The police launch rounded the bend of the high cliff. I was sitting in the stern of the boat by Carlotti. He was smoking, and he wore blue-tinted sunglasses. It seemed odd to me that a policeman should wear sunglasses. I felt he should be above such luxuries.
Grandi and three uniformed policemen were amidships. Grandi didn’t wear sunglasses: whatever he did would always be official and correct.
As soon as we got around the bend, I recognized the tiny bay and the massive boulders on which Helen had fallen.
Carlotti stared up at the cliff head. He made a little face. I could see he was thinking what it must have felt to have fallen from such a height. Looking up, I also thought the same thing. The distant cliff head up there made me feel like a pigmy.
The boat chugged into the bay. As soon as it drew alongside the rocks, we scrambled out.
Grandi said to Carlotri, “We haven’t touched anything. I wanted you to see it first. All we did was to remove the body.”
He and Carlotti began a systematic search of the spot. I and two of the policemen sat on one of the bouiders, out of the way, and watched them. The third policeman remained in the boat.
It wasn’t long before Grandi found the camera case I had tossed over the cliff. It was lying half-submerged in water, between two boulders. He fished it up. Both he and Carlotri examined it the way a couple of professors would have examined something that had fallen off Mars.
I noted the careful way Carlotti handled the case, and I was thankful I had got rid of all my prints.
Finally he looked over at me.
“This must be hers. Was she interested in photography?”
I very nearly said she was, but caught myself in time.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Most Americans on a visit to Italy bring a camera.”
Carlotti nodded and handed the camera case to one of the policemen who put it carefully into a plastic bag.
They continued their search. After about ten minutes and after they had climbed some distance from where I was sitting, I saw they had made another discovery. Grandi bent and picked something up from between the cliff face and a rock. The two men stood close together, their backs to me while they examined whatever it was they had found.
I waited, smoking, aware that my heart kept thumping and my mouth was dry.
Finally, after what seemed to me a lifetime, Carlotti made his way to where I was sitting. I pushed off from the rock and went to meet him. I saw he was holding what remained of Helen’s Paillard Bolex camera. It had obviously hit a rock in its fall down the cliff face. The telephoto lens had snapped off and there was a dent in its side.
“This could explain how the accident happened,” Carlotti said, showing me the camera. “She was probably taking a picture; holding it like this.” He held up the camera and peered through the viewfinder. “If she had stood on the edge of the path up there, it would be easy for her to take a false step with this thing obscuring her view’.”
I took the camera from him and looked at the little window panel at the back that showed how many feet of film you have run off. It showed twelve feet.
“There’s a film in it,” I said. “From the look of the camera the water hasn’t got into it. Get the film processed, and you’ll know for sure if she was taking something from the cliff head.”
This seemed to please him.
All the time we had been driving down to the harbour and all the time we had been in the boat, heading towards the place where Helen had died, I knew he had been secretly worrying about the trouble Chalmers might make for him.
“If she hadn’t called herself Mrs. Douglas Sherrard,” he said, taking the camera from me, “this would be a very straightforward affair. We will go to the villa now. I want to talk to the village woman.”
We returned to the harbour of Sorrento, leaving two of the policemen to continue the search for clues. They seemed pretty depressed at being marooned on the rocks. I didn’t blame them. It was very hot out there, and there was no shade.
When we reached the harbour, we took the police car and drove out to the villa.
The trip back from the bay and the drive up to the villa took a little over an hour and a half.
We left the police car at the gates and walked up the drive. The Lincoln convertible still stood on the tarmac before the villa.
Carlotti said, “Did this car belong to her?”
I said I didn’t know.
Grandi broke in impatiently to say that he had already checked the registration plates. Helen had bought the car ten weeks ago: soon after she had arrived in Rome.
I wondered where the money had come from. It puzzled me. I told myself that it was possible that she had cabled to her father, and he had sent her the money but, remembering what he had said about her keeping within her allowance, it didn’t seem likely the money had come from him.
We trooped into the lounge. Carlotti asked me politely if I would sit down and wait while he examined the villa.
I sat down and waited.
They spent some time in the bedroom. After a while, Carlotri came out carrying a small leather box: the kind of box you buy in Florence when you’re hard put to give a friend at home a present.
“You had better take charge of these,” he said, putting the box on the table. “They must be given to il Signor Chalmers. Perhaps you will give me a receipt?”
He lifted the lid. In the box were some pieces of jewellery. There were two rings: one of them had a large sapphire stone; the other had three diamonds. There was a collar of diamonds and a pair of diamond ear-rings. I don’t know much about the value of jewellery, but even I could see that these would be worth quite a lot.
“They are very nice,” Carlotti said. He sounded a little wistful as if he coveted the jewels. “It is fortunate no one broke in here while the place was unguarded.”
I remembered the tall, broad-shouldered intruder.
“Where did you find them?” I asked.
“They were on her dressing-table for anyone to steal.”
“They’re genuine? I mean, they’re not paste?”
“Of course they are genuine.” He frowned at me. “I should say at a rough guess they are worth three million lire”
While he was scribbling out a receipt for me to sign, I stared at the box and its contents. On her dressing-table for anyone to steal! I felt a little chill of uneasiness crawl up my spine. It didn’t seem then that the intruder I had seen had been a sneak thief. Then who had he been? The sound of the telephone bell startled me.
Carlotti answered it.
He said, “Si… si.… si.” Listened for a long moment, then grunted something and hung up.
Grandi came into the room. His face wore an expectant expression.
Carlotti lit a cigarette before saying to me, “They have just had the autopsy report.”
I could see something had upset him. His eyes were uneasy again.
“Well, you know how she died,” I said in an attempt to bridge ever the long pause that followed.
“Yes, there is no doubt about that.”
He moved away from the telephone. I could feel his uneasiness the way you feel the touch of a hand in the dark.
“Is there anything else?”
I was aware that my voice had sharpened. I saw Grandi turn to look at me.
“Yes, there is something else,” Carlotti said and grimaced. “She was pregnant.”
It was close on three-thirty by the time Carlotti had completed his examination of the villa and his interrogation of the woman from the village.
I didn’t see her.
I could hear the faint sound of their voices as he talked with her in the kitchen. I remained in the lounge, smoking cigarette after cigarette, my mind a squirrel cage of panic.
So Helen had been pregnant.
That would be the final nail in my coffin if they ever found out who Douglas Sherrard was. I knew I was not only innocent of her death, but also of her pregnancy, but if ever the facts came out, no one would believe it.
What a mad, crass stupid fool I had been to have ever got tangled with the girl!
Who had been her lover?
I thought again of the broad-shouldered, mysterious intruder I had seen the previous night. Was he the man? It was possible. It was obvious now that he hadn’t been a thief. No thief would have left three million lire’s worth of jewellery on the dressing-table.
I went on turning this situation over in my mind, watching the clock on the overmantel, knowing in another half-hour I would have to give Chalmers the details of her death.
The more I thought about it, the more acutely conscious I became that one false step would be my complete finish.
Carlotti came into the lounge as the hands of the clock on the overmantel moved to three forty-four.
“There are complications,” he said gloomily.
“I know. You said that before.”
“Do you think she was the suicide type?”
The question startled me.
“I don’t know. I tell you, I don’t know anything about her.” I felt compelled to drive this point home so I went on, “Chalmers asked me to meet her at the airport and take her to her hotel. This was about fourteen weeks ago. Since then I have scarcely seen her. I just don’t know anything about her.”
“Grandi thinks it is possible that her lover deserted her.” Carlotti said. I don’t think he paid much notice to what I had said. “He thinks she threw herself off the cliff in despair.”
“American girls don’t do that sort of thing. They’re too practical. You will have to be careful how you suggest a theory of that kind to Chalmers. He might not like it.”
“I’m not suggesting it to il Signor Chalmers, I’m suggesting it to you,” Carlotti said quietly.
Grandi wandered in at this moment and sat down. He stared at me with cold, hostile eyes. For some reason or other, he didn’t seem to like me.
“Make all the suggestions you like to me,” I said, looking steadily at Carlotti. “It won’t help you one way or the other, but be careful what you say to Chalmers.”
“Yes,” Carlotti said. “I understand that. I am relying on you for help. It seems there was a love affair. The woman has told me that the girl came here two days ago. She came alone. She told the woman that she was expecting her husband to join her the following day - that would be yesterday. The woman says there is no doubt that she was expecting him. She was very gay.” He broke off to stare at me. “I’m telling you what the woman said. Women are very often reliable concerning such matters.”
Go on,” I said. “I’m not arguing with you.”
“This man was supposed to be arriving at Sorrento from Naples at three-thirty. La signorina told her she was going to meet the train, and she was to come in at nine in the evening to dear up the dinner things. The woman left the villa at eleven in the morning. Between that time and the rime it was necessary for la signorina to leave to meet the train something happened either to prevent her from meeting the train or that made her change her mind about meeting it.”
“What kind of thing?”
He lifted his shoulders.
“She may have received a message. There is no record of her receiving a telephone call. I don’t know. I think it is very possible she learned somehow or other that her lover wasn’t coming.”
“You’re guessing,” I said. “You’ll have to watch out not to guess with Chalmers.”
“By then we may have some facts. I am trying theories.” He moved restlessly. I could see he was perplexed and unhappy with tile situation. “I am seeing if Grandi’s theory fits that in a fit of
depression she killed herself.”
“Does it matter?” I said. “She’s dead. Can’t this be put through as an accident? There’s no need to broadcast the fact that she was pregnant, is there?”
“The coroner will have the autopsy report. There is no way of keeping it quiet.”
Grandi said impatiently, “Well, I have things to do. I have got to find this man Sherrard.”
I felt as if someone had touched the back of my neck with a splinter of ice.
“I am going to call il Signor Chalmers,” I said, trying to make my voice casual. “He will want to know what is happening. What shall I tell him?”
The two men exchanged glances.
“It would be wise to tell him as little as possible at this stage of the investigation,” Carlotti said. “It would be unwise to mention this man Sherrard, I think. Couldn’t you say that she fell off the cliff while using her cine camera, that there will be an inquest and a full investigation and until then…”
The telephone interrupted him. Grandi lifted the receiver, listened for a moment, then looked across at me. “It is for you.”
I took the receiver from him.
“Hello?”
Gina said, “Mr. Chalmers phoned through ten minutes ago. He said he was flying out right away, and you are to meet him at 18.00 hours at the Naples airport to-morrow.”
I drew in a long, slow breath. This was something I wasn’t prepared for.
“How did he sound?”
“He was very curt and sharp,” Gina said. “He didn’t sound like anything except that.”
“Did he ask any questions?”
“No. He just told me the time he would be arriving and asked for you to meet him.”
“Okay, I’ll be there.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No. Go home, Gina. I won’t be needing you now.”
“If you do, I’ll be at my apartment all the evening.”
“Okay, but I won’t worry you. So long for now,” and I hung up.
Carlotti was watching me, his eyes frowning.
“Chalmers will arrive at Naples at 18.00 hours to-morrow,” I said. “Between now and then, you’d better get some facts. There’ll be no question of telling him as little as possible. He’ll have to be told everything, and in detail.”
Carlotti grimaced as he got to his feet
“We should be able to find this man Sherrard by to-morrow evening,” he said, and looked over at Grandi. “Leave your man here. He is to remain here until he is relieved. You can drive us down to Sorrento. Don’t forget the jewels, Signor Dawson.”
I picked up the leather box and slipped it into my pocket.
As we went down the steps and down the drive to the police car, Carlotti said to Grandi, “I’ll leave you in Sorrento. Try to find out if anyone knows Sherrard and if he was seen in Sorrento. Check up on all American visitors who arrived yesterday especially on any American travelling alone.”
In spite of the heat, I realized that the sweat on my face felt cold.
I got to the Naples airport at a few minutes to six o’clock. They told me the New York plane was on time, and was due in at any moment.
I went to the barrier, lit a cigarette and waited. There were four people waiting; two of them elderly women, the third a fat Frenchman and the fourth was a platinum blonde with a bust on her you only see in the pages of Esquire. She was wearing a white sharkskin costume and a small black hat with a diamond cluster ornament that must have cost someone a pile of money.
I looked at her and she turned. Our eyes met
“Excuse me: are you Mr. Dawson?” she asked.
“That’s right,” I said, surprised. I took off my hat.
“I am Mrs. Sherwin Chalmers.”
I stared at her.
“You are? Mr. Chalmers hasn’t already arrived, has he?”
“Oh. no. I’ve been shopping in Paris for the past week,” she said, her deep violet eyes searching my face. She had the hard beauty of a New York show-girl. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-three or four, but there was a worldliness about her that made her look older. “My husband cabled me to meet him. This is dreadful news.”
“Yes.”
I fidgeted with my hat
“It’s a terrible thing… she was so young.”
“It’s bad,” I said.
There was something in the way she kept looking at me that made me uncomfortable.
“Did you know her well, Mr. Dawson?”
“Hardly at all.”
“I can’t understand how she could have fallen like that.”
“The police think she was taking photographs and didn’t look where she was going.”
The sound of an approaching aircraft cut this uncomfortable conversation short.
“I think the plane’s coming in now,” I said.
We stood side by side, watching the aircraft land. After a few minutes, the passengers began
to alight. Chalmers was the first off the plane. He came quickly through the barrier. I drew back and let him greet his wife. They stood talking together for a few moments, then he came over to me and shook hands. He stared at me, then said they wanted to get to the hotel as quickly as possible, that he didn’t want to discuss Helen at this moment and for me to arrange a meeting with the police at his hotel at seven.
He and his wife got in the back seat of the Rolls I had hired for them and, as I didn’t get any encouragement, I got in front with the chauffeur.
At the hotel, Chalmers dismissed me with a curt, “See you at seven, Dawson,” and they were whisked away in the elevator up to the fourth floor, leaving me feeling a little breathless.
I had seen photographs of Chalmers, but in the flesh he was more than life size. Although he was short, fat and built like a barrel there was an atmosphere about him that reduced me and the people around him to the size of pigmies. The best description I can give of him is that he reminded me of Mussolini in his heyday. He had the same ruthless, jutting jaw, the same dark complexion and the same ice-pick eyes. It didn’t seem possible that he could have been the sire of a girl like Helen whose brittle, uncoarse beauty had been so fatally attractive to me.
When, at seven o’clock, Carlotti, Grandi and I trooped into the lush lounge that the Vesuvius hotel had provided for him, he had changed, obviously shaved and showered, and was now sitting at the head of a big table in the middle of the room, a cigar between his teeth and a glowering, dark expression on his hard face.
Sitting by the window was his wife, June. She had on a sky-blue silk dress that fined her like a second skin and her long, shapely legs were crossed, showing beautiful knees that attracted Grandi’s eyes and made his usually gloomy dark face take on a more animated expression.
I introduced him and Carlotti and we sat down.
For a long moment Chalmers stared fixedly at Carlotti. Then he said in his barking voice, “Okay, let’s have the facts.”
I’ve known Carlotti pretty intimately for the past three years. Up to this moment, I had never thought much of him as a policeman. I knew he was thorough, and he had a reputation for solving his cases, but he had never struck me as having any great talent for his job. But the way he faced up to Chalmers during the next twenty minutes gave me an entirely different opinion of him.
“The facts, Signor Chalmers,” he said quietly, “will be painful to you, but since you ask for them, you shall have them.”
Chalmers sat motionless, his freckled, fat hands clasped on the top of the table, his cigar, drifting smoke past his hard face, gripped tightly between his teeth. His small, ice-pick eyes, the colour of rain, stared fixedly at Carlotti.
“Never mind how painful it is,” he said. “Give me the facts.”
“Ten days ago, your daughter left Rome and flew to Naples. She took the local train from Naples to Sorrento where she paid a visit to an estate agent,” Carlotti said as if he had rehearsed this speech for some time, learning it by heart. “She introduced herself to the estate agent as Mrs. Douglas Sherrard, the wife of an American business man on vacation in Rome.”
I sneaked a quick look at Chalmers. He sat impassive, his cigar glowing, his hands slack on the table. I looked from him to his platinum blonde wife. She was looking out of the window and she gave no sign that she was listening.
“She wanted a villa for a month,” Carlotti went on in his quiet, excellent English. “She insisted on a place that was isolated, and the cost was immaterial. It so happened that the agent had such a place. He drove la signorina to this villa and she agreed to take it. She wanted someone to come in and look after the place during their stay. The agent arranged with a woman of a nearby village to do the necessary work. This woman, Maria Candallo, tells me that, on 28th August, she went to the villa where she found la signorina who had arrived a few hours earlier in a Lincoln convertible.”
Chalmers said, “Was the car registered in her name?”
“Yes,” Carlotti said.
Chalmers touched off the ash on his cigar, nodded, and said, “Go on.”
“La signorina told Maria that her husband would be arriving the following day. According to the woman, there was no doubt in her mind that la signorina was very much in love with this man whom she called Douglas Sherrard.”
For the first time Chalmers gave a hint of his feelings. He hunched his broad shoulders and his freckled hands turned into fists.
Carlotti went on, “Maria came to the villa at eight forty-five on the morning of the 29th. She washed up the breakfast things, dusted and swept. La signorina told her she was going down to Sorrento to meet the three-thirty train from Naples. She said her husband was coming from Rome on that train. Around eleven o’clock Maria left. At that time la signorina was arranging flowers in the lounge. That was the last time, so far as we know, that anyone saw her alive.”
June Chalmers recrossed her legs. She turned her pretty head and stared directly at me. Her worldly, violet eyes went over me thoughtfully: a disconcerting stare that made me look quickly away from her.
“What happened between that time and eight-fifteen in the evening is a matter for conjecture,” Carlotti said. “It is some-thing probably that we shall never know.”
Chalmers’s eyes became hooded. He leaned forward.
“Why eight-fifteen?” he asked.
“That was the time she died,” Carlotti said. “I don’t think there is any doubt about that. Her wrist watch was smashed in the fall. It showed exactly eight-fifteen.”
I had stiffened to attention. This was news to me. It meant that I was in the villa, looking for Helen, when she had fallen. No one, including a judge and jury, would believe I hadn’t had something to do with her death if it became known I had been up there at the time.
“I would like to be able to tell you,” Carlotti went on, “that your daughter’s death was due to an unfortunate accident, but at the moment, I can’t do it. I admit on the face of it, it would seem to be the solution. There is no doubt that she took a cine camera up on the cliff head. It is possible, when using a camera of this kind, to become so absorbed in what you are taking, that you could get too close to the edge of the path and fell over.”
Chalmers took his cigar out of his mouth and laid it in the ashtray. He stared fixedly at Carlotti.
“Are you trying to tell me that it wasn’t an accident?” he said in a voice you could cut a stale loaf on.
June Chalmers stopped staring at me and cooked her head on one side: for the first time she appeared to be interested in what was going on.
“That is for the coroner to decide,” Carlotti said. He was quite unflustered and he met the icepick eyes without flinching. “There are complications. There are a number of details that need explaining. It would seem there are two alternative explanations for your daughter’s death: one is that she accidentally stepped off the cliff head while using her camera; the other is that she committed suicide.”
Chalmers hunched his shoulders and his face congested.
“You have reason to say a thing like that?”
He conveyed that Carlotti had damn well better have a reason.
Carlotti let him have it without rubber cushioning.
“Your daughter was eight weeks’ pregnant.”
There was a long, heavy silence. I didn’t dare look at Chalmers. I stared down at my sweating hands that were gripped between my thighs.
June broke the silence by saying, “Oh, Sherwin. I can’t believe that…”
I sneaked a quick look at Chalmers. His face was murderous: the kind of face you see on the screen of some not-too-good actor playing the role of a cornered gangster.
“Hold your tongue!” he snarled at June in a voice that shook with violence. Then, as she turned to look out of the window, he said to Carlotti, “Is that what the doctor said?”
“I have a copy of the autopsy,” Carlotti returned. “You can get it if you wish.”
“Pregnant? Helen?”
He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. He still looked awe-inspiring, tough and ruthless, but somehow he didn’t make me feel quite such a pigmy; some of his big-shot atmosphere had gone out of him.
He walked slowly around the lounge while Carlotti, Grandi and I stared down at our feet and June stared out of the window. “She wouldn’t commit suicide,” he said suddenly. “She had too much strength of character.”
They seemed empty words: unexpected words from a man like Chalmers. I found myself wondering what chance he had ever given himself to find out if Helen had had any character at all. No one said anything.
He continued to walk around the lounge, his hands in his pockets, his face set and frowning.
After several uncomfortable minutes had ticked by, he paused suddenly and asked the worldold question, “Who is the man?”
“We don’t know,” Carlotti said. “Your daughter may have purposely misled the estate agent and the village woman by telling them he is an American. There is no American in Italy of that name.”
Chalmers came over and sat down again.
“He’s probably not using his own name,” he said.
“That is possible,” Carlotti said. “We have made inquiries in Sorrento. There was an American, travelling alone, on the three-thirty from Naples.”
I felt my heart contract: it was a horrible feeling. I found difficulty in breathing.
“He left a suitcase at the station,” Carlotti went on. “Unfortunately the description of him varies. No one particularly noticed him. He was seen walking on the Sorrento-Amalfi road by a passing motorist. All anyone can be certain about is that he wore a light grey suit. The station clerk said he was tall. The motorist thought he was of middle height. A boy from a nearby village said he was short and thick-set. There is no clear description of him. Around ten o’clock in the evening he collected his suitcase and took a taxi to Naples. He was in a great hurry. He offered the driver a five thousand lire tip to get him to the station to catch the eleven-fifteen to Rome.”
Chalmers was sitting forward, his eyes intent. He reminded me of some beast of prey.
“The road to Amalfi is also the road to this villa?”
“Yes. There is a branch road.”
“My daughter died at eight-fifteen?”
“Yes.”
“And this fella took a taxi in a hurry around ten o’clock?”
“Yes.”
“How long would it take to get from this villa to Sorrento?”
“About half an hour by car, or walking, it’d take well over an hour and a half.”
Chalmers brooded for a moment.
I sat there breathing through my half-open mouth and feeling pretty bad. I expected him to come out with some devastating discovery after these questions, but he didn’t. Instead, he suddenly hunched his shoulders and said, “She wouldn’t commit suicide. I know that. You can put that theory right out of your mind, Lieutenant. It is obvious: she fell off the cliff while using this camera.”
Carlotti didn’t say anything. Grandi moved uneasily and stared hard at his finger-nails.
“That’s the verdict I expect to hear,” Chalmers went on, his voice harsh.
Carlotti said smoothly, “It’s my business to give the facts to the coroner, Signor Chalmers. It is his business to find the verdict.”
Chalmers stared at him.
“Yes. Who is the coroner?”
“Il signor Giuseppe Maletti.”
“Here - in Naples?”
“Yes.”
Chalmers nodded.
“Where is my daughter’s body?”
“At the Sorrento mortuary.”
“I want to see her.”
“Of course. There will be no difficulty. If you will let me know when, I will take you there.”
“You don’t have to do that. I don’t like people following me around. Dawson will take me.”
“As you wish, signor.”
“Just fix it with whoever is in charge that I can see her.” Chalmers took out a new cigar and began to peel off the band. For the first time since I had entered the room, he looked at me. “Is the Italian press covering this business?”
“Not yet. We’ve been holding up on it until you came.”
He studied me, then nodded.
“You did right.” Then he turned to Carlotti. “Thanks for the facts, Lieutenant. If there’s anything else I want to know between now and the inquest, I’ll get in touch with you.”
Carlotti and Grandi got to their feet.
“I am at your service, signor,” Carlotti said.
When they had gone, Chalmers sat for a moment, staring down at his hands, then he said quietly and savagely, “God damn wops.”
I thought this was the time to unload the box of jewels Carlotti had entrusted in my keeping. I put the box on the table in front of Chalmers.
“These belonged to your daughter,” I said. “They were found in the villa.”
He frowned, reached forward, opened the box and stared at the contents. He turned the box upside down, letting the jewels spill out on to the table.
June got to her feet and crossed over to stare over his shoulder.
“You didn’t give her those, did you, Sherwin?” she asked.
“Of course not!” he said, poking at the diamond collar with a thick finger. “I wouldn’t give a kid stuff like this.”
She reached over his shoulder and made to pick up the diamond collar, but he roughly pushed her hand away.
“Leave it!” The snap in his voice startled me. “Go and sit down!”
Slightly shrugging her shoulders, she returned to her seat by the window and sat down.
Chalmers scooped the jewels back into the box and shut the lid. He handled the box as if it were made of egg shells.
He sat motionless for a long time, staring at the box. I watched him, wondering what his next
move was to be. I knew he would make a move. He was getting his big-shot atmosphere back.
His wife, staring out of the window, and I staring down at my hands, were pigmies again.
“Get this Giuseppe whatever his name is on the telephone,” Chalmers said, without looking at me. “The coroner fella.”
I turned up Maletti’s number in the book and put through the call. While I was waiting for the connection, Chalmers went on, “Give the news to the press: no details. Tell them Helen, while on vacation, fell off a cliff and was killed.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Be here to-morrow morning at nine o’clock with a car. I want to go to the mortuary.”
A voice said on the line that this was the coroner’s office. I asked to be put through to Maletti. When he came on the line, I said to Chalmers, “The coroner.”
He got up and came over.
“Okay, get busy, Dawson,” he said, as he took the receiver from my hand. “Mind - no details.”
As I went out of the room I heard him say, “This is Sherwin Chalmers talking…”
Somehow he made his name sound more important and more impressive than any other name in the world.