“Or killed,” Shayne said bluntly, the trenches deep in his cheeks. “But they’ll keep her safe until after the funeral, Will, and I want that much time with no official interference.”
“You’re asking me to sit on a murder.”
“A murder you wouldn’t know a damned thing about if I hadn’t handed it to you on a silver platter,” flared Shayne.
Gentry said soothingly, “Sure, Mike. I grant you that. Sure, I’ll give you all the time you want,” he added generously. “Up until… say… three o’clock this afternoon.”
“That ought to be plenty,” said Shayne bitterly, “for me to solve a murder that the whole goddamn police force of Miami has had in their lap for several days.” He got up and demanded abruptly, “Where’ll I find Petrie and Donovan?”
“They’re waiting for you right inside.” Will Gentry gestured toward a closed door. “I’ve told them to give you everything, Mike, and in addition to that, they’re under your orders if you want to make use of them.”
“Until three o’clock?”
Gentry said, “Until three o’clock,” and Shayne jerked his head at Rourke and went to the side door to interview the two detectives who had handled the Rogell investigation.
12
Shayne and Rourke both knew the two city detectives casually, and the men greeted them without particular enthusiasm as they entered. Petrie was thin and sour-faced, and he said sneeringly, “Gentry tells us you’re going to turn the Rogell thing into murder… and then solve it for us.”
Donovan was flabby-fat and easy-going. He grinned amiably and told them, “Don’t pay no heed to Jim. He’s sore because the chief wouldn’t let him haul in that hot little dish of a widow and give her a going-over. Not that I wouldn’t like to work over her myself, if you get what I mean.” He rolled his eyes and smacked his lips suggestively. “Like the guy comes home from the office and when the wife complains about all the work she’s did that day, he says, ‘What about me, doggone it? Slaving in the office over a hot secretary all day.’”
Shayne said, “Ha-ha. Why don’t you two start by telling us exactly what happened the night Rogell died.”
With Petrie doing most of the talking and Donovan filling in some details, they related how they had been called to the Rogell house by an insistent telephone call received from his sister at twelve-forty, which was exactly eleven minutes after her millionaire brother had died quietly in his bed.
On arrival, they had been met at the door by Henrietta, fully clothed and tearless, loudly insisting that she was convinced John Rogell had been poisoned by his wife. In the small library off the right of the hall, they had found Marvin Dale, soddenly drunk and obviously quite pleased that his brother-in-law had passed on. With Marvin had been Harold Peabody, sober and shaken, who told them he had spent the latter part of the evening alone with the millionaire in his second-floor sitting room, going over business affairs with him until Anita had interrupted them precisely at midnight with a hot drink for her husband which she invariably brought to him each night at that hour.
It had been a normal evening, Peabody insisted, with Rogell in the best of spirits and apparently in perfect physical condition, and he had left husband and wife together at twelve with no premonition of what was to come, had paused in the library for a nightcap with Marvin, and they were together when Anita called down frantically that John had had a stroke and to call Dr. Evans immediately.
The doctor had arrived within ten minutes and found his patient already dead. He was upstairs with the body when the detectives went up, and had not the slightest hesitancy in positively declaring that death was the normal result of Rogell’s heart condition, and had signed the death certificate to that effect.
Mrs. Blair, the housekeeper, had been in Anita’s boudoir consoling the grief-stricken widow whom they found fetchingly attired in a lacy nightgown and filmy black negligee. Mrs. Blair was also wearing slippers and robe, and told the officers she had retired to her third-floor quarters about eleven as was her custom, after preparing a silver thermos pitcher of hot chocolate milk for Mr. Rogell and leaving it downstairs on a tray on the dining table for Anita to take up to him at midnight… a nightly service which she insisted on performing for him herself every night.
In a highly emotional state and with much sobbing, Anita had related how John had appeared in good spirits when she entered the room with his tray and shooed Peabody out. Her husband was already in pajamas and robe, she told them, and she poured out his hot drink herself and sat with him while he drank it. Then she had gone into his separate bedroom with him (they occupied adjoining suites with a large connecting bath) and there was some indication, in halting testimony, that they might have been preparing to have intercourse when he suddenly groaned and stiffened in his bed, and a moment later his body became rigid and his breathing shallow and fast. It was then she had run to the head of the stairs to shout for the doctor, and when she returned to the bedroom a moment later, she could no longer detect his breathing. Henrietta had then come in from her own suite at the end of the hallway, and angrily berated her for being an unfaithful wife… then gone on to an open accusation of murder.
The officers had also interviewed Charles, who told them he had been in his quarters above the garage reading a magazine until about ten when he had come to the kitchen for a snack and had chatted with Mrs. Blair for a time while she was preparing Mr. Rogell’s hot chocolate milk. He had returned to his apartment and was in bed when he heard the excitement in the big house and realized that something was wrong.
That, in essence, was the contents of the report Petrie and Donovan had made of their investigation. Discounting Henrietta’s almost hysterical accusations, there was nothing whatsoever to indicate that John Rogell had not died a perfectly natural death. But as he discussed the case with the two detectives, after reading their report, Shayne discovered they had not been altogether as wholly satisfied as the report indicated. There was definite agreement between them that it was quite possible Anita’s grief was not as genuine as she tried to make it appear. Little things they had noticed, including a certain change in her manner when she looked at Charles and spoke to him for the first time since she had become a widow. Nothing you could put your finger on, they explained, but you got a feeling of, at least, a sort of relief between the two of them that it was all over.
They pointed out, however, that this did not necessarily mean they were guilty of anything more than possibly having had some sort of affair under the old man’s nose. Certainly, it was nothing on which to base a suspicion of murder.
Also, while trying to interview Marvin Dale in his drunken condition, he had openly admitted his pleasure in Rogell’s death, muttering that things would be different around the house now, and strongly intimating that his sister’s millionaire husband had disapproved of his sponging on her and had practically ordered her to cease providing him with funds.
And, of course, there was Henrietta. But you could see that her nose was completely out of joint and that she deeply resented Anita and would stop at nothing to harm her.
So there you were, the detectives said, and how in hell can you make murder out of any of that?
They had turned in a shorter report on the death of Daffy. Again, they had been sent to the Rogell house after an almost hysterical call from Henrietta insisting that this time someone had tried to murder her. Again, they had found exactly the same group of people present, with Marvin a little more sober and slightly more coherent this time, and all of them somewhat drawn together and somewhat on the defensive, as they related Henrietta’s impassioned harangue shortly before dinner, during which she had accused them all, singly or in unholy conspiracy, of having poisoned her brother. She had warned them flatly that she was going to demand an autopsy on John’s body, and was prepared to take whatever legal measures were necessary to force such action.
Then they had sat down at the dining table for dinner together and Henrietta had been served her special plate of creamed chicken from a chafing dish that had stood on the sideboard for half an hour, the others all sharing a dish of curried shrimp because Henrietta’s allergy to seafood was well-known to all.
None of them at the table, it appeared, had noticed Henrietta when she surreptitiously removed some of her chicken to a saucer and put it down on the floor beside her for Daffy. Indeed, Anita had insisted that she had done no such thing, and Peabody was quietly dubious as to whether she could have done so without being noticed… but anyhow the little dog had had convulsions and died almost at once… and Henrietta insisted she hadn’t eaten any of her chicken.
But the last scrap of it had vanished by the time the officers arrived, and even the chafing dish and
