Brett Halliday - Shoot the Works

He waited a moment, studying Mrs. Wallace’s face over Lucy’s left shoulder. Her eyes were tightly closed and tears squeezed out from behind the lids, streaming down the smooth, unlined face. She had dark hair, faintly sprinkled with gray, drawn back tightly from a rather high forehead into a bun at the back. She was inches taller than Lucy, and, when they drew apart, Shayne saw a willowy, well-preserved woman of fifty, wearing a plain white blouse and the tweed skirt of a serviceable travelling suit; a woman whose anguished dark eyes looked deep into his while the tears continued to roll down her cheeks; a woman whose tormented soul cried out to him for help and for understanding. He knew instinctively there was a hard core of practicality beneath that exterior, that beyond the normal passivity of her unlined face was a mature strength that had met adversity on equal terms in the past and was capable of doing so again in the future.

But at this moment she was a shattered woman, clinging weakly to Lucy’s younger strength, wetting her lips helplessly and striving for words that would not come while her eyes searched his rugged face in desperate appeal.

Shayne pushed them both gently forward over the threshold into a small reception hall, and closed the door firmly behind him. Making small, clucking sounds of sympathy, her arm tightly about the older woman’s waist, half-supporting her, Lucy led Mrs. Wallace through an archway, into a neat and pleasant low-ceilinged sitting room, where two pieces of matched airplane luggage stood together just inside.

Mrs. Wallace set feet in well-made, Cuban-heeled shoes firmly on the rug and drew away from Lucy as the girl urged her toward a rose-covered divan. The older woman stood stiffly erect with her arms pressed tightly to her sides and stared at Shayne, working her mouth for a moment and blinking her eyes rapidly.

Then she opened them wide and said in a low, precise voice, “It’s Jim, Mr. Shayne. In there.” She rotated slowly on the rug like an automaton, lifting her right arm to point to an open door on the right of a small hall leading off the living room.

Shayne nodded and passed her swiftly to the threshold of a fair-sized bedroom with neatly made twin beds, side by side, with a night table between them.

The body of a man lay on the floor, on his back, at the foot of the twin beds. There was a small, neat hole in the middle of his forehead from which a trickle of congealed blood showed. His eyes were open and staring upward and his mouth was slack. He was middle-aged and of medium build, in his shirtsleeves, with a blue bow-tie knotted neatly beneath his chin, wearing belted, dark blue trousers and well-polished black shoes.

Shayne stood very still in the doorway and studied the room carefully. There was no sign of struggle and everything appeared to be in order, except that three of the four drawers of a mahogany dresser stood open and, on the left-hand bed, there were neat piles of men’s clothing. Freshly laundered white shirts, undershirts and shorts, neatly rolled pairs of socks, half a dozen ties laid out carefully.

A large, empty suitcase was spread open on the other bed. Beside it, near the foot of the bed, lay a man’s wallet, spread open, so that, when Shayne stepped forward, he saw an identification card, behind cellophane, that said James Wallace.

Shayne knelt beside the dead man and touched his knuckles to the cheek. The grayish flesh was cool, but not clammily cold.

He got up and went back into the living room. Mrs. Wallace and Lucy were sitting side by side on the sofa across the room. Mrs. Wallace sat almost primly, her feet close together, her knees forming a right angle. Her hands were folded loosely in her lap and she leaned back with her head resting against the cushion. The line of her throat was clean and the flesh beneath her chin was firm and unlined. Her eyes were closed again, but the flow of tears had ceased. Lucy’s right hand was pressing her shoulder comfortingly, and Lucy looked at Shayne with fearful, questioning eyes.

He shrugged slightly and crossed the rug to stand close in front of the older woman. “Have you informed the police, Mrs. Wallace?” He kept his voice at a quietly conversational level.

She did not open her eyes. No expression showed on her face. She answered just as quietly, “No, Mr. Shayne. I wanted to consult you first.”

He said, “Where is the telephone?”

She stirred then. Opened her eyes and leaned forward. She said, “Jim is dead, Mr. Shayne. Calling the police can’t change that. Will you listen to me first?”

“Did you kill him, Mrs. Wallace?”

“I?” A look of momentary bewilderment crossed her face. “I kill Jim? Of course not. He was my husband. I loved him.”

“Tell me about it,” Shayne said patiently.

“I’ve been away. In New York for ten days. I had a train reservation to leave New York today. Jim was expecting me at noon tomorrow. But I had only an upper berth and an application in for space on a plane. They telephoned this morning that there was a vacancy on an afternoon flight and I cancelled my train reservation and took that instead.”

“Without informing your husband?”

“I tried to telephone Jim,” she said with dignity, “but failed to reach him. When I reached the airport at eight o’clock, I telephoned here the first thing because I have always promised Jim I would never come home unexpectedly without letting him know.” A wan smile touched her lips. “It was one of our little jokes. A solemn promise that neither would ever do that to the other, though we both always knew it couldn’t possibly matter.”

She paused thoughtfully, blinking her eyes again in a manner that gave her face a look of little-girl bewilderment, and Shayne prompted her gently, “So you telephoned home?”

“Yes. There was no answer, so I assumed Jim was having dinner out. I felt foolish about not coming straight on home at the time, but we had made that solemn promise to each other, you see, and I was determined I wouldn’t break it after thirty years.” Her voice broke slightly on the last two words. She pressed her lips together tightly and her fingers writhed together in her lap. She opened her eyes wide and forced herself to go on.

“So I took a taxi in to town from the airport and stopped at a restaurant to dawdle over some food, though I wasn’t really hungry, because there’d been dinner on the plane. But I had to do something, don’t you see?” She was speaking faster and her voice rose slightly. “To keep myself occupied until Jim got home, so I could telephone ahead. As we’d always promised each other, you see. I tried at nine o’clock and again, just a little before ten. And again at ten-thirty. When there still was no answer, I decided it was just being childish to put it off any longer, so I came on home.”

“At ten-thirty?” Shayne asked.

“I left the restaurant at ten-thirty-five. I noticed the time carefully. It took the taxi about ten minutes. I had the driver bring my bags up, and let myself in. All the lights were out and I had no idea at all that Jim was… here. I paid the driver and, when he left, I went into the bedroom and turned on the light. And I saw Jim. He was dead, Mr. Shayne. Someone had shot Jim. So I called Lucy. I remembered about you and I called Lucy.”

“Why not the police?” asked Shayne. “Every minute of delay gives the murderer a better chance of escaping. Where is the telephone?”

“Please, Mr. Shayne. Don’t you understand? Did you see Jim’s things laid out on the bed? The open suitcase?”

Shayne nodded and said casually, “As though he were packing for a trip.”

“But he expected me home at noon tomorrow. Don’t you understand what that means?”

“There might be a lot of explanations,” Shayne said briskly. “No reason to delay notifying the police any longer.”