Free 1958 - Not Safe to be Free by James Hadley Chase Page A

time when she moved, her skirts brushed against his leg.
    On her other side, his father was sitting, slightly leaning forward, his face set as he struggled to follow the action of the film by the inadequate subtitles that kept flashing onto the screen.
    They were watching a Swedish film. The photography was splendid, but neither Sophia nor Jay, who had arrived too late to pick up the thread of the plot, had the slightest idea what the film was about.
    A sudden subtitle, trite in itself, gave Jay the solution to the problem he was trying to solve: the problem of how he was going to get rid of the girl’s body in reasonable safety. When the subtitle appeared, Floyd Delaney, his schoolboy French failing him, leaned across Sophia and whispered irritably to Jay: “What the hell does that say?”
    Jay translated without conscious effort: “There’s safety in numbers.”
    His father grunted and settled back in his seat.
    There’s safety in numbers .
    Jay remembered reading somewhere—probably in the Michelin Guide—that the Plaza hotel had five hundred bedrooms. That must mean at a guess that there were a thousand people staying in the hotel. It seemed to him that a thousand to one risk of discovery was an acceptable hazard. He decided he wouldn’t attempt to move the girl’s body out of the hotel. He would carry it into the elevator, take the elevator to the top floor and leave it there.
    The body wouldn’t be discovered for several hours. How could the police find out if the killer was someone staying in the hotel or one of the hundreds of non-residents who had the run of the hotel during the Festival? How could they guess on which floor the girl had met her death, let alone in which of the five hundred bedrooms?
    The solution was so obvious he was surprised he hadn’t thought of it before.
    The tension that had been gnawing at him now went away and for the first time since he had killed the girl he relaxed.
    He was able, too, to think more clearly of the situation as it was so far. Everything depended on whether he could trust Sophia to keep silent.
    Would she lose her nerve? Would she tell his father?
    He thought not. Her behaviour when the girl’s body had tumbled out of the cupboard had been astonishing. She must have nerves of steel to have reacted as she had done. Of course she had been shocked, but she hadn’t lost her head or screamed or even fainted as most women would have done. She had gone white and her hands had covered her face but she had quickly recovered. She had gone out of the room and he had seen her sit down and light a cigarette.
    A woman who could do that after what had happened was not likely to lose her nerve. He looked slyly at her. Her face was expressionless as she watched the film. There was a resolute set to her mouth he hadn’t noticed before; otherwise she looked as she always looked when watching a movie.
    She must know it would be disastrous for his father and herself if he were discovered. He was pretty certain that he could rely on her silence.
    The film finished a few minutes to midnight.
    As they made their way along the Croisette back to the Plaza hotel, Floyd questioned his son about the film. His questions were technical and Jay floundered in trying to answer them.
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Delaney snapped, losing patience. “You’re talking through the back of your neck. You don’t seem to have learned the first thing about your trade. Look, have a talk with Cooper, will you? Get him to wise you up.”
    He turned his attention to Sophia. “I have a call to Paris before we meet the van Asters. At this hour we shouldn’t be held up.” He snapped his fingers at Harry Stone who was walking behind them. “See the car’s waiting, Harry. I want to talk to Courtney. We’re getting scarcely any coverage in the French press for our picture.”
    “I’ll run along,” Jay said. “I feel like a walk.”
    “Go ahead,” Delaney said curtly. He was still angry with his son