The Homicidal Virgin (9 page)

“Why not ask her?” suggested Shayne.

“I would if it were possible. That’s exactly what I would like to do. But she’s in New York visiting friends. I don’t know which one of several she’s with.”

“And this letter is postmarked New York.”

“Yes. But even with that coincidence, I dismissed the whole thing as a hoax when I first read it. Then, that very afternoon the shot was fired at me. I still dismissed it as an impossible thing. And then there was the second attempt yesterday. I simply don’t know what to think.”

“You’re veering around to the idea that maybe Muriel
has
hired somebody to kill you?”

“No. No!” Henderson pounded the desk angrily with his fist. “Nothing on earth would ever make me believe that. But I am inclining to the belief that the letter isn’t a practical joke. That it has
some
basis, though what it is I can’t even imagine.”

“I’d still like to know more about your stepdaughter. Did you say she’s nineteen?”

“Yes. An extremely well-poised and attractive young lady. Not at all the neurotic type. The last person in the world to do anything to cause such a letter to be written to me.”

“Yet it was written to you.”

“That’s exactly why I showed it to and am asking you to take the case, Shayne. You can see why I can’t take Painter into my confidence. Yet someone is trying to kill me, and you’ve got to find out why.”

“Still going back to Muriel,” Shayne said placidly. “How old was she when you married her mother?”

“Four years ago. She was almost sixteen.”

“Was her mother an invalid at the time?”

“When we were married? No. She was in poor health, but… her ailment hadn’t been properly diagnosed. None of us guessed that it was… cancer.” Henderson lowered his voice in speaking the word, as so many people do even today. In the same hushed voice he went on: “I insisted that she see the best specialists, but by then it was too late to operate… hopeless. She took to her bed and… all of us did our poor best to see that she was comfortable and happy until the end.”

“About three years ago?” Shayne pushed him relentlessly.

“Three years ago… what?”

“When her illness was diagnosed as cancer and she became bedridden.”

“Yes. That’s right. Though I don’t see…”

“When your stepdaughter was sixteen.”

“Yes. Muriel would have been sixteen.”

“A beautiful girl. On the brink of maturity. Did it ever enter your thoughts, Henderson, that the daughter might become a substitute for the mother? There the two of you were, living together closely in the same house. You, a young man for your years, deprived of the companionship of a wife and the sexual use of her body… living on intimate terms with a young and unawakened girl…”

“Stop it, Shayne! Stop it this instant.” Henderson’s face was congested. His doubled fist pounded the desk loudly. “Of all the filthy ideas I ever heard in my life.” He paused, breathing loudly and hard, glaring across at the detective. “What sort of cesspool do you have for a mind?”

“Pretty damned cesspooly.” Shayne shrugged and stood up, placing a blunt forefinger hard on the anonymous letter from New York. “This is still unexplained. Yet there has to be an explanation of one sort or another. Anyone who hates you enough to hire some stranger to murder you… there has to be a reason for that sort of hatred.”

“But I don’t believe that letter for a moment.”

“You believe that someone has tried twice to kill you in the past two days,” Shayne reminded him pleasantly.

“Will you take the case, Shayne?”

“I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.”

“You wouldn’t…
what?”

“I won’t waste time repeating myself,” said Shayne harshly. “Stew in your own damned juice. When you eat dinner tonight, start wondering if poison will be next. Every time you start to cross a street on foot remember how simple it is to commit homicide by automobile. Lock all the windows when you go to bed at night, and bar all the doors. Fire your present servants and hire some new ones whom you believe to be incorruptible. Change all of your regular habits of life and stay away from crowds and places where you’re known. Start
running,
Henderson. That’s my advice to you.” Shayne grinned down at him evilly. “Don’t trust anyone behind your back. Not ever again. It won’t do any good in the long run, but it’ll be something to occupy your mind while you’re still alive.”

He started to turn away, then swung back to demand, “How well do you know Hilda?”

“Hilda… ?” The abrupt transition threw Henderson momentarily off balance. Then he cleared his throat. “You mean the last lady I introduced you to? Mrs. Moran?”

“I mean the gal in the cute glasses. Whatever her name is. How long have you known her?”

“What earthly affair is that of yours, Shayne?”

“I’m making it my affair. How well do you know her?”

“Not well at all. I met her only yesterday as a matter of fact.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How did you meet her? What were the circumstances?”

“She came into my office to discuss a matter of disposing of some bonds. She is recently widowed, I believe, and not accustomed to dealing with financial matters.”

“So you invited her to drop in for cocktails today?” Shayne asked scathingly.

“I did, yes.”

“You don’t invite all your new clients in for cocktails, do you?”

“All of my new clients aren’t attractive widows alone in the city. I resent your questioning me, Shayne.”

Shayne said, “That makes me feel good,” and stalked out, closing the door firmly behind him. In the other room he found the party in the process of breaking up, and was unable to spot Hilda among those remaining. Lucy Hamilton and Timothy Rourke were together near the archway, and Lucy brightened up when he emerged. “We’re ready to leave, Michael. Is our host coming out so we can thank him?”

Shayne said, “I don’t know. What happened to the gal in the red dress and the cute glasses?”

Timothy Rourke said, “She beat it the moment you and Henderson went out. What did you say to frighten her, Mike? I saw you had her cornered for a time.”

Shayne said, “I’ll tell you about it later.” He took them both firmly by the arm. “Let’s go.”

“But shouldn’t we wait to say good-by to Mr. Henderson?” protested Lucy.

Shayne said, “I don’t think we need to bother,” and dragged them through the archway.

Driving back to Miami, Shayne remained silent and brooding behind the wheel while Lucy and Tim lightly discussed inconsequentials. Both were familiar with his moods and knew when he wanted to be left alone. When they reached the mainland, he suggested they all have dinner together, and they both agreed. Without consulting them, Shayne chose the Chanticleer Restaurant near the western end of the Causeway, and he remained sitting behind the wheel while they got out in front of it.

“Go in and get a table, Tim,” he decided abruptly. “Order Lucy a drink and be nice to her. I’ve an errand that won’t take me long.”

Lucy started to protest, but Shayne put the car in gear and drove away. He located the street address Hilda Gleason had given him without difficulty a few blocks from the Chanticleer. It was a two-story stucco house in a neighborhood of old houses that had been mostly converted into apartments and rooming houses. He went in and climbed one flight of stairs and found a door numbered 5.

He knocked on it loudly and repeatedly without getting any answer. As he was turning away, a door on the other side of the hall opened and a blowsy-looking blonde was framed in the opening with bright light behind her outlining a heavy torso and bulky limbs through a thin nylon dressing gown.

She said a trifle thickly, “She ain’t at home, redhead. But if you want some fun come on over with me.”

Shayne said pleasantly, “Some other time. Right now, I’ve got a yen for women wearing Harlequin glasses.”

He went down the stairs and out to his car, wondering more and more about Hilda Gleason. True, she had admitted she had sought cheap lodgings in Miami, but that didn’t make it essential that she should end up in a cathouse. It was just one more thing to wonder about her.

The bedside telephone awakened Shayne from deep and dreamless sleep. He reached out and fumbled for it in the darkness, got it to his ear, and said, “Hello,” into the mouthpiece.

Timothy Rourke’s voice said, “There’s been a killing at Henderson’s house, Mike.”

Shayne muttered, “So they got the bastard. Why bother me about it?”

“Not Henderson. He did the shooting.”

Shayne came fully awake and sat up in bed. “Shot who?”

“I don’t know any details. But I’m headed over there and thought you might like in on it.”

Shayne said, “I’ll see you there.” He tossed back the covers and turned on a light. It was 2:18 in the morning. He threw on clothes swiftly, and was out of the apartment in three minutes.

Twenty minutes later he slowed to make the turn into Henderson’s driveway. There were police cars in front of the house, and an ambulance with a spotlight bathing the front of the house in brilliant white light.

Shayne parked directly behind Rourke’s battered coupé and went up to a cluster of men about the body of a man crumpled on the porch just in front of the door. He lay on his back with sightless eyes staring up into the light. His low jaw was smashed by the bullet that had killed him. He was clean-shaven, with a hawklike face and a very high forehead. He wore a blue and white checkered sport shirt, buttoned at the throat with no tie, an almost new green suede jacket, and dark trousers that needed pressing. His black shoes were scuffed and had been resoled.

Timothy Rourke stood just inside the doorway, making notes on a wad of copy-paper with his ear cocked to overhear conversation inside the house while he gazed down at the dead man.

One of the Beach detectives officiously started to shove Shayne back, and Rourke looked up and said loudly, “You’re being paged inside, Shayne. Henderson was going to phone you until I told him you were already on your way.”

Shayne nodded and pushed past the detective, who gave way reluctantly. He stepped over the dead man onto the threshold and glanced past Rourke into the hallway where a patrolman stood outside the archway, and asked in a low voice, “What gives?”

“Painter is inside with Henderson. The press is excluded and they won’t talk loud enough for me to catch more than half what they’re saying. Get in there and pitch, Mike.”

The detective grinned briefly and went toward the uniformed man who moved to bar his entrance to the room. Shayne stopped in front of him where he could see Saul Henderson and Peter Painter standing face to face in the center of the room where the party had been held that evening. He didn’t look at the cop, but called out, “Did you want me, Henderson?”

He wore a maroon silk dressing gown and bedroom slippers, and his hair was disheveled. He jerked his head around and said gladly, “Indeed I do want you, Shayne. Come right in.”

The cop stepped out of his way and Shayne went through the archway, grinning at the Miami Beach Detective Chief who glared venomously back at him.

He said, “Congratulations, Chief. This is one time you got on the scene ahead of me.”

“And I don’t need you messing into this case, Shayne. You can have a talk with your client after I’ve finished questioning him about this homicide.”

Shayne started to say that Henderson wasn’t his client, but decided to let it ride. He lounged forward and said, “I’ll stick around until you’re through if you don’t mind.”

“Suppose I do mind?” Painter demanded aggressively. He was a small man with glistening black hair and a very thin, very black mustache, impeccably dressed and groomed even at this hour of the morning.

Shayne said, “I’ll stick around.” He sank into a deep chair and got out a cigarette. “Go right ahead and interrogate the suspect. That is, if Henderson is the suspect.”

“Suspect isn’t the word,” snapped Painter. “He admits shooting the man down on his doorstep.”

“In self-defense,” said Henderson quickly. “I told you that he snatched a gun from his pocket as soon as I opened the door.”

“I know you told me. Prove it.”

“The pistol was lying right there beside his hand. I don’t know how competent your fingerprint men are, but they must have found his prints on it.”

Painter didn’t admit or deny the fact. He said, “You admit you came to the door prepared to kill whoever was there.”

“I admit nothing of the sort,” said Henderson hotly. “A man has a right to defend his own home and person.”

“You went to that door with a loaded and cocked pistol in your hand,” said Painter waspishly. “You claim you had no idea who was ringing your doorbell at that time of night, yet you armed yourself before going to the door. That looks like premeditation to me.”

“I didn’t know who it was. I still don’t know. I never saw the man before in my life.”

“Most people don’t carry a cocked and loaded pistol with them to answer their own doorbell.”

“Most people haven’t had two attempts made on their lives in the past few days,” retorted Henderson.

“Oh, yes,” murmured Painter, delicately smoothing his mustache with a thumbnail. “We come back to that, of course. But I’m not at all convinced those were actual attempts on your life, you know. In fact, you could easily have engineered both of them yourself. There’s no proof you didn’t.”

“I think that dead man on my doorstep is sufficient proof. Isn’t it perfectly obvious even to an imbecile like you that he came here to make the third attempt after his first two had misfired?”

Peter Painter’s mobile features tightened with rage. “To an imbecile like me, Mr. Henderson, the nasty thought occurs that those two previous incidents could have been stage-managed just to set up this kill as it happened tonight.”

“My God,” groaned Henderson. “How devious can you get?”

“I’ve known some pretty devious murderers in the past. Isn’t that so, Shayne? Doesn’t this setup look phony to you?”

Shayne waved his cigarette lazily. “Sure. I’ll buy it. All you have to do is turn up a strong enough motive for Henderson wanting the man dead.”