“That’s when I was first really afraid. It was one of those things that just don’t happen to people. But it was happening to me. That’s when I saw the gun on the bedside table beside a bottle of whisky. He was puffing and out of breath and staggering, and I snatched the gun. I heard the whisky bottle fall to the floor, then everything turned sort of blurry and red.” She covered her face with her hands and shuddered. Shayne took a sip of cognac and waited. When she took her hands from her face she looked at him with imploring eyes. “I didn’t hear the gun go off. I wasn’t conscious of it, but suddenly I was standing over him and there was-a hole-in his head-and blood.” She fell against Shayne and sobbed uncontrollably.
Shayne held her until she was calm. “Finish your daiquiri,” he said gruffly, “then tell me how you came to lock yourself in the closet where you almost suffocated.”
The ice had melted, weakening the drink, and she finished it with a few swallows. “That’s too horrible to think of. And nerve-wracking. I hardly had time to realize what had happened when there was a knock on the door. I knew it was still unlocked, and that whoever it was could just turn the knob and catch me in there with him- dead.
“I was too frantic to think. I guess I acted automatically. The gun had dropped on the bed close to his hand. I grabbed it and wiped it clean and put it in his hand and curled his fingers around it. I was terrified for fear it would go off again.” She shuddered and sank weakly against the couch, her hands clenched tightly in her lap.
“The closet door was open,” she resumed after a moment. “The person at the door knocked again, impatiently. I stepped in the closet and shut the door quietly. I didn’t realize for several minutes that the door had latched and locked me in. There wasn’t even a doorknob inside. I hardly dared to breathe. I thought I could hear sounds in the room and kept expecting someone to open the door any minute. That’s when I made up the story I would tell whoever found me. The same story I told you and Chief Gentry. It was all I could think of.
“After a while everything was quiet. It was a strange silence-like my ears were all stopped up. Then I started hurting in my chest. I couldn’t get a good breath. I was sweating all over, and I knew I had to get out of there.
“That’s when I discovered there wasn’t a doorknob inside. The door was so tight I couldn’t even see a crack of light from outside. I went all to pieces and flung myself against the door time and time again, but it didn’t budge. I tried to scream, but not a sound came out. I kicked and pounded on the door until I was too weak to stand up. Then I fell to the floor and crawled around like a trapped animal looking for a place to get out. And that’s all I remember,” she ended, and expelled a breath in a series of jerky sighs.
Shayne took a long drink of cognac and an ice-water chaser. “It was a brutal experience,” he said quietly, “and you tell it very well. Now, let’s have the truth.”
She stiffened and squinted at his set features. “I’ve told you everything-just as it happened,” she said.
“You’ve told it the way you hope I’ll think it happened,” he corrected her harshly.
“Please, Mi-Michael,” she stammered. “I’m so tired. I can’t fence with you tonight.” She moved slowly as if to stand up, then whirled about and threw herself into his arms, clasping her arms around his neck and pressing against him.
He stiffened his neck when she tried to pull his head down. Her lips were parted and her sooty eyes were wide open and misty.
“It might be interesting to kiss a murderess,” he said in a calm, speculative tone, “but I think I’ll skip it if you don’t mind.”
She relaxed and closed her eyes, squeezing a tear from under each lid. “That’s a horrible word, Michael,” she said drearily. “Is it really murder-what I did?”
“It’s murder when you go to a man’s room of your own volition with a gun in your handbag and the determination to kill in your mind.”
“But I’ve told you-”
“A lot of lies mixed in with a few grains of truth,” he said brutally, pushing her away from him. He stood up and took his empty glass from the table, went to the desk and refilled it. Returning, he toed a light occasional chair along, stopped on the opposite side of the serving-table, and sat down.
“You had every intention of killing Morton when you went to the Ricardo Hotel,” he resumed, “after covering yourself carefully with a story about a fake telephone call.”
“But it wasn’t a fake. Lucy can tell you.” There was naked fear in her eyes.
“Lucy didn’t hear the phone ring at all,” he snapped. “You waited until she was under the shower and couldn’t know whether it rang or not. Then you called Morton to tell him you were coming over. When Lucy came out of the bathroom and caught the tag-end of the conversation you gave her the story about me calling.”
“Have you lost your mind, Michael? It wasn’t that way at all. Lucy will tell you-”
“I say it was,” he cut in sharply. “And so does the switchboard operator at the Ricardo,” he added untruthfully.
“That horrid old man-” She burst out angrily.
“Heard every word you said,” he supplied. “No call went out from three-oh-nine tonight, but your call came in about twelve-fifteen.”
“Suppose I did go over to see Ralph,” she jerked out viciously. “But the rest of it happened just as I told you. He misinterpreted my reason for going there at that time of night.”
“I’ll grant some of it did happen as you’ve told it,” Shayne said wearily, “but I don’t believe there was any struggle. You warmed up to him just as you’ve been doing to me, and then you let him have it. Carl Garvin messed up your plan by knocking on the door and opening it. I imagine you planned to write some sort of scrawled suicide note, didn’t you, after slipping those magazine pages you’d clipped the words out of into Ralph Morton’s wastebasket. You knew the police would find them-and assume that he sent those threatening notes to his wife.”
“Michael!” she exclaimed. “I don’t understand-”
“Oh, yes you do,” he burst out savagely. “You felt yourself pretty much of an expert at murder by that time- after the beautiful job of improvisation you did after killing Sara Morton.”
“Michael!” she wailed. “You can’t seriously think-” Her voice broke and she was weeping again.
“Save your tears,” he snapped. “You knew you had to kill Ralph Morton when you heard the midnight newscast saying he was seen outside her door pounding for admittance about six-thirty. No one saw him go in, and no one knew he didn’t get in because she was dead. But he knew. And your whole complex alibi depended on us believing she was alive at six-thirty. That’s why you double-locked the door, as an insurance against someone, a maid, for instance, opening the door and discovering the body before six-thirty.”
“You are insane, Michael Shayne. Do you think I’d have locked myself in that closet where I almost suffocated on purpose?” She blew her nose and wiped her eyes.
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t lock yourself in with any intention of suffocating. Where were you when Garvin opened the door? Behind it? When he ran away after seeing Morton’s body you thought he was hurrying to report it to the police. You figured you didn’t have time to get out of the hotel, so you smashed your glasses on the floor in front of the door, then locked yourself in the closet, thinking you’d be found within a very few minutes. That minor bump on your head was easily self-administered.”
She stared at him in helpless amazement. “I don’t see how you can think such things,” she said weakly.
“Your glasses were not on the floor when Garvin opened it,” he stated flatly. “But they were there when he and I arrived together an hour later. What does that do to your story?”
She drew in a long quivering breath and said wildly, “It’s all so preposterous! Have you forgot that special- delivery letter you got from Miss Morton! If you’ll check the pick-up times for mail at the Tidehaven you’ll see it had to be mailed between six-ten and seven-fourteen. Mr. Rourke will tell you I met him at six o’clock downstairs. If she mailed it after I met him-”
“That’s what made a damn near perfect alibi,” Shayne agreed. “If she had written and mailed the letter, you’d be in the clear. But I can prove she didn’t do either. You wrote the letter on her typewriter. I imagine you’ve pretty well perfected copying her signature, but not so well as to fool an expert. You had already shoved those fancy shears in her throat some minutes before six o’clock. After writing the note, you hastily concocted a series of three threatening messages to serve as a blind for mailing the letter-and to make me believe that was the reason she was so eager to contact me all day. It was a simple matter from then on. You didn’t have time to go up to the fourteenth floor and murder Sara Morton in those three or four minutes you left Rourke in the cocktail lounge. But it was plenty of time to drop the letter in the mail box.”
Beatrice Lally was crumpled on the couch with both hands over her face. There was no tearful weeping now.
