“And, look, take those glasses off,” his father went on. “You don’t have to live in them, do you?”
Jay took the glasses off and tucked them into his top pocket.
“I’d rather not see the movie, father,” he said. “I’m not dressed. I was thinking of going over to the Eden Roc for a swim.”
Delaney’s face tightened.
“I want you to see this movie. I want your opinion. What’s the matter with you? You’ll be coming into the Studio next year. How the hell do you expect to get anywhere if you don’t show some interest in your career?”
“All right,” Jay said meekly. “If you really want my opinion, of course I’ll see the film. I’ll go up and change.”
“Yeah, do that.” Delaney’s face relaxed and he grinned, slapping his son on the shoulder. The kid was okay: a little lazy perhaps, but, if you handled him right, he was cooperative. Sophia had said he was odd. That just showed you. Women were always going off at half-cock. Odd? Nonsense! “I’ll tell the guy at the door to keep you a seat next to me. Snap it up, boy. It’s due to start in twenty minutes. See you,” and leaving Jay and ignoring Thiry, he walked fast from the bar, waving to right and left to people he knew.
As soon as his father was out of sight, Jay put on his glasses again. He finished his tomato juice and edged a little closer to where Thiry and Stone were standing. He heard Stone say, “You can take it or leave it. She hasn’t any name in the States.”
Jay was tempted to tell Stone he was wasting his time. He thought of the girl lying in his cupboard and he felt a little trickle of excitement crawl up his spine. He had still six hours before he could attempt to move her. He might just as well sit in the cinema as wander about waiting for the time to pass.
Leaving the two men still talking, Jay left the bar, crossed the lobby to the elevator.
He said casually to the elevator attendant: “What time does the elevator go on automatic?”
“Three o’clock, sir,” the attendant told him.
Jay nodded.
It was as he had thought. He would need the elevator when he moved the girl. The thought that, within six hours, he would have to get her out of the cupboard, across the lounge, across the corridor and into the elevator, made his heart-beat quicken. There was a risk that Sophia or his father would hear him take her across the lounge. There was a risk someone would see him cross the corridor. He was ready to take the risk: it was all part of this intense excitement he had to have.
He was a little startled to find the door to suite 27 unlocked and he opened it cautiously and looked into the lounge. The lights were on and he heard movements in Sophia’s room.
He moved silently to his room, opened the door and stepped into the room, shutting the door before he turned on the light.
Sophia would be going to the movie. She would be leaving in a minute or so. He took the cupboard key from his pocket, unlocked the door and opened it.
The dead girl lay exactly as he had left her. He stared at her for a moment, then he reached down and touched her bare arm. The flesh felt cool and hard and he grimaced. She would be awkward to handle unless by the time he was ready to move her the rigor had passed off. He vaguely remembered reading somewhere that rigor did pass off after some hours, but just how long he couldn’t recall.
He took his tuxedo from the cupboard and tossed it on the bed, then, unable to wait, impelled by the urgent need to know for certain, he took hold of the dead girl’s arm and experimented in trying to pull her upright.
He was shocked by her weight and awkwardness. He felt a doubt that perhaps he wouldn’t be able to get her from his room to the elevator.
He put his hands under her armpits and, straining, he managed to lift her upright. Then, as he propped her up against the wall of the cupboard, he heard a knock on his door.
His heart gave a painful little kick, then began to thump so violently he had trouble in breathing. He heard the handle of his bedroom door turning. Letting go of the girl’s body, he slammed the cupboard doors shut as his bedroom door swung open.
He turned, feeling cold sweat on his face.
Sophia stood in the doorway. She was wearing a flame-coloured evening dress, cut low and tight in the bodice and flaring out at the skirt. There was a large diamond brooch in her hair and diamonds around her slender throat.
They stood staring at each other.
Sophia hadn’t expected to find him in his room. Her uneasiness had increased while she had been dressing and imagining she was alone in the suite, she had decided to take one more look at Jay’s room in the hope of finding something that would either reassure her or confirm her suspicions that something was badly wrong.
Seeing Jay, motionless, white-faced and so obviously frightened, she knew she had caught him in some guilty act.
She watched him take hold of himself.
“Hello,” he said and there was a slight quiver in his voice. “I was just going to change. Father wants me to see the movie to-night.”
“Does he?”
There was a pause, then he said: “I’ll have to hurry. You’re going, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m going.”
He moved away from the cupboard and, going over to his chest of drawers, he began to empty his pockets, putting his gold cigarette case, his lighter, handkerchief and money on top of the chest.
Sophia drew in a long, slow breath.
“Jay... is there something wrong?”
He stiffened, then slowly turned his head. The dark lenses of his glasses gave him a sinister appearance.
“Wrong? Why, no. What do you mean?”
“It’s a feeling I have,” she said, not moving. “This girl... ”
“You don’t have to worry about her,” Jay said. “She has gone now.”
“But is she likely to make trouble?”
“Why should she?”
“She might try to blackmail you.”
Jay smiled: at least his lips curved into a smile but the rest of his face was stiff and tense.
“She won’t do that. What makes you think she would do such a thing?”
“A girl like that... ”
The words hung in space. Sophia saw that Jay’s eyes were riveted on the cupboard and she looked too.
Very slowly, the cupboard doors were opening.
Sophia suddenly felt very frightened.
She saw Jay make a movement forward and then stop. His face had gone the colour of tallow.
The doors of the cupboard swung fully open.
Lucille Balu’s rigid body swayed uncertainly, then as Sophia’s hands went to her mouth, stifling her scream of horror, the dead girl slid to the floor at Sophia’s feet.
Chapter IV
I
No one, not even her husband, suspected that under the veneer of Sophia’s beauty there was a core of armour-plated hardness forged there by the misery and horrible squalor of her childhood. Very few people knew that Sophia was the product of the slums of Naples.
As soon as she had been able to walk, she had roved the Naples waterfront with a band of other filthy, ragged children, preying on tourists, surrounding them, dirty hands out-stretched, while chanting the only English word she knew: “Money — money — money.”
At night she returned to the tiny hovel constructed out of two wooden crates and a strip of corrugated iron that served as her home.
She lived there with her father, a short stocky Italian, with the flat black eyes of a gangster, who had never done a day’s work in his life.
If Sophia failed to bring home less than five hundred lira a day, her father would seize hold of her, raise her ragged dress and savagely flay her naked flesh with his belt. This existence continued until she was thirteen years old. Then one night, on returning home with less than the required five hundred lira, her mind and body cringing at the thought of the thrashing she would receive, she found her father curled up on the bundle of rags that served him for a bed, a dagger buried to the hilt in his heart.