Read Evil That Men Do for Free Online

from the chair, tapping an unlighted cigarette on the back of his hand. He gave me a quick look that told me I was expected to say nothing, ask nothing.
    “I would like to make my position quite clear to you, Miss Standing.” Chambrun sounded as if he’d said exactly this before without its penetrating. “This is a police matter. They’ll be here at any moment and the situation will be out of my hands. You’re a special friend of Mr. Battie’s, the Beaumont’s owner. He’d want me to help you in any way I can. Do you have a lawyer here in New York?”
    “I have lawyers everywhere,” she said, in a flat voice. “Poor little rich girls have lawyers everywhere, Chambrun—feeding off us!”
    “Then I think you should let me call the one who represents you here in New York.”
    “Why?” she asked, without looking at him. “Jeremy pulled his act once too often. Why should I need help?”
    “It wasn’t a suicide, Miss Standing,” he said quietly.
    She turned her head, very slowly, to look at him.
    “Come again,” she said.
    “It wasn’t a suicide,” Chambrun said. He lit his cigarette and watched her, eyes narrowed against the little cloud of pale, bluish smoke.
    “You’re playing a game with me!” she said, her voice not quite steady.
    “Games are your forte, Miss Standing,” he said.
    A little nerve twitched high up on her cheek. “Let me tell you again exactly what happened,” she said.
    “Please do.”
    “Marinelli had just left me,” she said. “I bought some clothes, you know. Having arrived without any luggage, I needed a full wardrobe of things.”
    “Why was that?” Chambrun asked.
    “Why did I need clothes? My dear man, I—”
    “Why did you come without luggage?”
    She turned her head to look at the bed. For the first time, I saw that it was strewn with newspapers. More papers were scattered around it on the floor.
    “I came on the spur of the moment,” she said. She laughed, and it was a bitter little sound. “I have a reputation for acting on impulse.”
    “Have it your way,” Chambrun said. “Marinelli had just left you—?”
    “She’d only been gone a moment or two when someone knocked. I supposed it was Marinelli who’d forgotten something. I opened the door and—and there was Jeremy.”
    “An old friend.”
    “Yes.” The scarlet mouth tightened. “He didn’t ask to come in. He just came in. I wasn’t glad to see him—just then.”
    “Why?”
    “I was sick of Jeremy and his act. I knew from you what he’d done earlier in the day—in the Trapeze. I didn’t want to be involved with him. It would call attention to my presence in the hotel. You know I didn’t want that. I’d registered as ‘Dorothy Smith.’ ”
    “He wanted you to hide him?”
    Doris shook her head, slowly. “He said he had to talk to me about something important. ‘The time has come, the Walrus said—,’ he said. I didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘Just to get in the mood,’ he said, and pulled out that silly gun. I told him I hoped it would work this time. ‘It won’t,’ he said, ‘until we’ve had a chance to talk things out.’ And then he held it to his head and pulled the trigger. There was the usual click, the usual delighted laughter from him. ‘This,’ I told him, ‘is the essence of Dullsville.’ I turned my back on him and came in here, closing the door behind me. He shouted after me that he could wait all night to talk to me, if necessary. I was angry. I didn’t have anything I wanted to talk to him about. I—I couldn’t think of anything. Well—the things I’d bought from Marinelli were all over the place in boxes, those boxes over there. I unpacked them and hung the dresses in the closet and put the other things away in the bureau. I’d just finished and was stacking the boxes when I heard a shot. I wasn’t startled. It just made me angry. I was supposed to go running out to see what had happened and Jeremy would be there laughing at me.