Gilded Nightmare (8 page)

“Like Puzzi!” I said. My mouth was cotton-dry.

“Like Puzzi,” Jerry said. “You better get over here.”

A
S I’VE SAID BEFORE,
a big hotel like the Beaumont is in reality a small town in itself. The same things happen in it that happen in any other town; births, natural deaths, suicides, fires, divorces, clandestine love affairs, robberies, business failures, celebrations, funerals—and murder.

Technically, the murder of the girl named Heidi had probably not taken place in the hotel. I say probably not because her body had been found a block away in an alley, and so far there was no indication that it had been carried there from somewhere else, like the hotel. But the dramatis personae were very much a part of the hotel. The police investigation would be centered there with Charmian Zetterstrom and her curious staff. The story would make a field day for the news media, and the Beaumont would come in for an unwanted chunk of lurid publicity. My job, I knew, as I hurried back to the hotel from Shelda’s, would be to soft-pedal that aspect of it as best I could.

The lobby looked normally quiet for eight o’clock in the evening, but I’d noticed two police cars parked down the block from the entrance as I came in.

Karl Nevers, the night reservation man, was on duty at the desk and I hurried over to him.

“The boss’s office,” he said, before I got out a question. “Hardy’s with him.”

As I headed for the elevators, Mike Maggio, the night bell captain, flagged me down. Mike has a gamin Italian face that’s usually screwed up in a mischievous grin. He looked very serious at this moment.

“I’m looking for the long-haired one,” Mike said. “You seen him?”

“What long-haired one?”

“The one with the red pants. Wynn, his name is. He’s missing. Hardy wants him.”

“I haven’t seen him since six o’clock when he was buying a drink for Shelda in the Trapeze.”

Mike’s mischievous grin wrinkled his face. “Shelda’s in good form, I hope,” he said.

“Keep your nose out of my business,” I said, grinning back at him.

I took the elevator to the second floor and headed for Chambrun’s office. “Hardy” was Lieutenant Hardy, a big, dark young man with an athletic build who looks more like a good-natured, if slightly puzzled, college fullback than a Homicide detective. We could be grateful for small mercies. We’d had Hardy with us before. He knew Chambrun and the inner workings of the hotel. He would know who to trust in our setup and wouldn’t waste a lot of time suspecting people like Mrs. Kniffen, the housekeeper, or some other innocent on the staff.

Hardy was with Chambrun and Miss Ruysdale in the inner office. He gave me a friendly nod as I came in. I saw that Chambrun had a set of file cards on his desk. They must be the ones relating to Charmian and her crew.

“Sorry to inconvenience you,” Chambrun said, drily. “The Lieutenant is anxious to find out what he can about the Zetterstrom mob before he starts on a questioning bee. We don’t have much on file except rumors.”

“We have Sam Culver,” I said.

“Sam has gone out somewhere for the evening. No reason he should have told us where he was going.”

“I understand Peter Wynn is among the missing.”

“I half hoped we might find him with you and Shelda,” Chambrun said.

They say at the Beaumont that Chambrun must have some secret peepholes that allow him to see everything that’s going on everywhere at the same time. He was obviously aware that Peter Wynn had been in the Trapeze with Shelda and me.

“You’ve got some kind of a nut prowling the joint,” Hardy said, scowling. “Only a sick mind could do the kind of job that was done on the girl—and the dog!”

“Murder always involves a sick mind,” Chambrun said.

“What actually happened to the girl?” I said. “No one’s told me.”

“Another dog story,” Hardy said. “Woman walking a Pekingese. It started to bark and raise hell at the mouth of an alley down the street. The woman investigated and found the girl. Horror stuff. She was ripped to pieces, head smashed in. Lady had presence of mind enough to call the cops instead of running off screaming by herself. Quick identification. The girl hadn’t been robbed. Eighty-ninety dollars in her handbag, and the key to her room in the Beaumont. We knew who she was in ten minutes. Heidi Brunner.”

“She’s the Amazon’s daughter,” Chambrun said.

“She went out to get a prescription for sleeping pills filled—for the Baroness,” Hardy said. “Never got to the drugstore. The prescription was still in her handbag, signed by Dr. Malinkov.”

“He’s licensed to practice here?” I asked.

Hardy nodded. “He was a top-flight plastic surgeon during World War II. Brought here from Germany toward the end of the war to work on mutilated G.I.’s. Licensed then. He went back to Europe in 1950. Evidently became part of the Zetterstrom world about that time.”

Chambrun glanced at me. “May explain the lady’s lack of wrinkles,” he said.

The red button on Chambrun’s desk phone began to blink. Ruysdale answered, listened, then covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

“It’s Marcus Helwig,” she said. “Both the Baroness and Madame Brunner are in hysterics. He knows the police are about to descend on them. He asks for the chance to answer preliminary questions away from them. Can he come here?”

“God save me from hysterical women,” Hardy said. “Tell him to come. Let me talk to my man there.”

One of Hardy’s assistants was already in the Zetterstrom quarters getting routine information. Hardy told him to send along a police stenographer with Helwig. Without waiting for instructions Ruysdale set up a small table and a chair for the stenotype operator at the far side of the room.

“Thing I don’t like about this,” Hardy said, “is the pattern. When you have a repeated M.O. you learn to expect a sort of chain reaction.”

“M.O. meaning modus operandi,” Chambrun said.

“Meaning method of operation,” Hardy said. “Dog and woman—same pattern. Like you ask yourself, who’s next?”

Helwig arrived with the police stenographer while Ruysdale was preparing a fresh demitasse for Chambrun. Helwig’s eyes were hidden by the black glasses. The grim lines at the corners of his mouth were etched deep, as though a sculptor had chiseled them in stone.

“I appreciate your courtesy in seeing me here,” he said. “As you can imagine, Madame Brunner is distraught. The girl was her daughter. The Baroness was very fond of the girl. She’s had her as a personal maid for some years. She is shocked, and a little frightened, I think.”

“Frightened?” Chambrun asked, his heavy eyelids lifting.

“Is it unreasonable for her to imagine that this is some sort of attack on
her?
” Helwig asked. “First her precious dog, then her close personal maid.”

“This afternoon in the lobby, when there was the commotion with Stephen Wood, the Baroness said, ‘I have been in some danger recently.’ What did she mean? Why, to come to the point, does she have a bodyguard?”

Helwig took a silver cigarette case from his breast pocket. I saw that it was an exact duplicate of the one carried by Peter Wynn. Merry Christmas from the Zetterstroms? “It is permitted to smoke?” he asked, and took a cigarette from the case and lit it with a silver lighter when Hardy nodded. “Surely, Mr. Chambrun, you are aware of some of the circumstances surrounding extraordinary wealth. The Baroness has one of the largest private fortunes in the world today. She’s automatically a target for confidence men, thieves, the operators of dishonest charities, but most of all, for revolutionary crackpots who simply feel she should be eliminated because she is rich. If she had children they’d have to be guarded day and night from people who would see them as prime objects for a kidnapping venture.”

“There are other reasons,” Chambrun said, in a cold voice.

Helwig nodded, as if to acknowledge a reasonableness in Chambrun’s statement. “Baron Zetterstrom was a much-hated man,” he said. “I don’t choose to rise to his defense at this moment. But I concede that every Jew who remembers, or has been taught to remember, Hitler-Germany hated him with a passion. Hated him and everything that was his—including his wife. He was unconventional in the way he lived after the war. There are moralists and religious fanatics who hated him, hate his memory, and hate what is left of his world—including his wife. There are people who attempted to ingratiate themselves with the Baron and Baroness on the Island, dreaming of financial gain, who found themselves tossed out into the night. They hate the Baron’s memory—and his wife.”

“And there are the Bruno Walds of those days,” Chambrun said.

Helwig’s stone mask didn’t alter by a hair. “Yes, there are the Bruno Walds,” he said. “They too hate the Baroness. Does that answer your question as to why a bodyguard, Mr. Chambrun?” He inhaled a deep lungful of smoke and looked around, tentatively, for an ashtray. Ruysdale was at his elbow with one. “When irrational violence appears on stage with the Baroness she has reason to fear that she may be the eventual target. I fear it. I shall urge her to return to the Island, where we can guarantee her safety.”

“Since the lady has so many enemies,” Hardy said, “and since you have evidently been close to the situation for a long time—”

“I was the Baron’s legal adviser before the war,” Helwig said. “Thirty years—and, of course, all the twenty years of his marriage and until today. I serve the Baroness as I served the Baron.”

“Then you must be closely aware of who her enemies may be,” Hardy said.

The corner of Helwig’s mouth twitched. “Do you ask me to pick a murderer for you out of all the population of Israel? Do you ask me to pick one out of a half-million prisoners of war from all the nations of the world who suffered under his wartime disciplines? Do you ask me to pick a murderer out of scores of people who were damaged by the Baron and Baroness’ way of life and from their hundreds of scores of sympathetic relatives and friends? All I can do, Lieutenant, is listen for the stealthy footstep outside her door, for a face across a crowded room that inadvertently reveals the fires of hatred. I know only that there is danger all around her and that it was sheer idiocy for her to leave the Island. But she insisted.”

“And you haven’t heard that stealthy footstep or seen that face here?” Hardy asked. There was irony in his question. He hated what he called “fancy talk.”

Helwig hesitated. “There was Stephen Wood in the lobby this afternoon,” he said. “There is Samuel Culver, who hates her.”

I thought I heard a faint grunt of impatience from Chambrun. I glanced at him. His eyes seemed to be closed.

“They can, of course, be checked out,” Hardy said.

“I trust you will be able to.”

“I understand Mr. Culver was with the Baroness when the dog was found.”

“When the dog was found,” Helwig said. “But may he not have encountered Puzzi on his way to visit the Baroness, killed him, crammed him into a trash can, and then calmly rung the Baroness’ doorbell?”

“Oh, for Godsake,” Chambrun said, impatiently.

“And why would he kill the maid?” Hardy asked.

“To strike cold terror to the Baroness’ heart.”

“He’d commit a brutal murder just to make the Baroness nervous?”

“The art of torture,” Helwig said, “is based on the theory of stretching out for as long as possible the period of pain and fear.”

“You should know,” Chambrun said, suddenly angry. “You were Conrad Zetterstrom’s chief aide, and he was the master.”

“Yes, Mr. Chambrun, I should know,” Helwig said, unruffled.

“You pick on Wood and Culver simply because they are the only people here you know have reason to hate the Baroness?” Hardy asked.

“Yes.”

“But there could be someone else?”

“There could be many others I wouldn’t recognize by sight,” Helwig said. “You see how real the danger is? If I can persuade the Baroness, do I have your permission to take her immediately back to the Island?”

“When we have Heidi Brunner’s killer safely locked away. That’s when you can go places, Mr. Helwig.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Chambrun glanced at Hardy. “May I?” he asked.

“Fire away,” Hardy said.

Chambrun’s bright, bold eyes looked at Helwig from under their heavy lids. “Did Heidi Brunner have any reason to kill the dog?” he asked.

“Why on earth—?” Helwig sounded genuinely startled.

Chambrun shrugged. “She was the dog’s nursemaid,” he said. “She might not have shown it openly, but she could have detested the little beast.”

“But—she didn’t kill herself,” Helwig said. “And I think she was genuinely fond of Puzzi. He was a nice little dog.”

“I am remembering a scene at which you were present, Herr Helwig,” Chambrun said. “When I had reported the death of the dog to the Baroness, she said, ‘An eye for an eye! Whoever did it will be made to suffer just as Puzzi suffered.’ ”

“But that was an extravagant—”

“I got the impression that Masters was quite ready to follow those instructions to the letter.”

“My dear sir—”

“Don’t look so wide-eyed and innocent, Herr Helwig. The suggestion was made. It could very well have been followed out. The dog’s skull was crushed, his body slashed by a dull knife. The girl’s skull was crushed, her body slashed by a dull knife.”

“What about this Masters guy?” Hardy asked.

“He’s a psychotic,” Chambrun said. “You don’t need a degree in psychiatry to spot it. He goes into action without giving it a moment’s thought. He could have killed Stephen Wood in the lobby this afternoon with that karate blow to the throat. He’d have made an old-time Western gunslinger blush with shame at the speed he had a gun into action. I was looking straight into his eyes when he pulled that gun, and I tell you my life was in the balance for about two seconds.”

“What about that gun?” Hardy asked. “It’s a violation of the Sullivan law.”

“He’s licensed to carry it,” Helwig said. He sounded suddenly very tired. The lines at the corners of his grim mouth seemed to be chiseled deeper into his gray face.

“How could he be?” Hardy asked. “You just got in at Kennedy this afternoon. He hasn’t left the Baroness to go get himself licensed.”