“You hired me to do a certain job for you yesterday, Miss Rogell. I did it, so I have no further intention of returning the retainer you paid me. An autopsy was performed secretly on your brother last night.” He held her gaze impassively. “All of you here will be interested to know that John Rogell died of heart failure… exactly as Dr. Evans stated on the death certificate.”
A long-drawn sigh came from Anita’s lips. She sat up straight and her eyes flamed contemptuously at Charles on the floor. “I told you so.” Her voice was thin with rage. “But you wouldn’t believe me. Your lousy ego made you think I’d done something to John… when I loved him all the time.”
“See here, young man.” Henrietta’s heavy voice cut in unexpectedly. “What sort of nincompoop performed that autopsy on my brother?”
“The regular police surgeon. A very competent man.”
“Competent, my foot! He’s a bungling fool. Didn’t he have brains enough to check for digitalis?”
“But it was common knowledge that your brother had been taking digitalis for years,” protested Shayne. “He would naturally expect to find that in his system.”
“Of course, he would. And that’s exactly why he should have measured the quantity he swallowed the night he died. Didn’t he realize that’s exactly what his wife would use to kill him? Instead of strychnine or something obvious like that. Mrs. Blair will bear me out that she knew exactly what effect an overdose would have. Dr. Evans warned her carefully enough. I could have told that fool doctor what to look for.”
Shayne nodded and tugged thoughtfully at his left earlobe. “Yes, I’m sure you could, Miss Rogell. Because you put that extra teaspoonful in his milk yourself, didn’t you?”
“Nonsense. It’s just that I happen to be the only one around here with a brain in my head.”
Shayne shook his red head soberly. “I’m going to arrest you for poisoning your brother, Miss Rogell. And for attempting to frame Anita for your crime by putting strychnine in your own creamed chicken and feeding it to Daffy in a last-ditch effort to draw attention to your first crime.”
“Of all the fantastic nonsense I ever heard!” she exclaimed crisply. “And then, I suppose, I came to the best private detective in Miami and hired him to make a case against me?”
“That’s exactly what you did. After your scheme to kill Daffy fell flat on its face and she was safely buried with the strychnine inside her. It must have been quite a blow to you when these two detectives who investigated that night didn’t even look into Anita’s handbag and find the strychnine where you’d put it. Instead, Charles found it there, and unfortunately jumped to the conclusion you’d hoped the detectives would reach.”
Henrietta’s lips were tightly compressed and she shook her gray head wonderingly from side to side. “And what possible motive would I have for doing all those things, Mr. Michael Shayne? You know the provisions of John’s will. I’m cut off without a penny of my own. She gets it all.” She jerked her head indignantly toward Anita. “I was the last person in the world to want to see John in his grave.”
“Correction,” said Shayne gravely. “You were the only person in this entire household with any motive at all. The others knew they were provided for in his will and could well afford to wait. Even Marvin Dale. Even though Rogell might have kicked him out of his soft spot here, his sister would have continued to provide for him until she came into a lot of millions on her husband’s natural death. You were the only one who couldn’t afford to wait for that. Your only chance of ever getting your hands on the money you felt was rightfully yours was to arrange it so Anita would be convicted of murdering him. In that case, the will would be set aside because a murderer cannot legally profit by her crime. If you waited for John to die normally, you were sunk. So… you didn’t wait, Miss Rogell.”
“You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?” she asked sarcastically. “The one thing you can’t show is opportunity. Haven’t you brains enough in that red head of yours to realize that I’m the only person here who couldn’t have dosed John’s milk the night he died? All the others had a chance at it. I didn’t.”
“That,” said Shayne heavily, “is why I suspected you from the first. The night it happened was the one night when you had a perfect alibi. That’s why you weren’t afraid to come to me and hire me to reopen the case. You figured you were perfectly safe. No matter who else might be suspected, it couldn’t be you.”
“Of all the Alice in Wonderland logic I ever heard,” said Henrietta with a sniff, “that takes the cake. Is that the way you solve all your cases, young man? By finding the one person who has a perfect alibi and then suspecting him?”
Shayne grinned ruefully. “It isn’t always that easy. But from the beginning in this one, it looked as though you might have carefully built yourself an alibi. As though you knew what was going to happen to John that night, and provided yourself with witnesses to prove you couldn’t have tampered with the chocolate milk.”
“And you’ll have to admit I couldn’t have,” she pointed out with dry satisfaction. “I was in my own room while Mrs. Blair was fixing it. She came straight upstairs after leaving it on the dining table, and I stopped her on the way up and went up to her room with her where I stayed every minute until after he had his attack. You can ask Mrs. Blair.”
“I’ve already asked Mrs. Blair,” Shayne countered easily. “She told me the same thing… along with some other interesting bits of information.”
He turned from Henrietta to the housekeeper who had not spoken a word since he first entered the room. “Do you remember telling me how Charles was in the kitchen that evening and poured out the last glass of milk to drink it with some cookies before you noticed it was the last and had to take it away from him so there’d be the regular cupful for Mr. Rogell?”
“I remember that, Mr. Shayne.”
“And you were surprised to discover it was the last glass in the refrigerator?” Shayne pressed on. “You’d thought there was another full bottle, but suddenly discovered there wasn’t and that you had to have Charles’ glass for Mr. Rogell? Do you remember that, too?”
“Yes, I do. I would have sworn there was another full bottle left after I made dinner.”
“Did you ever stop to wonder what had become of the bottle you thought was there… but wasn’t?”
“I don’t know. I… I guess I didn’t think too hard.”
“Because you had no reason to think about it at the time,” Shayne pointed out soothingly. “You had no reason to suspect that there was going to be a lethal amount of digitalis in his milk that night, so you naturally wouldn’t suspect that Henrietta had poured out the other bottle after dinner and poured digitalis into the last cup that was left… knowing that would be the cup you would put into the thermos for Rogell to drink. But now that you think back, Mrs. Blair, don’t you know there was another bottle that disappeared from the refrigerator before you heated milk for Rogell?”
“You’re putting words in her mouth,” said Henrietta loudly. “No jury will ever believe her.”
Shayne said grimly, “I think they will. Let’s wait and see.”
20
Lucy Hamilton had luxuriated in a long, soaking, hot bath, and rubbed soothing cold cream on her lips from which Shayne had roughly ripped away the adhesive tape. With makeup carefully applied to offset the deathly pallor of her face and arrayed in her nicest silk dressing gown and most frivolous slippers, she was happily relaxed at one end of the sofa in the security of her own apartment with Michael Shayne lounging at the other end. She had a tinkling highball glass in her hand, and on the glass table in front of the sofa were bottles of whiskey and cognac, a carafe of ice water and a bucket of ice cubes. Up to this point, Shayne had not allowed her to do any talking. Now he looked at her sternly over the rim of a wine-glass nearly full of cognac, and ordered, “Tell me just how it happened last night.”
She said, “I was silly, Michael. I never will forgive myself. But I was worried about you going out to dig up that dog, and when I got the telephone call I didn’t stop to think.”
He said, “There was a telephone call?”
“About nine o’clock.” She took a sip of her drink, then plunged into the recital with downcast eyes.
“I ate dinner alone and came back to wait for some word from you. I was sitting right here relaxing with a drink and a cigarette when the phone rang. I was so sure it would be you. I ran to the phone and a man’s voice answered. He talked fast and I didn’t recognize it at all. But he said: ‘Miss Hamilton, Mike Shayne gave me this number to call you. He needs you fast. Meet him in his office in fifteen minutes. If he’s not there, wait.’ Then he
