The Right Jack

lock with one solid kick.

Just as they broke down the door, they heard Madame Ronay scream for help, then a deafening explosion. Through a wide arch, they glimpsed two figures struggling, then a gun fell to the floor, and a split-second later Victor Earle crumpled and fell on top of it.

Madame Lucienne Ronay stumbled toward them, her face ashen. 'Grace a Dieu!' she sobbed hysterically. 'Quelle horreur!'

'What happened?' cried Sigrid, rushing past her to check Earle's vital signs.

'Je ne sais pas. This man. He calls me and says he has something that belongs to my beloved husband. Then, when we are alone, he points at me his gun and forces me here. I say to him 'Que voulez-vous? Tell me and I will give you anything-money? jewels?' But he does not say, just looks at me with those horrible eyes. When he hears you for un petit moment he looks away and I grasp his arm and we fight and then-'

She covered her face with her hands. 'Oh, Madame, how awful!' said Mrs. O'Riley. 'Shall I call your doctor?' Sobbing, Lucienne Ronay nodded gratefully.

Sigrid straightened from the dead man's body.

'At this point,' she said icily, 'I think your lawyer would be more helpful.'

'Lawyer?' asked Madame Ronay in a trembling voice. 'Because a man whow ould kill me is himself killed? Quelle absurdite!'

'Nevertheless, these are your rights,' said Sigrid and quoted them to the letter.

'Lieutenant!' cried Mrs. O'Riley, appalled. 'How can you? After what she's just been through.'

'Lieutenant Knight, please describe the scene you witnessed as we entered this apartment.'

As Knight began, Jim Lowry and Elaine Albee, escorted by an elevator attendant with a key, rushed into the penthouse. 'The garage man said no one-'

Albee fell silent when she saw Madame Ronay huddled on the couch and Victor Earle's body beyond.

'Continue, Lieutenant Knight,' said Sigrid sternly.

'Very well. As we entered, I heard a woman scream for help, followed almost immediately by a gunshot. An instant later, I saw two figures struggling, then the gun fell from Madame Ronay's hand, and Victor Earle followed.'

'Not my hand-his!'. insisted Lucienne Ronay. 'He tried to kill me.'

'Blackmail you, perhaps, but not kill,' Sigrid said. 'He told your secretary he had something of your husband's. Which husband, Brooks Ann Farr? Maurice Ronay or Fred Hamilton?'

IT was late afternoon and Victor Earle's body had long since been taken away, but police technicans continued to process the apartment.

They had found the pseudo-Frenchwoman's hidden cache of chemical compounds, enough to level the hotel, in a concealed compartment built into the floor of her closet. Another hiding place in the paneled ceiling of her dressing room revealed a tin box that confirmed what Sigrid had already reasoned out: pictures of Farr/Ronay with Fred Hamilton and a yellowed news clipping from a French newspaper, the obituary of Lucienne Duval, orpheline, born in Lyons in 1938.

Thanks to her Swiss prep school, Brooks Ann spoke flawless French, so it would have been simple to obtain a birth certificate and step into the identity of a dead woman with no relatives. Had anyone continued to look for Brooks Ann Farr, they would surely look for someone born thirty-seven years before.

It was a stroke of genius, an inspired adaptation of Poe's purloined letter, to hide her past in the public eye. She had lost weight, lightened her hair, and learned to create a glamorous persona with cosmetics, but any woman might do those things.

What made her disguise so flawless, thought Sigrid was her briliant realization that since most women pretend to youth, the best camouflage was a pretense of age. To speak constantly of one's approaching fortieth birthday while still in one's twenties. To be vocally rueful about nearing the half-century while still in one's thirties.

She was ferociously strong-willed and intelligent, and somehow she had captured the whimsical fancy of an elderly French millionaire. They would probably never learn if he had known her true background. Somehow, Sigrid doubted it. On the other hand, Maurice Ronay was said to have had eccentric tastes.

Absently smoothing her hair, Sigrid turned through the souvenirs that Farr/Ronay had chosen to keep of her former life.

Someone cleared his throat and she turned to see Oscar Nauman in the doorway.

'How did you talk your way past the guards and reporters downstairs?' she asked.

'You know my methods, Watson,' he said vaguely.

And she did. It could have been Susan O'Riley; it could have been Ronay's personal maid; it could even be one of her own police officers. She'd quit being surprised at the odd assortment of people Nauman knew.

'I've just come from Val's,' he said.

Sigrid waited.

'So much for the observation of an artistic eye,' he said dejectedly. 'I thought John was trying to place that Flythe man and all the time it was really Ronay. Val said John used to feel sorry for her; spent a lot of time listening to her problems with Fred Hamilton, so she must have recognized him immediately and was afraid it would soon be reciprocal.'

'Is Val bitter about that?'

'Right now. Eventually, she'll realize that's what made him John.'

'Ronay was safe as long as she stayed away from people connected with Red Snow,' said Sigrid, absently massaging her wounded arm. 'Not hard to do with everyone except Earle either dead or involved in middle-class pursuits. John Sutton was probably the only member of McClellan's SDS ever to walk into the Maintenon and he might not have given her a second glance if he hadn't been immersed then in his book and lectures of the period.'

'Did the busboy see her switch the boards?'

'I doubt it. I think what happened is that young Johnson saw Ronay on her way to check on the d'Aubigne Room and followed to offer his assistance. Raymond George said he was going to recommend Johnson for a bonus because he reacted so quickly to the fire, but Johnson had his immediate goal set on becoming a waiter in the Emeraude Room. The boy probably made some innocent remark about not wanting money for what hed id Friday night but a promotion.'

Nauman nodded reflectively. 'And she interpreted that as a blackmail threat that he'd seen her switch the boards. If I'd been paying attention last Wednesday-'

'Don't heap all the blame on yourself,' Sigrid said sharply. 'I should have caught it sooner myself, realized that she ordered the ashtrays changed to muddy the waters. I even had a witness tell me on Saturday that Madame Ronay was the one who bumped into the altered seating chart and trampled it underfoot. She probably hoped we wouldn't notice that Sutton's number had been changed to put him where the bomb would do the least damage to her precious ballroom.'

Nauman looked round, mentally cataloging the paintings over the bed and on the opposite wall. What sad dim parodies they were of those exquisite entertainments of Watteau and Fragonard, and how suited to the surface image of Lucienne Ronay.

He glanced at Sigrid and found her regarding him with a quizzical expression. Her new bangs wisped softly over her strong forehead but she'd eaten off most of her lipstick. Her bare lips made him feel strangely tender.

'You finished here soon?'

'I'm finished now. Let me tell the others I'm leaving.'

'Why don't you ask Knight to join us for a drink?' It was the nearest he could come just then to an apology.

'Alan? Oh, I sent him off with Albee an hour ago.'

'You did?' Some of Nauman's old preening masculinity crept back into his smile. 'Look, Siga-take off a few days and come to Connecticut with me this weekend.'

Sigrid tilted her head.

'You ought to give your arm a chance to heal properly,' he coaxed. 'I promise I'll behave myself.'

Sudden mischief quirked her lips and danced in her gray eyes but her tone was innocent as she asked, 'Want to bet?'