The Corpse That Never Was

Until that moment Lucy Hamilton had not had the faintest idea of what they were doing in Mona Bayliss’s apartment, nor why Shayne had insisted that she bring Mrs. Nathan’s hat with her in a bag.

She still didn’t understand, but she responded to the urgency in his voice by hurrying into the bedroom and opening the door to the large clothes closet in one corner. She stood on tiptoe to scan the shelf above an array of dresses on hangers, saw two turbans and a dressy straw hat with flowers, but no drooping black one.

Her fingers trembled as she pulled it from the bag and pushed it back on the shelf with Mona’s other hats.

Shayne was waiting for her with his hand on the doorknob when she rejoined him, breathing hard and shaking all over.

He grinned at her reassuringly as he turned off the inner light and eased the door open for a quick look down the corridor.

Then he drew her out boldly and closed the door and hurried her back toward the stairway.

When the door to the stairs closed behind them, he put his arm about her waist and squeezed tightly and told her admiringly, “You went through that like a veteran, Angel. By God I think I’ll put you on the payroll.”

She got a tremulous smile on her lips as they started to climb the stairs. “If I only knew what I was doing, Michael! If you’d only told me before…”

“Then you wouldn’t have done it,” he told her with a grin. “I didn’t know myself until we got here. We’re playing this strictly by ear, and when that lad recognized Grogan’s picture I figured this might be it.” He squeezed her waist again, slid his arm away and took hold of her elbow decorously as they emerged on the sixth floor again.

They went to the elevator and he pressed the DOWN button, and Lucy fought to get her breathing under control before the door opened to take them down.

It was the same car and the same boy. When they got in, he closed the door and told Shayne with a sly grin:

“That lady we mentioned… Miss Bayliss… I just let her off at five.”

Shayne stiffened and glanced sharply at Lucy. She averted her gaze from him and he knew she was thinking how close they’d come to being caught by Mona in her room.

Neither of them spoke until they reached the bottom. Then Shayne said casually to Lucy, “Why don’t you go on and grab a taxi for home? I think I’ll drop in on Mona for a moment.”

Lucy did not stir from the car. She said steadily, “I’ll go up with you, Michael. I am on the payroll, damn it.” The youth stood by listening to them with his hand on the control bar and not understanding at all.

Shayne said to him, “What are you waiting for? We’ll go back up to five.”

He said, “Yes, sir,” and they went up. When they got out he watched them go out of sight around the corner toward 511 and wondered what in hell this was all about. But he had two twenties in his pocket, and he quickly decided it was no concern of his.

Lucy stood close beside Shayne, stiff and white-faced and with a churning in her stomach when he again knocked on the door of 511, loudly and commandingly this time.

It opened after a moment, and a tall, voluptuous blonde looked out at them questioningly. She wore street clothes and had a light coat folded over her arm, and she looked frightened when she saw them, and exclaimed, “What is it?”

Shayne said gruffly, “Police,” and pushed the door open.

She fell back in front of him protesting loudly. “What do you want? You can’t come in here and…”

Shayne pushed her back roughly toward the archway and growled, “We’re already in. I’ve got a warrant for your arrest, Mona Bayliss, on a charge of murder.”

“Oh, God… no!” She swayed backward, her face going white. “There’s some awful mistake. You can’t…”

Shayne said grimly, “We don’t think there’s any mistake, Miss Bayliss. This is a police-woman, Miss Hamilton. Take a look in her bedroom, Hamilton. If you can find that hat in there…”

“What hat?” Mona practically screamed at him, her eyes big and rounded. “What do you mean by murder? You can’t…”

“This what you want, Sarge?” Lucy emerged from the bedroom carrying the big, drooping, black hat carelessly. “It was shoved back on the closet shelf…”

Mona’s eyes became glazed when she saw what Lucy carried in her hand. She staggered back, almost falling, and whimpered, “Oh, no, I… ditched it. God in heaven! I never meant it. You’ve got to believe me. I never knew.” She sank down onto her knees, tears piteously streaming from her eyes. “It was just a gag, he said,” she sobbed. “Just to get a divorce. I swear I never knew… until I read in the paper this morning. Oh, God, you’ve got to believe me,” and she slid forward onto the floor in a crumpled heap.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lucy Hamilton had driven Shayne’s car home after they took the half-hysterical and almost incoherent Mona Bayliss to police headquarters, and she was waiting for him with an open cognac bottle on the table just before midnight when a police car dropped him in front of her apartment.

He looked tired and depressed as he strode in, and Lucy quickly poured him a drink and asked wonderingly, “Did anything go wrong, Michael? From the way that Bayliss woman was babbling I thought the whole case was solved.”

“It’s solved, all right,” Shayne took a long swallow of cognac and grimaced, but not over the taste of it. “It’s all such a damned nasty mess,” he exploded. “My God! that bastard is a complete psycho. When he realized that Mona was spilling her guts and the jig was up, he didn’t bother to confess, by God. He boasted about his smartness and what a perfect murder plan he’d worked out. He’s not half as bothered about being executed as he is because things went wrong and he’s afraid people won’t think he’s as smart as he thinks he is. What a character.”

“Who, Michael?”

He lowered his glass slowly and stared at her. “What?”

Lucy Hamilton wet her lips and said, “Who? I’ve got a whole list of questions you’re going to answer before you leave here tonight, and that’s the first one.”

“Who… what?”

“Who did it? Was it Paul Nathan or Eli?”

“My God, I thought you knew. You heard Mona confessing her part.”

“I heard her raving about how she was just an innocent bystander… how she’d been sucked into impersonating Elsa here in order to frame her for a divorce. But all she ever said was ‘he’. I’ve been sitting here for an hour trying to figure it out, and everything I know about it points to Eli just about as much as it does to Paul. Maybe more, with him being the only left-handed one around.”

“It was Paul, of course. That left-handed deal was a good stunt. He’s secretly been practicing using his left hand for a year… writing with it mostly… just to set up that phony Lambert identity and the suicide notes which could never be traced to him by the handwriting. He admits that killing Max Wentworth with a left-handed blow was a sudden inspiration… just to confuse the issue… and hoping it would point to Eli.”

“A year?” Lucy echoed. “Then he planned to murder Elsa all along?”

“Ever since he married her. He never told Mona, of course, but he did tell her he was just marrying Elsa for her money and if she’d play along with him he’d manage a divorce later and a big cash settlement. In the meantime, he used some of Elsa’s money to set Mona up in that apartment where he visited using a mustache and tinted glasses as a disguise.”

“The elevator boy identified Joe Grogan’s picture as her visitor,” Lucy reminded him.

“That’s what really clinched it for me. That’s when I realized that almost any man of medium size and build, wearing that mustache and those glasses, would pass for any other. I knew, then, that Paul had worn the disguise that afternoon when he rented the apartment, and then turned the mustache and glasses over to Joe Grogan to wear up here that evening and let Mona into the apartment… with her wearing a duplicate of Elsa’s hat which Paul had provided.”

“Please start at the beginning, Michael. How did he get Grogan to do it?”