Джеймс Чейз - Not Safe to Be Free [= The Case of the Strangled Starlet]

Jay had been so curious and interested in what had been going on that it hadn’t occurred to him that he was the only non-member of the hotel staff in the lobby nor had it occurred to him that he was in any way conspicuous. Until these two men suddenly turned to stare at him he had considered himself as an invisible spectator, enjoying what was going on without being noticed himself.

With a sudden quickening of fear, he glanced away from the two men and, as casually as he could, he pretended to be reading the newspaper he was holding.

Perhaps he had been rash to come here so early in the morning, he thought, his heart-beat quickening. Perhaps he was drawing attention to himself; not, of course, that it could matter. The police had no reason at all to connect him with the dead girl. All the same it might be safer to leave now. He would take a stroll along the promenade and return when there were more people in the lobby.

Casually, he folded the newspaper, and, behind the screen of his dark glasses, he glanced quickly at the two men, then his heart skipped a beat and he stiffened as the police officer suddenly moved away from the hotel detective and came directly towards where he was sitting.

Jay watched him come, sudden panic gripping him. He remained motionless, his cigarette burning between his fingers, aware of a cold dampness breaking out all over his body.

The police officer’s face was expressionless, his small black eyes probing as he stopped in front of Jay.

“Monsieur Delaney?”

“That’s right,” Jay said and his voice was husky.

“I am Inspector Devereaux, Cannes police. I would like you to give me a few minutes of your time, if you please.”

Jay found it necessary to touch his lips with the tip of his tongue before saying, “Why? What is it?”

“Will you be good enough to come with me where we won’t be interrupted?” Devereaux said. “In this office, over here.”

Turning, he started across the lobby, not looking to see if Jay was following him.

For perhaps ten seconds, Jay remained in the chair. What did this mean? Fear tugged at his heart. Had something gone wrong? Had he done something unbelievably stupid and they were now on his track already? Was this man going to arrest him?

Then, pulling himself together, he got to his feet and sauntered across the lobby.

This was the test he had deliberately invited, he was thinking. How can they prove anything?

But the cold fear that gripped him made him feel slightly sick. He didn’t like the feeling and his heart was hammering as he walked into the office where the Inspector waited for him.

Whenever Joe Kerr came to report on the Cannes Film Festival and this was his third visit, he stayed at the Beau Rivage hotel because it was extremely cheap, because he was allowed to use the bathroom to develop his films and because the owner, Madame Brossette, allowed him from time to time to share her bed.

After so many years as a widower, Joe grasped at any crumb of feminine kindness and although he was a little frightened of this woman because of her size, strength and outbursts of temper, he eagerly looked forward to his yearly visits.

A few minutes after half-past nine a.m., he slid the prints he had finished into the toilet basin for their final wash.

He bent over the toilet basin and examined the prints. There were three of them. One showed Jay Delaney unlocking the door to suite 27; the second one showed Lucille Balu knocking on the same door and the third one showed Sophia Delaney, her hand on the door handle, an impatient frown on her face. The three pictures were linked together by the wall clock that showed plainly in each print. It showed that Jay Delaney had arrived at the door a few minutes to four, that the girl had arrived exactly at four and Sophia had arrived at seven and a half minutes past four.

Joe blew out his cheeks as he studied the prints. If they got into the hands of the public prosecutor, the boy would be a dead duck, he thought and what was more, Delaney’s wife would face an accessory rap.

He changed the water, then, lighting the butt-end of a cigarette, he began to clear up the mess he had made in the bathroom.

As he was tipping the hypo down the W.C., he heard a tap on the door.

A little startled, he went to the door, unlocked it and opened it a few inches.

Madame Brossette stood in the narrow passage, her arms akimbo and looked at him, her green eyes probing, her small red mouth set in a hard line.

Madame Brossette was forty-five. She had buried two husbands and wasn’t anxious now to take on a third. Her last husband had left her the hotel, the main business of which was to let out rooms by the hour to the girls who walked the back streets of Cannes during the early afternoon and far into the night. Apart from this source of income, Madame Brossette worked hand-in-glove with the tobacco smugglers of Tangiers and also she had important connections in Paris for the disposal of stolen jewellery.

Her appearance was impressive. Close on six feet tall and massively built, she always reminded Joe of a character out of a gangster picture. Her face was heart-shaped, her hair was the colour of rust and she was enormously fat.

“Hello,” Joe said feebly. “Did you want me?”

Madame Brossette moved forward like a steam roller and Joe hastily gave ground. She came into the bathroom, closed the door, then settled herself with ominous composure on the toilet seat.

“What have you been up to, Joe?” she demanded, her eyes as hard as emeralds.

“Up to? What do you mean?” Joe said, leaning his back against the toilet basin to hide the prints from her sight. “I’ve been up to nothing. What’s wrong?”

“So long as you haven’t been up to anything, then it’s all right,” she said, settling her massive buttocks more comfortably on the toilet seat. “I’ll tell them then you’re here and they can talk to you.”

Joe felt a tug at his heart. His raddled face lost some of its colour.

“They? Who?”

“Who do you think? The police have just been here asking for you.”

“For me?”

Joe suddenly felt so bad he sat down abruptly on the side of the bath.

“The police? For me?”

“Don’t keep saying that!” There was an impatient note in her voice. She had never been afraid of the police and she had no patience with those who were afraid of them. “I told them you weren’t here, because I thought you might have got yourself into some kind of trouble last night.” Her eyes were accusing. “You were late enough back here.”

Joe ran his fingers through his thinning hair and opened and shut his mouth without saying anything.

“It’s the homicide men on the job,” Madame Brossette went on, watching him closely. “They told me if you did come here, I was to call them. What have you been up to?”

Joe hadn’t been a crime reporter for nothing. He suddenly realized the danger he was in. That damned hotel detective must have told the police he had seen him in the corridor around the time the girl had died. The night clerk must have told them the time he had left the hotel. They would want to know what he had been doing in the hotel all those hours and what he had seen. He felt another tug at his heart. They might be crazy enough to imagine he had killed the girl!

Madame Brossette, watching him, saw his raddled face turn slightly green.

So he had been up to something, she thought and she began to grow anxious, for she liked Joe.

She was a woman who needed a lover. When Joe wasn’t in Cannes, she found a variety of substitutes, but Joe’s love-making was something special. He was the only man who was tender with her and to a woman who had lived hard, who trusted no one and who was becoming sharply aware of her advancing years, tenderness from a man meant a great deal.