Brett Halliday: Murder by Proxy

“It’s a relatively small firm, but moderately successful. Most of our accounts are out-of-town clients whose business we handle on an annual basis.”

Shayne nodded. “You live in an apartment? Have a maid?”

“Part-time. She comes in twice a week. Her first name is Rose. I don’t know her last name, but she does work part-time for other tenants in the building. She hasn’t been in since my wife left. They gave the place a thorough cleaning on Sunday, and Ellen had arranged for her to come in next Saturday…” He broke off with a frown. “Is our maid important?”

“I don’t know what’s important at this point. Your wife’s maiden name?”

“Ellen Terry. She was a professional model and a very successful one when I met her about a year and a half ago.”

Shayne nodded. It was very easy to believe that the original of the snapshot had been a successful model. “What agency did she work for?”

“It was one of the big ones… located in Rockefeller Center.” Harris knitted his forehead in thought. “Noble,” he announced. “Noble and Elliot. But she stopped working when we were married.”

“That was just a year ago?” Shayne said. “Let’s have a physical description.”

“She’s thirty-one years old. Rather tall, five-eight, I believe, and weighed just under a hundred and forty. She wore a size fourteen dress, I believe, sometimes a twelve. Her hair is blond and she carries herself beautifully. Every movement she makes is grace personified. She… was a woman people looked at when she entered a room.”

Shayne nodded, glancing over at Lucy whose pencil was racing over her pad. He leaned back and tugged at his left earlobe, and said, “Fine. Now give us the names and addresses, if you can, of her closest friends… male and female.”

Harris looked at him sharply. “See here, Shayne. I’ve told you she had no men friends. And anyhow, I fail to see how her friends in New York have any bearing on what has happened here.”

Shayne said flatly, “If I came into your brokerage office, a complete novice about stocks and bonds, I don’t believe you would welcome my advice on how you should do your job. I have to do my job my way. Now, start giving Miss Hamilton a list of your wife’s closest friends. Going back to her modeling days, if you can.”

Harris said, “I think I could use that drink now, if you don’t mind.”

Shayne nodded and pushed back his chair to get up. Harris turned to Lucy and thoughtfully began giving her a list of names, mostly feminine, some married couples, with addresses or partial addresses as he recalled them.

On the other side of the room, Shayne busied himself getting a cognac bottle from the second drawer of the filing cabinet, fitting two pairs of paper cups into each other and filling each to the brim with liquor and carrying them to the desk, then getting cups of ice water from the cooler which he brought back and set beside the nested cups.

He pushed cognac and ice water toward Herbert Harris as the New Yorker concluded earnestly to Lucy, “That’s all the names I can think of at the moment.” He glanced at Shayne and explained, “I’ve told your secretary we didn’t go out a great deal socially. Actually, we were both pretty well wrapped up in each other and we didn’t need other people.” He lifted the cognac and sipped it appreciatively.

Shayne said heartily, “I can understand that… during your first year of marriage. Let’s see, now. Have you got the name of her hairdresser, Lucy?”

She shook her head as Harris broke in vehemently, “Now what in the living hell has her hairdresser in New York got to do with Ellen’s disappearance in Miami? You may know your business, Mr. Shayne, but I certainly fail to understand…”

“All right, Lucy.” Shayne’s voice was grim. “Make a notation that Mr. Harris refuses to divulge the name of his wife’s hairdresser.”

“Wait a minute. I didn’t refuse. Hell, I don’t know her name,” Harris said sulkily. “It’s a shop on Park Avenue just around the corner from our place. Blanche, I think. Something like that.”

Shayne nodded noncommittally. “Now, let’s let Miss Hamilton get down the facts about your wife’s arrival, and so forth.” He settled back and took a long sip of cognac and narrowed his eyes. “You put her on a plane for Miami Monday afternoon. She phoned you from the hotel after her arrival, and you have heard nothing further from her. Didn’t that disturb you, Harris?”

“No. Why should it? I didn’t expect her to call or write me unless there was some particular reason.”

“And you didn’t bother to call her?”

“No.” Harris was on the defensive. “We’re mature people. I wanted her to have these two weeks away from me. I wanted her to meet new people and have fun without feeling that she had to report to me or that I was checking up on her.”

Shayne nodded, expressionless. “Now, this trip you suddenly decided to make. Did I understand you to say it was completely unexpected… not planned at all… that your wife hadn’t the faintest idea you might turn up in Miami today?”

“That’s right.” Harris became suddenly aggressive. “I didn’t know, myself, until late Thursday afternoon. A situation came up in the office that required me to be in Charleston, South Carolina on Friday. One of our elderly clients took a sudden notion to discuss his portfolio. I drove to Charleston that night, arriving Friday morning. I caught a few hours sleep in a motel and spent the afternoon with our client, and on a sudden impulse decided to drive on down here and spend Saturday and Sunday morning with my wife. By driving straight through, I planned to be back in New York Monday morning.”

“That’s a lot of cross-country driving,” Shayne suggested. “Most businessmen find a plane much easier these days.”

“I happen to like to drive,” Harris informed him coldly. “Especially by myself and at night. There’s something about driving across the country at night alone. You can really put the miles behind you… and stopping along the highway at the little all-night diners where the truckers congregate…” He paused, shaking his head as though a little ashamed of the enthusiasm with which he spoke. “I happen to like it,” he repeated. “And, when I left New York, I really had no idea at all of coming on. But when I realized it was Friday evening in Charleston and there was no reason at all for me to be back in New York before Monday morning… I suddenly thought how wonderful it would be to surprise Ellen… and I just came on.”

Shayne looked at him thoughtfully and a little wonderingly. You had to be pretty young, he thought, and very much in love with your wife, to decide it would be a good idea to pop up at her hotel at dawn in Miami when she was on vacation and had every reason to suppose you were safely in New York. How would Herbert Harris have liked it, he wondered, if Ellen had suddenly turned up unexpectedly at the New York apartment a week before she was expected home?

And yet? And yet!

Harris was pretty young… and apparently he was very much in love with his wife of one year. Aloud, Shayne said, “I guess that’s about all for now, Mr. Harris. I’ll get to work on it. Will you be available at the Beachhaven?”

“Yes, I… I suppose I may as well stay there as anywhere. Look here, Shayne.” He leaned forward and his jaw jutted aggressively. “I didn’t argue with you or withhold any information when you pointed out that you had your methods of working on a case just as I would have my reasons for buying certain stocks or bonds. But I’d still like to know why in hell you wanted this list of Ellen’s friends in New York… including her hairdresser. How can any of those people possibly have any connection with what has happened to her here?”