Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 33, No. 2, July 1973

Murder in Duplicate by Herbert Harris

From the grave her hand had come-pointing to Murder...

Lawrence Wayne studied himself in the mirror of his hotel room at Brighton.

The wavy, dark wig that concealed his balding head and the mustache, carefully applied with spirit gum, looked quite real.

When he donned spectacles — an aid his strong eyesight had never needed — nobody could possibly have identified him as Lawrence Wayne.

He counted himself fortunate that he belonged to the theater. Anyone else might find it difficult-dangerous even — to acquire disguises.

It was fortunate, too, that the girl’s apartment was so near Victoria Station. The train, which sped between Brighton and London in one hour, would deposit him almost on the doorstep of Joan Bowman.

He thought: An hour there, a little time to kill, an hour back — not much more than a two-hour gap in the afternoon.

“I’m spending a few hours on the bed. I don’t want to be disturbed till six,” he said told the young chambermaid.

It would not be Lawrence Wayne who left the hotel and returned to it some two hours later. It would be a nebulous unknown — a man with dark hair and moustache and spectacles.

Yet it would not be till he arrived at Corunna Court, the apartments at Vicoria, that the disguise came into its own.

He would make a point of being seen by old Rogers, the porter. More than that, he would inquire of Rogers the number of Joan Bowman’s apartment.

Later, when they had found her dead, Rogers would be questioned. “Did she have any callers this afternoon?” — “Well, yes, there was a man who asked where her apartment was. A chap with dark hair and moustache and glasses...”

Neither the cabby nor anyone on Brighton Station recognized him. They might have done so if he appeared as his true self.

One could never be too careful. Hadn’t the local papers run his photo? And there were the regular patrons of the Brighton theatre, outside which his portrait appeared again. “Lawrence Wayne, actor-playwright, in his own thrilled, Hurried Departure, prior to London production.”

He tried to read in the train, but was unable to deflect his mind from the girl he was about to destroy.

It was only a year since he had first called on her, in answer to that advertisement: “Authors’ MSS typed by clean, accurate typist.” She had typed that first thriller, the one that had never reached the stage. Then came Hurried Departure.

He had been elated when she had finished typing the latter. Taking the manuscript from her, he had known that it had the “feel” of success. Perhaps out of that elation, made more feverish by whisky, had come the beginning of the sordid affair.

Even now, some weeks after she had told him she was pregnant, Wayne re-experienced that shock, mixed with revulsion and hate, that he had felt when she broke the news.

So inconsiderate of her. So inopportune. But, then, she had known nothing of his ambitious plans.

Such plans. The founding of a little theatrical empire carrying the label of Lawrence Wayne — and unlimited capital with which to do it, thanks to the stage-struck heiress who thought Wayne was in love with her...

Back in his Brighton apartment, three hours later, he somehow felt surprisingly calm when the C.I.D. man called on him.

The eyes of Inspector Grey were darting, perceptive, unnerving, shifting from the dressing-room table with its confusion of grease paints to the stage costumes on the pegs and to Lawrence Wayne himself.

“Forgive the intrusion, sir” Grey said after introducing himself, “but we are making inquiries into the death of Miss Joan Bowman.”

“Miss Bowman?” Wayne frowned. “She’s dead?” He was glad he was an actor as well as a writer.

“She was strangled this afternoon, sir.”

“It’s dreadful!” Wayne exclaimed. “I knew her quite well!”

“Then you can probably help. We have the description of a man we are trying to put a name to.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know who her friends were,” Wayne said. “You see, she just did my typing. She’s been typing my plays for a year. In fact, she’s nearly finished another for me.”

“She had finished it, sir. Indeed, she had it all ready to post to you.”

That had been a nice touch, Wayne thought — parceling the MS, addressing it to himself. It should prove, as nothing else could, that she wasn’t expecting him.

“How awful,” Wayne murmured sadly.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Inspector Grey said, “but where were you this afternoon?”

“This afternoon?” — he expressed surprise — “Why, here, in Brighton, Inspector. I went to bed at the hotel, in fact — to refresh myself for tonight’s show.”

“I see.” Grey nodded. There was a pause. “That’s a most unusual ring you’re wearing, sir.”

“Ring?” Wayne glanced casually at the ring which he wore as a mascot. “Oh... yes. It belonged to my father. He brought it from Burma.”

“I see that it’s embossed,” Inspector Grey said. “With a snake?”

“Yes,” Wayne nodded, “a snake.” He was half-frowning. For the first time he was feeling oddly uncomfortable.

“Like this one,” the inspector added. He took from his pocket a sheet of quarto paper. Near the edge of the paper was a clear impression of a snake.

Wayne swallowed. “Where did you find this?”

“On Miss Bowman’s desk,” the CID man answered. “You must have leaned your knuckles on her desk when you spoke to her, Mr. Wayne. The embossing of the ring pressed against two sheets of paper with a carbon in between. It registered on the paper underneath.”

Wayne had paled. “I... I really don’t recall—”

“But you should recall, sir,” the inspector pointed out. “It was only this afternoon. Miss Bowman had pulled the papers and the carbon out of her machine for some reason, but she’d already begun to type something and you’ll see that today’s date is on the top. She’d finished the manuscript and was writing a personal letter — dated today!”