Brett Halliday - The Corpse That Never Was

“Hell, no. Go to it. The only thing that old Eli couldn’t get through his thick head is that this department has other things to occupy its time and attention. I’m treating it exactly as though Mrs. John Smith had died last night, and that Eli didn’t like one little bit.”

“Then you’ll give me whatever you’ve got?”

“Sure I’ll give you everything we’ve got. Haven’t I always cooperated, Mike? But the truth is, you know more about it right now than I do. You saw the couple in that room. Read the suicide notes, didn’t you? I wasn’t visiting my pretty secretary on the floor below when it happened.”

“I got out as fast as I could,” Shayne soothed him, “and only know what I saw when I broke the door down.”

“That was enough, wasn’t it?”

“For me, yes. Until I got a sizable check from Eli this morning. Now I’ve got a job to do. What about fingerprints in the apartment?”

Gentry shuffled papers on his desk, picked one up to glance at it. “Pretty clean. The woman’s were on the empty cocktail glass beside her, Lambert’s on the other one. His were on the shotgun barrel in the right position for holding it up to put the muzzle in his mouth with his bare toe on the trigger.”

He paused and Shayne asked, “No other fingerprints turn up in the entire place?”

“Nothing mentioned here. Hell, I don’t suppose Deitch dusted the whole goddamn place. Why should he?”

“No reason,” agreed Shayne lightly. “Except maybe to prove that no one else had been around.”

“I know. Eli tried to feed me that theory too. That Paul Nathan was there at the time and engineered the whole thing and ducked down the fire escape while you were busting in. For God’s sake, Mike. You can’t buy that?”

“I’m not buying anything. Mind if I borrow Deitch on his time off to give it a real going-over? He’s a good man.”

“I don’t care what he does in his spare time. Look, Mike, I’m not putting any roadblocks in your way. Go ahead and earn your fee. But I’m warning you right now, Eli Armbruster isn’t going to be satisfied with anything less than a murder rap against Paul Nathan. He hates that guy who married his only daughter.”

“I gathered that much,” Shayne agreed equably. “But I don’t hate him, Will.” He met the chief’s cold stare with equal coldness, and then relaxed with a shrug. “Know what killed her?”

“They did a simple stomach analysis. Potassium ferricyanide. Enough of it mixed with rum and creme de menthe to kill a couple of mules.”

“Potassium ferricyanide?”

“One of the fastest acting cyanides known,” Gentry informed him, “and one of the easiest to get hold of. Photographers use it for something.”

Shayne asked, “Was Lambert a photographer?”

“We don’t know what Lambert was.”

“Or Paul Nathan?” pursued Shayne.

Chief Gentry snorted eloquently.

“What do we know about Lambert?” persisted Shayne. “You say he gave a phony address in Jax when he rented the apartment?”

Gentry nodded, shuffling the papers and looking down. “A little less than a month ago. He came directly to the manager of the building in answer to a newspaper ad. Took a quick look at the apartment and rented it for a month. Cash in advance. Hundred forty bucks.” He read slowly from a typed report in front of him. “Quiet, pleasant type. Medium height. Medium weight. Medium everything. Small dark mustache and lightly tinted blue glasses. Left-handed, the manager recalls, but that’s about all he does recall. When he signed the lease.”

“Those suicide notes?”

Gentry looked up and nodded. “Written by a left-handed man according to our expert.”

“Did you compare the signatures with the lease?”

Gentry scowled and studied the report in front of him. “I guess not. Why in hell would they? It was open and shut. You saw it yourself.”

“That’s what Eli pointed out,” Shayne muttered, staring across the room. He turned his head to smile placatingly at Gentry. “Let’s not get off on that tangent again. What else did the manager remember about Lambert?”

“Not much. It was a month ago. Something about him being a salesman with his territory recently enlarged to include Miami so he needed a headquarters while in town. The inference being that he would only be occupying the apartment occasionally. And that seems to be just what he did. From what my men picked up, it was a weekend hangout… more-or-less.”

Shayne nodded. “A convenient place for Mrs. Nathan to visit him every Friday night.”

“That’s what it sounds like. There’s a Mrs. Conrad across the hall…”

Shayne grimaced. “I heard her on the subject last night. She just happened to have her door cracked open every Friday evening… but, hell, Lucy knows her and says the old biddy can be trusted to know what goes on in the building. So…?” He leaned back and spread out both hands expressively. “That’s all we’ve got. You read those notes, Will. Did they sound authentic to you? The sort of thing a man would write under those circumstances?”

“How in hell would I know? I’m not a psychiatrist. And we don’t know what kind of man Lambert was.”

Shayne scowled and leaned forward to rub out his cigarette in a big ashtray. “That’s right. We don’t. Where was Paul Nathan last night?”

“On the town. His regular Friday night out… so he says. Drifting around here and on the Beach donating his wife’s money to the gambling tables. He made out a list of the joints he’d been to in the course of the night, with approximate times at each place. It looks pretty good for an alibi from eight o’clock on. Want to see it?”

Chief Gentry selected a sheet and slid it over to Shayne. The redhead glanced down at the list of nightspots, and asked, “Did you check this itinerary out?”

“For God’s sake, Mike! On Saturday morning?” Will Gentry gritted his teeth together so hard that they bit through the chewed end of the cigar and a portion of it fell to the desk in front of him. He glared down at it, picked it up with stubby fingers and threw it toward a spittoon in the corner, spitting the fragment from his mouth after it. Then he rested both elbows on the desk and nestled his blunt chin against his palms.

“No,” he grated. “We didn’t check Paul Nathan’s alibi for the time of his wife’s suicide. Eli Armbruster didn’t pay us for that particular little chore.”

Shayne nodded imperturbably, folding the sheet of paper. “Mind if I keep this?”

“Hell, no. You’re welcome to it. Anything else you want?”

“I’d like to take one of the suicide notes, Will. Preferably the first one.”

“How about this one to go along with them?” Will Gentry scrabbled among the papers in front of him, pulled out a square sheet of heavy white notepaper folded into four thicknesses. The creases were deep and it showed signs of much handling. Shayne unfolded it slowly and saw that the handwriting looked similar to that of the suicide notes he had read last night. The letter was dated a month previously, and the salutation was: “Elsa, My own sweet.”

He sucked in a deep breath and three vertical creases formed above his nose as he settled back to read it.

“I cannot endure to continue existing as we are at present. My body cries out for your body, and my need for you is not fulfilled during the fleeting and fragmentary moments we are able to steal together.

“I am going to make different arrangements, darling, so we will have hours instead of moments lying in each other’s arms. I will find a private place known only to us where we can meet freely and happily.

“I will telephone you next Friday at the regular time.