There was an embarrassed silence, then Payton snorted sardonically and pursed his lips, while Tama stared at him woodenly. Duffieux blinked at me through his thick lenses and Captain Richecoeur hitched his knee-length stockings a centimeter higher. Only Payton would meet my eye, and he did it defiantly.
“Monsieur Payton?” said Tama after a while. “You’re saying that he killed his wife…and the Wests?” His voice dripped amused tolerance. “LaRoche, I think it’s really true what I said a moment ago: you’ve been bounced on your head once too often.”
Payton chuckled appreciatively, and I managed a twisted smile. “I can’t argue with you about the bouncing on the head bit, but it still doesn’t change the facts. You should consider them before you laugh. Here’s the key one: Charles Wentworth Payton had a wife whose behavior was not only an embarrassment and a danger to him in his private life and his attempt to run for public office, she was also getting ready to take him for one hundred million dollars.” Duffieux looked up sharply.
“Think about that for a while,” I said. “One…hundred…million…dollars. That’s what a divorce might have cost him.”
Tama looked skeptical and I waggled a finger. “No marriage contract with separation of property like you French so cleverly have. Half of everything was hers. And Payton didn’t like it. He was the one who’d made the money, and he intended to hang on to it. So he set out to do something about it. He could have pulled the kidnapping stunt anytime, but he waited to see how his senatorial campaign was coming along. And we know how it is: lousy.
“When he arrived here three weeks ago he was losing by 15 percent in the polls. When you’re that far behind what have you got to lose by taking a chance? Maybe a kidnapped wife would get him the sympathy vote. It’d certainly bring him publicity, and when you’re running against an incumbent that’s what you always need—to get your name recognized.”
“You should be my campaign manager,” said Payton agreeably.
I shrugged. “So what do the latest polls show? Are you still 15 percent behind?”
I’d finally touched him. He bounced to his feet, fists clenched. “That’s got nothing to do with it!” he shouted. “You miserable bastard, you think I’d kill my wife just so…just so.…” He spluttered with rage.
“Sure,” I said equably. “I do think so. And to save yourself one hundred million dollars.”
“But I don’t even know these Wests.…”
“That’s what you say. You’ve been coming to Tahiti for twenty years—you’ve never been to the Hotel Taaone? You’ve never met any of your wife’s friends? Hell, a man like you spends half his life on the road—you could have met them on the West Coast. Or you could have remembered reading about Susan West, girl terrorist and kidnapper. For that matter, you’re in the publishing game: you could have interviewed her. Don’t worry, Payton, once they start digging they’ll tie you to them.”
Duffieux sat forward. “You’re saying that Monsieur Payton originated this…scheme? That the Wests were just following his instructions?”
“Absolutely. He orchestrated it from the start. It didn’t make you wonder at the start when you heard how he refused to pay the ransom, how he refused to believe she’d actually been kidnapped?”
“But that’s because—” Payton began, and stopped.
“Because he was getting ready to milk it for every drop of publicity he could get,” I said. “Any ordinary billionaire running for the U.S. Senate would either have paid off the first time he was contacted, or would have been down here like a flash. But what does Payton do? He carries on with his campaign in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.” I snorted scornfully.
Tama nodded assent. “I remember at the time.…”
“…how odd you thought it was,” I reminded him. “Payton was just stalling until he thought the time was ripe. Finally, he had the Wests start sending those photos to the newspapers, and the story broke. So down he came, bringing with him half the media in the Western World.” I appealed to their natural chauvinism. “Is that the way a French senator would behave?”
Tama and Duffieux exchanged a long look that Payton didn’t like.
“Now wait a minute here.…” he protested, but Duffieux gestured imperiously and he fell into smoldering silence.
“When he got here,” I went on, “he discovered something that threatened to ruin his entire plans. He discovered that the Wests had cooked up a little scheme of their own, which they were running at the same time as the kidnapping.”
“Mmmm,” said Duffieux pensively. “The paratroopers.”
“Exactly,” I said. “That’s what’s always so dangerous about taking on partners—they tend to have minds of their own. All Payton was concerned about was getting rid of his wife and saving his money. Obviously he was going to give the Wests a cut of the ransom money once it was handed over, but the Wests were living in a fantasy world of their own—maybe they’d even come to believe all of the stories they’d made up about themselves and their prospects. They wanted more than just money—they wanted their hotel. So clever Bob West decided that this was the perfect time to get the paratroopers off his back.”
“By framing them for the kidnapping,” said Duffieux.
“That’s right. Only Payton happens to be a little smarter than Bob West was. He saw that any time you introduce extraneous elements into a scheme you begin to endanger the whole structure. For instance, if the frame-up against the paras was to go wrong, then the question would be, ‘Who could have set it up and why?’ Which is just exactly what we did ask ourselves. And the answer was obviously the Wests. I mean, once you start looking at them, they couldn’t bear very close examination.”
“It’s too bad you didn’t think of all this a little earlier,” said Tama sharply. “It might have saved Mrs. Payton’s life. Instead, you had us bugging the Wests’ house.”
I grimaced ruefully. “She’d been dead for several days by then: they must have killed her just as soon as they knew the paras were locked up. And bugging their house would have worked, just as I planned, except for one thing: Payton here knew all about it.”
Tama and Duffieux turned to consider Payton. Their faces were grave. Richecoeur hitched his chair closer.
“I was working for Payton, remember? He was the first person I told my suspicions about the Wests to. That must have given him a nasty shock. He could see what would happen, just as he’d feared once he learned about the Wests’ frame-up scheme. They’d be brought in for questioning, eventually they’d talk, Mrs. Payton’s body would be discovered, and to save their own skin they’d implicate him as deeply as possible.”
“In that case, there’d be only one thing to do,” said Tama with detachment, falling easily into the police interrogation routine. “He’d make plans to kill them.”
“It was a cinch,” I said. “First he warned them they were going to be bugged and that I was going to feed them some corny routine. They probably had a good chuckle about it. ‘Why don’t you go right home,’ says Payton, ‘after LaRoche gives you the spiel and tell Susan about it. You can ooh and ah at what surprising news it is, and then go right back to your ordinary routine. The cops will be taking down every word, and the only thing the whole deal will prove will be your innocence!’”
I grinned wolfishly at Payton, who stared back sullenly. “That was quick thinking. But you were lucky, you know. You really shouldn’t have gotten away with it.”
He shook his head as if the words were meaningless. “What now?” he asked wearily. “Your imagination is bottomless.”
“I mean when you killed the Wests. All it would have taken when you drove up was for Susan or Bob to say, ‘Hey, there’s good old Charlie Payton out there, I wonder what he wants?’ and your goose would have been cooked. You couldn’t have planned on Susan West turning on that electric mixer just as you drove up.…”
Payton sighed irritably and climbed to his feet. “I’ve never heard such a fantastic amount of nonsense.” He turned to Tama. “I’m surprised three responsible officials such as yourselves would lend yourselves to it. When I get back to the States I’ll have a word or two with some people about that.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Tama’s face hardened. “Just a moment,” he snapped. “I have a further question.”
Payton’s face reddened, and he turned to stare balefully at Tama. “Well?”
“It’s very easy to settle this once and for all,” said Tama. “Just where were you at the time the Wests were killed? You certainly weren’t with us at the Gendarmerie while we were listening to the bugs from their house.”
Payton’s lips tightened. “I was phoning the States,” he said shortly. “I do have other things to do than listen—”
“Interesting,” purred Tama. “It will be easy to verify since, of course, we were still running a tap on your phone. Your conversations will naturally have been recorded.”
“Of…course,” said Payton hesitantly. “Wait. Let me think. Maybe I was on the plane for those calls. Yes, I remember now. I was calling a number of…influential people in Washington and New Mexico.” He drew himself up and stared at Tama coldly. “My house was jammed with television clowns, and my phone was tapped. These were confidential calls,” he said acidly. “I have a complete communications center on my plane. I definitely remember now that I went to the plane. I spent several hours there.”
“I see,” said Tama. “Your radio officer will be able to vouch for—”
“I don’t need anyone to help me call the States,” said Payton irritably. “You think I’m a child? I.… Oh.” He frowned. “Well, of course, there was someone to let me in the plane,” he added hurriedly.
“And he stayed with you all the time you were there?” asked Duffieux, at last scenting blood.
Payton ran his hands through his hair. “Well.…”
I got painfully to my feet. “I’m going to fall on the floor if I sit here any longer. Can I go?”
Payton glared at me with open hatred. I winked at him.
Duffieux rubbed a fingertip along his lips, then nodded minutely. “As long as you’re back here at…oh, let’s say ten tomorrow morning. This morning.”
I could feel my head moving wearily up and down as I tried to nod. I had to concentrate to get it to stop.
“Until tomorrow,” I said. “I mean, this morning. Gentlemen.”