She met his gaze squarely. “Never. Nothing. I loved Jerome. He was just obsessively possessive.”
“You’re a very beautiful young woman,” mused Shayne. “You must have attracted a lot of men.”
“I’ve had my share of passes made at me,” she agreed easily. “But I married Jerome. I had two children by him. Why couldn’t he accept that instead of suspecting me?”
Shayne said, “Men are like that.” He paused and took a long drink of his gin and tonic. He set the glass down and asked Linda, “Where do Ernie and Emily Cahill live?”
“Down the street a block and a half. They’re old friends and often drop in unexpectedly.”
Shayne got up and went to the telephone stand. “What is their telephone number?”
“The Cahills?” Her face showed real consternation. “You’re not going to call them, Mike?”
“I’m going to call them,” he told her grimly. “Do you know the number offhand, or shall I look it up in the book?”
“But why, Mike?” she wailed. “Don’t you believe me either?”
“At this point I’m not taking anything for granted. You can’t really object to my calling them, Linda. This is different from your husband doing it out of jealousy. I’m investigating your husband’s murder. If I don’t call them, you can be sure the police will.”
“Don’t do it, Mike!” She rose slowly from the sofa and her eyes were wide and glazed. “You make me feel unclean,” she whispered throatily. “I thought you… Please trust me, Mike.” She closed her eyes and swayed toward him like a sleepwalker with hands extended, groping for him.
“Don’t do this to me.” Her voice was low and throbbing with emotion. She stumbled against him and nuzzled her forehead beneath his chin like a frightened, exhausted child.
Shayne said wearily, “It’s a good act, Linda. I’m impressed as hell. But right now I want to know whether it was Ernie Cahill who left a cigar in the ashtray last night, or someone else.”
She shrank away from him as though he had struck her, her face white, eyes glinting with anger.
“All right,” she grated. “You men are all alike. Every damn one of you. All right.” Her voice rose shrilly. “If you want the truth, it wasn’t Ernie. It was another man, though I didn’t know he was coming and I tried like hell to get him out of here before Jerome returned. Make what you want of that, damn you to hell.” She turned her back on him, sobbing.
Shayne took his hand off the telephone. “You tried to get rid of him,” he said softly, “but you didn’t succeed? Is that it, Linda? Now, suppose you tell me exactly what did happen here last evening?”
8
Linda Fitzgilpin stared down into her glass, then lifted it and drained the contents. She got to her feet and started for the kitchen, muttering, “’Nother drink won’t hurt.” She was swaying more obviously now than when Shayne had arrived.
He got to his feet and intercepted her, took the empty glass from her hand and turned her back firmly to the sofa. “Get just as drunk as you like after I leave. Right now, I want straight answers, Linda.”
He stood flat-footed in front of her while she sank back on to the sofa, and said, “Take it from the beginning. It is true that your husband came home somewhat unexpectedly about ten o’clock, found a cigar butt smouldering and suspected you had been entertaining another man?”
“That’s true.” She looked small and frightened, curled up on the sofa and avoiding his stern gaze.
“And the Cahill bit, and your quarrel? And the telephone call? Are you sure you can’t remember anything else he said over the phone?”
“I’m sure. I went into the bedroom immediately I realized the call wasn’t for me, and closed the door tightly. George was in there and I was scared to death what he might do. You see, just by the grace of God, he was in the bathroom when Jerome walked in, and he heard him and realized what had happened, and kept out of sight. But I didn’t know what moment he might take it into his stubborn head to walk out and ‘have it out with Jerome’ which is what he’d been threatening to do for the past hour. I was frantic, of course, and I begged him to hide in the closet while I tried to get Jerome out on some pretext, so George could slip out without being seen. He refused,” she went on dully. “He insisted he was coming on back out with me and have a showdown with Jerome. I finally opened the bedroom door and there was Jerome putting on his coat and going out the door. He said just what I told you… that he had to go out and would be back in an hour or so, and then slammed out of the apartment without ever guessing there was a man standing right behind me.”
Michael Shayne grimaced and tugged slowly at his earlobe. He moved back to his chair and sat down. “George being your lover,” he said calmly. “That was a close call. How often did you entertain him here?”
“I hadn’t seen him for more than a year until last night. Nor heard a word from him. He turned up completely unexpectedly about nine o’clock. He’d been out in California and just returned to Miami.”
“George who?” Shayne kept his voice amiable and interested.
“Nourse. He’s a professional gambler. I had an affair with him a year and a half ago. It happened while Jerome was in New York attending a convention,” she went on wearily. “I thought I was in love with him and I asked Jerome for a divorce. He refused point-blank. He was convinced in his own mind that it was just an infatuation which would soon wear off. He threatened to enter a counter suit if I tried to get a divorce, naming George as corespondent and demanding custody of the children. He even consulted a lawyer about it, and I knew he would have done it, so I gave George up and he went away. No matter what else you may think about me,” she ended defiantly, “I do love my children. Better than I loved George, I found out then. So Jerome and I patched up our marriage and we’ve got along. Only he’s been terribly suspicious and jealous ever since.”
Shayne said, “All right. We’ve got Jerome slamming out the door to keep some sort of appointment. Is that the last you saw or heard of him?”
“Until the police telephoned this morning and I looked over and saw his empty bed.”
“How long did George stay here?”
“That’s just it.” Suddenly Linda crumpled up on the sofa and began sobbing. “That’s the awful part. That’s why I didn’t know what to do this morning. He didn’t stay at all. He went right out behind Jerome saying, by God, he was going to settle it once and for all. And so this morning… don’t you see… my first thought was that George had followed him and they’d had a fight and… and Jerome was dead.”
Shayne said slowly and deliberately, “So you believed your lover had murdered your husband, and your only thought was to cover up for him.”
“Not murdered,” she cried out desperately. “I thought they’d had a fight. George has a terrible temper. Don’t you see, I didn’t know what to do?” She pleaded with him tearfully. “If I did tell the truth and it was George, don’t you see it would all have come out? The scandal! Don’t forget, there were two innocent children involved. I needed time to think,” she cried desperately. “I had to find out what had happened. I wouldn’t have protected George in the long run. You’ve got to believe that. But I thought maybe he was already arrested. In that case, what would have been gained by my telling? That’s why I fainted when they said Jerome had been poisoned. It was such a wonderful relief. Because then I knew it wasn’t George after all, and I wouldn’t have to implicate him.”
“How could you be sure it still wasn’t George?” demanded Shayne.
“George Nourse poison a man?” Linda stared at him disbelievingly. “You just don’t know George. He has a violent temper and associates with a tough crowd, but poison? Oh, no. As soon as I heard that, I knew it couldn’t be George.”
“Did Jerome know him by sight?”
“George? No. They never met face to face. George wanted to meet him man to man to discuss a divorce, but I wouldn’t let him. I was afraid of what might happen.”
“Then it’s possible he did follow Jerome last night… to some bar, say… start buying him drinks there and load Jerome’s with sodium amytal. You’ve said your husband was the type to be friendly with any stranger he met in a bar.”
“Yes. He was. But George isn’t that type. If he had approached Jerome he would have told him right out who he was and what he wanted to talk about.”
Shayne shrugged, unconvinced. “Tell me more about Nourse. Describe him.”
“I’ve told you he’s a gambler. Quite a successful one, I guess, though I never could understand how a man
