The Corpse That Never Was (4 page)

“I still don’t admit there is a case, Armbruster. I think you’ll be wasting your money…”

“Whose money is it?” bristled the erect old man. “I’ve got millions to waste if I see fit, Shayne. All I want from you is your promise to suspend judgment and make a thorough investigation of this affair, putting aside any preconceived ideas of what may or may not have happened before you broke the door into that apartment. I want to know who Robert Lambert was, how he met my daughter, and what he meant to her. I don’t expect you to whitewash Elsa, Shayne. I want the truth… so far as you can ascertain what the truth is. For this, I will pay you a retainer of ten thousand dollars. This is not contingent on anything… except that you will take the case and investigate it to the best of your ability.”

Shayne said, “I’m afraid you’ll be wasting your money, Mr. Armbruster.”

“Will you allow me to be the judge of that?”

Michael Shayne hesitated, and then shrugged his wide shoulders. “It’s difficult to turn down a fee like that,” he conceded. “You’ve hired yourself a private detective, Mr. Armbruster.”

“Splendid. But that is only one part of my proposition, Shayne.” The old man leaned forward and his voice became deadly serious. “I will pay… happily… an additional fifty thousand dollars for evidence that will convict Paul Nathan of my daughter’s murder.”

Shayne blinked at this. He shook his red head slightly, as though to reassure himself that he had heard correctly. “You’re not trying to tempt me, are you?”

“Tempt you, Sir?”

“To manufacture evidence,” Shayne said evenly.

“Certainly not,” snapped Armbruster. “I’m convinced in my own mind that Paul Nathan engineered my daughter’s death somehow.”

“In the name of God,
how?”

“You’re the detective, Shayne. That is for you to discover. I know the man is a wastrel and a scoundrel. A thoroughly evil man, Shayne. I am convinced that he married my daughter only because she was a wealthy woman, and when he discovered that she was also a strong-willed woman who had no intention of turning her fortune over to him, I am certain in my own mind that he plotted her death.”

Shayne said, “That is a strong accusation.”

“I mean it to be. I would gladly make it publicly if that would accomplish anything. I warned Elsa. I begged her months ago to give the man a divorce and a cash settlement that would take him out of her life forever. She refused. Elsa was a peculiar woman, Shayne. There was a lot of Armbruster in her. She had a feeling for property. What she bought, she held onto. In her own mind, I am convinced that she realized full well that she had bought a husband when she married Paul Nathan. She was perfectly willing to pay the price but she had no intention of relinquishing her purchase.”

“Did she love him?”

“Love?” Eli Armbruster’s voice sneered at the word. “I’m not at all sure that Elsa was capable of love. You see, as I told you at the beginning of this interview, I knew my own daughter, Shayne. For years, I have had no illusions about Elsa. Love? I simply don’t know. She wanted Paul Nathan as a husband. She bought him. She was prepared to pay a high price for keeping him. This is one of the reasons why it is so difficult for me to accept the premise that she had fallen head over heels with some stranger named Robert Lambert… was visiting him in that dingy apartment on the sly… and had got in so deep that she was prepared to take her own life for the sake of… love? No. There is some other answer. One of the things you should know, for instance, is that Nathan asked her for a divorce some months ago, having the effrontery to demand a cash settlement of a quarter of a million dollars to remove himself from her life. Being Elsa, she refused… although I advised her to rid herself of the fellow even on those terms.

“Thus, she was fully aware that if she ever gave him grounds for divorce, he would sue immediately. There are many cases in which Florida courts have awarded alimony or substantial cash settlements to impecunious husbands who have proved adultery against their wives in a divorce court. If for no other reason in the world, Elsa would
never
have laid herself open to such charges which could be proved.”

Shayne said, “People do all sorts of irrational things when driven by love… or sex… whichever you prefer to call it.”

“People, yes,” agreed Armbruster. “But not Elsa. I tell you, Shayne…”

“I know,” said Shayne, holding up a big hand to cut the man off. “You’ve made your point. Don’t try to over-sell it. At this point, I have an open mind about your daughter. I’ll want differing viewpoints from yours to round out my picture of her.”

Armbruster said stiffly, “Of course. You know your business best and I’m sure you have your own methods. Bear in mind, however, that my offer stands. A retainer of ten thousand for you to handle the case. An additional fifty thousand the day Paul Nathan is convicted of my daughter’s murder.”

“I shan’t forget,” Shayne told him easily. “I’ll have my secretary draw up a brief memorandum on that basis, and will mail it to you for your signature.”

“Do that, Shayne.” Eli Armbruster arose to his feet with the agility of a middle-aged athlete. “In the meantime, I will leave my check at her desk on my way out.”

“There’s no need for that,” Shayne protested arising behind his desk. “You can pay me when…”

“I wish to make the initial payment now, if you don’t mind. I want you to be thoroughly convinced that it is in no way contingent upon what you discover. I am buying only an honest and thorough investigation. Please report to me as soon as you have learned anything of interest.” With that, he turned his back and marched out of Michael Shayne’s office.

The detective sank back into his swivel chair and lit a cigarette, scowling morosely. He liked the old man, and he didn’t like the case one little bit. For that kind of money, he didn’t have to like the case, he reminded himself. He wondered what sort of woman Elsa Armbruster had been in life, what kind of unpleasant truths concerning his daughter Armbruster was destined to hear before Shayne had earned his fee.

He was puffing on his cigarette and still scowling when Lucy tripped in lightly through the open door, her face beaming while she waved a slip of green paper in the air.

“Shame on you, Michael,” she exclaimed in a voice that completely belied her words. “What did you tell the old boy to hypnotize him into
this?
Ten thousand whole dollars! He didn’t even say what it was for. Just got a blank check out of his wallet and wrote it out… then tossed it over to me as though he were buying a couple of movie tickets, and walked out.”

Shayne said, “That’s a down payment on my integrity, Angel.”

She looked at him blankly and said, “Oh?”

“That’s right. There’s fifty grand more if I can conjure up evidence to convict his son-in-law of murder.”

“You mean… last night? But you said that was suicide, Michael.”

“It is… officially.” Shayne shrugged and said, “Sit down and take a letter of agreement. If Paul Nathan is the louse Armbruster thinks he is, maybe I will hang a murder rap on him.”

“Whether he’s guilty or not?” Lucy asked matter-of-factly as she sat down across the desk from him and opened her shorthand pad.

“Hell,” said Shayne harshly, “we
know
he isn’t guilty. Start it out: Mr. Eli Armbruster, and get his address on the Beach. Dear Sir: Confirming our conversation of this morning…”

W
hen Michael Shayne entered Will Gentry’s private office at police headquarters a short time later, the Miami Chief of Police was seated behind his desk with the well-chewed stub of a black cigar in his mouth, studying some typed reports in front of him. He was a burly, red-faced man, and he lifted a beefy hand to welcome the redhead, muttering absently, “Just a minute, Mike, while I finish this.”

He continued to scowl down at the sheet in front of him, working his lips to move the soggy cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.

Shayne pulled a straight chair a little closer to his desk and eased his rangy body down into it. He got out a cigarette and lit it in silence, leaned back comfortably to let thin, grayish smoke roil slowly out of both nostrils.

Will Gentry grunted and pushed the paper aside. “I see you were Johnny-On-The-Spot again last night, Mike. How the hell do you manage it?”

“I know the right people. Go visiting them at the right time.”

“Yeh,” snorted Gentry. “That apartment house of Lucy’s! What’s she got that attracts violence?”

Shayne grinned and said, “Don’t blame her. She doesn’t even know the guy.”

“Neither does anyone else it seems.” Gentry slammed the flat of a big hand down on the papers in front of him. “A name, that’s all we’ve got.”

Shayne looked at him alertly. “You haven’t been able to trace Robert Lambert at all?”

“Nary a trace. No wallet. No identification. No papers. Every stitch of clothes in the apartment is practically new, without a laundry mark or dry cleaner’s tag.”

“Fingerprints?”

“Nothing on file here. We’ve sent them to Washington… should have a preliminary report this afternoon. No Robert Lambert listed in the directories here and none in Jacksonville where he gave a phony street address when he rented the apartment.”

“And no bereaved wife turned up to claim the body?”

“That’s what we’re waiting for… if Lambert is his name. You interested, Mike?” Gentry asked the question casually, removing the cigar from his mouth and studying it intently as though he didn’t know how it had got there.

Shayne said, “I’m interested. To the extent of a whopping retainer.”

“Old Eli, huh? He threw his weight around here and threatened, by God, if the police force couldn’t do anything he’d go to the one man in Miami who could.” Gentry permitted himself a sour smile. “So it’s your headache, Mike.”

“The old man is dead-set on making out a case against his son-in-law.”

“He’s dead-set on hanging a frame around the poor guy’s neck,” Gentry retorted angrily. “You going to do his dirty work?”

Shayne leaned back and stretched his long legs out in front of him, tugging thoughtfully at his earlobe. “I’m in business for hire, Will. Right now I’ve been retained by Eli Armbruster to make a thorough, complete and unbiased investigation of the circumstances in which his daughter met her death last night. Any objection to that?” His voice was slightly edged, challenging.

“Hell, no. Go to it. The only thing that old Eli couldn’t get through his thick head is that this department has other things to occupy its time and attention. I’m treating it exactly as though Mrs. John Smith had died last night, and
that
Eli didn’t like one little bit.”

“Then you’ll give me whatever you’ve got?”

“Sure I’ll give you everything we’ve got. Haven’t I always cooperated, Mike? But the truth is, you know more about it right now than I do. You saw the couple in that room. Read the suicide notes, didn’t you? I wasn’t visiting my pretty secretary on the floor below when it happened.”

“I got out as fast as I could,” Shayne soothed him, “and only know what I saw when I broke the door down.”

“That was enough, wasn’t it?”

“For me, yes. Until I got a sizable check from Eli this morning. Now I’ve got a job to do. What about fingerprints in the apartment?”

Gentry shuffled papers on his desk, picked one up to glance at it. “Pretty clean. The woman’s were on the empty cocktail glass beside her, Lambert’s on the other one. His were on the shotgun barrel in the right position for holding it up to put the muzzle in his mouth with his bare toe on the trigger.”

He paused and Shayne asked, “No other fingerprints turn up in the entire place?”

“Nothing mentioned here. Hell, I don’t suppose Deitch dusted the whole goddamn place. Why should he?”

“No reason,” agreed Shayne lightly. “Except maybe to prove that no one else had been around.”

“I know. Eli tried to feed me that theory too. That Paul Nathan was there at the time and engineered the whole thing and ducked down the fire escape while you were busting in. For God’s sake, Mike. You can’t buy
that?”

“I’m not buying anything. Mind if I borrow Deitch on his time off to give it a real going-over? He’s a good man.”

“I don’t care what he does in his spare time. Look, Mike, I’m not putting any roadblocks in your way. Go ahead and earn your fee. But I’m warning you right now, Eli Armbruster isn’t going to be satisfied with anything less than a murder rap against Paul Nathan. He hates that guy who married his only daughter.”

“I gathered that much,” Shayne agreed equably. “But I don’t hate him, Will.” He met the chief’s cold stare with equal coldness, and then relaxed with a shrug. “Know what killed her?”

“They did a simple stomach analysis. Potassium ferricyanide. Enough of it mixed with rum and crème de menthe to kill a couple of mules.”

“Potassium ferricyanide?”

“One of the fastest acting cyanides known,” Gentry informed him, “and one of the easiest to get hold of. Photographers use it for something.”

Shayne asked, “Was Lambert a photographer?”

“We don’t know what Lambert was.”

“Or Paul Nathan?” pursued Shayne.

Chief Gentry snorted eloquently.

“What do we know about Lambert?” persisted Shayne. “You say he gave a phony address in Jax when he rented the apartment?”

Gentry nodded, shuffling the papers and looking down. “A little less than a month ago. He came directly to the manager of the building in answer to a newspaper ad. Took a quick look at the apartment and rented it for a month. Cash in advance. Hundred forty bucks.” He read slowly from a typed report in front of him. “Quiet, pleasant type. Medium height. Medium weight. Medium everything. Small dark mustache and lightly tinted blue glasses. Left-handed, the manager recalls, but that’s about all he does recall. When he signed the lease.”

“Those suicide notes?”

Gentry looked up and nodded. “Written by a left-handed man according to our expert.”

“Did you compare the signatures with the lease?”

Gentry scowled and studied the report in front of him. “I guess not. Why in hell would they? It was open and shut. You saw it yourself.”

“That’s what Eli pointed out,” Shayne muttered, staring across the room. He turned his head to smile placatingly at Gentry. “Let’s not get off on that tangent again. What else did the manager remember about Lambert?”

“Not much. It was a month ago. Something about him being a salesman with his territory recently enlarged to include Miami so he needed a headquarters while in town. The inference being that he would only be occupying the apartment occasionally. And that seems to be just what he did. From what my men picked up, it was a weekend hangout… more-or-less.”

Shayne nodded. “A convenient place for Mrs. Nathan to visit him every Friday night.”

“That’s what it sounds like. There’s a Mrs. Conrad across the hall…”

Shayne grimaced. “I heard her on the subject last night. She just happened to have her door cracked open every Friday evening… but, hell, Lucy knows her and says the old biddy can be trusted to know what goes on in the building. So…?” He leaned back and spread out both hands expressively. “That’s all we’ve got. You read those notes, Will. Did they sound authentic to you? The sort of thing a man would write under those circumstances?”

“How in hell would I know? I’m not a psychiatrist. And we don’t know what kind of man Lambert was.”

Shayne scowled and leaned forward to rub out his cigarette in a big ashtray. “That’s right. We don’t. Where was Paul Nathan last night?”

“On the town. His regular Friday night out… so he says. Drifting around here and on the Beach donating his wife’s money to the gambling tables. He made out a list of the joints he’d been to in the course of the night, with approximate times at each place. It looks pretty good for an alibi from eight o’clock on. Want to see it?”

Chief Gentry selected a sheet and slid it over to Shayne. The redhead glanced down at the list of nightspots, and asked, “Did you check this itinerary out?”

“For God’s sake, Mike! On Saturday morning?” Will Gentry gritted his teeth together so hard that they bit through the chewed end of the cigar and a portion of it fell to the desk in front of him. He glared down at it, picked it up with stubby fingers and threw it toward a spittoon in the corner, spitting the fragment from his mouth after it. Then he rested both elbows on the desk and nestled his blunt chin against his palms.

“No,” he grated. “We didn’t check Paul Nathan’s alibi for the time of his wife’s suicide. Eli Armbruster didn’t pay us for that particular little chore.”

Shayne nodded imperturbably, folding the sheet of paper. “Mind if I keep this?”

“Hell, no. You’re welcome to it. Anything else you want?”

“I’d like to take one of the suicide notes, Will. Preferably the first one.”

“How about this one to go along with them?” Will Gentry scrabbled among the papers in front of him, pulled out a square sheet of heavy white notepaper folded into four thicknesses. The creases were deep and it showed signs of much handling. Shayne unfolded it slowly and saw that the handwriting looked similar to that of the suicide notes he had read last night. The letter was dated a month previously, and the salutation was: “Elsa, My own sweet.”

He sucked in a deep breath and three vertical creases formed above his nose as he settled back to read it.

“I cannot endure to continue existing as we are at present. My body cries out for your body, and my need for you is not fulfilled during the fleeting and fragmentary moments we are able to steal together.

“I am going to make different arrangements, darling, so we will have hours instead of moments lying in each other’s arms. I will find a private place known only to us where we can meet freely and happily.

“I will telephone you next Friday at the regular time.

“I love you more blissfully each passing day and can scarcely wait to hold you in my arms again.

“Your own

“Bobbie-Boy”

Shayne put the letter down and demanded, “Where the devil did you get this?”

“In a zippered side compartment inside Mrs. Nathan’s purse, along with a couple of credit cards. And here are the two suicide notes.”

“Did you show this letter to Eli Armbruster this morning?”

“No,” Gentry admitted sourly. “I hated to hit him with that, too. He’s so damned certain that his daughter couldn’t have been carrying on that sort of affair. This clinches it, seems to me.”

Shayne shrugged. “I’ve still been paid to do a job. He’ll never be happy until he has absolute proof that Paul Nathan couldn’t have had anything to do with it. That’s why I’m going to go over his alibi with a finetoothed comb.”

Gentry exhaled a long breath and nodded slowly, rubbing his chin with the back of his left hand. “Guys like Armbruster rub me the wrong way,” he rumbled. “Just because it’s
his
daughter. An Armbruster, by God. Like I said before… if it was Mrs. John Smith…”

“The basic difference is,” Shayne told him cheerfully, “that Mrs. John Smith’s daddy couldn’t afford to write a check the size Armbruster wrote this morning.” He got to his feet slowly, folding the papers in his big hands. “Can I get into the apartment?”

“No reason why you can’t. See Lieutenant Hawkins down the hall. He’s got the keys and all the dope. Keep me up-to-date, huh?”

Shayne said, “Sure,” and went out with a wave of his big hand, and down the hall to the office of Homicide Lieutenant Hawkins where he was given the key to the apartment above Lucy Hamilton’s. He also ascertained that Sergeant Deitch, the department fingerprint expert, who had answered the call the night before, was off duty until four o’clock that afternoon, and got his telephone number at home. Garroway, the lab technician, who had accompanied the Homicide Squad, was on duty in the police laboratory at the end of the hall, and Shayne found him alone and idle when he walked in a few minutes later.

Garroway was young and alert and serious and college-trained. He knew the redheaded private detective by sight, and got to his feet quickly. “It’s Michael Shayne, isn’t it? I saw you at that apartment last night.” He studied Shayne with frank curiosity from behind thick-lensed, horn-rimmed glasses.

Shayne nodded casually. “When do you go off duty?”

“At noon.”

“Want to do a little job for me? Over-time rates,” Shayne added with a grin.

“Sure. What is it?”

“A follow-up on that suicide last night. I know you gave it a superficial once-over last night, but I want the works.”

A faint flush crept into the young man’s cheeks and he answered guardedly, “I think we checked it out pretty well. It was perfectly obvious…”

“Let’s forget the obvious. Did you analyze, for instance, that wet spot on the carpet near the kitchen door beside the empty cocktail glass?”

“No. But the glass contained traces of the same poison mixture as the other glass beside the woman. Potassium ferricyanide. The second suicide note explained clearly…”

Shayne shook his head with a grin that was intended to take the sting out of his words. “That’s the sort of thing I mean. I know the lieutenant pushed you through last night, but this time I want everything. Could you meet me there with your equipment about twelve-thirty? I’ll have Deitch, too. A hundred bucks for an hour’s work.”

“Well… sure. But you don’t need to pay me. That is… if you think I overlooked anything…”

Shayne said, “My client can afford to pay you. Fine. Twelve-thirty.”