Brett Halliday - Die Like a Dog

Shayne said, “He died half an hour after drinking it. It would have been smart to grab the jug and the cup he drank from and have them analyzed.”

“But that doctor swore there was nothing to indicate poisoning. Said it was exactly the way he had expected the old boy to kick off.”

“But you did have Henrietta screaming murder,” Shayne reminded him mildly.

“That old biddy,” snorted Donovan. “You could see she plumb hated Anita’s guts, and you don’t pay much heed to that kind of raving.”

Shayne said, “I’m not blaming you boys. But it’s different with me. I’ve got a big fat fee riding on the off-chance I can prove it was murder. And the way it stacks up… anybody in the house that evening had the opportunity to put something in the thermos jug while it was sitting on the dining table downstairs.”

“Except maybe Henrietta, the way I remember it,” said Petrie doubtfully. “And Peabody, too. I don’t remember whether he mentioned leaving the old man’s room during that hour or not. Do you, Terance?”

“I don’t think he mentioned it one way or the other. But he wouldn’t of, of course, if he had slipped out of Rogell’s room and downstairs to poison his milk.”

Petrie was flipping through the pages of the typewritten report again, pausing to glance at a paragraph, and then turning on.

“Right here, Peabody says, ‘I was with Mr. Rogell in his upstairs sitting room from ten o’clock until midnight when Mrs. Rogell came in, and we were undisturbed during that period.’”

“So that don’t prove nothing,” Donovan pointed out again. “Rogell ain’t alive to say it ain’t so.”

“Here’s Henrietta,” said Petrie, reading, “‘I retired to my own suite about ten-thirty. Mrs. Blair and Charles were in the kitchen where she was warming John’s midnight milk. I heard Mrs. Blair come up about half an hour later, and I stepped out in the hallway to intercept her and ask if I might accompany her up to the third floor to get a book which she had promised to lend me. We went up together, and I remained with her, talking, until we heard Anita screeching that John was dying. We hurried down together and found John…’”

Petrie broke off. “That takes care of her during the hour the jug sat on the dining table. And the housekeeper, too, because Mrs. Blair corroborated Henrietta’s story exactly.”

“But she could have put something in the milk when she fixed it. Before she went up at eleven,” Timothy Rourke pointed out.

Shayne said, “Right. And so could Charles have slipped something in the jug while he was in the kitchen and Mrs. Blair was busy. And Anita and Marvin were downstairs together during the hour before midnight. Counting Peabody, who could have left Rogell for a time, we have five people who had access to the jug of hot milk before Rogell drank it.”

“What’s the use kicking it around now?” demanded Petrie. “The old boy is going to be burned to a crisp at noon, and if there ever was any evidence of murder inside him, it’ll be destroyed.”

“That’s why we’ve got to move fast,” said Shayne with a driving intensity behind his words. He glanced at his watch and calculated swiftly that it was just a few minutes before eight o’clock in Denver, Colorado. He dragged a worn address book from his pocket and checked an old entry, then told the others, “Sit tight right here. I’m going to make a fast phone call from Gentry’s office, and then we’ll all get on our horses.”

He strode through the connecting door and found Gentry talking to a young patrolman who stood stiffly at attention beside the chief’s desk. Shayne said, “I’ve got to make a call, Will,” picked up a telephone from his desk and got the police operator. He said crisply, “Person-to-person in Denver, Colorado. Felix Ritter. Here’s an old telephone number I have for him.” He read the number from his book and lowered one hip to the corner of Gentry’s desk while he waited. Impersonally, and with only a tiny part of his mind, he listened to Chief Gentry chewing out the patrolman for some minor infraction of regulations while the long distance connection was being made, and when he heard Ritter’s voice on the other end, he said incisively:

“Mike Shayne in Miami, Felix. Can you get out to Central City fast?”

“Mike? Sure I can. There’s a new road since you were here, and…”

“Fast as you can make it,” interrupted Shayne. “Write this down. I want any gossip or scandal from the natives about a Mrs. Betty Blair who used to run a rooming house there where the millionaire miner, John Rogell, hung out while he was making his fortune. Find out how friendly they were in the old days… and what people thought when Mr. Blair died and the widow came to Miami to work as John Rogell’s housekeeper. Got it? Here’s an angle. He left her fifty thousand bucks in his will.”

“Sure, Mike. Rogell just died, huh? In Miami? Remember reading how he got his start in Central City.”

“Fast as you can make it, Felix. I need any damned thing you can pick up and relay to me by twelve o’clock. Make a collect call to the Chief of Police here. Will Gentry. Before noon.”

Felix Ritter in Denver said, “Will do,” and Shayne hung up. The patrolman was on his way out, and Shayne told Gentry, “You’ll be getting a call about Mrs. Blair from Central City before noon. I’ll be checking with you…”

Another telephone on Gentry’s desk interrupted him. The chief scooped it up and said, “Yes?” He listened a moment, lifting a beefy hand at Shayne, his rumpled eyelids moving up and down slowly. He hung up and told Shayne, “Let’s get out to the Rogell place with Petrie and Donovan. Marvin Dale committed suicide out there last night. And left a suicide note addressed to you.”

In Shayne’s car, he and Rourke followed the screaming siren of Chief Gentry’s limousine through downtown traffic and out Brickel Boulevard to the Rogell estate. There were no other cars parked in front of the house, and the two men trotted up the stairs and across the porch behind the chief and his two detectives.

A white-faced maid opened the door for them immediately, and Mrs. Blair hovered in the wide hallway behind her, wringing her hands and with tear streaks on her broad face.

“This way,” she directed them. “Up the stairs here. I just can’t believe it. Poor Mr. Dale. Who’d ever have thought he’d do a terrible thing like this.”

The five men trooped beside her silently up the curving stairway where she turned to the right to an open doorway with Charles standing in front of it. He was in his shirtsleeves and without a tie, his hair uncombed and a heavy growth of dark stubble on his square face. There was a bluish bruise on his cheekbone and a pad of gauze on the side of his mouth under a piece of surgical tape. He kept his lips pressed tightly together and his eyes had a sullen glare when he saw Shayne with the others. He stepped aside from the doorway without speaking, and they entered a medium-sized bedroom with the body of Marvin Dale sprawled on the floor in front of a drop-leaf table with an overturned straight chair beside him.

The young man’s face was twisted and ghastly in death, his body stiffly contorted, indicating that he had writhed agonizingly on the floor before death mercifully ended his suffering.

There was a bottle of whiskey standing on the table, with a highball glass beside it. The glass held a small residue of brownish liquid. Off to one side was a small, round, squat bottle with the warning skull and crossbones plainly imprinted on it. It was labeled “Strychnine” and there was also the word “Poison” in large type.

Beside the bottle of strychnine were two torn pieces of note-paper that had been crumpled up and then smoothed and carefully placed one above the other, with torn edges in juxtaposition so that a superficial glance indicated that they were the torn top and bottom pieces of the same sheet of notepaper. A square box of the same notepaper and a ballpoint pen were on the extreme left-hand side of the table.