Figure it Out For Yourself (4 page)

There was a considerable amount of telephoning and coming and going of cars. After a while I heard a barking voice and I nudged Kerman,

'Brandon.'

'What a thrill for him to find us here,' Kerman said, and grinned.

The cop scowled at him and moved restlessly. Unconsciously, he straightened his jacket and looked critically at his buttons. Captain of the Police Brandon was a martinet, and every cop on the Force was terrified of him.

Silence settled over us again like a film of dust. Another half-hour crawled past. The hands of my watch showed a quarter past midnight. Kerman was dozing. I longed for a drink.

Then the door forked open and Brandon and Detective Lieutenant Mifflin of the Homicide Squad came in.

I gave Kerman a nudge and he opened his eyes as Brandon paused to survey us the way a grand duke would look at a set of muddy footprints on his bed.

Brandon was short and thickset, with a round, fat pink-and-white face, a mass of chalk-white hair and cold, inquisitive eyes. He was an ambitious cop without being a clever one. He got results because he used Mifflin's brains and took the credit. He had been Captain of Police for ten years. He owned a Cadillac, a seven-bedroom house; his wife had a mink coat, and his son and daughter went to the University. He didn't live in that style on his pay. There were the usual rumours that he could be bought, but no one had ever attempted to prove it as far as I knew. He had been known to fake evidence and encouraged his cops to be brutal and ruthless. A man with a lot of power; a dangerous man.

'So you two have horned in on this, have you?' he said in his hard, rasping voice. I've never known such a pair of jackals.'

Neither of us said anything. Talk out of turn to Brandon and you're liable to find yourself behind bars.

He glanced at the cop who was as rigid as a wooden effigy.

'Out!'

The cop went out on tiptoe and closed the door as if it were made of egg-shells.

Mifflin gave me a slow, heavy wink from behind Brandon's head.

Brandon sat down, stretched out his short, fat legs, pushed his hard pork-pie hat to the back of his head and fumbled for the inevitable cigar.

'Let's have it all over again,' he said. 'There're one or two points I want to check. Go ahead, Malloy. Tell it the way you told it to MacGraw. I'll stop you when I've had enough.'

'Kerman and I were spending the evening in my cabin,' I said briskly. 'At ten minutes past ten the telephone bell rang, and a man who identified himself as Lee Dedrick asked me to come over here right away. He explained that some man had 'phoned him and warned him that an attempt was to be made tonight to kidnap him.'

'You're sure he said that?' Brandon asked, slitting the cellophane wrapping of his cigar with a well-manicured thumbnail.

'Why, yes.'

'There's been no incoming calls to this house tonight. What do you make of that?'

'Maybe he had the call at his hotel.'

'He didn't. We've checked that too.'

'Any out-going calls from here, besides the one he made to me?'

Brandon rolled the cigar between his fat fingers.

'Yeah, one to a call-box number. What of it?'

Mifflin said in his slow, heavy voice, 'He could have been told during the day to call that number tonight, and got the warning that way.'

Brandon looked over his shoulder as if he wasn't aware until now that Mifflin was in the room. Although he relied on Mifflin's brains, he always acted as if Mifflin had no business to be on the Force.

'Maybe,' he said, 'or Malloy could be lying.' He looked at me, showing his small even teeth. 'Are you?'

'No.'

Tell me, why didn't Dedrick call the police instead of you?'

I had an answer to that one, but I didn't think he would like it. Instead, I said, 'He wasn't sure someone wasn't pulling his leg. Probably he was anxious not to make a fool of himself.'

'Well, go on. Tell me more,' Brandon said, setting fire to the cigar. He rolled it around between his thin lips and stared heavily at me.

'While he was talking, there was a sudden silence on the line. I called to him, but he didn't answer. I could hear him breathing over the line, then he hung up.'

'And that's when you should have called Headquarters,' Brandon snarled. 'You should have known something was wrong.'

'I thought maybe his chauffeur had come in, and Dedrick didn't want him to hear what he was saying. I'm not all that crazy to mix up a man like Dedrick with the police without his sayso.'

Brandon scowled at me and flicked ash off his cigar.

'You'd talk yourself out of a coffin,' he said sourly. 'Well, go on. You came out here and found Souki, That right?'

'Souki? Is that the chauffeur's name?'

'According to the letters he had in his pocket, it's his name. Did you see anyone on your way up; any car?'

'No. As soon as we found the body I told Kerman to 'phone your people. Before he could do so this girl arrived.'

Brandon pulled at his thick nose.

'Yeah, now about this girl: what did she call herself?'

'Mary Jerome.'

'Yeah; Mary Jerome.' He allowed a cloud of cigar smoke to obscure his face, went on, 'She said she was Mrs. Dedrick's secretary: right?'

'Yes.'

'She isn't staying at the Orchid Hotel.'

I didn't say anything.

'Did she strike you as the secretary type?'

'No.'

'Do you think she had anything to do with Dedrick's kidnapping?'

'I doubt it. She seemed genuinely startled when I told her. And, besides, why did she come back here after Dedrick had been taken away if she knew?'

'That's right, Malloy,' Brandon said, and gave me a foxy smile. 'You're on the right lines. She seemed upset, uh?'

'That's right.'

He sat farther down in the chair, stared up at the ceiling and rolled thoughts around in his mind. After a while, he said, 'Now, look, Malloy, I want you to get this straight. When the Press are told about this snatch there's going to be a lot of publicity and excitement. Dedrick's wife is an important woman. She's more than that: she's a household name. And another thing, she's got a lot of powerful friends. You and I could step off with the wrong foot if we're not very careful. I'm going to be careful, and you're going to do what you're told.'

I looked at him and he looked at me.

'It's my bet this Jerome girl is Dedrick'sa mistress,' Brandon went on. 'It sticks out a mile. He comes down here to rent this house. Mrs. Dedrick stays in New York. We don't know much about this guy, Dedrick. We haven't had much time since this broke, but we've already done a little digging. The wedding was secret. These two met eight weeks ago in Paris, and got married. Old man Marshland, Mrs. Dedrick's father, wasn't told until the two of them arrived at his house in New York as man and wife. I don't know why the marriage was secret unless Dedrick isn't anything to shout about, and she thought it would be better to present him to Marshland as her husband and not as her husband-to-be. I don't know, and it's not my business. But it looks as if Dedrick was playing along with another woman, and this woman is Mary Jerome. It is pretty obviously they intended to spend the night together here, only Dedrick got kidnapped before he could stop her turning up. The facts fit together. You can see why she didn't want to be questioned by the police, so she pulled a gun on you and cleared off before we turned up, and I don't mind telling you, I'm glad she did clear off.'

He waited to see if I had anything to say, but I hadn't. I thought it was likely he was right. The facts, as he had said, fitted together.

That's why I wanted to have this little talk with you, Malloy,' he went on, his cold eyes on my face. 'Dedrick's been kidnapped. Okay, that's something we can do something about, but the other thing isn't our business. You're not to say a word about Mary Jerome, if you do, you'll be sorry. I'll take you both in as material witnesses and my boys will give you a working over every day you're with us. I promise you that if any information gets into the Press about this woman. I'm not going to have any muck-raking in this case. Mrs. Dedrick is going to receive every possible consideration from me. It's bad enough for her to lose her husband this way, but no one is to know her husband was cheating on her. Understand?'

I thought of Mrs. Dedrick's possible powerful friends. Probably the Governor, who could crack Brandon on her say-so. He wasn't looking after her interests or considering her feelings, he was safeguarding himself.

'Yeah,' I said.

'Okay,' Brandon said, getting to his feet. 'Keep your traps shut, or you'll regret it. You two get out of here, and stay out of here. If you try to horn in on this case, I'll make you wish you were never born.'

'That'll be no new experience,' Kerman said languidly as he drifted to the door. 'Most mornings when I wake up I wish just that very thing.'

'Get out!' Brandon barked.

We got out.

THE following evening, around ten o'clock, I was trying to decide whether to go to bed early or open a new bottle of Scotch and make a night of it, when the telephone bell rang.

The bell sounded shrill and urgent and startled me, probably because, up to now, the cabin had been as still and as silent as a poor relation at a wedding.

I lifted the receiver.

'Hello?'

Above the faint humming on the line I could hear a dance band playing a waltz. The high notes of the muted trumpet suggested Glyn Boos's Serenaders; that would make the call from the Country Club.

'Mr. Malloy?' A woman's voice: pitched low with a little drawl in it. A voice calculated to stimulate male interest. At any rate it stimulated mine.

'Speaking.'

'My name is Serena Dedrick. I'm at the Country Club just now. Can you come over? I can offer you a job if you want it.'

I wondered why she couldn't have waited until the morning, but then the Dedricks seemed to specialize in out-of-office hours. It didn't worry me. I wanted her custom.

'Certainly, Mrs. Dedrick. I'll be right over. Do I ask at the desk for you?'

'I'll be in my car in the parking lot. It's a black Cad. Will you be long?'

'A quarter of an hour.'

'I will wait that long, but no longer.' The drawl had sharpened

'I'm on my way ...' I began, but she had hung up.

I went into the bathroom to inspect myself in the mirror, and decided I looked neat enough without being gaudy. As I straightened my tie, I wondered what she wanted: probably some first-hand information about the kidnapping. From the pictures I had seen of her and from the sound of her voice, she wouldn't be satisfied with anything second-hand.

I got the Buick out of the garage and drove fast up Ross-more Avenue that skirts the golfcourse, where a couple of cranks were trying to play golf in the moonlight with the aid of luminous balls, turned left up Glendora Avenue and arrived I at the imposing entrance of the Country Club with four I minutes of the quarter of an hour in hand.

The wooded gardens were ablaze with lights, and as I drove up the drive I could see a bunch of half-naked men and women clustered around the swimming pool, while Glyn Boos's Serenaders played under the arclights in a flower-decked alcove nearby.

The car park was around the back of the clubhouse. I edged my way in, and parked in what seemed to be the only vacant space left. I got out, looked up and down the long rows of cars, and decided it would be easier to pick the needle out of the haystack than find one particular black Cad. from this collection of luxury cars. There must have been over three hundred of them, and probably a third of that number were Cadillacs.

Parking lights flickered on and off, away to my left. I set off hopefully towards them. They continued to go on and off until I drew close enough to see they were attached to the glittering black car I had seen outside Ocean End two nights ago. I walked up to the car and looked in at the window. She was sitting behind the wheel, smoking a cigarette. The cold, hard light of the moon fell directly on her, and the first thing I noticed was the string of diamonds that flashed and sparkled like fire-flies in her hair. The moonlight gave her a sculptured-in-alabaster effect. She was wearing a low-cull strapless creation in gold lame, and she looked exactly what she was: the fourth richest woman in the world, from the diamonds in her hair to the cold, haughty expression on her rather long but distinctly lovely face.

While I was looking at her and thinking she had the largest eyes I have ever seen and that her long and silky eyelashes were probably her own, she was looking at me. In the few second of silence that followed we sized each other up with frank curiosity.

'I have about a couple of minutes in hand, Mrs. Dedrick, I said. 'But even at that I seemed to have kept you waiting. I'm sorry. Do you want to talk here or somewhere else?'

'Where else is there?'

'Well there's a river view near the golf-course that isn't bad. At least it's quiet.'

'All right. We'll go there.' She moved along the bench seat. Perhaps you'll drive.'

I got in under the steering wheel, switched on and trod on the starter. As I manoeuvred the car out of the lot into the drive-way, I gave her a quick glance. She was looking away from me, remote and thoughtful, her face as expressionless and as smooth as an ivory mask.

I drove through the entrance gates, turned right, continued up the brilliantly lit avenue to the bridge, then swung the car on to the bridle path that led along the river. A few minutes' more driving brought me to the spot I had in mind. I slowed down, turned the nose of the car to face the glittering moonlit river and parked. Except for the occasional croak of bullfrogs in the reeds farther up the river and the lap-lap-lap of water against the bank, there was no sound to disturb us.