individual’s particular situation and needs… that he was performing an important service to his clients rather than just sitting back and collecting money from them. He was such a good man…” She broke down at this point and began crying helplessly, rocking forward over her typewriter with her hands over her face.
Shayne lit a cigarette and smoked it thoughtfully, letting her cry herself out. She accomplished this in a couple of minutes, straightened up and blew her nose loudly with Kleenex, wiped her eyes and told him tremulously, “I wish I could be more help to you, Mr. Shayne, but I just can’t think of anyone who wanted Mr. Fitzgilpin dead or who would benefit by it.”
“Yet, someone did,” Shayne reminded her. “His wife mentioned one peculiar thing this morning,” he went on. “About an incident some weeks ago when a woman came in and wanted him to break the rules by issuing a large policy on her husband’s life without his knowledge. Do you recall that?”
“Oh, yes. Very well. It was most peculiar. It wasn’t as long ago as that. Not more than ten days. I remember she telephoned for an appointment the day after the interview appeared in the paper and I thought maybe she’d read it and got his name from that. Because she was a complete stranger and wouldn’t say who had recommended him… you know, the way most people do if they come to an insurance office. And she acted funny when she did come in the next day. He was busy with another client when she arrived, and she sat and talked to me for fifteen minutes at least. I tried to be nice to her because she had mentioned a quarter-million dollar policy when she telephoned and we never had anything near that big in this office before. But she seemed more interested in Mr. Fitzgilpin than she did in getting a policy. She sat right in that same chair you’re sitting in and asked all sorts of funny questions. Like, how long had I worked here, and did he go out of town very often, and did he enjoy going to New York and when was the last trip he’d made, and all like that. It just seemed so funny.”
“What was her name?” Shayne interposed.
“Mrs. Kelly. That’s the only name she ever gave. And not even any address or anything. Because after she did go in and talk to Mr. Fitzgilpin and told him what she wanted him to do, he gave her short shrift. I never saw him so vexed before. He was quite insulted to think anyone would come to him with a proposition like that. Like he said to me, a rich woman like that must certainly have a lot of insurance business of one sort or another, yet here she was coming to him to buy a huge policy like that. You see, she pretended to him that she didn’t know it was against the law to do that, but he was sure she did know, and that’s why she didn’t go to her regular broker.”
“Do you think she was a rich woman?” Shayne probed.
“Oh, I guess she was, all right. Great big diamonds on her fingers and a mink jacket that must have cost a fortune. Poor thing, though, I felt sorry for her before I found out what she was trying to get Mr. Fitzgilpin to do. She was pathetic with all her jewelry and mink. She was a woman who looked dowdy no matter what she wore. She was tall and awkward with big hands and feet, and a great, big nose and a thin mouth. You could just imagine her as a young debutante sitting on the sidelines and never getting asked to dance no matter how much money her family had.”
“You didn’t hear from her again?”
“I should say not,” she told him with satisfaction. “Not after Mr. Fitzgilpin got through telling her off.”
Shayne sat back for a moment, drawing on his cigarette and tugging thoughtfully at his left earlobe. Two things had occurred recently that were out of order in the even tenor of Jerome Fitzgilpin’s life. He had received a national award for salesmanship and been interviewed by the News, and a woman had come to his office a day or so later in an effort to induce him to sell her a quarter of a million dollar policy on her husband’s life without his knowledge or consent.
And now he was dead.
Were those two seemingly unrelated events tied together somehow? And if so, could they possibly constitute a motive for his murder? Mrs. Perkins’ thought that Mrs. Kelly might have come to him as a result of seeing the interview in the paper was a possibility, of course. But why would his refusal of her lead to murder?
Shayne leaned forward and mashed out his cigarette butt in a clean ashtray on Mrs. Perkins’ desk.
He glanced aside at the closed door labeled PRIVATE, and asked, “Do you mind if I go into Mr. Fitzgilpin’s office to take a look around?”
“No reason why I should mind, but I don’t know what you expect to find. The police already looked around without finding anything.”
She got up and moved around her desk to open the door for him, and Shayne asked her, “Did he keep his personal checkbook here? Any private records?”
“No. Nothing like that. Just the office accounts, and I take care of those. I can assure you everything is in perfect order.”
She switched on an overhead light and stepped back to allow the detective to enter a small, neat office with window shades tightly drawn to exclude the morning light. There was a bare desk with a swivel chair behind it, two comfortable leather chairs for clients to sit in, and three green metal filing cabinets ranged along the wall behind the desk. Shayne stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at the swivel chair and imagining the figure of the little man he had seen in the morgue sitting there. An inoffensive, friendly little man, eager to be of service to his clientele, patiently listening to their small troubles and sometimes giving them a helping hand in times of financial stress.
“You call me if you want me to explain any of the files or anything,” Mrs. Perkins said nervously from behind him. “I know right exactly where everything is.”
Shayne said absently, “I don’t suppose our answer is going to be in the files.” He moved across the room slowly, circling the desk and seating himself in Fitzgilpin’s swivel chair which creaked softly under his weight. There was a flat center drawer, and three deeper drawers on the right side of the desk. He shrugged non-committally as he sat there, relaxing and letting his mind go as blank as possible. This was where the dead man had sat daily, where he had transacted his business, interviewed clients, and whatever else an insurance broker did during office hours. He had sat in this chair behind this desk last night while a succession of small-salaried people had come to his office after their own work was done, laying grubby bills and silver in front of him to pay up weekly premiums on their small policies.
Shayne reached down and tried the handle of the top right-hand drawer. It opened easily and he saw it was neatly arranged with letterheads and envelopes and invoices.
The other two drawers showed the same neatness, with sharpened pencils, stamps, a Notary Seal and other adjuncts to Mr. Fitzgilpin’s business. Nothing out of order. Nothing of a personal nature.
The center drawer was different. It was not, Shayne was certain at first glance, one that was attended to by Mrs. Perkins.
There were half a dozen loose cigars, an untidy miscellany of memoranda torn from small pads, a few old letters still in their envelopes, exactly the sort of things that accumulate for years in a man’s desk which he probably forgets as soon as he closes the drawer on them.
Shayne pawed through them idly and without much real interest. They told him nothing more about the man than he already knew. He pushed the scraps of paper aside and reached farther back inside the drawer, jerked his hand back involuntarily when the sharp point of a pin pricked the ball of his thumb. He opened the drawer wider and groped in to discover a restaurant menu with a single long-stemmed yellow rosebud securely pinned inside the fold with a corsage pin. He drew it out carefully, and several of the faded, dried petals fell from the bud as he did so.
He laid the folded menu on the desk in front of him and regarded it curiously. It was from a restaurant in Greenwich Village in New York, and the printed date on the cover was November 19, 1961. About a year and a half ago.
Shayne carefully removed the big-headed pin so he could open the menu out flat. A small photograph was between the folds. About two by three inches. The sort of souvenir photo that is shot by girl-photographers in night clubs and restaurants, developed on the spot and sold to patrons for an exorbitant price.
It showed a couple seated at a restaurant table facing the camera. The girl was young and radiantly beautiful, wearing a low-cut cocktail gown with a corsage of tiny rosebuds pinned on the left shoulder of the gown. The man was about thirty, dressed in a business suit and dark four-in-hand tie, and looking superlatively well pleased with himself. He had dark, lean, handsome features, with a crew cut. The single faded rosebud that had been pinned inside the menu appeared to have been taken from the corsage the girl was wearing.
Shayne frowned and turned the photograph over. It was blank. There was no writing of any sort on the menu. He settled back in the creaking swivel chair and tugged at his earlobe while he considered the three exhibits
