Golden Trap (8 page)

“And Monsieur Martine?”

Lovelace shrugged. “He is married to her. He loves her.”

I turned to the next card, which carried information on a Dr. Claus Zimmerman. He rated an A for alcoholism, an O for over his head financially, a W for woman-chaser. The further note on the card read: “Traveling on a Swiss passport.”

“I knew Zimmerman when I was Karl Kessler in Germany,” Lovelace said. His voice seemed to grow unsteady. “He was a doctor at the Auschwitz death camp. He was an experimenter on live human beings—a cold-blooded bastard. He stood by, probably laughing, as thousands of Jews were slaughtered. He was tried for war crimes after the peace, and the evidence of Karl Kessler—me—sent him to prison for a long term. But somehow these people all slip back into the world, fresh and clean. He was paroled. Everyone seems to have forgotten who he was and what he did. He hasn’t forgotten, of course, and he hasn’t forgotten what I did to him.”

I looked at the next card made out to Anton Rogoff, a Roumanian businessman. He had only checked in the day before. His credit rating was excellent. He had reserved a suite for ten days. A note indicated he was a personal friend of Mr. Battle, the Beaumont’s owner. Kid-glove treatment indicated.

“He knew me as Gregor Bodanzky,” Lovelace said. “He manufactured munitions during the war. He sold to both sides, without either side knowing it. I exposed him to the Russians, our ally at the time, and he just missed being put up against the wall and shot. He might hold a grudge this long.”

I glanced at the last card. It was for one Hilary Carleton. Credit excellent, a “d” for diplomat, a note indicating he was on the British delegation to the UN and that he did not want his military title of Air Marshal used. A second note caught my attention. “See Curtis Dark, Carleton’s personal secretary.” At that moment Shelda was having a drink with Dark. I asked about him.

“He’s only twenty-five or -six,” Chambrun said. “He was an infant when Carleton had his contact with George.”

“Which was?”

“I was Michael O’Hanlon, a wild Irishman living in London during the blitz,” Lovelace said. “I was temporarily assigned to the British. There was a leak somewhere about bomber flights. Hilary Carleton was an Air Marshal in the RAF. His younger brother, Digby, had been wounded early in the war, no longer able to fly, and had been assigned to Hilary’s staff. He was an embittered, hard-drinking, woman-chasing, charming young man. It was my job to make friends with him. I as Michael O’Hanlon was supposed to be an Irish war correspondent. I drank with Digby and chased girls with him, and listened to his uncontrolled drunken talk. Eventually I had the goods on him, and I confronted him with it one night when he was pub-crawling with me. The words were only just out of my mouth when he pulled a gun. I thought I was done for. But instead of firing at me he put the muzzle in his mouth and blew the top of his head off. The official line was that he had been AWOL, missed an important assignment, and killed himself. Michael O’Hanlon was listed as a bad influence who led this brilliant young officer into defaulting on his responsibilities. I came face to face with Air Marshal Hilary Carleton at the inquest. He told me then, in his cold British way, that if it took all his life he would find a way to even the score with me.”

“Does he know the truth now?” Hardy asked.

Lovelace shrugged. “It wasn’t my business to tell him. Certainly there’s never been any public statement to the effect that Digby Carleton was a traitor, or that Michael O’Hanlon was an Allied agent.”

“An interesting cast of characters,” I said.

“Interesting,” Chambrun said, “and to be closely watched. Socialized with if possible. I can handle the Martines. Louis is almost as close a friend as George is. I should think you might take on Mr. Hilary Carleton, Mark.” He smiled very faintly. “I understand your secretary”—he managed to underline the word—“is at this moment having a drink in the Trapeze with Dark, Carleton’s secretary.”

I felt a little color rise in my cheeks. “How do you know that?” I asked.

“All these people were put under surveillance the instant George marked them off on the list,” Chambrun said. “Carleton came first and with him Dark. Mr. Del Greco checked in with Ruysdale ten minutes ago.”

Del Greco was the captain in the Trapeze.

“You could bring up the subject of Carleton’s brother.” Chambrun said. “Rogoff I will handle. He’s a friend of Mr. Battle’s, as you saw. It would be protocol for me to find out if he is comfortable and happy.”

“And your German doctor-butcher?” I asked.

“He spends the evening in the bars, looking over the girls,” Chambrun said. “We will all try to make him feel at home during the evening.”

I glanced at Lovelace. “There’s Marilyn VanZandt,” I said. “She’s tried to reach me several times during the afternoon, and she’s dining in the Blue Lagoon.”

“She has to be faced sooner or later,” Lovelace said, his face a grey mask. “Could we dine there too, Mark? I’d rather not be alone with her, and she’s going to see to it that we meet.”

Hardy made a grumbling sound deep in his throat. “You’re suggesting kid games,” he said to Chambrun. “I’ve got a murder on my hands and another man threatened with assassination. Am I supposed to sit on my behind while you people drink martinis and chat about old times with a bunch of highly probable suspects? I ought to drag every goddam one of them up here now and put ’em over the jumps.”

“You do that and you scare them off,” Chambrun said. “It would be like surrounding George with the Coldstream Guards. Whoever is interested in him just backs away and waits until we get tired of protecting him—or he gets tired of being anchored in one place. Can you connect any of these people with Smith?”

“I can’t connect anyone with Smith, or Smith with anyone,” Hardy muttered.

“Until you can, just let us sniff around the edges,” Chambrun said. “We can’t hurt your case and we may damn well help it.”

“I haven’t got a case,” Hardy said.

The phone rang and I answered it. It was Ruysdale. One of Hardy’s men was trying to locate him. He had a ballistics report. Hardy ordered him to come straight to my place.

Neither Chambrun nor Hardy would have a drink, but I made one for me and one for Lovelace. As I came back with them Hardy was scowling over the report his man had brought. Finally he looked up.

“The bullet that killed John Smith didn’t come from Lovelace’s gun or from his own. That means we don’t have the murder weapon.”

“And it means George is in the clear,” Chambrun said.

Lovelace took a swig of his Scotch. He wasn’t drinking carefully anymore. “So you see, Lieutenant, it is, to coin a phrase, open season on good old George!” He finished his drink in one more swallow and held out the glass to me.

“Reports on Smith’s fingerprints and other pertinent data should be back here from the FBI in a couple of hours,” Hardy said. “Play your fancy games if you like, but I’m pulling in the whole lot of them the minute I have one slim lead.”

T
HE TRAPEZE BAR IN THE
early evening is a way station for people going on to private parties or to one of the hotel’s dining areas. When I got there, looking for Shelda and Curtis Dark, the Trapeze was doing a rushing business. Mr. Del Greco and an assistant maître d’ were moving about among the tables helping the waiters to take orders. Mr. Del Greco prides himself on the swiftness and efficiency with which orders are filled in this room.

The clientele at the Trapeze are not the ordinary off-the-avenue customers you find in most Fifth Avenue hotels. They are, by and large, not the new rich or the publicity-hungry celebrities from Hollywood or Madison Avenue. The women are expensively put together, dressed for the evening, jeweled. You’ll see more different hair colors there than God ever dreamed of. The men wear the black and white uniform of dinner jacket or tails. There is a curious blankness to the faces. They aren’t there to display themselves to a gawking public. This was their room, not open to autograph hunters or glamor-struck adolescents.

Two of the half dozen people in the room not yet dressed for the evening were Shelda and young Curtis Dark. I paused in the entry way, watching them. To me they stood out like neon signs in the dark. Shelda is Shelda, her gold hair shimmering in the lights from the glass chandeliers, her basic black dress revealing all the soft and lovely curves of her body. I wondered how much the blankness in the faces of the older men who looked at her, pretending not to notice too much, hid a sudden hunger for lost youth and adventure. Shelda is something! She has a gift for listening with a kind of breathless eagerness that makes you think what you are saying is the most important thing in the world. She had turned on that particular facet of her charm for young Dark.

I watched him with a slight pang of my own. He was tall, slender, with the almost beautiful face of an Apollo on a coin. His eyes were blue and bright with excitement. His laugh was relaxed and charming. There was nothing effeminate about his beauty. He was very young, which I envied, and male, and bubbling with energy. Together they were a striking couple, a symbol of gaiety and youthful vitality.

This young man, I thought, I better not laugh off!

Mr. Del Greco saw where I was headed and a chair arrived for me at their table just as I did.

“The usual?” he asked as I arrived.

I glanced down at the empty glasses on the table. “Once all around,” I said.

The faintest kind of a cloud crossed the Apollo face as I touched Shelda’s shoulder, and instantly disappeared when Shelda said: “Curtis, this is my boss, Mark Haskell.”

“Lucky boss,” the young man said. His handshake was firm but not overdone. I wasn’t crippled by it. His accent was Oxford British. He should have been able to make a fortune in films.

Shelda’s eyes were dancing. She saw that I recognized a threat in young Dark and it pleased her. That’s another gift of hers. She can make me feel completely safe one moment and like crossing Niagara Falls on a high wire the next. I guess that’s what’s called being a woman.

I thought I wouldn’t miss the chance he’d given me. “I’m a great admirer of your boss,” I said.

Dark looked genuinely pleased. “You know the Air Marshal?”

“Around here we are instructed to drop the military title,” I said. “He’s just ‘Mr. Carleton’ at the Beaumont.”

Dark laughed. “He feels it might be considered ironic for an air marshal to be at the head of a delegation devoted to world peace. He was never regular army, you know. Rose through the ranks in the RAF.”

Not too fast, I told myself. I turned to Shelda. “When I saw you two together I hoped there wasn’t a Hollywood producer in the room, or both the bosses might be in danger of losing their prize employees.”

“You’re right about Miss Mason,” Dark said, admiration in his eyes. “How have you managed to keep her out of their clutches this long?”

I didn’t tell him how.

“I’ve had a lot of opportunities back home,” Dark said. “The Air Marshal is a great theatre fan and a good many of his friends are in films as well as the theatre. I’ve been tempted. The loot is so enormous if you happen to ring even a small bell. But I can’t leave the Air Marshal as long as I’m useful to him.”

“In the familiar struggle of loyalty versus loot loyalty doesn’t often win,” I said.

“My situation isn’t usual,” Dark said. There was something appealingly warm in the way he said it. “You see, I am the Air Marshal’s adopted son.”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“My parents were both killed in the blitz,” he said gravely. “I never knew them. I was in an institution along with hundreds of other war orphans. How I got so lucky I’ll never know, but the Air Marshal was going through the place one day, saw me, and for some reason hooked me out of that place and took me into his home.”

“How lucky for you,” Shelda said.

“You have no idea how lucky,” Dark said. “But maybe it was good for him too. His wife, his young son, and his only brother were killed in the war. He seemed to need someone to look out for; someone to take the place of his lost family. By a miracle he chose me. No career could tempt me to leave him until he says the word.”

“I didn’t know Hilary Carleton had a brother,” I said, as offhandedly as I could.

“Killed in the war,” Dark said. “They were very close.”

Nothing in his face or the way he conveyed the information suggested he was aware of the true story—the story of treachery and suicide. Chambrun, I thought, had been right. Dark was too young to have been involved with Lovelace in the old days. Obviously Hilary Carleton would have made every effort to blot out the story of his brother’s defection. Dark might not know about it, and in any event he would have been schooled to keep it covered if he did know.

And then Dark stood up, abruptly, a warm smile moving his mouth. I turned and saw a tall, elegant man in dinner jacket coming toward the table. It was Hilary Carleton.

Carleton was, I suppose, in his late fifties. He moved with the grace of a fine actor. His face was ruggedly handsome, with a square jaw and firm mouth, high cheekbones, and the forehead of an intellectual. His brown eyes had a pleasant, friendly twinkle to them. His dark hair was greying at the temples. This was the “man of distinction” to end the whole routine.

“Hello, sir,” Dark said. “Won’t you join us?”

Carleton gave Shelda and me a polite, questioning look. “If I’m not intruding,” he said.

“Please do join us,” Shelda said.

Dark introduced us. “Miss Mason and Mr. Haskell. They are the public relations geniuses for the Beaumont.”

“I trust you’ve been discreet about the secrets of the Commonwealth, Curtis,” Carleton said, smiling. He took the chair Del Greco magically produced. “Scotch and soda, and God help me, no ice,” he said to the maître d’. “Foul British habit I can’t shake,” he said to us. “But it’s one of the very few ways to keep warm in a London winter. No ice!” He looked appreciatively at Shelda. “You make this a very pleasant way to end an exhausting day, Miss Mason.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, obviously pleased.