‘I’m afraid I have a shock for you. Mr. Dedrick’s chauffeur is in there.’ I waved towards the lighted window. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Dead?’ I saw her stiffen.
‘He’s been shot through the head.’
She lurched forward, and I thought she was going to faint. I caught hold of her arm and steadied her.
‘Would you like to sit in the car for a moment?’
She pulled away from me.
"No; it’s all right. You mean he’s been murdered? ’
‘It looks like it. It’s certainly not suicide.’
‘What has happened to Lee—Mr. Dedrick?’
‘I don’t know. He telephoned me, saying someone had warned him he was going to be kidnapped. I came out here and found the chauffeur dead.’
‘Kidnapped? Oh!’ She drew in a quick, shuddering breath. He said that? Are you sure?’
‘Why, yes. We’re just going to search the house. We’ve only been here two or three minutes. Will you wait in your car? ’
‘Oh, no! I’ll look too. Why should they want to kidnap him?’
‘I asked him that. He said he was Serena Marshland’s husband.’
She pushed past me, ran up the steps and walked quickly along the terrace. I followed her.
Kerman came out and barred the way into the room.
‘I don’t think you should go in there,’ he said mildly.
‘Have you seen Mr. Dedrick?’ she demanded, staring up it him. The light from the room fell on her face. She was lovely in a hard, cold way, with good eyes and a firm mouth and chin. At a guess she would be about thirty, and not the type I would have expected to be a rich woman’s secretary. Her clothes were expensive-looking, and she wore a silk evening wrap over a winecoloured, strapless evening dress with the confidence and grace of a model.
Kerman shook his head.
‘Please look for him. Both of you. Search the house.’
I nodded to Kerman.
‘Phone the police first, Jack.’
Whilst Kerman was using the telephone, the girl went to look at the chauffeur. I watched her, saw the colour leave her face, but as I went to her, she pulled herself together and turned away.
‘Come out on to the terrace,’ I said. Kerman will look for Mr. Dedrick.’ I put my hand on her arm, but with a little shiver she shook it off and walked out on to the terrace again.
‘This is dreadful,’ she said. ‘I wish you would try and find Mr. Dedrick instead of hanging around me. Why did he ‘phone you? Does he know you?’
‘I run Universal Services. He’s probably seen one of our advertisements.’
She put her hand to her face, and leaned against the balustrade.
‘I’m afraid that conveys nothing to me. What is Universal Services? I have only been in Orchid City for a few hours.’
‘We handle any job from divorce to grooming a cat. Mr. Dedrick wanted a bodyguard, but I’m afraid we arrived a little late.’
I saw her flinch.
‘I can’t believe it. Please make sure he’s not in the house. He must be here!’
‘Kerman’s looking now. I understood from Mr. Dedrick that he had only just moved in here, and was alone with his chauffeur. Is that right?’
‘Mr. Dedrick has rented this house for the summer. Mrs, Dedrick and he have been staying for a few days in New York,’ she explained, speaking rapidly. ‘They have just come back from Paris. Mr. Dedrick flew from New York a few days ago. He went on ahead to make the arrangements about the house. Mrs. Dedrick arrives tomorrow. I came with him to make sure everything in the house was in order. We have rooms at the Orchid Hotel. Mr. Dedrick said he was going to look over the house this evening, I was to join him later,’
‘I see.’
Kerman came out on to the terrace.
"No one in the house,’ he said.
Take a look around the garden.’
He gave Mary Jerome a quick, interested look and went off down the terrace steps.
‘He’s never mentioned being kidnapped to you, has he?’
‘Oh, no.’
‘What time did he leave his hotel?’
‘At seven-thirty.’
‘He called me at ten past ten. I wonder what he was doing for two hours and forty minutes here. Have you any idea?
‘I suppose he was looking over the house. I wish you would go after your friend and help him. Mr. Dedrick might be lying in the grounds—hurt.’
I began to get the idea that she wanted to get rid of me.
‘I’ll stick around until the police come. We don’t want you kidnapped.’
‘I—I don’t think I can face any more of this. I’ll go bock to the hotel,’ she said, her voice suddenly husky. ‘Will you tell them, please? I’ll see them at the hotel.’
‘I think it would be better to wait until they come,’ I said quietly.
‘No; I think I’ll go. He—he may be at the hotel. I think I ought to go.’
As she turned, I caught her wrist
‘I’m sorry, but until the police come, you must stay.’
She stared up at me, her eyes hard in the moonlight.
‘If you think it is necessary.’
‘That’s the idea.’
She opened her bag.
‘I think a cigarette…’
She did it very smoothly. I found myself looking down at a .25, aimed at my midriff.
‘Go in there!’
‘Now, look…’
‘Go in there!’ There was a dangerous note in her voice. ‘I’ll shoot if you don’t go in!’
‘You’re playing it wrong, but have it your own way.’
I walked into the lounge.
The moment I heard her running down the terrace I jumped to the balustrade.
‘Head her off, Jack!’ I bawled into the darkness. ‘But watch out; she has a gun!’
Then I legged it down the terrace after her.
There came a spiteful crack of the .25, and a slug buzzed past my head. I dodged behind a tub of palms. More gun-fire, and an excited yell from Kerman. Then a car engine exploded into life; the gun fired again and the car went furiously down the drive.
I raced to the end of the terrace, intent on following her in the Buick, but she had taken care of that. Her last shot had gone through the off-side rear wheel.
Kerman came out of the darkness.
‘What goes on?’ he demanded indignantly. ‘She tried to shoot me.’
V
We sat together before the empty fireplace in the library while a stony-eyed cop stood by the door and watched us without appearing to do so.
We had told our stories to Detective Sergeant MacGraw, and now we were waiting for Brandon. As soon as MacGraw learned who Dedrick was, he said the Captain of Police would want to see us. So we waited.
In the next room a squad of the Homicide boys were at work, dusting for fingerprints, photographing the body and the room, and prowling around for clues.
There was a considerable amount of telephoning and coming and going of cars. After a while I heard a barking voice and I nudged Kerman,
‘Brandon.’
‘What a thrill for him to find us here,’ Kerman said, and grinned.
The cop scowled at him and moved restlessly. Unconsciously, he straightened his jacket and looked critically at his buttons. Captain of the Police Brandon was a martinet, and every cop on the Force was terrified of him.
Silence settled over us again like a film of dust. Another half-hour crawled past. The hands of my watch showed a quarter past midnight. Kerman was dozing. I longed for a drink.
Then the door forked open and Brandon and Detective Lieutenant Mifflin of the Homicide Squad came in.
I gave Kerman a nudge and he opened his eyes as Brandon paused to survey us the way a grand duke would look at a set of muddy footprints on his bed.
Brandon was short and thickset, with a round, fat pink-and-white face, a mass of chalk-white hair and cold, inquisitive eyes. He was an ambitious cop with
out being a clever one. He got results because he used Mifflin’s brains and took the credit. He had been Captain of Police for ten years. He owned a Cadillac, a seven-bedroom house; his wife had a mink coat, and his son and daughter went to the University. He didn’t live in that style on his pay. There were the usual rumours that he could be bought, but no one had ever attempted to prove it as far as I knew. He had been known to fake evidence and encouraged his cops to be brutal and ruthless. A man with a lot of power; a dangerous man.
‘So you two have horned in on this, have you?’ he said in his hard, rasping voice. I’ve never known such a pair of jackals.’
Neither of us said anything. Talk out of turn to Brandon and you’re liable to find yourself behind bars.
He glanced at the cop who was as rigid as a wooden effigy.
‘Out!’
The cop went out on tiptoe and closed the door as if it were made of egg-shells.
Mifflin gave me a slow, heavy wink from behind Brandon’s head.
Brandon sat down, stretched out his short, fat legs, pushed his hard pork-pie hat to the back of his head and fumbled for the inevitable cigar.
‘Let’s have it all over again,’ he said. ‘There’re one or two points I want to check. Go ahead, Malloy. Tell it the way you told it to MacGraw. I’ll stop you when I’ve had enough.’
‘Kerman and I were spending the evening in my cabin,’ I said briskly. ‘At ten minutes past ten the telephone bell rang, and a man who identified himself as Lee Dedrick asked me to come over here right away. He explained that some man had ‘phoned him and warned him that an attempt was to be made tonight to kidnap him.’
‘You’re sure he said that?’ Brandon asked, slitting the cellophane wrapping of his cigar with a well-manicured thumbnail.
‘Why, yes.’
‘There’s been no incoming calls to this house tonight. What do you make of that?’
‘Maybe he had the call at his hotel.’
‘He didn’t. We’ve checked that too.’
‘Any out-going calls from here, besides the one he made to me?’
Brandon rolled the cigar between his fat fingers.
‘Yeah, one to a call-box number. What of it?’
Mifflin said in his slow, heavy voice, ‘He could have been told during the day to call that number tonight, and got the warning that way.’
Brandon looked over his shoulder as if he wasn’t aware until now that Mifflin was in the room. Although he relied on Mifflin’s brains, he always acted as if Mifflin had no business to be on the Force.
‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘or Malloy could be lying.’ He looked at me, showing his small even teeth. ‘Are you?’
‘No.’
Tell me, why didn’t Dedrick call the police instead of you?’
I had an answer to that one, but I didn’t think he would like it. Instead, I said, ‘He wasn’t sure someone wasn’t pulling his leg. Probably he was anxious not to make a fool of himself.’
‘Well, go on. Tell me more,’ Brandon said, setting fire to the cigar. He rolled it around between his thin lips and stared heavily at me.
‘While he was talking, there was a sudden silence on the line. I called to him, but he didn’t answer. I could hear him breathing over the line, then he hung up.’
‘And that’s when you should have called Headquarters,’ Brandon snarled. ‘You should have known something was wrong.’
‘I thought maybe his chauffeur had come in, and Dedrick didn’t want him to hear what he was saying. I’m not all that crazy to mix up a man like Dedrick with the police without his sayso.’
Brandon scowled at me and flicked ash off his cigar.
‘You’d talk yourself out of a coffin,’ he said sourly. ‘Well, go on. You came out here and found Souki, That right?’
‘Souki? Is that the chauffeur’s name?’
‘According to the letters he had in his pocket, it’s his name. Did you see anyone on your way up; any car?’
‘No. As soon as we found the body I told Kerman to ‘phone your people. Before he could do so this girl arrived.’
Brandon pulled at his thick nose.
‘Yeah, now about this girl: what did she call herself?’
‘Mary Jerome.’
‘Yeah; Mary Jerome.’ He allowed a cloud of cigar smoke to obscure his face, went on, ‘She said she was Mrs. Dedrick’s secretary: right?’
‘Yes.’
‘She isn’t staying at the Orchid Hotel.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Did she strike you as the secretary type?’
‘No.’
‘Do you think she had anything to do with Dedrick’s kidnapping?’
‘I doubt it. She seemed genuinely startled when I told her. And, besides, why did she come back here after Dedrick had been taken away if she knew?’
‘That’s right, Malloy,’ Brandon said, and gave me a foxy smile. ‘You’re on the right lines. She seemed upset, uh?’
‘That’s right.’
He sat farther down in the chair, stared up at the ceiling and rolled thoughts around in his mind. After a while, he said, ‘Now, look, Malloy, I want you to get this straight. When the Press are told about this snatch there’s going to be a lot of publicity and excitement. Dedrick’s wife is an important woman. She’s more than that: she’s a household name. And another thing, she’s got a lot of powerful friends. You and I could step off with the wrong foot if we’re not very careful. I’m going to be careful, and you’re going to do what you’re told.’
I looked at him and he looked at me.
‘It’s my bet this Jerome girl is Dedrick’sa mistress,’ Brandon went on. ‘It sticks out a mile. He comes down here to rent this house. Mrs. Dedrick stays in New York. We don’t know much about this guy, Dedrick. We haven’t had much time since this broke, but we’ve already done a little digging. The wedding was secret. These two met eight weeks ago in Paris, and got married. Old man Marshland, Mrs. Dedrick’s father, wasn’t told until the two of them arrived at his house in New York as man and wife. I don’t know why the marriage was secret unless Dedrick isn’t anything to shout about, and she thought it would be better to present him to Marshland as her husband and not as her husband-to-be. I don’t know, and it’s not my business. But it looks as if Dedrick was playing along with another woman, and this woman is Mary Jerome. It is pretty obviously they intended to spend the night together here, only Dedrick got kidnapped before he could stop her turning up. The facts fit together. You can see why she didn’t want to be questioned by the police, so she pulled a gun on you and cleared off before we turned up, and I don’t mind telling you, I’m glad she did clear off.’
He waited to see if I had anything to say, but I hadn’t. I thought it was likely he was right. The facts, as he had said, fitted together.
That’s why I wanted to have this little talk with you, Malloy,’ he went on, his cold eyes on my face. ‘Dedrick’s been kidnapped. Okay, that’s something we can do something about, but the other thing isn’t our business. You’re not to say a word about Mary Jerome, if you do, you’ll be sorry. I’ll take you both in as material witnesses and my boys will give you a working over every day you’re with us. I promise you that if any information gets into the Press about this woman. I’m not going to have any muck-raking in this case. Mrs. Dedrick is going to receive every possible consideration from me. It’s bad enough for her to lose her husband this way, but no one is to know her husband was cheating on her. Understand?’
I thought of Mrs. Dedrick’s possible powerful friends. Probably the Governor, who could crack Brandon on her say-so. He wasn’t looking after her interests or considering her feelings, he was safeguarding himself.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Okay,’ Brandon said, getting to his feet. ‘Keep your traps shut, or you’ll regret it. You two get out of here, and stay out of here. If you try to horn in on this case, I’ll make you wish you were never born.’
‘That’ll be no new experience,’
Kerman said languidly as he drifted to the door. ‘Most mornings when I wake up I wish just that very thing.’
‘Get out!’ Brandon barked.
We got out.
CHAPTER TWO
I
THE following evening, around ten o’clock, I was trying to decide whether to go to bed early or open a new bottle of Scotch and make a night of it, when the telephone bell rang.
The bell sounded shrill and urgent and startled me, probably because, up to now, the cabin had been as still and as silent as a poor relation at a wedding.
I lifted the receiver.
‘Hello?’
Above the faint humming on the line I could hear a dance band playing a waltz. The high notes of the muted trumpet suggested Glyn Boos’s Serenaders; that would make the call from the Country Club.
‘Mr. Malloy?’ A woman’s voice: pitched low with a little drawl in it. A voice calculated to stimulate male interest. At any rate it stimulated mine.
‘Speaking.’
‘My name is Serena Dedrick. I’m at the Country Club just now. Can you come over? I can offer you a job if you want it.’
I wondered why she couldn’t have waited until the morning, but then the Dedricks seemed to specialize in out-of-office hours. It didn’t worry me. I wanted her custom.
‘Certainly, Mrs. Dedrick. I’ll be right over. Do I ask at the desk for you?’
‘I’ll be in my car in the parking lot. It’s a black Cad. Will you be long?’
‘A quarter of an hour.’
‘I will wait that long, but no longer.’ The drawl had sharpened
‘I’m on my way…’ I began, but she had hung up.
I went into the bathroom to inspect myself in the mirror, and decided I looked neat enough without being gaudy. As I straightened my tie, I wondered what she wanted: probably some first-hand information about the kidnapping. From the pictures I had seen of her and from the sound of her voice, she wouldn’t be satisfied with anything second-hand.
I got the Buick out of the garage and drove fast up Ross-more Avenue that skirts the golfcourse, where a couple of cranks were trying to play golf in the moonlight with the aid of luminous balls, turned left up Glendora Avenue and arrived I at the imposing entrance of the Country Club with four I minutes of the quarter of an hour in hand.
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