Shape of Fear (18 page)

“But …”

“There could have been five men perched on the garden wall. She couldn’t have seen them because of the awning. They could all have been shooting at the same time Sullivan and Loring were shooting. In the excitement—and with those riveting machines going. Not to be absurd, what I’m suggesting is there might have been someone else, hidden from Mrs. Girard, who was also shooting. If I were in charge of this case, I’d like a ballistics expert to convince me that Sam Loring was shot by bullets from Sullivan’s gun, and vice versa.”

“You’re off your rocker,” Clark said. “Are you trying to tell me you think Sullivan didn’t kill Sam?”

“I’m saying I’d like to be convinced,” Chambrun said, sitting down in his desk chair, “that Sullivan killed Loring and that Loring killed Sullivan.”

“So we’ll prove it to you.”

I looked at Chambrun, a faint tickling sensation at the back of my neck. His heavy-lidded eyes didn’t tell me anything. The shambles at Shelda’s place had left me, reluctantly, without any doubts. Girard had been right about Digger. Digger had taken us all in, including Juliet, with his charm. Now Chambrun was hinting that things might not be exactly as they seemed. It was possible there’d been a third person there in that garden; that Juliet hadn’t seen him; that, in the racket of gunfire and riveting machines, she hadn’t realized there was a third person shooting.

“Before we discuss this any further,” Chambrun said quietly, “I urge you to think again about what you’re setting in motion, Clark. I’d countermand that order to bring in Delacroix and LaCoste if I were in your shoes. I’d get Lieutenant Hardy here from the hospital and issue a joint statement to the press. His case and yours are closed. He has Cardew’s murderer. You have the head of an international drug ring. Lull our friend Mr. Bernardel and his associates into a sense of security. And while they feel safe, we tighten our surveillance. We watch them like hawks. And we can hope they’ll play into our hands.”

Clark nodded slowly. “I’ll need an authorization from my boss,” he said. “Can I use the phone in your outer office to call Washington?”

“Help yourself. But I suggest you lay off Delacroix and LaCoste, even if it’s only for fifteen minutes.”

“Will do,” Clark said, and left us.

Jerry Dodd and I sat there in puzzled silence waiting for Chambrun to say something. He seemed to be far away, lost in his own thinking. Finally he looked at us with a faint smile. “Do you remember the time, Jerry, when that girl in six-o-nine kept sending downstairs for out-of-town telephone books? She got three or four big, thick phone books sent to her room. There was something odd about it She kept sending down for out-of-town phone books, but she didn’t make any out-of-town calls.”

“I remember,” Jerry said.

“It was Mrs. Veach who twigged it,” Chambrun said. “She called me and told me about it. I suggested an avid letter-writer in search of addresses. Mrs. Veach had another notion. They could be used to stand on, she suggested.”

“When we got to six-o-nine, the girl had hung herself,” Jerry said.

Chambrun nodded, scowling at the memory. “Things like that happen,” he said. “Something seems perfectly straightforward, and then it begins to pressure you—bug you.”

“So you’re bugged about this,” Jerry said.

Chambrun nodded. “Sam Loring was apparently a first-class agent,” he said. “He was head of the Bureau’s Rome office. He was fighting the big Italian distributors. He was in charge of this French case. A top guy. Now, fellows like Loring don’t work under their own hats. The job is too tricky, too dangerous. They’re in constant touch with their home office. They report their suspicions as well as facts. A couple of years back Loring came to trust Sullivan. He actually showed him lists of names of suspects. When did he change his mind about Sullivan?”

“Who knows?” Jerry said.

“Someone who should know is Clark,” Chambrun said. “Clark, who was working with Loring on this end. If Loring had become suspicious of Sullivan, wouldn’t he have told Clark? They were setting up a trap here. Would Loring keep back the fact that he suddenly suspected Sullivan when Sullivan was right here under Clark’s nose? I say no.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Jerry said.

“And surely if he’d gotten to the point where he had enough evidence to arrest Sullivan, he wouldn’t be silent about it. So what took him to Shelda’s apartment and why climb the back fence into the garden?”

“He did that?” Jerry asked.

“He didn’t come in the front door. Mrs. Girard was there.”

“Maybe he was already there in the garden,” Jerry said, “before Mrs. Girard got there.”

Chambrun snorted. “Spying on Shelda? Come on, Jerry.”

“Maybe Mrs. Girard,” Jerry said.

“How could he know Mrs. Girard would be there? It happened completely spontaneously as I understand it. Mrs. Girard ran away from the fight in Mark’s office. She asked Shelda if there was some place she could be alone. Shelda took her to her apartment. There was no way Loring could know that would happen ahead of time. He had to come over the fence.

“And that third person was doing what?” Jerry asked, puzzled. “Not after Shelda. Mrs. Girard?”

“After Sullivan,” Chambrun said. “He was said to be in danger. Mrs. Girard was trying to warn him off. So this third person follows him to the apartment, climbs the back fence to get at him. But Loring is following that one. Sullivan sees someone in the garden. It’s not Loring but the other man. He draws his gun because he knows this other man may be after him. The shooting starts. Loring comes into view—Mrs. Girard’s view. He’s not after Sullivan but the man who’s shooting at Sullivan. That one gets both Sullivan and Loring and high-tails it over the wall.”

“So when they dig the bullets out of Sullivan and Loring, they find neither of them shot the other and that they don’t have the gun that did the killing.”

“That’s what they may find,” Chambrun said.

“So you still believe in Sullivan,” Jerry said.

“I believe in Sam Loring,” Chambrun said. “He was too well trained at his job to suddenly suspect Sullivan and not pass it on. I think he was tailing someone on the list—someone Sullivan also recognized as dangerous.”

“According to our reports,” Jerry said, waving to the chart by the telephone, “Bernardel hasn’t left the hotel since he arrived this morning. Kroll and Miss Dorisch have been with him.”

“But no one’s been watching Delacroix or LaCoste,” Chambrun said.

“It could have been one of them,” Jerry conceded.

“What about Girard?” I said. “The last thing he said to us, Mr. Chambrun, was that if Digger tried to play games with his wife again, he’d kill him. He could have followed Digger to Shelda’s place and found it was an assignation with Juliet. He was on Loring’s list. Loring could have followed him.”

“Except that our chart shows that Girard hasn’t left his suite.”

“He could have slipped out. Maybe he bought someone. You said that was a possibility.”

“Bought the floor maid and an elevator man and Jerry’s man in the lobby and the doorman? Not so many, Mark.”

“Maybe he hired someone to tail Digger.”

“Not impossible. But who?” Chambrun shook his head. “You like Digger, Mark. You don’t like Girard. You can’t make a case out of that. You can’t ignore facts.”

“Your theory about a third man in the garden isn’t based on fact,” I said.

“Oh, yes, it is, my boy,” Chambrun said. “Sam Loring wouldn’t have kept a suspicion of Digger to himself. Fact number one. If Loring didn’t suspect Digger, what reason would Digger have to start shooting at him without a word, with Mrs. Girard there to witness it? None. Fact number two. We can hope the ballistics experts will prove it out for us with fact number three—Loring and Digger were hit by bullets from a third gun.”

The special phone over by the chart rang. Jerry went to it and picked it up. Then he covered the mouthpiece with his hand, still listening.

“Bernardel’s on the phone to Girard from the phone in the Trapeze. He’s getting the whole story from Girard.” Chambrun nodded. He looked tired. He beckoned me, and I went over to stand beside him. Jerry went to call Clark back from the outer office.

“Try to locate Lieutenant Hardy at the hospital,” Chambrun said. “If Digger is still alive, tell him I think he should take every precaution to make certain he has no visitors. There are people who won’t want him to talk just as much as we do.”

I went into the outer office, passing Clark in the doorway, to make the call. It took quite a while for Hardy to come on at the other end.

“How is Sullivan?” I asked him.

“Still alive,” he said.

“Chances?”

“Poor.”

I gave Hardy Chambrun’s message.

“Tell your boss I do my sleeping—if any—at night,” he said sourly. “But there’s no chance Sullivan will be able to do any talking for a while. Two bullets in the chest and one in the neck. He lost a tub full of blood. They think he’s partially paralyzed at the moment.”

“They got the bullets out of him?”

“What’s the matter? You want a souvenir?”

“Chambrun thinks there may have been a third person involved in the shooting. He’s interested in the ballistics report”

“Third person my foot!” Hardy said.

“Ballistics …”

“Ballistics will explode that little notion for him in pretty short order. Not too long now. But you can assure Chambrun nobody’s going to get to see Sullivan—if he lives.”

I put down the phone and was just turning toward the inner office door when someone came in from the outside corridor.

It was Paul Bernardel. He gave me a blank look and then stopped short.

“Mr. Haskell,” he said. “I—I was preoccupied. I’m no longer amused by your entertainments, Mr. Haskell. Is Chambrun at home?”

“Yes.”

“Is there any late news on Digger?”

“I just finished talking to the hospital. They’re not hopeful.”

“Has he been able to tell them what happened?”

“I don’t believe he’s been able to talk.”

Bernardel made a sweeping gesture of anger with a pudgy fist. The jolly Santa Claus was conspicuously missing. “Do you know why he lies there fighting for his life, Mr. Haskell?”

“Three bullet wounds,” I said.

“Because I have been criminally careless of his life!” Bernardel said. He turned his back on me and barged into Chambrun’s office.

T
HE ATMOSPHERE IN CHAMBRUN’S
office was thick with tension. They must have been aware that Bernardel was on his way because there was no evidence of surprise as I followed that fat man into the room. Harry Clark had that white, angry look on his face I’d seen in Shelda’s garden. I knew that in his book Bernardel was the man he wanted, the man responsible for Sam Loring’s death no matter who’d done the actual shooting.

“I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Clark,” Bernardel said.

“I take it you’re here in the role of a grief-stricken friend,” Clark said.

“Let us not waste time with insults, Mr. Clark,” Bernardel said. “I might suggest that you are here in the role of the farmer who forgot to close the barn door and is now looking for the stolen horse.”

“Look, buster …”

Bernardel brushed aside the interruption. “Digger Sullivan is an old friend,” he said. “Naturally I’m deeply distressed by what has happened. I pray for him. But let’s you and I play our cards face up on the table, Mr. Clark. I know why you’re here. I know what you think of me. And I can guess what you’re thinking about Digger at this point.”

Clark seemed to make an effort to control his personal feelings. “There are no secrets about it,” he said. “As a matter of fact, we’re about to make a statement to the press.”

So he’d gotten an okay from Washington.

“Let me guess what it is,” Bernardel said, and he, too, sounded angry. “You have caught the head of an international drug ring, the man you also believe to be the murderer of Murray Cardew and possibly the late Colonel Valmont. This is supposed to lull the people you really want into a feeling of security. They will now become idiots, you think, and fall into your trap. Infantile, Mr. Clark.”

“And I am the infant who thought of it,” Chambrun said, his face expressionless.

“That surprises me,” Bernardel said. “You are not playing games with children. You are not the only one, Mr. Clark, out to smash this conspiracy. If you were, perhaps your little scheme would work, though I doubt it. But as matters stand, even if you believed the statement you propose to make to the press, packed up your tents and dropped the case, no guards would be lowered. Mortal enemies are still face to face.” The big mobile face suddenly broke into a sardonic smile. “I can hear the wheels going round in your head, Mr. Clark. What is my game? What am I trying to get you to think at this moment? What does the evil Monsieur Bernardel hope to gain by coming to you in this fashion?”

“Well—what?” Chambrun asked. “I’d rather hear it from you than try to guess.”

Bernardel’s smile widened. “I don’t know how to tell you,” he said. “If I tell you the truth, you wouldn’t believe it because I am the sinister Paul Bernardel. If I tell you a lie, you may believe it because it is what you want to believe. How can I hope to make my point?”

“A real problem,” Chambrun said. “But you came here, so you must have had some notion of how to proceed.”

Bernardel took a cigar from his pocket and lit it, squinting at Chambrun and Clark through the clouds of blue smoke.

“Let me try this way,” he said. “A deal has been made and millions of dollars will be exchanged for drugs. The money will go to enemies of the present French government. This, gentlemen, is a private fight, a fight between Frenchmen. The outcome is of hardly any concern to you here in this office. You have no reason to take sides. It shouldn’t matter to you which side I’m on. If I told you I was on the side of the French government, you wouldn’t believe me. So let’s assume that I am the government’s enemy.”

“We know that,” Clark said.

Bernardel’s huge shoulders moved in a typically French shrug. “You see, it would be useless for me to claim anything else. But this need not make me a villain in your eyes. After all, your George Washington was an enemy of the government in power in his day. In the view of the British, he was a traitor. In your view, he was the father of your country, a national hero. General Robert E. Lee was a traitor to the government in your Civil War. But today even people from the North think of him as a good man, a fine man. I simply say this to make it clear, if I can, that being opposed to the present French government doesn’t mean that I am Jack the Ripper or a child murderer or a monster of any sort. If I could convince you of that, then perhaps you would listen to me.”