Shape of Fear (12 page)

“Lieutenant Hardy’s got to be brought up-to-date on all this,” Chambrun said with a kind of impatience. “See if you can locate him, Jerry, and have him come here.” He turned to Digger. “Mrs. Girard had very good advice for you,” he said. “Why don’t you get out of here—go somewhere far away until this book is closed?”

“No,” Digger said. “If I’m in danger, I must be close to the truth. If I’m not, there’s no danger.”

“Except that Girard will chop you down the next time you run into him somewhere.”

“I’ll be ready for him next time,” Digger said grimly. He started to rise painfully from the chair. “Somebody’s got to find Juliet.”

“Not you,” Chambrun said. “For God’s sake, use your head, Sullivan. Let her husband find her. It’s his problem.”

“Have you forgotten that Girard is on the list?” Digger asked. “Loring’s list? Doesn’t it occur to you that every word he’s told Juliet may be a lie. Oh, he’s cleared me—which puts her in his debt. But wouldn’t that be a nice screen to hide behind if he’s actually a part of the whole conspiracy? No, Mr. Chambrun, I’m not going anywhere, and I’m going to find Juliet and talk to her.”

Chambrun started to protest and then evidently thought better of it. “Come with me, Mark,” he said, and walked out of the office. He didn’t say anything as we went along the corridor to the elevator. He pressed the
UP
button. “I don’t like any part of this, Mark. I’ve always said that if the time ever came when I didn’t know what was going on in my own hotel I’d retire. Here we have people slipping messages under doors and God knows what else. I’m suddenly not sure of my own people. It’s a miserable damn feeling.” Impatiently he pressed the elevator button again. “We live in a world of money. That’s what the Beaumont is—home away from home for the richest people in the world. But there’s never been so much money floating around ready to buy disloyalty. I’m going to find out who the corrupters are, Mark, if it’s the last thing I do on this job.”

“Where are we going?” I asked him.

“Girard,” he said. “I want to know who his messenger boy was.”

Except for the lump on the back of his head made by the butt of Jerry Dodd’s gun, Girard had come out of the brawl in better shape than either Digger or me. He’d had an opportunity to get cleaned up and to change into a fresh suit There was a small patch on the back of his crew-cut gray head and a darkening bruise on his left cheekbone. He was ghostly pale but quite composed as he opened the door to us. He gave Chambrun a formal little bow and stood aside for us to come in.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he said.

The Beaumont’s suites are not furnished like ordinary hotel rooms. Each room is the result of an individual decorative scheme. The Girards, obviously by design, had been assigned to a suite done in the French Empire period. I noticed this, but mostly I was conscious of the faint scent of Juliet Girard’s perfume.

“The police are not with you?” Girard asked us as he came into the room behind us.

“Mr. Sullivan prefers not to bring charges,” Chambrun said. He, too, must have been aware of the perfume. “Your wife has come back, Mr. Girard?”

“No,” Girard said. He raised a hand to touch the bruise on his cheek.

“Look here, Mr. Girard, your quarrel with Sullivan is no concern of mine except as it disrupts the peace and quiet of my hotel.”

“You may count on me for all damages,” Girard said.

“Damn the damages,” Chambrun said. “I’m not going to play cat-and-mouse games with you, Girard. I know the whole story of your relationship with Sullivan. I know more than that. I know that my hotel is being used by people from your country as a base of operations for a drug ring and a political conspiracy. I don’t mean to put up with it. What I don’t know is which side you’re on, Mr. Girard. But you will understand why I am going to ask you questions and why I’m damn well going to have the answers.”

A faint, cold smile moved Girard’s mouth, “I’ll answer whatever questions I can,” he said.

“How did you know your wife and Sullivan were meeting in Haskell’s office?”

“That is my affair,” Girard said.

“It is my affair,” Chambrun said. “Tell him what happened when you found Mrs. Girard in your office, Mark. Tell him all of it.”

I told. I told the whole thing. I could see a little nerve twitching in Guard’s cheek as he listened.

“So you see,” Chambrun said when I’d finished, “it was no cheap lover’s meeting. Like your wife, Sullivan got a message he assumed was from her. The whole thing was stage-managed by someone, Mr. Girard. The same someone brought you back to find them. I want to know how that was done.”

“Whatever my wife might do it would not be something cheap,” Girard said.

“The message, Mr. Girard!”

Looking at Girard I suddenly wondered if he might be the stage manager himself; arranged the whole thing in order to have an excuse for finishing Digger. Anything was possible in this madhouse setup.

“It was a telephone call,” Girard said.

“A call! Someone talked to you?”

“A woman.”

“You don’t know who it was?”

“No.” Girard hesitated. “I left Juliet here and started on my way to the airport to meet Paul Bernardel. When I reached the lobby, I heard my name being paged. I was told there was a phone call for me and that I could take it on one of the house phones. I did. It was a woman who asked if I was Monsieur Girard. I said I was and asked who she was. She said it didn’t matter. She simply wanted to tell me that my wife was planning to meet Sullivan in the public relations office at ten-thirty. I asked how she knew, but she hung up. I connected myself with the hotel switchboard and asked where the call had come from. They told me it was an outside call.” Girard walked over to the center table and helped himself to a cigarette from a pack that was lying there. His hand wasn’t steady as he lit it.

“My first impulse was to come back here and confront Juliet with what I’d been told. But I didn’t, Mr. Chambrun. I—I think I’d like to tell you why.”

“That’s your decision, Mr. Girard.”

“I tell you because it has a bearing on what you say is going on here in the hotel. It goes back a long, long way, Mr. Chambrun.”

Neither Chambrun nor I spoke.

“In the darkest days of France’s history, I found myself fighting in the Resistance,” Girard said. He glanced at me, a gleam of humor in his eyes. “We learned in those days how to fight, how to kill. The man in charge of my particular cell, or unit, was a tough-fibered army colonel who would have died ten times over for his country. His name was Georges Valmont, shrewd, cunning, ready to meet Nazi terrorism with a brand of his own that was just as tough and just as deadly. He fought for his defeated country and for a man he believed with all his heart was France’s only hope—General Charles de Gaulle. I was Valmont’s chief lieutenant. I came to love him as a father. My own father was killed in an early bombing raid on Paris. When at last the fighting came to an end and Paris was free once more, we all tried to gather together the threads of our shattered lives. I went back to a vanished legal practice. Valmont stayed in the reorganized French army. He had a problem of a personal nature—an eight-year-old daughter, Juliet. His wife had been an American. At the start of the war, she had refused to leave Paris. Her place and the baby’s, she thought, was with her husband. While Valmont was at the front, she died—some unrecorded illness. There were no records. Valmont managed to get the infant girl out of France and here to America to relatives of his wife’s.

“Now he wanted her back. She was his child, but the American relatives put obstacles in the way. They had known Valmont hardly at all; perhaps disapproved of the marriage from the start. He was forced to undertake an intricate legal business to regain Juliet’s custody. It was natural that he should turn to me, his closest friend in a time of disaster, to handle the legal matter for him. It was a difficult business, but of no consequence to matters at hand. Eventually I came to this country to see the relatives. They were not the ogres we had imagined. Perhaps I was specially gifted for the occasion—to plead my friend’s cause. In any event, I was able to persuade them, without legal action, to return Juliet to her father. I brought her back to France with me, a beautiful and delightful child. This was in forty-seven.

“In a strange way I became a part of Juliet’s growing up. I was constantly in and out of Valmont’s home. I had more free time than Valmont, with the result that I took the child to the museums, the art galleries, the cinema, for long drives in the country. I took a delight in watching her grow up almost as if she were my own child. I loved her, but I was not ‘in love’ with her. She was a child. In the ten years that followed my bringing Juliet to France, all our lives became more or less settled in an unsettled world. My law practice grew and prospered. Valmont became more deeply involved with his beloved Charles de Gaulle. And Juliet—she became a young woman.

“Eventually de Gaulle became the President of France. His greatest and most pressing problem was Algeria. His solution—to grant Algeria her independence. You know that this split France down the middle. There were many of us—like myself—who supported de Gaulle, believing he was France’s only hope, yet who disagreed on this point. In the end, it was open civil war. Algeria was drowning in a bath of blood. But eventually, after a referendum was held in which de Gaulle received the support of a majority of the French people, I abandoned my outspoken opposition to his plan and supported him both openly and in private. Life is made up of choices, Mr. Chambrun. A strong de Gaulle was more important to France than Algeria.”

“Valmont always supported de Gaulle’s position?” Chambrun asked.

Girard shrugged. “Yes. Perhaps deep down in his heart he may have disagreed, but never by so much as the lifting of an eyebrow did he admit it. And he became an important part of the fight against the Secret Army terrorists.” He drew a deep breath. “In fifty-nine, Juliet was twenty years old. One day I invited her for one of our usual drives into the country. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps it was in the touch of her hands, perhaps something hidden down behind her eyes—whatever it was, to my complete astonishment, I discovered that I was deeply, romantically, irrevocably in love with this child who had become a woman.” Girard’s voice was suddenly unsteady, and he stopped talking for a moment, obviously making an effort to control it.

“I swear,” he said almost desperately, “I swear that she felt something of the same thing. It was an extraordinary mutual discovery. On my part it was overwhelming. On hers—well, it was puzzling. I had been ‘Uncle Charles’ for ten years. Suddenly I was a man. Sixteen years older but not an inconceivable object of love.

“I told Valmont about it that night. He was, I think, pleased. He wanted an early marriage for her because of the danger and uncertainty of his own existence. But he made one thing very clear to me. He would bring no pressure to bear on Juliet. If she asked for his approval, he would give it. But he would urge nothing on her.

“In a few days Juliet and I talked seriously about it. This girl—this woman—was as honest as you can imagine. She had always loved me—as ‘Uncle Charles.’ She now felt some strange stirrings that bore no relationship for the feelings she might be expected to have for a favorite uncle. She needed, she told me, time to sort it out. She was reacting as a woman to me, but it was all mixed up with a long-time childhood affection. She needed time to be sure. How much time she couldn’t say. It was honest. It was fair.

“Oh, but I walked on eggs! There was suddenly no life for me unless, in the end, she would have me. And as time went by, week after week, and month after month, I was joyfully aware that very slowly she was coming to the point where she would say yes. We had so much in common. Her tastes, in effect, were mine because I had helped to develop them. I had, you might almost say, been responsible for making her into the woman I now loved so overwhelmingly. And then—then it all turned to ashes!”

Girard brought his fist down on the table beside him—once, twice. His voice began to shake again, now with a kind of raging anger.

“A man came to visit Colonel Valmont. It was Sullivan. He came with a letter of introduction from Paul Bernardel. Valmont, through his underground connections, already knew something about Sullivan. Valmont was up to his neck in a very dangerous game. He had become convinced that the Secret Army was raising funds for arms and ammunition by trafficking in drugs. He was up against not only fanatical former comrades-in-arms, but also cold-blooded, deadly criminals making millions out of human misery. He was aware of the identity of some small frogs in the pond, but he let them alone, gunning for the big ones. He knew, for instance, that Langlois, Bernardel’s race-car mechanic, was a source of supply to some of the members of the international set—tourists, movie stars working in Europe, political refugees. One of the people he suspected of being a big frog was Paul Bernardel. No proof, though. He hoped that Langlois might lead him to that proof. But Langlois was suddenly eliminated—apparently because of Sullivan. Sullivan had gone to Langlois for a supply of heroin for an injured racing driver who was a friend of his. The story he told Valmont was that he had then gone to Bernardel with the story about Langlois. He and Bernardel had gone to see Langlois and found him shot to death. Sullivan, with a great pretense of outrage, was determined to dig deeper. Bernardel gave him a letter of introduction to Colonel Valmont.”

“ ‘Pretense of outrage’?” Chambrun asked.

“I’ve never believed him. I don’t believe him today,” Girard said harshly. “You will come to think that it is because of Juliet. No! I hate him because of Juliet. But I do not believe him as a trained investigator. I believed then and I believe now that his approach to Colonel Valmont was devious and dishonest. Why Langlois was killed I don’t know. Perhaps Bernardel and Sullivan set a trap for him. Perhaps, when Sullivan was able to get heroin from him without any difficulty for his injured friend, they decided Langlois was a dangerous link in the machinery. But it gave them a public justification for sending Sullivan to Valmont. Sullivan, the dashing young American race driver; Sullivan, filled with righteous indignation; Sullivan, electric with charm. May God destroy him!”