Deadly Joke (18 page)

“Maybe you were greedy to take over his blackmail business,” Chambrun said.

“Now look!” Hyland said. “Now look!”

“You look, Counselor,” Hardy said. “I want to know who the man behind that opera hat is. I want to know every detail of your evening—before the shooting and after. I want to know the names of all the people you can think of who knew the joke was planned.”

Hyland looked dazed. “You really think the killer meant to get Charlie?”

“I think it’s possible.”

Very slowly Hyland turned his head so that he was looking at Douglas Maxwell. It was quite clear what he was thinking, wondering.

“I’ll save you some speculation,” Hardy said. “Mr. Maxwell has perfect alibis for both of tonight’s murders. Now, are you willing to help, Counselor, or do we go about this the hard way? I can hold you as a material witness. You know that.”

Hyland drew a deep breath. “I don’t want to name names, Lieutenant, without some thought. But I’ll tell you this. The guy with the opera hat is an actor. He’s a friend of Charlie’s. He was chosen simply because he happened to own a full-dress suit. That’s the only reason he was chosen. When the shooting happened, I grabbed him and told him to get out of there. It wouldn’t help his career to be involved. There wasn’t anything he could do to help Charlie or the police.”

“And you took off for the same reason?”

“Yes.”

“You took off, changed out of your own dress clothes, and came back.

“You know I came back?”

“You were in the Blue Lagoon room with Haskell,” Hardy said, impatient.

“Ah, yes.” You could almost see the wheels going round in Hyland’s head.

“So tell me how the evening was planned?” Hardy said.

“Could I—could I have a cup of coffee?” Hyland asked.

“Help yourself.”

“If you look under that covered dish, Hyland, I suspect you may find some smoked salmon and cheese,” Chambrun said. “You may need some strengthening.”

We watched Hyland as he poured himself a cup of coffee with hands that shook. He took the cover off the dish and wolfed down a mouthful or two of his request breakfast. He gulped some coffee, wiped his mouth with his handkerchief which had little bloodstains on it from his scratched cheek, and turned back to us.

“The joke,” he said. “The joke started a couple of weeks back when Charlie saw the item in the paper about a fund-raising dinner for Doug Maxwell. We were some of us having some drinks at Charlie’s place. Melody will remember. You remember, don’t you, Melody?”

She looked at him, her face blank. She was as far gone from him as she had been from Chambrun.

“I remember Charlie said, ‘Can you imagine raising a few million bucks in one night for that pompous ass?’ He meant Doug. He was wondering how to make Doug look foolish. Like one of us should dress up as a waiter and go up to Doug during the banquet and throw a cream pie in his face. That would get a laugh, of course, but it wouldn’t do Doug any harm. It might do him some good. The first things we thought of were all like that. They’d get a laugh, but they’d outrage people into supporting Doug even more. ‘If we could only trick Doug into doing something absurd,’ I remember saying. Charlie gave me a funny look. ‘Did you ever think that I am Doug—if I want to be?’ he said. That’s when we thought along the lines of Charlie pretending to be Doug.” Hyland fumbled for a cigarette.

“It wasn’t until several nights later,” he said, exhaling a lungful of smoke, “that Charlie came up with it. We’d arrive in the lobby a few minutes later. Two of us, in full dress, would walk right in front of him. He’d be there, but without his pants. When we got him right in front of the cameras and the news people, we’d step aside and let them see him. He would look down, be surprised to see that he didn’t have on his pants, and we’d hustle him out. We’d take a powder, and a few moments later Doug would appear and walk into the middle of hysterical laughter. He would have a hell of a time explaining it, and half the world would never believe his explanation. That’s all there was to the joke. It worked to perfection until—until Charlie went down with a bullet in his heart. I saw he was dead. I ran, dragging the actor guy along with me.”

“How did you know he was dead?” Hardy asked.

Hyland wiped some beads of sweat from his face. “I fought in a war once, Lieutenant.”

“So then what did you do?” Hardy asked.

“Outside the hotel the kids were yelling and screaming. They didn’t know what had happened yet. The actor and me, because of our dress clothes, were the enemy. They yelled at us and threw garbage at us. I thought I wasn’t going to get away, but I did. I got a cab home as fast as I could. I turned on my TV set and got the word. They’d just discovered that it wasn’t Doug who’d been shot; that it was his look-alike cousin, Charlie Sewall. I got out of my dress clothes and changed into something less fancy. I went back to the hotel. It was a natural thing for me to do. I am Charlie’s lawyer. You wouldn’t let me see the body. I couldn’t get to Doug, who was Charlie’s only family.” This part began to sound memorized. “I waited around for a better moment. That’s when I ran into Haskell in the Blue Lagoon.”

“You’ve left out something,” Hardy said.

“So help me, Lieutenant.”

“You’ve left out the fact that you saw Haskell and Miss Marsh walking down the block toward Madison. You told Haskell you didn’t want to talk to Miss Marsh because you thought he was the police.”

Hyland moistened his lips. “That’s true,” he said. “I didn’t want to be stopped and questioned until—until I found out just how things were.”

“And how were things, Mr. Hyland?” Chambrun asked.

“The dinner was going on, just as though nothing had happened.” He sounded bitter. “Nobody cared about poor Charlie. All that mattered was raising a few million bucks for Doug.”

“And you were in the Blue Lagoon, tossing five-dollar bills at Pat Coogan and listening to your favorite songs—as though nothing had happened,” Chambrun said.

“I was waiting till I was told I could see Doug,” Hyland said. “What was I supposed to do, sit in the lobby and twiddle my thumbs?”

“So that’s the early part of your evening,” Hardy said. “Let’s go back to the joke. You and your actor brought Sewall into the lobby. You stepped aside and let the reporters and the cameramen see him without his trousers. Then—?”

Hyland blotted at his face. “Then Charlie grabbed at his chest, and there was blood, and he went down.”

“You heard the shot?”

“No, I didn’t hear the shot. If you’d been there, you’d know why. A couple of hundred people were screaming with laughter.”

I could vouch for that.

“But you knew he’d been shot,” Hardy said.

“I’ve seen too many men die in battle not to know,” Hyland said.

“Did you look around for somebody with a gun?”

“I suppose I did—in a way.”

“In a way?”

“I thought if it was somebody close by, he might try to shoot his way out,” Hyland said.

“And you wanted to be sure not to be in the line of fire,” Chambrun said.

“Wouldn’t you?” Hyland said.

“You didn’t see anyone with a gun?” Hardy asked.

“No.”

“You didn’t see anyone running away who might have had a gun?”

“Lieutenant, the place was a madhouse—some crowding in toward Charlie, some trying to get the hell out of there. People were crying and screaming. They thought, of course, it was Doug. Whoever shot Charlie could just have walked away in that milling around.” He hesitated, his face clouding. “You’d think whoever was standing next to the killer would have heard the shot, seen something.” He seemed honestly puzzled by that fact.

No one mentioned the balcony to him.

“So let’s go on to the last part of your evening,” Hardy said. “You came back here, you couldn’t get to Mr. Maxwell, and my men wouldn’t let you see the body. You went into the Blue Lagoon and listened to the music, talked with Haskell. You were curious as to what Miss Marsh was doing here.”

“Only vaguely curious,” Hyland said. “I knew she was an old friend of Chambrun’s. I supposed she’d come to see Charlie, to try to make arrangements, wanted help. She’d naturally go to her old friend who was on the inside.”

“So you stayed here, drinking and listening to the entertainer until the Blue Lagoon closed.”

“Yes. I tried once more to get through to Doug. No luck. Then I thought I would check in with Melody. I knew she must be feeling pretty low.”

“How thoughtful,” Chambrun muttered.

“So I went to her place,” Hyland said. “I persuaded her it wasn’t good for her to stay in her apartment where she could almost—almost still smell Charlie. I offered her my spare room, and she went to my apartment with me.”

Hardy glanced at Melody. Her face was turned away. She was looking blankly at the corner of the room.

“Will you describe in detail how you ‘persuaded’ Miss Marsh?” Hardy asked.

“I—I just talked her into it,” Hyland said.

“Punctuating your conversation by overturning the furniture, breaking glasses and lamps, and getting your face scratched,” Chambrun said.

Hyland’s narrowed eyes were fixed on Melody. He moistened his lips. “Melody was in a hysterical state,” he said. “You have to realize that her world had come to an end. Charlie was her world. When we started to—to talk about it, she blew her stack. She started to throw stuff around, yelling and screaming. I—I tried to stop her. She—she fought with me. That’s how I got my face scratched. The poor darling had gone off her rocker. I—I finally got her quieted down and she came away with me. That apartment was no place for her to stay.”

There was a moment of silence and then Hardy said: “Is that the way it was, Miss Marsh?”

Very slowly Melody turned to look at him. She looked dazed. Then she nodded her head.

“Oh, for God sake,” Chambrun said. He sounded disgusted.

Hyland’s smile had returned. He was suddenly relaxed. He had gotten away with it, I thought. “I think Melody and I have been as cooperative with you as you could expect, Lieutenant,” he said. “None of us has had any sleep. Unless there is something else—?”

“I think Miss Marsh should have medical attention,” Chambrun said. “She’s obviously in a state of shock.”

“I’ll arrange for it,” Hyland said.

“I’ll arrange for it,” Chambrun said. He pressed a button on his desk. Miss Ruysdale made an instant appearance. “Will you take Miss Marsh to the guest room in my apartment, Ruysdale, and have Dr. Partridge attend to her. She’s in shock.”

Melody looked from Chambrun to Hyland. There was terror in that look. Hyland broke the log jam.

“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t stay here, Melody,” he said. “Chambrun is better equipped to take care of you than I would be—for the present.” There was something threatening about those last three words.

“I don’t want you out of touch, Hyland,” Hardy said.

“My dear Lieutenant, are you suggesting that I have some reason to run out on you? I’ll be very much in touch. I am, after all, Charlie Sewall’s lawyer.”

Miss Ruysdale had gone over to Melody and the two women walked out of the office together. Melody never looked at one of us.

“Good luck, Lieutenant,” Hyland said, when they were gone. He was suddenly feeling very chipper. “I guess you have my unlisted phone number.”

“I have it,” I said.

“Then I’ll see you around,” Hyland said. He walked, quite jaunty, out of the office.

“Jerk!” Hardy said, when the door had closed.

“I was surprised you mentioned the blackmail thing in his presence, Pierre,” Maxwell said.

“It will hold him off for a while, now that he knows he has more people to deal with than you.”

Maxwell pushed himself up out of his chair. It took effort. “I’ve really got to get some rest, Pierre. I’ll have my whole political committee down on me in a couple of hours. Thanks for trying to help.”

Maxwell’s escort of Jerry’s two men were waiting in Ruysdale’s office to convoy him upstairs. Chambrun went over to the breakfast wagon, buttered a roll, and took it with a cup of coffee back to his desk.

“The Marsh woman is really in shock,” Hardy said.

“Shock my foot!” Chambrun said. “Hyland has frightened her into silence. If she admits to knowing about the blackmail, he’s probably convinced her he could bring charges of conspiracy, extortion, God knows what else against her. She’d spend the rest of her life in jail. If we can get the district attorney to promise her immunity if she’ll testify, she’ll get well very quickly. First I’ll try to persuade her myself. I don’t want to bring this blackmail thing into the open unless I have to.”

“One thing’s certain,” Hardy said. “Hyland isn’t our killer. That photograph gets him off the hook. He was standing right next to Sewall when the shot was fired from the balcony.”

“He’s not a killer,” Chambrun said. “He’s a bloodsucker.”

The little red button blinked on Chambrun’s phone. He answered.

“Chambrun here…Yes, Jerry.” Chambrun’s face went rock-hard. “Hardy’s with me. Yes, we’ll come at once.” He put down the phone. His little black eyes were blazing slits. “Jack MacDonald, our maintenance crew chief, has been beaten to death in his office in the basement,” he said. He stood up. “MacDonald was one of the people with a key to the balcony.”

T
HERE IS A GARAGE
for guests of the Beaumont a floor below street level. At the same level are furnace rooms, air-conditioning equipment, and other maintenance machinery. MacDonald’s office opened off a concrete tunnel leading from the elevators to the garage. Office was a fancy name for it. It was a square, windowless room with a couple of air-circulating vents at the floor level and near the ceiling. There was a metal filing cabinet where MacDonald kept his worksheets and assignments. There was a table against one wall where MacDonald had a coffee percolator, and a cot against the opposite wall where he could snooze during inactive hours.

Jerry Dodd and one of the maintenance crew were waiting for us outside the door to MacDonald’s cubicle. Jerry’s face was drawn and white.

“It’s not pretty,” he said. “We’ve got some kind of a maniac running loose in the hotel, Mr. Chambrun. Same kind of wild violence as in the case of Shaw. Somebody went on beating him long after he was dead.”