Painter strutted to the center of the room and whirled to face the trio. “We already had her body. Found it early this morning in the bay less than three hundred yards from here.”
“Her—body?” Christine cried out sharply. “Drowned?”
“Not exactly, Mrs. Hudson,” Chief Painter said. “She’d been struck over the head—” he paused and delicately cleared his throat. “Her throat was slashed,” he ended quietly.
Christine caught her husband’s arm and began to sob. “Now, now, dear,” he comforted her. “You mustn’t take it too hard. We’ve only had her with us a short time.”
Shayne raised ragged brows, looking from the couple to Painter, then went over and sat down in a chair.
Chief Painter confronted him “I suppose you wouldn’t know a damned thing about this, Shayne? You just happened to drop in this morning?”
Shayne looked up at the dapper little man who stood before him, immaculately turned out in the latest style, and stiffly erect. He said, “That’s right.”
“Nuts!” The dynamic chief turned on the heel of one small shoe and snapped to Mr. and Mrs. Hudson, “Whichever one of you called Shayne in on this case, get this through your heads. I won’t have him interfering with police business. The woman was murdered, and I’m taking personal charge of the investigation.”
Shayne’s gray eyes shone with an angry and humid glow. “I told you I was catching the noon plane,” he said.
Painter disregarded him. He continued bitingly, “I’ve had experience with Shayne messing up cases before. I assure you that the Miami Beach officials are capable of handling this murder investigation.”
Leslie Hudson looked inquiringly at Shayne, then turned a puzzled glance on Painter. His right hand came up in a gesture of confusion and embarrassment. “I don’t quite understand,” he said, addressing Painter. “I’m sure it was a purely friendly gesture on Mr. Shayne’s part—dropping in to say good-by to Mrs. Hudson.”
Christine was still clinging to her husband’s arm. She dropped her hands to her side and stepped forward. “Of course it was,” she said, “but now that this terrible thing has come up about Natalie, I want him to find the guilty person. With your permission, of course, Chief Painter.” She appeared to have gained complete control of her emotions, and she flashed a smile at Painter.
Painter nervously fingered his mustache. He said, “But you heard Mr. Shayne say he was catching the noon plane.”
“Just a moment.” Shayne sprang from his chair. He said, “Mr. Hudson, will you describe the maid—Natalie—to me?”
“Of course. She was something under thirty, I suppose. Quite blond, and—” he twirled a hand above his baldish head “and frizzly.” He turned to his wife and asked, “Rather nice looking, wouldn’t you say?”
Christine laughed lightly. “Any maid would look good to us, Leslie,” she said. “She had a rather pleasant face and she liked to laugh and talk. I’d given her some of my old gowns and she looked very nice in them. And,” she added, turning to her husband, “she helped herself to the lovely perfume you gave me.”
Shayne was watching Christine. Her light laughter and her smile and the glow in her eyes went away when she turned away from Painter. He said, “My trip to New Orleans isn’t really important. I can easily put it off a day or so if you really want me to look into this.” He knew, suddenly, that there was more involved than the IOU which Barbizon held against Christine, and he deliberately shoved aside the urgent telegram from Lucy Hamilton and the thousand-dollar retainer in the Belton case.
Leslie Hudson was saying, cordially, “We’d appreciate that, Shayne. Natalie was a maid who’d been with us only a short time, but we owe her that much.”
Shayne scarcely heard him. When Christine’s husband stopped speaking, Shayne said to Painter, “You’re conducting an investigation?”
The chief raised his padded shoulders a trifle straighter and warned him bitingly, “Just try pulling a fast one, Shayne. Just one. That’s all I ask.” He turned his back on the redhead, whipped out a notebook and demanded, “The maid’s full name?”
“Natalie Briggs,” said Hudson.
“Age?”
“About—twenty-eight,” Christine answered when her husband looked at her inquiringly.
“Height and weight?”
Leslie Hudson’s eyes were a mixture of green and gray. He drew his brows together between them, but didn’t look at his wife. “I would say about five-feet-eight or nine inches. She was tall.” He thought for a moment, turned to Christine and said, “A hundred and thirty, wouldn’t you say, dear?”
“Fifty,” Christine murmured, her long lashes half-closed. Her tousled dark head was nestled against Leslie’s arm, and she didn’t look at Shayne.
“Any relatives? Close friends?” Painter asked officiously.
Hudson didn’t answer immediately. He looked down at Christine and said, “None that I know of. She was sent to us by an employment agency a few weeks ago. You know how it is these days. But she was perfectly satisfactory,” he maintained stoutly.
Painter’s small black eyes flashed. “H-m-m. So you don’t actually know anything about her.” His tone indicated that they knew everything about her and were directly responsible for her murder. “When was she last seen by any member of your household?”
Christine lifted her head and spoke in a steady voice. “I can answer that. It was right after dinner. Leslie had gone to the plant, and she had a date. She came in to show me how a green dinner dress looked on her—one I had given her. I was reading the evening paper in the living-room. She said there was something she had forgotten to do and went upstairs. When she came down, I could smell the perfume, but I didn’t care about that. Naturally,” she ended, “I didn’t ask her where she was going.”
“Did someone call for her?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.” Christine seemed to remember all of a sudden that she was a hostess. She moved wearily toward a chair and said, “Let’s all sit down.”
She sank down on a love seat and her husband sat beside her. Painter stood in his tracks, his notebook in his hand and his pencil poised above it. Shayne dropped into a chair and crossed his legs.
“When Natalie wasn’t here this morning, I asked Mrs. Morgan if she knew anything. Mrs. Morgan was in the kitchen just before Natalie left.”
“Who is Mrs. Morgan?” Painter asked.
“Our housekeeper,” said Christine.
Painter raised his right hand which held his pencil and ran a finger over his thin mustache. “Why didn’t you report the maid missing earlier?” he demanded. “Was she in the habit of spending her nights out?”
Leslie Hudson said, “The maid’s room is in the house. We naturally gave her a key to the back door so she could come in on her night out. I suppose she stays out quite late, which is none of our business as long as she does her work the next day. We didn’t know she hadn’t come in until just before I left for the office this morning.”
“There was no wind last night,” Painter asserted, “and your maid was found floating in the bay a short distance from here. It’s my guess she was killed right here and dumped in the bay. Where were you two all evening?”
“There was a pretty high wind this morning,” Shayne said.
Painter’s small black eyes darted to Shayne. “You keep out of this, Shamus,” he snapped. He turned back to the Hudsons. “Where were you last night?”
Leslie Hudson looked at his wife quickly, but she was staring at her pink fingernails. He said, steadily, “My wife and I were out.”
“Where?” Painter asked caustically.
Christine lifted her eyes and looked steadily at Painter. She did not smile. She asked, “Are Leslie and I suspects?”
Painter again cleared his throat delicately. “Not yet,” he admitted, “but it’s just as well to establish an alibi if you can.”
Hudson tightened his arm on his wife and said, “We will see to that when the necessity arises,” stiffly.
Painter said angrily, “If you’re not going to co-operate, that’s the way I’ll play it. Now, who else is in the house?”
“Mrs. Morgan,” said Leslie Hudson, “and my brother, Floyd.”
“Where are they? I want statements from them, and—”
The telephone rang in an adjoining room. Shayne saw Christine stiffen. Her dark, terrified eyes met his for an instant. It was as though she expected the ring and appealed to him for help.
“I want to inspect the girl’s room and her possessions,” Painter was saying, as Christine sat on the edge of the love seat, and they could all hear Mrs. Morgan answering the telephone.
A moment later Mrs. Morgan entered the spacious living-room and said, “It’s for you, Mrs. Hudson.”
As Christine dragged herself from the love seat and went slowly through the open doorway to the telephone, Peter Painter turned on one heel to face the middle-aged woman. “Are you Mrs. Morgan?”
“I am,” said the woman, her hands folded across her ample diaphragm. Her calm blue eyes ran the length of the chief’s short stature.
“You can come in right now,” Painter said. “I want you to give me everything you can about Natalie Briggs. Try to remember everything—”
All of them heard a stifled gasp from the adjoining room, and the faint sound of a body crumpling to the floor. Shayne and Hudson rushed into the room together.
Christine lay outstretched on the floor beside the telephone stand in a dead faint.
Chapter Five: ALIBI OR RUSE
MRS. MORGAN FOLLOWED Shayne and Hudson at once, took in the situation at a glance and went directly to a lavatory opening off the library for a wet cloth and smelling salts.
Mr. Hudson lifted his wife in his arms and carried her to a couch. Kneeling beside her, he stroked her hair and called to Mrs. Morgan to hurry. She was back in a few seconds and they administered cold cloths to the unconscious girl’s face and held the salts to her nostrils.
Shayne picked up the receiver dangling from the cord. He called, “Hello—hello,” into the mouthpiece, but the connection had been broken from the other end. He swore softly, and was replacing the receiver as Painter came in.
“See here now—” Painter began, but no one paid any attention to him.
Shayne grinned and said, “I bet the whole bunch are guilty as hell. You can see this is just a dodge to avoid answering your questions.”
“I’ll ask for your advice when I want it,” Painter snapped. He strutted over to the trio and said, “What does she mean by a stunt like that?”
Hudson turned a strained and anxious face up to him as Christine stirred and moaned faintly. “I don’t understand this any more than you do. It isn’t like Christine at all. As soon as she comes around I’m sure she’ll explain. There, there, dear,” he went on to his wife. “Are you all right now?”
Christine opened her eyes and looked around wonderingly, her stark gaze going slowly from one face to the other. Color came slowly into her cheeks and she said, “Oh! I—don’t know what happened. Everything went black and I—” She caught her husband’s hand and held it tightly.
“Who was on the telephone?” Painter demanded. “What was said that caused you to faint?”
“Nothing.” She drew herself up to a sitting position, still clinging to Hudson’s hand. “I did come in to answer the phone, didn’t I? I remember now. I’d just picked up the receiver when a wave of sickness struck me.” She managed a wan smile and turned her face toward Mrs. Morgan. “Silly, wasn’t it?”
“Not at all,” the older woman told her. “You’ll come up to your room now and rest.” She gave Hudson a significant look and said, “We’d best have the doctor in to see her right away.”
“I’ll carry you up,” her husband said, and gathered her in his arms. Mrs. Morgan followed them from the room.
Painter called out, “I want all of you back here. And Mr. Hudson’s brother. Send him down at once.”
Leslie Hudson returned to the library in a very few minutes. There was a puzzled look in his eyes. He muttered, “I don’t understand. Do you suppose—can Mrs. Morgan be right?” He cut himself off abruptly, as though he suddenly realized he was speaking aloud thoughts that were not for strangers.
Shayne laughed and slapped him lightly on the back. “It does happen on the best of honeymoons,” he assured the worried man. “Nothing to worry about.”
“But she hadn’t told me. I didn’t know—”
“You’ve been married only a month,” Shayne reminded him. He turned on Painter and said harshly, “You’ve got to be careful what you say to a woman in her condition.”
Tiny beads of sweat were standing on Painter’s face. He mopped it away with a handkerchief and mumbled, “How was I to know? I’m through with her anyhow for the time being. What about this brother of yours, Hudson?”
“I doubt whether Floyd’s up yet. I imagine Mrs. Morgan will send him down. Here he is now,” Hudson added quickly. “Suppose we go back to the living-room.”
The four men moved into the larger room. Floyd Hudson stopped in the center of the room and waited.
Floyd Hudson was the man Shayne had seen at the Play-Mor Club with Natalie Briggs the preceding night.
He blinked owlishly at the little group and demanded, “What in hell’s the excitement, Les? Mrs. Morgan said I was wanted down here.”
“Just a formality, Floyd,” his brother assured him in a gentle voice. “This is Chief Painter of the Beach police force. They found Natalie’s body in the bay this morning, and there are some routine questions he has to ask.”
“Natalie? In the bay,” Floyd Hudson looked shocked. “Are you serious? Did she commit suicide?”
“I’ll ask the questions,” said Painter stiffly. “How well did you know the maid, Mr. Hudson?”
Floyd shrugged and muttered, “What do you mean by a question like that? Are you insinuating—?”
“I’m asking,” Painter said.
“How well would I know a maid?” the younger brother demanded truculently. He pressed stubby fingers against his forehead. “Natalie wasn’t any prize, you know.”
“When did you see her last?”
Floyd turned his head slightly and looked at Shayne for the first time since he entered the room. He narrowed his bloodshot eyes and appeared to be concentrating on something. “Wait a minute,” he muttered. “Let me get this straight. When did she do it?”
“Natalie Briggs was murdered some time last night,” Painter told him. “Right here in your back yard if I’m not mistaken. Pending an autopsy, the doctor’s first guess is around midnight.”
Floyd looked at Shayne again and asked, “Is this another cop?”
“I’m sorry,” the elder brother said. “Mr. Shayne, my brother. Mr. Shayne is an old friend of Christine’s,” he went on, “a private detective who is helping the police clear up Natalie’s death.”
Shayne stepped forward and took Floyd’s extended and unresponsive hand. “I believe we ran into each other last night at the Play-Mor Club.”
“Did we? Maybe so.” Floyd wet his lips and groaned. “My head. God, but it’s splitting. I suppose I might as well give it to you straight,” he said to Painter. “I took Natalie to the Play-Mor last night.” He saw his brother give a start of surprise and added defensively, “She’d been after me to take her some place like that ever since she’d been here. I didn’t see any harm in it.”
Painter was making notations in his book. “Was this the first time you’d taken her out, Mr. Hudson?”
“Of course. God, you don’t think I’d make a practice of it.” He closed his eyes and shuddered. “She got half-tight on a couple of drinks and insisted on gambling. After she’d dropped all her own money she wanted me to put up for her. I was sick of my bargain by that time, and I slipped away and left her there.”
“What time was that?”
“About ten o’clock.”
Painter looked at Shayne. “You say you saw him ther
e with the maid?”
“I said I saw him at the Play-Mor. He was with a girl who answered Mr. Hudson’s description of the maid.”
“What time was that?”
“I saw them at the roulette table slightly before ten. I dropped forty bucks and went out for a few drinks and looked in again about ten-thirty. She was still there, but I didn’t see him.”
“That’s what I told you,” Floyd put in wearily. “I skipped out on her and went on and made a night of it by myself.”
“Where?” Painter asked incisively.
Floyd shook his head. “God only knows. I hit the Den first and tilted a few. And I think I was at the Yacht Club, and maybe the Tropical Tavern.” He managed a puffy-lipped smile. “Didn’t get in till about four-thirty.”
“You didn’t come back here in the meantime?”
“Hell, no. Home didn’t appeal to me right then.”
“How long were you at the Play-Mor?” Painter demanded of Shayne.
“I reached my apartment at eleven o’clock. I didn’t go back into the gambling room after I looked in at ten-thirty.”
“And the girl was there at that time?”
“She was at the roulette table when I went out and got a cab,” Shayne said steadily.
Mrs. Morgan entered the room unobtrusively. She touched Leslie Hudson’s arm and said, “I think you’d best go up to Mrs. Hudson, sir. She’s resting quietly, but she’d like to see you.”
“Of course” Hudson arose hastily. “You’ll excuse me.
“And I,” said Floyd, “have told you all I know about anything. Is there hot coffee, Mrs. Morgan?”
“On the stove. I’ll fix some—”
“You’ll stay right here,” Painter said sternly, “until you’ve answered a few questions.”
As she turned back looking flustered and unhappy, Floyd brushed past her, saying, “I’ll fix some myself. And don’t tell him any more than you have to.”
Mrs. Morgan sat down and folded her hands in her lap. She answered Painter’s questions steadily and clearly. She had helped rear Christine, and when Christine married she had been happy to come to Miami and take the position as housekeeper in the Hudson home. She hadn’t known Natalie Briggs until she came to work as a maid, and the girl had done her work competently. There had been no complaints. She knew nothing at all about the dead girl’s background or friends. She had had no callers during the few weeks she’d been employed at the Hudson house, and had received no letters to Mrs. Morgan’s knowledge.
Blood on Biscayne Bay Page 4
