Murder and the Married Virgin ms-10

by Brett Halliday

  Mr. Lomax looked from Quinlan to Shayne in consternation.

  “You’re demented,” he panted. “It couldn’t have happened that way. Katrin never burned her gas. We all knew of her aversion to a gas fire.”

  Quinlan remained leaning forward. He stopped poking his cigar at Lomax and held it perfectly still in mid-air.

  He didn’t move a muscle for a full thirty seconds. Then he twisted his head to look at Shayne in mute appeal.

  Shayne drew in a long breath and exhaled noisily. “I didn’t tell you because I figured you’d lock me up the moment you found out that theory had blown up on us. Lomax is right. Katrin Moe never turned her gas on. She wouldn’t stay long in a room where gas was burning.”

  Quinlan slowly sank back in his chair and put his cigar in his mouth. He said, “Now, by God-” in a low, stifled voice.

  “There’s just one question I want to ask you, Lomax,” Shayne interrupted. “Whose idea was it to put that insulating material around the hot-air pipes in the basement?”

  Lomax looked up at Shayne, completely surprised. “That was Neal’s idea. He suggested it Wednesday afternoon, and explained that fuel would be greatly conserved. I thought it was fine of him to offer to do the work himself-”

  “That’s all I want,” Shayne cut in.

  He turned to Quinlan and said grimly, “Bring Neal Jordan in here.”

  Lomax looked at Shayne quizzically.

  Quinlan hesitated and started to expostulate angrily, but the look on Shayne’s face checked him. He flipped a button and said into the mouthpiece, “Bring Jordan in here.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Neal Jordan’s face was flushed from sweating and the heat from the bright lights. He smiled pleasantly when he stepped inside the doorway. His smile faded when he saw his employer sitting there with a stricken look on his ashen face.

  He said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Lomax. I wasn’t going to tell them until-” He paused, and in loud ringing voice continued, “Until they told me about Katrin. I couldn’t stomach that.”

  Lomax’s eyes were weary and confused. He drew a hand across his forehead and said, “I don’t know. I simply don’t know.”

  “The hell you don’t,” Shayne burst out. “You’ve known all along but you wouldn’t let yourself believe it.”

  Lomax tightened his bloodless lips and gave him a hurt look.

  “I don’t know whether you realized how the murder of Katrin Moe was accomplished or not,” Shayne said quietly. “But you must have known it was murder and you kept your mouth shut. You were sitting on top of a volcano, weren’t you? You knew what was going on between your wife and Neal Jordan, and you closed your eyes to it. You were careful to keep any money out of her hands because you were afraid she might run off with him-and as soon as the necklace vanished you knew she’d stolen it to collect the insurance.”

  “No.” Lomax forced the word out. “The necklace was hers. Why would she steal it to collect the insurance? She could have sold it if she wanted money.”

  “You’re forgetting it was synthetic. Not worth more than a few grand.”

  “But she didn’t know that,” Lomax protested. “I’m sure she didn’t. If she’d tried to sell it secretly and found out about the substitution I would have heard about it-and in no uncertain terms.”

  Shayne nodded. “That’s one of the angles that’s had me stopped all the time,” he admitted. “Knowing that gems have gone up in value since you bought the necklace. Why would anybody be anxious to collect a hundred and twenty-five thousand insurance when the necklace itself would bring so much more today in the legitimate market?”

  “It’s still got me stopped,” Quinlan said harshly. “Unless Lomax stole it-”

  “Lomax didn’t steal it. Don’t forget that he was willing to pay the insurance money himself. And again, that’s why I couldn’t see anyone else killing Trueman to get it back after Trueman tried to pull a double-cross by turning it back to me.”

  Turning slowly to Neal, Shayne went on, “But I think I’ve got an answer that fits both those facts. A synthetic stone chips much more easily than the genuine. The only reason you and Mrs. Lomax could have preferred an insurance swindle to a legitimate sale was because the Ghorshki emerald had been damaged. Wasn’t that it?”

  Jordan smiled and said quietly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The hell you don’t. Why else did you have to get it back from Trueman after you’d passed it to him?”

  “Did I?” Jordan’s deliberate manner bordered on insolence.

  Shayne turned to Quinlan and explained, “In a necklace like this, built around one large faultless stone, the value depends largely on that stone. A tiny chip marring it would cut the value in half. Mrs. Lomax and Neal Jordan knew that. They knew the insurance company wouldn’t pay off in full if the damage became known. That’s why Neal had to kill Trueman to prevent him from selling it to me.”

  “If you take Mr. Lomax’s story at face value,” said Jordan, “it busts that theory all to hell. If he had planned to buy it back from Trueman-”

  “That,” Shayne cut in harshly, “was just as bad from your angle. You’d still be stuck with a damaged necklace and Katrin’s murder would have been for nothing.”

  “Fairy tales,” Jordan scoffed.

  Shayne snorted and picked up a sheaf of papers from Quinlan’s desk. “Two witnesses saw you there between two and three o’clock this morning. But you and Lomax both agree he was there between twelve and one.” To Lomax, he said, “What did you think when you heard Neal drive out again after you got home from the Laurel Club?”

  “Nuts,” said Jordan loudly. “I didn’t-”

  Shayne said, “Shut up. Didn’t he, Lomax?”

  The aged manufacturer nodded slowly.

  “I heard the car go out the drive. When I read about Trueman’s death this morning, I wondered-I didn’t know what to do.”

  “I know it was tough on you with your wife mixed up in it,” Shayne said in a kindly tone. “You knew all the time it was she who stole the necklace, didn’t you?”

  “No,” Lomax cried out.

  “The hell you didn’t,” Shayne said angrily. “Why else did you think Katrin Moe was murdered?”

  “She wasn’t. That is, I didn’t know-”

  “You must have suspected the truth. You knew your wife was having an affair with Jordan-that the trip to Baton Rouge was a phony and they went somewhere else to spend the night together.”

  Lomax came out of the chair with a smothered oath, his hands doubled into fists.

  Quinlan said, “Sit down, Lomax,” in a cold voice that sent him back to his seat.

  “Sure, he knew about that,” Jordan sneered. “He had detectives on us months ago. But I don’t know what all this stuff is about the necklace-and Katrin being murdered.”

  “You know more about it than anybody,” Shayne told him. “You planned it all when you and Mrs. Lomax got back from Baton Rouge and heard about the burglary in your absence. That burglary was made to order if you could make it appear the necklace had been left out of the safe Tuesday night. The only one who could disprove that was Katrin. So she had to die before the loss of the necklace was announced.”

  “I suppose you think I persuaded her to go to bed and turn on the gas?” Neal Jordan sneered.

  “No,” Shayne said. “It was the new insulation on the hot-air pipes that put me wise. That, and the flexible tube you used when you demonstrated how to relight the pilot light in the furnace.”

  Neal Jordan’s expression changed. He darted one glance around the room, then lunged forward toward the door. Shayne laughed harshly and tripped him. A policeman was on top of his sprawling body as he went flat, and when he got slowly to his feet he wore a pair of handcuffs.

  His eyes were murderous as he turned on Shayne and snarled, “So you did catch on? I was afraid you were wise when you asked for that demonstration.”

  “I don’t understand it,” said Lomax hel
plessly. “I don’t understand it at all. My wife may have been indiscreet but I can’t believe that she would-murder.” He covered his face with his thin white hands and rocked back and forth.

  “I don’t believe she knew what Neal planned,” Shayne told him. “Although I don’t know how he got her to hold back on her announcement of the loss of the necklace until after Katrin’s death if she didn’t know.”

  “I wouldn’t trust a woman with anything like that,” Neal said scornfully. He had regained his self-possession and faced them calmly with a sneer on his lips. “I made her think we were going to wait until Katrin had gone on her honeymoon before we sprung the loss. She’s still fool enough to think the girl just conveniently committed suicide and I certainly wasn’t going to tell her differently.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Inspector Quinlan wearily. “What sort of demonstration were you talking about a while ago?”

  Shayne laughed and told him. “Neal was good enough to show me how the murder was managed. Funny thing is, I was working on another theory altogether at the time. The one that went to hell when I learned Katrin couldn’t stand the smell of gas so couldn’t have gone to sleep with it burning.”

  The inspector was savagely chewing on his cigar, trying to keep abreast of events. “Sure,” he said thickly. “That one.”

  Shayne said, “I was a fool not to think of the hot-air pipe running up to her room sooner. A stream of gas sent into that pipe on a cold night while the furnace was running-” He shrugged his shoulders. “It was as nearly painless as death can be.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lomax whimpered. “What had the new insulation to do with it? He didn’t start putting it on the pipes until after she died.”

  “The insulation was to effectively cover up the hole in the hot-air pipe near the furnace in case anyone ever came snooping around,” Shayne explained. “You see, there’s a flexible tube on the front of the furnace used to light the pilot light. By inserting the end of that tube into the hot-air pipe leading to Katrin’s room, Neal was able to send a flow of hot gaseous air into her locked room on the third floor all night. He naturally didn’t start the flow until he was certain she was asleep, trusting it would enter so gradually and insidiously that she would never waken.”

  “But how about the gas grate in her room?” Quinlan put in, unable to hold his curiosity any longer. “How did it get turned on?”

  “It simply wasn’t,” Shayne told him. “The gas didn’t enter her room through the grate, but from the furnace pipe.”

  “It was on when we broke into her room,” Lomax reminded him. “I saw Neal run over and shut it off.”

  “The power of suggestion,” Shayne grunted. “The room was full of gas and you saw Neal heroically dash in and reach down and pretend to turn the valve on the grate. Actually, he didn’t turn anything. The valve was closed all the time. He’d pulled his tube out of the furnace pipe just before he came up, so the gas began to clear out of the room immediately after you saw him pretend to shut off the grate and you were convinced he had shut it off.”

  “That’s right.” Neal Jordan laughed in the old man’s face. “You made a swell witness for me. I had it all planned that way-knowing her door would be locked in the morning and you’d have to call on me to break it down.”

  Mr. Lomax shrank back from him in horror. “To think that you-that my wife could have-”

  Neal laughed boastfully and sneered, “She was a push-over. Why do you think I stayed on at your house all these months, doing your odd jobs and being the model servant? For the lousy salary you paid me? An old man married to a wife with young ideas! You knew what was going on. I’ve just been waiting for her to get hold of a wad of dough. But you were so damned tight about doling out the cash. And after she dropped that damned necklace and chipped the center emerald I had to figure out this insurance stunt.”

  The old man sprang to his feet and swung back a gnarled fist to strike the jeering face, but Shayne got between them, shaking his red head.

  Quinlan ordered Jordan taken out, and advised Lomax in a kindly tone, “You’d better go home and think things over. I don’t know what the charges will be against you or your wife, but I’ll do the best I can for you.”

  His buzzer sounded just as Nathan Lomax went out the door, thanking him in a shaky voice. He opened the connection and listened, then turned to Shayne and announced, “Looks like you’ve pulled another one out of the hat. That was a report from Craigville. They grabbed Anton Moe off the train. He admits escaping from the pen under the name of Hodge and that his sister Katrin gave him the ticket home. Now how in the hell did you figure that?”

  “I added up some things,” Shayne said wearily. “Such as the price of a railroad ticket plus ten per cent tax, and it came out Craigville-which is where Katrin and her brother Anton once lived, according to the dope on her citizenship papers.”

  He tugged his hat down over his eyes and moved toward the door. “That’s about everything-except the little matter of a twelve and a half grand fee. And I suppose the insurance company will try to hold out on a technicality after they learn the stolen necklace was synthetic.”

  “That’ll be tough,” said Quinlan sympathetically, “after all the work you’ve done.”

  Shayne said, “Don’t worry too much about it. I have a little document in my pocket that even an insurance company will have a hard time wiggling out of.”

  Back at his office, Lucy greeted Shayne with a worried look and the announcement: “Lieutenant Drinkley called a few minutes ago. He’s suddenly decided to leave town and he wondered if you’d made any progress.”

  Shayne said, “He can read about it in tonight’s paper.” Lucy looked up with eager surprise, and he nodded with a wide grin. “It’s ended. Wrapped up and put to bed.”

  She said impulsively, “I’m so glad, Michael. I’ve been worried.”

  “You needn’t waste any more sympathy over Neal Jordan being framed,” he told her. “He confessed both murders fifteen minutes ago.”

  She bit her underlip and looked away from him. Then she stood up slowly and lifted her wrist to him. It was still red where he had twisted it that afternoon to bring her back from the edge of hysterics.

  In an oddly tight tone, she said, “Kiss it and it’ll be well.”

  Shayne bent his head and kissed the mark on her wrist with lingering tenderness. She was laughing when she drew back from him, and her brown eyes were starry.

  “I’m still wondering about the Norwegians-the married virgins and all.”

  Shayne shook his head and grinned. “It ain’t so. Not even Norwegians, I guess. Katrin’s brother was in the penitentiary under an alias and the only way she could get in to see him was to pretend a relationship that would fit his alias. So she called herself Mrs. Hodge when she visited him, and bought a wedding ring which she put on every Wednesday afternoon to strengthen the pretense.”

  Lucy said, “You’ve still got a thousand things to tell me. Who stole the necklace, and-”

  Shayne put a big hand firmly over her mouth. “To explain everything thoroughly I’ll have to relax with about six fingers of cognac in a washtub. Let’s close up the office for the day and-”

  “Relax,” she finished for him, twisting away. “All right. Let’s. I know just the place. There’s even a bottle of cognac left in my apartment from the last time you were there.”

  Shayne asked wryly, “Sure you haven’t any boy friends likely to slip in from the fire escape with a blunt instrument in their hands and lethal intent in their hearts?”

  “No boy friends,” Lucy promised him gaily.

  He said, “What are we waiting for then?”

  She linked her arm in his and they went out of the office together.

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