Dead Man's Diary & A Taste for Cognac

Brett Halliday

and

A cryptic note concealed in a 
DEAD MAN’S DIARY
 causes Mike Shayne to return to the past, to trace the secret of the dead man’s life—and he finds himself dangerously involved in murder, both past and present.

In
A TASTE FOR COGNAC
, Mike and a copper-haired girl reporter from New York uncover the crime story of the year—but twenty-four terror-filled hours on a gunmen’s island hideaway create some reasonable doubt whether they will live to tell it.

Michael Shayne’s rangy body was comfortably settled on his living-room couch on a brisk day in March, 1945. A glass of cognac and a tumbler of ice water were within easy reach on the end table. He was reading an early edition of the tabloid
Morning Tribune
which he had picked up on his way home. His telephone rang.

He scowled at the instrument, ran knobby fingers through his unruly red hair, and wriggled to the other end of the couch to answer it.

The voice of Lucy Hamilton, his secretary, came over the wire. “Michael! Come over to my apartment right away. And no wise-cracks. There’s a woman here who needs you desperately.”

“Fine time to be dragging a man out of bed,” he growled.

Lucy said, “I’ll expect you in fifteen minutes,” and hung up.

In twelve minutes Shayne strode into the small office of the apartment building on North Rampart Street bordering the French Quarter. A middle-aged woman sat near the switchboard, placidly knitting. She looked up at him incuriously as he went past her to the self-service elevator in the rear.

Lucy Hamilton was waiting for him outside her door on the third floor when he stepped from the elevator. She hurried to meet him and clutched his arm. “It’s Mrs. Groat from across the hall,” she said rapidly. “She’s terribly worried about her husband, Michael. You’ve got to help her.”

Shayne looked down at her flushed face and her dark, anxious eyes. She wore a chenille robe of blue, belted tightly about her slim waist. Her brown hair fell in soft curls around her shoulders.

He gave her a crooked grin. “So, my clients are coming to you, eh? Why didn’t you tell her to come to my office tomorrow?”

“And spend a terrifying night wondering what’s become of her husband? She’s in an awful state, Michael.” Lucy urged him toward her open door and into the small living room.

A plump, middle-aged woman sagged against a pillow on the couch. Her hair was grayish and she wore a gray dress of snug-fitting design. She gazed up at Shayne mutely with washed blue eyes. Tears streaked her rouged cheeks and her rouge-smeared lips trembled as she dragged her body to a straight position.

“This is Mr. Shayne, my boss, Mrs. Groat,” said Lucy. “I know he’ll help you.”

Shayne gravely pressed her limp hand and turned to look at a swarthy man who had risen from his chair when Shayne entered the room.

“This is Mr. Cunningham, Michael,” Lucy said. “He’s a shipmate of Mr. Groat’s, and he’s awfully worried, too.”

Cunningham was of medium height, stocky, and thirtyish. His face was deeply bronzed, his hair a short black stubble, and he wore bell-bottomed blue serge trousers with a wide, tight waistband. He held out a small, stubby hand covered with black hairs and took Shayne’s in an iron grip. “Pleased to meetcha, Mr. Shayne,” he said, and showed incredibly large white teeth in a thick-lipped smile.

Shayne nodded. As Cunningham took his hand away, Shayne saw a purple and yellow anchor tattooed on it.

“Suppose you tell me about everything,” he said to Lucy. “You know what’s important and what isn’t.” He motioned her to sit beside Mrs. Groat on the couch.

“Well, Mr. Groat went out at eight o’clock, telling his wife he’d be gone not more than an hour. He didn’t tell her where he was going. By eleven o’clock she was becoming worried, and then Mr. Cunningham called to ask for her husband. He had had an appointment to meet him at nine o’clock and had been waiting for two hours. She asked Mr. Cunningham to come up to the apartment, and after they talked it over, she came across the hall to ask my advice. You see, she knows I work for you, and—well, she thought I’d know what to do.”

Shayne turned to Cunningham. “You say you and Groat are shipmates?”

“In the Merchant Marine. If you noticed yesterday’s papers—”

“Don’t you remember that feature story on the front page, Michael?” Lucy interrupted eagerly. “About the two seamen who were rescued from a lifeboat after their ship had been torpedoed near the Panama Canal?”

“Leslie Cunningham,” Shayne muttered, “and Jasper Groat. You’re an able seaman and he—”

“Was the third engineer,” Cunningham supplied. “This was our first trip together and I didn’t know Jasper well until the ship was torpedoed, but I got to know him mighty well during the two weeks we were in a lifeboat together. You sure get to know a guy when a thing like that happens.”

Shayne said, “Two weeks in a lifeboat. You don’t look any the worse for it.”

“It wasn’t too bad. The boat was stocked with grub and water. The sun was the worst thing—and not knowing when—” He broke off with a shrug. “I reckon it was Jasper’s faith pulled us through.”

Mrs. Groat began to sob. “Jasper was always a pious man. But he was changed this time, Mr. Shayne. He was moody and worried. He wouldn’t talk to me about any of it. Something was bothering him. He kept saying that maybe we’d have a lot of money right soon, but he wouldn’t tell me how or why.”

“I reckon he meant his diary,” Cunningham said, looking down at his short, stubby feet. “Jasper kept a diary all the time we were afloat. Yesterday morning when the reporters were interviewing us, one of them asked him about publishing it. In a lot of newspapers, y’know. He told Jasper it might be valuable and said he’d see him about it later.”

“Wasn’t there another man in the lifeboat with you?” Lucy asked.

Cunningham lifted his head slowly to look at her. He wet his pudgy, cracked lips. “At first there was. A soldier off the troopship, name of Albert Hawley. He was hurt in the explosion and we pulled him out of the water. He lived four or five days. Jasper nursed him the best he could but it wasn’t any use. He died with Jasper holding him in his arms at night and we buried him at sea next morning.”

“Jasper talked about him a lot,” Mrs. Groat said. “He lived right here in New Orleans. His mother is that rich Mrs. Hawley. Jasper expected them to call him up after the newspaper story came out. He didn’t know whether he ought to call them or not. Seemed as though that was partly what troubled him.”

“You have no idea where he went tonight?” Shayne asked.

She shook her head despairingly. “But I know he made a telephone call when I was out this afternoon. He was just hanging up when I came back. He acted strange about it. He denied making any call and got mad when I insisted I’d heard him as I came in. I heard him say, ‘I’ll expect you first thing in the morning,’ and then he hung up.”

Shayne asked, “What about some friends he might have gone to see? He may have changed his mind after he went out.”

“No. He would’ve told me.” She wiped her eyes with a rouge-mottled handkerchief. “You see, we were going out to dinner to celebrate when he came back. We always do when he comes in from a voyage.” She began to sob, and moaned. “Oh, I know something awful has happened to him. I just know it.”

“She’s right,” Cunningham said soberly. “The dinner was going to be on me. We planned it all in the lifeboat. He called me up about eight o’clock to remind me of it. I know he wouldn’t run out on me.”

Shayne said, “There’s not much I can do tonight. Have you called the police?”

Faintly Mrs. Groat echoed, “The police?” Her eyes, dried of tears, stared tragically at Shayne.

“Of course,” he said. He went to the phone and dialed. After a brief conversation with the desk sergeant, he hung up and went toward the door, saying, “The police haven’t heard anything so far. They’ll call you if they do. I’ll have a look into things tomorrow.”

Cunningham stood up. “I might as well go along, Mrs. Groat. I’ll call you first thing in the morning, and I sure hope Jasper turns up all right.” He turned to Lucy, his black eyes running boldly over her slight figure as he said, “Good night.”

Shayne had his hand on the doorknob. He sauntered back into the room and sat down.

When Cunningham went out, Lucy turned flaming cheeks to Shayne and flared, “Did you see the way he looked at me?”

Shayne chuckled. “He’s just been rescued after two weeks adrift in a lifeboat.” Then to Mrs. Groat, “If you haven’t heard from your husband in the morning call me at my office.”

Mrs. Groat dragged herself up from the deep cushions. Lucy put an arm around her and accompanied her to her apartment across the hall.

Shayne let himself down in the elevator. In the office he stopped before the woman who was still placidly knitting and asked, “Do you keep a record of calls through the switchboard?”

She said, “Outgoing calls,” without looking up.

“Will you check a call about four o’clock this afternoon from 311? It’s police business.”

Her fingers stopped in the middle of a stitch. She glanced up at Shayne, startled. Without a word, she consulted a sheet of paper clamped to a board on the switchboard and said, “That was long-distance. To Mrs. Leon Wallace in Littleboro.”

Shayne laid a dollar bill on the desk and said, “I’d like to talk to Mrs. Leon Wallace in Littleboro.”

“You can take the call in there,” she stammered, indicating a booth in the corner of the small office.

Shayne waited a full five minutes before the booth phone rang. He lifted the receiver and said, “Hello.”

An operator said brightly, “On your call to Littleboro—there is no answer. Shall I keep trying?”

“Cancel it.” He hung up and went back to the anxious-eyed woman at the switchboard. “Do you know Mr. Groat in 311?”

“Yes. He and his wife have lived here for two years.”

“Did you see him tonight when he went out?”

She said, “He stopped and asked me the best way to get to Labarre Road.” She started to pick up her knitting but, instead, turned back to Shayne with a frown riding the gold bridge of her spectacles. “He made a phone call from the booth there before he went out.”

Shayne went back into the booth and thumbed through the names under H until he found Mrs. Sarah Hawley on Labarre. Then he walked out to his car parked at the curb.

A man moved forward from the shadows beside the building. “Just a minute, Mr. Shayne,” Leslie Cunningham said. “If you’ve got time I’d like to talk to you.”

The detective stopped. “It’s pretty late,” he said.

“This is important. It’s about Groat.”

“Why didn’t you do your talking upstairs?”

“I didn’t want to talk in front of his wife.” Cunningham made an impatient gesture. “No use getting her any more worried than she is.”

Shayne swung into a long-legged stride. “If you’ve got something to say, let’s find a place where we can sit down.”

Cunningham’s shorter legs fell into unrhythmic step. “There’s a place on Toulouse,” he suggested. “I’ll buy a drink.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” They turned right on Toulouse and, halfway down the block, went into a bar.

Jarring music from a rear room drifted through a heavy pall of smoke. Three men supported hunched shoulders with their elbows on the bar.

“Let’s go back where we can sit at a table,” Cunningham muttered, waving his hand and saying, “Hi, Louie,” to the bartender as he passed.

The juke-box jive grew louder and the smoke heavier when they pushed through the swinging door into the rear room. They found a vacant booth and slid into it.

A pretty girl wearing a dirty apron came over and flicked a dirty rag across the table, then asked, “What’ll you have, gents?”

Shayne said, “A double shot of the best brandy you can find in the joint.”

Cunningham ordered a double bourbon with plain water. The waitress slouched away, the music stopped, and when another record dropped into place, he leaned toward Shayne and said, “As I understand it, you ain’t hooked up with the cops, Mr. Shayne.”

“My letterheads say I’m a private investigator,” Shayne told him. “Tell me about your sea rescue.”

“It wasn’t much.” Cunningham made a deprecatory gesture. “Tough to get rolled out in the middle of the night with a ship breaking to pieces under you, but we came out all right. We had a sail rigged up and would’ve made land all right if the rescue ship hadn’t picked us up.”

The girl brought their drinks. Cunningham laid out a dollar and a half and she took it away.

“If you come onto something not just right,” the sailor said slowly, “you can keep your mouth shut, huh? You don’t have to blab all you know? Like a lawyer—you got a right to protect your client?”

Shayne’s lips thinned a trifle against his teeth. He held the glass of brandy to his nose and scowled, set it down on the table, and said gently, “Like a lawyer. What’s on your mind?”

“I’m plenty worried about Groat. Something bad’s happened to him. I know it. You know how it is when you think maybe you’re going to die. You plan to have a big celebration if you come out alive. I was gonna blow him to the dinner, and Jasper wouldn’t have passed it up.” Cunningham was watching Shayne intently. He was nervous and tight-strung.

“Any idea where he went tonight?” Shayne poured brandy into his mouth and swallowed it quickly, then chased it with water.

“Yeah. I think I have. I can’t go to the police, see?”

“Why not?”

“Because they’ll ask too many questions. It’s a long story. Less you know about it the better it’ll be. It’s Jasper’s diary I’m thinking of.”

“The diary some reporter said he might buy from Groat for publication?”

“That’s it. He was writing in it all the time we were shipwrecked. Put everything down, see? Everything we said and what he thought. He was a great one for thinking.”

“What about the diary?”

“I want it. That is, if anything’s happened to Jasper I want it bad. It’s got—a lot of stuff about me in it.” The sailor took a big drink of bourbon and ran his tongue over his lips.

“Stuff you don’t want published?”

“That’s it. I told Jasper to lay off giving it to that reporter. He wouldn’t listen to me.”

“What kind of stuff?” Shayne persisted. Cunningham’s faint smile showed his big white teeth. His tone took on a lighter vein when he said, “You know how it is when a man thinks he might die. He tells all sorts of things he wouldn’t think of telling anybody otherwise. Things that wouldn’t look good in print.”

Shayne asked, “Did Groat turn the diary over to the reporter?” He finished his drink and thumped the glass down.