Free Death After Breakfast by Hugh Pentecost Page A

sonofabitch who did it!”
    I guess a lot of us felt that way.
    It is difficult to describe how that day wore on. Jerry Dodd and his men carried on the slow, grim search of the hotel. They would not have covered all the ground for hours and hours. But as time ticked away those of us who knew what they were searching for were plunged deeper and deeper into a kind of fatalistic despair. They weren’t going to find Chambrun.
    Nothing was normal as the day wore on. A lot of us knew about Chambrun but the word hadn’t leaked to the press. However, we had a murder that had leaked, and the place was swarming with reporters and photographers trying to get some kind of newsbreak from Hardy. They had deadlines to meet, and facts were sparse. Laura Kauffman had been stabbed to death in her suite. The police were following rather slender leads. That was all they got.
    About four o’clock I met with Ruysdale and Michael Garrity in Chambrun’s office. The big man, who was really the power in the owners’ group, turned out to be reasonable and stubborn at the same time. He thought at first that to throw the Chambrun story into the news hopper might draw attention away from the murder. Ruysdale and I easily persuaded him that to do that would turn the hotel into bedlam. Reporters would instantly hint at two murders. It was finally agreed that I would meet with reporters, representing the hotel. It would be my job to persuade them that Laura Kauffman’s murder had nothing to do with a breakdown of hotel security. She had, in effect, had an office here to handle ball arrangements. People were free to come and go. No one had broken into the room. Whoever it was had been let in by Mrs. Kauffman. There hadn’t been any reason at all to keep the lady under surveillance or guarded. Hotel security was cooperating with the police in every way possible. The theme, then, was that the Beaumont’s management had no reason to feel responsible for what had happened.
    Michael Garrity was not so pliable in another area. He expressed himself in rather colorful language on the subject of George Mayberry.
    “When the police get through with him,” Garrity said, in his deep rumbling voice, “I’ll see to it that the stupid bastard is kept out of the hotel—from here on in. Which brings us to the ball and the film.”
    “Mr. Chambrun had laid out very specific rules and regulations,” Ruysdale said. She was sitting at Chambrun’s desk again, and she looked exhausted, deep dark circles under her eyes.
    “I’m aware of that,” Garrity said. “But I think if Chambrun were here, I could persuade him to change his mind about those rules. You see, Miss Ruysdale, the ball will no longer be an elegant charity affair. A thousand people will be jabbering about rape, and murder, and violence. Very damaging to the hotel for months to come. The one thing that might divert them, give them something else to talk about and think about, would be a filming on the dance floor and later in the lobby and the Trapeze Bar while people are still here. Duval is a famous man, like a Bergman or a Fellini. He will put on a show for them, involve them, use them. They will go home talking about him and not the unfortunate Mrs. Kauffman. I think it’s just good sense to permit the diversion, where under normal conditions it might have been as objectionable as Chambrun thought it would be.”
    It made some sense, I thought
    “If Mr. Chambrun comes back and finds we’ve gone over his head—” Ruysdale said.
    “He’s a reasonable man,” Garrity said. “When he understands the reasons for overriding him, he may award us all the order of merit.”
    Ruysdale looked at me. For once I thought she was too done in to think clearly for herself.
    “I think Mr. Garrity’s made a case,” I said. “I buy it.”
    And so it was that Claude Duval got his way. Ruysdale and Garrity would notify him and make whatever arrangements had to be made to suit him. I went off to meet the