Shayne. I’ll take that call.”
Shayne was saying, “Browne speaking.”
The operator said, “We have a call for you from New York, Mr. Browne. Go ahead, please.”
A gruff voice said, “Browne? Turnbull speaking.”
“I’ve been waiting for your call.”
“Yes. My girl told me you haven’t received my report on the Morrison affair. I don’t understand-”
“Skip it,” said Shayne impatiently. “I need the salient points fast. Can you give them to me?”
“I haven’t the newspaper clippings, of course. They were mailed to you. However, I have my notations here. Uh-Mrs. Morrison died in a hit-run accident on January 20, 1943. She was forty-two, mother of a twelve-year-old son and wife of Victor Morrison who was a wealthy broker. The accident occurred at night with only one witness and the driver was never apprehended.
“There were a couple of curious angles. At eight o’clock her maid said she received a call from some woman. She heard Mrs. Morrison agree to meet her at nine o’clock sharp, and when she hung up she appeared nervous and worried. She left the house at eight-forty without telling the maid where she was going, and she was struck at an intersection about fifteen blocks away at exactly nine o’clock-having walked there to keep her appointment, apparently.
“The hit-run car was a big black limousine, and according to the testimony of the witness was parked less than a block away just prior to the accident and was traveling at high speed when it struck Mrs. Morrison.”
“Intentional?” Shayne asked.
“I said there were some curious angles. Mr. Morrison owned such a limousine and had driven it to his club earlier that evening. The inquiry was naturally discreet, but there was no one to swear he was at the club at nine o’clock. However, he was there when the police called a little later, and no proof he had been away.”
“Did the police suspect him?”
“I talked to the officer who had charge of the investigation and he recalled it vividly. This is strictly off the record, but he assured me that if they could have turned up a shred of a motive he would have arrested Morrison on a charge of murder. But there was no motive. No money involved, and all the evidence pointed to a happy marriage.
“About nine months after his wife’s death, Morrison quietly married Estelle Davoe in Connecticut. She had once been his private secretary but had resigned in December. A thorough investigation at the time of the marriage failed to turn up the slightest indication that they had had an affair before his wife’s death.
“That’s the complete sketch, Browne. I’m sure you’ll receive-”
“Thanks,” Shayne said. “That’s all I need right now. Add this call to your bill.”
He hung up and said to Painter, “Come on. You’re about to solve a couple of murders in spite of yourself.”
Victor Morrison and Chief Gentry were seated side by side. Shayne moved in and stood between the two chairs, slightly in front of the two men.
He said, “This is in your back yard, after all, Will. If Morrison was out in his boat only half an hour this afternoon, Browne must have been killed on your side of the bay. You can hold him on that, though I’ve a hunch New York will put in a prior claim once those letters to his ex-secretary are made public.”
Chapter Twenty-Two: MURDER WILL OUT
“What sort of damnable trick is this?” demanded Morrison.
Shayne ignored him. He went on to Gentry, “In fact I’m pretty sure Browne was killed on the mainland before he was dumped into the boat. He wasn’t dumb enough to go calmly for a boat ride with the man he planned to blackmail.”
“But Browne’s body was found on this side of the bay,” Painter objected. “If Mr. Morrison can prove he was out only half an hour he couldn’t possibly have brought the body over here and dumped it.”
“I recovered the body about five-thirty,” Shayne reminded him. “There was a strong easterly wind blowing. Strong enough to float a body from the middle of the bay to the place where it was found.”
He turned to Estelle Morrison and said, “Your big mistake was turning those letters of yours over to Browne to plant on Mrs. Hudson as divorce evidence. You should have known Browne would figure they’d actually been written to you and would look for more blackmail evidence.”
Estelle Morrison was slumped in her chair. Sheer fright contorted her face into ugliness. “I told him they had been written to Christine. I told him she’d returned them to Victor when she married Hudson. I intercepted them-”
“Estelle!” Morrison’s voice rang out harshly. He stood up and glared across the room at her, then sank wearily back into his chair. “I admit I wrote those notes to Christine. I was frantic at the thought of losing her when she told me she was going to marry Hudson. I knew Estelle was cheating on me, but she was too infernally clever in New York to be caught. By establishing residence here and taking advantage of Florida’s divorce laws I felt sure I could divorce her, and that’s why I begged Christine to wait.
“I was a fool,” he added with ponderous dignity, “but I am not a murderer.”
“It won’t work, Morrison,” said Shayne, turning cold gray eyes back to the financier. “There are scientific tests that will prove conclusively that those letters were written three years ago instead of two months. I’m surprised you didn’t get some such report from your handwriting experts,” he went on, addressing Hampstead. “Though such tests aren’t necessarily part of their job, most of the good ones are thoroughly familiar with the tests for determining the approximate age of writing.”
Hampstead’s lips were clamped in a straight line. He hesitated a moment before admitting, “One of them did suggest the possibility that the letters hadn’t been written recently. But I had no reason, otherwise, to suspect I was present when they were discovered here and had no intimation they were a plant.”
Shayne turned again, anxiously, to Leslie and Christine. Leslie had relaxed from his rigid position and held one of her hands in his. He said, “If you had had the originals instead of photostats, Christine, Bernard Holloway would have put his finger on the truth at once. But with only a photostat he had no way of determining how old they were.”
Christine turned her head, lifting her face from her husband’s arm, and nodded wearily.
“I know,” said Shayne with a wry smile, “that some of you haven’t seen the letters in question and don’t know what is in them. They were written to Morrison’s ex-secretary, declaring his love for her and discussing plans for getting rid of his wife so they could marry. But that was three years ago. Right after you went to work for Morrison,” he went on, nodding to Christine. “If you had bothered to mention to me that the present Mrs. Morrison was formerly his private secretary, I might have guessed the truth at once.”
Christine sat up straight on the love seat. “I do remember the peculiar circumstances under which his former wife was killed, but I never heard a hint around the office about his being in love with Estelle when his wife died.”
As Shayne looked on, Leslie wriggled an arm around his wife and drew her close, and her head dropped against his shoulder. He said grimly, “That was their one protection against having a murder charge laid against them both. The New York police may not be able to prove it was you, Estelle, who made the telephone call that summoned the former Mrs. Morrison to her death, but those letters you saved for three years are going to be damned good evidence that you helped plan the job.”
“She did,” Morrison declared gruffly. He had risen from his chair and stood pointing an accusing finger at her. “She was responsible for the whole thing. She drove me to it. Before I met her I was content with my life-my wife and my son. She taunted me about living a drab life and worked me up to a state of-” He stopped and backed away, his hands covering his face, and again dropped into his chair.
Shayne said to Morrison, “About those letters, now-”
Morrison mopped sweat from his forehead and said, “She kept them and held them over me. She should have known she couldn’t use them without implicating herself, but she made my life miserable by reminding me of their existence.”
Shayne said, “And when she found out you were going to divorce her she saw a way to use them and planted
