Gilded Nightmare (3 page)

“Now that,” Sam said to me, softly, “is the way to play a poker hand when you don’t hold any cards.”

J
ERRY DODD AND FRANK
Williams, one of the assistant house managers, helped a still tottering Stephen Wood to the hotel infirmary, which is on the lobby floor just behind the reception desk. The day nurse, Miss Kramer, sat Wood down in a chair and proceeded to clean up his bloody mouth and chin while a call went out for Dr. Partridge, the house physician. Miss Kramer is one of those jolly professionals who insists on asking, “How are we feeling?” or “Would we like a pillow back of our head?” She’s in the infirmary all day with very little to do except, perhaps, to help someone get a chunk of soot out of an eye, or bandage a cut finger for a busboy who’s handled a steak knife injudiciously. When she has anything that looks remotely like a real case she becomes slightly more than intolerable. Wood squirmed under the touch of her square, capable fingers. He was having difficulty talking. Evidently that vicious blow at his throat had temporarily paralyzed his vocal equipment.

Chambrun appeared on the scene before Dr. Partridge could be pried away from his backgammon game in the Spartan Bar.

“You’ve gotten his name?” he asked Jerry Dodd.

“He’s having difficulty speaking,” Jerry said.

“His name is Stephen Wood,” I said.

“How do you know?” Chambrun asked.

“Sam Culver knows him.”

“Is he registered here?”

I picked up a telephone and called Atterbury at the front desk. Stephen Wood was not a guest of the Beaumont.

“Mr. Wood,” Chambrun said, “do you want to bring assault charges against the Baroness’ bodyguard?”

Wood shook his head, slowly, from side to side.

“What were your intentions when you confronted the Baroness?”

Wood just stared straight ahead.

“He’s not armed,” Jerry Dodd said. Jerry hadn’t made any sort of formal search, but in the process of getting Wood to his feet and helping him to the infirmary he’d evidently made certain there were no weapons hidden under the tweed jacket.

“What was your purpose?” Chambrun asked again. His voice wasn’t friendly.

Wood moistened his lips. His voice, when he tried it, was a husky whisper. “I—I made a mistake,” he said.

“Mistake?”

“She—she isn’t the woman I thought she was.”

“You called her by her first name,” I said.

“It was a mistake,” Wood said, his eyes lowered.

“It is a little difficult to mistake the Baroness for someone else,” Chambrun said.

Wood swallowed painfully. “Nonetheless,” he said.

“Who did you think she was?” Chambrun asked.

“Someone else,” Wood said.

“Someone else named Charmian?” Chambrun asked.

“I tell you it was a mistake,” Wood said. “I thought she was someone else.”

“Someone else named Charmian?”

“For Godsake, how many times do I have to tell you it was a mistake? Please, I’d like to get out of here.”

“Not till Dr. Partridge has checked you out,” Chambrun said. “We have possible lawsuits to consider. What is your address, Mr. Wood?”

Wood muttered the name of a flea-bag hotel on the West Side. “There’ll be no lawsuits.”

At that moment Doc Partridge came in, grumbling. The dice had been rolling well for him for a change and he resented being called away from a winning streak.

“I want a full report on what you find,” Chambrun said. He turned for the door, giving me a little nod that indicated he wanted me to go with him. Out in the lobby he turned to me, exasperated.

“What do you make of that double talk?”

“It was no mistake,” I said. I gave him a brief account of my conversation about Wood with Sam, and how Wood had been waiting in the lobby for Charmian Zetterstrom’s arrival

“Tell Sam Culver I want to see him in my office,” Chambrun said, and started away. He was stopped by a signal from Atterbury at the desk. We walked over. Atterbury was smiling his sphinxlike smile.

“You are summoned into the Presence,” he said to Chambrun.

“Be good enough to speak English,” Chambrun said.

“You are to wait upon the Baroness at your earliest convenience. I quote. Helwig, the steward, just phoned down. Maybe she doesn’t like the wallpaper in 19-B.”

Chambrun looked at me. “See what she wants. And get me Sam Culver.” He walked briskly away.

Atterbury grinned at me. “Watch your step,” he said. “I understand she eats attractive young men alive.”…

No two suites at the Beaumont look alike. Floor plans are much the same, but each one has been individually decorated to give it its own character. 19-B is a gem of eighteenth-century French delicacies. It is strictly designed to satisfy female taste; the four rooms are in different pastel shades, with gold the basic furniture color. The paintings on the walls are not reproductions, but who the artists were only Chambrun knows. A woman was supposed to squeal with delight when she first walked in. There was a huge double bed in one of the bedrooms, a single in the other. There was a small, very modern kitchenette.

I was admitted to the suite by the blond poodle carrier after I had explained that Chambrun wasn’t available at the moment and that I was his deputy. The girl seemed doubtful until Charmian Zetterstrom’s clear, cool voice came to us from the living room.

“Ask Mr. Haskell to come in, Heidi.”

She sat on a gold-brocade-covered love seat, facing me as I walked in. The black glasses were gone, and she had the bluest blue eyes I can ever remember seeing. She had on a simple pale-yellow shift that ended several inches above very shapely knees. The lovely legs were tucked up under her on the love seat.

She was, I told myself, something of a miracle. She had married Conrad Zetterstrom twenty years ago. She had to be close to forty. Without the facts you couldn’t have believed it. The dark hair had the sheen of a bird’s wing. That can be managed in a beauty shop. The yellow shift was high-necked, but her arms were bare. I looked for a little forty-year-old flabbiness near the armpits. There was none. I looked for the lines around those magical blue eyes and on the slender neck that Shelda had promised me would be there. They were nonexistent. If there was anything tell-tale at all, it was that the pale skin was obviously overlaid, skillfully, with some sort of pancake makeup. It had the texture of an actor’s face, which has been cold-creamed each night and twice on matinee days. Her body looked firm, and young, and exciting. The Amazon masseuse must be a genius, I thought.

“Come in, Mr. Haskell,” she said. “Please sit down.” She gestured toward a frail-looking armchair next to the love seat. “Can I have Heidi get you a drink?”

She was apparently completely organized after less than half an hour in her new quarters.

I sat, feeling a little as though I’d been called on the carpet by my fourth-grade schoolteacher. I had, I may say in passing, been madly in love with that fourth-grade teacher. I declined the drink.

“You are Mr. Chambrun’s assistant?” she asked.

“I’m the hotel’s public relations director,” I said, “which means that I am also its number-one trouble shooter. There’s something that displeases you?”

“On the contrary, I couldn’t be more delighted with the arrangements you’ve made for us.”

For some idiotic reason I remembered Atterbury’s remark about musical beds. “How can I help you?” I asked.

“I want to give a party,” she said. “Except for a short stay in London this is the first time I’ve been off Zetterstrom Island in twenty years. I want to—how do you say?—do it up brown.”

“Fine,” I said. “Parties are our business. Anything from coming out balls to intimate dinners in a private dining room.”

“I have something modest as to numbers in mind,” she said. “Say fifty to seventy-five people.” She leaned back a little, blue-shaded eyelids half lowered. “I want an
apéritif
such as no one has ever drunk before. I want hors d’oeuvres such as no one has ever seen or tasted before. I want a dinner that will make the world’s gourmets concede it tops anything they’ve ever feasted on before. I want wines from strange, exotic places that go down like liquid gold. I want music that will make the guests swoon with delight.” The eyelids rose and the blue eyes fastened on me. “Can you arrange all that, Mr. Haskell?”

“Mr. Amato, our banquet manager, is your man. He will jump up and down with pleasure at the prospect of planning a dinner on which there is no cost limit. I assume there is no limit.”

“None.”

“Let me talk to him. When he’s had a chance to formulate some suggestions I’ll arrange for him to come to see you. How soon do you want to give this dinner?”

Her eyes were very bright. “I’m like a child giving a first birthday party. I wish it could be tomorrow. But I know it’s impossible. I want it as soon as your Mr. Amato can arrange for all the things I’ve requested.”

“It shouldn’t take too much time,” I said. “Amato knows exactly where to go for the most unusual rarities.”

“There is one other thing,” she said. “The guest list.”

“Oh?”

“I have been what you might call a recluse all these years. I have very few friends.”

“Fifty to seventy-five are more than most people have,” I said.

“Oh, but I haven’t anything like that number of friends,” she said. “Three or four at the outside that I know are in New York. I particularly want to have a man named Samuel Culver. He is the only must.”

“Sam may not be very pleased with you at the moment,” I said. “You cut him dead in the lobby a little while back.”

The blue eyes widened, and I thought I saw a slight nerve-twitch high up on a lacquered cheek. “He was there?”

“Inches away from you,” I said.

“Oh, my God!” she said. Then: “It must have been the excitement. I was so eager to get away from the trouble Masters had caused—if you see Sam, will you explain?”

“Sure,” I said. “He probably understood. He’s an understanding-type guy.”

“Don’t I know it?” she said.

“Does Stephen Wood go on your guest list?”

“Who is Stephen Wood?”

“The man your Masters slugged in the lobby.”

“Of course not. He’s a complete stranger.”

“So let’s get back to the guest list,” I said.

She smiled at me. “You are to supply the guests,” she said.

I just stared at her.

“Surely there must be hundreds of fascinating people in the worlds of art, music, science, politics, theatre, who would be intrigued at the prospect of a fabulous dinner and an opportunity to meet the much-talked-about and mysterious Baroness Zetterstrom.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“I leave the guest list to you, Mr. Haskell.”

I felt tongue-tied. “Shall I convey an invitation to Sam Culver?”

“Please, no,” she said. “I’d like to do that myself. But if you will explain to him how I happened not to see him in the lobby, and ask him if he’d come to see me, I’d be grateful.”

“My pleasure,” I said.

A relaxed smile lit up her strangely lovely face. “Since we will be involved closely with the details for the party, Mr. Haskell, can we stop being formal? What is your first name?”

“Mark.”

“May I call you Mark? And you will call me Charmian. So that’s settled.” She sounded as though she’d just decided on the precise hour for D day. “You may tell Mr. Chambrun that I am altogether delighted with his emissary, and that he needn’t make the effort to apportion any of his valuable time to me.”

She held out her hand, and I think I was expected to kiss it, Continental fashion. I wasn’t up to that. I just touched her fingers with mine and gave her a half-comic little bow. At the same moment I felt as if a mild charge of electricity had gone through me. …

Sam Culver lives at the Beaumont. He owns one of the smallest cooperative units in the upper regions of the hotel, a comfortable living room, small bedroom and bath, and a tiny kitchenette. The living room, except for casement windows looking out over the East River and the 59th Street bridge, is walled-in by books. The furniture is heavy and comfortable. Sam does quite a bit of traveling and often the small apartment stands empty. Maintaining this
pied-à-terre
is the only indication in Sam’s way of life that he is anything more than very modestly well-off.

When Sam was reached with the message that Chambrun wanted to see him in his office, he called Chambrun on the house phone and suggested that they get together in Sam’s apartment.

“I think I know what you want to see me about, Pierre. Wouldn’t there be less chance of interruption up here? It’s not a simple story.”

And so, while I was being subjected to the special charms of the Baroness Zetterstrom, the mountain went to Mohammed.

When Chambrun was settled comfortably in a deep armchair, a Dubonnet on the rocks—the strongest drink he ever takes during working hours—on a side table by the chair, Sam began to talk, filling a pipe from a variety of tobacco tins on his desk.

“Mark has told you, Pierre, that I said Stephen Wood might turn Charmian Zetterstrom’s blood cold when he confronted her. It didn’t happen. Either she didn’t know him or she has at last become the greatest actress in the world.”

Chambrun flicked the ash from his Egyptian cigarette into a silver ashtray next to his drink. Sam was holding a lighter to his pipe.

“You know Wood and some history that connects him with the Baroness?” Chambrun asked. “She ignored him, says he is a complete stranger; he says he made a mistake. She is not, he says, the woman he thought she was.”

Sam puffed blue clouds. “You know me, Pierre, on the subject of surface facts versus subsurface truths. The surface facts may be a little puzzling to you. I think it’s true that Charmian never laid eyes on Stephen Wood before. I think it may also be truth of a sort when Wood says Charmian isn’t the woman he thought she was.” Sam grinned at Chambrun. “You think of me, I imagine, as a reasonably sober, well-oriented, unneurotic, fundamentally moral person. If you were to discover that I was, in fact, the Boston Strangler, you might say, ‘He’s not the man I thought he was.’ Wood was speaking that way, I think. He wasn’t mistaken in thinking she was Charmian Zetterstrom. But when she didn’t react at the sight of him he concluded she was not the woman he’d thought she was.”