by Jack Batten
“Who was it?” I asked. “And did we seem to be at cross-purposes in this conversation?”
“You’re a Canuck, right then?”
“So far, so good.”
“Orright then,” Terrill said, “I heard two blokes in your room. The voices on them were Canadian like yours. What I thought, one of them was you, or whoever had the room with the sheila. But later on, after I talked to you out here, after I thought about it, it wasn’t you.”
“Sheila?”
“Woman. Lady. Girl. The pretty little one with the dark hair.”
“She’s an Annie.”
Terrill gave an impatient wave. Part of his hand came away from the beer bottle. It was a Tuborg.
“What’s the time frame we’re working on here?” I asked. “When did you hear these two voices?”
“Cripes, you got the bleedin’ questions, haven’t you then?”
“Appreciate it if you bear with me, Mr. Terrill. It could help on a matter I care about. Other people care too.”
“Well, I don’t mind,” Terrill said. “The time I heard the voices, that part’s easy. It was ten minutes ... something under that maybe ... five minutes, ten minutes before you came out where you’re standing right now, on the balcony.”
“That’s also before the guy must have fallen off the, uh, roof?”
“A touch before, right.”
“And you thought one of the men you heard in my room sounded like me?”
Terrill nodded his head and swigged from his Tuborg.
“But wasn’t,” I said. “And the other voice belonged to a Canadian too, but didn’t sound like me?”
Terrill did more nodding and swigging.
“Okay, the big question,” I said, “can you describe the second voice?”
“Bloody guess I can.” Terrill was aggressively indignant. “It’s my job, isn’t it then?”
“What, accents?”
“Voices, mate. I’m a sound man for ABC.”
“You work for the American Broadcasting Company?”
Terrill unhooked his clog from the balcony railing. “The Australian Broadcasting Corporation,” he said indignantly.
“Chalk up what I said to North American parochialism.”
“We got a unit here shooting a documentary on Paul Cox,” Terrill said. “But you probably never heard of the bloke.”
“One of the really original film directors around,” I said. “He did Man of Flowers. Loved that one. Um, let’s see, My First Wife and, what else, the movie about Van Gogh.”
“Orright then.” Terrill seemed mollified by my praise for Australia’s own Paul Cox.
“The second voice,” I said, “can you tell me about it?”
Terrill hesitated. “These two blokes lift something out of your room?” he asked. “Is that what you’re on about?”
“Let’s say they were uninvited guests.”
Terrill’s eyes were an acute blue, made even sharper by the coppery tan of his face. His eyes spent a few seconds looking into mine. I kept my mouth shut and concentrated on not blinking.
“No harm I suppose,” Terrill said. He folded his arms. The Tuborg was almost empty. “This other bloke,” Terrill said, “he sounded like he talked through his nose. Lot of Poms do that, English.”
“So does one variety of Canadian.”
“Bloke had a loud voice. Bit cranky, he sounded too.”
“Think you’d recognize the voice if you heard it again?”
“Why not?” A hint of belligerence crept back into Terrill’s tone.
“There’s a catch,” I said.
“Wot then?”
“The voice will be speaking over the telephone.”
“No matter.”
I tilted my head in the direction of the room. “Want to strike while the iron’s hot?” I said. “Come in now and get on with the phone call?”
“Let me fetch m’self another piggy.”
“Excuse me?”
“Bottle of beer, mate. Want one?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks.”
Terrill disappeared in search of his beer. The first voice he had heard coming from my room on the morning of Jamie’s death must have belonged to Jamie himself. His vocal inflections, the run-of-the-mill Southern Ontario pitch and timbre, were enough like mine, superficially anyway, for Terrill to have briefly supposed it was me in the room. It was the second voice that counted. It had to belong to the guy who pushed Jamie into space. From Colin Terrill’s description, Mike Rolland wasn’t the voice’s owner, not if the voice was Canadian. And it wasn’t the voice of a Clutch, not Georges or Emile. Hell, they didn’t even speak English.
Terrill returned with another Tuborg and without the weighty shoes. He climbed barefoot from his balcony to mine. The distance was only a yard, but from seven storeys up, I wouldn’t have taken it. Terrill took it in stride. One stride.
In my room, I dialed the Negresco Hotel.
“How many words you think you’ll need for identification purposes?” I asked Terrill. “Hello be enough?”
“Bit of a natter is more like it, mate.”
I asked the operator at the Negresco for the Cartwright suite. She rang through, and I held the phone to accommodate Colin Terrill’s left ear and my own right.
“Yes.” It was Pamela’s voice.
“Not that one, mate,” Terrill said to me. He had a wide grin on his tanned face. I put a finger to my lips to shush him.
“Yes?” Pamela said again. “Who the hell is this?”
“It’s me,” I said. “Crang.”
“Someone’s with you.”
“Listen, sorry to bother you at a time of family crisis, but is Archie handy?”
“What do you want with him?” Pamela sounded out of sorts. “And answer me about whoever else is on the line.”
“Just a neighbour dropped by to borrow a cup of vodka.”
“Don’t kid me, Crang. That was an Australian accent. Australians don’t drink vodka. Nothing but beer in that miserable outpost they call a country.”
Terrill made motions like he was going to vent some spleen over the telephone line. I clapped a hand against his mouth.
“This Australian is a sophisticated member of the film community,” I said. “You mind if I speak to Archie?”
“What does anybody expect from a country settled by convicts?” Pamela grumped on. “They’re a race of beer drinkers and women haters.”
Terrill sputtered into my hand.
“I’ll give you Archie,” Pamela said, “But don’t keep him. We’re due for a conference in Daddy’s room.”
There was a thonk from the other end as Pamela set down the phone.
“Let me run this next voice past you,” I said to Terrill, “and no comments till we hang up. Okay?”
I took my hand away from his mouth.
“Bloody woman,” Terrill said. He upended the Tuborg bottle into his mouth. I dried my hand on my jeans.
“What is it, Crang?” Archie honked into the phone.
“Nice to hear your voice, Arch,” I said. I looked at Terrill. He motioned for more conversation. He’d been too intent on guzzling beer to pick up on Archie’s opening remark.
“The reason I called you, Arch,” I said, “I want to thank you for taking my side yesterday afternoon. Damned decent of you.”
Archie did nothing except breathe into his receiver. I held the phone closer to Terrill’s ear and waited.
“Yes,” Archie said. He stopped at the one word. Surely he didn’t read anything fishy into my phone call. The call was a flimsy device, but it couldn’t be transparent enough to raise Archie’s suspicions about anything. Or could it?
“Nobody else in the family appreciated the work I did,” I said. I was trying shamelessly to prime Archi
e’s pump. “But you stepped right in there with a vote of approbation.”
“You’re welcome, Crang,” Archie said. “I thought you did fine. Now, if that’s all, you can understand we have a great deal on our plates over here.”
“That’s the bloke,” Terrill said, not moderating the volume of his own voice.
I whapped my hand back on his mouth.
“Bloke?” Archie shouted from his end. “Who is a bloke? What bloke? Crang, are you there?”
“Time to go, Arch,” I was speaking rapidly. “Just called to tip my hat to you. Thanks tons.”
“Damn you, Crang, who was that? What foolishness are you up to now?”
“No foolishness, Arch. Cross my heart.”
I hung up.
“You’re sure?” I asked Terrill.
“Bloody right. You think I wouldn’t recognize a stuck-up bloke like that one there?”
I plunked down on the bed. My energy had deserted me in a rush. Archie? He’d bumped off Jamie? It was my own little game, using Terrill, that seemed to have unmasked Archie as the killer. Still, the notion took the wind out of my sails.
“The woman who cheeked off Australia bloody annoyed me,” Terrill said. “Who was she?”
“My ex-wife.”
“Good-oh for you she’s not still your wife.”
“Somebody else told me the same thing the other day.”
Terrill drank some beer. “Get what you wanted on the phone then, mate?” he asked brightly.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“You sure? I’ve seen happier blokes than you look right now,” Terrill said. He was standing over me. The hairs on his legs were bleached white by the sun.
I raised my head. “It’s one of those situations where I feel half-glad, half-sad,” I said. “Know what I mean?”
“I don’t see halves, mate,” Terrill said. “You look all of a piece to me. Like a bleeding grave digger.”
“Not a bad analogy.”
I stood up.
“Better siddown a bit, mate,” Terrill said.
I sat.
“I dunno what lark you’re on,” Terrill said, “but I’ll leave you to it.”
“Thanks.”
“You look like shit, mate.”
“Thanks again.” I sank back onto the bed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
After I got over feeling shaken up, I felt angry. After that, I felt like a drink. The whole process of shifting feelings, beginning to end, took five minutes.
The pint of vodka I’d bought for room purposes was in the cabinet over the sink in the bathroom. I poured three fingers into a toothbrush glass. It tasted warm but potent. I carried the glass back to the bedroom and sat in the chair with my feet propped on the desk.
Something was sticking in my craw, and it wasn’t the room-temperature vodka. Swotty Whetherhill had played flimflam with a multimillion-dollar client account. Pamela Cartwright had cheated on her husband. The husband, pompous Archie, had dusted off the guy Pamela was cheating with. And who was it who got left with a moral and legal dilemma? Me. That’s what stuck in my craw.
In order to bring Archie to account, I couldn’t move through normal channels. Inspector Farinaud was the only normal channel I knew, and I’d already deceived him. It would save both of us many complications if I continued to deceive the good Inspector.
Sure, I’d told the crew at the Negresco I was willing to speak openly and freely to Farinaud if I had the supportive presence of Cayuga & Granark with me. But that was when I had thought open and frank speaking would rope in Mike Rolland. Now I knew it would rope in Archie. That put a different spin on the offer.
Actually the difference in spin wouldn’t be so much in my offer as in its reception by Swotty. He’d be a heck of a lot less inclined to aid in the unmasking of Jamie Haddon’s murderer if the murderer happened to be married to his daughter. He wouldn’t be inclined at all. He’d go the other way. It’d be Watergate all over again. Cover-up. Stonewall. Erase the tapes.
I was working myself into a lather. I got up and paced. There wasn’t much room for pacing. Not enough room to swing a cat in, either. I resumed my seat at the desk and thought over the events of the last couple of days.
When I’d seen Jamie resting his backside against the balcony railing on Wednesday morning, Archie Cartwright must have been deeper in the room. He was out of my range of vision, but Colin Terrill had picked up Archie’s voice. Jamie was probably giving Archie some lip. Jamie was talented at that. He must have been rubbing it in about his affair with Pamela. Then what? Then Archie shut Jamie’s mouth. Shut it for good.
As far as the murder went, my reasoning accounted for the two classic ingredients, motivation and opportunity. Motivation: Archie hated Jamie for what he’d done to Archie’s marriage and self-esteem. Opportunity: Archie was the only other guy in the room with Jamie. Move over Sherlock Holmes, it was a tidy piece of deduction.
I stepped out on the balcony. There must have been a brilliant sunset going on. I couldn’t see it, not from our side of the hotel, but I watched its reflection bouncing off the water and the buildings over toward Cap d’Antibes. Down below, the street was picking up with evening traffic. Jamie’s dried blood was still visible on the sidewalk. The sight drove me indoors and back to my ratiocinations.
I had Archie nailed as the killer, but that left me with the problem of where to park my knowledge. Take it to Swotty? Rub his nose in it? Ridiculous. Forget that choice. Farinaud? That would raise awkward implications. Work through Pamela? No, again. She’d already lost a lover. Losing her husband wouldn’t make for clear thinking on her part.
Well, who?
Trum.
I sat a little straighter at the desk. Trum, his father, and his brother. They weren’t precisely neutral parties. C&G paid Trum’s salary and paid whatever hefty amounts the other Frasers billed the trust company for services rendered. But the three of them were lawyers and officers of the court. They couldn’t ignore a murder. Even if the murder had happened in a foreign jurisdiction? Well, hell, the dead guy and the guy who caused the death were Canadian nationals. That ought to bring the Frasers in for a share of my moral and legal dilemma.
I’d catch a cab to Nice and the Negresco, collar Trum, brief him on what I’d learned, and together we might brainstorm our way to a solution. Maybe it wasn’t much of a plan, but it’d get me out of the hotel room.
I took a long shower and shaved for the second time that day. In the closet, there was a long-sleeved sweatshirt in black and a linen jacket in wheat. I put them on. I felt chic and well-groomed and calm and organized and decisive. I straightened the jacket on my shoulders, went into the corridor, shut the door and took the elevator to the lobby.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
There were no taxis at the stand in front of the hotel. I walked south. There would be cabs cruising on Rue d’Antibes. I whistled the beginning of “If I Were a Bell.” When I got to the part about “ding, dong, ding, dong, ding,” I saw Archie. He was thirty yards down the sidewalk and coming toward me. He wasn’t whistling.
Archie was dressed like Robert Redford in Out of Africa. Crisp khaki slacks and jacket, belt in loops around the jacket, open-necked white shirt. He looked bold and dauntless. A man on a mission. He didn’t resemble a person who might run amok. But appearances could be deceiving.
I stood in the middle of the sidewalk. My mind shuffled through alternatives to waiting and watching Archie Cartwright bear down on me. I could take to my heels. I could request asylum from a friendly passerby. I could fall down on the sidewalk and kick my feet in the air. Each choice seemed beneath my dignity. The side pockets on Archie’s safari jacket were wide and deep. He had his right hand shoved into the pocket on the right side. His left hand was free and clenched. I kept on standing still until Archie pulled up in front of me. At close range, his face seemed tighter
and more constricted than it had from a distance.
“Listen, Arch,” I said, “there are ways that lawyers can work this thing out.”
“I have a knife in my right hand, Crang,” Archie said. He was standing very close to me.
“A knife? That’s ridiculous, Arch.”
“Listen to what I say.”
“But a knife. Arch. WASPs don’t carry knives. Guys in ghettos, yeah, drug dealers. You should have something more traditional, a fowling piece maybe.”
“Your mouth will do you no good,” Archie said. His head was four or five inches from mine and slightly higher.
“Could you back off a bit, Arch?” I said. “Where you’re standing is called crowding the other person’s space.”
Archie’s left hand clasped my arm above the elbow. It was casually done, but the strength of the grip matched Emile Clutch’s. Archie’s purpose wasn’t to hold me in place. It was to get me on the move. He swung himself to my left flank, his left arm reaching across his body to keep me against him, his right hand buried in the khaki pocket. I felt the tip of the knife through the fabric of his jacket and mine. We walked south, the odd couple.
“Where did you pick up stuff like this, Arch?” I asked. “A Mafia encounter group?”
“I am a major in the Queen’s Own Reserves.”
“They teach knives in the Queen’s Own?”
“All weapons,” Archie said. “Keep walking, Crang.”
It was well past twilight. The street lamps had come on. People sauntered up and down the sidewalk, going to dinner, heading for home, glasses of wine, conversation, loved ones, a few laughs. I was linked to a nut with a shiv.
“This is crazy, Arch,” I said.
Archie pricked the end of the knife into the flesh around my hip bone.
We crossed Rue d’Antibes. The back of the Majestic Hotel blocked out much of the southern sky. Archie steered us right, going west, on a narrow, quiet street. Most of one side of the street was taken up by a not particularly striking cathedral.
“With me, Arch, the signs are you intend to harm me. But I don’t think you intended to shove Jamie off the balcony. That alters your defence in law for the damage you do to me. Canadian law anyway.”
