Brett Halliday - Too Friendly, Too Dead

Shayne nodded with satisfaction. He took his hand off the menu and opened it to show her the faded and brittle rosebud inside. “Do you know why he had this carefully preserved in his desk drawer? It’s dated November nineteenth, nineteen sixty-one.”

“Of course,” she said softly. “I remember it all very clearly now. The rosebud and the menu. And there was a picture of the bride and groom. I suppose that’s it, though I couldn’t be sure. He was the best man at a wedding at City Hall,” she explained to Shayne.

“It was all very romantic, and it was the high point of the convention for him. It was just like Jerome to do a quixotic, sentimental thing like that. He didn’t know the bride and groom from Adam and Eve. He just met the bridegroom the night before in the bar at the hotel where he was staying in New York while he was having a beer after a convention meeting. I’ve told you before how friendly he was, and interested in strangers. He’d just start talking to anyone, any time or place, and generally they’d end up by responding and confiding in him.

“Well, this night he got in conversation with this nice young man, who finally told him he planned to get married at City Hall the next day, but he was a stranger in New York and didn’t know a soul to stand up with him. Well, you can imagine what Jerome said to that?”

She paused, smiling expectantly at Shayne, and he made the response she evidently wanted. He grinned encouragingly and said, “From what I’ve learned about your boss, I suspect he offered to help them get married.”

“Not only that,” she said triumphantly, “but he went out and bought the bride a corsage of rosebuds the next day, and then ended up by blowing the four of them to an expensive dinner at this restaurant down in Greenwich Village. The bride lived in New York and had a friend, you see, to stand up with her. It was just the sort of kind, thoughtful thing Jerome would do. He was so pleased about it when he came back and told me all the details. He said they were a lovely young couple, so obviously desperately in love, and he was certain it was a real love match and that they’d live happily ever after.”

Shayne nodded slowly, staring down at the photograph of the newly-weds. “You don’t remember their names? Nothing else about them?”

“I’m not even sure he told me their names. He just met them that one time, you see. Why are you so interested? He never had any further contact with them that I know about.”

Shayne said honestly, “I don’t know. Mrs. Perkins, you don’t mind if I take these along with me?”

“Of course not. But I still don’t see…”

“Neither do I,” he told her frankly. “Right now I’ve got a picture of the friendliest and nicest man in the world who got himself poisoned last night. It’s not a pretty picture,” he added grimly, “and it may change a great deal before we come to the end of it.”

He carefully folded the dry rosebud and the picture back inside the menu, and thrust it into the side pocket of his jacket.

“If you think of anything else… anything at all… don’t hesitate to get in touch with me.”

“I will,” she breathed. “Oh, I will, Mr. Shayne. You’ve got to… you’ve just got to… get the person who did that terrible thing to Jerome.”

Linda Fitzgilpin was alone when she let Shayne into her apartment half an hour later. She still wore the simple black dress she had worn to the morgue, but now there was a look about her as though she were beginning to come apart at the seams.

Her lip rouge was mostly gone, but there was higher color in her cheeks than previously. The red hair that had been softly waved was now slightly dishevelled and her hands trembled as she held both of them out to Shayne. Her voice was higher-pitched, with an almost strident note in it:

“Mike! I’ve been wondering when you’d come. Lucy’s taken the children out… you know she promised them a picnic in the park… poor darlings, they don’t seem to quite realize what has happened to their daddy… and I’ve been sitting here all alone, thinking and wondering…”

She drew him into the room with her hands grasping his, and she talked too fast and too nervously. Her eyes were slightly dilated and Shayne caught a strong whiff of liquor from her breath as he was drawn close to her.

He disengaged his hands gently and told her, “I’ve been around. Gathering up bits and pieces as I went.” He moved across to a deep chair near the sofa and sank into it with a sigh. She closed the door and stood indecisively in front of it for a moment while he got out a cigarette and lit it. Then she said with forced gaiety, “I’m going to confess I’m having a wee bit of a drinkee. Would you like one? There’s bourbon and gin in the kitchen.”

“No reason why you shouldn’t relax with a drink,” he told her amiably. “Sure. I’ll have a small gin… with tonic if you have it.”

She swayed very slightly as she turned and went into the kitchen. Through the open door, Shayne saw her pick up a tall glass as she went by, and take a gulp from it before getting down a fresh glass for him.

Her “wee bit of a drinkee” he thought wryly, was quite an understatement. He hoped she knew how to handle the stuff because there was certain information he hoped to get from her.

She held two tall glasses in her hands when she returned. One was colorless with gin and tonic, the other a deep, brown hue that betokened lots of bourbon and not much else.

Shayne accepted his glass gravely, took a sip and discovered she had not spared the horses in pouring his gin either. She sat on the sofa and crossed her nice legs, and he asked, “Have the police been around yet?”

“No. Not a word from them. Not a word from anybody.” She drank from her glass and grimaced. “I’m… afraid, Mike,” she said in a small voice. “Help me. Please help me.”

“Of course I’ll help you, Linda. Why are you afraid?”

“Of the police. That nasty little man at the Beach. You see I… I lied to you this morning. And now I don’t know…” Her voice quavered into silence and she took another drink, her round eyes peeking at him anxiously over the rim of her glass.

Shayne sat very still, expelling a lungful of smoke. “What did you lie about specifically?”

“About… Jerome and last night. I was so confused and frightened when I first woke up and they told me,” she rushed on. “I thought… oh God! how can I tell you what I first thought? You see, they didn’t say it was poison at first. Just that Jerome had been found dead beside his car. I just naturally supposed that… that he’d been murdered. You can see that, can’t you? So when I called Lucy I told her… well, that I’d taken a sleeping pill before Jerome came home from the office and that’s all I knew about it.”

“And you hadn’t?”

“Oh, I took a sleeping pill, all right, and then a big drink of whiskey, and I woke up groggy and confused. I didn’t know he hadn’t come home until I looked over at his bed and saw it was empty. So it wasn’t really a lie… except…”

“Except what, Linda?”

“He did come back from the office. A little after ten o’clock. At least an hour before I expected him. It was one Friday night he didn’t stop to have a beer with the boys,” she went on with a trace of bitterness in her voice. “And he had a big drink of whiskey and… and we had a sort of argument, and then he had a phone call and went right out again. That’s when I took my pill and went to sleep.”

“Sodium amytal?” Shayne asked sharply.

“What?”

“What kind of sleeping pills do you take?” he asked grimly.

“Nembutal,” she faltered. “I have a prescription. Oh, Mike! You don’t think…?”