Death After Breakfast (21 page)

He was the anonymous little man I had assumed to be Duval’s secretary.

The room was suddenly flooded with people; Hardy and three plainclothes cops, Betsy Ruysdale, who’d evidently been with Hardy, waiting, and Mrs. Haven, holding the snarling little spaniel in her arms. Our hero!

I remember Ruysdale turning off the stereo and going to sit by Chambrun. Hardy was kneeling by the secretary’s body—had they said his name was Jacques Bordeau?—feeling for a throat pulse. He looked up and the expression on his face gave us an answer. Bordeau was not going to tell us anything, now or ever!

“When the dog barked—and bless him, Victoria,” Chambrun said, “I took up a position just inside the front door—with this.” He held out the poker. “I thought I would simply knock the gun out of his hand if he had one. I had the music going. He knew how to work the lock. He pushed the door in, but he was turned at such an angle that we were instantly facing each other. That .44—I think it’s under him—was aimed straight at my gut. There was no time to be clever. I just brought the poker down on his head with all the strength I have. He was so shocked to find me there, facing him, that his reactions failed him. He lost a heartbeat in time, and in losing it, lost his only chance.” He glanced at his watch. “We don’t have time to get to the airport to intercept Duval,” he said “We’ll have to trust Jerry.”

“I can reach police at the airport,” Hardy said. “We have reason to arrest him now if this is his man.”

“It’s his man,” I said.

The scene at the airport must have been tense, if brief. According to Jerry Dodd, Duval came off the plane and, exactly as Chambrun had predicted, headed for a pay telephone. He dialed a number, waited; dialed it again and waited. He came out of the booth angry and anxious, and found himself confronted by Jerry.

“I’m from the hotel, Mr. Duval,” Jerry said. “I’ve brought a car. Taxis are sometimes hard to come by at this time in the morning.”

“I’m not going directly to the Beaumont,” Duval told him. “Thanks all the same.”

He started to move away and found two plainclothes cops standing on either side of him.

“Your secretary has been killed at the Hotel Beaumont,” he was told. You are wanted there for questioning.”

Jerry told us that Duval’s expression didn’t alter by a hair; no shock, no surprise. It was as though he was prepared.

“So be it,” was all he said.

It was about a quarter past two in the morning when the two plainclothes men and Jerry delivered Duval to Chambrun’s office at the hotel. Chambrun was sitting at his desk. I was there along with Hardy and Betsy Ruysdale.

It was a strange moment. Chambrun’s hooded eyes were fixed intently on Duval. Duval, his shaved head gleaming in the light from the chandelier, seemed unaware of anyone else but Chambrun. Finally it was Chambrun who spoke.

“You’ve had some rather elaborate cosmetic surgery done, Perrault,” he said.

Perrault! The name came up into focus. Hugo Perrault, known thirty-five years ago as the mad Butcher of Montmartre. Dead more than thirty years, if I remembered Chambrun’s story correctly. A plane crash while trying to escape from Paris; the man from whom Chambrun had escaped in Laura Hemmerly’s apartment in Paris during the occupation.

“When a man has faced death, no amount of disguise will hide his would-be killer,” Duval said, quietly. “The eyes. There is no way to disguise the eyes.” He drew a deep breath. “I wonder if I might have a glass of water?”

Ruysdale moved to Chambrun’s desk and poured water into a glass from a thermos jug there. She took it to Duval.

“Thank you,” Duval said. “I have a splitting headache.” He took a flat tin of aspirin tablets from his pocket and quickly swallowed a couple of them.

Chambrun half rose from his chair, and then settled back, his face a rock-hard mask.

“They’ve told you about Bordeau,” Hardy, said. “Mr. Chambrun killed him before he could kill Mr. Chambrun.”

“You still are able to move quickly, Chambrun,” Duval said “I must move quickly now.”

“I know,” Chambrun said.

“Jacques Bordeau was the son of a close associate of mine in the days when I first knew you, Chambrun,” Duval said. “A terrorist of the first order, finally wanted by police all over Europe. I took him under my wing because I thought, some day, he might be useful. Violence was all that gave him pleasure. It was to him what heroin is to an addict. When I had to come here for the filming, I knew I couldn’t risk your identifying me.”

“What could Chambrun do if he identified you?” Hardy asked

“You don’t understand the world of the past, Lieutenant,” Duval said. “There are underground forces, mainly in Israel, still searching for what they call war criminals. Men like Eichmann, men like me. They think of us as Jew killers. Identified I would be snatched away, tried, executed.

“That plane crash, thirty-three years ago, I did not die in it as you can see, Chambrun. But I was terribly burned. A plastic surgeon built me a new face. I had a chance to make a new life. I did. I took a new name. I have reached the top of my profession as a director of films. Only once or twice in all that time has there been a danger of exposure. I knew, when it was decided to film here at the Beaumont, that there was the risk of your spotting me, Chambrun. Bordeau and I arranged to have you absent. You were not to be harmed unless you made it necessary. You didn’t make it necessary.”

“But you found you had another enemy in the hotel,” Chambrun said.

The corner of Duval’s mouth twitched. “Laura Hemmerly,” he said “now Mrs. Kauffman. I didn’t dream who she was—this Mrs. Kauffman—when I sent for her to discuss the filming schedule with her. When she came into my suite I couldn’t believe it. Thirty-five years ago I had been her lover in Paris. That was why she set you up that time in the Avenue Klebert, Chambrun. I was her man. But—when that plane crashed and I was, as you might say, rebuilt, no one could know, not even a lover. So, three days ago I found myself facing her. I knew who she was, but I wasn’t sure she’d recognized me—till she phoned. She knew, and she would use what she knew. I knew I was in the clutches of a blackmailer forever. So—I turned Bordeau loose. I think he took a spectacular pleasure in what he did.”

“Bastard!” Jerry Dodd said.

“As I said, violence was Jacques’s special delight.”

“I think I must hurry you, Duval,” Chambrun said. “Why Shirley Thomas?”

“An unfortunate situation,” Duval said. “I regret it, though I suspect that doesn’t matter to you. She called me.”

“And got the answering machine?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t quite tell your Los Angeles policeman the truth. She got me. She told me she was helping the police dig out facts about Laura Kauffman. She had a list of names, given her by Laura’s husband. Laura had evidently taunted him with her past adventures. Near the head of the list was one Hugo Perrault. Did I know anything about him—since I must have lived in Paris at that time?” Duval shook his head. “Was she on to me? Was that why she asked me? I couldn’t risk it. I told her I couldn’t discuss it then but would she be at home at three thirty. I would call her then. Of course I had no intention of calling her. I just wanted to be sure she’d be at home when Bordeau went to see her. I called him, gave him his orders.”

“You sonofabitch!” I heard myself say.

“About Chester Cole,” Chambrun asked. “What has happened to him?”

“Cole is—is somewhere at the far ends of the earth,”

Duval said. “He—he had dug up something about Bordeau’s past, not mine. He was on the point of telling you, Bordeau thought. Bordeau frightened Cole out of his life and he took off for God knows where.”

Duval lifted a hand to his throat and made a little moaning sound. “When Cole hears—that we are both dead—he will reappear.”

Duval dropped down on his hands and knees and then rolled over on his back and lay there, gasping for breath. Hardy rushed to him.

“Nothing you can do, Walter,” Chambrun said. “In the old days, the days of the first terror, men like Duval, men like me, carried with us the way out. You will find those aren’t aspirin tablets in that little tin box.”

“You let him do it?” Hardy said. Chambrun’s hands were quite steady as he lit a cigarette. “It will save us being involved in a long, sensational trial. Does it matter who stopped him, the law or himself?”

He didn’t say it, but I can imagine he was thinking he had a hotel to run and nothing must interfere with that.

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copyright © 1978 by Judson Philips

cover design by Julianna Lee

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