“We’re asking the questions, Blake,” Shayne told him evenly. “Any reason why you don’t want to tell us where you spent last night?”
“Can you give me any good reason why I should?” Marvin faced the two of them defiantly, and then suddenly turned and hurried away from them toward Jenson who was putting his suitcase in the back seat of the sedan.
“You got to tell me, Ollie,” he jerked out desperately. “We’re friends, aren’t we? What is this all about? Something’s happened, hasn’t it? A minute ago you said I’d see Sissy in just a minute. What about Ellie? You didn’t mention her. What about my wife? Has something happened to Ellie? You got to tell me. I’ve got a right to know.”
“Well now, Marv…” Jenson looked past the distraught auto dealer at the two men from Miami for a signal. Shayne shrugged wide shoulders and nodded.
“I’m sorry, Marv.” The police chief put a fleshy hand on Blake’s shoulder and squeezed it tightly. “I hate to have to tell you like this. Dag-nab it, yes. Something bad has happened to Ellie. She got herself murdered last night, Marv.”
“ Murdered? Ellie?” Marvin shrank back from him, aghast. “I don’t believe it, Ollie. I just don’t believe it. Not Ellie.” He began to shake violently, staring at the chief as though hoping for some reprieve, but seeing none in Jenson’s unhappy countenance.
Shayne stepped up beside him briskly and said, “It’s a hell of a thing to hit a man with, Blake. I’ve been in this business a lot of years and I never have found a good way to break it to a husband.”
“Shayne?” Marvin Blake said dully, staring at him as though seeing him for the first time. “Michael Shayne. I know. You’re a detective, aren’t you? Then it must be true.” His voice broke and he turned back to Jenson. “What about Sissy? Goddam your soul to hell, Ollie. Tell me the truth. Is Sissy…?”
“Sissy’s all right,” Jenson told him. “She’s waiting for you right now at the Wilsson house where Minerva’s looking after her, and you got to get hold of yourself and keep your chin up when you go to see her. She’s a right brave little girl, Sissy is, and she needs her daddy right now more’n she ever needed him in her life before.”
“Sissy,” Marvin cried out in pain. “I’ve got to go to her. What are we waiting here for? Goddam it, Ollie…”
“Now you just take it easy, Marv. You’ll see Sissy soon enough. Let’s us get a few things straight first, and then we won’t have to bother you later on.”
“Who did it? How did it happen?” demanded Marvin exactly as though Jenson had not spoken.
Jenson swallowed hard and looked appealingly at the Miami detective. Shayne said evenly, “Your wife was strangled to death in her own bed, Blake. Chief Jenson suspects some transient who may have got into the house through the front window. You’re just holding up our investigation by refusing to tell us where you were last night. I’m sorry to have to say this, but you may as well understand that a woman’s husband is always the first suspect in a case like this. The sooner we can mark you off the better.”
“Me? You suspect me?” demanded Marvin incredulously. “You think I… I’d do that to Ellie? I loved her.” He swayed back against the car and began sobbing helplessly. “My God, you fool, I loved her. Don’t you understand that? She was my wife… Sissy’s mother!”
“So where were you last night?” Shayne’s even voice beat at him through his hysteria.
“Well, I wasn’t out here murdering anybody, that’s for sure. My God, Ollie! You don’t believe that for a minute. Why don’t you tell him? I got a right to go home.”
“Well, now, Marv,” Jenson said uncomfortably. “It’s like Mr. Shayne says. Sooner we get that cleared up, sooner we can get onto finding the man that really did it. All you got to do is tell us, Marv. Just don’t try to lie at a time like this. We know you checked out of the hotel. So, where’d you go and where’d you stay last night? That’s all you got to tell us. There’s just the three of us men-folks here, Marv,” he went on earnestly. “It won’t have to go no further than here. We don’t care a damn if you shacked up with some fancy woman, or what.”
Marvin Blake wilted back against the car and hung his head. “So that’s what you think? You think I was out whoring around while Ellie was getting murdered?”
“It wasn’t like you knew it was going to happen to her,” Jenson consoled him. “None of us’ll fault you on that. You just come on and tell us, Marv. I’ll tell you one thing right now,” he hurried on. “Not another soul in town knows you wasn’t at the convention last night where you was supposed to be. No need anybody ever should know, I reckon, including Sissy, if you’ll just tell us the truth so’s we can check it out. No matter for you to be ashamed, no matter what you did.”
“Ashamed? Oh, my God.” Marvin Blake put both hands over his face and it was difficult to tell whether he was laughing or crying. Watching his shaking shoulders there in the hot sunlight, and listening to him, Shayne thought it was about a fifty-fifty mixture of laughter and tears, both of them wavering on the verge of hysteria.
The three men waited uncomfortably, grouped closely around him, until the seizure slowly subsided. He took his hands away from his face and lifted his head, blinking and licking his lips. “It’s funny… almost,” he said hoarsely. “What you think. When I… all I wanted was to get away from that hotel and the convention last night and get home to my wife… and not get pissy-assed drunk the way I knew I’d do if I stayed on there with the other boys. If I just had of done it,” he moaned, his face twitching with the horror of it. “If I just had made it like I planned… Ellie might be all right. I’d of been here, don’t you see? Nothing like that could have happened, if I’d just been here. It’s my fault, don’t you see? Because I took that first drink like a damn fool, and then another one and another. And so I ended up drunker than maybe I would have if I had stayed on at the hotel, and I didn’t even make it home like I planned to do.”
“Tell us about it,” said Shayne gently. “Just the straight facts. Don’t blame yourself. You can see it would have happened just the same if you’d stayed over as you meant to.”
“Well, I… it just came to me suddenly yesterday that I didn’t want to stay on for the big doings last night, but that I’d rather come on back home. And it seemed silly to waste all that money spending an extra night at the hotel and the dinner and drinks and all, and so I just decided to slip out without saying anything to anybody, to avoid any arguments, you know. Because the others would laugh at me and make jokes and say dirty things about how I just couldn’t stand to be away from my wife for another night… and I didn’t see how it was anybody’s business what I did.” He looked about defiantly at the three men in front of him.
“Check-out time at the hotel was four o’clock, even if there wasn’t any train back to Sunray until after six, but I could save a whole night’s room-rent by checking out then, and so I did.”
“You mean the ten-twenty express from Miami, Marv?” Jenson broke in with a frown. “It don’t even stop here.”
“Yes, it does. To let off passengers, if there are any. It says so right on the time-table. I looked it up there in my hotel room, and then was when I decided. One of the reasons I decided,” he went on in a suddenly hushed voice, “was because there was the prettiest pair of earrings in a little store next to the hotel that I wanted to buy for Ellie for a present, but they cost twenty-eight dollars and I didn’t feel like I could afford it. But I figured I’d save at least that much by skipping last night and coming straight home, and so I went into the store and bought them.”
He raised his right hand slowly and hesitantly to his breast pocket and drew out the gaily wrapped box. “They’re right here.” His face worked convulsively and he paused to swallow twice before he could go on. “She’ll never see them now,” he half-whispered. “She’ll never know.” He blinked back tears and smiled entreatingly at them. “I just can’t believe it. Not yet I can’t. They were just right for her. The earrings, I mean. I just couldn’t wait to see her face when I came home and surprised her and she opened up the box.” He paused, looking down at the box and turning it over and over in his hands.
Chief Ollie Jenson cleared his throat loudly. “Well, now, Marv, what I say is none of us know for sure. What a body knows or doesn’t know after… well, what I mean is, it don’t do any good to think about that now. It’s the intention that counted.”
“Maybe… Sissy will like them when she grows up,” said Marvin unsteadily and somewhat vaguely. He sighed and put the earrings back into his pocket. “Where was I?”
“You’d just checked out of the hotel and bought those earrings to bring home to Ellie on the ten-twenty Express,” Jenson reminded him.
“That’s right. Well, I walked on down toward the station carrying my suitcase. I had plenty of time and didn’t want to waste any money on a taxicab. And I thought I’d better get a bite to eat because even if there was a diner on the train they charge like the dickens for even a sandwich and a cup of coffee.
“So I stopped at a place about a block from the station and went in and set my bag down to rest and get a
