Die Like a Dog

12

Shayne and Rourke both knew the two city detectives casually, and the men greeted them without particular enthusiasm as they entered. Petrie was thin and sour-faced, and he said sneeringly, “Gentry tells us you’re going to turn the Rogell thing into murder… and then solve it for us.”

Donovan was flabby-fat and easy-going. He grinned amiably and told them, “Don’t pay no heed to Jim. He’s sore because the chief wouldn’t let him haul in that hot little dish of a widow and give her a going-over. Not that I wouldn’t like to work over her myself, if you get what I mean.” He rolled his eyes and smacked his lips suggestively. “Like the guy comes home from the office and when the wife complains about all the work she’s did that day, he says, ‘What about me, doggone it? Slaving in the office over a hot secretary all day.’”

Shayne said, “Ha-ha. Why don’t you two start by telling us exactly what happened the night Rogell died.”

With Petrie doing most of the talking and Donovan filling in some details, they related how they had been called to the Rogell house by an insistent telephone call received from his sister at twelve-forty, which was exactly eleven minutes after her millionaire brother had died quietly in his bed.

On arrival, they had been met at the door by Henrietta, fully clothed and tearless, loudly insisting that she was convinced John Rogell had been poisoned by his wife. In the small library off the right of the hall, they had found Marvin Dale, soddenly drunk and obviously quite pleased that his brother-in-law had passed on. With Marvin had been Harold Peabody, sober and shaken, who told them he had spent the latter part of the evening alone with the millionaire in his second-floor sitting room, going over business affairs with him until Anita had interrupted them precisely at midnight with a hot drink for her husband which she invariably brought to him each night at that hour.

It had been a normal evening, Peabody insisted, with Rogell in the best of spirits and apparently in perfect physical condition, and he had left husband and wife together at twelve with no premonition of what was to come, had paused in the library for a nightcap with Marvin, and they were together when Anita called down frantically that John had had a stroke and to call Dr. Evans immediately.

The doctor had arrived within ten minutes and found his patient already dead. He was upstairs with the body when the detectives went up, and had not the slightest hesitancy in positively declaring that death was the normal result of Rogell’s heart condition, and had signed the death certificate to that effect.

Mrs. Blair, the housekeeper, had been in Anita’s boudoir consoling the grief-stricken widow whom they found fetchingly attired in a lacy nightgown and filmy black negligee. Mrs. Blair was also wearing slippers and robe, and told the officers she had retired to her third-floor quarters about eleven as was her custom, after preparing a silver thermos pitcher of hot chocolate milk for Mr. Rogell and leaving it downstairs on a tray on the dining table for Anita to take up to him at midnight… a nightly service which she insisted on performing for him herself every night.

In a highly emotional state and with much sobbing, Anita had related how John had appeared in good spirits when she entered the room with his tray and shooed Peabody out. Her husband was already in pajamas and robe, she told them, and she poured out his hot drink herself and sat with him while he drank it. Then she had gone into his separate bedroom with him (they occupied adjoining suites with a large connecting bath) and there was some indication, in halting testimony, that they might have been preparing to have intercourse when he suddenly groaned and stiffened in his bed, and a moment later his body became rigid and his breathing shallow and fast. It was then she had run to the head of the stairs to shout for the doctor, and when she returned to the bedroom a moment later, she could no longer detect his breathing. Henrietta had then come in from her own suite at the end of the hallway, and angrily berated her for being an unfaithful wife… then gone on to an open accusation of murder.

The officers had also interviewed Charles, who told them he had been in his quarters above the garage reading a magazine until about ten when he had come to the kitchen for a snack and had chatted with Mrs. Blair for a time while she was preparing Mr. Rogell’s hot chocolate milk. He had returned to his apartment and was in bed when he heard the excitement in the big house and realized that something was wrong.

That, in essence, was the contents of the report Petrie and Donovan had made of their investigation. Discounting Henrietta’s almost hysterical accusations, there was nothing whatsoever to indicate that John Rogell had not died a perfectly natural death. But as he discussed the case with the two detectives, after reading their report, Shayne discovered they had not been altogether as wholly satisfied as the report indicated. There was definite agreement between them that it was quite possible Anita’s grief was not as genuine as she tried to make it appear. Little things they had noticed, including a certain change in her manner when she looked at Charles and spoke to him for the first time since she had become a widow. Nothing you could put your finger on, they explained, but you got a feeling of, at least, a sort of relief between the two of them that it was all over.

They pointed out, however, that this did not necessarily mean they were guilty of anything more than possibly having had some sort of affair under the old man’s nose. Certainly, it was nothing on which to base a suspicion of murder.

Also, while trying to interview Marvin Dale in his drunken condition, he had openly admitted his pleasure in Rogell’s death, muttering that things would be different around the house now, and strongly intimating that his sister’s millionaire husband had disapproved of his sponging on her and had practically ordered her to cease providing him with funds.

And, of course, there was Henrietta. But you could see that her nose was completely out of joint and that she deeply resented Anita and would stop at nothing to harm her.

So there you were, the detectives said, and how in hell can you make murder out of any of that?

They had turned in a shorter report on the death of Daffy. Again, they had been sent to the Rogell house after an almost hysterical call from Henrietta insisting that this time someone had tried to murder her. Again, they had found exactly the same group of people present, with Marvin a little more sober and slightly more coherent this time, and all of them somewhat drawn together and somewhat on the defensive, as they related Henrietta’s impassioned harangue shortly before dinner, during which she had accused them all, singly or in unholy conspiracy, of having poisoned her brother. She had warned them flatly that she was going to demand an autopsy on John’s body, and was prepared to take whatever legal measures were necessary to force such action.

Then they had sat down at the dining table for dinner together and Henrietta had been served her special plate of creamed chicken from a chafing dish that had stood on the sideboard for half an hour, the others all sharing a dish of curried shrimp because Henrietta’s allergy to seafood was well-known to all.

None of them at the table, it appeared, had noticed Henrietta when she surreptitiously removed some of her chicken to a saucer and put it down on the floor beside her for Daffy. Indeed, Anita had insisted that she had done no such thing, and Peabody was quietly dubious as to whether she could have done so without being noticed… but anyhow the little dog had had convulsions and died almost at once… and Henrietta insisted she hadn’t eaten any of her chicken.

But the last scrap of it had vanished by the time the officers arrived, and even the chafing dish and Henrietta’s plate and the dog’s saucer had been washed clean.

Sure, that looked suspicious, they both agreed, but you had to blame Mrs. Blair for it because it appeared no one had ordered her to do so, and it was pretty hard to suspect the plump and pleasant housekeeper of murder and attempted murder.

But the swift burial of Daffy was a somewhat different matter. All of the witnesses agreed that Anita had become hysterical after her pet’s death, and called Charles in and ordered him to take Daffy’s dead body away from her sight and bury the bitch at once. Her explanation of this somewhat suspicious action was that she had a deep-rooted phobia about death and corpses and could not stand the sight or thought of them.

But when the detectives pointed out that it would clarify matters and either prove or disprove Henrietta’s contention that her chicken had been poisoned if they could take the dog’s body for analysis, Anita had arrogantly denied the need to disprove Henrietta’s absurd charge, and had flatly ordered Charles not to show the detectives where Daffy was buried.

“So, there you have it,” Petrie summed up the situation with a shrug. “Sure, it looked suspicious but we couldn’t force them to show us the dog’s grave. Maybe we could have taken it into court and got a search warrant, but Will Gentry didn’t think so.”

Shayne nodded thoughtfully and said, “Let’s go back to Rogell’s death. Check your report and read me exactly what Peabody said about his leaving the couple together upstairs.”

Petrie shuffled some typewritten pages clipped together and said, “Let’s see. Here it is.” He cleared his throat and began reading:

“Mr. Rogell and I concluded our business shortly before midnight and were smoking a final cigar when Mrs. Rogell came in from the bathroom, carrying a thermos jug and a cup, and a bottle containing her husband’s heart medicine which I knew he took every night. She was dressed in a negligee, and was very sweet, but wifely and firm, when she insisted it was time for John’s medicine and I would have to go. She put the cup and jug on a bedside table, and measured out his medicine with an eye-dropper into the cup. I said good night to them both and went out while she was pouring hot chocolate into the cup.”

Petrie stopped and looked up. “Want me to go on?”

Shayne said, “No. But I do want to get it straight in my mind about that thermos jug. The way I understand it, Mrs. Blair fixed the chocolate drink in the kitchen as was her custom, and left it on the dining table about eleven o’clock before she retired.”

“That’s the way she told it,” Donovan said. “They all said she did it that way every night, and that it was understood Anita would take it up at midnight and give the old man his daily dose of medicine… and from some other things that was said we got the idea she was maybe gonna give him his daily dose of something else along with it.” He snickered. “Isn’t that right, Jim?”

“Yeh. She’d be the one to do that little thing… just in case the chauffeur didn’t give her all she wanted.” Petrie looked at Shayne, “You’re thinking there might have been something else in his cup of hot milk besides medicine?”

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.”