The Corpse That Never Was

Shayne shook his head, regarding the three bottles thoughtfully. “I think I’ll take Eli’s advice and see what that other combination tastes like.”

“Rum and creme de menthe? For Christ’s sake,” sputtered Rourke.

Shayne grinned and put a couple of ice cubes in a glass, poured rum on top and then added a dollop of the sweet liqueur. He swirled the cubes around with his forefinger and then tasted it.

“Not bad,” he reported. “Though I’ve a hunch that a bit of potassium ferricyanide would perk it up a bit.”

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