James Chase - You Find Him, I'll Fix Him

It was like handing me a razor and telling me to hurry up and cut my throat.

He had gone on to say that I might as well examine the villa in detail while I was up here, and check up on the place where Helen had died.

“Use her car. When you’re through with it, sell it and give the money to some charity. Sell all her stuff in there. I don’t want it. I’ll leave it to you. I’ve fixed to have her body flown home.” He had shaken my hand, his rain-coloured eyes on my face. “I want you to find this guy, Dawson.”

“I’ll try,” I said.

“Look, you’ll do more than try: you’ll find him.” His chin pushed out at me. “I’ll hold the foreign desk open for you until you do find him… understand?”

Which was just another way of saying if I didn’t find him, I wouldn’t get the foreign desk.

The whisky did me some good. After the second drink, I was able to shake off my panic and begin to think.

I didn’t believe for one moment that Helen had been murdered or that she had committed suicide. Her death had been accidental. I was sure of it.

I hadn’t been her lover. It was something I couldn’t prove, but at least I knew it. Chalmers had told me to find Sherrard whom he believed was her lover. I was Sherrard, and I wasn’t her lover, therefore it followed that there was another man involved. If I were going to save what was left of my future, I had to find this guy and prove he had been her lover.

I lit a cigarette while I let my mind work on this thing.

Was this man I had to look for the intruder I had spotted in the villa? If he wasn’t, then who was the intruder? What was he looking for? Certainly not the box of jewels. That had been on the dressing-table and he couldn’t have failed to have teen it. Then what had he been looking for?

After thinking around it for five minutes and getting nowhere I decided to shelve it for the moment and try some other angle that might yield dividends.

Helen had lived in Rome for fourteen weeks. During that time she had met this man X who eventually became her lover. Where did she meet him?

I realized then that I knew nothing about Helen’s activities in Rome during those weeks. I had taken her out a few times, been to her apartment twice and met her once at a party, but apart from that I had no idea how she had passed her time.

She had stayed at the Excelsior hotel, and then had rented an expensive apartment off the Via Cavour. Chalmers probably had paid the hotel bill: giving her a little luxury until she had settled down in Rome. It was probable that after staying at the hotel a few days, she was to move into one of the university hostels. Instead, she had moved into an apartment that must have soaked up nearly all of her sixty dollars a week allowance.

Did this mean that she had met X at the Excelsior, and he had persuaded her to take the apartment, probably paying for it?

The more I thought about it, the plainer it became that I should have to start this hunt for X in Rome. I knew of a firm of private investigators who had a reputation for thoroughness. It wouldn’t be possible for me to dig into Helen’s past back-ground without help. My first move would be to consult them. I got to my feet and wandered into Helen’s bedroom. I had only glanced into the room previously, but now I examined it in detail.

I looked at the double bed and felt a little qualm. She had planned this for both of us. I must not lose sight of that. It was obvious to me that her affair with X had petered out and, looking for a new lover, she had selected me. Had she been in love with me or had she been looking for a father for her unborn child? The thought was unsettling, but it was something that was a waste of time to brood on. Only Helen could tell me that, and she was dead.

Then another idea dropped into my mind. I remembered what Maxwell had said about Helen. She makes a play at arty-thing in trousers . The trouble she gets a guy into! Suppose X had still been in love with her, and she had grown tired of him? Suppose he had found out she had taken this villa and was planning to live here with me? He might have come down to even the score. He might even have thrown’ her over the cliff.

This would be a sweet theory to lay before Chalmers, who was obviously convinced that Helen was a thoroughly decent girl. I couldn’t lay it before him without involving myself.

With this idea nagging at the back of my mind, I spent an hour going through her three suitcases. It was a waste of time, because I knew both Carlotti and Chalmers had been through them and had found nothing. Her clothes carried a faint smell of an expensive perfume that made her memory very alive to me. I was feeling pretty depressed by the time I had completed repacking the suitcases, ready to put in the car when I left.

I looked over the whole villa, but I found nothing that’d tell me what she had done from the time the village woman had left her arranging the flowers to the time she had died.

I carried the suitcases down the steps and loaded them on the back seat of the convertible. I returned to the villa and gave myself another drink.

I told myself that my search must begin in Rome. Here I had found nothing, and as I thought about that, I got another idea. I stood thinking for a moment, then I crossed to the telephone and asked to be connected with Sorrento police headquarters. When I got through, I asked for Lieutenant Grandi.

“This is Dawson,” I said. “I forgot to ask you: did you have that film processed? The film in Signorina Chalmers’s cine camera?”

“There wasn’t a film in the camera,” he said curtly.

“No film? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

I stared at the opposite wall.

“If there was no film in the camera, she wasn’t using the camera when she died,” I said, speaking my thoughts aloud.

“That doesn’t follow. She could have forgotten to put a film in, couldn’t she?”

I remembered that the indicator on the camera had shown that twelve feet of film had been run off. I knew a little about these cameras, and I knew that when you put a film in, there is a catch that opens the film gate through which you thread the film, and as the gate opens the indicator is automatically set back to zero.

“I suppose she could,” I said. “Did Lieutenant Carlotti think anything of it?”

“What’s there to think about?” Grandi snapped.

“Well, thanks. Just one other thing: there wasn’t anything taken from the villa, was there? Besides the jewels, I mean.”

“We didn’t take anything.”

“Have you finished with the camera and the case? I’m collecting la signorina Chalmers’s things now. If I drop by, can I have the camera?”

“We don’t want it any more.”

“Okay, I’ll be along then. So long, Lieutenant,” and I hung up.

The footage indicator on the camera had shown twelve feet. That meant there had been a film in the camera, and it had been removed by someone who wasn’t familiar in handling this type of camera. The film had been forcibly removed, ripping the length of film out of the gate without releasing the gate lock. It meant too that the film had been ruined by taking it out this way, so it followed whoever had taken it out hadn’t wished to keep the film. The only purpose for removing the film was to destroy it.

Why?

I gave myself another drink. I was suddenly excited. Could this be the clue Chalmers had said I would find, and having found this one, I’d find another?

Helen wouldn’t have ripped the film out of the camera. That was certain. Then who did?

Then the second clue dropped into my mind the way a leaf floats off a tree.

I remembered her showing me ten cartons of cine film when I had called at her Rome apartment. I remembered chaffing her about buying so many, and I remembered she had said she intended to use most of the film in Sorrento.