Henrietta’s plate and the dog’s saucer had been washed clean.
Sure, that looked suspicious, they both agreed, but you had to blame Mrs. Blair for it because it appeared no one had ordered her to do so, and it was pretty hard to suspect the plump and pleasant housekeeper of murder and attempted murder.
But the swift burial of Daffy was a somewhat different matter. All of the witnesses agreed that Anita had become hysterical after her pet’s death, and called Charles in and ordered him to take Daffy’s dead body away from her sight and bury the bitch at once. Her explanation of this somewhat suspicious action was that she had a deep- rooted phobia about death and corpses and could not stand the sight or thought of them.
But when the detectives pointed out that it would clarify matters and either prove or disprove Henrietta’s contention that her chicken had been poisoned if they could take the dog’s body for analysis, Anita had arrogantly denied the need to disprove Henrietta’s absurd charge, and had flatly ordered Charles not to show the detectives where Daffy was buried.
“So, there you have it,” Petrie summed up the situation with a shrug. “Sure, it looked suspicious but we couldn’t force them to show us the dog’s grave. Maybe we could have taken it into court and got a search warrant, but Will Gentry didn’t think so.”
Shayne nodded thoughtfully and said, “Let’s go back to Rogell’s death. Check your report and read me exactly what Peabody said about his leaving the couple together upstairs.”
Petrie shuffled some typewritten pages clipped together and said, “Let’s see. Here it is.” He cleared his throat and began reading:
“Mr. Rogell and I concluded our business shortly before midnight and were smoking a final cigar when Mrs. Rogell came in from the bathroom, carrying a thermos jug and a cup, and a bottle containing her husband’s heart medicine which I knew he took every night. She was dressed in a negligee, and was very sweet, but wifely and firm, when she insisted it was time for John’s medicine and I would have to go. She put the cup and jug on a bedside table, and measured out his medicine with an eye-dropper into the cup. I said good night to them both and went out while she was pouring hot chocolate into the cup.”
Petrie stopped and looked up. “Want me to go on?”
Shayne said, “No. But I do want to get it straight in my mind about that thermos jug. The way I understand it, Mrs. Blair fixed the chocolate drink in the kitchen as was her custom, and left it on the dining table about eleven o’clock before she retired.”
“That’s the way she told it,” Donovan said. “They all said she did it that way every night, and that it was understood Anita would take it up at midnight and give the old man his daily dose of medicine… and from some other things that was said we got the idea she was maybe gonna give him his daily dose of something else along with it.” He snickered. “Isn’t that right, Jim?”
“Yeh. She’d be the one to do that little thing… just in case the chauffeur didn’t give her all she wanted.” Petrie looked at Shayne, “You’re thinking there might have been something else in his cup of hot milk besides medicine?”
Shayne said, “He died half an hour after drinking it. It would have been smart to grab the jug and the cup he drank from and have them analyzed.”
“But that doctor swore there was nothing to indicate poisoning. Said it was exactly the way he had expected the old boy to kick off.”
“But you did have Henrietta screaming murder,” Shayne reminded him mildly.
“That old biddy,” snorted Donovan. “You could see she plumb hated Anita’s guts, and you don’t pay much heed to that kind of raving.”
Shayne said, “I’m not blaming you boys. But it’s different with me. I’ve got a big fat fee riding on the off- chance I can prove it was murder. And the way it stacks up… anybody in the house that evening had the opportunity to put something in the thermos jug while it was sitting on the dining table downstairs.”
“Except maybe Henrietta, the way I remember it,” said Petrie doubtfully. “And Peabody, too. I don’t remember whether he mentioned leaving the old man’s room during that hour or not. Do you, Terance?”
“I don’t think he mentioned it one way or the other. But he wouldn’t of, of course, if he had slipped out of Rogell’s room and downstairs to poison his milk.”
Petrie was flipping through the pages of the typewritten report again, pausing to glance at a paragraph, and then turning on.
“Right here, Peabody says, ‘I was with Mr. Rogell in his upstairs sitting room from ten o’clock until midnight when Mrs. Rogell came in, and we were undisturbed during that period.’”
“So that don’t prove nothing,” Donovan pointed out again. “Rogell ain’t alive to say it ain’t so.”
“Here’s Henrietta,” said Petrie, reading, “‘I retired to my own suite about ten-thirty. Mrs. Blair and Charles were in the kitchen where she was warming John’s midnight milk. I heard Mrs. Blair come up about half an hour later, and I stepped out in the hallway to intercept her and ask if I might accompany her up to the third floor to get a book which she had promised to lend me. We went up together, and I remained with her, talking, until we heard Anita screeching that John was dying. We hurried down together and found John…’”
Petrie broke off. “That takes care of her during the hour the jug sat on the dining table. And the housekeeper, too, because Mrs. Blair corroborated Henrietta’s story exactly.”
“But she could have put something in the milk when she fixed it. Before she went up at eleven,” Timothy Rourke pointed out.
Shayne said, “Right. And so could Charles have slipped something in the jug while he was in the kitchen and Mrs. Blair was busy. And Anita and Marvin were downstairs together during the hour before midnight. Counting Peabody, who could have left Rogell for a time, we have five people who had access to the jug of hot milk before Rogell drank it.”
“What’s the use kicking it around now?” demanded Petrie. “The old boy is going to be burned to a crisp at noon, and if there ever was any evidence of murder inside him, it’ll be destroyed.”
“That’s why we’ve got to move fast,” said Shayne with a driving intensity behind his words. He glanced at his watch and calculated swiftly that it was just a few minutes before eight o’clock in Denver, Colorado. He dragged a worn address book from his pocket and checked an old entry, then told the others, “Sit tight right here. I’m going to make a fast phone call from Gentry’s office, and then we’ll all get on our horses.”
He strode through the connecting door and found Gentry talking to a young patrolman who stood stiffly at attention beside the chief’s desk. Shayne said, “I’ve got to make a call, Will,” picked up a telephone from his desk and got the police operator. He said crisply, “Person-to-person in Denver, Colorado. Felix Ritter. Here’s an old telephone number I have for him.” He read the number from his book and lowered one hip to the corner of Gentry’s desk while he waited. Impersonally, and with only a tiny part of his mind, he listened to Chief Gentry chewing out the patrolman for some minor infraction of regulations while the long distance connection was being made, and when he heard Ritter’s voice on the other end, he said incisively:
“Mike Shayne in Miami, Felix. Can you get out to Central City fast?”
“Mike? Sure I can. There’s a new road since you were here, and…”
“Fast as you can make it,” interrupted Shayne. “Write this down. I want any gossip or scandal from the natives about a Mrs. Betty Blair who used to run a rooming house there where the millionaire miner, John Rogell, hung out while he was making his fortune. Find out how friendly they were in the old days… and what people thought when Mr. Blair died and the widow came to Miami to work as John Rogell’s housekeeper. Got it? Here’s an angle. He left her fifty thousand bucks in his will.”
“Sure, Mike. Rogell just died, huh? In Miami? Remember reading how he got his start in Central City.”
“Fast as you can make it, Felix. I need any damned thing you can pick up and relay to me by twelve o’clock. Make a collect call to the Chief of Police here. Will Gentry. Before noon.”
Felix Ritter in Denver said, “Will do,” and Shayne hung up. The patrolman was on his way out, and Shayne told Gentry, “You’ll be getting a call about Mrs. Blair from Central City before noon. I’ll be checking with you…”
Another telephone on Gentry’s desk interrupted him. The chief scooped it up and said, “Yes?” He listened a moment, lifting a beefy hand at Shayne, his rumpled eyelids moving up and down slowly. He hung up and told Shayne, “Let’s get out to the Rogell place with Petrie and Donovan. Marvin Dale committed suicide out there last night. And left a suicide note addressed to you.”
