You Find Him – I'll Fix Him Page 8

  June Chalmers recrossed her legs. She turned her pretty head and stared directly at me. Her worldly, violet eyes went over me thoughtfully: a disconcerting stare that made me look quickly away from her.

  "What happened between that time and eight-fifteen in the evening is a matter for conjecture," Carlotti said. "It is some-thing probably that we shall never know."

  Chalmers's eyes became hooded. He leaned forward.

  "Why eight-fifteen?" he asked.

  "That was the time she died," Carlotti said. "I don't think there is any doubt about that. Her wrist watch was smashed in the fall. It showed exactly eight-fifteen."

  I had stiffened to attention. This was news to me. It meant that I was in the villa, looking for Helen, when she had fallen. No one, including a judge and jury, would believe I hadn't had something to do with her death if it became known I had been up there at the time.

  "I would like to be able to tell you," Carlotti went on, "that your daughter's death was due to an unfortunate accident, but at the moment, I can't do it. I admit on the face of it, it would seem to be the solution. There is no doubt that she took a cine camera up on the cliff head. It is possible, when using a camera of this kind, to become so absorbed in what you are taking, that you could get too close to the edge of the path and fell over."

  Chalmers took his cigar out of his mouth and laid it in the ashtray. He stared fixedly at Carlotti.

  "Are you trying to tell me that it wasn't an accident?" he said in a voice you could cut a stale loaf on.

  June Chalmers stopped staring at me and cooked her head on one side: for the first time she appeared to be interested in what was going on.

  "That is for the coroner to decide," Carlotti said. He was quite unflustered and he met the icepick eyes without flinching. "There are complications. There are a number of details that need explaining. It would seem there are two alternative explanations for your daughter's death: one is that she accidentally stepped off the cliff head while using her camera; the other is that she committed suicide."

  Chalmers hunched his shoulders and his face congested.

  "You have reason to say a thing like that?"

  He conveyed that Carlotti had damn well better have a reason.

  Carlotti let him have it without rubber cushioning.

  "Your daughter was eight weeks' pregnant."

  There was a long, heavy silence. I didn't dare look at Chalmers. I stared down at my sweating hands that were gripped between my thighs.

  June broke the silence by saying, "Oh, Sherwin. I can't believe that ..."

  I sneaked a quick look at Chalmers. His face was murderous: the kind of face you see on the screen of some not-too-good actor playing the role of a cornered gangster.

  "Hold your tongue!" he snarled at June in a voice that shook with violence. Then, as she turned to look out of the window, he said to Carlotti, "Is that what the doctor said?"

  "I have a copy of the autopsy," Carlotti returned. "You can get it if you wish."

  "Pregnant? Helen?"

  He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. He still looked awe-inspiring, tough and ruthless, but somehow he didn't make me feel quite such a pigmy; some of his big-shot atmosphere had gone out of him.

  He walked slowly around the lounge while Carlotti, Grandi and I stared down at our feet and June stared out of the window. "She wouldn't commit suicide," he said suddenly. "She had too much strength of character."

  They seemed empty words: unexpected words from a man like Chalmers. I found myself wondering what chance he had ever given himself to find out if Helen had had any character at all. No one said anything.

  He continued to walk around the lounge, his hands in his pockets, his face set and frowning.

  After several uncomfortable minutes had ticked by, he paused suddenly and asked the worldold question, "Who is the man?"

  "We don't know," Carlotti said. "Your daughter may have purposely misled the estate agent and the village woman by telling them he is an American. There is no American in Italy of that name."

  Chalmers came over and sat down again.

  "He's probably not using his own name," he said.

  "That is possible," Carlotti said. "We have made inquiries in Sorrento. There was an American, travelling alone, on the three-thirty from Naples."

  I felt my heart contract: it was a horrible feeling. I found difficulty in breathing.

  "He left a suitcase at the station," Carlotti went on. "Unfortunately the description of him varies. No one particularly noticed him. He was seen walking on the Sorrento-Amalfi road by a passing motorist. All anyone can be certain about is that he wore a light grey suit. The station clerk said he was tall. The motorist thought he was of middle height. A boy from a nearby village said he was short and thick-set. There is no clear description of him. Around ten o'clock in the evening he collected his suitcase and took a taxi to Naples. He was in a great hurry. He offered the driver a five thousand lire tip to get him to the station to catch the eleven-fifteen to Rome."

  Chalmers was sitting forward, his eyes intent. He reminded me of some beast of prey.

  "The road to Amalfi is also the road to this villa?"

  "Yes. There is a branch road."

  "My daughter died at eight-fifteen?"

  "Yes."

  "And this fella took a taxi in a hurry around ten o'clock?"

  "Yes."

  "How long would it take to get from this villa to Sorrento?"

  "About half an hour by car, or walking, it'd take well over an hour and a half."

  Chalmers brooded for a moment.

  I sat there breathing through my half-open mouth and feeling pretty bad. I expected him to come out with some devastating discovery after these questions, but he didn't. Instead, he suddenly hunched his shoulders and said, "She wouldn't commit suicide. I know that. You can put that theory right out of your mind, Lieutenant. It is obvious: she fell off the cliff while using this camera."

  Carlotti didn't say anything. Grandi moved uneasily and stared hard at his finger-nails.

  "That's the verdict I expect to hear," Chalmers went on, his voice harsh.

  Carlotti said smoothly, "It's my business to give the facts to the coroner, Signor Chalmers. It is his business to find the verdict."

  Chalmers stared at him.

  "Yes. Who is the coroner?"

  "Il signor Giuseppe Maletti."

  "Here - in Naples?"

  "Yes."

  Chalmers nodded.

  "Where is my daughter's body?"

  "At the Sorrento mortuary."

  "I want to see her."

  "Of course. There will be no difficulty. If you will let me know when, I will take you there."

  "You don't have to do that. I don't like people following me around. Dawson will take me."

  "As you wish, signor."

  "Just fix it with whoever is in charge that I can see her." Chalmers took out a new cigar and began to peel off the band. For the first time since I had entered the room, he looked at me. "Is the Italian press covering this business?"

  "Not yet. We've been holding up on it until you came."

  He studied me, then nodded.

  "You did right." Then he turned to Carlotti. "Thanks for the facts, Lieutenant. If there's anything else I want to know between now and the inquest, I'll get in touch with you."

  Carlotti and Grandi got to their feet.

  "I am at your service, signor," Carlotti said.

  When they had gone, Chalmers sat for a moment, staring down at his hands, then he said quietly and savagely, "God damn wops."

  I thought this was the time to unload the box of jewels Carlotti had entrusted in my keeping. I put the box on the table in front of Chalmers.

  "These belonged to your daughter," I said. "They were found in the villa."

  He frowned, reached forward, opened the box and stared at the contents. He turned the box upside down, letting the jewels spill out on to the table.

  June got to her feet
and crossed over to stare over his shoulder.

  "You didn't give her those, did you, Sherwin?" she asked.

  "Of course not!" he said, poking at the diamond collar with a thick finger. "I wouldn't give a kid stuff like this."

  She reached over his shoulder and made to pick up the diamond collar, but he roughly pushed her hand away.

  "Leave it!" The snap in his voice startled me. "Go and sit down!"

  Slightly shrugging her shoulders, she returned to her seat by the window and sat down.

  Chalmers scooped the jewels back into the box and shut the lid. He handled the box as if it were made of egg shells.

  He sat motionless for a long time, staring at the box. I watched him, wondering what his next

  move was to be. I knew he would make a move. He was getting his big-shot atmosphere back.

  His wife, staring out of the window, and I staring down at my hands, were pigmies again.

  "Get this Giuseppe whatever his name is on the telephone," Chalmers said, without looking at me. "The coroner fella."

  I turned up Maletti's number in the book and put through the call. While I was waiting for the connection, Chalmers went on, "Give the news to the press: no details. Tell them Helen, while on vacation, fell off a cliff and was killed."

  "Yes," I said.

  "Be here to-morrow morning at nine o'clock with a car. I want to go to the mortuary."

  A voice said on the line that this was the coroner's office. I asked to be put through to Maletti. When he came on the line, I said to Chalmers, "The coroner."

  He got up and came over.

  "Okay, get busy, Dawson," he said, as he took the receiver from my hand. "Mind - no details."

  As I went out of the room I heard him say, "This is Sherwin Chalmers talking . . ."

  Somehow he made his name sound more important and more impressive than any other name in the world.

  PART FIVE

  I

  At nine o'clock the following morning I was outside the Vesuvius hotel with the hired Rolls as instructed.

  The Italian press had given Helen's death quite a coverage. Every paper carried her picture: showing her as I had first known her with her horn spectacles, her scraped-back hair-do and wearing her intellectual, serious expression.

  As soon as I had left Chalmers the previous evening, I had called Maxwell. I gave him instructions to go ahead and break the story.

  'Play it down," I said. "Make it sound commonplace. The story is she was on vacation in Sorrento, she was using a cine camera, she got absorbed in what she was taking and she fell off the cliff."

  "Who do you imagine is going to swallow a yarn like that?" he demanded, his voice excited. "They'll want to know what she was doing alone, living in a villa that size."

  "I know," I said, "but that's the story, Jack, and you're stuck with it. We'll tackle what comes next when it comes. This is the way the old man wants it, and if you want to keep your job, that's the way it's got to be." I hung up before he could argue further.

  I handed it to him when I saw the morning's papers. He had followed out my instructions to the letter. The press carried the story and a photograph, and that was all. No smart alec had an opinion to express. They just stated the facts as known, soberly and without hysterics.

  Around nine-ten, Chalmers came out of the hotel and climbed into the back of the Rolls. He had a bunch of newspapers under his arm and a cigar between his teeth. He didn't even nod good morning to me.

  I knew where he wanted to go, so I didn't waste time asking him. I got in beside the chauffeur, told him to drive to Sorrento and to snap it up.

  I was a little surprised that June Chalmers hadn't come along far the ride. From where I sat I could get a good view of Chalmers in the driving mirror as he read the newspapers. He went through them quickly and searchingly, dropping one after the other on the floor of the car as he finished reading what he wanted to read.

  By the time we reached Sorrento he had got through all the papers. He sat smoking his cigar, staring out of the window, communicating with the only god he would ever know – himself. I directed the chauffeur to the mortuary. When the Rolls pulled up outside the small building, Chalmers got out and, motioning me to remain where I was, he went inside.

  I lit a cigarette and tried not to think of what he was going to look at, but Helen's smashed, bruised face was in my mind and had been in my dreams last night, and it haunted me. He was in there for twenty minutes.

  When he came out, he walked just as briskly as when he went in. His cigar, now burned down to an inch and a half, was still gripped between his teeth. I decided that to look at your dead daughter with a cigar in your mouth was playing the role of "the iron man" to an ultimate end.

  He got into the back seat of the Rolls before I had time to get out and hold the rear door open for him.

  "Okay, Dawson, we'll go up to this villa now."

  Nothing was said during the drive up to the villa. When we got there, and I had got out of the car to open the wrought-iron gates and got back in again, and we had crawled up the drive, I saw the Lincoln convertible was still standing on the tarmac before the front door.

  As Chalmers got out of the Rolls, he said, "Is this her car?"

  I said it was.

  He glanced at it and then went on up the steps and into the villa. I went after him.

  The chauffeur watched us without interest. As soon as Chalmers's back was turned, he reached for a cigarette.

  I kept in the background while Chalmers looked the villa over. He left the bedroom to the last and he spent some time in there. Curious to see what be was up to, I edged to the doorway and looked in.

  He was sitting on the bed beside one of Helen's suitcases, his big, fat hands in a mass of her nylon underwear while he stared fixedly out of the window.

  There was a look on his face that turned me cold, and I moved silently back until he was out of my sight, then I sat down and lit a cigarette.

  The past two days had been the worst I had ever lived through. I felt I was caught in a trap and was waiting for the hunter to come along and finish me off.

  The fact that Carlotti had traced me from Sorrento to the villa, that he knew I had been wearing a grey suit, that he knew exactly when Helen had died and that I, as the mysterious man in the grey suit, had been up there at that time, made my flesh creep.

  I had lain awake most of the night, worrying and thinking, and as I sat waiting while Chalmers was going through his daughter's things, I still worried.

  He came out eventually and walked slowly across the lounge to the window.

  I watched him, wondering what was going on in his mind. He remained like that for several minutes, then he turned and came over to sit in a chair near where I was sitting.

  "You didn't see much of Helen when she was in Rome?" he asked, staring at me with his rain-coloured eyes.

  This question was unexpected and I felt myself stiffen.

  "No. I called her twice, but she didn't seem to want me around," I said. "I guess she looked on me as her father's employee."

  Chalmers nodded.

  "You have no idea who her friends were?"

  "I'm afraid not."

  "She obviously got into pretty rotten company."

  I didn't say anything.

  "I suppose this guy Sherrard gave her the jewels and the car," he went on, staring down at his freckled hands. "It looks as if I made a mistake keeping her so short of money. I should have given her more and sent some woman along with her. When a good-looking punk comes along, well-heeled with money, and is willing to give lavish presents, it doesn't matter how decent a girl is, it's a temptation not to fall for him. I know enough about human nature to know that. I shouldn't have put her in the way of such temptation." He produced a cigar and began to peel off its cellophane wrapping. "She was a thoroughly decent girl, Dawson," he went on. "She was a student; a serious-minded girl. She wanted to study architecture. That's why I let her come to

  Italy. Ro
me is the blood and bones of architects!"

  I took out my handkerchief and wiped my face. I didn't say anything.

  "I have a pretty high opinion of you," he went on. "I wouldn't be giving you the foreign desk if I hadn't. I've fixed this coroner fella: he's going to bring in a verdict of accidental death. There's going to be no talk about pregnancy. I've had a word with the police chief. He's agreed to let the thing lie. The press will roe the line. I've had a word in that direction too. So now we have a clear field. I'm going to leave this to you. I have to be in New York by the day after tomorrow. I haven't the time to dig into this thing myself, but you have. From now on, Dawson, you have nothing else to do but to find Sherrard."