Brett Halliday: Murder by Proxy

“How do you know it’s his?” Shayne asked as the three men got out. “You’ve never seen it… or him either.”

Gifford chuckled as they walked to the entrance. “I know his license number. Hell, I can tell you the color of the socks he wore on his last birthday.”

There was no doorman. They entered a parqueted foyer with neat rows of shining brass mailboxes. Detective Fermi, who had been there before, said, “I think it was Seven D,” and glanced at a mailbox to confirm the number. He nodded and led the way to a self-service elevator that was waiting, and they went up to the seventh floor.

Shayne pushed the button on 7-D, and after a moment Herbert Harris opened the door. He was in his shirtsleeves and tieless; his face was unshaved and haggard. He had a highball glass in his hand, and he looked at Shayne and the others in disbelieving astonishment. “Mr. Shayne! What on earth are you doing in New York?”

“You hired me to do a job,” Shayne told him levelly, moving forward while Harris backed away into a large, pleasant and very neat sitting room. A suitcase stood near the bathroom door with Harris’ jacket draped over it. “You paid me a fair-sized retainer,” he added. “And I intend to earn it. These are two New York detectives, by the way. Gifford and Fermi.”

Harris nodded politely, but it was evident that he was more puzzled than before. “I hired you to help find my wife when she was missing,” he blurted out. “I’m perfectly satisfied with the results you got.”

Shayne said, “I’m not. I’m still looking for her, Harris.”

“You’re still… looking?” he asked weakly. “But she… her funeral was yesterday morning.”

Shayne shook his head. “Not your wife’s funeral. The body of Ruth Collins was cremated in Miami yesterday morning. Where is your wife hiding?”

“This is utterly fantastic.” Harris dropped into a chair, rubbing the back of his left hand across his eyes. “Have you gone mad? Dozens of people in Miami identified my wife’s photograph.”

Shayne said easily, “Oh, it was your wife who was in Miami Monday evening drawing attention to herself. But it wasn’t her body in the trunk of the convertible she had rented. That was Ruth Collins.”

“But she… it was Ellen,” Harris cried out desperately. “The Miami Beach police checked her fingerprints here in New York to get a positive identification.”

Shayne said, “I know all about that. Detective Fermi, here, is the man who came to this apartment to get comparison prints. Tell us how you went about it, Angelo.”

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.”