Tom Hoke - Murder in the Grand Manor

Outside it was still hot and the wind pushed him back to the guest house. Who says Chicago has a monopoly on wind? Seventh Street in Fort Worth, Texas was a perfect wind tunnel, so he had found out. On the top of Beau Mitchell's bleak hill, the wind stung your eyes when you faced it, and tore at you when you walked away from it. Jim felt uneasy about this job. That was for openers.

He didn't sleep well in Mitchell's guest house.

Later on he wished he had. Instead of counting proverbial sheep, he wondered why he had any compulsion to take this job. The money really wasn't that important. He didn't like Beau Mitchell. He was fairly sure he wouldn't like Jerry Duprey. It could only be curiosity. Mitchell was an enigma. He shuddered over a double bourbon and finally fell asleep.

When he went to meet Jerry Duprey, he almost missed him for two reasons. First, Duprey had a hat, and second he didn't have on glasses.

Anyway, it just goes to prove a picture presents only one dimension. At first sight Jerry Duprey looked slightly stupid, but Jim began to doubt it soon. And the picture didn't show how black his hair was or how black his eyes were behind the glasses in the picture.

Later Jim found out somewhere inside Dupreys portly exterior was a rather complex man. It was possible twenty-five years before he had been his mother's darling little roly-poly six year old uninhibited son. But Jim bet he wouldn't have liked the man even then. Jim didn’t like children just because they are children. To him, as people grow older, they are more of whatever they were to begin with.

On some it's becoming. Not on Jerry Duprey.

Even at the first meeting he recognized something remotely curious about Duprey.

Jim might have been more interested in him if he thought his role would be more than a playboy baby-sitter. Maybe this would teach him a lesson. But first impression indicated the guy was scared.

Duprey put on his glasses and took off his hat to mop his brow, and Jim caught up with him.

"You Duprey?" he asked. The man turned around fast. "Yeah, who are you?" He stuck out his chin, but his voice didn't seem too firm.

"Name's Jim Smith, Mitchell sent me. He's out of town." Jim stuck out a fist and got a handful of limp fish and a trace of a grasp at the end of his fingers, along with a cold blank stare. He was going to love this guy. Duprey gave the same big stupid smile Jim had noted in the picture, but his eyes were anything but stupid.

"Beau's gone?" Jim nodded. This was finally getting through to him. Jim watched Duprey relax. Finally the man said: "You like night spots, Smith?"

Jim sighed. For two thousand bucks he was wild about night spots. "Yeah, sure, shall we eat first?" he asked hopefully. Duprey went for the meal idea, and Jim steered him to a good restaurant.

Their first meal together didn't enchant Jim.

This guy was a taker. He took over everything at the table, including his salad, his first drink when he went to the restroom, and his desert.

Duprey took everything but the check. He even took over too many drinks and got a little garrulous. Any sentence with over six words indicated he was garrulous. It didn't make much sense to Jim, but he was listening.

Duprey had a broken record going on this one.

"Just you wait, Smith. Just you wait! Beau too!" and he squinted at him until Jim could hardly see his eyes. Jim tried to make Duprey come up with more, but it was no use. He finally decided they had absolutely nothing in common. Maybe Jim was uncharitable, but this job didn't appear to be a cinch.

It wasn't. They did the town and Dallas too for the first few nights. Jim knocked off the liquor except for a shot now and then to keep him going. Duprey accepted everything as if he deserved the red carpet treatment. When they hit the dumps, he would pick up some babe and take her off into a corner, feeding her drinks and chugalugging his own, leaving Jim the bill. Jim always got stuck with his girl friend's unwashed female companion, and he always got a giggler. Duprey managed to get drunk and a spot vindictive about two in the morning. Jim got to be a clock watcher. At least Duprey slept until noon every day. But, after a bunch of mad merry nights Duprey started to question where Mitchell was. This Jim couldn't answer because he had never heard back from their host.

On the fifth morning after Jerry's arrival, Jim was summoned to the main house, leaving Duprey snoring peacefully in bed. Mitchell's man answered the door and pointed to the telephone in the hall. "Mr. Mitchell wants to talk to you, Mr. Smith." He picked up the telephone. Mitchell must have been at the other end of the earth because the connection was lousy and his voice indistinct.

"How you doing, Smith," he asked.

"Peachy-dandy!" Jim replied sarcastically.

"You should have upped it a thousand."

Mitchell ignored his reply. "Jerry still there, Smith?"

"Yeah," Jim said, "Sleeping it off."

Mitchell's voice crackled. "Keep him there, Smith. You just keep Duprey there!" He hung up.

Jim returned to the guest house to find Jerry rummaging in the kitchen for some breakfast.

He let him have at it. Nursemaid he was, but nobody said he was to be a cook. Duprey came into the living room and plunked his short body in a chair and took a drink of tomato juice. For a guy who had little on his mind but his social activities, he came out with a question, looking at Jim shrewdly. "How did you get your job with Mitchell?" he asked.

"I ran into him in San Antonio a few weeks ago," Jim answered truthfully. Then, not so truthfully: "He needed a public relations man."

Jerry forgot him. "When's he coming home?" he asked for the nine hundredth time.

Jim was starting to catch the drift. "Any time, Duprey, you know how he is. How about hitting a new spot tonight? The Stripper", he suggested, but Dupery’s mind for once seemed to be on something else.

Duprey stared at the telephone until Jim asked,

"Shall I make a reservation, Duprey?" He frowned, still staring at the phone. He didn't catch the sarcasm in Jim’s question, and Jim didn't repeat it. Duprey puzzled him, but not enough for his own good.

"Okay, The Stripper," he finally answered.

A few nights on the town must have dulled Jim’s responses. He should have paid attention to Dupery’s abstraction. He wished he had. That night they groped their way through an almost male audience and found a table. For once Jerry pulled out a bottle. Jim should have known better. It took only one drink to put him in the land of nod. It was a lousy drink, made up of two jiggers of booze and one Mickey. Jim woke up on a couch in the men's room, and Jerry was long gone.

The show was over and the janitor was cleaning up the place. He didn't seem surprised to see Jim. Nice place this one. Of course the car was gone too. But, as nobody had rolled Jim in his slumber, he still had a pocket full of Mitchell's money. So he called a cab. His watch said it was four in the morning.

He had the taxi driver let him out at the gate.

After the taxi left, he circled the guest house.

He didn't see a car in front, but that didn't mean it wasn't in back. He looked around and then across at the big house and had the strangest feeling it was empty. Maybe Mitchell's man was having a night on the town.

Jim fumbled open the back door to the guest house, which surprised him by being unlocked, and he switched on the light in the living room. The house was empty. He was right. How was he going to explain this to Beau Mitchell? Jerry's clothes and his bag were gone, and the room was a mess, with half-opened drawers, and a welter of papers in the wastebasket. Jim didn't find much until he reached the bottom of the basket, where a torn up Express Mail envelope attracted his attention. It was addressed to Mr. Jerry Duprey, as he found after difficulty in piecing it together. The return address was the Grand Manor Hotel, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. It had been mailed two days before. He slipped it into a pocket. Maybe this was something to go on, slim as it was. He had to have a try at getting Duprey back before Mitchell returned.