Shape of Fear (10 page)

“Mrs. Veach has come up with something, Mark, that may be of no small interest. Would you and Jane mind telling your story over again, Mrs. Veach?”

“I don’t know if you are familiar with our system, Mr. Haskell,” Mrs. Veach said in her best headmistress manner. “We have two girls handling out-calls and two girls handling in-calls. The out-call girl has a pad on which she writes down the number given her by the person in the hotel making the out-call. Then she dials the number, and when the lights on the board indicate the call has been completed, she tears the slip off the pad and puts it in a small wire basket. The chief operator—which is me in the daytime and Mrs. Kiley at night—moves around behind the girls and picks up the slips in the baskets at regular intervals. These call slips are then entered, charged against the room or office from where the call was made. And the slips are then kept in case there is any argument after a bill is rendered. In the case of a long distance call, the slip is kept out of the basket until the switchboard girl gets the final charges.”

“It sounds highly efficient,” I said.

Mrs. Veach looked pleased. “Jane was on duty last night,” she said, “but when she read the morning paper, she came in to see me.”

“I felt just awful when I read about what happened to Mr. Cardew,” the girl said. “Maybe you don’t know what it’s like working at the switchboard, Mr. Haskell. We got the lives of hundreds of people in our hands—cheaters, bums. We don’t connect a man’s girl friend with his room when his wife answers the phone. And vice versa. We protect ’em. We make sure that the wrong messages don’t get into the wrong hands. But do you think we get any thanks for that? We don’t. We get complainte, and we get snapped at, and if we pick up twenty-five bucks a year in tips, it’s Columbus Day! Well, Mr. Cardew was something else. Always polite, never complaining. I guess he didn’t have very much dough, but there was always some nice little gift for the girls at Christmas. I felt terrible when I read about him in the paper, and I remembered something that the newspaper didn’t mention. It may not be anything, but I thought I ought to tell Mrs. Veach.”

“It proves you’re a highly sensible and efficient girl,” Chambrun said, “and it won’t be forgotten.”

“It was like this,” Jane said. “About nine o’clock—the call slip will show the exact time—Mr. Cardew put in a call from his room. It was to the Waldorf. I know the number. We get it all the time. Well, I dialed it for him, and when he was connected, I tore the slip off my pad and put it in the basket. All perfectly routine. A few minutes later Mr. Cardew’s light went on again. He asked for Mr. Chambrun. There’s no slip on that, you understand; not from one room to another in the hotel. I stayed on the line though. No telling where Mr. Chambrun might be at that hour. I tried his apartment, then the office. And then I asked Mr. Nevers on the front desk if he knew where Mr. Chambrun was, and he told me he’d gone to the theatre. I told Mr. Cardew. He sounded worried. Then he said, ‘That call I made to the Waldorf, Jane. I was somehow plugged in on somebody’s conversation. Some mix-up on their switchboard, I suppose. But I never did get my party. I wonder if you’d try it again.’ I told him ‘sure,’ dialed the Waldorf, listened in while he was connected and asked for the French Ambassador’s suite. When someone answered, I cut out. Well, technically, Mr. Cardew owed for that first call, but I took the slip out of my basket and called the chief operator—outside—and raised hell. I’d just finished that when Mr. Cardew’s light went on again, and he asked for you, Mr. Haskell I said I’d try to run you down. I finally located you in the Grill and had you connected. I guess that’s it.”

I must have looked puzzled.

“It’s just that Jane realized the account in the papers didn’t have it straight,” Mrs. Veach said. “The papers said Mr. Cardew had made three calls—to Mr. Chambrun, then to the Waldorf, then to Mr. Haskell. Jane had gone off when the police were inquiring. Mrs. Kiley went by the slips. But the first call he made was to the Waldorf, when he got cut in on someone else’s conversation. Jane had destroyed that slip, since there was no charge on the call. After talking to me, we thought it just might have some importance.”

“It just might, Mrs. Veach,” Chambrun said. “And just to clear up one other point: you’re not aware that anyone called Mr. Cardew in his room last night?”

“There aren’t any records of incoming calls, Mr. Chambrun, unless there’s a message,” Mrs. Veach said. “But Flo and Rosalie were on the in-lines last night. We all liked Mr. Cardew. He seldom got any calls. They don’t remember a call for him, and I think they would have. You know our system. On an in-call, if someone asks for you or Mr. Haskell or Mr. Cardew—anyone—we ask who’s calling. Then we call the room and say ‘Mr. So-and-so is calling.’ Then you say, ‘Put him through,’ and we make the connection. We don’t put through any calls without going through that routine except where we know it’s proper—like a call to you, Mr. Chambrun, from the desk or the kitchen or Mr. Haskell’s office. I’m sure Flo and Rosalie would remember if there’d been a call for Mr. Cardew.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Veach. Your efficiency always amazes me.”

“It was you that set up the system, Mr. Chambrun.”

Chambrun smiled at her. “So I did,” he said. “Thank you again.”

The two women left us, and Chambrun lit a cigarette and sipped his coffee, his heavy eyelids drooping. “Make anything of that, Mark?” he asked finally. “If he called the Ambassador first, that about clinches Hardy’s notion that it wasn’t hotel business,” I said.

The hooded eyelids lifted. “It’s always possible that some maniac was cruising along our hallways, saw Murray Cardew’s door standing ajar and went in and killed him just for the hell of it. But I don’t believe that for an instant, Mark. Mrs. Veach has thrown some light on an area that’s puzzled me.”

“I could use a little light,” I said.

Chambrun took a deep drag on his cigarette. “Cardew needed help. He called three people for it. The Ambassador—me—you. I’ve done a little checking. No one spoke to him at dinner. Mr. Cardoza, who always took very nice care of
him
in the Grill, assures me of that. He went straight to his room after dinner. No in-calls. So when did something happen that made him suddenly feel that he needed help? Mrs. Veach, I think, has supplied us with the answer. He was plugged in on a going conversation. He heard two people talking. What he heard sent him scurrying for help. First to me. Then to the Ambassador, an old friend whom he trusted. Then to you, whom he knew I trusted.”

“How could he get plugged in on a going conversation?” I asked.

“Happens all the time,” Chambrun said. “A national magazine was recently sued for ten million dollars for printing a story based on such an overheard conversation. I assume the Waldorf has much the same switchboard system we have. Let’s assume somebody in the Ambassador’s suite made an out-call. While it’s in progress, Murray Cardew makes an in-call. The operator plugs him in. There should automatically be a busy signal, but some one of a million small parts in the switchboard machinery doesn’t work. Cardew is plugged in on a going conversation.”

“But the Ambassador was at the Philharmonic.”

“That doesn’t mean there was no one in his suite,” Chambrun said impatiently.

“LaCoste!” I said. “He’s just been to see me. He told me he took the call from Cardew—what we now know was the second call.”

“Now we move,” Chambrun said. He leaned forward. “What would you do if you got cut in on a conversation like that?”

“Try to get the operator back,” I said. “Of course. You wait a minute, thinking the operator will know what’s happened. Then, if you happened to hear something that interested you, Mark, you might listen. Not good manners, but you might.”

“I almost certainly would,” I said.

“Then, shocked by what you heard, you might try for the operator—by jiggling the receiver button up and down. Failing to get her, you’d then hang up.”

“So?”

“So the people talking would hear that receiver jiggling and would know someone had been on the line.”

“But if I was one of those people talking, I wouldn’t know who was doing the jiggling.”

“Unless, for instance, Cardew spoke: ‘Operator! You’ve got me on a busy line.’ Someone who knew him would recognize his voice. Or perhaps that didn’t happen. Perhaps he just hung up. The conversationalists are frightened by what may have been heard. They disconnect and wait for the call to come in again. After a bit it does, and it’s Cardew, asking for the Ambassador. Either way, the conversationalists would have a good idea who’d been listening in.”

I thought a moment. “It could be that way, sir, but there’s a time problem. Right after Cardew talked to LaCoste at the Waldorf he called me. I was delayed twenty minutes getting to his room. But that would hardly have been time enough for LaCoste to get here from the Waldorf, go up to Cardew’s room, kill him, and get away.”

“Unless LaCoste could call someone already here in the hotel to do the job,” Chambrun said.

I could feel the small hairs rising on the back of my neck. “Max Kroll,” I said. “He was on Digger’s list. He was already registered here.”

Chambrun nodded. “He’s the number one choice, Mark. Jerry’s checking out on his comings and goings last night.” His face darkened. “For the first time since I’ve been at this job, Mark, I’m not altogether certain of my own staff. As I told you last night, they can pay almost any price, these people, to get a job done.”

“What can Mr. Cardew have heard?” I wondered.

“If we knew that,” Chambrun said, “we’d be in like Flynn.”

T
HAT WAS THE QUIET
part of the morning. I’ve read about people who have premonitions of danger. I don’t. Or perhaps that morning I was such a mass of premonitions that nothing specific headed the bill of fare. Chambrun’s theory about the overheard phone conversation was just a theory, but it held a hell of a lot of water for my money. Jean LaCoste had not been on Sullivan’s list, but the Ambassador had been and LaCoste, his private secretary, could well be in cahoots with him. And Kroll. Kroll—or anyone else on the enemy payroll—could already have been on his way to Cardew’s room while I was talking to the old man on the phone from my table in the Grill. There was a small piece of comfort to be taken from that notion. I couldn’t have gotten there in time even without Lily Dorisch’s interruption.

There was an odd look in Shelda’s face when I got back to my office.

“You didn’t tell me!” she accused.

“Tell you what?”

“That you had an appointment with her.”

“Her? Who do you mean, ‘her’?”

“Madame Girard. She’s making herself comfortable in your office.”

I felt my heart give a good solid thump against my ribs.

“You were just being polite,” Shelda said.

“What are you talking about?”

“When you said I was prettier than she is.”

“I wouldn’t think of being polite to you,” I said. I wasn’t really paying attention. Juliet Girard in my office!

“Do what you can for her, Mark,” Shelda said, suddenly serious.

“What do you mean?”

“She’s in bad trouble, Mark. You can sense it just looking at her. I don’t care how pretty she is. Help her.”

I got my full attention on Shelda for a moment. “You’re a nice girl,” I said.

Juliet Girard was standing by the windows overlooking the park when I went into my office and closed the door behind me. She spun around at the sound of the closing door, her face pale, her lips parted. Instantly I was aware that she’d expected someone else. She lifted a hand and pressed a small lace handkerchief against her scarlet lips. Shelda could tell you what she was wearing down to the last detail. I couldn’t begin to. Something dark, covered by a fur jacket; a small hat with a little nose veil that half concealed the wide, nearsighted eyes.

I was mainly aware that I was a disappointment, and it hurt.

“Mr. Haskell?” she asked in a low, throaty voice.

“Madame Girard,” I said.

“I know you’re Digger’s friend,” she said. “I saw you with him in the Trapeze Bar last night.”

“We’re very new acquaintances,” I said.

“Which makes our debt to you all the greater,” she said.

I just stared at her. She must have realized I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Digger didn’t ask you if we might meet here?”

“I’m afraid he didn’t, but you’re welcome,” I said.

A faint smile moved her lips and it was as if something had lighted up inside her. “He hasn’t changed,” she said.

God knows she didn’t sound like a woman bent on revenge.

“He told you to meet him here?” I asked.

“A message—slipped under my door about a half hour ago—said to meet him here at ten-thirty.”

“And you came—just like that?”

“Just like that,” she said. She stood very proud and straight. “You wouldn’t ask that if you didn’t know something about our past, Mr. Haskell.”

“I know what’s generally known, Mrs. Girard,” I said. “I also heard your husband, very angry, tell Digger to stay away from you.”

“Poor Charles,” she said. And she meant it. There was real concern and a kind of pity in her voice. “He’s on his way to the airport to meet Paul Bernardel.” She looked straight at me with those lovely, wide blue eyes. “Believe me, Mr. Haskell, I’m not here to betray him. He’s my husband and I owe him my complete loyalty. But—but I can’t live with—with certain unresolved situations in my life. I have to set them straight to have any peace.”

“You’ve changed your mind about Digger’s guilt?” I asked.

“I know he’s innocent,” she said. It was almost a whisper. “Do you know how I know?”

“How?”

“Charles proved it to me.”

“Your husband?”

“Yes.” She turned away again toward the windows. “Is it wrong for me to see Digger just once to tell him this? Is it wrong for me to tell him—just once—that the thing he believed—that he is the only man I could ever love—is still true? Because I will not desert Charles. Not ever. I pledged myself to him in good faith, and he’s been nothing but kindness. And honest! Almost unbearably honest. But Digger can’t be asked to go through the rest of his life without knowing. Is just ten minutes too much to ask, Mr. Haskell?”