The Cannibal Who Overate, page 17
Then the answer came to Hardy. If Palmer hadn’t seen who hit him, Moon would be in the position of claiming that this proved how close the mythical killer had been to reaching him—just a few steps from his back door.
The front doorbell rang and Hardy’s man crossed the room in a hurry to let in the doctor.
“Stay with him,” Hardy ordered his man, pointing at Storm. “Don’t let him out of that chair. Don’t let him near a phone.”
“Am I under arrest?” Storm asked. Some of his self-confidence was returning.
“You’re damn right,” Hardy said. “Homicide, before the fact.”
“I’ve a right to get in touch with my lawyer,” Storm said.
“You can try,” Hardy said. “If he tries, Joe, take him apart.”
“I’ll break you for this, Hardy,” Storm said.
“Could be. And if I think you got a chance, buster, I may break you first—slowly and into small pieces.” He followed the doctor into the bedroom where the injured Palmer lay.
The second course of their dinner, a delicate green turtle soup, was just being served when John and Alison saw Jerry Dodd bearing down on them from the entrance to the Blue Lagoon. His professional cheerfulness was notably missing.
“Sorry,” he said. “You two are wanted in Chambrun’s office.”
“Oh Jerry!” Alison said. “We’ve only just started dinner. Maybe half an hour?”
“Moon’s loose,” Jerry said. “Slugged one of Hardy’s men. Anyone he might have an eye on’s wanted in Chambrun’s office. That’s you, Mr. Wills. The boss wants Miss Barnwell, too. He thinks Moon might be interested in her.”
“In me?” Alison said, her eyes wide.
“He’s blown his lid,” Jerry said. “The boss thinks you might be used to put some kind of pressure on Mr. Wills. Sorry about the soup.”
They followed Jerry across the lobby to the bank of elevators. Anyone familiar with the hotel routines would have been conscious of unusual tensions. There were cops at the revolving doors; plain-clothes men were hurrying from one bar and restaurant room to another. Just as they reached the elevators Mr. Amato came bustling toward them from the outside. Somehow he looked absurd in a gaudy plaid sports jacket, tweed top coat and an Alpine hat. The black coat and striped trousers were his working uniform and he hadn’t stopped to change into them. He carried a manila envelope under his arm.
“Is the party off?” he asked eagerly. “Mr. Chambrun asked me to rush down here with the guest list. I took it home so I could drop it off with the artist who paints the place cards in the morning. Is it off?”
“My guess is you can comfort your ulcer,” Jerry said.
They shot up to four and along the corridor into Chambrun’s office. John was suddenly aware that Alison’s hand was locked tightly in his.
The office was crowded. John saw that Willard Storm, looking a lot less like a Madison Avenue smoothie, was huddled in a chair in a corner. Chambrun was behind his desk, bending over a set of blueprints. Hardy and half a dozen plain-clothes men were bunched around him.
Hardy pointed at the prints. “It’s hard to see how he could have gotten out of the hotel without being seen,” he said. “You say there’s a watchman on the service entrances at night?”
“After delivery hours,” Chambrun said. “As a matter of fact you can’t deliver an ice cube to this place without being checked. The trouble is no one would have a reason to stop Moon until fifteen minutes ago. It might seem odd for him to leave the hotel by way of the kitchens, but he’s an odd guy.”
“But he’d be remembered! He’s known!” Hardy said.
Chambrun’s lips were tight. “He hasn’t been remembered so far,” he said. “But it takes time to check, Lieutenant. There are over twelve hundred employees on duty at this moment.”
“Well, there’s no place he could go but down,” Hardy said. He began giving orders to his men, pointing to certain check points on the blueprints.
The motherly Mrs. Veach, chief telephone operator, appeared at that moment carrying a telephone with a jack attachment and a head set. Chambrun smiled at her.
“Thanks for your ever-cooperative spirit, Mrs. Veach. Set yourself up over there at that big table.” He carried the blueprints over to her. “Calls will be coming in from all over the hotel in a few minutes. They’ll tell you that a certain exit is covered. Mark it on the print. The housekeepers on each floor are searching broom closets, linen rooms, and checking each room and apartment on every floor. When you are given the all clear, mark that floor off.”
“If you had some thumbtacks, Mr. Chambrun, it would show up faster on these blueprints.”
“Good girl,” Chambrun said. He produced thumbtacks from his desk. Mrs. Veach plugged her phone into a jack in the wall board. There was an instant buzzing. Mrs. Veach took the call and promptly placed a thumbtack in the blueprint. Chambrun glanced at it, gave her a fatherly pat on the shoulder and turned away to confront the panting Amato.
“Thanks for being so quick, Amato,” he said.
“Is the party off, Mr. Chambrun? What’s going on? Has he called off the party?”
Chambrun smiled at him. “The party’s off, my friend. Go home and get yourself drunk. It’ll do your ulcer more good than you imagine. Just leave me that list.”
Amato handed over the list. “I prayed,” he said. “I prayed all the way down in the taxi. I didn’t really believe, but I prayed.” He went out, almost dancing, without ever having found out what was going on.
The office was quiet now except for the almost constant buzzing of Mrs. Veach’s phone. The blueprints were rapidly accumulating tacks. Hardy watched over her shoulder, sucking on his lower lip, doing a little praying himself. He was waiting for a call that wouldn’t result in a thumbtack. That would mean someone had seen Moon.
Chambrun spoke to Jerry Dodd. “Our two friends?”
“Gamayel hasn’t shown,” Jerry said, “but the men at both entrances are ready to flag him when he comes in. I sent Jack Stroehmeyer to the Opera House. He’ll bring Mrs. Haven back—ride with her every step of the way.”
“I guess that’s all we can do,” Chambrun said. He gave John and Alison a tight, tired little smile. “Sorry about the dinner, children. Jerry brought you up to date?”
“We don’t really know what’s happened,” Alison said.
Chambrun gave it to them. “Slugging the man Palmer doesn’t make too much sense, unless Moon’s run completely amok. I felt we couldn’t take the chance that he hasn’t. He might take a swipe at anyone he has reason to dislike.”
“He must have got out of the hotel,” John said. “Surely he couldn’t stay hidden for five minutes here. Everybody knows him.”
Chambrun waved wearily toward Mrs. Veach’s blueprints. “Have you the remotest idea how many places there are to hide in a place like this? Excuse me a minute. I want to look at this list.” He unfolded the papers Amato had brought him. He was obviously looking for a specific name, and he found it almost at once. His mouth tightened. He turned to Jerry.
“Was Stroehmeyer going to phone you from the Opera House, Jerry?”
“Well, no, Mr. Chambrun. That is unless something went wrong—she wasn’t there or something?”
“Well, that’s that. I want you downstairs, Jerry. The minute her car gets here I want her covered. No one’s to get anywhere near her from the car to this office except you and Stroehmeyer. Understand?”
“Can do,” Jerry said, and took off.
“Mrs. Haven and Gamayel are our only possible keys to this puzzle,” Chambrun explained to John and Alison. “It’s something of a disaster they’re both out of the hotel.” He turned to look at Mrs. Veach. The phone had buzzed and she was putting another thumbtack in the blueprint.
“What can I do to help?” John asked.
“Sit tight,” Chambrun said. “When Mrs. Haven gets here you and Alison may both be useful.”
“You think she may have the answer for you?”
The heavy lids of Chambrun’s eyes were almost closed. “I think she is the answer,” he said.
At just a little after ten o’clock the ancient Pierce-Arrow pulled up at the side entrance to the Beaumont. The old man driving the car got out and walked around to open the door. Inside the car Mrs. George Haven sat rigidly upright, making no move. Gently, almost reverentially, the old chauffeur removed a fur robe from her knees. Jack Stroehmeyer, Jerry Dodd’s man, who had been sitting beside Mrs. Haven in embarrassed silence, got out the far side of the car and came around to the sidewalk. From inside the hotel Jerry Dodd and two policemen appeared.
The old chauffeur offered his hand and Mrs. Haven got slowly out of the car.
“Sorry we had to break up your evening, Mrs. Haven,” Jerry said.
“I sincerely hope for your sake, Dodd, your employer has a reasonable explanation for this interference with my evening. Do you realize Nilsson90 was singing tonight?” She brushed away Jerry’s arm. “I don’t need your help, Dodd. Otto is used to my ways.”
The old chauffeur, who scarcely came up to Mrs. Haven’s shoulder, took her arm and helped her across the pavement to the revolving door.
“Good night, Otto.”
“Good night, Madam.”
Mrs. Haven propelled herself violently through the door and set sail for the far end of the lobby. Dodd and Stroehmeyer had literally to run to catch up with her. Her blue evening coat, lined with white fox, trailed out behind her. The dress under it was out of Great Expectations.91 At the elevator she spun on Jerry.
“I can get to my rooms without your help, Dodd.”
“I’m afraid we have to go to Mr. Chambrun’s office, ma’am.”
“If Chambrun wants to explain this extraordinary evening he can come to me,” Mrs. Haven said. “Mind you, Dodd, I’ve never trusted the man. In the seven months I’ve lived here he’s never once spoken to Toto. Beware a man who doesn’t like dogs, Dodd.”
“It’s a police matter, Mrs. Haven,” Jerry said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to go to Mr. Chambrun’s office.”
“Police matter!” Her voice boomed out so that people at the far end of the lobby turned.
“Something to do with Mr. Moon, ma’am. Please, this way.”
Her hand, like a bony claw covered with rings, closed over his wrist. “The plot against Mr. Moon has been successful?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. At least we think not. Lieutenant Hardy and Mr. Chambrun will tell you what it’s all about, ma’am.”
She leaned on him so hard he thought she was suddenly ill. But after a moment she straightened up and walked into the waiting elevator. They rode to four in silence. Stroehmeyer got out first and looked up and down the corridor. Mrs. Haven followed him. Jerry opened the office door for her, and she sailed in, evidently recovered from her moment of weakness.
The first person she spotted as she made her entrance was John Wills. There was an angry glitter in her eyes. “Do I have you to thank for this, Wills?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Haven,” John said. “I have told Lieutenant Hardy and Mr. Chambrun—and Alison—about our visit. But that isn’t why they’ve asked you to come here.”
“Asked me! I was literally dragged out of my opera box by that young man—and Nilsson in her second act! So you were unwilling for any of us to have any privacy, Wills. I am disappointed. Not in you, but in my own judgment of you.”
“So much has happened since I saw you, Mrs. Haven. You didn’t know that Moon’s secretary had been murdered?”
“I think,” Chambrun said, gently, “it would be better if Mrs. Haven sat down.” He bowed toward the comfortable green leather armchair by his desk.
“Your headwaiter’s manners will get you nowhere with me, Chambrun. A man who could ignore an innocent little dog for seven months—” But she draped herself in the armchair.
Hardy still stood by Mrs. Veach’s table, an expression of awe on his face.
“Would you care for some coffee, Mrs. Haven?” Chambrun asked.
“I would not! If you have some good bonded bourbon whiskey—?”
“At once.”
While Chambrun went to the cabinet behind his desk Alison knelt beside the old woman’s chair. “What’s happened is pretty shocking, Mrs. Haven,” she said. “It seems there is no plot to kill Mr. Moon.”
“No plot!”
“No plot against Moon. He is the plotter and the plot is against one of you.”
“What do you mean, Barnwell, by ‘one of you’?”
“The club,” John said. “Mr. Gamayel’s club.”
Chambrun came back with a two-ounce whiskey glass of bourbon and handed it to the old woman.
“You call that a drink?” She tossed it off in one large gulp. “Will somebody make some sense out of this for me. I should like to know what you think justifies tearing me forcibly away from a performance of Siegfried.”92
In a quiet, almost conversational tone, Chambrun brought the old woman up to date. She listened, sitting very straight in her chair.
“So you see, Mrs. Haven,” Chambrun concluded, “the man is aiming at someone and we haven’t the slightest notion who it may be. Mr. Wills led us to believe that you and Mr. Gamayel might be able to help. We haven’t been able to locate Mr. Gamayel. We had to bring you here in the hope of saving a life. I think even the great Nilsson would forgive you if she knew why you’d walked out on her.”
“Don’t be an idiot, Chambrun,” the old woman said, in a hard unfamiliar voice. She looked straight past and through them as though they weren’t there.
“Let me be very precise, Mrs. Haven,” Chambrun said. “It wasn’t just to get information from you that we brought you here. It seemed quite possible to me that you, yourself, were the target.”
“What nonsense,” she said. But she didn’t look at him.
He turned and picked up that morning’s copy of the Tribune on his desk. It was opened to the page of photographs—Moon with G.B.S., Moon with the Italian film star, Moon with the Prince of Wales, and the studio portrait of the vanished Viola Brooke. He handed it to Mrs. Haven. She looked at it and glanced up at him, sharply.
“I don’t mean to wound you, Mrs. Haven, by telling you that I was only twelve years old at the time it happened—1922, wasn’t it? I don’t think I had ever seen a picture of Viola Brooke until today. It didn’t click with me until I looked at it again tonight.”
“Viola Brooke is dead,” the old woman said, her voice harsh.
“I’m sure all of us in this room would like to respect your wishes, Mrs. Haven. But bear in mind Aubrey Moon knows she is not dead. I think he is mortally afraid of her, Mrs. Haven. I think he means to kill her. You could tell us why and you could help us protect her.”
The old woman was silent for a long time in a room in which nobody else seemed to be breathing.
“You’re right, of course,” she said, in a voice so low they could scarcely hear her. “I am Viola Brooke.”
90 Birgit Nilsson (1918–2005), the great Swedish soprano, sang the role of Isolde on Thursday, February 16, 1961. (On Tuesday, February 14, Renata Tebaldi sang the role of Mimì in La Bohème.) Though Nilsson also appeared in Turandot and Aida, her primary repertoire was the Wagnerian Ring cycle. She performed in Wagner’s Die Walküre on Saturday, February 20, 1960.
91 Charles Dickens’s novel, set in the mid-Victorian era.
92 Siegfried was not performed at the Met in 1960 or 1961; however, it was performed on Tuesday, January 2, 1962, just prior to publication of The Cannibal Who Overate, and starred Birgit Nilsson in the role of Brünnhilde.
Five
John Wills found himself staring at the old woman with a kind of shocked fascination. This was the famous beauty who, forty years ago, had disappeared from her dressing room at a West End theatre in the middle of a performance and never had been heard of again! For almost a year the newspapers had kept her story alive, and had finally given up when there’d been no clues at all to her fate. Viola Brooke who, from all accounts, had almost certainly been Moon’s mistress for a number of years after the first World War!
The old woman’s eyes turned to Willard Storm, huddled in a chair across the office. He was leaning forward, his eyes bright behind the black-rimmed glasses. Here was a story!
“I tell you the truth, Chambrun,” the old woman said, “at great cost to myself. That worm—” and she pointed a bony finger at Storm, “—that worm will have a field day with me. Must he be present if I am to go on?”
“Don’t worry about him, Mrs. Haven,” Hardy said. “He’ll cooperate. He has to, if he doesn’t want the book thrown at him.”
“At the age of seventy-three a woman still has her vanity,” Mrs. Haven said to no one in particular. “Some women retain their beauty in old age. For many reasons I have had to play another game. I have made myself comic to avoid recognition. For thirty-five of those years it was a joyful game. The last five years have been a kind of hell.”
“Your husband died five years ago, Mrs. Haven?” Chambrun asked, gently.
She nodded, her heavily painted eyelids closed.
“It’s not our wish to make things painful for you, Mrs. Haven,” Chambrun said. “In terms of our problem there are certain things we need to know. Ozman Gamayel is your friend?”
“A good, loyal friend.”
“Does he know the truth about you, Mrs. Haven?”
“He does. He and my chauffeur, Otto—and Aubrey—are the only people who did know until now.”
“Have you any idea where Mr. Gamayel is?”
“No. He left my apartment when it was time for me to dress for the opera.”
“Neither of you knew then about Miss Stewart’s murder?”
