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

The flashing strip of sharp steel filled Joe with horror. What was left of his drink-sodden courage disintegrated.

“Don’t touch me!” he said, his voice quavering. “You can have them! I’ve got them here... ”

He pulled out his wallet and spilled its contents out on to the bed. Among the few crumpled thousand franc notes, his press card and a faded snap-shot of his wife was a soiled envelope.

Jay picked up the envelope, got to his feet and moved away from the bed. He put the razor on the table, then he opened the envelope and took out three negatives and a number of prints. He checked them, then laid them in the ashtray on the table.

“Are there any more, Mr. Kerr?”

Joe shook his head.

Jay stared at him and he felt certain the man was so frightened he was telling the truth.

“She hasn’t any either?”

Again Joe shook his head.

Taking out his cigarette lighter, Jay applied the flame to one of the photographs. He stood over the little burning pile until there was nothing left but black ash which he scattered over the carpet.

“So now, Mr. Kerr, it is your word against mine,” he said. “I wouldn’t advise you to talk to the police. My father has a lot of influence. Besides, the police would want to know why you hadn’t told them before. Attempted blackmail carries quite a stiff prison sentence. From what I hear a French prison isn’t very comfortable.”

Joe felt if he didn’t have a drink, he would faint and with a hand that shook violently, he grabbed up the bottle of whisky and poured whisky into the glass by his bedside. He half-filled the glass with whisky before Jay moved up to him and took the bottle out of his hand.

The touch of Jay’s cold fingers against his feverish skin made Joe start back. Then, as Jay moved away and set the bottle on the table, Joe picked up the glass and drank greedily.

The effect of the whisky on him was immediate. He felt as if he had been hit on the back of his head and he realized the mistake he had made in drinking the whisky so quickly.

He felt the glass slide out of his hand and he heard it, as from a long way off, thud on to the carpet. His brain now seemed to be wrapped in a hotbed of cotton wool. He lay back, feebly blowing out his raddled cheeks, feeling the violent acceleration of his heartbeats.

He was aware that Jay was standing over him and the dark glasses, reflecting the light, frightened Joe. Then suddenly he saw his wife standing behind Jay and smiling at him. She was wearing the white brocaded dress in which she had died and he felt vaguely surprised that there was no blood on the dress.

She was beckoning to him and he tried to lift his head to see her more clearly, but the effort was too much for him. Then he became aware that the boy was doing something and his dazed eyes shifted from his wife to the boy’s hands.

The boy was holding a scarlet cord between his fingers and the cord formed into a loop.

Joe thought this was odd and he made a desperate effort to try to understand what was happening, but the whisky fumes now had taken control of him.

He felt himself grinning stupidly as the boy moved slowly and silently up to him, the scarlet loop held in front of him.

Joe looked from the boy to his wife and he saw a big patch of blood was now forming on the front of her dress. He started up, not feeling the loop of silk as it dropped around his neck, staring with drunken horror at the steadily increasing circle of red on the white dress.

It wasn’t until the scarlet cord bit savagely into his raddled, ageing throat that it flashed through his mind that he was being murdered.

It was a little after a quarter past eleven when Madame Brossette, bending over her magazine, suddenly lifted her head to listen.

Somewhere upstairs she could hear a tap running and she frowned. The only person she allowed to use the bathroom was Joe. Surely he hadn’t gone in there when she had told him to remain in the hideout? Maybe it was one of those wretched girls, although what they would want in the bath-room puzzled her.

Again she listened and her frown turned into an angry scowl as the sound of running water continued. If there was one thing Madame Brossette hated more than anything else it was waste.

Grunting with annoyance, she pushed back her chair and got up. She walked to the foot of the stairs and stared up them, listening.

Water was gushing out of the taps, she decided. Someone had been in the bathroom and not only had left the taps open but had also left the bathroom door open.

“Turn that water off!” she bawled but without much hope that anyone up there would take any notice. The thought of climbing the long, steep flight of stairs in the night heat irritated her, but after waiting a few more seconds, she caught hold of the banister rail and started the long plod up.

Jay watched her come through the crack between the door and the door post. He had turned on the taps and had left the bathroom door open in the hope the sound of the running water would bring the woman up the stairs.

He was very tense. He could feel a muscle twitching in his cheek and he had difficulty in controlling his quick, hard breathing.

He watched the woman reach the head of the stairs, then move heavily down the passage to the bathroom.

Silently he opened the door, stepped out into the passage and going down three of the stairs, he laid across the fourth stair the bolster he had taken from his bed. Then he stole up the stairs and back into his room as Madame Brossette, muttering angrily, turned off the tap.

She came out of the bathroom, turned off the light, then walked half way down the passage and paused outside the door of the broom cupboard.

Jay stiffened. This was the risk he knew he would be taking if he brought the woman up the stairs. Would she look in to see how Joe was?

But he relaxed as Madame Brossette shrugged her heavy shoulders and then continued on down the passage.

Jay watched her. He tensed himself and as Madame Brossette reached the head of the stairs and turned to descend them, her back now to him, Jay silently opened the door and stole out behind her.

Madame Brossette had reached the third stair before she became aware that there was someone behind her. She suddenly felt hot, quick breath on the back of her neck and she had a vague idea that she could hear the thump-thump-thump of heartbeats.

Her foot descended to the fourth stair as she turned her head. She saw a crouching figure of a man just behind her, his hands outstretched and in the dim light the dark glasses he wore gave him an inhuman look.

She caught her breath sharply. Then she felt the stair give under her weight as she stepped on to something that had a horrible soft feeling.

She lost her balance. She made a desperate grab at the banister rail.

Jay put his hand on her shoulder and gave her a violent push.

She began to fall backwards, her mouth wide open, her eyes bulging with shock and a thin, wailing scream starting from her throat.

Jay reached down and snatched up the bolster as the woman’s great body landed in the lobby with a crash that shook the house.

The thud of her body made an appalling sound and it was immediately followed by a violent crashing of bottles on the shelf over the bar, jerked loose by the shock of the woman’s fall.

Jay jumped up the three stairs and moved quickly into his bedroom, closing the door. He threw the bolster on the bed, then taking out his handkerchief he wiped his sweating face.

Was she dead?

He couldn’t imagine anyone falling like that without being instantly killed, but there was a chance that she had survived the fall.

For a few seconds there was no movement nor sound in the hotel. It was as if everyone who had heard the sound of the fall were paralysed, staring at each other, listening and wondering.