Brett Halliday - Too Friendly, Too Dead

“You didn’t hear from her again?”

“I should say not,” she told him with satisfaction. “Not after Mr. Fitzgilpin got through telling her off.”

Shayne sat back for a moment, drawing on his cigarette and tugging thoughtfully at his left earlobe. Two things had occurred recently that were out of order in the even tenor of Jerome Fitzgilpin’s life. He had received a national award for salesmanship and been interviewed by the News, and a woman had come to his office a day or so later in an effort to induce him to sell her a quarter of a million dollar policy on her husband’s life without his knowledge or consent.

And now he was dead.

Were those two seemingly unrelated events tied together somehow? And if so, could they possibly constitute a motive for his murder? Mrs. Perkins’ thought that Mrs. Kelly might have come to him as a result of seeing the interview in the paper was a possibility, of course. But why would his refusal of her lead to murder?

Shayne leaned forward and mashed out his cigarette butt in a clean ashtray on Mrs. Perkins’ desk.

He glanced aside at the closed door labeled PRIVATE, and asked, “Do you mind if I go into Mr. Fitzgilpin’s office to take a look around?”

“No reason why I should mind, but I don’t know what you expect to find. The police already looked around without finding anything.”

She got up and moved around her desk to open the door for him, and Shayne asked her, “Did he keep his personal checkbook here? Any private records?”

“No. Nothing like that. Just the office accounts, and I take care of those. I can assure you everything is in perfect order.”

She switched on an overhead light and stepped back to allow the detective to enter a small, neat office with window shades tightly drawn to exclude the morning light. There was a bare desk with a swivel chair behind it, two comfortable leather chairs for clients to sit in, and three green metal filing cabinets ranged along the wall behind the desk. Shayne stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at the swivel chair and imagining the figure of the little man he had seen in the morgue sitting there. An inoffensive, friendly little man, eager to be of service to his clientele, patiently listening to their small troubles and sometimes giving them a helping hand in times of financial stress.

“You call me if you want me to explain any of the files or anything,” Mrs. Perkins said nervously from behind him. “I know right exactly where everything is.”

Shayne said absently, “I don’t suppose our answer is going to be in the files.” He moved across the room slowly, circling the desk and seating himself in Fitzgilpin’s swivel chair which creaked softly under his weight. There was a flat center drawer, and three deeper drawers on the right side of the desk. He shrugged non-committally as he sat there, relaxing and letting his mind go as blank as possible. This was where the dead man had sat daily, where he had transacted his business, interviewed clients, and whatever else an insurance broker did during office hours. He had sat in this chair behind this desk last night while a succession of small-salaried people had come to his office after their own work was done, laying grubby bills and silver in front of him to pay up weekly premiums on their small policies.

Shayne reached down and tried the handle of the top right-hand drawer. It opened easily and he saw it was neatly arranged with letterheads and envelopes and invoices.

The other two drawers showed the same neatness, with sharpened pencils, stamps, a Notary Seal and other adjuncts to Mr. Fitzgilpin’s business. Nothing out of order. Nothing of a personal nature.

The center drawer was different. It was not, Shayne was certain at first glance, one that was attended to by Mrs. Perkins.

There were half a dozen loose cigars, an untidy miscellany of memoranda torn from small pads, a few old letters still in their envelopes, exactly the sort of things that accumulate for years in a man’s desk which he probably forgets as soon as he closes the drawer on them.

Shayne pawed through them idly and without much real interest. They told him nothing more about the man than he already knew. He pushed the scraps of paper aside and reached farther back inside the drawer, jerked his hand back involuntarily when the sharp point of a pin pricked the ball of his thumb. He opened the drawer wider and groped in to discover a restaurant menu with a single long-stemmed yellow rosebud securely pinned inside the fold with a corsage pin. He drew it out carefully, and several of the faded, dried petals fell from the bud as he did so.

He laid the folded menu on the desk in front of him and regarded it curiously. It was from a restaurant in Greenwich Village in New York, and the printed date on the cover was November 19, 1961. About a year and a half ago.

Shayne carefully removed the big-headed pin so he could open the menu out flat. A small photograph was between the folds. About two by three inches. The sort of souvenir photo that is shot by girl-photographers in night clubs and restaurants, developed on the spot and sold to patrons for an exorbitant price.

It showed a couple seated at a restaurant table facing the camera. The girl was young and radiantly beautiful, wearing a low-cut cocktail gown with a corsage of tiny rosebuds pinned on the left shoulder of the gown. The man was about thirty, dressed in a business suit and dark four-in-hand tie, and looking superlatively well pleased with himself. He had dark, lean, handsome features, with a crew cut. The single faded rosebud that had been pinned inside the menu appeared to have been taken from the corsage the girl was wearing.

Shayne frowned and turned the photograph over. It was blank. There was no writing of any sort on the menu. He settled back in the creaking swivel chair and tugged at his earlobe while he considered the three exhibits carefully. Roses for remembrance!

A sentimental souvenir of something. Of what? A dinner in Greenwich Village a year and a half ago.

He sighed and explored the rest of the center drawer without finding anything further to attract his interest. He closed the drawer and squinted down at the menu, the rosebud, and the photograph again. They seemed to be trying to tell him something. Something about the nature of the murdered man. An insurance broker who had kept this carefully in the back of his desk for more than a year.

He placed the flower inside the menu again, folded it together and got up, carrying the folded menu in one hand and the photograph in the other back to the outer office where Mrs. Perkins sat behind her typewriter again with her hands folded in her lap and a far-away expression on her nice face.

She looked up with a start as Shayne emerged from the inner office, her gaze going instinctively to the objects in his hand. “Did you find something?”

“I don’t know.”

Shayne laid the menu in front of her, still folded over the rose. He turned the photo around for her to look at. “Do you know this couple?”

She frowned down at it, slowly shaking her head while her eyebrows creased in puzzlement. “I don’t… think so. Neither one of them looks familiar at all.”

Shayne hesitated with one big hand covering the menu. “When you were telling me about Mrs. Kelly’s visit to the office, you mentioned the fact that she appeared to be interested in certain personal things about Mr. Fitzgilpin… including the frequency of his visits to New York and the last time he’d been there. Do you recall the date you told her?”

“Oh, yes.” Mrs. Perkins’ eyes brightened. “He’s only been there once since I’ve been in the office. To attend a convention in the fall of nineteen sixty-one. In November. About the middle of the month.”