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

I

There had been a time when Joe Kerr had been considered by editors and agents as a top-flight journalist: probably the best in the game.

There had been a time when Joe could call his agent, tell him he was going over to London or Paris or Rome or wherever it was to cover some special event, and, within the hour, his agent had sold the article, sight unseen and had also got a generous expense allocation to cover the cost of the trip.

At that time Joe could not only write brilliantly but he was also a class photographer and that made a very lucrative combination.

He reached the peak of his success in 1953. He not only had a book chosen by the Atlantic Book of the Month Club, but he also had a profile running for three weeks in the New Yorker and Life had given a five-page spread to his remarkable photographs of the birth of a baby.

But the highlight of that year for him was his marriage with a nice but thoroughly ordinary girl, whose name was Martha Jones.

Martha and he set up home at Malvern, which was a little over an hour’s run from Philadelphia, Joe’s working headquarters.

Married life agreed with Joe. Martha and he were as happy together as two people really in love can be happy.

Then something happened that was to alter completely the rhythm of Joe’s life.

One night coming back from a rather wild party, Joe, not exactly drunk, but certainly fuddled, accidentally killed his wife.

They had driven back to their home in Joe’s Cadillac, with Joe driving. He knew he was a little high and he had driven the thirty odd miles with extreme care. He was carrying with him his most precious possession and he wasn’t going to put her in the slightest danger just because he had had one whisky too many and was a little dizzy in the head.

They arrived home without incident and Martha got out of the car to open the garage doors while Joe slid the automatic gear into reverse and had his foot on the brake pedal.

As Martha was about to open the garage doors, Joe’s foot slipped off the pedal and the car began to move backwards.

Fuddled and realizing Martha was directly behind the car, Joe stamped down hard on the brake pedal, missed it and his foot descended on the accelerator.

The massive car swept back at a speed that made it impossible for Martha to jump clear.

She was smashed against the garage doors and, with the splintered and broken doors, hurled into the garage and crushed against the back brick wall.

Joe never recovered from this experience. From the moment he got out of the car and ran to the lifeless body of his wife, he began to go downhill.

He began to drink. He lost his touch and editors soon discovered he could no longer be relied on. After a while, the assignments didn’t come to him and the articles he wrote lost their bite and didn’t sell.

Anyone knowing him in 1953 wouldn’t have recognized him as he shambled up the drive of the Plaza hotel after his brief conversation with Jay Delaney when he had hopefully asked if Jay could arrange an interview for him with Jay’s father.

Joe Kerr was a tall, thin man who looked a lot older than his forty odd years. He stooped as he walked and he was always a little short of breath. His hair, the colour of sand, was thin and lank, but it was his raddled plum-coloured face that shocked people meeting him for the first time.

Since the death of his wife, he had been drinking two bottles of whisky a day and his face was now a mass of tiny broken veins. With his ruined face, his watery frog’s eyes and his shabby clothes, he looked beaten and broken and people moved out of his way when he approached them.

Somehow, he still managed to scrape up a living. He was now employed by a Hollywood scandal sheet called Peep that paid him enough to buy his drink and the bare necessities.

Peep had a large circulation. It specialized in near-pornographic photographs and an outrageous gossip column. In his heyday, Joe wouldn’t have dreamed of contributing to such a paper, no matter what he had been offered. Now he was thankful to do so.

As he walked into the Plaza lobby, his Rolliflex camera hanging around his neck and bumping against his chest, Joe was thinking of the letter he had had that morning from Manley, the Editor of Peep.

Manley hadn’t pulled his punches. If Joe imagined he had paid his fare to Cannes to get the insipid junk that Joe was turning in, Joe had another think coming.

“How many more times do I have to tell you that we have got to have something that’ll stand our readers on their ears?” Manley wrote. “Cannes is a cesspit: everyone knows that. The dirt’s there. If you’ll only lay off the booze and dig for it, you’ll find it. If you can’t find it, then say so and I’ll wire Jack Bernstein to take over.”

This letter had shaken Joe’s nerves. He knew no other paper would employ him and if Manley dropped him, he might just as well walk into the sea and keep on walking.

Ever since Floyd Delaney had arrived in Cannes, Joe had been desperately trying to get a personal interview with him.

Floyd Delaney was the most colourful character at the Festival and Joe hoped that, if he could get him talking, he could trap him into saying something indiscreet. He had worried Harry Stone, Delaney’s publicity manager, to get him an interview, but Stone had been brutally frank.

“If you imagine F.D. wants to talk to a rumdum like you Joe,” he said, “you must be out of your mind. That pickle puss of yours would give him a nightmare.”

Joe’s drink-sodden mind glowed with resentment when he remembered Stone’s words. If he could only dig up some dirt on Delaney, he was thinking, something really hot with photographs, maybe the snoot wouldn’t be quite so sensitive about how a man looked if his own face was turning red.

It was a quarter to four when Joe took up his position in an alcove window that gave him an uninterrupted view of the door to suite 27. He was out of sight of anyone going into the suite and also out of sight of the occasional waiter who passed up and down the corridor.

He sat on the window seat, his Rolliflex at the ready, satisfied that there was enough light in the corridor to get good pictures without using his flash equipment.

He had had four double whiskies since two o’clock and his mind was a little fuddled. He wasn’t quite sure what he was waiting for, for he knew Delaney and his high-hat wife were in the cinema and they wouldn’t be out much before six o’clock. He had seen Delaney’s good-looking son sunning himself on the beach and he looked set to remain there some time. So, on the face of it, Joe was wasting his time sitting outside this door. Nothing seemed likely to happen in suite 27 until around six o’clock, and, even then, the chances of anything of value to Joe happening was remote.

But that didn’t bother Joe. It simply supplied him with an excuse to sit still for a while and to get away from the mad crush downstairs.

The Cannes Festival had exhausted him. The competition had been unbelievably fierce. Joe felt old and washed-up when jostling with the other photographers for position when some famous star condescended to pose for a very brief moment to allow the photographers to go into action.

These photographers were young men, smart in their Riviera clothes, with hands that were rock steady and their ruthless keenness dazed Joe. His drink-fuddled mind made him clumsy with his camera and he had trouble in keeping it steady. They jostled him to the back of the crowd, yelling at him: “Get the hell out of the way, grandpa! Let a man work!”

At five minutes to four by the corridor clock immediately above the door to suite 27, Joe snapped out of a doze and peered down the corridor.

He saw Jay Delaney come down the corridor and pause outside the door to suite 27.

Without thinking much about what he was doing, Joe lifted the Rolliflex, glanced quickly into the view-finder, adjusted the focus and then gently pressed the shutter release. He had already set the aperture and he was satisfied that he had taken a printable picture should Manley want to print a picture of Floyd Delaney’s son which, Joe knew, was extremely unlikely.

He shifted on the window seat as he watched Jay unlock the door and disappear into the suite.

Joe shrugged and groped for the half-pint bottle of whisky he always carried around with him in his hip pocket. He took a long pull, sighed and put the bottle away. He was just beginning to wonder if he should waste any more time outside this door when he saw a girl coming down the corridor.

He recognized her immediately. She was the up-and-coming French starlette, Lucille Balu, in a blue and white off-the-shoulder dress and a string of fat blue beads around her lovely brown throat.

Automatically, Joe wound on a new strip of film, wondering what she was doing on this floor reserved for film executives only. He felt a tiny prickle of excitement as she paused outside the door of suite 27.

He lifted his camera as she raised her hand to knock on the door and the shutter clicked as she rapped.

As he lowered the camera, he thought the right caption to that picture should be: Opportunity Knocks. Lucille Balu, the French starlette, knocks on the door of Floyd Delaney’s luxury suite at the Plaza hotel. Is this the beginning of a Hollywood career for this talented young beginner?

Not the kind of material Manley was looking for, of course, but there was a chance he might sell the picture to some other rag.

He watched the door open and Jay appear in the doorway. He heard Jay say, “How wonderfully punctual! Come on in. My father’s waiting to meet you.”

He watched the girl enter and the door close.

It took several seconds for Jay’s words to sink into Joe’s fuddled mind.

My father’s waiting to meet you.

That couldn’t be right. Floyd Delaney was at the cinema. Joe had seen him with his wife walking up the steps leading to the cinema and he knew they wouldn’t be back until at least six o’clock.

Joe ran his fingers through his thinning hair.

What did this mean?

He remembered Jay Delaney had asked him who the girl was and he suddenly stiffened to attention.

Was there more to this good-looking, pleasantly mannered youngster than he had imagined?

Joe had already noticed that Jay seemed to live a pretty solitary life. He had noticed, too, that he spent his days alone sitting on the beach, reading and kept away from the fun and games that made the drudgery of the Festival worthwhile.

Had this boy tricked the girl into coming to the suite on the pretext that his father wanted to see her? Any ambitious starlette would jump at the chance of meeting Floyd Delaney. Was the boy going to attempt to seduce her?

Joe broke out in a hot sweat of excitement. Suppose he did and she screamed for help: that would give him the right to burst in there with his camera. He might even catch them struggling together: the girl with her clothes up around her neck! How Manley would eat a picture like that! It would wipe out all Joe’s past mistakes! He would be in solid with Manley for life!

He leaned forward and listened, but he couldn’t hear anything. Then just as he was about to leave his hiding-place and go and listen at the door, he saw Sophia Delaney coming briskly down the corridor.

For a moment he couldn’t believe his eyes. His run of bad luck had been so consistent that he couldn’t believe he was getting a break and what a break!

Step-son lures starlette up to Papa’s luxury suite, then, at the psychological moment, step-mother arrives! It was the kind of stuff Peep lived on!

Joe lifted his camera as Sophia knocked on the door.

II

As Jay swung the scarlet cord, he saw Sophia follow each swing.

He felt very sure of himself. He had seen that he had frightened Sophia and he knew it wasn’t easy to frighten his father’s wife. He had also seen that he had disconcerted her by his bare-faced admission that he had brought a girl to the suite.

I had better not overdo it, he thought. I’d now better begin to reassure her. I mustn’t let her imagine that there is anything seriously wrong. I had her worked up just now so badly she looked as if she were going to bolt out of the room. She must be very sensitive to atmosphere. I wonder how she guessed about the girl. Maybe it was the perfume. Women notice things like that. The girl had been over-scented.

“Do you mean to tell me you have a girl in your bedroom?” Sophia said and he could see she was now trying to whip up her anger again, which had been cooled by her fear.

“I’m sorry, Sophia.” He spoke gently. “It was one of those stupid impulses.”

He moved away from her, tossing the curtain cord onto the settee; then he sat on the arm of a lounging chair.

He had now to persuade her to come over to his side. He had to appeal to her sympathy and understanding. He must get her to promise not to tell his father.

It was fantastic, he thought, that she should have returned like this. For three days she had remained with his father throughout all those dreary performances, but on this day, when it had been so vitally important that he shouldn’t be disturbed, she had to return.

But, now he had recovered from the shock of hearing her angry rapping on the door, he found the situation exhilaratingly exciting.

It had certainly been a shock when she had rapped on the door. He had been kneeling beside Lucille’s lifeless body, loosening the cord around her throat. The knocking sound had paralysed him. His heart seemed to stop beating. The blood in his veins seemed to congeal. His mind had gone blank with panic. It had been a bad moment, but it also had been a test.

He had known from the beginning that if he did this thing, sooner or later, he would be challenged and he would have to rely on his nerve and his wits to save himself, but who would have imagined the challenge would have come so quickly? The girl was scarcely dead when the knocking had come on the door.

He had got his panic quickly under control. He had known that he had only a few seconds in which to act. He had picked up the girl’s body. She had been surprisingly heavy and awkward. He had staggered with her into his bedroom and dumped her on his bed. Then he had returned to the lounge and snatched up the curtain cord and stuffed it into his hip pocket.

There had been an added complication: during the very brief but violent struggle, the string of the girl’s necklace had broken and the beads had shot about the floor.

They were big blue beads, the size of small walnuts and although they were easy to retrieve, he had had to do it at lightning speed.

He had just picked up the last bead in sight when he heard a key being pushed into the lock of the door.

He had darted into his bedroom and closed the door soundlessly as the door leading into the suite had opened.

He had had no time to compose himself when he heard Sophia call him.

He had been thankful for his dark glasses. He was confident that he could control the expression on his face, but he knew that his eyes would have given him away could she have seen them.

“A stupid impulse,” he repeated. “I’m really sorry, Sophia. She looked so attractive and I was bored.” He reached for his cigarette case lying on the table and opened it. “Will you?” He offered the case.

She shook her head.

“I can’t understand you doing such a thing,” she said and her voice was cold.

He lit a cigarette and he was pleased and not a little proud to see how steady his hands were.

“I don’t think you realize how lonely I am sometimes,” he said, feeling sure this would be the right approach. “After all, Sophia, you have father, but I have no one. Father doesn’t care about me. He’s too busy to care about anyone but you. This girl was on her own in the lobby. She looked lonely too. So I talked to her. It was she who suggested we should go somewhere together. Don’t think I’m trying to excuse myself. She appealed to me, and, if I had had the nerve, I would have made the suggestion. I didn’t know where to take her, so I brought her up here.” He looked at Sophia from behind his dark glasses. She was relaxing and she had moved over to the table and now rested her hips against it. He could see he had her interest. “It’s a funny thing, but although I thought she was attractive down in the lobby, as soon as I got her up here, I realized she wasn’t attractive at all. I suppose it was seeing her in this familiar room. Anyway, I realize now what a fool I’ve been to have brought her up here.”

“I can understand that, Jay,” Sophia said and he was quick to notice that her voice had softened.

“My one thought was to get rid of her,” he went on. “I didn’t know how to do it. I was scared she would make a scene. Then you knocked. I can’t tell you how glad I was that you came back. I honestly don’t know how I would have got her out of here without making a scene.”

Sophia moved uneasily.

“Can she hear what you are saying?” she asked and looked at his bedroom door.

“Oh, no.” He leaned forward to flick ash into the ash-tray. “I bundled her into the bathroom and locked the door.” Then he couldn’t resist making the gruesome joke. “She can’t hear anything — she might just as well be dead.”

Sophia wasn’t listening. She walked over to the window and stared down at the sea glittering in the sunshine.

“I must say this does surprise me, Jay,” she said. “It wasn’t nice of you to bring a girl up here.”

“I know and I’m ashamed of myself. I’m sorry, Sophia.”

She turned then and her lips made a movement of a stiff smile.

“Let’s forget it. I’m sure it won’t happen again.” She began to cross the room to her bedroom. “I’m going for a swim. I just looked in for my swim-suit.”

Jay felt a surge of triumph run through him. He had come through the first test. It had been unbelievably easy. He was willing to admit it had been a very dangerous moment. If he had lost his nerve, it would have been disastrous.

“Thank you, Sophia, for being so nice about it,” he said and gave her a lost, very young smile. “Will you have to tell father?”

“No, I won’t tell him.”

A blue object lying under a chair caught her attention and she bent and picked it up.

“Where did this come from?” she asked and put on the table one of the beads from the broken necklace.

Once again panic nibbled at the edges of Jay’s mind as he looked at the bead.

“It’s a pretty thing, isn’t it?” he said, trying to speak casually. “Are you sure it isn’t yours?”

“Of course it’s not mine!”

The snap in her voice warned him not to overdo his casualness.

He pointed to his bedroom door, lowering his voice as he said: “It must be hers. She probably dropped it.”

Sophia gave him a questioning, uneasy look, then she walked quickly into her bedroom, leaving the door open.

Jay picked up the bead and dropped it into his trousers pocket, where the other beads were.

He would have to search the room very carefully after Sophia had gone to make sure there were no other beads lying around. It was unfortunate she had seen it. If she thought about it she might realize it was a bead from a string of beads and that, together with the scratches on his arm she had seen, might make her think there had been a struggle.

Sophia came out of the bedroom carrying her swim-suit and her peignoir.

Jay opened the door for her.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” she said and looked pointedly at his bedroom door; then she went quickly down the corridor as if she were anxious to get away from him.

Jay stood in the doorway looking after her, then he turned and shut and locked the door.

He glanced at his wrist-watch. The time was exactly half-past four.

Moving quickly, he began to search the room for any more of the blue beads. He found yet another under the settee and then, after a further search, he was satisfied there were no more to be found.

He replaced the curtain cord and then stood back and surveyed the room.

There were no signs of the struggle that had taken place. The room looked exactly as he had found it when he had entered forty minutes ago.

He lit a cigarette, and, moving over to the window, he examined the three ugly red scratches on his arm.

The girl had tried desperately to save her life. The cord had choked back her screams, but she had managed to reach behind her and had clawed his arm just before she lost consciousness. He had been surprised and alarmed that such a frail-looking girl could have had such desperate strength. There had been a moment when he had begun to doubt if he could subdue her.

He went into his bedroom, crossed the room without looking towards the bed and entered the bathroom. He bathed his arm and put on some disinfectant ointment. Then he washed his hands and, while he was drying them, he considered his next move.

It wouldn’t be safe to get rid of the body until the early hours of the morning. The Plaza hotel went to bed around half-past three a.m. He had twelve hours to make up his mind what to do with the body. But during those twelve hours, unless he did something about it, the girl would be missed.

He remembered overhearing the conversation between the girl and the man with the wiry black hair who, he guessed, would be her agent. They had made a date to meet in the bar downstairs at six. If she didn’t turn up, this man might make inquiries about her and this, Jay decided, he would have to prevent.

He went back into the lounge, again not looking towards the bed as he crossed the room. He went over to the row of reference books his father always had by him and, after a quick search, he found, in a copy of Who’s Who in the Film World, a scrappy entry covering Lucille Balu’s brief career as a movie star. He learned that she was twenty-one, had appeared in five movies, that she had an apartment in Paris and her agent’s name was Jean Thiry.

Jay closed the book and replaced it on the shelf, then he picked up the telephone receiver and asked the girl on the switchboard to connect him with Information and Messages.

He had no fear that his call could be traced. The two men dealing with messages were coping with a steady stream of callers throughout the day. They would not be likely to remember one isolated call.

“Will you please deliver the following message to Monsieur Jean Thiry, who will be in the bar at six o’clock?” Jay said. “The message is: I am spending the evening in Monte Carlo. Will see you in the morning. Lucille Balu.”

The man repeated the message, said it would be delivered to Monsieur Thiry and then hung up.

At about six o’clock, Jay knew the maid came to prepare his bed for the night.

He went into his bedroom, shutting and locking the door.

He looked at the dead girl lying on the bed. She lay on her side in a slightly curled up position, her back turned to him. She looked as if she were sleeping.

He glanced around the room for a place in which to hide her. There was a big cupboard against one wall and he went over to it and opened it, noting there was a lock on the door. He decided to put her in there.

For a brief moment his nerve faltered at the thought of touching her, but only for a moment. He opened both doors of the cupboard, then went over to the bed and took hold of her.

Again her dead-weight surprised him and he was breathing heavily by the time he had got her into the cupboard.

He was glad when he had shut and locked the cupboard doors. He took the key from the lock and put it in his pocket. Then he went to the chest of drawers, took from it a pair of swimming trunks and, unlocking the bedroom door, he went into the lounge. He paused to fill his cigarette case from the box on the table; then he left the suite, locking the door after him.

He crossed the passage to the elevator and pressed the buzzer.

Joe Kerr watched him.

Joe was puzzled and disappointed. What had seemed to be the situation of a life-time had mysteriously fizzled out to nothing. Instead of a first-class row and scandal and a chance for him to have walked into the suite with his camera, nothing had happened at all.

Sophia Delaney had left, taking with her a swim-suit and now young Delaney had also left with a swim-suit.

But where was the girl? Why hadn’t she left?

Joe had seen the boy lock the door: that meant the girl couldn’t leave even if she wanted to. What was the idea?

Joe wiped his red-raw sweating face with a grubby hand-kerchief and tried to puzzle out what it all meant.

The girl had gone in there and she hadn’t come out, so she must still be in there. Then why had young Delaney locked her in?

This was now developing into an intriguing situation.

Joe peered up and down the long, deserted corridor, then he left his hiding-place and crossed over to the door of suite 27.

He listened intently, his ear against the door panel, but he could hear nothing. He hesitated for a moment, then, lifting his hand, he rapped sharply on the door. He knocked several times, but he heard no movement nor sound from within the suite and he stepped back puzzled.

He was certain she was still in there. Had young Delaney warned her not to answer a knock?

Then he suddenly became aware that he was being watched and he moved casually away from the door and glanced down the corridor.

At the far end, leading to the stairs, he saw the short, bulky figure of the hotel detective.

With the resourcefulness of years of experience as a newspaperman, Joe started down the corridor towards the detective, who eyed him suspiciously as he came.

“Mr. Delaney doesn’t seem to be in,” Joe said as soon as he was within a few paces of the hotel detective.

“No, he isn’t,” the detective snapped. “Didn’t you inquire at the desk?”

“Why, sure,” Joe said blandly. “I was told he was in his suite.”

“That was the young Mr. Delaney, but he’s out now. You don’t want him, do you?”

Joe sneered.

“What should I want him for? Never mind. I’ll come back.” He moved around the hotel detective and started down the stairs, whistling softly, aware the detective was staring after him.

That was bad luck, Joe thought, as he edged his way through the crowd in the lobby. I wonder how long he’s going to remain up there? Anyway, the girl can’t get out until young Delaney returns.

He crossed over to the hall-porter’s desk.

“When any of the Delaneys go up to their suite, let me know, will you?” he said to the hall porter. “I’ll be in the bar.” Reluctantly he parted with a thousand franc note. “Don’t forget: it’s important.”

The hall porter said he’d let him know, took the note and then moved away.

Joe crossed over to a telephone booth and asked the girl on the switchboard to connect him with the Delaneys’ suite. There was a long pause, then the girl said, “I’m sorry, monsieur, no one answers.”

Joe replaced the receiver and edged his way through the crowd into the bar. As he pushed open the swing door, he saw the hands of the clock above the bar stood at five minutes to five.

At that hour the bar was almost empty. Joe shocked the barman by asking for a plate of ham, a roll and butter and a double whisky.

He was sure the girl was still in the suite. No point in going hungry, he told himself as he began to butter his roll. The wait could be a long one, but he was determined to see the girl leave, even if he had to wait outside the door of the suite all night.