“You must have known it wouldn’t work when they pulled you off the plane,” Shayne said.
“I still had hopes.”
Her lips were pursed. She was still one of the coolest people in the room. Painter jumped to his feet.
“Shayne, I warn you. One of these days you’ll go too far. If you knew who she was all along, why in God’s name didn’t you say so?”
“I didn’t know who she was. All I knew was that she wasn’t Katharine Brady.”
She turned to Painter. “I want to talk to Mike alone.”
“You aren’t talking to anybody alone, madam!” Painter snapped. “From this point on, I’m asking the questions. What were your relations with Tom Moseley?”
She smiled and remained silent.
Shayne said, “Moseley worked for the Loring law firm. He handled her income tax. He was in the same Harvard class as her husband and Paul Brady. I believe they were lovers.”
She looked at Shayne, amused, but her fingernails were digging into her palms.
“Moseley was getting more and more nervous about what he’d let himself in for,” Shayne said. “She’d already tied him up in one killing. That was his limit. He wanted her to surface and stop the action before anything bad happened, and the way it was going, something bad was bound to happen. But she couldn’t bring herself to call it off. She killed him with a gin bottle. She left a piece of false beard to point to Henry. In a way that wasn’t too clever. We can use it to prove premeditation.”
“Was he involved in your disappearance from the boat, Mrs. De Rham?” Painter said.
“Ask Mike. You can see that I’m not doing any talking.”
Painter hesitated, then turned to Shayne. “Was he?”
“Obviously. She couldn’t have worked it without help.”
“Mike-” she said.
“Did Henry ever play you the statement the night watchman from the Winslow plant made before he died? I have it. They steered me to it. They didn’t think it mattered because they thought you were dead and they couldn’t get any more mileage out of it. In my hands it would back up the fire-at-sea story.”
“O.K., Shayne,” Painter said, “what statement are you talking about now?”
“The De Rhams and the Bradys and Tom Moseley were all at a college reunion in Cambridge. Dotty and Tom sneaked out in the middle of a dance and set a fire that burned down a factory. One of them had left a bottle of liquor in the night watchman’s locker, and he didn’t turn in an alarm. He died of his burns, but before he did he told De Rham that he’d seen a woman in a red dress, a white Olds, and a man in a hat with a funny band, the kind that’s worn to college reunions. Henry got it on tape, and so long as he had it she was stuck with him as a husband. Moseley probably had her promise that she would marry him when she could get something to counteract that tape. They set up the disappearance carefully. Moseley was already in Florida. He rented a boat and made a night rendezvous with the
“Is that how it happened, Mrs. De Rham?” Painter asked.
“That has to be how it happened,” Shayne said when she didn’t answer. “She destroyed her will and left things in such a mess that both Paul and her husband thought the other had killed her. She knew they wouldn’t report that she had fallen overboard. It was too dangerous for both of them. They were both connivers. All she really needed was one forged check or fraudulent transfer order and she could divorce Henry without parting with any cash. She’s the one who called Petrocelli and threatened him in a way that made him notify the police. She called Loring. Loring was getting two kinds of calls-from Henry pretending to be Dotty and from Dotty herself. She was horrified to hear that the boys were already into her for a couple of hundred thousand. She had to know what their plans were, so she hired a detective, Teddy Sparrow. Tom Moseley was probably semi-hysterical by this time. He was over his head. He may even have changed his mind about marrying her-certainly he wouldn’t marry her on these terms. He wanted to call everything off, just when it was beginning to work. So he had to go.”
“If you can prove I killed Tom Moseley,” she said, “you’re a magician, Mike. I won’t admit for a minute that anything you’ve said is true. I walked off the boat the minute we got to Miami. I was so sick of that man! I moved into the St. Albans and did some drinking. When I started functioning again I called Joshua, and before I could say a thing he scolded me about something I’d said on the phone the day before. I hadn’t made any phone calls the day before. I decided I’d better know what that pair of scoundrels was up to. That’s all. I didn’t even know Tom was in town.”
She should have left it at that, but she couldn’t resist adding, “You’ve created a brilliant monster named Dotty De Rham. Surely that Dotty De Rham-not the real one-could manage to get in and out of a hotel room early in the morning without being seen?”
Shayne grinned at Painter. “What do you think, Petey?”
Painter said cautiously, “Do you have anything you’re holding back? Some final tricky surprise to make people think you’re a genius?”
“No, that’s about all.”
Painter considered. “Well, good old-fashioned police work may turn up something you’ve missed, Shayne. It’s been known to happen. My men are interviewing every guest on Moseley’s floor, every guest on Mrs. Brady’s-” he corrected himself-“Mrs. De Rham’s. The murder room is going to be given complete scientific analysis. Fingerprints. We’ll do a thorough job on that piece of beard-”
Shayne and Mrs. De Rham smiled at each other.
Shayne said, “I know. But in some ways Petey’s a pretty good cop, and he has good people working for him. They may actually come up with something. If we can’t get you for murder, we’ll have to put you in a mental hospital for the rest of your life.”
Her smile disappeared. “You’re beaten for once, Mike. Admit it.”
He shook his head. “You start fires and you kill people. It’s all in the record. When I tell Joshua Loring about your latest caper, he’ll sign the papers. Commitment proceedings don’t operate on strict rules of evidence. Those incendiary episodes in your history are going to count against you.”
“Those-” She stopped.
“I know,” Shayne said gently. “You’d been planning to burn down that factory for a long time, for entirely rational reasons, and you planted those episodes to give you an out in case anything went wrong. I know damn well you’re sane. Too much so, if anything. You’re so damn sane you can’t see any reason why things can’t always go your way. You’ll be the sanest patient in the booby hatch.”
She lifted one eyebrow. “A romantic to the end, Mike. Life isn’t that bad in a mental hospital. I rather enjoyed my stay there. There’s a social life. They take care of you, you don’t have to worry about what’s happening in the rest of the world, you’re not involved.”
She looked away, but not before he had seen the fear in her eyes.
Paul Brady said in a harsh whisper, “Dotty?”
He had been forgotten, lying rigid and unseeing under the hospital sheet. Henry’s body would come ashore with a bullet hole in the chest, matching the hole in the cotton jacket. The money Henry had turned over to him would be found. Unlike Dotty De Rham, he would be tried and convicted, and would probably go to the chair.
“I’m sorry, Paul,” Mrs. De Rham said.
“Dotty, I have to-This is the last time we’ll ever talk. Please come closer.”
He groped for her. She put her hand in his, her face softening, and came down beside him.
“Dotty, I know you thought I was pretending, but I-loved you.”
His hand came up to caress her face. Suddenly he seized her hair, pulled her head back, and went for her eyes.
She cried out. Shayne covered the intervening space in one long stride and seized his shoulder. He twisted, his body charged with fury. Shayne thrust one arm around his neck and tore him away. He had used a hypodermic needle with the point broken off. His first thrust tore into one eye. The only thing that saved the second eye was the fact that she was wearing a wig, and she managed to turn her head. Before Shayne could subdue him he connected twice more, grinding the sliver of glass into her face and ripping downward.
When Shayne let him go he fell back unconscious. Dotty was screaming terribly.
