Death of a Dastard (Prologue Books) Read online

  Henry Kane

  death

  of a

  dastard

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  “I’m a Nut, I’m a Thrill Seeker … I love my husband but oh, you kid…. All right. I’m sick. And one of the symptoms of my sickness was this little whippersnapper, this idiot boring boy, this pompous little nothing-type sex companion, this silly little momentarily satisfying Jason Touraine.”

  Her name was Madeline McCormick and she’d come to Pete Chambers for help. The beautiful millionairess with a come-on eye for men and a daredevil sex life had had her fun inside marriage and out until she took on Jason Touraine, a professional lover-boy more greedy than gallant. He came to a deserving end — death by violence. And Mrs. McCormick was the last one to see him alive and loving!

  Tough private eye Pete Chambers dodges the heady lures of volatile beauties as he investigates their love lives, tries to save his client from the city cops, and tracks down the killer of Jason Touraine, the dastard who recklessly courted murder.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Case of the Murdered Madame

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  JASON TOURAINE was a dastard.

  Dastard is an old-fashioned term but I must be old-fashioned in describing Jason Touraine: there is no new-fashioned term more properly fitting.

  Dastard implies coward, sneak, sinner, scourge, miscreant, recreant, scoundrel, cockatrice — and Jason Touraine was a gorgeous combination of all that and gorgeous is precisely the word for what was Jason Touraine. Jason Touraine was a tall, lean, hard, irresistible stack of male loadstone. Jason Touraine was as attractive to females as a powerful electromagnet is attractive to loose-strewn iron shavings. Jason Touraine, who stood up to no man — what need? — stood up to, and lay down with, many women, but valiantly: it was his stock in trade. I grew to know a good deal about Jason Touraine, all, however, in retrospect, because when I grew to know a good deal about him, he was already dead, and I had been hired to find out who killed him and why.

  I saw him for the first and last time that Friday evening at the party of the McCormicks on East 66th Street — the evening that Harvey Everest McCormick became a customer. Harvey’s wife, Madeline, was already a customer — had been for a number of years — but Harvey was a novitiate: on that Friday evening, for the first time, he made initial encounter as client to a private richard.

  The invitation said eight o’clock, so of course I showed up at eleven: who needs the frigid wassail of the warm-up period? I took care of that at home and arrived well-oiled but not askew, to be enthusiastically bussed, right on the mouth, by Madeline Van de Velde Clemson McCormick. She then led me to meet a lot of the guests, who were higher than breakfast for a giraffe — genial men and lovely ladies — and while I made earnest effort to dally amongst the more pulchritudinous of the latter, mine hostess would have none of it. I made earnest effort to dally because at the moment I was footloose, lovelorn, and looking like all hell to be entrapped in a liaison. But mine hostess was intent upon introducing her late arrival to all and sundry, even her husband.

  “Peter,” she said. “You know Harvey, don’t you?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Harvey,” she said. “You know Peter, don’t you?”

  “I do,” he said.

  “Well, damn! Christ! Do something! Say hello, kiss each other, shake hands, go into a buck and wing. Something!”

  “Hello,” said Harvey Everest McCormick.

  “Hello,” I said.

  Mine hostess was something.

  Ebullient, dour, dashing, lugubrious, lively, charitable, acquisitive — mine hostess had a personality with more tiers than a cut-through onion. Her maiden name had been Madeline Smetana. She had been born in Altoona, Pennsylvania. She had been an only child of Ukranian-Americans. Her mother had died when she was thirteen and she had been the woman of the house for her widowed father, a coal miner who believed in education. She had been a bright student in high school and when her father had met his end in a mine-crash pile-up, the insurance settlement had been sufficient to transport her to a one-room apartment in Poughkeepsie, New York; a change of name to Madeline Smith; and a matriculation at Vassar. She had been graduated cum laude, she had been the star of the Varsity Show, she had stayed on for her Masters in Drama, and then, of course, she had hurried to New York and acquired a two-line part in a revival of The Importance of Being Earnest under the direction of the esteemed Mortimer Van de Velde, who was then sixty-two. Mortimer — thrice-divorced — had cast a covetous eye upon unreluctant Madeline, and in a comparative trice, Mortimer was quatre-married. He had stayed alive and active until he was seventy-seven and until he had steered the dramatic Madeline through nine leading roles on Broadway. Then, in a sudden clutch of heart failure, he had passed on to his Valhalla, leaving behind a great name, no money, and a ripe widow who, at age thirty-nine, retired from the stage.

  At age forty, svelte, slender, regal, and sophisticated, she had met and married Horace Delmont Clemson, a millionaire many times over and a client of mine. Horace Delmont Clemson had then been sixty-six, only four times married, and when I had remonstrated with him about his intended fifth launching, he had chuckled and said, “Baby, how many years do I have left? Isn’t it worth it to spend whatever those years in control of this marvelous woman?”

  Those years had been three. He had died leaving his all to his dearest Madeline (I had been one of the witnesses to his will, as subsequently, I had been one of the witnesses to Madeline’s will). His all had been an astonishing accumulation of hard cash, a packed portfolio of blue-chip stocks and bonds, and the sole ownership of the successful enterprise called Horizon Press, the Managing Editor of which had been the tall, lean, loose, gangling, good-looking, red-haired Harvey Everest (his mother believed she had given birth to a mountain) McCormick.

  Madeline Van de Velde Clemson had had many intimate conferences with Harvey Everest McCormick, both before and after the death of the venerable Horace, and one such conference, after death, wafted Harvey McCormick over the heads of anxious vice-presidents unto the office of acting president. Thereafter the acting president and the sole owner, after a short engagement, merged as husband and wife; the acting president became the actual president; and the name of the firm was changed to Harvest House (Harvest representing the first four letters of Harvey and the last three letters of Everest).

  On this Friday of the party on 66th Street, the McCormicks had been married a bit over three years: Madeline was forty-seven, her husband was thirty-seven, and her latest lover, at least so inside rumor had it, was Jason Touraine, to whom she now led me in a last burst of introduction before rushing off to other pursuits, such as drinking.

  “Jason Touraine,” she said. “Meet an old friend — Peter Chambers.

  “Hi
,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “You two ought to get along famously,” she said.

  “Why?” I said.

  “Why not?” she said and fled.

  “Fabulous, isn’t she?” said Jason Touraine.

  “Sure is,” I said. What else can you say?

  “I’ve heard about you,” he said. “You’re the private detective, aren’t you?”

  “Yep,” I said. As per prediction, we were getting along famously.

  “Madeline talks about you often,” he said.

  The guy was an assistant editor at Harvest House but he referred to the boss’s wife as Madeline.

  “I imagine she talks about you often too,” I said.

  “I hope not,” he said and grinned engagingly.

  He lived up to his notices: he was a looker, no question. He was built like a sprint-swimmer: tall, broad-shouldered, lean-flanked, long-legged; he had green eyes, a tan face, square white teeth, an easy baritone voice, dimples, assurance, and black hair vibrantly crew-cut.

  “Do you enjoy your work?” I said.

  “Pardon?” he said but the grin got hard.

  “Harvest House,” I said.

  “Oh. Yes. I do.”

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Three months.”

  “Like it?”

  “Love it.” And now the green eyes squinted, looking past me, and he waved.

  A lady approached. The lady was exquisite. The lady moved with the grace of a dancer. The lady was dark, wide dark eyes inscrutable, shining dark hair piled on head in theatrical coiffure. The lady was young, about twenty-five, sheathed within a discreet black gown, which, discreet or no, gave emphasis to a willowy, sinuous, olive-skinned figure.

  Touraine looked at his watch and looked at the lady.

  “It’s about time,” he said.

  “I work for a living, remember?” She spoke in a rich, deep, cultured contralto.

  “But I told you this thing went off at eight o’clock. I wrote the whole damned thing out for you, didn’t I?”

  “My first show goes on at nine. Or have you forgotten?”

  “You can skip one show, can’t you?”

  “No, I can’t — at the risk of getting fired.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “I asked. But we had a full house. So the answer was no. This is the first break I’ve had, and I’ll have to be getting back soon.”

  “Lovers’ quarrel?” I inquired.

  “Worse,” said Touraine. “Family quarrel. Like husband and wife. Karen, I’d like you to meet Peter Chambers. Mr. Chambers — my wife, Karen Touraine.”

  “How do you do?” I said.

  “Don’t mind us,” she said and looked about. “This is a lovely place, isn’t it?”

  “First time you’ve been here?” I said.

  “First time,” she said. “It’s just beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “The old Clemson mansion,” I said. “Three stories. One more beautiful than the other. Why don’t you ask Madeline to take your wife on the grand tour, Mr. Touraine?”

  “Good idea,” he said.

  “Do you know Madeline, Mrs. Touraine?”

  “Madeline?”

  “Madeline McCormick.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve never had the pleasure. I know Mr. McCormick, but I’ve never met his wife.”

  “We’ll fix that right now,” said Touraine. “Come on, Karen. Nice having met you, Mr. Chambers.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Husband and wife, arm and arm, went off, and I had just set my course for the bar where two white-jacketed attendants were busily dispensing potables, when a touch on my arm produced Harvey McCormick, quite sober. Gravely he said, “May I talk with you, Mr. Chambers?”

  “Beautiful gal, that one, isn’t she?”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Karen Touraine.”

  “Quite. Would you come this way, please?”

  “I was heading for the bar.”

  “I’ll take you to a private bar.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  The private bar was in the library at the back of the house and when we entered I noticed that he touched a button on the knob, which locked us in, alone. He crossed to a liquor cabinet, opened it, said, “What’ll it be?”

  “Drambuie,” I said. I reserved Drambuie for serious talk.

  “Mr. Chambers,” he said, “you’re a man of the world.”

  “Well, thanks.” I liked Drambuie.

  “I need the services of a private detective, a discreet private detective, a man I can trust, and … well … a man of the world.”

  “I’m it,” I said, sensing a fee.

  “Actually, although you are an acquaintance of mine, you’re a good friend of Madeline’s. For that reason, I’m certain there are people who would say that I’m crazy to think of retaining you in these circumstances.”

  “Girl trouble?” I said.

  “No trouble. Not yet. I’m hoping there won’t be any. But just in case.”

  “Is that where I fit in? — just in case?”

  He poured Drambuie for himself and sipped. “It’s you — because there simply is no one else whom I know; that is, whom I feel I can trust. I can go to a stranger, but who knows who in hell the stranger is, and how far you can trust him. On the other hand, I do know you, I know of your absolutely impeccable reputation, and, I’m back to my first point — you’re a man of the world.”

  “Meaning I don’t figure to snitch to a man’s wife?”

  “Would you?”

  “Of course not. And vice versa. I wouldn’t snitch to a woman’s husband. I’m in the kind of business where you must be neutral and disinterested and stay neutral and disinterested.”

  “I know. I’ve inquired. About you. I’m an executive, Mr. Chambers. People are my business and in my business we are not disinterested; quite the contrary, we are vitally interested. I’ve been vitally interested in you, and you’re my man.”

  “Give me a for instance,” I said.

  He smiled. “For instance, Horace Clemson was your client. For instance, Horace Clemson, old as he was, was quite a ladies’ man. He was the boss, I was managing editor — there was a good deal I knew about Horace Clemson. For instance, I knew that he was mixed in some scrapes with very young girls while he was married to Madeline, and that you were helpful in getting him out of these scrapes, and that you were not critical about him, and you did not breathe a word to Madeline.”

  “One thing has nothing to do with the other.”

  “Perhaps you’re a superb cynic, perhaps a true sophisticate — ”

  “I’m a slob who attends to his own business and keeps his nose out of other people’s.”

  “No matter. You’re the man for me.”

  “Thank you. Now what’s your trouble, Mr. McCormick?”

  “Harvey.”

  “I’m Pete.”

  “No trouble, Pete. I’m going to Chicago tomorrow morning.”

  “I know. Madeline mentioned it. Business, isn’t if?”

  “Mostly. I’d like you to accompany me. I’ll be gone Saturday, Sunday, Monday. Return Tuesday. What would your fee be?”

  “As bodyguard?”

  “To accompany me.”

  “Same thing. A hundred bucks a day. You pay the expenses.”

  “We have a deal,” he said.

  “Fine. Now what’s it all about?”

  “Nothing very sinister. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. I’m making a nine o’clock flight. You’ll meet me at the American Airlines check-in counter at La Guardia at eight-thirty.”

  “Oh my, that’s awfully early for me.”

  “So I’ve heard. You’re sort of night people, aren’t you?” He went to a desk, opened a drawer, took out a checkbook and pen, wrote a check, and handed it to me. “Payment in advance,” he said.

  He was a good executive. He realized that early morning was a huge sacrifice. The check w
as in the sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars.

  “Tomorrow morning?” he said.

  “La Guardia Airport. American. Eight-thirty promptly.”

  He blinked, nodded, smiled, strode to the door, twisted the knob, and we returned to the party.

  Chapter Two

  THE TRIP to Chicago was uneventful. Harvey was uncommunicative and I did not press him. Once I said, “Do you go to Chicago often?”

  “You know we have a branch office there, don’t you?”

  “I’ve heard,” I said.

  “I go on an average of once a month. Sometimes more, sometimes less.”

  “This trip business?”

  “Partly.”

  And that was about it. I slept most of the way and when we arrived I was more chipper than when we left. We checked into the Palmer House, a suite for him and a room for me, and, after I had showered, he knocked on my door and said, “I’m going down to the office for a meeting.”

  “You want me to go with you?”

  “No.”

  “Fine bodyguard.”

  “Not yet.”

  “When?”

  “I’ll tell you about it over dinner.”

  “What time will that be?”

  “How’s seven o’clock?”

  “Fine. Anywhere special?”

  “We’ll meet in my suite. Madeline always calls me at about seven. After that, we’ll decide. Okay?”

  “See you at seven, boss.”

  I wandered about the town, nibbled in a couple of Chicago saloons, lunched on Chicago steak which is almost as good as Kansas steak, visited with some of my Chicago acquaintances of whom I have many, and at seven-fifteen, rear down and feet up in Harvey’s suite, I was sipping on a sent-up Rob Roy while he put the finishing touches to connubial conversation with New York. When he hung up, I said, “Man, you paid me a large seven and a half, remember?”

  He grinned. “Tax free. Business expense.”

  “But a large seven and a half, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “So far I haven’t earned a dime of it.”

  “Your very presence here is part of earning it.”

  I put my feet to the floor and set my drink away. “Harvey, you’re a close-mouthed kind of guy, but don’t you think it’s time you opened up? A little?”