Dead Man's Diary & A Taste for Cognac (6 page)

Shayne said, “Because I’ve got a date to keep with a dame. She’s waiting in my apartment right now and I need to be sober to handle her.” He wagged his head and closed one eye in a wink. “It happens to be your ex-sister-in-law!”

“Not Beatrice!” she gasped. Her upper lip curled in contempt.

“That’s right. We had quite a talk this morning. I suppose you know it was she who invited Groat out to the Hawleys to be murdered last night.”

“Did she murder him?”

“I don’t know. If I can keep her sober long enough, I’ve got an idea she can tell me who did.”

“We haven’t settled anything,” Mrs. Meredith reminded him. “I don’t think I understand you, Mr. Shayne.”

Shayne was at the door and had hold of the knob when someone rapped. He turned to look at Mrs. Meredith, one eyebrow quizzically raised. She had half-risen from the divan and her eyes were wide. She shook her head at Shayne but didn’t speak.

The rapping sounded again. Shayne turned the knob and opened the door. He said, “Well, well,” and stepped back when he saw Leslie Cunningham standing on the threshold.

The sailor wore a double-breasted suit of blue serge; the snap brim of a felt hat was pulled low over his bronzed forehead. His black eyes glittered with surprise when he saw Shayne. He jerked his gaze to Mrs. Meredith and muttered, “I didn’t know you two knew each other.”

Shayne said, “I get around a little.” He motioned Cunningham inside and added, “Mrs. Meredith is looking for another victim to drink one of her mint juleps. I’m just leaving.”

Cunningham squared his shoulders and stepped into the room. His actions showed a strong trace of self-consciousness. His gaze was fixed on Mrs. Meredith’s face as though he hoped to receive some signal from her, some hint as to what she expected from him.

She said smoothly, “It’s nice of you to drop in, Mr. Cunningham. I would like to mix you a mint julep since Mr. Shayne scorns them. Besides, my charming ex-sister-in-law is waiting in his apartment,” she added acidly.

Shayne said, “I’m sure you two have a lot to talk over.” He started for the door again, adding, “Just as I have with Mrs. Meany.”

“I’ve got some things to talk to you about,” Cunningham muttered. “I just heard Jasper Groat’s body has been found.”

“Didn’t surprise you, did it?”

“No. As I told you last night, I knew something had happened to him. What about the diary?”

“You still have that to worry about. You and Mrs. Meredith and the Hawleys, and Hastings and Sims—and maybe Joel Cross.” Shayne went out and closed the door.

In the lobby he went down the corridor behind the desk and stopped at a door marked
Private.
A voice said, “Come in,” when he knocked.

Kurt Davis was lounging in a chair smoking a cigar. He didn’t look the way a house detective is supposed to look, but at the St. Charles the job called for brains more than brawn.

He said, “Hello there, Shayne. Are you working?”

“Sort of.” Shayne pulled up a chair and sat down. “Can you get me the home address of Mrs. Meredith in Room 319?”

“I can get you the address she used when she registered.”

Shayne nodded. “I don’t expect an affidavit with it.”

Davis got up and strolled across the small room to a metal box affixed to the wall. He pressed a button and spoke into the box. Turning back to Shayne, he asked, “Anything we ought to have on her?”

“I don’t think so.” Shayne hesitated, then added, “You might keep an eye on the men she entertains in her suite.”

“A floozie?” the house detective asked.

“Not at all. The worst she’s likely to do is knock some guy out with one of her mint juleps. She’s mixed up in a case I’m working on. I don’t know how deeply. If there’s a pinch, I’ll see that your dump is kept clean.”

The metal box buzzed. Davis turned to it, pressed a button, and said, “Yes?”

Shayne took out a small memo pad and a pencil. He copied down the street address as Davis repeated it aloud. He promised, “If I get anything you can use, I’ll pass it on,” and went out.

It was getting quite dark as he walked up the street to a telegraph office and wrote out a message to Mr. Theodore Meredith in Chicago, Illinois. It read:
Dangerous complications demand you here immediately. Wire me at once but not at hotel because am watched. Send message to this address.

He completed the message with his own apartment address and signed it
Matie.
He sent it as a straight message, went back to his parked car, and drove to his apartment.

When Shayne stepped out on the sidewalk he glanced up to see light in the front windows of his second-floor apartment. He knew he hadn’t left the lights on when he had gone out earlier in the day.

He thought he discerned movement inside the room and watched the windows for a full minute. The movement was not repeated. He grinned wryly upon realizing that he might have been telling Mrs. Meredith the truth, after all, when he had said lightly that Beatrice Meany was waiting for him in his apartment. He started forward, hoping she hadn’t already got into the liquor. There were a lot of things he wanted to ask her.

He went up the front steps onto the veranda, passed through double entrance doors into a small, dimly lit hallway with stairs leading directly upward. The small light bulb at the top of the stairway was out, leaving the upper hall in darkness. He turned toward the crack of light showing under his door.

As he brought his keys from his pocket his hand grasped the doorknob. It turned easily and the door swung open.

The crumpled body of Beatrice Meany lay in the middle of the brightly lighted room.

Shayne stood in the doorway taking in every detail of the scene. Beatrice was dead. Her eyes were open and glazed, her tongue protruded slightly from her lips and was bluish, her head was twisted in a manner indicating a broken neck.

Shayne whirled from the doorway and lunged down the hall. He halted briefly at the head of the stairs, reaching up to touch the unlit light globe. The bulb was warm. He twisted it in, carefully touching it with two fingers near the neck of the globe. Light flooded the hallway.

He strode on to a narrow rear stairway, went swiftly down to the rear of the lower hall and found the back door opening onto the alley standing ajar. He stepped out and looked up and down the alley, but saw no one.

Back in the entrance hall, he put a coin in the wall telephone and called police headquarters. “This is Mike Shayne, and I’ve got a corpse for you.” He gave the address and hung up, turned and went to a door marked
Janitor,
opposite the stairway.

He opened the door and called, “Jake.”

A voice said, “Yassuh,” and in a moment a wrinkled Negro came to the door. “What yo’ want, Mist’ Shayne?”

“Do you know how a woman got in my apartment?”

“Yo’ sistuh? Yassah. Ah let her in, Mist’ Shayne. She said ’twas a s’prise like.”

“What time did you let her in?”

“’Bout a hour ago, Ah reckon.” Jake scratched his kinky head. “Jest after sundown. Ah was rakin’ the front yahd an’ she druv up in a taxi an’ asks me was yo’ heah an’ then could Ah unlock yo’ door so’s she could wait.”

“Have you seen any strangers around here since you let her in?”

“Strangers? Sho now—” He scratched his head again, then said, “Ah reckon yo’ mean that gentleman what come li’l while later. He asks has a gal come heah to see yo’ an’ Ah tells him ’bout yo’ sistuh waitin’. He jest snorts an’ goes up.”

“How long did he stay?” Shayne asked sharply.

“Ah don’ rightly know. Didn’ see ’im leave, Ah reckon. Ah got busy an’ didn’ take no notice. Is suthin’ wrong?”

“The girl is dead,” Shayne said curtly.

He heard car doors slam outside and hurried to the front door to admit Inspector Quinlan and members of the homicide squad.

The Inspector barked, “So it’s you, Shayne. The Sergeant did get the name right. Where’s the body?”

“Upstairs in my apartment.” Shayne led the way upstairs to his open apartment door. “In here,” he said. “I touched the outside knob opening the door, but didn’t go inside.”

Quinlan nodded to his men to get to work, stepped back beside Shayne, and asked, “Who is she?”

“Beatrice Meany, daughter of Mrs. Sarah Hawley. Lived out at the Hawley place with her husband and her mother.”

“Mixed up in the Groat case,” Quinlan said.

“She’s the girl who told me she’d asked Groat to come out last night, but denied seeing him arrive.”

“What was she doing here?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Shayne’s eyes brooded over the room. “She was too drunk to talk very straight when I was out at the Hawley house.”

“So you invited her here to finish the interview?”

“She invited herself.” Shayne told him about Beatrice’s phone call to his office to get the address of the apartment. “That’s all I know about it,” he ended bitterly. “She came here about an hour ago, evidently, and passed herself off as my sister in order to get in. A man came asking for me a little later. Jake told him I wasn’t in and only my sister was here, but he came up anyway. Jake didn’t see him leave.”

“Did Jake give a description of him?”

“He hadn’t got that far when you arrived. Here’s one thing more, Inspector.” Shayne showed him the light bulb at the head of the stairs. “That was unscrewed and the hall was dark when I came up. It was still warm when I screwed it in. I was careful not to touch it except right at the neck with two fingers.”

“All right,” Quinlan grunted. “I’ll have it checked. Let’s talk to the janitor.”

Jake was waiting for them at the foot of the stairs. He repeated the story he had told Shayne, for the Inspector’s benefit.

When asked for a description, the Negro said, “He was sorta fat, an’ sorta young. He had on a gray suit, Ah reckon, sorta dark.”

“Was he wearing a hat?” Shayne asked.

“A hat? Yassuh. Ah reckon so. Ah jest don’ recollec’k.”

“The description sounds like Mr. Meany,” Shayne told Quinlan. “The girl’s husband. He’s quite bald for so young a man, and you notice it if you see him bareheaded.”

Quinlan went to the telephone and talked to Headquarters. He dispatched men to the Hawley residence to pick up Gerald Meany and learn what they could about his movements that afternoon, hung up, and turned back to Shayne. “I suppose Jake saw you come in just now?”

“No one saw me come in,” he answered cheerfully.

“Can you prove she was dead when you got here?”

Shayne frowned and admitted, “Depends on how long she’s been dead. I can account for my actions to within about fifteen minutes of the time I called Headquarters.”

Quinlan got out his notebook. “Let’s have it.”

“I went to Room 319 at the St. Charles Hotel about an hour ago. Took about half an hour drinking a mint julep. Dropped in on the house dick for a chat on my way out, fooled around a few minutes, and drove straight back here.”

Quinlan went to the phone and called the St. Charles. He asked for the house detective, and after talking for a few minutes, hung up.

Shayne said, “Call Room 319 now, and see if there are still two people in the room where I left them. Mrs. Meredith will probably answer. You ask for Leslie Cunningham.”

When the connection was made, Inspector Quinlan said, “Mrs. Meredith? I’d like to speak to Mr. Cunningham.” When the sailor got on the line, the Inspector questioned him, jotting down the answers in his notebook. Presently he hung up and turned to Shayne.

“Davis and Cunningham check your story. Davis says you were there at seventeen minutes after six. Your report on the murder reached Headquarters at exactly six thirty-nine. That’s twenty-two minutes to account for from the time you left Davis, and it’s not more than a five-minute drive here. How much time did you waste after you got here before calling in?”

“Not more than five minutes,” Shayne told him.

“Don’t you know enough to report a murder as soon as you see it?”

“I thought I saw movement in my room when I got out of my car,” Shayne explained, “and watched the window for a while. When I found the dead woman, I thought the murderer might be just then getting out the back way, and I checked. Then I took time to turn on the hall light.”

“That puts you here at six thirty-four. It didn’t take you seventeen minutes to drive here from the St. Charles.”

“How does Kurt Davis place the time so exactly?”

“Claims he looked at his watch. It’s a habit of his.”

Shayne grinned wryly. “I suppose you wouldn’t believe me if I told you I went window shopping for twelve minutes.”

Quinlan’s face reddened. He barked, “Window shopping!”

“Let’s go up and see what the boys have got,” Shayne suggested. “Maybe I’ll think of something better than window shopping.”

Doctor Matson’s assistant met them in the doorway of Shayne’s apartment. He said, “Death by strangulation and possible fracture of the vertebrae. Not more than a half an hour ago, and probably within the past fifteen minutes. The doc will have to give it to you closer than that.”

Shayne asked, “Could she have been strangled by a woman?”

The young assistant considered for a moment then said, “It’s very doubtful. The contusions on her throat indicate a lot of strength in the hands that caused them.” He went on down the hall.

Shayne and Quinlan went inside the room where the photographer was putting away his equipment and the fingerprint men were finishing up their work.

Sergeant Donovan scowled at Quinlan. He said, “We haven’t got anything worth while. One set of prints everywhere, presumably yours, Mike. Her prints are on that brandy bottle on the table and on the arms of that chair behind her.”

“How about the light bulb in the hallway?”

“Yours are plain enough at the top. The imprints on the bottom and sides are smudged,” Donovan said disgustedly.

“Try the back stairway and door for prints,” Shayne said to Donovan.

“You can call it quits if you don’t find anything worth reporting,” Quinlan said. He went over and sat down wearily on the sofa.

Shayne stood looking at the dead woman. Beatrice Meany did not look like a dipsomaniac as she lay there. Her naturally childish features had taken on a sort of dignity in death. There was a troubled expression on her face, as though she didn’t understand why this had happened to her.

Two men came up the stairs with a long wicker basket. They placed the body in the basket and took it away.

Shayne picked up the brandy bottle and squinted at it. “She’d helped herself to a couple of big slugs before she got it,” he said to the Inspector. “Want a shot?”

“No, thanks. Why did she come up to your apartment?”

“She wanted to keep Ezra Hawley’s money away from her dead brother’s ex-wife. I suppose she wanted me to help her.”

“The woman in Room 319 at the St. Charles?” Quinlan asked, frowning deeply.

“That’s right—Mrs. Meredith.”

“I suppose she wants you to help her get the money.”

“That’s right.”

“And Leslie Cunningham, Groat’s companion in the lifeboat, was with Mrs. Meredith when I talked to them.”

“That’s right. Cunningham is the only one left now who can testify when Hawley died.”

“Is he working with Mrs. Meredith?”

Shayne hesitated, then said, “My impression of Cunningham is that he’s out for whatever he can get. Mrs. Meredith has quite a lot to offer, I’d say.”

“And you think she’s offering it to him?”

“She’s hard-boiled and she’s plenty smart. I don’t think she’d stop at anything to get hold of a million dollars.”

“What about Groat’s diary?”

“That’s still the stumbling block. The hell of it is,” Shayne admitted irritably, “we don’t know which side the diary favors—the Hawleys or Mrs. Meredith. Cunningham pretends he isn’t sure whether Hawley lived four or five days. That may be the truth, or he may just be waiting to make sure the diary is out of the way before he comes forward with definite testimony. Both parties are anxious to get hold of it to substantiate their claim or to suppress it if it doesn’t substantiate their claim.”

“Doesn’t anyone actually know what’s in the diary?”

“Cunningham may, but he’s not saying. And Joel Cross should know, whether he realizes what it means or not.”

Quinlan blinked at him. “Cross must know plenty or he wouldn’t have advertised he was going to print the diary.”

“Yeah.” Shayne took a long drink from the brandy bottle. He sat down on the sofa beside Quinlan. “Cross could be playing a deep game,” he mused. “What have you done about alibis for Groat’s death?”

“Not much. I haven’t checked yours, for instance.”

Shayne grinned. “What time?”

“Matson puts the murder between eight and nine last night. If he’s right—”

“Let’s assume it’s correct,” Shayne suggested.

“He was murdered with the old familiar blunt instrument, and tossed in the river soon afterward,” Quinlan said heavily.

“Any way of telling how soon?”

“I asked Matson that. He grumbled about expecting miracles from a mere man of science and then admitted there were indications that it was not more than ten or fifteen minutes later.”

“Just long enough to get from the Hawley house to the river.”

Quinlan nodded unhappily. “I got exactly the same information you did, except the old woman said the girl was nuts and that her saying she talked to Groat and invited him out wasn’t worth a damn as testimony. Which reminds me—” He went to the telephone.

There was a knock at the door. Shayne opened it. A girl in messenger uniform said, “Telegram for Mrs. Mere—”

Shayne said, “Sh-h,” and shoved her into the hallway, closing the door behind him. “I’m Mr. Meredith. I’ll sign.” He fished out a half-dollar and put it in her hand, signed for the message, and thrust it into his pocket.

Quinlan was just hanging up the receiver when Shayne returned. He asked, “Who was that?”

“Telegram for me.”

Quinlan grunted and said, “Gerald Meany is missing—since a little before five. From what my men learned out there it looks as though he may have followed his wife over here.”

“Followed her?”

“Here’s the way they got it,” Quinlan said. “Mrs. Meany called a taxi and left the house around four o’clock. Seems she had some sort of an argument with her husband before she left, and a short time later he came down from her room with a scrap of paper and asked the Negro butler and Mrs. Hawley if either of them knew whose address it was.

“They both claimed they didn’t know. The Negro did remember the street name, and told my men it was a number on Carondolet. It was on a sheet torn from the telephone pad in the Meanys’ suite. The butler testified that Meany went out to his car and drove away immediately afterward. He hasn’t returned. I’ve got a pickup out for him.”

Shayne said, “It adds up to fit Jake’s story. Funny—he didn’t act like the jealous type.”

“That does it,” Quinlan said briskly. “He got sore about the way she carried on with you when you were out there. He brooded about it all day. When she came over here this afternoon it was too much for him. So he let her have it when he found her waiting here.”

Shayne’s gaunt face was expressionless. He said, “It sounds okay, but he was crazy if he was jealous of his wife on my account.” He grimaced at the memory of the few moments spent with her in her living-room. Then he took the telegram from his pocket, opened it, and read:
You know utterly impossible for me to come. Call me tonight. Extremely anxious. Theodore.

Shayne crumpled the yellow sheet and tossed it aside carelessly. He asked pointedly, “Anything else you want with me?”

“Not until we pick up Meany and find whether he’s got an alibi for this.” Quinlan went out, reminding Shayne as he went to the door: “You’ve still got twelve minutes unaccounted for—and I don’t believe you were window shopping.”