The Corpse That Never Was ms-45

by Brett Halliday

  “Certainly.” She nodded her head toward a closed door on her right. “Go right in. I don’t think Mr. Barstow is particularly busy.”

  Shayne thanked her and opened the door she had indicated. It was a large, pleasant office with sunlight streaming in a wide window, and with a bald-headed, chubby-faced man leaning back in a swivel chair behind the clean desk and caught square in the middle of a wide yawn by Shayne’s unannounced entrance.

  He cut off the yawn in mid-stride, wriggled himself erect in the chair and put on an eager smile. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “I’m a detective, Mr. Barstow… is it?” Shayne sat in front of the desk and lit a cigarette.

  “A detective? I see. In regard to that most unfortunate affair upstairs last night, no doubt.” Barstow frowned portentously and rubbed his pink, bald scalp with a pink palm. “A terrible thing. Most unfortunate. I talked to a lieutenant last night, you know. I’m afraid I wasn’t very much help because, you see, I scarcely knew the tenant. Lambert? Yes. A self-effacing sort, I remember thinking at the time he rented the apartment. Quiet and conservatively dressed. The type of renter one hopes to get for a bachelor apartment. With a man like that one doesn’t expect difficulties, you see. The sort of thing… ah… exactly the sort of thing that did occur last night. I consider myself a fair judge of human nature, and I simply never would have dreamed that Lambert was the sort to have an affair with a married woman.”

  “You never can tell by appearances,” Shayne agreed sympathetically. “Speaking of appearances, Mr. Barstow, what do you recall about the man? I know you described him last night, but I thought perhaps you’d given the matter further thought and could add something to your description this morning.”

  “Indeed I have given it further thought. Yes, indeed. My gracious, it’s the first time anything like this has ever occurred in a building under my management. On the other hand, I’m afraid there’s not much I can add to the description I gave your lieutenant last night. Just sort of medium.” He spread out both his plump palms in exasperation. “I did remember noticing that he signed the rental agreement with his left hand. The lieutenant said that might be very important.”

  “And it probably is,” Shayne told him. “You see, our handwriting expert says the suicide notes were written by a left-handed man. He had a dark mustache, I believe, and wore tinted glasses.”

  “Lightly tinted. Blue. So light the color was scarcely noticeable.”

  “And he just dropped in cold, looking for an apartment? No one referred him to you?”

  “In answer to an advertisement. He was very easily pleased and appeared satisfied with the price, remarking that he would not be occupying the apartment a great deal and would require no maid service. I do recall that he particularly required a telephone and was delighted that our transient apartments have telephones served by a switchboard.”

  Shayne nodded thoughtfully. This was the first time he had known the building had its own telephones. Lucy, of course, had her own private line, but that was on a year’s lease…

  He said, “I understand he gave you a home address in Jacksonville?”

  “Yes. I gave it to the lieutenant. He explained that his home office was there, but that he was trying to build up this territory and would be in Miami possibly two or three days each week.”

  “The Jacksonville address was a phony,” Shayne told him. “Non-existent.”

  “Dear me. Then do you suppose…?”

  “Right now,” said Shayne evenly, “it looks as though he used your building simply as a trysting place. We don’t even know if Lambert was his name. You didn’t ask for references, I suppose?”

  “N-no. Not in the case of a month-to-month rental. He paid the first month in advance, you see.”

  “In cash, I understand?” Shayne made his voice hard and raised ragged, red eyebrows in disapproval. “Didn’t you think that was quite unusual? Don’t most tenants pay by check?”

  “They do, of course,” the manager agreed stiffly. “On the other hand, he said something about not wanting to ask me to take an out-of-town check since he desired immediate occupancy.”

  “That was less than a month ago?”

  “Three weeks ago yesterday. I checked the date this morning. I’m sorry I can’t help you more, but I must reiterate that I saw the man only that one time. He had his own key to the front door and we have a self-service elevator. We try not to intrude on our tenants’ privacy so long as they give us no reason for doing so.”

  “This company he worked for? He said he was a salesman?”

  “Yes. That is, I believe it was definitely implied. He mentioned his territory being enlarged recently to include Miami.”

  “Did he mention the name of the company? What sort of product he handled?”

  “I don’t… believe… I, I’m just not sure. It may have been mentioned casually, but I simply don’t recollect.”

  “Could it have been something to do with photography? Photographic supplies?”

  Barstow blinked rapidly and then pressed fingertips to his eyes in an attitude of deep thought. His face brightened when he removed them. “I do believe that was it. I do, indeed. Is that important?”

  “It may be. Now, I understand he signed some sort of rental agreement? I’d like to take that with me, Mr. Barstow.”

  “It’s a very simple form. Miss Mayhew will get it for you. Ah… I understand the police put a padlock on the door after it was broken in last night. Do you know when they will be through… when his possessions will be removed? I understand it will require a thorough cleaning before it will be available for rental again.”

  “It will require that,” Shayne agreed somberly. “A couple of days, I imagine. I’m going up now to make another check. I’m expecting a couple of men from headquarters in about half an hour. Will you see they are let in the front?”

  “Certainly.” Barstow got to his feet as Shayne did, and came around the desk. “I’ll speak to Miss Mayhew.”

  Shayne stood aside and followed him out of the office where he spoke to the typist and she twisted around in her chair to pull out a drawer of a filing cabinet and find a cardboard folder which she opened and laid before him. It contained only a single page of fine print, headed RENTAL AGREEMENT at the top and signed at the bottom, “Robert Lambert,” in what appeared to Shayne to be the same handwriting as the suicide notes in his pocket.

  He took it from the folder and folded it up with the other papers Gentry had given him, and told Barstow, “You can have this back after we’ve compared signatures.”

  “No hurry at all. I’m sorry I haven’t been of more assistance.”

  Shayne smiled and shrugged. “I’m sure you’ve done your best. I assume you’ve discussed Lambert with Miss Mayhew and she has nothing to add to your description?”

  She said, “I was at home ill the day he rented the apartment. So far as I know I didn’t even see him at all.”

  Shayne was about to turn away when he had a sudden thought. He turned back and asked, “The telephone. Are tenants charged for their calls?”

  Mr. Barstow and Miss Mayhew nodded in unison. Barstow said, “They are billed at the end of each month.”

  “Then you keep track of each apartment,” Shayne said to the girl.

  “On the outgoing calls, yes. It’s twenty cents for each call. I simply make a notation on each card.”

  “And don’t keep a record of the numbers,” Shayne guessed.

  “Not on local calls. On long distance, of course.” She turned to her desk and a circular index file. She flipped it expertly to the letter L, and Shayne leaned over her shoulder to look at the card headed, LAMBERT, Robert.

  The first date on the card was that same Friday, three weeks before, on which Lambert had rented the apartment. He had made a call to Miami Beach at 9:20 p.m. and the number was written down. Beneath that in a lightly penciled scrawl was jotted down a local telephone number.

  Shayne put his finger beneat
h it, saying, “I thought you didn’t list local numbers.”

  “We don’t normally. That number was probably busy, and Nina wrote it down and told the party she would keep trying.”

  On the following Friday evening at 9:15 Lambert had called the same Miami Beach telephone number as before, and last night he had again called that same Beach number at 9:25.

  Shayne picked up a scratch pad and pencil from her desk and made a note of the only two numbers that had been called from the Lambert apartment. He asked, “Is there any chance that you overheard anything that was said on these calls? You or the other operator?”

  She shook her head strongly. “We don’t eavesdrop.”

  “Mightn’t you just hold on long enough to hear the answer… enough to know whether it was a man or woman he called?”

  She hesitated, giving the appearance of trying to give an honest answer. “Sometimes, I suppose… I just might. If I weren’t too busy. But I don’t remember any of his calls.”

  “Not even last night?” persisted Shayne. “Stop and think. You can’t be very busy at nine-thirty in the evening. You were on last night, weren’t you?”

  “Happens I was. Nina… that’s the girl usually takes the switchboard at five to midnight… had a heavy date and I took over for her. Last night?”

  She puckered her brow and thought deeply. “I think… maybe… a woman answered. And he said, ‘Darling’ or something like that. And then I cut out. Because I don’t ever try to eavesdrop,” she ended strongly with a glance at Mr. Barstow.

  Shayne thanked them both for their cooperation and promised to keep them informed of developments. He then went out to the elevator and up to the third floor.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The police had put a new hasp and a padlock on the outside of the door that Shayne had crashed in the preceding night, and as he stopped in front of it to fit the key Lieutenant Hawkins had given him into the lock, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that the door directly opposite stood slightly ajar. The muted sound of a TV set or a radio came from inside the room, and he hesitated a moment as the padlock came open, wondering whether to try to talk to Mrs. Conrad now or wait until later.

  She solved the problem for him by opening the door wider and poking her head out and saying happily, “Well there, now. It’s Mr. Michael Shayne, isn’t it. I recognize you from last night, you know. My! The way you did slam yourself against that door when all the rest of us were just standing around wondering how to get in. I said right then that you were just about the strongest man I ever did see, and after seeing you in action I know how you go about solving your cases all right. I said that very thing to Mr. Carmichael down the hall last night, and he sneered and said, ‘More brute force than brains,’ and I said, ‘Well, he’s got to have brains too, you bet your sweet life,’ to have achieved the national reputation you’ve achieved, and that shut him up all right.”

  Shayne turned with a smile and said, “You’re Mrs. Conrad, aren’t you? The only one who was able to give the police any worthwhile information about your neighbor. It’s lucky you’re so observant.”

  “I keep my eyes open and my wits about me.” She tossed her head importantly. She was a tall, thin-faced woman, with a long, sharp nose and beady eyes. “Not that I ever thought I’d be giving information to the police, you understand. Not about something like what happened in there, last night. But you never can tell these days. Goodness! Such goings-on in a respectable apartment building like this. From the very first time I saw that woman come traipsing up to the room late at night, I said to myself, I said: ‘Oh-oh. Monkey business, I bet.’ You could tell right off. There was something sneaky about her.”

  Shayne glanced at his watch and said, “I wonder if you’d mind telling me all about it again, Mrs. Conrad. I’m expecting a couple of men from headquarters in about twenty minutes. If we could leave your door open so I’ll know when they come…?”

  “You come right in and wait,” she invited him happily. “’Course we’ll leave the door open a little. I always do, you know. To make the air-conditioner work better. It says right on it that a window or door should be left open across the room for most efficient operation. And a good thing too, if you ask me. No one else around here sees very much that goes on.”

  Shayne followed her into a starched, polished and hygienic sitting room, the same size and shape as Lucy’s on the floor below, but managing to look completely unlived-in. There were no books, magazines or newspapers visible. There were stiffly starched white doilies on every table, and immaculate white antimacassars on the back of the sofa and the two upholstered chairs, A large TV set dominated one end of the room with a picture flickering across it and the sound turned low, vying with the hum of an air-conditioner opposite the front door.

  Shayne sat down gingerly in one of the chairs, with the feeling that she would probably leap at it with a vacuum cleaner as soon as he got up. She seated herself in the other chair and leaned forward to tell him:

  “I tried to catch that nice Miss Hamilton downstairs early this morning to tell her how wonderful you were to take charge in such a masterful way last night, but she had left before I got down to her room. Such a dear, sweet girl. I’ve often told her how lucky she is to have such an exciting job working as your secretary and right in the middle of important crimes all the time.” Shayne repressed a grin, remembering what Lucy had told him about Mrs. Conrad last night, and said, “No one seems to know anything about the man across the hall, Mrs. Conrad. Except you. I’ve just been talking to the manager and his secretary downstairs. It seems the manager only saw him the one time when he rented the apartment, and the girl not at all. Did you ever speak to him?”

  “I tried to. The first day he moved in. In the friendliest way possible. To welcome him as a new neighbor, you know. That was about a month ago. Less than a month, I guess.” She pursed up her thin lips and nodded. “Yes. It was a Friday, I know. Three weeks ago, it’d be. Because I saw him again that next Friday, and then last night. Just three times in all since he’s been here. And entertaining that same woman every one of those Friday nights until heaven knows what hour in the morning. You can take my word for it he was using that room for nothing but a love nest. And with a rich married woman in society and all on the Beach to boot. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard on the early news this morning that she was an Armbruster. Worth millions in her own name, they say. Well! What she saw in a man like him…”

  “Let’s try to take it in order,” Shayne suggested desperately. “You saw him when he first looked at the apartment and rented it?” He got out a cigarette and fumbled for matches, then hesitated and looked around uncomfortably, aware that there was not a single ashtray in sight.

  “Well, no,” Mrs. Conrad admitted. “Not when Mr. Barstow first showed him the apartment. That was in the afternoon and I wasn’t in. But that evening when he brought his suitcase up. You see, I didn’t even know the apartment had been rented. It had been vacant for more than a week, and I was wondering how long it’d be before someone grabbed it. Apartments don’t stay vacant in this building very long as a rule. The rates are reasonable and it’s in a very convenient location, and very well kept up.” She appeared not to notice the cigarette Shayne was holding half-way to his mouth, and he reluctantly replaced it in his shirt pocket.

  He said, “That was the first Friday evening. What time, Mrs. Conrad?”

  “Between eight and nine, I’d say. My door was open a crack like always and I just happened to notice this man set a suitcase down in front of the door there and fumble with a key in the lock, so I just peeked my head out to say a good evening and welcome to him, to make him feel at home, you know, and he just glanced sideways at me across the hall in a most unfriendly way, and then he muttered something and got the door open and picked up the suitcase and went in, and I won’t say he exactly slammed the door shut, but I will say he closed it very firmly right in my face.”

  “What was your impressi
on of him?”

  “Well! That he wasn’t such-a-much, if you know what I mean. With those funny blue glasses and a little mustache. Nothing about him to make you look twice if you met him on the street. I couldn’t see what he had to be so high-and-mighty about, practically insulting me when I offered him a pleasant good evening, but that was before I saw her slipping up to his door, and then I said to myself, ‘Ah-ha. So that’s your game, is it?’ Because I realized right away why he was so standoffish. He didn’t want anybody being friendly and paying any attention to what he did. Having that woman up to visit him all hours.”

  “How did you know it wasn’t his wife?” asked Shayne.

  “You could just tell she wasn’t any wife. Not his wife, at any rate. Call it a woman’s intuition, if you like. Something sneaky and mysterious about her. I just knew it right off when I saw her that first night. Sidling up the hallway in high heels and trying not to clack in them. With that floppy black hat pulled down so you could hardly see her face.”

  “What time was that? How much after you saw him go in?”

  “Half an hour or so. Nine-thirty or ten, I’d guess. I saw her coming up the hall looking at numbers, and I just stepped up close inside my own door to see if I’d guessed right, and sure enough she stopped and knocked, not very loud… sort of secret-like… and he must have been expecting her and waiting because he opened it right off and she slipped inside like she didn’t want to be seen.”

  “The same woman you saw last night?”

  She nodded vigorously. “And the Friday before, too. Well, I couldn’t swear to it on the witness stand because I never did see her face hardly, those first two times, but dressed the same all three times, with that same black hat. I could swear to the hat. You don’t see many like that nowadays. They used to be stylish, but they’re old-fashioned right now. You have to have a lot of money to wear one like that and not care what people think.”

  “You say you hardly saw her the first two times,” Shayne reminded her. “Does that mean you did see her face last night?”