Brett Halliday - Murder and the Married Virgin

“Katrin Moe was in love,” Shayne said evenly. “Is this Eddie quite a playboy?”

“As much as he can be, I suppose, on what the old man lets him have. Liquor and women and dice, perhaps. I understand that Lomax is pretty tight with the boy.”

“What about Clarice?”

“She impresses me as being much bored with life. Flippant and hard-boiled. And then there’s the chauffeur-”

“Yeh. There’s the chauffeur,” Shayne prompted when the inspector paused for a moment.

“He’s what a lot of girls dream about when they’re married to guys like us,” Quinlan mused. “Not bad either. That’s the hell of it. Good-looking enough to be a movie actor or a matinee idol, but not that type. He’s quiet and unassuming and looks you squarely in the eye and you wonder why the devil he’s a chauffeur. Apparently well educated, too.”

“H-m-m,” Shayne muttered, “but Katrin Moe was in-”

“Sure, Katrin’s in love with her second looey,” the inspector interrupted. “But he’s stationed in Miami Beach and here’s God’s gift to women and a little weasel like Eddie Lomax with money right close at hand. I don’t know what went on, but there’s the picture as I see it.”

“Yeh.” Shayne’s eyes were morose. “A missing necklace worth a hundred and fifty grand-and a dead girl.” He flung his cigarette to the floor and ground it out with the toe of a big shoe.

“And here’s something else for you to chew on, Shayne,” Quinlan told him, a sardonic smile twitching his mouth. “Katrin Moe had a plain gold wedding ring in her handbag and it had been worn. It fitted the third finger of her left hand.”

Shayne shot a startled look of surprise at the inspector. He started to say something, but instead he came to his feet and went toward the door. Turning his head he asked, “Has Doc Mattson got her?”

“Over at the lab. You want a note or something?”

“Thanks. I don’t need it with Doc. If you get anything else let me know.”

“I won’t forget you. I’m glad you’re working on it, Shayne. Looks like another one that may call for your special brand of rabbits out of a hat.”

Shayne’s jaw was set, deepening the hollows in his cheeks, as he stalked into the police laboratory.

Doctor Mattson chuckled. “Look who’s come howling.” A stout little man with a round head as bare as a billiard ball, he wore a Vandyke and thick-lensed glasses through which he peered at the world with a sort of puckish glee. He was attired in a white surgeon’s gown and smelled of formaldehyde.

“Quinlan said you were doing a P.M. on the suicide case,” Shayne told him as he advanced toward a straight chair filled with old magazines.

“She’s a lovely girl,” Doctor Mattson said, waving his soft, well-kept hands enthusiastically. “Why can’t I ever meet one like that while she’s still warm? They all come to me in the end-the port of dead desire. Sit down, Michael. Got a drink on you?”

Shayne tilted the chair and let the magazines fall to the floor, toed it around to face the police surgeon and sat down. He grinned broadly but there was no mirth in the grin. He said, “You stay sober till you finish with Katrin Moe. Then I’ll fix you up. Still lean toward bourbon?”

“Anything with an alcoholic content, Michael.” He shook his head. His eyes, which were like two black peas behind the thick lenses, were sad. “It was different when I used to have live patients and tried to save them.”

“What about her?” Shayne said impatiently.

“Katrin Moe,” he murmured, rolling the name over his fat, pouched lips. “She died with a smile on her young mouth, Michael. Put this down-a slim, unsullied body, clean-limbed and full-breasted. Like a young sapling in the spring when the sap begins to run.” He smacked his lips and sat down on a corner of the scarred oak desk.

“Wait a minute,” Shayne said hastily. “This is a medical report, not a flight into poetic fancy. Is unsullied a figure of speech? Or a fact?”

“A fact, Michael. She has never been touched by man.”

“How much farther have you gone?”

“Not much.”

“I wish you’d hurry up with the rest of it.”

“What’s the need of a post-mortem?” Doctor Matt-son demanded. “It’s a desecration to carve up that body. The girl committed suicide, didn’t she?”

“That’s what I want you to tell me.”

The doctor squinted at him for a long moment, then said:

“What are you looking for?”

“Positive evidence that she died as a direct result of breathing gas. If that evidence isn’t present, some slow-acting poison, I’d say.”

“That won’t take long,” Mattson told him cheerfully. “But you can put it down without a post-mortem that she didn’t mind dying. She welcomed death. She greeted it with outflung arms and a smile. A girl like that!” He waggled his bald head again, and his eyes were sad.

“Today was to have been her wedding day,” Shayne told him gravely.

“All I can give you is the direct cause of death. I can dissect a brain but I can’t read the thoughts that precede death.”

“I’ll work on that end,” said Shayne, “after you’ve assured me it was suicide. That’s the one thing I’ve got to have.”

“There’s a simple test to determine whether or not death was caused by the inhalation of gas fumes. Whether it was self-administered is beyond my province.”

“Sure,” Shayne said impatiently. “The physical setup takes care of that. She was inside a locked room all night with the gas grate turned on. If she wasn’t drugged and was in full possession of all her faculties, she wouldn’t have turned on the gas and gone to bed with any expectation of getting up on her wedding day. And I don’t think she would have welcomed death with a smile and outflung arms,” he ended harshly. He got up and paced the length of the small office, stopped to ask, “How long, Doc?”

“Couple of hours.”

Shayne tugged his hat brim lower on his forehead, said, “I’ll call you or drop in-and there’s a bottle of Ancient Age waiting for you,” and went out.

A heavy drizzle of rain swirled with a chilling wind as Shayne turned in the driveway of the Lomax residence on Mirabeau Avenue and drove between double rows of clipped hibiscus hedge to the front of the imposing three-storied house with dormer windows set in the gabled roof. A more recent construction than the plantation dwellings in the suburban section, the house had been designed to conform with the traditional style of the nineteenth century, with embrasured French windows and round wooden columns rising majestically to support the wide, second-floor gallery with its ornamental iron railing of intricate design.

Shayne parked near the stone steps leading up to the veranda and got out. There was an ancient iron knocker on the heavy double doors, but an electric button had been installed in the framework on the right. He pressed the button and waited, hugging his coat close against the wet chill of New Orleans in December.

The left-hand door opened about a foot and a rosy-cheeked, round-eyed maid peered out at him. She said, “Yes, sir?”

“Is Mr. Nathan Lomax in?”

The maid was hesitant and an expression of mingled terror and awe was in her dark eyes as she held the door firmly and regarded the towering figure before her.

“I’m from the insurance company-about the necklace,” Shayne said gently.

“Yes-sir. I guess he’s in,” she stammered. “I’ll go ask him.”

She started to close the door. Shayne grinned and gave it a shove and followed her into a wide hallway covered from wall to wall with lush mauve carpeting and running the length of the house to other double doors at the rear. A wide stairway of polished mahogany curved upward to a landing and doubled back to the second floor.