her further about the call, but Shayne explained that he had made it. Mrs. Blair further stated that she knew nothing about anything that had gone on after she retired, that she had arisen at eight as was her custom and went directly to the kitchen to start preparing breakfast, where she had remained until Charles hurried in the backdoor and said that Mrs. Rogell had wakened him by his telephone extension to say that her brother had killed himself.
“We hurried up the stairs together,” Mrs. Blair said, “and there was Mrs. Rogell in her nightclothes in the hall crying her eyes out. Charles and I both looked in Mr. Marvin’s room and saw him lying on the floor and looking terrible. Then Charles closed the door and told me not to go in until the police came, and he went in Mrs. Rogell’s sitting room with her still crying, and closed the door. I came back to the kitchen and wondered why you were so long getting here,” she ended on a note of accusation.
Gentry asked, “When did you first see the body?”
“It was only a little after nine o’clock. Charles said he would call the police and I kept wondering why you didn’t come.”
Gentry said to Shayne, “It sounds as though he had a difficult time persuading her to give up the note.” And he asked Mrs. Blair, “Did you see the bottle of poison on the table in Marvin’s room?”
“That I did.” She began to cry softly. “Strychnine. With the skull and crossbones plain to see. I told Charles it looked like the one the gardener keeps in the garage for killing moles in the garden and I always knew it was dangerous stuff to have around.”
“When did you see it last?”
“Months, I guess. I don’t have much occasion to go in the garage.”
“Did everyone in the household know there was strychnine there?”
“I guess. It wasn’t any secret,” she said woefully. Gentry shook his head soberly as they climbed the stairs to interview Anita Rogell. “I don’t like any of this, Mike. There’s a stink I can’t get out of my nostrils.” He stopped at the head of the stairs abruptly and suggested, “Let’s see what Doc says before we talk to Mrs. Rogell.”
Doc Higgens had completed his examination and he came out of the death room briskly as they turned toward it. He said, “A massive dose of strychnine… until I do a P. M… taken in a highball about eight hours ago. Send him down to my charnelhouse as soon as you’re through with him.” He went on, and Chief Gentry went into the room to confer with his technicians, and Timothy Rourke sauntered out and rejoined Shayne. He grinned hopefully and said, “I’d like to get a statement from the stiff’s sister giving her ideas on why he killed himself.”
Shayne said, “We’re going to talk to her now. Why don’t you drift in behind us and stay in the background so Will can pretend he doesn’t notice you? What do the boys say about the set-up in there?”
“Nothing much. He sat down and wrote that note about two o’clock, spiked a drink of good whiskey with poison and drank it. Fingerprints all check. Everything’s okay. Except that goddamned suicide note. It doesn’t say anything.”
“They sure it’s his handwriting… and the two torn pieces check?”
“They check perfectly. Couldn’t possibly be faked. And George, the identification man, found a lot of samples of Marvin’s writing and swears it’s the same… though the man was obviously pretty drunk when he wrote the note.”
“He’d have to be to calmly swallow strychnine. Which is probably why the note isn’t more rational. Very few suicide notes are wholly rational,” Shayne went on with a frown, as though arguing a point with himself. “By the time they work themselves up to that point, they’re not making too much sense. On the other hand, I’ve got a strange feeling about the wording of that note…”
He broke off as Gentry came out and lumbered up the hall toward them. He said gruffly, “Let’s go in and see how the lady of the house is holding up after the death of hubby and her brother.”
14
The door leading into Anita Rogell’s upstairs sitting room was opened at Gentry’s knock by the maid who had let them in downstairs. She held the door slightly open and turned her head to murmur, “It is the police, Madame,” and then she opened it wider and stood aside for them to enter the room Lucy Hamilton had described to Shayne the preceding afternoon, and they walked into the same hothouse temperature Lucy had experienced.
Anita reclined on the chaise-longue across the room. She wore a violet, silken dressing gown that was belted tightly about her slender waist, and she looked fragile and frightened and grief-stricken as she dabbed at her long- lashed eyes with a lacy handkerchief and her unrouged lips quivered pathetically as she said, “Come in, gentlemen.”
Will Gentry crossed the room and looked down at her. He said, “I’m sorry it’s necessary to intrude at this time, Mrs. Rogell. I’m Chief Gentry of the Miami police, and I think you’ve met Mr. Shayne. He was in my office discussing the case with me this morning when the call came in about your brother, and I thought it well to bring him with me.” He made no mention of Timothy Rourke who moved unobtrusively to one side in the background and gingerly seated himself on the edge of a slipper chair.
She said, “Yes. I… met Mr. Shayne briefly last evening. I believe he entered my property illegally with the avowed purpose of digging up my little dog who died recently.”
Gentry didn’t pursue that subject. He sat down in a chair a little to Anita’s right, and Shayne seated himself on the other side of her. Gentry cleared his throat and his hand subconsciously strayed up to his inside coat pocket where he carried a supply of his stogies, and he half-drew one out before sighing and replacing it in his pocket. He put both beefy palms flatly on his knees and said:
“I’ll be as brief as I can, Mrs. Rogell. I want you to tell me exactly what happened last night after Mr. Shayne and the doctor went away.”
“Yes,” she said in a low voice, dropping her long lashes and twining her fingers together nervously in her lap. “I… suppose I must. I’ll try.”
She drew in a deep breath and held it for a long time, and the tip of her tongue crept out to moisten her lips. Then she lifted her lashes and gazed at him appealingly and said in a little girl voice, “It’s going to be most dreadfully difficult because I… you see… I realize that the foolish, impulsive thing I did was directly responsible for… for Marvin… for his…”
“Suicide,” supplied Gentry bluntly. “I realize how guilty you must feel under the circumstances. Just tell us in your own way exactly what happened.”
“Marvin was drinking,” she said unhappily. “Mr. Shayne knows. He saw him briefly. After he and Dr. Evans went out the front, I went into the downstairs study and remonstrated with Marvin… begged him to stop drinking and go to bed as soon as he finished that drink. He was in an ugly mood and said he’d do what he damn well pleased. I left him sitting there,” she explained with dignity, “and came up to prepare for bed myself. I had a hot bath, and then I began thinking about Charles and started worrying about him. He has a great pride in his physical prowess and is so loyal and devoted to all of us that I knew he was terribly distressed by his encounter with Mr. Shayne. I was afraid… well… that he might start brooding about it and try to retaliate somehow, and I knew Dr. Evans had ordered him to take a strong sedative and go to sleep.
“I didn’t realize, of course, that Mrs. Blair had much the same feeling and had already gone out with him and insisted that he take the pills and go right to bed, so I foolishly decided I would go out myself just to be sure he was all right. I slipped on a robe and went downstairs. There was still a light in the study, but I assumed Marvin was too stupid with drink to hear me going out.”
She paused to bite her underlip thoughtfully. “I realize that makes it sound as though I felt guilty about going out to see Charles. I didn’t… really. It was just that Marvin has a nasty mind, and once or twice before when he was drinking heavily he made some insinuating remarks about having a handsome and virile young chauffeur, and about… John being so much older than I. So I just wanted to avoid anything like that, and I went out the back way without knowing he heard me.”
She paused again to run the tip of her tongue over her lips. “I saw the light was on in Charles’ rooms over the garage, and I turned on the floodlight and went out. Charles came to the door in his pajamas and robe when I knocked, and he went back and got under the covers and I sat down for a minute after he told me he had already taken his pills and was waiting for them to take effect. He wanted to talk about Mr. Shayne and about how he’d been taken completely by surprise and hadn’t a chance to defend himself when he was assaulted, and I tried to
