Murder by Proxy

17

When Michael Shayne returned to his office from lunch the next afternoon, Lucy Hamilton sat demurely typing at her desk and did not glance up as he entered.

He went past her into his private office, and stopped in surprise at sight of a large, square cardboard box sitting in the center of his desk.

Lucy stopped typing and got up and silently followed him into his office. She found him leaning over the desk staring in perplexity at the label on the box which was addressed to him.

Standing in the doorway, she said, “I couldn’t hear any ticking inside so I thought it was all right. But if you’re going to start ordering cases of liquor delivered here to the office, Mr. Shayne, I think you’d do better to close this place up and move back into your hotel.”

“I didn’t order a case of liquor, Lucy. How did this get here?”

“Delivered by messenger,” she told him sweetly. “It’s several months until Christmas, but they do keep moving the season up, don’t they?”

“I don’t know anything about it,” he declared, crossly. He moved around his desk, stopped with a frown and leaned over to remove a small, square envelope affixed to the side of the box with scotch tape. He opened it and took out a card and read aloud in a wondering voice: “With the compliments of Mr. and Mrs. John J. Benjamin.” He chuckled and added, “The ‘and Mrs.’ is in parentheses, and I’ll bet this would be a surprise to her if she saw it.”

“Who is John J. Benjamin?”

“He is an upright gentleman from Detroit who, one time in an otherwise blameless life, had the temerity to look into the melting eyes of a female whom he found more beautiful than his lawfully wedded spouse… that’s who John J. Benjamin is,” Shayne told her blithely. “Let’s open this here gift offering… and what’ll you bet it’s not domestic sherry?”

He took hold of a corner of the stapled cardboard top in strong fingers and ripped it back to display neat rows of bottles, each one carefully encased in white tissue paper. He lifted one out and stripped the paper off, and his bantering tone changed to one of pure incredulity and pleasure.

“Cordon Bleu, Lucy. A whole damn dozen of them. Why, the sweet, little guy. I’ll be double-damned. How did he know that I’d positively drool over such a gift?”

“He can probably read,” she suggested. “Brett Halliday has mentioned your taste in cognacs in several of his books.”

“Yeh, but I never thought Benjamin was the kind of guy… you never can tell… hell! let’s sample it.” He began opening the bottle he held in his hand.

“Michael! You just came back from lunch, where I’ll bet you had half a dozen drinks.”

“Sure, but not Cordon Bleu,” he agreed blandly. “You know what? We’re going to have to invest in some glasses to keep in the office for this. It’s sacrilege to drink it out of paper cups.”

“I certainly hope you won’t commit sacrilege, Michael,” she said sweetly. “I’ll go shopping for some glasses tomorrow morning…”

“It’s not all that sacrilegious.” He grinned at her infectiously as he set the open bottle down on the desk and turned to the water cooler to nest two paper cups together.

Filling the inner one reverently from the bottle, he held it aloft and murmured, “I thank you, Mrs. Benjamin.” He sank into the swivel chair behind his desk and said, severely, “So, to work. Get me Bob Merrill at the Beachhaven, Lucy.”

She said, “Yes, Mr. Shayne,” and left the room. Shayne peered after her dolefully. Was he drinking too much these days? He didn’t think so. In fact, he very probably was drinking too little. He hadn’t felt up to par for weeks. He kept having these recurrent periods… The buzzer sounded on his desk and he lifted his telephone and Lucy’s voice said, “I have Mr. Merrill, Michael.”

He said, “Bob?”

The chief security officer of the Beachhaven Hotel said cautiously, “Yeh, Mike?”

“Remember I asked you to run a close check on that desk clerk and bellboy of yours? What results?”

“I thought you were off this Harris case, Mike?”

Shayne chuckled and sampled some more Cordon Bleu. “Petey Painter thinks so, too. I’m not, Bob. Did anything show up?”

“Nothing.” Robert Merrill’s voice was coldly superior. “They’re both clean as a whistle. We haven’t turned up anything to indicate that Mrs. Harris came back here alive that night.”

Shayne said, “All right, Bob. Lower your hackles. This is Mike Shayne, remember?” He broke the connection and happily drank the rest of the Cordon Bleu from the inner paper cup.

Timothy Rourke breezed in to his office while he sat there, gazing at the empty cup. He came to a halt and thrust both hands deep into the patch pockets of his shabby jacket and whistled shrilly. “Lucy said you were hanging one on. She didn’t mention the fact that you were working your way through a case.”

Shayne waved his hand grandly toward the cardboard box on his desk. “Little token of esteem from a client. Guy’s got a hell of a taste in liquor, it seems. Try a bottle.”

“I’m on the edge of a deadline,” Rourke told him severely. “Last night, you told me to check before we went to press today, to see if I could print any of that stuff from Gifford in New York. So, I’m checking.”

Shayne very carefully poured more cognac into the nested cups. “The answer is no.” He peered at Rourke owlishly. “Gifford hasn’t called back. Situation remains unchanged. Ultimate evaluations are becoming momentarily clearer. Have a drink, Tim.”

Rourke said, “Later,” sitting down and looking at his old friend happily. “I remember a couple of times in the past when ultimate evaluations became clearer, Mike. Are you onto something this time?”

Michael Shayne made a sweeping gesture with his right hand. “We’re on the edge of a breakthrough, Timothy.” He drank more cognac.

His desk buzzer sounded. He lifted his phone and Lucy said, “Mr. Gifford on the wire from New York.”

He said, “Hello, Jim,” and Jim Gifford said, “I thought I might as well check in, Mike. I’ve been working.”

“So?”

“I talked with Ruth Collins’ room-mate for one thing. I don’t think she’s as surprised as she pretends to be that Ruth didn’t turn up at the Catskill hotel. I think she had a hunch she planned some other gambit for her vacation, but nothing definite. She didn’t know about an affair between Ruth and her boss, but I’m pretty sure she sensed it. In other words, take this for what it’s worth, Mike, I’d say that Ruth Collins and Harris had planned to spend most of these two weeks together while his wife was on vacation in Florida.”

“All right.” Shayne sounded and acted completely sober. “I’ve got that. You’ve been snooping around the office, Jim?”

“I have that. And there is plenty of low-down here on the Harris-Collins affair. Nothing overt, but… it was pretty generally accepted. What’s more important, everything I can find out about Herbert Harris puts him on the pretty fine edge financially. Nothing desperate, but… he’s a few weeks late paying his bills. He has two thousand a month drawing account from the business, and stays drawn in advance most of the time. Nothing really serious, but… I gather a hundred thousand insurance from his wife’s death wouldn’t be amiss.”

“Despite all that,” grated Shayne, “do you maintain that he could not possibly have done the job on her in Florida last Monday or Tuesday?”

“When I began to get this other stuff, I rechecked, Mike. He just couldn’t have. I can place him here… I’ll put it all in my report,” Gifford broke off. “No use running up a long distance bill. Take it from me, Harris was not in Miami murdering his wife last Monday or Tuesday.”

Shayne said, “All right, Jim. Send me a detailed report and a bill, and drop it.” He started to hang up, but was interrupted by Gifford.

“There’s one more very small thing. It’s so tenuous that I normally wouldn’t include it in a report… but you can have it for what it’s worth, Mike. There’s a faint suggestion, somehow, that his secretary, Ruth Collins, might have been holding something over his head. It comes mostly, I think, from those who knew his wife and couldn’t understand how he could even look at another gal. In order to justify it, I think, they suspect Ruth has some hold on him… though nobody is sure what it is. Now, I will hang up.” And he did.

Shayne dropped his phone onto its prongs and cheerfully emptied his paper cup. “We’re getting closer to the breaking point all the time. It’s already later, pal. Have a drink of this stuff and we’ll ratiocinate together.”

“I will if there’s nothing to add to my story as written.”

“Nothing to add at this time, Tim. The plot is thickening in New York… that’s all. Lucy!” he called out commandingly through the open door into the outer office.

She came to the doorway and stopped, shaking her head in mock despair when she saw Timothy Rourke filling a paper cup from the bottle in front of Shayne.

“Come on in and join the party,” Shayne ordered her. “We’re solving a murder case and I need the feminine point of view. And not an entirely sober point of view either.” He pointed a finger at her sternly. “Sobriety doesn’t solve murder cases. Not tough ones like this. We need inspiration. Got twelve whole bottles of the stuff, so drink some of it.”

She said, “You’re already tight as a tick,” but she smiled and got herself a paper cup and held it while he poured it half full.

He paid no attention to her remark, but said, “Now then. Let’s get our basic facts straight in our minds. Let’s go back to the Harris’ in New York. He’s a partner in a small brokerage firm drawing two grand a month and spending it. He’s married to a luscious blonde with a hundred-thousand-dollar insurance policy on her life, and he’s playing around on the side with his secretary, who’s also a blonde, but maybe not quite so luscious. But a hundred grand might make up for that difference.

“All right. So he insists his wife come to Florida alone for two weeks coincident with his secretary’s vacation from the office. Question number one: Did his wife know about secretary’s vacation? Did she care?”

He paused and Lucy promptly said, “No, to the first question. Sure, she would have cared. Any wife would.”

Shayne said, “Ah,” and filled his nested cups again. “At this point the meeting should consider the strange conduct of Mrs. Harris the moment she arrives in Miami. As soon as she reaches the hotel, she makes a point of telling every man she contacts that she is alone in town and more-or-less available. Let’s see, there were…” He ticked them off on his fingers, “The desk clerk, bellboy, bartender, Gene Blake, Benjamin. That last name is strictly off the record, Tim. Five of them altogether in the course of her first evening in town. What does that add up to, Lucy?” He took Ellen’s picture from his pocket and laid it on his desk. “Look at her,” he urged. “And you saw and talked to Harris here on Saturday morning. Here’s where we need an inspiration. Let’s all have a drink.”

He and Tim drank while Lucy knit her brows over the picture.

“Keep in mind, too, Lucy,” Shayne sounded completely sober suddenly, “that everything Gifford found out in New York paints the same picture of Ellen Harris that we got from her husband. A loving and loyal wife. Even back in her modeling days, before her marriage, she had a reputation for chastity. This is what has been bothering me from the beginning. How can a woman change so suddenly and blatantly?

“She can’t,” he told them flatly. “It just isn’t in the books. So, what is the answer? I give you two possibilities. Either it wasn’t Mrs. Harris who flew to Miami Monday afternoon… or she drew attention to herself intentionally and with malice aforethought… for reasons which are at present unknown to us.”

He calmly sipped cognac and beamed at Rourke as the reporter objected. “But we know it was Mrs. Harris, Mike. A dozen people identified that picture. And the fingerprint report was positive.”

Shayne nodded agreeably. “We all know that fingerprints don’t lie and the New York police are infallible. All right, we’ll have to accept the fact that the dead woman is Mrs. Harris. We’ll come back to that later. If she was going around drawing attention to herself, giving men the impression that she could be had easily, why? What possible reason could she have had?” Neither of them answered him. He took a sip of cognac and declared, “That’s the crux of the problem. Let’s crack the crux. Come on, Tim. You need more inspiration. Hell’s bells, man, you and I have cracked more difficult crux’s than this in the past.” He leaned forward and poured fine old cognac into Rourke’s cup. “You, too, angel?”

Lucy put her hand over her cup and shook her head absently. “One answer is that she was deliberately creating this image of herself, knowing that she was going to be away from her hotel room for several days and fixing it so too much fuss wouldn’t be made about it. I’m not saying it very well, I’m afraid. But she would know the hotel would check around, if her room remained vacant, and, if they got reports from the hotel clerk and bellboy and bartender indicating that she was the sort of woman who probably would, be sleeping around, then they’d be inclined to sit back and let matters take their course.”

“Which is exactly what happened,” Shayne pointed out, happily. “Go to the head of the class, Lucy. Bob Merrill did get those reports about her, and since her room was on a credit card and her luggage still there, he did nothing about reporting her. So now we have a logical reason for the way she acted. And that brings us to another crux. Why did she plan to be away from her hotel for several days? Disregarding the obvious reason which doesn’t seem in character… what other reason could she have?”

Again, he received no answer. He sighed deeply and took another drink.

“Let’s not at this point disregard a strange coincidence. I correct myself. Seeming coincidence. I don’t believe in coincidences. Not in murder cases. I refer to the fact that Ruth Collins disappeared from New York on Monday… the same day that Mrs. Harris flew to Miami and checked into the Beachhaven. She told her room-mate she was going to the Catskills on Monday to stay for two weeks, and she ostensibly did so. But she had cancelled her reservation the Friday before, and didn’t turn up. So far as we know, no one has seen her since. Where did she go? Where is she now?”

Timothy Rourke sat erect excitedly. “Didn’t you tell me that Gifford mentioned a strong resemblance between her and Mrs. Harris? Both blondes and beautiful and well-stacked?”

Shayne nodded with a grin. “I wondered when you were going to think about that.”

“But, hell, it’s impossible,” Rourke objected, slumping back and taking a sip of cognac. “Too many people definitely identified this picture. If there was that close a resemblance, Gifford would have told you.”

Shayne nodded. “Yeh. I don’t think they were identical twins or anything like that. I still wonder where Ruth Collins has disappeared to.”

Lucy Hamilton hesitated and then murmured, “If all those people could be mistaken about the picture… but, no.” She shook her head decisively. “We know the dead woman is Mrs. Harris.”

“We keep coming back to that,” agreed Shayne. “And that brings us to another major question. Why was she beaten so as to be unidentifiable after she was shot? Everyone knows about fingerprints these days. If you really want to render a body unidentifiable, you have to cut off or mutilate the fingers.”

“A stupid murderer might not realize this,” Rourke suggested. “If he knew that her fingerprints weren’t on record, he might think there’d be no way of checking… without realizing how simple it would be for police to get comparison prints from the apartment in New York.”

“Sorry, Tim. I don’t think Herbert Harris is stupid. In fact, I’m beginning to believe he came awful damn close to committing a perfect crime.”

“You think he did it?”

“His wife is dead,” Shayne said flatly. “He stands to collect a hundred thousand dollars from an insurance policy. He isn’t too solvent, and he has another woman on the string. That’s just too damned many coincidences for me to stomach. Yes. I think Herbert Harris is our boy. And, by God, I’m beginning to get a faint glimmering of how he pulled it off.”

“How?” Lucy and Rourke spoke the word simultaneously. Shayne emptied his cup of cognac, marshaling his thoughts. He spoke very slowly, as though testing each word as he went along.

“Let’s suppose Mrs. Harris didn’t get on that plane at all in New York Monday afternoon. Suppose she was already dead in the New York apartment when the plane took off with Ruth Collins aboard, using Mrs. Harris’ ticket, carrying her luggage and handbag complete with credit card, and even wearing her rather distinctive wedding ring.

“When Harris gets back from the airport, after seeing Ruth off, it would be about time for him to put her in the trunk of his automobile, before rigor mortis set in. Ruth would make his alibi perfect. She plans to disappear Monday night, and he takes great care in New York to appear in the right places at the right times to make it impossible for him to have been in Miami either of those two crucial nights… as Gifford reported. He’s a partner in the brokerage firm, so it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to arrange the trip on Thursday night to Charleston. And it would appear perfectly natural for him to decide on the spur of the moment to drive on to Miami to spend the weekend with his wife.

“Wait a minute, Tim.” Shayne raised a big hand to still the reporter. “I know what you’re going to say, but let me think this out my own way. Ruth Collins had disappeared from the Beachhaven Monday night in a manner that makes two things pretty certain. One is, that no one will seriously look for her until Harris turns up and raises the alarm Saturday morning. The other is that when the body is found in the rented car, she has cleverly laid several false trails that Monday evening, and the police won’t really be surprised that she got herself murdered.

“Safest place to leave the rented car for a few days is in the hotel parking lot with a guest sticker on it. So we have Harris driving in from Charleston early Saturday morning, meeting his secretary with the convertible at a prearranged spot and transferring his wife’s body from his car to the convertible. She drives it back to the hotel lot and parks it again, and then goes back to wherever she’s been in hiding since Monday night. So, now we know why the face was beaten. To keep people who had seen Ruth Collins from failing to recognize the corpse. Harris knew damned well that fingerprints would prove the dead woman his wife. He had to have that in order to collect the insurance. How’s that for inspiration?” He beamed at them happily and refilled his cup, splashing cognac on his desk in the process.

“It’s a hell of an inspiration,” Rourke said sourly.

“Everything fits,” Shayne insisted. “Remember, there wasn’t any blood in the trunk of the convertible. And remember that the people at the hotel, who might get a look at the body, had only seen the supposed Mrs. Harris briefly a few days before. Gifford describes Ruth Collins as similar in coloring and size, so they would accept the dead body as the woman they had seen.”

“But the picture, Mike.” Rourke stabbed his finger at it angrily. “You promised you wouldn’t pull identical twins out of the hat.”

“He’s right, Michael,” Lucy agreed gravely. “For a minute I thought you almost had it. And there’s the red dress, too. It was identified as the one she wore out of the Beachhaven.”

“How can you identify a particular dress?” scoffed Shayne. “In fact, that’s another point in favor of my theory. In planning this whole thing, all Harris had to do was to order a duplicate of the red dress from the shop where she bought it, and have it in readiness to dress the corpse in before putting her in his car. Damn it, Tim! Remember you told me the M.E. said the shot fired into her heart had not penetrated the dress, and you suggested it could have been pulled aside to let the bullet enter. Sure, I suppose it could have been that way. But it’s a hell of a lot more likely that she was wearing something else when she was shot, and the red dress slipped onto her afterward.”

“There’s still the indisputable evidence of the picture. Both this one and the other pose Painter has got.”

“Not very much evidence is really indisputable, Tim. It’s just come clear to me, goddamn it!” He pounded the desk happily. “Your mention of Painter’s picture broke it through to me. Sure. Harris handed out two snapshots of his wife which he just happened to have in his wallet. But, what do we actually know about those pictures? Only that Harris said they were of his wife. Suppose they’re pictures of Ruth Collins instead? Now, by God, ultimate evaluations are perfectly clear.” He exultantly poured his cup full of cognac and drank half of it off with a triumphant flourish.

“Wait a minute, now.” Dawning comprehension was beginning to replace the stubborn disbelief on Rourke’s face. “By God, Mike. By God, it would work.”

Lucy was nodding too, and her face was rapt as she held out her cup. “Let me have one more drink and I think I’ll understand exactly what you’re talking about.”

Shayne poured her cup full. Timothy Rourke got to his feet slowly, his eyes glittering with happy excitement. “Harris is taking off for New York this afternoon. He told me he planned to drive straight through with maybe a stop-off for a few hours to sleep. His wife was cremated this morning. If we call Painter, it may not be too late to grab him.”

“On what grounds?”

“Well, hell. You just outlined the whole thing.”

“In theory, Timothy. What do you think Painter would say about one of Mike Shayne’s drunken theories? No, let Harris take off. He’s not going to disappear. He’s a very contented and happy man right now. Everything has gone off without a hitch as he planned. His wife’s body is cremated, and there’s a hundred grand check to be collected from the insurance company. We need a picture of Ellen Harris that we know is a picture of her. Get Tim Gifford on the phone, angel.”

Lucy went in to her desk to put the call through. Rourke looked at his watch, pacing the floor excitedly. “It’s too late to hit today’s edition.”

“Save it for tomorrow, and you’ll have the whole story with a picture of Ellen Harris to prove it.”

Shayne’s buzzer sounded and he lifted his phone. “Jim? One more small chore and we’re going to hang a murder rap on Herbert Harris.”

“But I’ve told you, Mike…”

“Forget everything you’ve told me. Just do this one thing. Get me a recent picture of Ellen Harris pronto and send it airmail special delivery. There should be plenty around, with her being an ex-model.”

“Sure. They showed me a batch at the agency where she used to work.”

“Get one of Ruth Collins, too, if you can. Be damn sure to mark each one of them carefully, which is which. But if you can’t get Collins in time, see that one of Mrs. Harris gets on a plane tonight. I’ll be waiting for it in my office tomorrow morning.”

Gifford said, “Will do,” and hung up. Shayne reached for the half-emptied bottle of Cordon Bleu and drank from the neck of it.