Brett Halliday - Michael Shaynes' 50th case

And encountering cold and unresponsive flesh!

A murdered mother.

A mother who would never again turn slowly to her in the warm bed and welcome her with soft arms and murmured assurances of maternal love which were so much a real part of Sissy’s life.

Shuddering, Leroy Smith had firmly closed the hallway door into Sissy’s room and backtracked to the Scene of the Crime.

Here, it had been almost as difficult for the impressionable young man. Thank God, they had removed the body before he arrived. He was spared that, though his imagination could place the naked and murdered body of Ellie Blake squarely in the middle of the big nuptial bed in front of him.

All of the top covers were thrown back, and the bottom sheet was fitted tightly at the corners. Certainly, there was no indication of a struggle in the room. Beside the bed in disarray lay Ellie’s clothing. At least, he supposed they were the clothes Ellie Blake had worn before retiring last night. He wondered if she generally tossed them aside carelessly on the floor when she went to bed at night.

Probably not, he thought. Not on a normal night when her husband was there and they decorously went to bed together. But last night she had been alone in the house. Her husband was in Miami and maybe she had luxuriated in being alone and just wantonly tossed aside her clothes before getting into bed naked and alone.

What kind of woman had she been, really, he wondered. Did a married woman get sick and tired of going to bed decorously every night with the same man? Had Ellie Blake been happy to have those few days alone in the house (with only her six-year-old daughter) while her husband was in Miami?

It seemed to him that this bedroom should be able to tell him something. Murder had been committed here less than twelve hours before. Murder most foul. There should be something here for a Trained Investigator to get his teeth into.

That was when he heard an automobile coming up the drive and stopping in front of the house.

He crossed the bedroom swiftly to the window and looked down. He didn’t recognize the shabby coupe parked outside the front door or the gangling figure that got out of the driver’s seat and walked briskly around the front of the car toward the front door.

He hurried out and down the stairs and was two steps from the bottom when the chimes rang in the living room to his left. They sounded loud in the empty and silent house and a queer sort of tingle raced up and down his spine, and he sternly disregarded it as he went to the front door and pulled it open.

A tall man with thin features and cavernous eyes confronted him. He had alertly intelligent eyes and seemed perfectly self-assured as he looked at the young man in uniform and murmured, “Officer Smith? I’m the Press. Miami News.”

It was the first time Leroy had ever been addressed as “Officer Smith.” It was also the first time he had ever actually encountered a reporter from a big city newspaper. In a shaking voice, he said,

“Yes. I’m… Leroy Smith. Officer Leroy Smith,” he amended, getting some of the shakiness out of his voice.

“Rourke.” Timothy Rourke held out a thin hand and winced as the young man wrung it with unnecessary vigor. “Your chief of police said you were in charge here, and suggested I get a statement from you.”

“For the… Miami News? Say, you’re Timothy Rourke, aren’t you? I read your by-lined stories all the time in the paper. You want a statement from me?”

“Whatever information you’re at liberty to make public,” Rourke told him urbanely. “I got the impression from Chief Jenson that he fully expects you to come up with a solution to the murder.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Smith disclaimed halfheartedly. “I do have a few ideas, I guess. Come on in the house, Mr. Rourke. You want to go up to the bedroom where they found her?”

“Let’s look around down here first.” Rourke walked into the hallway and glanced through the door into the neat kitchen, and then into the living room on the right. “Is that the window where you think entry was made?”

“It was found unlocked and open a couple of inches. Everything else locked up tight. No fingerprints, though, and no foreign substances picked up from the floor inside by the special filter on my vacuum cleaner… so the findings are inconclusive. But there’s these two highball glasses in front of the sofa, Mr. Rourke. Fingerprints on one glass I’ve identified as belonging to the deceased… I don’t know about the others.”

“You mean she sat here and had a drink with someone before she got herself strangled?”

“Well, I… I guess she had a drink with someone all right. Don’t quote me as saying I think it was her murderer, though. More likely an innocent friend.”

“But you’ve photographed the prints just in case?” insisted Rourke.

The young policeman colored slightly. “I don’t have a proper fingerprint camera. But I did lift the prints with scotch tape and I have them for identification.”

“Excellent.” Rourke nodded emphatically and the young man glowed. The reported jotted down some notes on a wad of copy paper. “Leroy Smith. Is that right?”

“That’s right. I was all prepared to make a moulage of any footprints outside the window, you could say in your newspaper story if you want, but unfortunately it’s all gravel outside as you can see for yourself if you look.”

Rourke nodded absently and went back to the stairway after a last glance around the neat living room. “Upstairs, eh?”

“The room to the right at the head of the stairs.” Smith followed him up eagerly. “The other bedroom with connecting bath is their little girl’s room. Only six years old and she was sound asleep all the time. Didn’t know a thing until she woke up this morning and went to call her mother and found her lying there, in the middle of the bed, cold and dead. It makes me sick to think of it.”

“Had she been screwed?” Rourke asked callously as he stepped inside the bedroom and looked at the wide, smooth bed.

“I… I… don’t know,” stammered Leroy Smith behind him. “I didn’t even see her body, and I don’t know how one would determine a thing like that.”

“Any semen stains on the bed? You used ultraviolet, didn’t you? Or don’t you know…?”

“I am perfectly aware,” said the young man stiffly, “that an ultraviolet light will cause the stains of semen and other physiological fluids to re-emit energy in the form of visible light generally known as fluorescence. Semen, indeed,” he went on didactically to cover an inward confusion, “will generally show a rather bright, blue-white fluorescence. Unfortunately, though, we have no ultra-violet equipment on hand.”

Rourke shrugged and crossed the room to a large dressing table. “The doctor should be able to tell us that.” He picked up a double cardboard-framed photograph of a smiling man and a very attractive, calm-faced woman and studied it. “Is this a picture of the Blakes?”

Leroy Smith glanced at it and nodded. “Taken when they were married, I guess. Marvin looks just about the same today, but Ellie is… was… a lot prettier today than then.”

Rourke nodded slowly and closed the cardboard folder and tucked it under his arm. “I can use this in the paper.” He strode across the room to enter the bathroom and look around, then opened the door on the other side and glanced into Sissy’s room.

When he returned, Leroy Smith said hesitantly, “If you think you’d like a picture of me, Mr. Rourke, to run in the newspaper, I could get you one without any trouble just by stopping off at home for a minute. It shows me in my uniform and all.”

“Just exactly what I need,” Rourke told him enthusiastically. “We’ll caption it: Scientific Sleuth Goes Clueless.” He started briskly out of the room. “Now then: Tell me how to get to the Wilsson house. I understand that’s where the Blake child is staying until her father gets home from Miami this afternoon.”