Guilty as Hell

by Brett Halliday

  “He offered me eight thousand to quit,” Shayne said. “I don’t think anybody else will top that. Now I have to ask you the yes-or-no question, Forbes. Did you sell the folder to Candida?”

  “No.”

  But there was no conviction in his voice, as though this detail was of no interest to him. After a long swallow of whiskey, he burst out, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t talk to you! My God, we can’t just expect you to—”

  “He doesn’t want you to incriminate yourself,” Shayne said. “When we check on it, I think we’ll find that Lou Johnson or somebody acting for Lou Johnson received the full five thousand, and if it didn’t come from your father, the assumption would be that it came from you. But there’s one other outside possibility—that there’s a third person involved, who really stole the folder and set up the poker game so you’d take the fall if it ever got that close.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “I think Candida would have been willing to go as high as thirty or forty thousand for that material. A five-thousand-buck payoff to Johnson would be cheap insurance.”

  Forbes rattled the ice in his drink. He shook his head.

  “Johnson was Ruthie’s friend. She knew he was staying in the hotel, and it was her idea to get in the game. In fact—”

  “In fact what?” Shayne said when he stopped.

  “It seems to me she suggested taking off the limit, and that’s when the trouble started. I’m not sure of that part, but if somebody introduced her to Johnson—hell, maybe she collected a small percentage, I’ve never been able to make out where her money comes from. But if somebody arranged that game to get my signature on some IOU’s, she knows who it was. We can find out in the morning.”

  Shayne drained his glass and stood up. “We’d better ask her now. She may be many miles away in the morning.”

  “She’s asleep.”

  “Maybe not. She was pretty strung out when I saw her. The sleeping pills wouldn’t take hold right away. Coming, Candida?”

  “Needless to say, for my own protection.”

  Shayne overpaid the waiter and hurried the others to the elevator. He and Harry Hurlbut exchanged a look, and the elevator door slid shut. They rode up in unfriendly silence. On the twelfth floor, Forbes led them to Ruth’s room.

  Shayne knocked. When there was no immediate response, he said, “Keep knocking. I’ll get a key.”

  “I have one.”

  Forbes unlocked the door. “Ruthie?” he called softly. He turned to Shayne. “I told you she’s asleep.”

  “Maybe we can wake her up.”

  Shayne turned on the ceiling light. This room was like most other hotel rooms in Miami Beach—a low ceiling, walls painted light green, furniture and fixtures modern, clean-lined and anonymous. But Ruth Di Palma was an exceptionally untidy guest. Her clothes were everywhere. Slacks and sweatshirt were crumpled in the middle of the carpet. Sandals and underclothing made a trail toward the bathroom. A damp footprint had been left on the carpet by a bare foot, beside a wet bathtowel. There was a glass of water and an open bottle of pills on the bedside table, with a spilled cigarette package, a sheaf of bills and other odds and ends from Ruth’s open bag.

  Ruth herself was sleeping face down in the untidy bed, breathing hard. She was unclothed. Her midsection was covered by a corner of the sheet.

  “We’re wasting our time,” Forbes said. “She never gets to sleep right away, but once she makes it—”

  Shayne reached the bed in two strides. He touched the flesh at the corner of the girl’s mouth. Dropping to one knee, he felt for the wrist that was dangling over the side. For a moment he couldn’t find a pulse. Her breath caught and held, caught and held. He finally picked up a pulse-beat. It was faint and ragged.

  He grabbed the phone, knocking her opened bag to the floor.

  “Get a doctor up here in a hurry!” he said urgently when the switchboard answered.

  CHAPTER 17

  She died at 1:30 the next morning.

  Shayne and the others were waiting in an unoccupied room across the hall. Hurlbut summoned Shayne out to the hall with a movement of his head.

  “Goddamn it, Mike,” Hurlbut said in a savage undertone. “Fifteen minutes earlier and they think we could have saved her. She had looks, good health, brains, friends—why do they do it?”

  Shayne lit a cigarette. “You think it was suicide?”

  “That’s how it looks. We’ll have to go to an autopsy to find out. It’s either that or an accident—too much liquor and too many different pills. They had a case like it at the Sans Souci last week. I didn’t think she looked too bombed when she came through the lobby.”

  “She’s been taking bennies all weekend to stay awake.”

  The security man swore under his breath. “I really liked that kid, Mike.”

  Shayne entered the room where the girl had died. She still lay on the bed, covered by the sheet. A Mt. Sinai interne was dismantling the resuscitator. The hotel doctor, a tired-looking man Shayne didn’t know, was closing his case at the bureau. Ruth’s sweatshirt was still in the middle of the carpet. It had been walked on.

  Shayne went over to the doctor. “My name’s Michael Shayne. This girl’s part of a case I’m working on. I know you can’t give me a definite cause of death, but are there any indications one way or another?”

  The doctor finished what he was doing. He was a young man, going bald. “You know better than that, Shayne. Wait for the autopsy.”

  He went into the bathroom to wash his hands. Shayne was waiting when he came out. The doctor said angrily, “Is it important?”

  “Damn important.”

  The doctor buttoned his shut collar and tightened the knot of his necktie. He went to the bedside, where he turned down the sheet and lifted the dead girl’s left arm. Turning her wrist, he showed Shayne several spidery red lines.

  “A prior attempt? Maybe. Several years ago, I’d say. I don’t know the girl, never been my patient. I think it’s a case of barbiturate poisoning, twenty-five grains minimum. No signs of alcohol complication. Half-empty prescription bottle, wrist scars. What does it look like to you? But I’d like it better if she’d left a note. People are so used to having pills around, they get careless.”

  He looked down at Ruth’s face. Her expression was peaceful, not much changed from the way it had been in life.

  “Not knowing what she had on her mind,” the doctor said, “I have to say it’s a tossup. Look at the room, the mess in that handbag. Not an orderly person, but the kind of person who would lose count and swallow too many pills accidentally?” He broke off. “The hell with it. I can’t help you. Talk to the medical examiner. Now I’m going to bed.”

  He raised the sheet.

  Shayne thanked him and stood at the bedside for a moment thinking, while the interne wheeled the resuscitator out of the room. Hurlbut came in, looked at Shayne’s preoccupied face, and went out again with the doctor.

  Alone with the dead girl, Shayne began to move about restlessly, trying to put together an impression of Ruth Di Palma from the scattered personal objects amid the impersonal hotel furniture. There was only one book in the room, a paperback by a Protestant clergyman, known for his advice to lonely and unhappy people who dreamed of improving their chances in life without going back to infancy to start over. The binding was badly sprung, and sections had been read more than once.

  The objects on the bedside table had been returned to the girl’s bag. Shayne emptied the bag again and picked over the contents. He did a careful job, trying to force each object to disclose its secrets before putting it back in the bag. Presently he was left with a curiously-designed pill container. It was flat and circular. The pills were arranged around the circumference of a movable calendar wheel, in sockets numbered from one to twenty.

  After studying this for a long moment he dropped it in his pocket and went back to the hall, where Hurlbut was conferring with the doctor. When they were through, Shayne arranged for the use
of the room across the hall for the remainder of the night. He went in. Candida was smoking in one of the two chairs, one leg over the chair arm. She looked at Shayne without expression.

  “What do they think?”

  Shayne poured a drink from a cognac bottle supplied earlier by Room Service. Forbes was outside on the terrace, leaning over the railing looking out at the ocean. His back was stiff.

  Without raising his voice Shayne said, “Come in now, Forbes. We have things to talk about.”

  Forbes turned. His eyes were red and puffy.

  “What things?”

  “Come in and sit down.”

  Forbes did as he was told, moving jerkily.

  “Your father’s right about one thing,” Shayne told him. “It’s time for you to start taking a little responsibility. You don’t realize it yet, but this is your worst jam to date.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re feeling sorry for yourself because your girl’s dead. I’m sorry too, sorry she let herself get mixed up with you people. Candida, are you going to stick to your story that you never met Forbes before tonight?”

  “It’s true.”

  “Maybe you can convince me of that, but not without doing a certain amount of talking. Here’s how things stand at the moment. Ruth may have attempted suicide a few years ago. There are scars on her wrist.”

  “She got those in a car accident,” Forbes put in.

  “Forbes,” Shayne said patiently, “if you have any sense at all, you won’t say one more word until I’m finished. She could have been lying to explain the scars. What I’m trying to tell you is that the doctor assumes this was another suicide attempt, only this one succeeded. The autopsy will probably bear that out. But I’m ninety-nine-percent certain that when she went to sleep she expected to wake up again. Here’s why I think so.”

  He held out the pill wheel to Candida. “Do you know what these are? They were in her purse.”

  She glanced at them. “Birth-control pills. Druggists don’t ask to see a marriage license before they fill that prescription.”

  “Take a closer look.”

  She took the wheel and studied it. When she spoke there was an undercurrent of excitement in her voice.

  “Last night’s pill is gone.”

  “So?” Forbes demanded.

  “The idea is with these things,” Shayne explained, “you have to be careful not to miss a day. You build up immunity over a period—five days, I think it is, five days running. So for girls like Ruth, who might forget, they’re packaged this way. You buy them by the month. When you take the first pill in a new cycle, you turn the wheel to that day’s date and lock it. As you work your way through the month, you always know where you are.”

  “I still don’t see—” Forbes said.

  “Use your head, damn it!” Shayne said sharply. “Ruth’s in bed. She’s decided to kill herself, so she won’t have to get up in the morning to face another long empty day. Would she try to remember what day it was, so she could take a birth-control pill first? Those are for people with a future. Don’t tell me she’d do it as a matter of habit. She wasn’t that kind of a girl.”

  “You think it was an accident?”

  “Accidents happen,” Shayne said. “But I don’t think this was one. She was tired, not drunk. Here’s a theory. Listen to the way it sounds. You were there while she was getting ready for bed. The moment she came in, she got herself a glass of water and took a couple of pills. You got rid of the water while she was in the shower. She came out. ‘Did I take my pills? I guess not—no water.’ Two more. She was finishing up a tense weekend and she couldn’t stop thinking about all the interesting things that happened. She went on talking after she was in bed and reached for the bottle. Two more pills. A long goodnight kiss. ‘See you in the morning, Ruthie. Don’t forget to take your pills.’”

  Forbes came to his feet abruptly, then sat down again. Shayne held his eyes for a moment, and swung around on Candida.

  “Then you came up. You told her Forbes was in trouble over that old poker debt, and she could help by leaving town for a few days. She agreed—anything to help her boy. You gave her five hundred dollars. There were ten fifties in her purse, separate from the rest of her money, which added up to nine and a half bucks. Then you got her a fresh glass of water so she could take a couple of pills and forget it. Make it three. No, she has to counteract all that benzedrine. Four.”

  “That’s pure fantasy!” Candida snapped. “And you know it.”

  “I don’t know a goddamn thing. All I’m doing is wrapping a couple of guesses around a theory. Maybe you didn’t pay Ruth to organize that poker game, but at this point it sure as hell looks like it. A statement from her to that effect would cost United States Chemical two million bucks and put Hal Begley in bankruptcy. You’re an ambitious girl, Candida, too ambitious. Success or failure, prestige or exposure—and the whole thing hinged on whether or not Ruth was alive in the morning. When she asked you if you’d seen her taking her sleeping pills, it would be so easy to say no.”

  “It wouldn’t be easy, and it didn’t happen.”

  Shayne laughed unpleasantly. “And what about you, Forbes? Your father has just about had it with you. If I can show that you sold Candida that folder, he’ll kick you out of the company and change his will.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I don’t believe you.” The detective lit a cigarette deliberately. “Slavery was abolished years ago. If you don’t want the job, quit. You’ve got a terrible record on your own showing. Add it all up, and a hard-eyed district attorney would get a profile of a spoiled rich kid who wouldn’t hesitate a minute about slipping a couple of extra pills to a girl who was that much of a danger to him.”

  Forbes looked at Shayne defiantly, but there was terror in his eyes.

  “Which one of you did it?” Shayne said. “You both had the opportunity. You both have a motive.”

  Candida looked at Forbes, whose eyes had narrowed. She said warningly, “Don’t let him rattle you, Forbes. If it’s that bad, we both need a lawyer.”

  “You won’t have time to talk to a lawyer,” Shayne said. “Talk to me. I’m not a cop. Nothing’s going to be signed here. I can’t hurt you with a verbal admission.”

  “I don’t think I’ll start trusting you this late in the game.”

  “I’m setting a deadline—seven tomorrow morning. At five after seven I dump the whole thing in the D.A.’s lap. District attorneys can’t leave anything hanging. They have to come up with a solution. If what he comes up with is conspiracy to commit murder, I want you to realize that he can make it stick. The one basic thing to prove is that Forbes was the source of the T-239 folder. Everything follows from that. We can bring in Jake Fitch to testify about the locker-room time sheet. We establish the exact moment the transfer took place, and then we talk to Lou Johnson and find out when he was paid off. If the folder changed hands April twenty-third and Johnson got his money that evening or the next day, what else will a jury need?”

  He saw that he had finally managed to reach her. There was a tense line between her eyebrows. Her eyes were steady on his face.

  He said less harshly, “How did you make the arrangements, by phone? You couldn’t accept anonymous material. You had to have a name to go with it. I’ve been telling you how this will look to a jury. That doesn’t mean I think it happened that way. I think you were fooled, Candida, badly fooled. There’s only one person who could do it, and only one way it could be done. One important thing is missing. Until I get that, the rest of it isn’t worth a goddamn.”

  “Stop!” Forbes said. “Tell me one thing. Do you think Ruthie was murdered?”

  “Yes,” Shayne said bleakly. “And I think it was meant to be written off as a suicide. The fact that you and Candida were with her before she went to sleep couldn’t have been arranged in advance. But it gives me a lever, and I mean to use it. You have a choice: talk to me now or the D.A. in the morning.”

&n
bsp; “I haven’t concealed anything,” Forbes said sullenly. Candida picked up her drink. It was a Scotch highball, nearly full. She tilted the glass higher and higher and set it down empty.

  “Forbes sold me the folder,” she said.

  Forbes shot out of his chair. “How can you lie like that? Whatever Shayne wants to think happened when Ruthie went to bed, I know what happened! She took two sleeping pills and her birth-control pill and asked me to get in with her and hold her until she fell asleep. Then the phone rang. I don’t know what you said to her, but it woke her up. She told me to go. If anybody gave her any extra pills, it was you! When I worked on the proofs of the report, I took them home one weekend. Ruthie was with me. Did you hire her to sneak them out to you? Did you?”

  He started for Candida. Shayne moved between them.

  “Shut up, Forbes! Candida’s going to tell us what happened. Sit down and listen.”

  He backed Forbes into his chair and then returned to Candida.

  “O.K., it’s the middle of April,” he said. “You can see there’s no hope of getting what you want out of Walter Langhorne. You’re about ready to start putting the heat on Jose Despard. Take it from there.”

  She held out her glass and he poured Scotch over the ice.

  “Hal got a phone call at the office,” she said. “It was a man’s voice. Hal buzzed me and I listened on an extension. The voice was faint and very fuzzy, as though he was speaking through a tissue stretched over the mouthpiece. Walter had a way of using synonyms for common expressions, and this man did the same thing. But I knew instantly that it wasn’t Walter. It was somebody else who wanted us to think it was Walter. He offered us the T-239 material.”

  “Who suggested the country-club locker?”

  “He did. He gave us precise instructions. There were two packages. The first one had every alternate page of the report, pages one, three, five and so on. Hal picked it up. We checked with United States. They were delighted and told us to go ahead. We wrapped thirty thousand dollars in fifties and hundreds and Hal left it in the locker. Somebody picked it up and left the even-numbered pages.”