The Uncomplaining Corpses ms-3

by Brett Halliday

  He said, “Go back to sleep and dream you’re married to a ribbon clerk,” with rough tenderness, unclasped her hands from his neck and went out through the living-room.

  Ten minutes later Shayne was speeding across the causeway over Biscayne Bay to Miami Beach.

  The light rain had turned to mist. Shredded clouds obscured the thin arc of the moon as he turned to the left off the beach end of the causeway. A wraith-like mist crept in from the bay, making foggy fingers of the light rays from a car behind him. A police car raced past him and he speeded up to follow it.

  It swerved onto a side street, slowed, and lurched through an opening in a high wall of coral rock surrounding a three-acre estate. He followed, nosing his battered roadster in behind half a dozen official cars and an ambulance parked in front of a massive two-story house with lights brilliantly flooding every window.

  A Miami Beach policeman guarded the front door. He looked at Shayne suspiciously, then recognized the private detective and grunted, “Go on in. The chief’s looking for you.”

  Shayne went into an entrance hall where there were more cops. They regarded him with open hostility; two detectives officiously ranged him between them and escorted him up a wide curving stairway. The thin high sound of a woman’s hysterical wailing knifed downward at them through a low rumble of subdued voices.

  Shayne climbed the stairs silently, his gaunt face expressionless, bushy red eyebrows crowding down over lowered lids.

  A policeman pushed a young man across the thickly carpeted hall in front of them as they reached the top. The young man wore dinner clothes and his face was a ghastly yellow. He kept opening and closing his mouth as though he were talking, but no sound came out. The policeman was being firmly paternal with him.

  Plain-clothes men were gathered at the door of the room from which the young man had emerged. Shayne recognized members of the Beach homicide squad and nodded but they didn’t nod back. They merely drew away stiffly to let him enter with his two escorts.

  At the left of the entry was a luxurious dressing-alcove as large as an ordinary bedroom. Directly beyond was a silver and white bedroom as large as a living-room, and in the center of its rug a dead man lay on his back. Joe Darnell’s plump face held a look of boyish reproach; his lips were parted as though he were utterly relaxed. There was a round bullet hole in the center of his forehead. A black handkerchief was loosely knotted around his neck.

  Beyond him, men were grouped about a four-poster bed. The detectives shoved Shayne past the corpse into the group. His left eyebrow shot up and a muscle rippled in his lean jaw as he looked down at the nude body of Leora Thrip.

  In death she clung to the semblance of placidity which had served her well in life. She had been gagged and choked with her blue silk nightgown. Her eyes were open, glazed in death, her upper features above the gagging gown showed no contortion of resentment or fear. Like Joe Darnell, Mrs. Thrip appeared not to object to what had happened to her.

  Her torso was as smooth and slender as a young girl’s. Her arms were outstretched with fingers clawed downward at the mattress, limbs stretched straight down and pressed close together with only rigidly down-curling toes to indicate the death agony which must have racked her body while she fought against the torture of strangulation.

  Shayne looked at her for a long time, then lifted his gaze to meet the challenging black eyes of Peter Painter across the bed from him.

  “Why drag me out of bed to look at this?” Shayne asked.

  With a great show of deliberation the Miami Beach detective chief lifted a manicured finger and caressed the threadlike mustache of his mobile upper lip. Someone snickered behind Shayne. Painter glared in that direction with eyes that were like shiny black marbles, then said:

  “I wanted to see how you would react to sight of your handiwork.”

  Shayne snorted his disgust. He started to turn away but the two detectives tightened their grip on his arms. He shrugged and asked in a resigned tone, “What fool idea are you riding this time, Painter?”

  “You don’t deny that you know her, do you?”

  “Of course not. Is that any sign I murdered her?”

  “Do you know the man lying on the floor behind you?”

  “Sure. I didn’t kill him either.”

  “We know you didn’t kill them, Shayne. Not with your own hands or gun.” Peter Painter was walking around the head of the bed toward Shayne. His hands were thrust deep in his coat pockets and there was an expression of supreme enjoyment on his delicately molded features.

  “But you’re directly responsible for two deaths, Shayne. You and no one else. You sent that killer out here on a job. You knew what Joe Darnell was when you sent him out here. Don’t try to deny that.” The last five words came out a thin-lipped snarl.

  “Yes,” Shayne said, “I knew what Joe Darnell was. If you’re intimating that he was working for me tonight you’re a damn liar.”

  Painter had stopped in front of him on widespread legs. Breath hissed in between his teeth, wheezed out slowly. He was a full head shorter than Shayne and he had to stand on tiptoe to get a healthy swing.

  Shayne’s head jerked back under the impact of Painter’s fist against his jaw. Pinioned on both sides by Painter’s men, he made no other move. He licked a trickle of blood from his lower lip and said, “That was a mistake, Painter.”

  Painter strutted backward, blowing on his bruised knuckles. “I don’t think it was a mistake, Shayne. You’re through in Miami. Washed up. I may not be able to hang a murder rap on you but you’re through as a private detective in this or any other state.”

  Shayne shook his head from side to side. His eyes were very bright. “What’s the setup?”

  “Here it is. Right under your nose.” Painter gestured triumphantly. “Joe Darnell was a known police character, yet you sent him out here as your employee to protect a client-”

  “That’s twice you’ve lied,” Shayne interrupted in a remote voice.

  Painter stiffened and doubled his fist. Then he smiled. “I don’t blame you for trying to deny it but it won’t wash. You promised Mr. Thrip you’d send a man out. Darnell arrived at five and told the butler you had sent him to see Mr. Thrip. Accepting him in good faith as a legitimate, licensed, and bonded private operative, Mr. Thrip showed him over the house and grounds he was hired to protect. There was an unlocked window in the library. It was too good a chance for a man like Darnell to pass up. While the house slept, Darnell crept up here and into this bedroom-looking for loot perhaps, though probably he came directly to Mrs. Thrip’s bedroom for this.” Painter pointed a stern finger at the woman who had been brutally murdered in her bed.

  “You’d make a good pulp writer,” Shayne grunted. “Skip the guesswork and tell me what actually happened.”

  “Mr. Thrip was aroused shortly after two o’clock by a sound from his wife’s bedroom. He admitted to me that he felt a trifle uneasy about the type of man you had sent out and that may have accounted for the fact that he paused to get a loaded pistol from a bureau drawer before opening the connecting door and turning on the light. It was just as well for him that he observed that precaution, for he surprised this fiend bending over his throttled wife. Darnell leaped away toward the door, but Thrip luckily brought him down with one shot. Those are the unadorned facts, Shayne, and how do you think they’re going to look for you in tomorrow morning’s Herald?”

  “They’re going to look like hell,” Shayne admitted. He frowned down at the dead woman, then around at Joe Darnell.

  “Have you gone over Joe?” he asked suddenly.

  “Of course.”

  “Was he armed?”

  “No, but-”

  “How much money did he have on him?”

  “Three or four dollars. If you think you can talk your way out of this-”

  “Stop your yapping,” Shayne snapped without looking at Painter. He started forward and the detectives subconsciously relaxed their hold on his arms. Painter trotted aft
er him as he strode into the dressing-room and moved from one piece of furniture to another, his gaze searching everywhere for the jewel case which Thrip had described to him. It was nowhere in sight.

  Behind him Painter panted venomously, “My men have been over everything. There’s not the slightest question-”

  Shayne stopped him with a savage gesture. “You’ve never been able to see anything that wasn’t under your nose. Something stinks around here. Even you should be able to smell it.”

  “There’s a stink all right but nothing to compare with the stench that’s going to be raised tomorrow when the story comes out.” There was gloating triumph in Painter’s voice.

  “I want to see Thrip,” Shayne cut in.

  “He’s suffering from shock. His physician has ordered him to remain undisturbed at least the rest of the night.”

  “Yeh,” Shayne muttered, “murder is an unnerving business. What about the rest of the family-the servants? I’ve got to find out-”

  “I’ve questioned all the family and the servants as a matter of routine and there isn’t the slightest doubt that the affair happened just as I outlined it to you.”

  “That’s what you say,” Shayne growled. “It’s what you want to think. It solved everything neatly-even to putting me out of your hair. I’m not taking this lying down.”

  “But you’ll take it, Shayne. I’ve warned you time and again that you can’t play with fire and not be burned.”

  Shayne turned his back on the dapper detective chief. There was a stir in the hallway outside, the babble of voices. The newshounds had arrived.

  Shayne shouldered his way through them as they came trooping in. They shot questions in his direction and he answered them with a jerk of his head toward Peter Painter, who was waiting to be interviewed.

  Outside the death chamber Shayne stood in the wide hallway looking down the length of it. The policeman whom he had seen pushing the young man across the hall now stood guard outside a closed door on the opposite side about halfway down.

  The guard scowled and planted himself solidly in front of the door as Shayne approached.

  “Can’t nobody go in here,” the man said. “Chief’s orders.”

  “Your chief’s orders don’t apply to me,” Shayne told him. “These people are my clients and I have a right to see them.”

  “Your clients, eh? Bad luck that is for them. The lady in the bedroom yonder-she was your client too, I’m told.”

  Shayne said, “This is going to be tougher on you than on me,” without rancor.

  His knotted fist came up smoothly and without warning from his side. It struck the cop’s jaw solidly with all of Shayne’s hundred and ninety pounds behind it. The man in uniform went down with a surprised look on his face.

  He stayed down without moving.

  Shayne glanced around swiftly to see that he was unobserved, then dragged the policeman up to a slumped sitting position against the wall, opened the door silently, and went inside.

  Chapter Five: THREE UNPLEASANT PEOPLE

  When Shayne closed the door behind him, shutting out the hall light, he blinked at the dimness, waited a moment for his eyes to adjust themselves to the faint light cast by a pine log crackling on andirons in a tiled fireplace across the room.

  It was a large sitting-room, he soon perceived, with French windows along one side and with open doors leading into bedrooms from two sides. He thought for a moment he was alone in the room. Then he heard the sound of heavy breathing coming from a divan set against the wall near the fireplace.

  As he turned his eyes in that direction a trickle of resin gurgled out of the burning log and yellow flame spurted up. In the wavering light he saw two figures on the divan. The girl was sitting at the end next to the fireplace, legs stretched out in front of her. A slim-bodied young man in evening clothes lay full length on the divan with his head in the girl’s lap. His face was toward her and he was breathing loudly.

  Her head was bent forward and she appeared to be staring down at him intently. Brown hair that was bobbed long enough to comb hung down, shrouding her face from Shayne’s gaze. Shayne was certain that they were both unaware of his presence in the room. He wondered if the young man in evening clothes was asleep, passed out, or neither. He wondered if they were brother and sister.

  He said, “Hello,” and stepped toward them.

  The girl jerked her head and the longish strands of hair were flung back from her face. Her eyes looked perfectly round and they glittered in the light from the leaping yellow flame. The young man’s head came up a second later, like a released spring. He swung his legs off the end of the divan and sat up beside the girl. His face looked yellower in this light than it had out in the hall when the cop led him away from his stepmother’s room. His mouth began opening and shutting again, but, as before, no words came out. It gave him the appearance of idiocy.

  The girl smoothed her negligee and asked angrily, “What are you doing, sneaking in here? The police said we wouldn’t be disturbed.”

  Her eyes were actually almost as round as they had looked from across the room. Her lashes were colorless and didn’t show drawn back tightly against whitish eyebrows. The effect was, extraordinarily, that of naked amber marbles set into the flesh above high cheekbones. Her cheeks were concave. Her nose and chin were narrow and pointed, giving her the look of a vixen.

  Shayne dropped into a chair a few feet in front of the divan. He said, “I’m not sneaking. The policeman just happened to be mistaken.” He looked at the young man and asked sharply, “What’s the matter with him? Can’t he talk?”

  “Of course he can talk,” the girl snapped. She nudged the young man with her elbow. “Say something, Ernst. He gets that way when he’s badly upset,” she explained more calmly.

  Ernst gulped and smacked his lips loudly. He stopped staring at Shayne and asked, “What shall I say, Dot?”

  “That’s enough,” Shayne grunted. “I just wanted to be sure you were human.” He transferred his attention to the girl. “You’re Dorothy Thrip, I suppose, and this is your brother Ernst.”

  She nodded ungraciously. “We’ve both told the police everything we know. Now get out and leave us alone.”

  “After a while,” Shayne promised, “you can be alone all you want. Right now I’m asking questions. I’m not the police. I’m just the fall guy who happens to be plenty on the spot because of the merry goings-on in this house tonight.”

  “Then you haven’t any right to question us if you’re not a policeman. Get out before-”

  “Shut up,” Shayne said. His eyes were murky with anger. He hunched forward a little, his big hands hanging loosely between his legs.

  “There’s something screwy around here and I don’t mean only you two. Were both of you at home tonight when the killings were pulled off?”

  Dorothy hesitated, then said, “Yes,” sullenly. “That is, Ernst was just coming upstairs when Dad shot the man.”

  “And you were in here?”

  “I was in my bedroom.” She gestured to the door behind her with a thumb as pointed and nearly as long as her forefinger.

  “Alone?”

  She bobbed her head. “I was undressing.”

  “Was Carl Meldrum with you?” Shayne asked the question casually and she seemed wholly unaware that it held any significance.

  “No. Carl had gone.”

  “Don’t you generally undress before he leaves?” Shayne asked gently.

  She blinked her eyelids down tightly and it was as though a shutter had been drawn over two amber lights.

  Ernst lurched to his feet and snarled, “Damn you! What do you think you’re doing? Carl and Dorothy don’t-”

  “Don’t they?” Shayne didn’t look at him.

  Dorothy’s mouth was twisted in a tight smile of cunning. She let her eyelids slide up slowly. “How did you know about Carl? The other cops didn’t”

  “I told you I wasn’t a cop. I’m the guy who knows a lot of things and who inte
nds to find out a hell of a lot more.”

  Ernst sank back onto the divan. His haggard face had an ineffectual scowl and his eyes were hot with suppressed fury. Dorothy put her hands down on the divan beside her and let her head lie back. Her round eyes looked down her nose at the detective, challenging him.

  “Carl said good night to me at the door fifteen or twenty minutes before Dad caught the man in Leora’s room. Ernst was just reaching the top of the stairs when it happened. That’s all either of us know.”

  “Neither of you is taking it very hard,” Shayne said.

  “Why should we? She was so damned holier-than-thou-always prissing around-doling out a few dollars now and then when she had millions-”

  “Which you’ll get now,” Shayne cut in sharply.

  “Sure. Why not? God knows we deserve it for putting up with her hypocritical ways all these years. Believe me, mister, if I wanted to cut loose I could tell you plenty.”

  “No,” Ernst panted. His mouth worked in that strange way and he finally yelled, “No, Dot! For God’s sake, do you want to-?”

  “I’m not going to.” Dorothy tossed him a disdainful glance. It was stifling hot in the room. The burning log was dying down to smoking embers and furtive shadows danced in the corners.

  Shayne lifted his gaze and saw Dorothy studying his face with a calculating look. He got up and turned his back to the divan, walked to the fireplace, and lit a cigarette. When he turned back Dorothy looked vaguely disappointed.

  “I’ll leave you two to your own devices,” he said in a flat voice. “After I talk to your father and Carl Meldrum and find out how much you’ve both lied, I’ll be back for the truth.”

  He stalked across the room to the door, turned the knob silently, and went out.

  The policeman was still slumped against the wall in an attitude of peaceful repose.

  Shayne went briskly down the hall, nodded to two cops on guard at the head of the stairs, strode down and out into the pale, washed daylight.