The Uncomplaining Corpses ms-3

by Brett Halliday

  “She refused. As I have explained, my wife was not one to part with money easily. She pretended to dismiss the notes as the work of a harmless crank at first. Later she admitted she was worried and suggested we place the matter in the hands of a private detective. I confess my nervousness yesterday when she came to my office unexpectedly, but fortunately she spoke in such vague terms that you remained deceived.” There was a note of gratification in Thrip’s voice as though he preened himself on his cleverness in deception.

  There was a short silence during which Shayne stared at the floor and Thrip stared straight ahead. Then, as if speaking to himself, Thrip muttered, “I shan’t pretend any great grief over my wife’s death, but it is a pity she had to die in such a brutal manner.”

  Shayne’s eyes grew keen for an instant, but he was staring thoughtfully at the floor again when he said, “You say she pretended to dismiss the notes as the work of a crank at first. Do you imply that there was more to them than that-and she knew there was-she knew whom they were from?”

  “I do imply exactly that. I feel morally certain she knew the identity of the author of the notes from the first. Guessing the authorship of the notes myself, I felt she was in grave danger, but when she refused to consider the consequences of disregarding the threats I considered myself absolved of all responsibility in the matter.”

  “Hoping perhaps,” Shayne said with sharp irony, “that she would get bumped off so you could get your hands on her money.”

  “I resent that, Mr. Shayne.” The realtor arose, his face purpling with wrath. “I see no reason why I should allow you to insult me. Your status in my house is that of an unwelcome intruder.”

  Shayne didn’t move. His long legs were stretched out in front of him and his eyes were fixed on the toes of his number twelves. “I’m staying, Thrip. Sit down and stop swallowing your goozle. You’re not going to deny, are you, that her money comes to you and your children?”

  Arnold Thrip fidgeted indecisively, then sat down on the extreme edge of his chair. “As to that, it will be a matter of common knowledge when Leora’s will is probated that half of her fortune comes to us.”

  Shayne lifted his gaze sharply. “And the other half?”

  “I can’t see that it’s any of your business,” Thrip said, “but her brother, Buell Renslow, will receive half of the estate. As a matter of fact, Leora’s entire portion of the fortune comes to us-half of her father’s estate. For years she has enjoyed the use of the income from the entire estate, but there was a provision in her father’s will providing that one-half should go to her brother upon her death-or be held in trust for him until his release from the penitentiary to which he was sentenced twenty-five years ago for murder.”

  Shayne snapped from his moodiness with a start of surprise. “You’d better start at the beginning and tell it straight through.”

  Thrip stuck a dead cigar in the little pouch he made of his lips, drew ineffectually, laid the cigar on the stand. He turned a little toward Shayne. “I can’t see that it is any concern of yours,” he said with conscious dignity.

  Shayne’s half-closed eyes were brilliant. “Murder has been committed, Mr. Thrip,” he said in a low tone. “You and your children are involved. You might be doing yourself a favor to come clean with me.”

  Thrip took a fresh cigar from a humidor on the stand, lit it, blew a puff of smoke ceilingward. “It is a brief though sordid story. You can understand my hesitancy in speaking of it. I have a standing in the community to maintain.”

  “Well?” Shayne said impatiently.

  “Two years before I married Leora, her only brother killed a man in a drunken brawl in a western mining camp. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and the disgrace of it hastened his father’s death. His father had taken millions in gold from a Colorado mine. His will stipulated that his entire fortune should be inherited by his daughter for her use as she saw fit during her lifetime, but in the event of her death, one-half of her estate should be set aside as a trust for the brother in the unlikely event that he redeemed himself and made a good enough record in the penitentiary to receive a pardon. If he should he pardoned before her death, he was to receive the income from one-half of the estate until her death. Buell Renslow was pardoned from the penitentiary two months ago.”

  Thrip paused to puff on the cigar which had accumulated a long gray ash. He flipped the ash off carefully, glanced at Shayne’s impassive face, and continued:

  “Renslow came here to Miami immediately after being released, and contacted his sister. He demanded that she turn over to him the money that would legally become his upon her death. Leora, being of the grasping nature I have described to you, refused his request. She instructed her attorneys to pay over to him the income every month and refused to see him after that first occasion. Two weeks later, the first threatening note arrived. I am positive it was written by her ex-convict brother, but he has never been discussed between us, and neither of us mentioned our belief that he wrote the notes. I am positive, however, that she knew they could come only from Buell Renslow.”

  Shayne listened with fixed attention during the last part of the recital. Not by look or gesture did he indicate that he knew of the notes from Leora Thrip’s own lips.

  He nodded and muttered, “Then this Buell will actually benefit by his sister’s death?”

  “Of course. To the tune of more than a million dollars. If her death had come about under any other circumstances, Mr. Shayne, I should not hesitate to suspect her brother of the crime.”

  “You mean-if you hadn’t caught the killer in the act and knew it couldn’t be Renslow?”

  “Yes. That’s what I mean.”

  “But he wouldn’t have access to the house,” Shayne argued. “He couldn’t have got into her room.”

  Thrip looked at him in astonishment “You are overly trusting for an efficient detective, Mr. Shayne, to put it mildly. A man like that, who has consorted with criminals for years, could easily get an impression of a lock and have a locksmith make a key to fit it. He might even bribe a servant to leave a window unlatched.” His eyes were bulging at Shayne. He held the detective’s gaze steadily until he turned to contemplate his cigar.

  “I-see,” Shayne said. He shrugged and asked, “What about the jewel case? I didn’t see it when I was called in last night And Darnell didn’t have a thousand-dollar bill on him-according to police reports.”

  There was a red glow on Thrip’s cigar. “Why, he evidently had gone to my wife’s bed before looking for the case. A man like Darnell wouldn’t be likely to think of money while contemplating such-such a crime as he committed. At any rate, the case was on the vanity with the bill inside when I called the police. Naturally, I removed it before they arrived.”

  “Naturally,” Shayne muttered.

  “Quite naturally,” Thrip agreed smugly.

  “What about your daughter’s friend, Carl Meldrum?” Shayne shot out. “I understand he brought her home late last night.”

  “Meldrum? What about him?” Thrip appeared blandly disinterested in Meldrum.

  “That’s what I’m asking you. What sort of an egg is he?”

  “I know nothing against him. He appears to have money, also breeding and social position.”

  Shayne said, “U-m-m. One more question, Mr. Thrip.” He was tugging at the lobe of his left ear with right thumb and forefinger. “Who was the last person to see your wife alive-and at what time?”

  Thrip fidgeted in his chair. His bulging eyes were cold, his manner plainly irritated. “The police definitely established that last night. Dorothy stopped and spoke to her mother on her way up to her room at one-thirty.”

  Shayne nodded decisively and got to his feet. “You wouldn’t have any idea where I could reach Buell Renslow?”

  “None whatever. He hasn’t put in an appearance here since that first visit after his release from prison about two months ago.”

  “Do either of your children know about him?”

&nb
sp; “Only vaguely. I’m sure neither of them knows he has been pardoned and is in Miami.”

  Shayne thanked him and went out the door. He hurried down the stairs. Out in the fresh salt-tanged air he filled his lungs deeply on the way to his car.

  He drove back to Miami and to police headquarters where he went directly to the private office of his old friend, Will Gentry, Miami detective chief.

  Chapter Nine: A DIFFERENT ANGLE

  Will Gentry was a solid, square-jawed man of fifty. He was issuing orders to two plain-clothes men when Shayne pushed the door open and walked in. He squinched grizzled eyebrows at the redhead and ended the interview with his subordinates by growling:

  “Bring them both in and I don’t give a damn how you do it. Mother of God, do I have to draw you a picture for every pinch I want made?”

  The officers saluted stiffly and went out. Gentry chewed on the butt of a sodden cigar and tried ineffectually to light it. After the third attempt he hurled it at a shiny spittoon in one corner. It plopped wetly inside. He hunched his big body forward and rumbled:

  “Well, Mike, you seem to have sewed yourself up in a sack this time.”

  Shayne nodded and with one toe dragged up a chair. He draped his angular body into it in front of the chief’s scarred desk and agreed, “It looks that way, Will.”

  Gentry frowned and his blunt fingers fiddled with a fountain pen lying in front of him. “Painter was in here not more than half an hour ago. He had a book-length telegram he was sending the governor. He wanted my signature on it along with the heads of the Ministerial Alliance and the Civic Betterment League. It pointed out in no uncertain terms that your continued presence in our midst with a private dick’s license was a menace to all the laws in the statutes and to the lives of our law-abiding citizens.”

  Shayne lit a cigarette and blew smoke across the scarred surface of Gentry’s desk. “Did you sign it?”

  “Nope.”

  Shayne said, “Thanks, Will.”

  There was a short silence between them, broken by Gentry’s fist thudding down on the desk. “Damn it, Mike, I’ve known you more than ten years. You’re bullheaded and reckless and hell-on-wheels when you get mad and you’ve never given a hang for what anybody thought and you’ve got away with everything but murder in this man’s town, but this time you’re washed up if you don’t pull one out of the hat quick.”

  “Am I?”

  “Hell, yes. Painter’s got you over a barrel. This isn’t something local that we can hush up. When a private detective murders the client he is hired to protect-that makes headlines from Baltimore to Frisco. It’s like the old one about the man biting the dog. The governor’s going to grab your license so fast it’ll make your head spin around.”

  Michael Shayne nodded wearily. “I’ve added it up to the same answer. So, I guess it’s up to me to pull one out of the hat, and I may use Painter’s Panama.”

  Gentry shot him a piercing glance. He stopped fiddling with the fountain pen and pulled a blunt black cigar from his vest pocket. Worrying the end of it with his teeth, he grunted, “What’s the straight of it, Mike?”

  “You knew Joe Darnell? Hasn’t he been going straight since he did that rap for housebreaking?”

  “Maybe. But he was pretty hard up. The way it looks to me is that Joe was casing the joint looking for what he could pick up and the lady hears him and sets up a squawk. Joe jumps her and puts on a little too much pressure.”

  “That’s the way it reads,” Shayne admitted grimly. “The papers are making the mistake of listening to Painter, as usual. Joe wasn’t on the prowl. He went in on a ready-made lay-planted and primed for him. He wasn’t worried about any squawk. He was expecting some slight interference to make it look good when the insurance investigators checked up on the missing loot. He wouldn’t have jumped the woman. He didn’t.”

  “The hell you say.” Gentry’s mouth fell open and he held the cigar half an inch from it. “Then those notes-all that stuff about him guarding the joint for you-is all that phony?”

  “There were notes all right-blackmail-but the rest of the setup is phony as hell. But I can’t prove a word of it. My only out is to turn up the real murderer-Joe’s murderer too, by the way, since he swallowed a slug on account of Thrip triggering in a hurry without taking time for questions when he saw his wife stretched out stiff and Joe in the room.”

  Gentry’s graying head bobbed up and down. “I knew it had to be something like that. Anything I can do, Mike?”

  “I don’t know,” Shayne told him truthfully. “I’m following two or three leads. Joe could tell us a lot if he could talk. He’d know who went in and came out. You can do this, Will. Every visitor with a criminal record is supposed to register when he hits town. See if a Buell Renslow, pardoned lifer from Colorado, is on your list. He probably isn’t because that’s just another goofy law you can’t enforce.”

  “Probably not but we’ll see,” Gentry agreed amiably. He flipped the switch on an interoffice communicator on his desk and gave an order.

  “And I’d like to locate a Mona Tabor who gives a Little River post-office box as her address”-Shayne waited while Gentry made a note of it-“and dig up anything you can on Carl Meldrum at the Palace Hotel on the beach,” he ended.

  A buzzer sounded. The chief said, “Shoot,” into a phone and listened a minute. He shook his head at Shayne. “Nothing on your ex-con.”

  “Then wire Colorado for his mug and prints. And circulate the word among your stoolies that he’s wanted. He shouldn’t be hard to pick up if he runs true to form. Another angle will be Mrs. Thrip’s lawyers. They’ve been paying out monthly sums to Renslow. You might tackle them officially.”

  Gentry was scribbling notations on a pad. He grunted with surprise and looked up at the detective. “What’s the connection? How does the con figure?”

  “Mrs. Thrip’s brother,” Shayne told him briefly. “I’d like to know where he was between one-thirty and two last night. He made something like a million during that half hour.”

  Gentry made his lips into a big O and permitted a whistle to escape him. “Nice work if you can get it. Better than a cop drags down.”

  “Or a private dick.” Shayne stood up, tangling his coarse red hair. “Will you hop onto that stuff, Will? And phone any dope over to me. I’ve got one call to make before I land back at my apartment.”

  Gentry said, “You bet,” and lifted his heavy hand in farewell as Shayne went out.

  The detective’s roadster was parked against the curb outside headquarters where it was marked No Parking — Police. He got in and pulled up to the traffic light on Flagler, waited for it to change, and turned east past the Bade County courthouse.

  In front of the First National Bank on the corner of Flagler and Northeast First Avenue he parked in the space reserved for armored cars and went in to cash Leora Thrip’s check into a sheaf of twenties,

  Shayne’s next stop was the Miami Daily News tower on Biscayne Boulevard. He went up to the noisy, smoke-filled city room just before press time and found Timothy Rourke relaxed in front of a littered desk in a corner overlooking the bay.

  Rourke looked up and waggled a finger at Shayne with portentous gravity. “Naughty, naughty, Michael. There’s an old Hindu proverb that says, He who playeth with fire shall someday find himself in the middle of a mighty conflagration.”

  Shayne nodded soberly, pushed back some papers to slouch down on a corner of the reporter’s desk. “That’s rank plagiarism on the Chinese. What’s your first-edition headline, Tim?”

  “Hot off Petie Painter’s platter. Revocation of Shayne’s License Demanded. And it’s subbed: An indignant citizenry rallied solidly behind police authorities and civic leaders this morning to press demands upon the governor that Michael Shayne’s authority to prey upon innocent victims be annulled at once,” Rourke quoted gravely, “or words to that effect.” He grinned cheerfully and offered Shayne a cigarette.

  Shayne shook his head. “So you boys
are convicting me without a trial.”

  “A trial? What the hell, Mike? Isn’t it open and shut? You don’t deny Darnell was working for you, do you?”

  “It wouldn’t do me any good to deny that,” Shayne admitted. “The catch is, Tim, Darnell didn’t choke the dame.”

  “Wh-a-a-t?” Rourke choked over a windpipeful of smoke.

  “He didn’t,” Shayne said with a driving intensity that riveted all of Rourke’s attention. “I’ve given you stuff in the past,” Shayne went on harshly, “and you’ve made money by listening to me. The Herald nailed me to the cross on Painter’s say-so this morning. Why don’t you guys try printing the truth?”

  Rourke’s flaring nostrils quivered like a hound’s on the scent. “Good God, Mike! Have you got any proof?” He was reaching for a wad of copy paper and a pencil.

  “Not a damn bit. But I’m telling you. You can quote me, can’t you? Do you think I’m taking this lying down? Joe Darnell didn’t kill Mrs. Thrip. Painter’s willing to let it lie that way because he hasn’t got brains enough to catch the real murderer and because it harpoons me.”

  “But what about Thrip? If Darnell didn’t kill Mrs. Thrip what reason did Thrip have for killing Darnell?”

  “Plenty of reason,” Shayne insisted. “Breaking and entering. Hell, I’m not blaming Thrip. His story is straight enough. He did what any man would do under the circumstances. My quarrel is with his interpretation of what he saw when he turned on the light. I’m working on the theory that Mrs. Thrip was dead before Joe Darnell entered her bedroom.”

  Rourke’s keen eyes dulled as Shayne spoke. “That’s not like you, Mike,” he observed absently. “This is the first time you ever blatted out a theory for publication. I thought you left that angle for the Painters.”

  “I’m working on this with two strikes on me before I come to bat,” Shayne explained. “I want the murderer to know I’m on his tail. I’ve got to smoke something out, Tim. There are so damned many angles-” He paused, shook his head gloomily, then asked, “Well, Tim?”