1957 - The Guilty Are Afraid Read online

  I heard one of the thugs groan softly, and I knew I hadn’t much time. I stepped up on to the balustrade of the terrace, reached up for the narrow coping running along the edge of the roof, got a grip, then pulled myself upwards.

  I have a pretty good head for heights, but while I was dangling in mid-air, I did think of the long, long drop far below.

  I got my leg up on the roof, heaved upwards and slid my body on to it. For a long moment I remained there, clutching on to the tiles and wondering if I made one more move if I’d start a slide I wouldn’t be able to stop.

  I made the move, got up on hands and knees, and then, very cautiously, I stood up. My crepe-sole shoes afforded a good grip. Bending low, I walked up the tiles to the flat roof and sat down.

  There was no skylight. If anyone came after me, he would have to come the way I had, and with a gun in my hand, that made my position for the time being impregnable. I had a magnificent view over the whole of St. Raphael City and I sat admiring it.

  Around eight o’clock I heard the club suddenly come to life. Far below big Cadillacs, Packards and Rolls-Royces pulled up outside the hotel entrance. A very slick dance band started up: lights came on on the terrace. I judged it safe to light a cigarette. I decided to wait an hour and then see what I could see.

  By nine o’clock the rush was on. Above the precision slickness of the band, I could hear a great buzz of voices and laughter. Now was the time and I stood up.

  Going down the sloping roof was a lot more dangerous than going up: one slip and I would shoot over the edge and down on the sidewalk some three hundred feet below.

  I moved an inch at a time, squatting on my haunches, digging my heels into the tiles and checking myself with my hands. I reached the edge, got a grip on the coping, got my legs over the edge, twisted off and swung into space.

  Away to my right I could see the brilliantly lit terrace with its tables, its elegantly dressed men and women and the regiment of waiters milling around them. I was just in the shadows, and unless anyone came right to the end of the terrace, I couldn’t be seen.

  My feet touched the wide ledge that ran below the windows of the offices. I let myself drop: a dangerous move, and as I landed I nearly lost my balance and toppled backwards. But by dropping my head forward I just managed to correct my balance, then I hooked my fingers into the coping and held on while I got my breath back.

  The rest was pretty plain sailing. All I had to do was to walk along the ledge and look in the windows as I passed. The first two rooms I came to were empty. They were furnished as offices with desks, typewriters and filing cabinets: everything on the de luxe scale. The third window was much larger. I paused beside it and looked in.

  Cordez sat in a high-backed chair before a big glass-topped desk. He was smoking a brown cigarette in a long holder and was checking figures in a ledger.

  The room was big and done over in grey and eggshell blue. All the desk fitments were of polished steel. Three big filing cabinets, also of steel, stood along the wall. Near where Cordez was sitting was a big safe.

  I kept just out of the stream of light that came through the open window, bending forward so I could peer into the room. Cordez worked quickly. His gold pencil travelled up the rows of figures, casting them with the practised ease of an accountant.

  I remained watching him for perhaps ten minutes, and then, just when I was beginning to think I was wasting my time, I heard a knock on the door.

  Cordez looked up, called, “Come in,” and then went back to his casting again.

  The door opened, and a fat, white-faced man in a well-fitting tuxedo entered. He had a red carnation in his buttonhole and diamonds glittered at his shirt cuffs. He closed the door as if it were made of something very brittle and stood still, waiting, his eyes on Cordez.

  When Cordez had finished casting a column, he noted down the total, then looked up.

  His expression was coldly hostile.

  “Now look, Donaghue,” he said, “if you haven’t any money, get out. I’ve had about all I’m going to take from you.”

  The man fingered his perfectly set tie. Sullen hatred showed in his eyes.

  “I’ve got the money,” he said, “and don’t give me any of your damned impertinence.” He hauled out a roll of bills from his hip pocket and threw them on the desk. “Here’s a thousand. I’ll have two this time.”

  Cordez picked up the roll, straightened it and counted the bills. Then he opened a drawer in his desk and dropped the roll into it. He got to his feet and walked over to the safe. Standing squarely in front of it so his body hid the combination from Donaghue and myself, he twirled the dial and pulled the door open. He reached inside, took something out, closed the safe door and came back to the desk.

  He flicked two match-folders across the glass top of the desk so they came to rest before Donaghue.

  Donaghue snatched them up, opened them and examined them carefully, then slid them into his vest pocket. He went out without a word, and Cordez returned to his desk. He sat for a long moment staring at the opposite wall, then he picked up his gold pencil and began casting again.

  I remained where I was, watching.

  During the period of forty minutes, two other people came in: a fat, elderly woman and a young fellow who looked as if he were still at college. They each parted with five hundred dollars for a match-folder. Each time Cordez treated them as if he were doing them a favour. By now it was ten minutes to ten, and I remembered my appointment with Margot Creedy.

  I leaned forward and looked down. Ten feet below and to my left I could see a balcony to one of the hotel bedrooms. No lights showed from the window. I decided that would be my safest and easiest way out.

  Crouching, I slid past Cordez’s window and arrived immediately above the balcony. Then I sat on the ledge, turned, caught hold of the coping, let myself hang, then dropped.

  The french doors were easy enough to force, and a few minutes later I was in the bedroom. I groped my way to the door, opened it and looked cautiously out into a wide, deserted corridor.

  Then I set off down the corridor in search of the elevator.

  It was as easy as that.

  Chapter 9

  I

  At five minutes after ten o’clock, I saw Margot Creedy come through the hotel’s revolving doors and pause under the brightly lit canopy.

  She was wearing an emerald green dress made of sequins, with a plunging neckline, that fitted her like a second skin. Around her throat was a string of big, fat emeralds.

  She glittered as she stood there, and she was pretty breathtaking. I was acutely aware of the Buick’s shabbiness as I edged it up to the hotel entrance. I pulled up, slid across the bench seat and got out.

  “Hello there,” I said. “I want to be personal and tell you you look wonderful. That’s just for the record. My real opinion is a little too intimate for expression.”

  She gave me her small smile. Her eyes were very alive and sparkling.

  “I put this on specially for you,” she said. “I’m glad you like it.”

  “That’s an understatement: it’s a dazzler. Have you your car here?”

  “No. I’ll show you the bungalow, and then perhaps you wouldn’t mind driving me back?”

  “Of course I’ll drive you back.”

  I held the door open and she got in. I had a brief glimpse of her slender ankles as I shut the door. I went around the car, got in and drove down the drive.

  “You turn right and go to the far end of the promenade,” she told me. There were a lot of cars idling along the promenade. It wasn’t possible to do more than twenty miles an hour and then only in short bursts.

  The moon was up, the night was warm and the sea and the palms made a nice setting. I was in no hurry.

  “From what I hear this Musketeer Club is quite a place,” I said. “Do you go there often?”

  “It’s the only place you can go to that isn’t crammed with tourists. Yes, I go there quite a lot. Daddy owns half of it,
so I don’t have to pay the bills. I wouldn’t go there so much if I did.”

  “All you’d have to do is to hock one of those emeralds and you could move in there for good.”

  She laughed.

  “It so happens they don’t belong to me. Daddy allows me to wear them, but they are his. When I want a change, I take them back and he lends me something else. I don’t own anything. Even this dress I really can’t claim as mine.”

  “There’s the bungalow you have on lease,” I said, looking at her out of the corners of my eyes.

  “It’s not my lease. Daddy bought it.”

  “He’ll love his new tenant. I think maybe I’d better skip this idea and not move in.”

  “He won’t know. He still thinks I use it.”

  “It would come as a surprise if he drops in for a cup of tea, wouldn’t it?”

  “He never drops in for anything.”

  “Well, if you’re sure about that. So you’re the genuine poor little rich girl?”

  She lifted her lovely shoulders.

  “Daddy likes to control everything. I never have any money. I have to send him the bills and he settles them.”

  “No one ever settles my bills.”

  “But no one tells you you shouldn’t have bought this or that, and you can do without these or those, do they?”

  “You know if you go on like this, I’ll begin to feel sorry for you, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  She laughed again.

  “I don’t see why not. I like sympathy. No one ever gives me any.”

  “You listen carefully: the drip, drip, drip you hear is my heart bleeding for you,” I said.

  We were reaching the quieter part of the promenade now and I was able to increase speed. I shifted into top and moved up to forty miles an hour.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” she said. “Sometimes I’m quite desperate for money.”

  “So am I. Now look, you don’t ever have to be desperate for money: not a girl like you. You could make a small fortune as a model. Ever thought of that?”

  “Daddy wouldn’t allow me to do it. He is very careful about the dignity of his name. No one would employ me if he told them not to.”

  “You’re just stalling. You don’t have to live here. New York would love you.”

  “Do you think it would? Turn left here, down that road.”

  The headlights picked out a rough, sandy road that seemed to be running right into the sea. I swung the car off the broad promenade and reduced speed. We went down the sandy road into darkness. The headlights cut a white path ahead of us.

  “I was just talking: it’s easy to talk,” I said. “You can’t lead other people’s lives. You’ve managed so far. You’ll go on managing.”

  “Yes, I suppose I will.”

  “This is a little off the beaten track, isn’t it?” I said, as the car bumped over the uneven road. Palm trees on either side blocked out the moon and there was only darkness each side of the headlight beams.

  She opened her bag and took out a cigarette and lit it.

  “That’s why I wanted it. If you had lived in this town as long as I have, you would welcome a little seclusion. Don’t you like being alone?”

  Thinking of a possible visit from Hertz and his thugs, I said with reservation, “Within reason.”

  We drove for a quarter of a mile in silence, then the headlights picked out a squat bungalow within twenty yards of the sea.

  “Here we are.”

  I pulled up.

  “Have you a flashlight?” she asked. “We’ll need it until I can find the light switch.”

  I got a big flashlight out of the door pocket. We both got out and together we walked up the path to the bungalow’s door.

  The moon was brilliant and I could see a mile-long strip of empty sand, palm trees and the sea. In the distance I could see lights of a house that was built up on a rocky hill, projecting into the sea.

  “What’s out there?” I asked as Margot opened her bag and hunted for the door key.

  “That’s Arrow Point.”

  “Those lights from Hahn’s place?”

  “Yes.”

  She found the key, pushed it into the lock and turned it. The door swung open. She groped, and then a light sprang up on a big luxuriously furnished lounge with a small cocktail bar in the distant corner, a radiogram and television combination, plenty of comfortable lounging chairs, a three-foot wide padded window seat that ran the length of one of the walls and a blue and white mosaic floor.

  “This is quite something,” I said, walking in and pausing in the middle of the big room to look around. “Are you sure you mean me to move in here?”

  She walked over to the double french doors and threw them open. She touched a light switch and lights came up on a thirty-foot long terrace that had a magnificent view of the sea and the distant lights of St. Raphael.

  “Do you like it?”

  She came back to stand in the doorway and she again gave me her small bewitching smile. Just to look at her got my blood running around in my veins like a car on a roller coaster.

  “It’s terrific.”

  I was looking at the bar. There was an assortment of bottles on the shelves. It seemed to me there was every drink you could want there.

  “Are those bottles the property of your dad or are they yours?”

  “They’re his. I took them from the house. Four bottles at a time.” She smiled. “He has everything. I don’t see why I shouldn’t help myself sometimes, do you?”

  She went behind the bar, opened the door of a refrigerator and took out a bottle of champagne.

  “Let’s celebrate,” she said. “Here, you open it. I’ll get the glasses.”

  She went out of the lounge. I broke the wire around the cork of the bottle and, as she returned with two champagne glasses on a tray, I eased the cork out. I poured the wine and we touched glasses.

  “What do we celebrate?” I asked.

  “Our meeting,” she said, her eyes sparkling at me. “You’re the first man I’ve met who doesn’t care if I’m rich or poor.”

  “Now wait a minute . . . what makes you think that?”

  She drank the champagne and flourished the empty glass.

  “I can tell. Now go and look at your new home and tell me what you think of it.”

  I put my glass down.

  “Where do I begin?”

  “The bedroom is through there to the left.”

  We looked at each other. There was an expression in her eyes that could have meant anything.

  I went to look at the bedroom, finding I was a little short of breath. I told myself I was letting my imagination run away with me, but the feeling that she wasn’t here merely to show me the bungalow persisted.

  It was a nice bedroom: a double bed, closets and a mosaic floor. The closets were full of her clothes. The room was decorated in pale green and fawn.

  The bathroom was right next door and looked as if it had been built for a Cecil B. de Mille movie with a sunken bath and a shower cabinet in pale blue and black.

  I returned to the lounge.

  Margot was lying full length on the window seat, her head supported by two cushions. She was staring out across the expanse of moonlit sea.

  “Do you like it?” she asked, without looking at me.

  “Yes. Are you quite sure you want me to have it?”

  “Why not? I don’t use it now.”

  “You have your things here still.”

  “There’s nothing I want immediately. I’m a little bored with them. Later, I’ll use them again. I like giving clothes a rest. There’s plenty of room for your things.”

  I sat in a lounging chair by her. Having her alone in this bungalow gave me a feeling of acute excitement. She turned her head and looked at me, then she said, “Are you making any progress with your murder?”

  “I don’t think I am, but you can’t expect me to keep my mind on my job with this sort of thing happening t
o me, can you?”

  “What is happening to you?”

  “This—the bungalow. And, of course, you. . .”

  “Am I so disturbing then?”

  “You could be. You are.”

  She looked at me.

  “But then so are you.”

  There was a long pause, then she swung her long legs off the window seat.

  “I’m going to have a swim. Coming?”

  “Why sure.” I got up. “I’ll get my bag. It’s in the car.”

  Leaving her, I went out into the darkness, got my bag out of the car and came back.

  I carried the bag into the bedroom where I found her standing before the full—length mirror. She had taken off her dress and she had on now a white negligée. She was looking at herself, her hands lifting her hair off her shoulders.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said, setting down the bag. “I’ll do it for you.”

  She turned slowly. There was that look in her eyes I’ve seen from time to time in the eyes of a woman who is making a proposal.

  “You think I’m beautiful?”

  “More than that.”

  I felt myself sliding over the edge. I made a poor attempt to stop this from developing into something I could be sorry about in the morning, by saying, “Maybe we’d better skip the swim and I’ll take you home.” I was aware of feeling suddenly short of breath. “We might be sorry. . .”

  She shook her head.

  “Don’t say that. I’m never sorry for anything I do.” Still looking at me, she walked slowly towards me.

  II

  Give me a cigarette,” Margot said from out of the darkness. I reached for my pack on the bedside table, shook one out, gave it to her, then flicked my lighter alight. In the tiny flame, I could see her with her golden head resting on the pillow. There was a relaxed, peaceful expression on her face and she looked at me, our eyes meeting above the flame and she smiled.