The Corpse That Never Was

CHAPTER SEVEN

The two men carried their drinks into the living room and sat on the couch out of the way of the two officers, and Shayne grimaced over the mixture in his glass and asked Rourke, “What about Paul Nathan? Did you dig up any dirt?”

“Not exactly. Hell! Let’s be honest. Nothing, really. The only thing is… we don’t have anything that goes back beyond the announcement of his engagement to Elsa Armbruster. He is vaguely described as an insurance executive on the Beach when he met Elsa… and that’s about it. It was a brief engagement and a big society wedding, and they moved into a new home and he went into the Armbruster organization in some minor executive capacity. No rumors. No scandals. They apparently don’t go out a great deal, and hardly ever entertain at home. Mrs. Nathan has remained active in a lot of charitable organizations and fund-raising activities, but her husband has stayed out of the news.”

Shayne swallowed some more rum and creme de menthe and scowled across the room. “I suppose he’ll inherit her estate.”

“I suppose. Estimated at a couple of million at least.”

“Why in hell,” demanded Shayne angrily, “didn’t she just give him the divorce he asked for? It would have been a lot cheaper… even at a quarter of a million.”

“What’s that?”

Shayne related what Eli had told him that morning. “Why hold onto her husband if she was in love with another man? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Haven’t you ever noticed that rich people never do? Not to people like us, Mike. They think differently. They’re conditioned to think differently from childhood. You and I say: What the hell is a quarter of a million? She’d still have one and three-quarters left. More than she can possibly spend in the rest of her life, no matter how she throws it around.

“But they don’t see it that way, Mike. I’ve run into a lot of them in my work over the past twenty years. A buck is a buck, by God! Much more than it is to you or me. Particularly if it’s an inherited buck.”

Shayne muttered, “Yeh. Eli made somewhat the same point this morning. He emphasized that Elsa was an Armbruster. She had a ‘feeling for property,’ he explained to me. She wasn’t about to give up a husband she had bought with her own money. All right. I can understand that under normal circumstances. If she enjoyed being married to the guy. But she evidently didn’t. Here she was, carrying on a passionate love affair with a married man that was building up to suicide. I can’t see even a woman with a strong ‘feeling for property’ continuing to cling to her husband under those circumstances.”

“Didn’t Lambert say in his note that his wife’s religion stood in the way of a divorce?”

“Sure. But once again… enough money can take care of that. Divorce evidence has been framed before… for a lousy thousand bucks or less.”

Timothy Rourke drained his bourbon highball and sighed. “You always run into these unanswerable questions in suicides. There’s never a logical answer, Mike. If they were logical people they wouldn’t do it. Q.E.D.”

Shayne said, “Yeh, I know,” still sounding unconvinced, and looked up with eyebrows raised questioningly as the two officers reentered the room from the bedroom. Garroway carried a bundle of clothing which he put down on the rug, and said, “I’ll take this suit he was wearing into the lab where I can do a thorough job. But I don’t expect to get anything, Shayne. This is all new, department store stuff. Been worn once and never washed. And another thing: I don’t think that bed linen has been disturbed for weeks… since it was made up fresh when he moved in. Certainly not for the purpose that couple were supposed to be using this apartment for. You know, there are always stains and indications you can test for.”

“Maybe they did their romping on top of the bedspread,” Rourke suggested.

“Maybe.” Garroway was a deadly serious young man. “But I ran tests on that, too, without getting anything.”

“How about you, Sarge?” Shayne asked the fingerprint man.

“I got some prints,” he said. “I can’t be positive until I run comparisons with the men who were up here last night, but I have a strong hunch they’ll all check out. One thing I can tell you: I didn’t find any of the woman’s prints to indicate she’d spent any time here. A few faint smudges a week or so old that might or might not be. Only clear prints of hers were on a little plastic slipper bag I found on the shelf in the closet.”

“A container for those red slippers on the floor?”

“They fit into it all right. The nightgown and peignoir have been worn by the way.”

“What about Lambert’s glasses?” Shayne asked suddenly. “He always wore blue tinted ones. I haven’t seen a pair around.”

“They’re at the lab,” Garroway told him. “We got them from on top the dresser in the bedroom last night. Took them in to see if they could be traced.”

“Any luck?”

“No. They aren’t prescription lenses. Could be picked up anywhere.”

“And I suppose you took the shotgun in?”

“Yes. Standard single-shot, twelve gauge. Hasn’t been used a great deal, but it’s ten or twelve years old. No chance to trace it either.”

“That damned gun bothers me,” muttered Shayne. “What in the name of God was it doing here so conveniently? It isn’t exactly the sort of thing a man brings along with him to keep a hot date.”

“But the suicide was planned for last night,” argued Rourke. “I understand the suicide note said so.”

“It also said they’d planned to go out together with cyanide,” Shayne told him caustically. “He lost his nerve and spilled his drink, and had to do the job with the gun. He hadn’t planned that. So what was the gun doing here?”

“That’s another one of those questions for which there is no logical answer,” Rourke told him pleasantly. He stood up and yawned. “Are we all through here?”

“Yeh.” Shayne looked at the men. “When can I have a report?”

“Couple of hours.”

“Call my office,” Shayne directed. “Or my secretary, Lucy Hamilton, if the office doesn’t answer.” He gave them Lucy’s number and got up also, leaving half his drink still in the glass.

Rourke waited and watched him as he went into the bedroom. The reporter grinned when he came back thrusting a small plastic container with the slippers into one side pocket, and ramming the flimsy red nightgown set into the other. “A present for Lucy?” he asked with a leer.

Shayne said coldly, “I’m taking these home where they belong.”

“For the bereaved husband? I’m sure he’ll love to have them as souvenirs.”

Shayne shrugged; they went out together and he snapped the padlock on the outside of the door. “Let’s walk down a flight,” he suggested. “See if Lucy’s back from the office. I could use a decent drink to wash the taste of that stuff out of my mouth.”

They walked down a flight, but a knock on Lucy’s door indicated that she hadn’t returned. They went down to the ground floor where Rourke announced that he was late keeping a date for a free lunch, and drove off hastily.

Shayne drove back to a small restaurant on Eighth Street just off the boulevard where a double cognac washed the cloying taste from his mouth, and he ate a hasty steak sandwich.

His next stop, he decided, should be at the office of Harry Brandt, a nationally known expert on handwriting and the validation of questioned documents. Harry’s office was only three blocks away, and after he left the handwriting samples with him, a trip across the bay to Miami Beach and an interview with Paul Nathan was indicated.

And that would about wind it up, Shayne told himself sourly. Thus far he hadn’t accomplished a damned thing to earn Eli Armbruster’s ten grand retainer. It was an easy way to pick up a hunk of cash, but Shayne didn’t like to earn his money so easily. There was still Nathan’s alibi to be checked, he reminded himself. Not that he expected to prove anything by it because there wasn’t yet a single circumstance that pointed the finger of suspicion at the husband, but it was one more thing to do before he made his final report to his client.

Harry Brandt had the ground floor of an old Stucco residence on Fifth Street near the bay where he kept bachelor quarters and did the work which found its way to him from all over the country.

He was a pleasant-faced tweedy man in his forties, and he took a foul-smelling pipe from his mouth to greet the redhead with a smile at his front door. “Come in, Mike,” he urged. “I see by the paper that you were on the spot again last night. Anything in it for me?”

He led the way down the hall to a pleasant, masculinely-appointed sitting room and waved Shayne to a comfortable chair.

“A very simple thing, but I have to check it out to satisfy a client.” Shayne dug into his pockets and extracted the two suicide notes and the letter that had been found in Elsa’s handbag. He pushed them over to Brandt, together with the rental agreement signed by Lambert.

“I guess there’s no doubt that those first three were written by the same man. I don’t think there’s much doubt that this is also his signature… but that’s the thing I have to know.”

Harry Brandt glanced through the notes and letter alertly. He said, “The man’s left-handed, of course. The second note shows more haste and strain, which is natural, if I understand the circumstances, but there’s enough difference that I’ll have to make a few tests to be positive the same person wrote them both. This signature…” He studied the name at the bottom of the agreement carefully, glanced aside to compare it with the other two “Robert Lambert’s.”

“Off-hand, I’d say yes, Mike. You want more than that?”

“I need a positive yes or no. And my client can afford to pay for it.”

“Nice to have clients like that these days,” Brandt told him with a twinkle in his eye. “Okay. I’ll give it the works. You just want an opinion… not blow-ups to go into court with?”

“I don’t think it’ll reach court, Harry. Certainly not if your answer is in the affirmative. Can I call you?”

“Around four.”

Shayne thanked him and went out to his car. He had memorized the Miami Beach address from the telephone book in Lambert’s apartment, and it was a pleasant thirty-minute drive to a modest, two-story, ocean-front house set in the middle of beautifully landscaped grounds.

The glistening white driveway of crushed coral rock led past the house to a triple garage at the rear, and also curved past the colonnaded front under a porte-cochere to a circular turn-around.

There were no other cars in view when Shayne got out and left his car under the porte-cochere. He went up stone steps and rang the doorbell, and the door was opened by a trim, colored maid in a dark blue uniform. She had nice, clean-cut features and intelligent eyes, and she shook her head gravely when Shayne asked, “Is Mr. Nathan at home?”

“Not right this minute, he isn’t. I expect him back any time.” She had a soft, melodic voice and she formed her words carefully without too much of a southern slur.

Shayne said, “Perhaps you could answer a few questions. I’m a detective and I have to check on a few things.”

“Yes, sir. I reckon I can try. Mr. Nathan, he said the police might come around and I was to tell them whatever they asked. He went to the burial parlor and I expect he stopped out to have lunch. Won’t you come in, sir?”

Shayne followed her down a wide central hall to double doors that opened onto a square library. She stood aside for him to enter, and followed him inside hesitantly. He sat in a leather chair and smiled at her and said, “Why don’t you sit down, too? Tell me your name first.”

“Thank you, sir.” She sat warily on the extreme edge of a chair across from him. “Alyce Brown, sir.”

“Were you surprised by what happened last night, Alyce?”

“Yes sir. Real shocked. I just can’t believe it’s true. Not even yet, I can’t.”

“Didn’t you suspect that Mrs. Nathan was… having an affair with another man?”

“No, sir. She was always a real lady.”

“You never heard anything peculiar. Like… well, phone calls from a strange man?”

“No, sir.”

“How long have you worked here, Alyce?”

“Most a year now. Ever since they were married and moved in this house.”

“What other staff is there?”

“Just the cook. She’s my aunt. The two of us do everything needed.”

“How did Mr. and Mrs. Nathan get along?”

“Like most married folks, I guess.”

“No quarrels or fights?”

“No, sir. No more than most married folks, I guess.”

“Did you ever hear them discuss a divorce… anything like that?”

“No, sir. They wouldn’t… not in front of a servant.”

“Do you and your aunt sleep in?”

“Yes, sir. Except on Friday nights. That’s our day off. Friday noon to Saturday noon. Of course, we both came early this morning when we heard about the terrible thing that happened last night.”

“But you’re both always off on Friday nights?”

“Yes, sir. Mrs. Nathan wanted it that way. It was… well, like Mr. Nathan’s night off, too. He never came home for dinner on Friday nights.”

“Has this been going on ever since they were married?”

“Yes, sir. Mrs. Nathan explained how it was to us when she first set our night off on Friday. How that she thought a husband should have one night off to himself every week away from his home and his wife, just like a servant should. And that’s the way they did.”

“Then you’d say that Mrs. Nathan was generally alone in the house on Friday nights?”

“Either that, or she’d go out some place by her own self.”

Shayne settled back and got out a cigarette. Alyce arose swiftly and got a table lighter from beside her and held the flame for him. Shayne waited until she had reseated herself before reaching into the two side pockets of his coat and bringing out the slippers in their plastic container and the red nightgown set.

He handed the slippers to Alyce and shook the nightgown and peignoir out from extended fingertips.

“Do you recognize these?”

Alyce was turning the tiny slippers over and over in her hands. She looked up and Shayne caught a glint of tears in her soft brown eyes. “They… just like some Mrs. Nathan had.”

“When did you last see hers?”

“I… just couldn’t say. Hanging up in her closet… she lay them out when she wanted me to launder them.”

Shayne got to his feet. He said, “Let’s go to her room and see if hers are there.”

She nodded with downcast eyes and got up carrying the slippers. She held out her hand for the two flimsy garments as though she felt it was not quite proper for a man to be handling them, and Shayne followed her out of the library to a wide stairway leading to the second floor. It was very still inside the house as they climbed the carpeted stairway.

At the top, Alyce led the way to the front where she entered a pleasant, sunny sitting room with doors opening out on both sides of it. There was a cretonne-covered sofa and two rocking chairs near the wide window at the far end of the room; at the left of the entrance door was a gleaming rosewood desk with a matching chair in front of it.

Alyce motioned to the door on the right and said, “That is Mr. Nathan’s room.” She turned to open the door on the left and said, “I’ll go see,” closing the door behind her as though she deemed it improper for a strange man to see the interior of her dead mistress’s bedroom.

Shayne strolled across toward the window and stubbed his cigarette out in an ashtray on the small table between the two rocking chairs.

Alyce came back through the bedroom door and her features were tight and strained, her lips were trembling. She said brokenly. “It must be so then, isn’t it? I didn’t… I just couldn’t… I kept thinking… I’m sorry, sir.” She tried to draw herself up stiffly, avoiding Shayne’s gaze.

He said quietly. “Then they are hers, Alyce?”

“Yes, sir. Her slippers and that same set aren’t there. You’ll have to excuse me, sir, but… it just came to me, like…”

Shayne said, “It’s all right. We had to be sure. You’ve been very helpful.” He moved to her and touched her arm gently. “Who uses this desk, Alyce?”

“That one? Mrs. Nathan. That’s where she makes out the marketing lists, does the household accounts and writes out checks to pay bills.”

Shayne said, “She did all that? Not Mr. Nathan?”

“She always said it was the duty of a lady to take care of household things.”

Besides, Shayne couldn’t help thinking to himself, it was her money she was spending. She would be one to keep a firm grip on expenditures.

He turned to the desk and pulled out the wide center drawer. A large flat checkbook lay on top of other neatly arranged papers, the kind that has three checks to the page.

He lifted it out and opened it on the desk to the final entry she had made before her death.

It was the top check on that page, dated four days previously and the stub was neatly made out to “cash,” $100.00. The balance in the account after that check was deducted was $2,962.25. Above the line for the signature on the checks themselves was the printed name, “Elsa Armbruster.” So, she hadn’t opened a joint account with her husband after they were married. Shayne wondered if he had a personal account of his own, and if so, what his balance was.

He turned the stubs backward slowly, glancing down at the three separate notations on each sheet of stubs. Elsa had been a methodical account-keeper. Each stub was dated, the payee and amount noted clearly, and the purpose of each check meticulously entered.

The entries seemed ordinary enough; dry cleaner, a florist, a doctor bill, a $50 donation to a charity. She didn’t write a great many small checks. They were all for fair-sized sums, indicating that she waited for bills to be rendered monthly.

He stopped on the third page back, his eyes glinting with excitement. The stub was dated almost exactly one month previously. The amount was $250, payable to “Max Wentworth.” Beneath the name, the single word “Retainer” appeared.

Shayne knew quite a bit about Max Wentworth, none of it very good. He straightened up with the checkbook open in front of him, a questioning scowl on his face, when he heard a car coming up the drive fast, and slow with a protesting screech of brakes beneath the porte-cochere beside his own car.

Behind him, Alyce said hurriedly, “That will be Mr. Nathan now. Maybe I’d best go down…”

Shayne said, “I’ll go with you,” and followed her, leaving the checkbook open on the rosewood desk behind him.