Brett Halliday: One Night with Nora

Her color deepened slightly, but she drank to the toast.

Nora glanced around the room, then studied her drink for a moment before saying, “That’s what I came to talk about,” in a low voice. “I keep thinking about last night—”

“I keep thinking about that, too,” Shayne told her helpfully. “It’s due to be one of my pleasantest memories.”

She lifted her glass, drained it, and held it out to him. “May I have another, please? I need several of these to make me stop feeling like a shameless wanton.”

“Have all you want, of course, but don’t stop feeling that way on my account. Men like nothing better than shameless wantons, if you don’t already know it.”

She took the glass and smiled fleetingly, drank half its contents, and accepted a cigarette and light from him. She settled back and said soberly, “I think I’d say it differently. That men like women who act like shameless wantons when they’re not.”

“You should know better than I,” he told her agreeably. “I was told today that one night with Nora has been known to change strong men into infatuated weaklings.”

“Who told you that?” she flared angrily.

“Don’t jump at me,” he said with a slight shrug. “I consider it one of the greatest compliments I ever heard.”

“Who said that about me?” she demanded.

“Ann Margrave.”

“Oh, her!” She made a gesture of dismissal and emptied her glass, and settled back again with her cigarette. “Ann is the perpetual adolescent. She chased after Ralph for years and she never did forgive me for marrying him.”

Shayne took a long drink, then asked, “So, you’re going back to Wilmington tonight. Do you have to?”

“Yes. I — Mr. Bates made the reservation. Of course, I have to go.” She smiled and added, “Which doesn’t leave us much time for those drinks.”

Shayne filled her glass the third time. “You don’t have to stay in Wilmington, do you?”

“Not forever, I hope.” She smiled quite gaily and sipped at her cocktail. “I wouldn’t call this really weak yet. A little more and I’ll be tight enough to tell you what I really came to say.”

“Have a little more by all means,” he invited with a wide grin. “If you should happen to miss that plane?”

“No,” she said quickly. “I really mustn’t do that. That’s why, well—” She fluttered her eyelids and took a deep drink, as though seeking courage to go on.

Shayne didn’t help her. He crushed out his cigarette, sipped, and waited.

“That’s the reason why I wanted to tell you I hope to come back to Miami in a few weeks,” she said breathlessly.

“I hoped you were going to say that, Nora.”

“Did you? Did you really?”

Shayne nodded. “We don’t have to pretend to each other, do we?”

“No. I guess we don’t, Michael.” Her voice was beginning to slur a trifle, caressing and sensuous. “So you won’t be shocked if I confess that I’ve been thinking, if I had the key to your room when I do come back, and, well, if — some night, when you were sound asleep, like last night, it would be something to anticipate — to look forward to and wonder when—”

“It would, indeed,” he said. “And I’m certainly not shocked, darling.” He half stood, reached across the desk to open the center drawer, took out the key she had left behind early that same morning, and held it up. “You really want to take this with you?”

“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed breathlessly. “I really do.”

Shayne drew it back, looking down at it broodingly. “I wondered,” he said flatly, “how long it would take you to realize your pretty neck was in danger as long as I have this key.”

“What do you mean?”

“I imagine you realized the danger in the beginning,” mused Shayne. “While Chief Gentry was here this morning. But you couldn’t very well ask for it then. It was some sort of evidence. You showed remarkable restraint by walking out and leaving it here as though it meant nothing to you.”

“What do you mean?” she demanded again, her voice rising shrilly on the last word.

“You’ve been pretty damned remarkable throughout this whole thing,” Shayne went on flatly. “What actually happened in your hotel room during the minute and a half you waited for me to reach your door? Did Ted Granger really shoot himself? Or did you grab the gun away from him, when I knocked, and then kill him?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Michael,” she moaned. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“This key isn’t any joke,” he told her harshly. “It’s going to unlock the death chamber for you, and you know it. I’m afraid we can’t touch you for shooting Ted Granger. You’re the only one who can testify as to what happened in that locked room. But you’ll never talk yourself out of murdering your husband, Nora. It just isn’t in the books.”

She slowly brought her emotions under control, sat back rigidly erect, and stared at him.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she told him calmly. “No matter what absurd theory you have about Ralph’s death, I couldn’t possibly have gotten into his room, if I’d tried. You know, yourself, that’s the wrong key.”

Shayne said dispassionately, “You made one slip, Nora. One tiny slip in some of the neatest and fastest work to beat a murder rap I’ve ever run into. Why did you close my door on the night latch last night before coming to bed?”

“Because I thought you were Ralph. I’d left the door open to have a little light to see to undress. You can’t be serious,” she pleaded. “You’re just joking, and I don’t think it’s funny at all.”

“If I hadn’t been standing in the bedroom doorway, if I hadn’t seen you go to close the door, it might never have come to me. But I couldn’t get that picture of you out of my mind. You looked good,” he went on angrily. “So damned good that it kept coming back to me. And finally I realized the truth. You knew perfectly well you weren’t in Ralph’s apartment. Your whole story was a desperate lie to alibi yourself.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to get at at all,” she told him, her voice still calm and cold.

“Ludlow,” said Shayne grimly. “The photographer who was supposed to take a picture of you in bed with Ralph as clinching evidence to kill the divorce. We got it from Ludlow; and from Bill Nash, who was posing as Michael Shayne in the deal. You knew the setup. Everything was timed to the minute. They’ll testify you were to enter Ralph’s apartment at exactly two-ten. You were to leave the door ajar for Ludlow to follow ten minutes later, get undressed and into Ralph’s bed, and have the picture taken.

“And you did just that, Nora. The door was open for Ludlow at two-twenty. Ralph was there waiting for his picture, but you weren’t.”

“Where was I, mastermind?” she asked scathingly.

“You were in Ralph’s kitchen going out his back door onto the fire escape with his back-door key, which is just a common one that opens most ordinary doors. I tried my back-door key on his this afternoon and it fits, all right. You worked fast to get out of a hell of a spot after you stabbed him. You knew the photographer was due in that open doorway any moment. I imagine you ducked in the kitchen with your clothes in your arms about the time Ludlow walked in. Or did Ralph wake up before you were fully undressed, threaten to throw you out, and got you so angry you grabbed up the paper knife and let him have it, before you realized you were trapped there?”

“You’re telling it,” she said, feigning indifference, but her voice was unsteady.

“That’s right, I am,” he agreed pleasantly. “Anyhow, you did come out on the fire escape, bringing the backdoor key to two-sixteen with you, and down one flight to my landing. By that time, you’d had a moment to think. Ralph was dead, and the detective and photographer would place you in his room at the right time. If you could get into the apartment below, pretend you believed it was Ralph’s and that you had been given the wrong key by mistake; well, it was a crazy chance, but the only one you saw. And you took it, babe, with the aplomb of a seasoned murderess, may I say? I don’t know how much practice you’d had, but—”