Brett Halliday: Murder by Proxy

Fermi shrugged and said, “The place was neat as a pin, just as it is now. Of course, there are always prints to be found if a place has been lived in, no matter how carefully it’s been cleaned. I dusted in the bathroom and bedroom, particularly a dressing alcove there that the wife would normally use. I found plenty of clear prints, all about a week old, that corresponded exactly with the set sent up by Miami Beach. There were also a man’s prints, and a few of another woman which I assumed to be the maid.”

“There you are,” said Harris. “How can you go against what this detective tells you?”

“I don’t go against it. I just have a different explanation. I’m sure that you and your wife cleaned up all her prints as carefully as you could before she left for Florida on Monday. Then you brought your secretary in after you left the office that day. Ruth Collins had left her apartment that afternoon with her bag packed, ostensibly for a two week vacation in the Catskills. Instead, she moved in here very happily to play house with you for two weeks. You encouraged her to use the bathroom, of course, and your wife’s dressing table. When you were sure the evidence was complete, you shot her in the heart, Harris, and then beat her face in beyond recognition. You must have really hated her to do that sort of job. What was she holding over your head? Something from the office? Had you been dipping into company funds? Is that why you needed the insurance money on your wife so desperately that you’d murder another woman to get it?”

“No, no, no!” Harris cried out wildly against the flood of accusations. He jumped to his feet, dropping his glass on the rug. “This can’t be happening to me. It’s the most insane thing I ever heard. The autopsy showed that my wife’s body had been placed in the trunk of the convertible within a couple of hours after her death… not later than Tuesday night.”

Shayne said coldly, “The autopsy indicated that her body had been crammed into the trunk of some car within a couple of hours after her death. But it wasn’t the convertible, and it wasn’t in Miami, Harris. It was the trunk of your Buick right here in New York. The New York police have your car down at their chemical laboratory right now,” he ended disgustedly. “They’re making tests that will prove beyond a shadow of doubt that your secretary’s body spent four days in the back of your car before it was transferred to the convertible in Miami early Saturday morning.

“We’ve just come from Ruth Collins’ apartment where Fermi found dozens of fingerprints proving that the dead woman had lived there. Now, where is your wife hiding? We have to arrest her as an accessory before and after the fact, and a co-conspirator in the premeditated murder of Ruth Collins. If there’s any justice at all, she’ll go to the chair with you.”

“She’s… oh, my God, she’s…” Herbert Harris dropped into a chair and covered his face with his hands and began sobbing.

Shayne shrugged and told Fermi, “He’s all yours. Peter Painter isn’t going to like this one little bit, but the crime was committed in your jurisdiction. Come on, Jim, let’s find a bar where they stock Cordon Bleu.”