Deadly Joke (14 page)

“What questions?” Clarke asked. He had abandoned his pipe and slipped it back in his pocket.

“If I were the opposition, I would consider some facts,” Chambrun said. “Charlie Sewall had it in his power to damage Doug Maxwell, perhaps beyond repair. Maxwell and his adviser, you Mr. Clarke, might have decided that Sewall had to be eliminated. Had you learned, since many people knew about it, that Sewall planned to appear without his pants in the lobby last night? If you did, you knew he would be a perfect target, and that everyone would assume the murder bullet was meant for Maxwell. Now it turns out that Maxwell has a perfect alibi, and that you have a perfect alibi.”

“Which should put an end to the questions,” Clarke said.

“On the contrary. The questions just begin. How handy that you and Doug are both in the clear. My question number one would, therefore, be: Did Maxwell and Clarke hire someone to do away with Charles Sewall? You can buy a gunman for chicken feed these days. My second question would be: Did Maxwell and Clarke provide the killer with the murder weapon? Isn’t it a remarkable coincidence that Clarke owns a Walthers
P-38
, the unusual kind of gun used by the killer? My third question: Did Stewart Shaw get a glimpse of the killer on the balcony? Shaw was in the hotel then. Did Shaw recognize him, realize that his beloved boss must be involved, wait for a moment when he could confront the killer, and got himself killed for his pains?”

Clarke drew a deep breath. “Are those all your questions?” He was, I saw, close to an angry explosion.

Chambrun gave him a thin smile. “I’m not saying I believe any of those things, Mr. Clarke, but if I were the strategist for the opposition, I would ask them. If the voting public gets to know that Doug Maxwell once stole some money, and then these questions are asked, I don’t think he would have the remotest chance of being elected, no matter how angrily you deny the implications contained in those questions.”

Clarke controlled himself. “Well, thank God you aren’t the strategist for the opposition.”

“Whoever is may not be a complete fool,” Chambrun said. “I’ve painted this picture for you to make it clear that Dicky Hyland, or whoever else may hold Maxwell’s confession of theft, must be handled with kid gloves if you have any wish to have Maxwell elected.”

“Have you put this to Doug?” Clarke asked.

“No.”

“I think I should, then,” Clarke said. “If Dicky Hyland gets to him, Doug might blow his stack if he isn’t aware of the possibilities.”

“He’s supposed to be resting,” Chambrun said.

“I think his rest should be interrupted,” Clarke said. “Have you any objection, Lieutenant?”

“No,” Hardy said, “but Mr. Chambrun’s questions are interesting, you know. I’d like to ask a couple of my own.”

“Shoot,” Clarke said, an edge of impatience in his voice.

“Tell me what you can about Stewart Shaw.”

“Stew?” Clarke seemed to make an effort to bring himself away from what was on his mind. “Some of this is sketchy, Lieutenant. Doug has talked about him, but I wasn’t particularly interested in Shaw at the time. He was a navy man. Long after Doug’s service in World War II, you understand. I suppose Shaw was thirty-five, twenty years younger than Doug. Shaw had served quite a number of years; enlisted, not drafted. He finally decided not to re-enlist. Someone Doug knew—the son of a friend, I think—was Shaw’s commanding officer. This officer sent Shaw to Doug at Barstow College with a letter asking Doug to do what he could about finding some kind of a job for Shaw. Doug interviewed him, liked him, hired him as part of the campus police force at Barstow.

“Shaw was grateful. He made a point of trying to do special services, outside his regular routine, for Doug. Doug came to count on him, eventually put him in charge of campus security. When the campus riots erupted last year, Shaw was in the middle of the action. Doug was in the middle of it, too. He didn’t hide away from it as many college administrators have. He walked the campus, took the insults and the obscenities, faced the activists, laid down the law, and eventually won over the majority of the student body. It was a dangerous time for Doug, and Shaw never left his side. Somebody wrote an article about Doug and Stew Shaw for one of the big national magazines. They both got a measure of fame out of it. It was what led to Doug’s being asked to run for the Senate. When he decided to resign from Barstow and make the run, Stew Shaw also quit and became Doug’s batman and bodyguard. Jack Mickly, the
PR
man, and a couple of secretaries also left Barstow to become part of Doug’s team. That’s about it, I think, Lieutenant.”

“Shaw was really devoted to Maxwell?” Hardy said.

“That’s putting it mildly, Lieutenant.”

“So if Maxwell was in bad trouble, Shaw would go to any lengths for him?”

“I’d say so.”

“Like shooting Sewall to keep him from unloading on Maxwell?”

“Oh, come off it, Lieutenant.”

“Why?” Hardy asked, a stubborn look on his face. “He was in the hotel when the shot was fired. He knew all about the arrangements, the locked balcony, the works. He had access to a Walthers
P-38
.”

“How?”

“Do you examine your gun collection every day, Mr. Clarke?”

“Of course not.”

“Maxwell and Shaw were in and out of your apartment fairly often during the planning of tonight’s dinner, weren’t they?”

“Well, yes, they were.”

“It’s possible, then, that Shaw managed to slip that gun out of your house, isn’t it?”

“And how did he get it back there after the shooting?” Clarke asked.

“Your apartment is just around the corner from Maxwell’s house, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Hardy spread his hands. “You may remember that Shaw was sent to the house earlier this evening to ‘get some things’ Maxwell needed? He could have hidden the gun after the shooting, retrieved it when he had a moment, and taken it, cleaned, back to your apartment.”

“How did he get into my apartment?” Clarke asked.

Hardy shrugged. “How did he get into the balcony in the lobby? He was some kind of key genius.”

“And who killed him and why?” Clarke asked. He was angry again. “Not Doug. You had him covered. Not me. A dozen people know I was in the Trapeze Bar when the riot started. Haskell here knows that. Who, then?”

“A friend of Charlie Sewall’s?” Hardy was asking himself the question. “There are two men who came into the hotel with Sewall who haven’t yet been identified. Maybe the man who now holds the evidence against Maxwell?”

Clarke laughed. “Dicky Hyland? Shaw could have broken him in half with one arm tied behind him.” He shook his massive head. “You don’t seriously believe Doug and Stew Shaw planned to murder Charlie, do you?”

“It’s a question Mr. Chambrun’s opposition genius might ask,” Hardy said. He looked satisfied with himself.

Clarke’s early affability had left him. “Can you give instructions to the hotel switchboard, Lieutenant, so that I can get through to Maxwell? I think he should know how rough the going may be.”

Hardy picked up the jacked-in phone on the table beside him and asked to be put through to
14B
. He handed the phone to Clarke. Maxwell himself evidently answered.

“It’s Watty, Doug,” Clarke said. “I’m afraid I woke you up…No, I can imagine…I’m with your friend Chambrun and the police lieutenant. They’ve made some rather extraordinary suggestions to me that I think you should hear…Yes, now…Sure. I’ll come right up.” Clarke put down the phone. “He wasn’t sleeping, which isn’t strange.”

Hardy turned to his plainclothes man. “Take Mr. Clarke up to Fourteen B,” he said.

“You think I need protection, Lieutenant?” Clarke asked.

“I don’t want anything to happen to you, Mr. Clarke, until we’ve gone through the business of checking tonight’s guest list name by name. I’ll be ready for you in half an hour. I hope you’ll be through with Maxwell by then.”

Hardy watched Clarke and the cop leave the room. He reached in his pocket for one of his long, thin cigars. He put it in his mouth but he didn’t light it.

“You think there might be anything to my theory about Shaw, Chambrun? That he could have done the job for Maxwell? Oh, I know Maxwell’s your friend. But it could be. And Shaw could have been done for by one of Sewall’s two friends. We have no way of knowing that they ever left the hotel. One of them might have seen Shaw on the balcony and waited to get him.”

“It’s a neat little package,” Chambrun said, “but aren’t you just juggling one ball now, Lieutenant? There’s still the very logical possibility that the man with the gun thought he was killing Maxwell. I have a hunch the District Attorney’s office is going to ask you why you aren’t looking for someone who meant to get Maxwell.”

“You won me over to the other side,” Hardy said.

“Find the man who managed to get a key to that balcony and you’ll know which side of the street to play,” Chambrun said. “Jerry Dodd’s working on that now. I’m going to check with him.”

Chambrun gestured to me to go with him. We walked out into the deserted lobby together. We saw Jerry Dodd talking to Karl Nevers, the night reception clerk at the front desk, and Chambrun headed for him. I looked at the clock over the desk. It was going on three o’clock. All the bars and the Blue Lagoon were closed. The cleaning crews were at work everywhere.

“It’s a dead end,” Jerry said, his shrewd face twisted by frustration. “To start with, we’ve been trying to check to see whether anyone saw a bloodstained man taking a powder. You couldn’t do the kind of butcher-boy job that was done on Shaw without getting splattered by his blood. But tonight there were dozens of bloodstained people running around while those kids were wrecking the joint. It almost wasn’t noticeable, there were so many of them. No lead there.”

“The keys,” Chambrun said.

“Yeah, the keys,” Jerry said. “Karl here has keys, but they’re kept locked in the office safe. Del Greco up in the Trapeze has a key to the balcony. He keeps it on a ring that he carries in his pocket, along with his personal house keys and others. It never leaves him. It hasn’t left him. Mrs. Kniffin, the housekeeper, has a key to the balcony. It’s kept on a wire ring attached to a chain she wears around her neck. It never leaves her while she’s working. She never lends her keys to anyone. If someone wants something unlocked, she unlocks it for them herself. She never locked or unlocked the balcony doors. My keys are on a key board in my office. That board is on the inside of a closet door. The closet door is kept locked and I carry that key in my pocket. No one else has one. That door hasn’t been forced. The maintenance crew chief has a key to the balcony. He keeps his keys in his office in the basement. He can’t remember ever using the balcony key because those doors are never locked. The key is there now. For someone to borrow it, they’d have had to pry open a metal box where he keeps his keys. The box hasn’t been jimmied. So much for the key department.” Jerry made an impatient gesture. “We already know the locks on the balcony door weren’t picked.”

“There’s an answer, of course,” Chambrun said. “The balcony doors were supposed to be locked but they weren’t—or one of them wasn’t.”

Jerry’s mouth was a thin slit. “I locked them myself. It seemed important to me, so I didn’t trust the locking up to anyone else.”

“Did anyone ever talk to you about the balcony and the locked doors, Jerry?” Chambrun asked.

Jerry frowned. “As a matter of fact the only person I ever discussed it with was Maxwell himself.”

I saw Chambrun’s face tighten.

“It was about a week ago,” Jerry said. “He and Mr. Clarke and some others came here to look over the ballroom and the banquet arrangements. They came out here to the lobby and they were discussing whether Maxwell should make his entrance through the front door or the side. They went off to look over the setup and kind of grinned at me. ‘If somebody wanted to drop a flowerpot on my head that would be just the place to do it from,’ he said. I told him we could lock it off. ‘Maybe that would be a good idea,’ he said. That’s actually when the idea to lock the doors came up.”

“You didn’t discuss with him where the keys were kept?”

Jerry looked outraged. “For God sake, Mr. Chambrun, why should I?”

“No reason, Jerry. So just keep at it,” Chambrun said.

Chambrun and I walked away toward the elevators. The lobby has an almost cathedral quality for me at this deserted time of night.

“Maxwell could have mentioned the balcony to almost anyone,” I said.

Chambrun stopped and looked up at the balcony. “Somebody had to know all of the details about keys that we’ve just heard,” he said. “What’s bothering you, Mark?”

I remembered Jerry saying once that Chambrun had X-ray eyes; that he could look at you and read the maker’s name on the inside of your shirt collar.

“I’m slightly worried about a couple of gals,” I said.

“Diana?”

“Some. I didn’t expect her to stand me up without letting me know. Maybe I guessed wrong about her. I think I’m more worried about your friend Melody Marsh.” I told him about our parting, the business about the wildflowers in case something happened to her. “That guy Hyland seemed very interested in her and what she wanted here,” I went on. “He saw us walking down the street toward Madison Avenue together. Naturally I didn’t tell him why she’d come to see you. Just that she felt a responsibility to Sewall. I think he was trying to find out what she knew.”

“So you think he’s the one who’s inherited Maxwell’s confession?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. “And I’d hate to think he might try to keep Melody quiet. He’s a mean bastard, from what I saw of him.”

“Perhaps we should warn her,” Chambrun said, frowning. “You have her address and telephone number?”

I took the slip of paper out of my wallet and handed it to him. He went into one of the lobby phone booths and dialed the number. After a moment or two I saw him re-dial it. Then he came out.

“No answer,” he said. He looked at his watch. “She could have stopped off at a friend’s. It’s a bad night for her. She’d need company.”

“If she’s with friends, then she’s okay,” I said.