  "I'm very grateful, but..."

  "I can show you the sights, take you dining and dancing if you like. There's an art show in the gallery. I can take you for a drive in the park in a horse-drawn cab." I waved at the television set in the corner. "Of course, if you prefer Archie Bunker..."

  "You're very sweet, Mark," she said. 'Tm afraid, for a little while, I'm going to just have to slug it out alone."

  "I can't twist your arm," I said. "If you need anything at all, call my office. If you need something serious, call Chambrun. If you want to cry on someone's shoulder, call Betsy Ruysdale. I'll be back later in the day—just in case."

  So I left her, regretting I hadn't been able to ring the right bell.

  There are bases for me to cover every day at the Beaumont. There are fashion shows where glamorous models display the latest from Paris or Seventh Avenue to buyers for the "Beautiful People"; there are small conventions, and directors' meetings for big corporations, Hollywood stars, best-selling authors, sports figures, and special friends of someone who need an individual and cordial hello. My job is to greet, to find out if they want the press brought in or kept out, and to let them know that the whole staff is in the starting blocks, prepared to make it clear that they are now in the best of all possible worlds. It would be a bore if the faces weren't different every day.

  I left Valerie Summers to go through these standard routines, but I wasn't quite able to shake the tragedy in those wide violet eyes, an air of helpless desperation. What she needed, I thought, was to be taken out of an atmosphere that bore any relationship to her regular life. Absurdly, I thought of a roller-coaster ride at Coney Island and sticks of cotton candy—and the tunnel of love?

  A little before noon I checked into Chambrun's office. Ruysdale was at her desk in the outer room. Chambrun never calls her Betsy or Miss Ruysdale. He neuters her by simply calling her Ruysdale. The whisper persists among the staff that their relationship is a lot closer than that impersonal "Ruysdale" suggests. She's a handsome woman with natural red hair and the milk-white skin that often goes with that coloring. She dresses rather severely in the office. Chambrun wouldn't have liked having an army of males hanging around his chief aide. I've seen her, however, at a charity ball, wearing a low-cut evening gown. She is something! I remember wondering why I was wasting my time with young women. Ruysdale is, I suppose, about forty, but very much in her prime.

  She gestured toward Chambrun's office. "The long arm of the law," she said.

  "What have we done now?"

  "We are clean," Ruysdale said. "It's Lieutenant Matthew Keegan, the Homicide man in charge of the Summers case. You get the lady settled in?"

  "Settled isn't the word I'd choose. Shook-up lady."

  "I think the Man would appreciate an interruption," Ruysdale said. "Why don't you just walk in?"

  Having heard Gardner Fails suggest that Keegan was probably an old-fashioned kind of cop trying to make a crime fit a familiar pattern—and having assured Valerie Summers that that's the way it was—the Homicide man was unexpected. "Matthew Keegan" suggested a face like the map of Ireland and square-toed shoes. The man sitting in a leather armchair facing Chambrun across the carved, Florentine desk looked like a bright young Madison Avenue advertising genius; well-tailored tropical worsted summer suit, pale gray, what I would have sworn were custom-made shoes, well polished, a pale blue Brooks Brothers shirt with a button-down collar, and a dark-blue silk tie with maroon stripes. This young detective was a fashion plate. He had dark curly hair, worn short, and dark eyes that had a twinkle of humor in them. I've called him young, but I suppose he was my age, late thirties. It depends on how old you are how young that is. I was to learn later that Keegan was college edu^ cated with a law degree from Columbia. He belonged to what Chambrun called "a new breed of cop." This one hadn't learned his crime-fighting techniques by first pounding a beat.

  Chambrun introduced us and I had the uncomfortable feeling for a moment that those keen dark eyes were reading the label on the inside of my shirt collar. This, I th
ought, could be a weakness. Keegan had formed an opinion about me before I had opened my mouth to say boo.

  "Mark has been settling in Mrs. Summers," Chambrun said.

  "Couple of hours ago," I said.

  "How does she seem?" Chambrun asked.

  "What would you expect? Dead strangers on your living room rug are not a cause for celebration," I said.

  "Particularly if you gunned them down yourself," Keegan said. It was a thin, steely voice that, I found out after a while, made everything he said sound threatening.

  "The Lieutenant has a little more information than we had from Gardner Fails," Chambrun said. He was leaning back in his desk chair, heavy eyelids lowered, with a faint smile on his lips. I knew that Cheshire-cat look. He was pleased with himself about something.

  "We have identified the dead man," Keegan said. "He used several names in his business, but we think the real one was Carl Rogers. He was known in the Village. A peddler."

  "Drugs?" I asked.

  "Drugs, porno-sex, anything lousy you can think of," Keegan said. "He's been charged more than a dozen times with crimes of one sort or another, but he's always managed to slip off the hook. There are two possible angles to his case."

  "It's a little early to limit yourself to two, isn't it, Lieutenant?" Chambrun suggested.

  Keegan gave Chambrun what I thought was a mildly patronizing smile. "I don't think we'll have to go beyond two," he said. "Studying people is my business, you know."

  "If you'll stop to think about it, so is mine," Chambrun said.

  "You don't know Mrs. Summers, do you?"

  "I haven't laid eyes on her yet," Chambrun said.

  "I was called in on the case about one o'clock this morning," Keegan said. "Her story was she'd been to a show—musical with Mickey Rooney—and got home a little after eleven o'clock. Let herself into her apartment, she says, switched on the lights, and there was a man, shot in the head, just lying there. She called the local precinct house. A couple of patrol cops got there first, then two detectives from the precinct. When they were satisfied it was a homicide I was called in. My department."

  "What convinced the original detectives it was a homicide?" I asked. Foolish question, I suppose.

  "No guns anywhere," Keegan said. "Somebody shot Carl Rogers and took off, or—" and Keegan's eyes narrowed "—somebody shot Rogers, disposed of the gun, and didn't take off."

  "Meaning Mrs. Summers?" Chambrun said.

  "Who else?"

  "You haven't found the gun?"

  "Not yet. The medical examiner got the body about midnight. He guesses Rogers had been dead three to four hours. That would place the shooting at some time between eight and nine o'clock."

  "Mrs. Summers was at the theater then," Chambrun said.

  "She says. She has no ticket stub to prove it. She was alone, she says. No one to alibi her. There is absolutely no sign of any forced entry to the apartment. Back door locked, no windows forced, not even a scratch on the front-door lock."

  "Rogers was a professional criminal," Chambrun said. "He could have managed a simple lock, couldn't he?"

  "He'd have had to have something to do it with," Keegan said. "A skeleton key, a lock pick of some kind. Nothing like that on the body."

  "I understand from Gardner Fails he had no wallet, no identification of any kind," Chambrun said.

  "True. Just a few bucks in bills and loose change. We identified him from the fingerprint files. They had his prints from one of those early arrests."

  "And you think..."

  "Mrs. Summers had to have let Rogers into the apartment," Keegan said.

  "Isn't there someone else who had access? A building superintendent, a janitor?"

  "Man who covers several buildings on the block. He was home all evening playing poker with friends. Airtight alibi. He has a key, but it never left him. The building owner may have a key. He's in Europe."

  "Some previous tenant?"

  "Woman who had the apartment before Mrs. Summers died about a year ago. She was ninety-two years old. No family. No maid who came in and might have had a key. Mrs. Summers has no cleaning woman or a maid with a key. Can you imagine a woman with her kind of money having no help?"

  Chambrun reached in the cedar-lined box on his desk for a cigarette. "So you have two theories, Lieutenant."

  "There's something abnormal about a young, beautiful, very rich chick being so alone," Keegan said.

  "You know her story," Chambrun said. "A happy marriage, her husband burned up in a fire. It takes time for someone to adjust after a thing like that."

  "It's how they adjust," Keegan said. "Drugs are a way to adjust. Some kind of raw sex is a way to adjust. Carl Rogers was in the business of supplying both those things."

  "So?"

  "So she went hunting for one or both," Keegan said. "When it began I can't guess just yet. Rogers could have been supplying the lady with whatever she needed for months. Then, he either held her up, cut off her supply, tried to blackmail her and she let him have it."

  "Blackmail?"

  "Hell, Mr. Chambrun, the Village is like a small town. Word about people gets around. To begin with, Gardner Fails found that apartment for her. I guess he made no secret to the renting agent who his client was. Jeb McCandless's daughter, a very, very rich lady. Rogers would hear that sooner or later. He put the bite on her for some really big dough. Maybe he threatened to expose her habits, whatever they are."

  "So she kills her source of supply?"

  "Maybe not. Maybe I've got her wrong," Keegan said. "My number two theory is that Rogers didn't know her, but heard about her, knew who she was, that she was loaded. He studied her, rang her doorbell last night, threatened her, God knows what, and she shot him."

  "And then goes calmly to the theater and doesn't report it for three or four hours?"

  "She had to get rid of the gun," Keegan said. "I doubt if she went to the theater."

  "It would be strange, if she did go to the theater," I said, "that there isn't someone who will remember that head of beautiful golden blonde hair."

  "So what?" Keegan said. "Maybe she did go. She had to have time to think her way out of the jam she was in."

  "What kind of a jam was she in?" Chambrun asked. He sounded suddenly impatient. "A common crook, drug pusher, con man, gets himself admitted to her apartment with some tall story and threatens her. She acts in self-defense."

  "And waits three or four hours to call the police? That's what's wrong with my number two theory, Mr. Chambrun. If Rogers was a complete stranger and threatened her, why wait to report it? No, I have to think they had some kind of relationship. He supplied her with drugs; maybe he, personally, supplied her with sex, or with young studs to do the job; or with a gay woman if she's that kind. They quarreled over money, over who knows what. She shoots him. Then she needed time to get calmed down. Maybe there's blood on her clothes. She has to change and get rid of bloody clothes and the gun before she calls the police."

  "And you haven't a shred of evidence to prove any of that, Lieutenant, or she wouldn't be staying here at the Beaumont, free to come and go as she pleases."

  "I'll find the evidence," Keegan said. "But I don't want her taking a powder on me while I collect it."

  Chambrun glanced at me. "The lieutenant came here to ask me to put a tap on Mrs. Summers' phone," he said. "I've told him I'll do no such thing. A guest in this hotel is entitled to exactly the same security as a man in his own home. This is his home when he's staying here."

  "I can get a court order," Keegan said.

  "Maybe," Chambrun said. "If you can and do, I won't obey it, nor will any other employee of this hotel. You'll have to close up the place and send hundreds of us to jail, Lieutenant. Get a warrant for her arrest and take her out of here and no one will resist you. Try to invade her privacy while she's a guest here and you'll find yourself behind a very large eight ball."

  For a moment the two men stared at each other, adversaries. I think Keegan decided t
hat pressure was not the way to deal with Chambrun.

  "I don't understand what you'd expect to hear on her phone, Lieutenant," I said. "It isn't a private line. It goes through a switchboard. She knows that."

  Keegan seemed to be thinking out loud, not answering me.

  "Very rich people can afford eccentricities that the rest of us can't," he said. "Valerie McCandless Summers can afford a drug habit without any problems. She can buy herself sex partners without any problems. She can be in touch with a travel agent right now making plans to take off for China, if she thinks she'll be safe there."

  "And following that line of reasoning," Chambrun said, "She could have bought off a cheap punk like Carl Rogers without any difficulty at all. She could afford to pay blackmail if that's what his game was."

  "Maybe she was on a high, blew her stack," Keegan said.

  "And maybe it was exactly the way she says it was," Chambrun said. "She went to the theater alone, came home, and found a dead stranger on her rug." He pushed back his chair and stood up. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant, I can't set traps for guests of the hotel to make your job easier."

  A kind of dark anger flooded the detective's face. Black Irishman, I thought.

  "I hope you won't come to regret making that decision, Mr. Chambrun," he said.

  THREE

  I suppose you could say that I live in a kind of fantasy world, a kid's dream-up. Nothing can go wrong with Papa in charge. Papa stands guard against all dragons, and even more than that, against all human villains who can really make trouble. It was a busy day, and I didn't worry about Valerie Summers, didn't even think about her till along about six o'clock— drink time. Chambrun—who is the Papa in my world—had decided to protect her against the villain, who was Lieutenant Matt Keegan of Homicide. That may sound childish, but you may have heard the television commercial for some insurance company— "Get yourself a piece of the rock." Some wise guy said, "We don't need a piece of the rock. At the Beaumont we have the rock itself." He meant Chambrun, of course. That's how we all feel.

  So Valerie Summers was safe, I thought, but at six o'clock I decided she might be interested in a drink, even dinner. Gardner Fails had suggested that could be my function and the notion didn't depress me. I'm a kind of a sly operator, you should know. I called room service to ask if the lady in Five A had ordered drinks or dinner. Nothing had been served up there all day. There were a hundred places in the hotel and within a couple of blocks of it where she could have gone for lunch, of course.