Exploit of Death - Dell Shannon (24 page)

He flung out his hands.

"You can supply us with her home address?"

"That, yes. It will be in our records." He
picked up a phone and issued a rapid order. "There are, I think,
some thirty employees in this office, but I do not think any of them
would have known Miss Martin, except casually. The readers, the
editors, their secretaries, the stenographers, they are all on the
floors below and she would have no occasion ` to go there. But her
address we can supply." A moment later a slim dark girl came in
and gave him a slip of paper which he presented formally to Rambeau.

Rambeau glanced at it. "Ah, yes. This
arrondissement
—convenient
to the office. I thank you." They exchanged bows.

Mendoza stood by impatiently while Rambeau talked to
the employees on the next floors down in a succession of offices
large and small, occasionally translating the answers briefly. When
he led Mendoza back to the Renault, he lit both their cigarettes and
said, "It is unsatisfactory, but I can see how it comes about.
None of these people knew her personally. She is simply the secretary
to the head of the firm. These women who read the manuscripts, they
are all older women, and Juliette would have no contact with that
office, with the editors, except now and then. The editors keep a
different lunch hour, she did not go out until one o'clock. Even if
they all frequented the same café, you see—they all knew her and
liked her, but none of them know where she lived or that she was
affianced. Or, of course, what the fiancé's name is. But her
apartment will tell us
more." He started
the engine with a flourish. "If there is a concierge in the
building—"
 
But it proved to
be one of the new high-rise apartment buildings with no manager
living there. Rambeau swore in French at length. "It is more
delay. But we will still proceed." He took Mendoza back to his
office. Mendoza had been interested to see that that office was laid
out on the general lines of his own, a much larger one beyond,
housing a number of desks where men typed reports, questioned
witnesses. Rambeau issued peremptory orders to the man nearest the
door. "It will not take long to find out," he said to
Mendoza, and within twenty minutes was looking at a sheet of paper
with a name and address on it. "So. The building is maintained
by what you would call a management corporation. They oversee many
such buildings, apartments and offices, for the owners. They will
know, some answers."

Suddenly he erupted into a whirlwind of energy. He
bundled Mendoza back to the car, to another tall building down
anonymous streets, finally into the office of a small man in a
sharply tailored suit. They went on talking with many gestures for
some time and the small man brought manila-covered files from a row
of file cases in a larger office. At last he went away and was gone
for some minutes.

Rambeau said, "So we progress. He has gone to
get us the key. And it was something I should have foreseen. Rents in
Paris are very high now, and often girls like Juliette, they share an
apartment with another, two other girls. That has happened here. Only
the one girl officially leases the apartment, you see. Up to four
months ago, that apartment was leased under the name of Claire
Ducasse. Since then, the checks for the rent are signed by Juliette.
The lease is to end in December. Who knows what happened?—perhaps
this Ducasse has lost her job or gets married or has a little
argument with Juliette. But of course the address and phone number
will be in her name in the directory. Never mind. We have got there
in the end."

The small man came back and handed him a key and they
exchanged formal bows. Rambeau drove rapidly back to the apartment
building. Juliette Martin's apartment was on the fourth floor, and
the door opened into a pleasant living room with upholstered couch
and chairs, a lady's writing desk with a fold-down lid, a small T.V.
in one corner, all very neat and clean. There was one bedroom with
twin beds, a bureau, a chest of drawers, a lamp table between the
beds. Clothes hung in the closet. A metal stand held shoes on the
floor. Rambeau went back to the living room and made straight for the
desk while Mendoza began to search drawers in the bedroom.
 
Fifteen minutes later, Rambeau said, "There is
something stranger than we had thought here, my friend. There is no
correspondence at all in the desk. No address book. No list of phone
numbers beside the telephone, and it is across the room from the
desk, it would only be natural— Me, I am a bachelor, but that is
not to say I know nothing about women. Always they keep the love
letters, even the little notes, the letters from friends. They keep
so much!—but aside from this there should be her bankbook, the
canceled checks—she is a businesslike young woman, she would keep
perhaps a book of accounts—and there should be receipts for the
rent."

Mendoza stood in the middle of the living room,
rocking a little heel to toe, his eyes vacant. He said, "There's
nothing in the bedroom
¡Media vuelta!
But,
pues si.
They had
to have her keys. That made the delay. That and maybe something else.
Saturday to Tuesday."

"What are you saying?"

"They had to get her keys to get in here. I
don't know if she'd have packed her address book, planning to be gone
only three weeks or a month—the people she might send postcards to,
she'd have known their addresses. The fiancé, friends. Our anonymous
X's would have known her address from the letters to Grandfather, but
they needed the keys. They got those as soon as she arrived. That
autopsy report—yes, it's on the cards she was kept on enough
sedatives to be docile all that while—Saturday to Tuesday—and
somebody came over here to clear out the apartment. The address book,
if it was here, everything personal. I think she'd have kept
Grandfather's letters, you know. So that even if the police ever got
this far, there'd be no definite connection." He focused on
Rambeau. "Does it strike you that this place is a little too
clean? It hasn't been occupied for nearly a month. There ought to be
more dust."

"In the name of seven devils!" said
Rambeau. "To remove all the fingerprints? That is not so easy to
do."

"No," said Mendoza. "Maybe that was
just somebody trying to be extra thorough. And Trennard identified
the photographs, but that isn't quite the same as identifying the
body. And such a businesslike, ambitious fellow, apparently he hadn't
got an eye for a pretty girl, it could be argued that he couldn't be
sure. Do you know what it adds up to, Rambeau? I don't think they
ever expected anybody to get this far. But just in case, they made a
clean sweep."

"
Sacrée Mere
,"
said Rambeau. He brought out a cigarette and then put it away again.
He said, "If there is anything for the scientists to find—but
now I will say something also.
Grandpére
.
He becomes an obsession with me as with you. But if you are right,
something else emerges, and that is—money. All of this—what we
deduce—has cost someone a respectable amount of money. The bribing
of the witnesses to the Hoffman business, and now a flight to Paris—"

"Yes, and it's another dead end," said
Mendoza. "Where do we go from here?"

Rambeau said violently, "By the good God in
heaven, we will go on from here! This animal, he insults me with his
little cleverness. We will scour France for this Claire Ducasse— I
will bring the technicians here, and somewhere there will be
Juliette's fingerprints. We will inquire at all the shops and
businesses within half a mile of here and that office—she must have
purchased food, clothing, necessities at local places, and she will
have gone to shops with her friends—somewhere she will be known and
perhaps the friends remembered. There are the banks—we will find
where she kept an account, examine the records. My friend, there must
be something to lead us on."

"I wonder," said
Mendoza.

* * *

PALLISER AND LANDERS walked down Jefferson Boulevard
toward Thirtieth Street. The nearest parking slot had been a block
away. Landers said, "This is a damned waste of time."

"Probably," agreed Palliser. They went into
the drugstore on the corner. It was a dingy old place with
miscellaneous merchandise on two long counters. No customers were in
at the moment, and there was a man sitting on a high stool behind the
pharmacy counter at the rear of the store, bent over a ledger.
Palliser said, "There it is." Just inside the front door on
the wall was a cork bulletin board and there were several little
handwritten signs thumbtacked to it. FREE KITTENS, and a phone
number. GOOD TRANSPORTATION CAR $300. SEWING MACHINE OR
SALE—BABYSITTING— "Freeman remembered the fellow's name was
Len. I just thought we could have a look at him."

At the bottom of the board, there was a little card
attached with one thumbtack to the cork. In neat ballpoint print it
said, Len, any hand work, with a phone number.

Palliser looked at it, took it down, and walked down
the length of the store. The man on the stool looked up inquiringly.
He was a middle-aged black man in a pharmacist's white smock. "Do
you know anything about this fellow?" asked Palliser, showing
the card.

"Oh, sure. I wrote that for him, I don't think
he can read and write, he's kind of simple. He comes in here on
errands for his mother sometimes and she always sends a note, says
what she wants. I guess he could do any kind of work like cleaning or
yard work—he's big enough."

"Do you know what his last name is—where he
lives?"

"Sure. She writes me checks sometimes. Up on
Twenty-ninth, their name is Williams. She's Martha Williams. The
apartment on the corner."

They left the car where it was and walked the block
up there. It was another ancient apartment building. The mailbox said
that the Williamses lived in 4-A at the rear.

There wasn't any bell. Landers knocked on the door.
After a dragging minute it was opened by a tall thin black man with a
vacant face and dull eyes. Palliser asked, "Did you do some work
for a fellow named Rawson last Friday, on Thirtieth Street?"

Before he answered, they realized that he was drunk.
Beyond him they could see a bare, untidy living room. A T.V. was on
with the volume turned down and there were a couple of empty bottles
on the floor in front of it. He was nearly falling-down drunk and he
certainly didn't look too bright. He said, "Huh?" And
Palliser hesitated. There wasn't anything to be got out of him. And
then Williams said in a thick, slurred voice. "Tha'
fella—yeah—yeah— I guess I show him! Tha' damn cheapskate
dude." He hiccuped and clutched the door for support. "Him
inshult a guy, give me ten lousy dirty bucks for all tha' damn work—I
cut 'em up good, I did!" He staggered against the door and slid
down to the floor and passed out.

Landers said to Palliser, "For God's sake, are
you starting to have hunches like the boss? My God. And of course
it's not an admissible confession, but—"

"Three people dead,
like that," said Palliser. "It never crossed my mind, Tom.
I just wanted to ask if Rawson had talked to anybody else that day."
They looked at the long limp body on the dirty floor and they felt a
little tired. This gave them that much more to do. "Get the lab
out here looking for the knife. Get a warrant. Talk to him when he's
sobered up. Talk to the mother." And he'd probably be certified
as unsuitable for trial and wind up in the asylum at Atascadero. They
were always glad to clear one away, but they couldn't claim any
credit for this one. And whatever happened to Len Williams, it wasn't
going to bring three people back to life.

* * *

HACKETT WAS TYPING the initial report on Gloria Pratt
when his phone rang and he picked it up. "Robbery-Homicide,
Sergeant Hackett."

"Oh, Art," said Alison's voice at the other
end. "You aren't hypnotizing people now, are you?"

Hackett had never hypnotized anybody in his life, in
any sense of the word, but he answered the sense of the question
equably. "Not since the court threw it out as admissible
evidence. Why? We never used it here as far as I remember. It can be
useful in getting people to recall plate numbers and so on, but I
suppose the court figured it's a little too close to black magic."

"Well, l thought maybe somebody down there could
put me in touch with a good hypnotist—one the police had used. Luis
called last night and he's hit another dead end. This French
detective who's been helping him still thinks they can find
something, but Luis doesn't—and I know that girl said something
else, and I just can't remember, and I thought maybe a hypnotist
might get it out of me."

Hackett massaged his jaw. "We1l, somebody at the
lab will probably know. I can find out for you."

"Find out now, Art, will you? If there's
anything buried in my subconscious mind I'd like to get it for Luis."

"I'll call around and
get back to you," said Hackett.

* * *

MAIRI MAC TAGGART said in a cross voice, "I'm
not liking this at all, my girl. It's a verra dangerous thing to do,
letting a doctor or anybody at all go poking around at your brain."

"Don't be silly," said Alison. "Thousands
of people are hypnotized every day. I just hope I'm a good subject."