Brett Halliday - Dolls Are Deadly

“I know,” Shayne interrupted, “but he didn’t have the two dolls.”

“Of course not. I’ve got them.”

“What for? Are you starting a private eye business of your own?”

“No, but he came back again after you’d left, to try and talk you into changing your mind about helping him, and left the dolls with me because I seemed interested, which is more than you did. He seemed glad to get rid of them, though he was nice about it. He said he didn’t want to put the curse on me. I convinced him the curse was only dangerous for the person it was originally meant for-”

“You’re not sure about that. You took an awful chance.” Shayne grinned. “What’s the ‘something else’ you mentioned that happened?”

“There’s a woman here waiting to see you. That’s why I couldn’t close the office at a decent hour.” Lucy lowered her voice. “She says she’s going to wait to see you if it takes all night. She’s been here about an hour and she’s so fidgety she’s about to jump out of her clothes. You’d better hurry.”

“I’ll wait till she jumps. Is she young and beautiful?”

“She is young and beautiful,” Lucy said frostily, “and she is very scared, and I don’t blame her. If you don’t want somebody else to be murdered, you’d better get on over here. Because she’s got one of those little dolls too.”

Shayne left the phone booth and went out to his car, driving west as fast as the law allowed, pondering the circumstances which had brought two frightened people to his office today with voodoo dolls. Was this a new fad, like chain letters?

He discarded the idea distastefully as he recalled the graying face of Henny Henlein. The taking of human life, even a depraved life like Henlein’s, wasn’t to be regarded lightly.

It was a little after six when he strode into the anteroom of his third-floor office where Lucy sat typing. Through the partially opened door into the next room he could see a woman sitting in the chair beside his desk.

Lucy looked up reproachfully.

“Don’t frown, angel. It makes wrinkles.”

“Then hurry up,” she whispered. “That woman’s half crazy. I put her in your office because it made me jittery just to look at her.”

“Who is she?”

“Somebody named Clarissa Milford. Mrs. Clarissa Milford.”

“And you say she got one of the voodoo dolls?”

Lucy nodded.

Shayne looked through the door again. “She’s quite a doll herself.”

“She was when she came in. Waiting for you has aged her.”

Shayne grinned and roughed her hair playfully with a big hand as he walked past her to his office.

He closed the door only partially and looked at Clarissa Milford. Lucy hadn’t exaggerated. This was about the most upset woman he had ever seen. When she left home she had probably looked neat-she was wearing a trim blue suit with a ruff of white lace at her throat and she carried white gloves. But since then she had apparently been pulling at herself. Wisps of honey-blond hair hung from the bun at her neck. Her lipstick, except for a thin rim at the outer edge, had been eaten off. The red nail polish on all but the last two fingers of her left hand was flaked unevenly, and she was chewing on one of them when he came in. She wore a plain gold wedding ring.

She looked up at Shayne with a kind of wild expectancy. She had a small, straight nose, clear blue eyes and creamy skin. When she was not under strain, she must have had the statuesque chic of a model.

“Relax, Mrs. Milford.” Shayne walked over to his desk. “We won’t get anywhere until you do.”

She folded her hands tightly in her lap. “I’ll try.” Her voice was tense. “But things have been happening so fast. Only last week my nephew, Jimsey Thain, was killed by a hit-and-run driver.”

The words came out in a rush. “He was only twelve,” she continued breathlessly, “and he was close to us-like our own. It was my car that killed him.” She swallowed hard and reached in her purse for a handkerchief. Her hand was trembling.

“Your car?” he repeated incredulously.

“Oh, I didn’t do it. I wasn’t driving. My car had been parked in front and I never left the house. It must have been stolen-by teenagers maybe.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t have. Everyone blames everything on teenagers these days. It could have been anybody, I guess. The car was found abandoned just a short way from where Jimsey’s body was found. You must have read about it in the papers. It was only last week-”

“Nobody saw the accident?”

“No. The section isn’t heavily settled. Whoever did it could have walked away easily without being seen.”

“Mrs. Milford,” Shayne said gently, “this isn’t really what you came to see me about, is it?”

“No.” She waited to get her voice under control. “On top of everything else, this morning I got this.” She opened her purse again, took out a small doll and laid it carefully on a corner of the desk.

The redhead picked it up. It was identical to the ones Henlein had shown him a few hours earlier and, like one of them, had a black-headed pin protruding from its chest.

He laid it down, wrinkled his heavy red brows and tugged his left earlobe. What possible connection could there be between a small-time gangster and this extraordinarily pretty housewife? Could two people with such widely separated backgrounds have a common enemy? It did not, on the surface, seem reasonable. Yet the fact that Henny Henlein had been killed after receiving the dolls took this case out of the realm of fantasy and reasonless fear and put it starkly in the world of reality where fear was justified.

There was one difference between this doll and the ones Henlein had received. Glued to the black yarn hair was a yellow strand which might have come from Mrs. Milford’s own head.

“Do you think this is yours?” He fingered the hair.

“No. The texture’s different and it’s straight. Mine has a slight wave when it’s not pulled tight. And the color’s a little off. Look.” She picked up the doll and held it next to her head. The yellow strand was noticeably lighter and did not have the same golden tinge.

“Then we don’t have to start figuring who might have had an opportunity to get a strand of your hair.” Shayne leaned back in his swivel chair, took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and extended it to her.

He lit both hers and his own, then asked, “Do you think someone believes you ran over your nephew, and sent you the doll to frighten you?”

She shuddered. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. No, I don’t see why anyone would think that.”

“How was the doll sent?”

“It wasn’t. It was left. On the kitchen table while I was out. We live in the country and seldom lock our doors.”

“You have no neighbors?”

“Only my sister and brother-in-law, Mabel and Percy Thain, Jimsey’s parents. They live in a house that’s a twin to ours about an acre away. But they were out too. The same place my husband and I were.”

“Where was that?”

She hesitated, seeming a little embarrassed. “At a seance.”

“At Madame Swoboda’s?”

“Yes.” She puffed at her cigarette nervously. “How did you know?”

“It’s the one getting the best play right now. Do you attend many seances, Mrs. Milford?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “It’s not that I believe in them-though I suppose I do a little or why would I be so terrified at having received the doll?”

Recalling what had happened to Henny Henlein, Shayne knew she had reason to be afraid.

“I guess it’s the idea,” she continued unsteadily, “that someone wants to kill me that upsets me. That anyone could hate me that much.”