His first and immediate reaction was to talk to Manley. A story as big as this needed co-operation and he was about to reach for the telephone to put through an unheard-of-expensive call to Hollywood, when he paused. An idea dropped into his mind and he leaned back to consider it.
Floyd Delaney was a millionaire four or five times over. In Joe’s Rolliflex was incontestable evidence that Lucille Balu had entered Delaney’s suite at four o’clock. Any police surgeon worth a damn could tell within a half an hour when she had died and Joe was pretty sure the girl had been murdered between four and four forty-five, when Jay Delaney had been in the suite.
That meant either young Delaney or Sophia Delaney had murdered her and Joe thought it wasn’t likely that Sophia had done it, but obviously she was an accessory.
Here then was a situation that could be turned into profit. Why call Manley? Why bother to write the story? All Joe had to do was to talk to Delaney, come to a financial understanding with him to keep his mouth shut and he would be on easy street for the rest of his life.
Joe’s raddled face lit up at the thought and he shifted the grimy pillow at his head, making himself more comfortable.
Delaney might be persuaded to part with half a million. With that Joe could retire and settle somewhere on the French Riviera. He could buy a small villa, get a house-keeper to look after him and give up the struggle of competing with the smart young punks who were trying to push him out of his job. What a terrific kick he would get out of telling Manley to go jump in a lake!
He frowned, stroking his red, raddled nose.
A half a million! With that money, he could get a villa with a view of the sea; he could afford a comfortable armchair, a good radio and a continuous flow of whisky. Pretty good, he thought and no more work.
As he lay thinking about this, a sudden uneasy thought came into his mind.
Technically speaking, if he went to Delaney and asked him for half a million in return for his silence, he would be committing blackmail. If Delaney wasn’t prepared to make a deal with him, he might find himself in the hands of the police. Also, by keeping silent, even if Delaney parted with the money, he would be making himself an accessory to murder and if he were found out, he could be faced with a stiff prison sentence.
Joe flinched at the thought of getting into trouble with the police and again he was tempted to call Manley, to give him the story and let him handle it, but, as his hand moved to the telephone, he again hesitated.
“Take it easy,” he said aloud. “Wait and see how this thing develops. You’ve got the pictures. You mustn’t rush this. If the police get a lead on the boy, Delaney might jump at the chance of buying the pictures off me. The thing to do is to take it nice and easy and wait. It’ll be tricky, but you can cope with it. This could be the biggest thing that has ever happened to you if you don’t make a mess of it.”
He reached up and turned off the light. The time was now twenty minutes past four. His body ached for sleep, and, as soon as the sordid little room turned dark, he closed his eyes and slept. He dreamed he was carrying his wife’s crushed and bleeding body along a corridor in the Plaza hotel.
Lucille Balu, giggling excitedly, walked by his side.
Chapter VI
I
At 6.15 a.m., a waiter making his way to the Service room on the third floor of the hotel noticed the elevator door was standing open and he went over to close it.
A few minutes later, in response to his frantic telephone call, Vesperini, the assistant manager and Cadot, the hotel detective, came hurriedly upon the scene.
Vesperini had been about to leave the hotel for the flower market. He was freshly shaven and immaculate, wearing a dark, well-cut suit and a carnation in his buttonhole.
Cadot, roused out of his bed, wore jacket and trousers, hastily pulled over his pyjamas. His fat face was unshaven and still puffy from sleep.
The two men looked at the dead girl and reacted in different ways. Vesperini immediately thought of the hotel’s reputation and what must be done to cause the hotel’s clients the least inconvenience.
Cadot, on the other hand, had difficulty in concealing his leased excitement. Nothing had happened in the hotel since his appointment to give him a chance to exercise his talents as a detective. Here was his big chance and he was already visualizing his photograph in all the newspapers.
Cadot said: “If Monsieur would be good enough to notify Inspector Devereaux, I will remain here. It would be better to arrange to have ‘out of order’ signs put on the elevator doors on all floors in case someone wishes to use this elevator.”
Vesperini instructed the staring waiter to get this done and then, leaving Cadot, he hurried away to call the police and inform the management.
Left on his own, Cadot examined the girl, being careful not to move her. He recognized her and he thought how fortunate it was that she was not without some fame. The murder, when the news broke, would cause a major sensation.
He lightly touched the girl’s arm. From the hard, board-like feel of her flesh, he judged she had been dead for at least twelve hours.
Had she been strangled in the elevator? This seemed unlikely. As she wasn’t a resident of the hotel, she must have come here to visit someone.
He closed the elevator door and leaning his fat back against it he speculated on whom the girl could have visited and why she had been strangled.
He was still cogitating ten minutes later when Inspector Devereaux of the Cannes Homicide hurried out of the elevator at the far end of the corridor with four plain-clothes men at his heels.
There was a brief consultation, then Cadot asked for permission to dress and shave while the Inspector made his preliminary investigation.
The inspector agreed to this and Cadot hurried away to his quarters in the basement.
Inspector Devereaux was a short, thickset man, in his late forties. He had a round face with a small beaky nose, a thin, hard mouth and bright, small black eyes. He was an efficient police officer with a reputation for thoroughness. As he looked down at the dead girl, recognizing her from the photographs he had seen in Jours de France and Paris-Match, he realized that this case would receive enormous publicity and it was going to be difficult to solve.
He realized that the girl couldn’t have met her death in the elevator. She had been murdered in one of the hotel’s five hundred bedrooms. Since all these bedrooms were occupied by people of wealth and importance, the investigation would have to be handled with extreme tact and caution.
It was necessary that the girl’s body should be removed from the elevator as quickly as possible and he gave orders for the body to be immediately photographed and then walking over to Vesperini, who was hovering in the background, he asked him if there was an unoccupied room where the body could be removed as soon as the police photographer had completed his task.
Vesperini suggested one of the bathrooms since all the bedrooms were occupied and Devereaux agreed to this.
Within ten minutes, the girl’s body had been photographed and then carried into a bathroom and laid on the floor. By this time the police surgeon had arrived and Devereaux left him to his examination.
His men were examining the cage of the elevator, dusting the surfaces for fingerprints.
“I want every print you find recorded,” Devereaux told them. Then, leaving them to work on this, he and Henri Guidet, his assistant, went down to the lobby with Vesperini.