Brett Halliday - Bodies Are Where You Find Them

Rourke snorted loudly. “As if that proved anything. Not here in this Miami climate, Mike. Half the girls I know don’t wear any pants.”

“I said nice girls,” Shayne stressed. “But her lack of underclothing isn’t the only thing I’m hanging my present theory on. In addition to that you also made disparaging mention of the fact that she wore no make-up or nail color, and that her hair was unkempt and stringy. Remember?”

“When was all this?” Painter asked hoarsely.

Shayne shrugged his shoulders. “While Rourke was helping me dispose of her body the other night.”

“Disposing of her body, eh? So, you’ve decided to confess it?”

“Why, yes,” Shayne said. “I held out two or three things on you this morning because they looked bad for me. I lied when I told you the girl was snatched from my apartment while I was at the depot. She wasn’t snatched. She was strangled in my bed. She was lying in there dead while you and Stallings were there a short time later. Then I lost her, but not for long. Remember the crack-up I was in around midnight on Biscayne Boulevard? That was staged to toss her back in my lap. She was a passenger in the car that crashed into me.”

Painter snorted angrily. “That’s a likely story. Got any proof?”

“Rourke will verify it. He was invaluable in chauffeuring her around. Any time any of you gentlemen wish to dispose of a corpse I can recommend Tim.”

Rourke shuddered and swore explosively. Shayne silenced him with sudden gravity of words and expression. “I’ve got to tell all this, Tim. It’s an important part of my case.”

He turned back to the roomful of listening men. “Well, there you are. A girl comes to my apartment to talk, but is too full of dope to talk when she gets there. I hide her in my bedroom to keep my wife from seeing her. I rush my wife to the depot and when I return the girl has been strangled in my bed. I leave my apartment for a short time and when I return the body has been snatched. Later a wreck is staged to shove her back onto me — without pants. Do you begin to see any logic behind those reasonless acts of the killer?” Shayne paused. “This next, without the rest of the case, might not mean as much as I think it does. Maybe”—his grin was less than convincing—“maybe some of you know more than I do about what the modern gals are wearing. Want to qualify as an expert, Painter?” He didn’t wait for a reply, but went on swiftly. “According to me, anyhow, most nice girls wear pants when they go out on the street — and lipstick and rouge and nail color. Why, even the gal found floating in the bay last night with nothing else on wore pants and a brassiere. Rut if you’ll look at the police report on the discovery of Helen Stallings’s body this morning you’ll see that she wore neither, only a silk dress. But Helen was a nice girl by all accepted standards. There’s only one explanation. She had been some place where even nice girls don’t wear underthings. A hospital, maybe. A sanitarium like yours, Doctor Patterson. None of your patients wear anything under those Mother Hubbards you put on them and none of them have any facilities for prettying up.”

Dr. Patterson opened his mouth to protest.

“I’m doing the talking,” Shayne interrupted savagely. “The girl who came to my office yesterday afternoon too doped to do any talking was wearing a blue silk dress, and, I’m convinced, the conventional silk things underneath. Not that I made a personal examination, you understand. She looked like that sort of girl. Also, I don’t recall noticing particularly that she wasn’t wearing the normal amount of make-up and nail polish, which indicates she probably was. Nowadays, one notices the absence of such things, but not their presence. Later, Helen Stallings appears on the scene, choked to death but indecently nude underneath. What happened to the pants and brassiere in the meantime?

“I’ll tell you. They’re on the body of the girl found floating in the bay, the one whose head and face were battered beyond recognition to hide the damning fact that her death was actually due to strangulation. That’s the girl who was throttled in my office — the one who called herself Helen Stallings.”

A babble of incredulous protests and questions arose when Shayne paused. He turned to Painter. “Get the autopsy report on that girl and you’ll see I’m right. The head wounds were inflicted after she was strangled.”

“I still don’t see any sense to what you’re saying,” Peter Painter bubbled. “You admit the dead girl is actually Helen Stallings—”

“Sure. The body that was dumped back on me after the wreck. The murderer switched bodies in the meantime. He put the blue dress on Helen Stallings and threw the other body in the bay. After committing the first murder he had to go on with it and kill Helen, too. He went to Patterson’s Sanitarium where she has been kept in a padded inner cell ever since the switch was made a month ago and hung her by the neck so the same marks of strangulation would show and I’d think it the girl who was killed in my office. The girls were of the same type and build, of course. Then he took the body away, naked except for the single garment they wear there, dressed her in the blue dress he had stripped from his first victim, and engineered the crash with my car to get her back in my possession, hoping she would be found at the scene of the crash.

“The car that crashed into me was a black limousine,” Shayne went on swiftly. “The left fender and radiator grill were smashed in the crash. When you find that car you’ll have your double murderer, Painter. It isn’t just chance that Stallings owns a black limousine. The man who slipped into my apartment and murdered the girl is one who knew she was coming there to expose the whole rotten situation. Stallings is the only man who knew she was going to me to spill the beans. He admits that Baldy telephoned him from the Bugle Inn. I advise you to check the condition of Stallings’s limousine.”

“Good God above, Shayne.” Painter’s forefinger trembled across his tiny black mustache. “Are you actually serious?”

“I demand that you assure yourself my automobile is undamaged,” Stallings put in resonantly. “This entire fabric of lies is the most preposterous thing I ever heard of.”

“Well, I — sure. In fairness to you, Mr. Stallings, I’ll have a man look at your car.” Painter turned to one of his men and said, “Blake, go out to the garage and see that’s what.”

“And I would advise that you check the car over,” Shayne suggested. “There may be other clues in the back seat where the body-switching took place. A checkup should have been made immediately after the accident — wreck,” Shayne amended.

When Blake departed hurriedly, Shayne turned to Painter and went on.

“I’ve got all the proof you need. Give me that water tumbler, Tim.”

Rourke drew the glass from his coat pocket, carefully wrapped in a handkerchief. Shayne handed it to Painter. “There’s a full set of fingerprints on that glass. I took them from the girl’s fingers after I found her murdered. All you have to do is compare them with the prints of the body from the bay to prove I’m right.”

Blake rushed excitedly into the room while Painter was examining the tumbler. Blake was carrying a long white muslin garment unzipped down the front.

“Look at this, chief. Found it stuffed down behind the back seat. And the fender’s smashed right enough, just like Mr. Shayne said.”

“What is that thing?” Stallings demanded. “The fender can’t be smashed. I tell you it can’t.”

“You’ll hang, Stallings,” Shayne told him quietly, “just because your chauffeur neglected to get that fender fixed today.”