The Corpse That Never Was (3 page)

“Good God!” Rourke sat up tensely, excitement glittering in his deep-set eyes. “Elsa Armbruster! Only daughter and sole heir of old Eli Armbruster. Been married to a man named Nathan about a year. Society with a capital S. Sneaking off to a dump like this. Sorry, Lucy,” he added quickly. “It’s not really a dump, but… for a woman like Elsa Armbruster…”

Lucy nodded indulgently. “You don’t have to dot your I’s, Tim. Goodness! She could buy and sell every person living in this building fifty times over. What on earth would she be doing here?”

“Take Tim’s capital S and put it in front of e-x,” Shayne suggested with a cynical lift of one red eyebrow, “and I think you’ll have the answer. Society millionairesses are apparently just as susceptible as parlor maids.”

“But… but…” sputtered Lucy. “Think of a woman like that committing
suicide.
With all the money in the world. Everything to live for. It’s incredible.”

Shayne said somberly, “Apparently there was one thing that all the money in the world couldn’t buy for her. The man she wanted. His note said that his wife had religious convictions which made it impossible for him to get a divorce. Love,” he said angrily, “is a many-barrelled as well as many-splendored thing. The damned mess it can make of some people’s lives! By God, Lucy. Let’s be thankful that you and I have remained sensible and refused to get caught in a trap like that.”

She looked at him wonderingly for a moment, and Timothy Rourke chuckled and said drily, “Yeh. Keep on being sensible, you two.” He finished his bourbon and unfolded his emaciated frame. “I’ll be on my way. Thanks for the drink, Lucy.” He moved toward the door and said softly over his shoulder, “And God bless you, my children.”

They sat very still until the door closed behind him, and then Lucy turned with a soft little cry of, “Oh, Michael,” and threw her arms about his neck and buried her face against his shoulder.

Shayne held her tightly and banished the memory of the upstairs room from his mind.

A
lthough the next day was Saturday, Shayne had promised Lucy the night before that he would go to the office that morning to sign some checks she had ready, so he was up before nine o’clock.

He put water on to heat for the dripolator, then got the morning paper from in front of his door and opened it out on the center table in the sitting room.

The headline across the front page said: SLEUTH SMASHES DOOR ON SUICIDE PAIR.

He left the paper there and went back into the kitchen to put coffee in the drip pot, pouring boiling water on top of it, and then he scrambled three eggs and made toast while the water dripped through.

Carrying his breakfast in to the table, he ate with relish and sipped strong, black coffee while glancing through the front-page story. Actually, there was less printed about the case than he already knew. Neither of the suicide notes was quoted, and it wasn’t clearly explained why both poison and a shotgun had been used in the two deaths. Robert Lambert was referred to as the “mystery man,” and the identity of his paramour had been handled as discreetly as possible, with the name of “Armbruster” not even appearing, though there was a picture of the dead woman wearing the same floppy black hat Shayne had seen on the table in the death room.

The story was continued on the second page, and there they had a picture of the cuckolded husband as he was leaving the morgue after identifying his wife’s body. He was an open-faced young man, wearing a scowl as he faced the camera, his sport jacket and shirt open at the throat.

Shayne put the paper aside, took his empty plate into the kitchen where he ran hot water over it, poured another cup of coffee and reinforced it with cognac.

He was sitting back and sipping this pleasurably when his telephone rang. Lucy Hamilton answered when he picked it up. “Are you coming in this morning, Boss?”

“Sure. In about half an hour.”

“Mr. Armbruster is here to see you,” she told him briskly, and he knew the man must be standing beside her desk. “Mr. Eli Armbruster. He is very anxious to see you.”

Shayne said, “Tell him fifteen minutes, Angel,” and hung up with a frown. He had never met Eli Armbruster, but the name was well-known to anyone who had lived in Miami for any length of time. In the early twenties he had come to Miami as a young man and bought extensive holdings on the ocean side of Biscayne Bay which was then barren scrubland. Through the boom-and-bust of the twenties, he had simply sat back and held onto his property, neither buying nor selling during the period of frenzied speculation, and by sitting tight and holding on he had eventually become one of the wealthiest men on the peninsula when prosperity returned to the area in the late thirties.

He was a widower and had only one child, his daughter Elsa. He was prominent in civic affairs and charity drives, but had never entered politics, though he probably wielded more behind-the-scenes influence on Dade County politics than any other single individual.

Michael Shayne sighed deeply and finished off his coffee royal. He did not look forward to meeting Eli Armbruster this morning. The memory of the twisted body and contorted features of the old man’s daughter was still vivid in Shayne’s mind. What do you do, what can you say, to comfort a father who has lost his child under these circumstances?

Shayne shaved and dressed swiftly, and entered his office fifteen minutes after Lucy’s telephone call. She was typing at her desk beyond the low railing across the reception room, and she looked fresh and young and vital as she smiled at him and said demurely, “Mr. Armbruster is waiting in your office, Mr. Shayne.”

Shayne nodded and dropped his hat on a hook near the door, and crossed to the open door of his private office.

A tall, slender, elderly man sat stiffly erect in a leather chair at one corner of the wide, bare desk. His feet were planted firmly together on the floor in front of him, blue-veined hands were placed precisely on his knees. He had scanty, white hair and a bristling, white military mustache, and a pair of the clearest, most penetrating blue eyes that Shayne had ever encountered.

He didn’t rise as Shayne came in and closed the door behind him, but inclined his head slightly and said, “Mr. Shayne,” and lifted his right hand to offer it to the detective. “I am Eli Armbruster,” he said precisely, “and I am pleased to meet you, although I could wish the circumstances of our meeting were different.”

Shayne took his hand and felt his own gripped in a surprisingly firm grasp. He looked down into the bright, blue eyes and said, “I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am, Mr. Armbruster.” He hesitated, but looking down into those blue eyes, knew this was not a man with whom to mince words, “Suicides are hell,” he said flatly, “for those who remain behind. One can
never
understand…”

“Nonsense, Mr. Shayne,” snapped Armbruster. “This isn’t suicide we’re faced with. It is murder.”

Shayne released his hand and walked around the desk to seat himself in the swivel chair. He got out a cigarette and lit it thoughtfully. He said, “I realize that’s a natural reaction from a father. But I’m afraid we have to face the facts in this case.”

“That’s what I suggest you do, Sir.” His visitor’s voice was firm and placid. “The simple fact is that my daughter, Elsa, did not take her own life. It is unthinkable… impossible. I know my daughter, Mr. Shayne. She could no more take her own life than… than I could. She was a strong woman. Headstrong and willful. She might, now I grant you, she
might
decide to have an affair with another man. If she did so decide, she would have entered into the arrangement in a calm and practical manner. Elsa was not one to throw her cap over the windmill, to lose her head over any man. I know that girl, Mr. Shayne. It would have been utterly impossible for her to commit suicide. She carried my blood in her veins. An Armbruster could never take that way out.” He spoke with quiet, unshakable conviction which was very impressive.

Shayne tugged at his left earlobe and asked, “Have you talked to the police, Mr. Armbruster?”

“I came directly here from Chief Gentry’s office. I know Will Gentry, Mr. Shayne. I respect him as a conscientious and fairly efficient public servant. On the other hand, he is a dolt. Two and two
always
make four to Will Gentry. He does not possess a mind capable of conceiving that two and two may sometimes add up to three or to five.”

Shayne tried not to smile at this characterization of Chief Will Gentry. It was a perfect summing up of Will’s character, but the hell of it was that two and two
did
add up to four.

He said mildly, “There were the suicide notes, Mr. Armbruster. Did you read those?”

“Gentry showed them to me. Written by whom? Signed by whom, Shayne? Not by my daughter. You will observe that
she
left no notes behind her.”

“Not in that apartment,” Shayne agreed. “Possibly she left one at home for her husband.”

“He says not.”

“In cases like this,” Shayne argued, “a husband often denies the existence of such a note. It’s a defensive reaction… a refusal to wash dirty linen in public.”

“If there were such a note from Elsa, Mr. Shayne, I assure you that Paul Nathan would be the first to offer it as evidence. Don’t make the mistake of looking upon him as a grieving and bitter husband. I tell you, Sir, he is laughing at all of us behind our backs this morning. He has committed the perfect crime. He has rid himself of an unwanted wife and become heir to a multi-million-dollar estate in one stroke.”

The vehemence of his assertion shook Shayne a trifle, but he countered doggedly, “I’m afraid you are attributing superhuman powers to Paul Nathan. I don’t know anything about his relationship with his wife or how much he may have desired her death, but the fact remains that I have never in my life seen a more positively cut-and-dried double suicide set-up than the one I crashed into last night.”

“That is it exactly.” The ramrod-stiff old man leaped on Shayne’s statement avidly. “That is precisely the point I made to Will Gentry. Positively cut-and-dried. No possible question about it. A two and a two as plain as the nose on your face which
must
add up to four. So there is no real investigation. Naturally. What is there to investigate? Play it down and hush it up to save old Eli Armbruster’s feelings. Now tell me, Mr. Shayne. I understand you were there on the scene? How much painstaking and real investigation was there? What sort of search was made for clues that might possibly… just
possibly
… prove it to be something different from the cut-and-dried appearance of double suicide on the surface?

“Come now,” he demanded urgently as Shayne hesitated, marshalling his thoughts. “You’ve been in the middle of plenty of homicide investigations in the past. Just let your imagination have a little bit of freedom. Allow yourself to assume… just for instance… that there hadn’t been those two suicide notes in evidence. Then it
wouldn’t
have been cut-and-dried. There would have been certain questions for which the police would have sought the answers. I know Gentry has an efficient police laboratory. Were those technicians called in to subject that apartment to the sort of painstaking analysis it would have received under less cut-and-dried circumstances?”

Shayne had to say thoughtfully, “No. Under the circumstances that sort of procedure didn’t seem called for.”

“Exactly. Under the circumstances. Now… who is this man who signed his name Robert Lambert?”

“I don’t know what success the police have had in tracing him.”

“None,” said Armbruster triumphantly, pointing a lean forefinger at Shayne. “Up to this point they have not discovered one single clue leading to his identity. Why not? I’ll tell you why not. Because they don’t really care. What difference does it make after all? The case is closed. A man named Robert Lambert is dead and my daughter is dead. Do they know it was Lambert himself who wrote those notes? Suppose they were clever forgeries? Do they
know
my daughter had been meeting him there frequently? Perhaps she was just lured there last night.”

“And induced to drink a cyanide cocktail against her will?” Shayne tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice because he liked the old man and admired the indomitable spirit which refused to accept the obvious, but he didn’t quite succeed because Armbruster flushed slightly and his penetrating blue eyes glittered with anger.

“I expected better of you, Shayne. You’ve gotten a lot of publicity in Miami and there’s been a public image built up of you as a man of imagination and of unorthodox methods which have produced results in the past and solved crimes which the police considered insoluble. I believe there is even a fiction writer who has made a small fortune writing up your cases in book form and selling millions of copies of them. Yes, goddamn it, Mr. Shayne. It is not inconceivable to me that Elsa was lured to that apartment last night and induced to drink a cocktail containing cyanide against her will. Without her knowledge, at least. My daughter had a peculiar taste in drinks. Her favorite potion was equal parts of heavy, dark rum and crème de menthe. Have you ever tasted that particular mixture?”

Shayne couldn’t repress a faint shudder as he confessed, “Not that I recall.”

“I suggest you try it so you’ll know what I’m talking about. I think you will then agree with me that a lethal dose of cyanide or any other poison could be introduced into that concoction without the drinker’s knowledge. Now, do you begin to see what I’m getting at, Shayne? If you can throw away all your preconceptions, do you see how each physical fact in that seemingly cut-and-dried suicide set-up might be interpreted differently?”

Shayne took a long pull on his cigarette and tried to readjust his thinking to fit Eli Armbruster’s ideas. It was very difficult. He had
seen
it, damn it. Armbruster hadn’t. He said slowly:

“I’m sorry, but as you probably already know, I was just downstairs one flight when it happened. I heard the blast of the shotgun, Mr. Armbruster. I ran upstairs and broke in the locked and chained door.”

“I know you did. That’s one of the reasons I have come to you. Stop just a moment and think, Shayne. How much time elapsed between the time you heard the gun go off and the moment you burst into the room?”

Shayne considered his reply carefully. “Probably three or four minutes. Not more than five, certainly.”

“Ah.” Eli Armbruster grunted his satisfaction. “So, by your own admission, from three to five minutes went by between the time the shotgun was fired and anyone entered that apartment?”

“The door was locked and chained on the inside,” Shayne reminded him.

“Mr.
Shayne. Does that building have fire escapes as required by the building code?”

“Yes.”

“Can they be reached through each separate apartment?”

“Yes. Through the bedroom windows mostly.”

“Were the bedroom windows of that particular apartment locked on the inside last night?”

Michael Shayne hesitated, scowling heavily. He recalled standing there with his back to the door looking down at the two bodies, and the acrid smell of discharged gunpowder in the room. And he distinctly recalled the light breeze blowing in from the bedroom which dissipated the odor.

He said, “As a matter of fact, Mr. Armbruster, I’m quite certain that the bedroom window was open at the time.”

“Aha! But no one… including you, Shayne… thought that significant?”

“Frankly, no. We had no reason to suspect…”

“Exactly what I have been trying to point out to you,” crowed Eli Armbruster triumphantly. “It was all so cut-and-dried. Thinking back over it now, you can’t be positive there wasn’t a third person in that apartment when the shotgun went off, can you? A third person who went out the bedroom window onto the fire escape while you were running up the stairs and breaking down the locked door?”

Shayne shook his red head and confessed, “No. I can’t be positive. On the other hand…”

“Wait a minute,” ordered Armbruster peremptorily. “Stop right there, Shayne. This is all I asked in the beginning. That you allow a tiny iota of doubt to enter your mind. No more than that. Only that two and two do not
have
to always equal four. Will you take the case?”