1957 - The Guilty Are Afraid (8 page)

I was in no mood to be sociable with a waiter right at this minute. When he had gone, I got off the bed and, sitting in the lone armchair, I ate the sandwiches and drank the beer.

Someone had taken Jack’s things out of the room next door and put them in a neat pile in the corner of my room. I was reminded by the sight of them that I had to write to his wife. After I had finished my meal and had lit a cigarette, I took a sheet of the hotel notepaper and wrote to her. It took me until half past ten to complete the letter to my satisfaction. I offered her a reasonable sum as compensation for losing her husband. I purposely made the sum a little low because I knew she would bargain long and bitterly to get more out of me. She had never liked me, and I knew she would never be satisfied no matter what I gave her.

I stuck the envelope down and left it on the dressing table to post the following morning.

I then sat down and unlocked Jack’s suitcase. I went through his stuff to make sure there was nothing in the case that might upset his wife when I returned it. It was as well that I did, for I found photographs and letters that proved he had been cheating her for the past year or so. I tore them up and dumped them in the trash basket. I went through the rest of the suitcase and I found, hidden in the lining of the case, a match-folder: one of those things restaurants and night clubs give away as an advertisement. This was something special. It was covered with dark red water-silk and across the outside in gold letters was the legend: The Musketeer Club and a telephone number.

I turned the folder over between my fingers, remembering that Greaves, the hotel detective, had said that the Musketeer Club was the most exclusive, apart from being the most expensive club in town. How had Jack got hold of the folder? Had he gone to the club? Knowing him, I was sure he wouldn’t go to a de luxe night spot like that unless it was for business reasons. He was far too careful with his money to take any girl to a place that expensive.

Still holding the folder, I got to my feet, thought for a moment, then, leaving my room, I took the elevator down to the lobby.

I asked the reception clerk if Greaves was around.

“He’ll be in his office right now,” the clerk said, staring at my swollen eye. “Downstairs and to the right. Did you have an accident, Mr. Brandon?”

“This eye? Why, no. I ordered some sandwiches to be sent up and the waiter threw them at me. Think nothing of it. I go for that kind of service.”

I left him with his mouth hanging open and his second chin quivering and went down the stairs to Greaves’s office.

It was more of a cupboard than a room. I found him sitting at a small table, laying out a hand of patience. He looked up as I came to rest in the open doorway.

“Someone take a dislike to your face?” he asked, without much show of interest.

“Yeah,” I said and, leaning forward, I dropped the match-folder on the table.

He looked at it, frowned, looked up at me and raised his eyebrows.

“How come?”

“I found it in Sheppey’s suitcase.”

“I’m willing to bet a buck he never went there. He hadn’t the class, the money nor the influence to get past the bouncers.”

“No chance?”

“Not a chance in ten million.”

“Maybe someone took him in. That possible?”

Greaves nodded.

“Maybe. A member can take in who he likes, but if the other snobs don’t like who he brings in, he could lose his membership. That’s how it works.”

“He could have picked it up somewhere.”

Greaves shrugged.

“First one I’ve seen. The guys and dolls who go to the Musketeer Club wouldn’t soil their lily white fingers touching a thing like that. They’d be afraid it’d give them a germ. I’d say someone took him in and he brought this away with him to prove he had been there. It’s something to brag about if you’re the bragging kind.”

“Know where I can get hold of a members’ list?”

He smiled sourly, got up, edged around his table and went to a cupboard. After rummaging around for a few moments, he offered me a small book, bound in faded red water-silk with the same gold lettering on it as the match-folder.

“I found it in one of the rooms at the Ritz-Plaza and thought it might come in useful one day. It’s two years out of date.”

“I’ll let you have it back,” I said, retrieving the match-folder from the table and putting it and the members’ book in my pocket. “Thanks.”

“Who gave you the shiner?”

“Nobody you’d want to know,” I said, and went out and up to the lounge. I found an armchair away from the old ladies and gentlemen and read through the names in the book. There were about five hundred names to wade through. Four hundred and ninety-seven of them meant nothing to me: the other three did: Mrs. Bridgette Creedy, Mr. Jacques Thrisby and Miss Margot Creedy.

I closed the book and slapped it gently against my hand.

I sat for some minutes thinking. Then out of the blue came an idea. I considered it, decided after a moment or so that it wasn’t perhaps a brilliant idea, but at least it wasn’t a bad one, and I got to my feet.

I went over to the hall porter and asked him where Franklyn Avenue was.

He told me to take the second on the right, then the first on the left by the traffic lights.

I thanked him and went down the steps to where I had left the Buick.

Chapter 5

I

T
he Franklyn Arms turned out to be one of those snooty, high-toned apartment blocks reserved only for those in the upper social register, and who have more than a six-figure income.

There were, at a guess, not more than thirty apartments in the block. The building was three stories high, and sat with the dignity of a dowager duchess in an elaborately cultivated acre of land with lawns, a fountain in which stood a reproduction of Donatello’s Boy with a Dolphin, floodlit to underline the architect’s good taste, and set beds with silver centaurea and sky blue petunias.

I steered the Buick into a vacant space between a Silver Wraith and a Silver Dawn Rolls-Royce, got out and walked past a Continental Bentley, a sixty-two coupe Cadillac, and a Packard Clipper. There was enough money rolled up in all that hardware to keep me happy for ten years.

I pushed my way through the revolving doors into an oak-panelled lobby decorated with carnations growing in chromium-plated boxes set against the walls, and a small fountain with half a dozen well-fed, contented-looking goldfish swimming in the lighted water.

Over in the far corner was the reception desk behind which stood a tall blond man in an immaculate tuxedo, who wore a bored, disdainful expression on his handsome, effeminate face.

I went over to him and gave him one of my friendly smiles. This was probably a mistake, for he reared back as if I had hung a decayed fish under his aristocratic nose.

“Miss Creedy please,” I said.

He fingered his immaculate tie while his brown eyes travelled over me. He would know to the exact cent what my suit, tie, shirt and hat cost. The valuation didn’t seem to impress him.

“Is Miss Creedy expecting you?”

“No. Will you call her and tell her I have just been talking to her father and would now appreciate a word with her. The name is Lew Brandon.”

He tapped his beautifully manicured fingernails on the top of the polished counter while he thought. From the strained expression in his eyes, I could tell this was a process that would never come naturally to him.

“Perhaps you had better write first,” he said at length. He lifted his arm and consulted a solid gold Omega. “It is a little late for a call.”

“Look, buster,” I said, making my voice suddenly tough, “you may be a thing of beauty, but don’t kid yourself you’re a joy forever. Just call Miss Creedy and let her make her own decisions.”

He stared at me for a brief moment, surprise and alarm in his eyes, then he went into a room behind the counter and shut the door.

I took a cigarette from my pack and pasted it on my lower lip. I wondered if he were going to call the law. I’d look pretty sick if some ambitious cop rushed me down to headquarters on a charge of annoying the elite of St. Raphael City. But a couple of minutes later, he came out looking as if he had swallowed a bee. He indicated an automatic elevator across the way and said curtly, “Second floor. Apartment seven.” Then, tossing his blond curls, he turned his back on me.

I found apartment seven after walking down a long oak-panelled corridor. As I paused outside the front door, I could hear a radio playing something from Mozart. I pushed the bell button, and after a moment or so the door was opened by an elderly, pleasant-looking woman in a black silk dress and a frilled white apron.

“Mr. Brandon?”

“Yes.”

I surrendered my hat as I walked into a small hall, which was furnished with an oval-shaped table on which stood a silver bowl of orchids.

The maid opened a door, said, “Mr. Brandon,” and stood aside for me to enter.

I walked into a big lounge, decorated in white and apricot. The walls and drapes and the leather lounging chairs were in apricot; the carpet and Miss Creedy were in white.

She stood by a big radiogram, looking towards me, slim and quite tall, with ash-blonde hair, the quality of spun silk. She was sensationally beautiful in the classic tradition and her eyes were the colour and seemed to have the same texture as those giant mauve-black pansies you see from time to time at the better flower shows.

She was high-breasted, long-legged, with hips that had curve and just the right weight. She was wearing a white evening gown with a plunging neckline, and around her throat was a string of diamonds that had probably been given to her on her twenty—first anniversary and must have set old man Creedy’s bank balance back quite a long way.

She wore elbow-length gloves, and around one wrist was a diamond-and-platinum watch, and on her little finger, worn over the glove, was a long flat ruby set in a thin gold hoop.

She looked what she was: every inch a multi-millionaire’s daughter. All in all I could understand why Mrs. Creedy had found her hard to compete with. She must have flung her bonnet over the roof when this young woman had packed her bags and left home.

“I would be glad if you would excuse me for making such a late call, Miss Creedy,” I said. “I wouldn’t be troubling you only my business is urgent.”

She gave me a small smile. It was neither friendly nor hostile: a hostess welcoming a stranger in her home, a show of good manners; no more, no less.

“Has it something to do with my father?”

“Well, no: remotely perhaps, but to be honest I didn’t think you would see me unless I mentioned your father’s name.” I gave her a boyish smile, but it made no impression.

She was now looking straight at me and her dark eyes had a disconcerting directness. “I am head of the Star Inquiry Agency,” I went on. “I’m hoping you might be willing to help me.”

She stiffened a little and frowned. Although she looked severe, she still managed to look beautiful.

“You mean you are a private detective?”

“That is right. I am working on a case and you could help me, Miss Creedy.”

I could see she was beginning to freeze.

“Help you? I really don’t know what you mean. Why should I help you?” The freeze was now in her voice.

“No reason at all except some people don’t mind helping others now and then.” I tried the boyish smile again, but still with no results. “This business might interest you if you will let me tell you about it.”

She hesitated, then she waved to a chair.

“Well, all right,” she said. “Perhaps you had better sit down.”

I waited until she had sat down on the settee opposite before I dropped into the chair she had indicated.

“Five days ago, Miss Creedy,” I said, “my partner Jack Sheppey came here from our office in San Francisco on an assignment he received over the telephone. The caller didn’t give his name to the girl who handles our switchboard. I was away at the time. Sheppey left without saying who the caller was, but he did write your father’s name on his blotter.”

While I talked, I watched her and I could see I was holding her attention. She was thawing out.

“Sheppey sent me a cable asking me to come down here. I arrived this morning. I went to the hotel where he was staying but he had gone out. A little later, the police came for me to identify him: he had been murdered in a bathing cabin out at Bay Beach.”

Her eyes widened.

“Why, of course. I saw it in the evening paper. I didn’t realize . . . was he your partner?”

“Yes.”

“You say he wrote my father’s name down on his blotter?” she said, frowning at me. “Why should he have done that?”

“I don’t know unless it was your father who called him.”

She looked away then and began to turn the ruby ring around on her finger. I had an idea she was suddenly uneasy.

“Daddy wouldn’t do that. If he wanted an inquiry agent, he would get his secretary to do it.”

“Unless it happened to concern a matter of an extremely confidential nature,” I said.

She continued to look away.

“I really can’t see what all this has to do with me,” she said. “I am going out in a few minutes . . .”

“I saw your father this afternoon,” I said, and saw her stiffen. “I asked him if he had hired Sheppey and he said he hadn’t. He was very emphatic about it. He produced what looked like an ex-fighter named Hertz and told him to take a look at me. He implied if I didn’t mind my own business, Hertz would discourage me.”

A slight flush mounted to her face.

“I still can’t see what this has to do with me. So if you will please excuse me . . .”

She got to her feet.

“I am trying to trace Sheppey’s movements, Miss Creedy,” I said, standing up. “Apparently he went to the Musketeer Club and I want to find out who he went with. You are a member of the club. I was wondering if you would sponsor me at the club so I could make a few inquiries.”

She stared at me as if I had suggested she should take a trip to the moon.

“That’s quite impossible,” she said, and she sounded as if she meant it. “Even if I did take you into the club and I have no intention of doing such a thing, they wouldn’t tolerate you asking anyone questions.”