“He won’t be long.”
She sat down in a lounging chair near to the one I had been sitting in, crossed her legs, and let me see her knees.
“Please sit down, Mr. Dawson, I want to talk to you.”
“Can I get you a drink?”
She shook her head.
“No, thank you, I’ve only just finished lunch. We are hoping to catch the three-forty plane. Mr. Chalmers is supervising the packing right now. He loves to do that sort of tiling himself.”
I sat down and looked at her.
“Mr. Dawson, I haven’t much time,” she said. “Please don’t misunderstand me if I seem harsh towards Helen, but I must speak to you about her. My husband is a very ruthless and hard man but, like so many hard men, he has a sentimental side. All his affection and love were lavished on his daughter. It may be difficult for you to believe this, but he worshipped her.”
I moved restlessly. I couldn’t see where this was leading to. I remembered what Helen had said about her father, and how bitter she had been. She had said he had no interest in her, and he only thought of himself and finding a new woman to amuse him. What June Chalmers was telling me didn’t add up.
“I’ve heard that he didn’t give that impression,” I said cautiously. “Most people think he had no time for her.”
“I know. That was the impression he did give, but in actual fact he was ridiculously fond of her. He was anxious not to be thought an indulgent father, and he very stupidly kept her short of money. He thought too much money would spoil her, and he gave her only a very small allowance.”
I sank a little lower in my chair. I can’t say I was particularly interested in all this.
“I believe you are anxious to return to New York and take up your new appointment: it’s the foreign desk, isn’t it?” she said abruptly.
That stiffened me to attention.
“Yes.”
“The job means a lot to you?”
“Why, of course…”
“My husband has a very high opinion of you,” she went on. “He has told me what he wants you to do. I mean about Helen. He is sure she has been murdered. He gets these fixed ideas from time to time, and nothing anyone can say will make him think otherwise. The police and the coroner are satisfied it was an accident. I am sure you think so too.”
She looked inquiringly at me.
For no reason I could think of I felt suddenly uneasy in her presence. Maybe it was because I had an idea that her smiling calmness was phoney. There was a suppressed tension about her I could sense rather than see.
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s something I’m going to investigate.”
“Yes, and that brings me to why I want to talk to you. Mr. Dawson. I want to warn you to be careful how deeply you probe into this business. My husband was crazy about Helen. I don’t like speaking badly about anyone who can’t defend themselves, but in this case I haven’t any choice. He thought she was a good, decent, studious girl, but she wasn’t. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for money: nothing at all. She lived for money. My husband only gave her an allowance of sixty dollars a week. I know for a fact she spent as much as two or three hundred dollars a week when she was living in New York. She had absolutely no scruples how she got money so long as she got it. She was perhaps one of the most worldly, undisciplined, immoral and unpleasant women I have ever met.”
The rasp in her voice as she said this shocked me.
“I know it is a dreadful thing to say,” she went on, “but it is the truth. If you probe into her past you will find this out for yourself. She was utterly rotten. This wasn’t the first time she was pregnant: a thing like that wouldn’t have worried her. She knew what to do and who to go to. The men she went around with were degenerates and criminals. If anyone deserved to be murdered, she did!”
I drew in a long, slow breath.
“And yet you don’t think she was murdered?” I said.
“I don’t know.” She stared at me. “All I do know is that the police are satisfied she died accidentally. Why can’t you be satisfied?”
“Your husband has told me to make an investigation. That’s an order.”
“If you investigate her death as a murder, you are certain to uncover a whole series of unpleasant facts about her. I am sure she behaved in Rome as she has behaved in New York. It will be impossible to conceal these facts from my husband. He is completely convinced that Helen was a decent, clean-living girl. The facts you will have to tell him will shock him. He won’t forgive you for shattering his illusions about his daughter, nor is he likely to employ a man in the most important position on his newspaper who has shown him how completely fooled he has been about such a worthless degenerate as his daughter was. Now do you understand why I am asking you not to probe too deeply into this business?”
I reached out, picked up my glass and finished my whisky.
“How is it you know so much about Helen Chalmers?” I asked.
“I’m not blind and I’m not stupid. I’ve known her for some years. I’ve seen the men she associated with. Her behaviour was notorious.”
There was more to it than that: I was sure of it, but I didn’t say so.
“This puts me on a spot,” I said. “Mr. Chalmers has told me if I don’t uncover the facts, I won’t get the job. Now you tell me if I do, I still won’t get it. So what do I do?”
“Don’t uncover them, Mr. Dawson. Delay things. After a while, my husband will get over the shock of her death. At the moment he is furious and revengeful, but when he gets back to New York and is caught-up once more in his work, he will calm down. In a couple of weeks’ time you can safely report no progress. I can assure you he will let the matter drop. I can promise you, if you don’t start an investigation you will get the foreign desk, but if you do, I am sure my husband, when he learns the truth about Helen, will never forgive you.”
“So you suggest I sit back and do nothing?”
Just for a moment her fixed smile slipped. Into her eyes jumped a staring fear that startled me. It was there for a split second, then the smile came back, but I had seen her fear all right.
“Of course you will have to make out to my husband that you are doing your best, Mr. Dawson. You will have to send him reports, but no one can blame you if you don’t discover any worth-while information.” She leaned forward and put her hand on mine. “Please don’t check up on Helen’s life in Rome. I have to live with my husband. I know how he would react if he knew the truth about Helen. It was I who persuaded him to let her go to Rome, and he would blame me, so it’s not only for your sake I’m asking you to do this, it’s for mine as well.”
I was sitting facing the reception hall and I saw Chalmers come out of the elevator and go over to the reception desk. I pulled my hand from hers and got to my feet.
“Here’s Mr. Chalmers now.”
Her mouth tightened, and she turned to wave to Chalmers who came over. He carried a light overcoat on his arm and a despatch case in his hand.
“Hello, Dawson, did you want to see me?” he asked as he put down his case. “We haven’t much time.”
I had intended to tell him about the missing films and about the Renault that had followed me, but now, having listened to June Chalmers, I decided I needed some time to think over what she had said before I committed myself. I was suddenly stuck to explain what I was doing here.
But June wasn’t.
“Mr. Dawson brought Helen’s camera,” she said. For a moment I wondered how she knew the camera was Helen’s, but glancing at the case, I realized she had spotted Helen’s initials on it. All the same this show of quick- wittedness told me she was a lot smarter than I had imagined. Chalmers scowled at the camera.
“I don’t want it. I don’t want any of her things,” he said curtly. “Get rid of it.”
I said I would do that.
“Did you find anything up at the villa?”
I caught June’s anxious eyes. I shook my head.
