Michael Shaynes' 50th case ms-50

by Brett Halliday

  He paused and listened thoughtfully to a scratchy voice coming over the wire from Miami. After a time, he said, “I see. Well, thank you very much.” He hung up shaking his head.

  “That seems to be definite. Blake checked out of the Atlantic Palms a little before four o’clock yesterday afternoon even though the convention did run through last night and most of the delegates are still there right now.”

  Chief Ollie Jenson’s jaw hung open slackly. “Yesterday afternoon? I don’t get it. Where’d Marv go? He’s not due home until today. He wouldn’t just walk out on the convention. It don’t stand to reason.”

  Timothy Rourke’s eyes were feverishly bright and he reached a thin hand for the phone again. “I think we’d better try to find out where Marvin Blake was while his wife was getting herself murdered. Operator? Another person to person call to Miami charged to the same card number. You got it? Michael Shayne.” He gave her the redheaded detective’s office number and Chief Jenson leaned forward nervously.

  “Hey. Mike Shayne! That’s that private detective in Miami ain’t it? I don’t know as I like you calling him…”

  “Hi, Mike,” Rourke said into the phone. “Tim Rourke. I’m calling from Sunray Beach where we had a sex murder last night. Doing anything the next half hour?”

  From Miami, Michael Shayne said, “Not a thing, Tim.”

  “Write this down. Marvin Blake from Sunray Beach. Delegate to the auto dealers’ convention at Atlantic Palms Hotel which ended last night. His wife was murdered here at midnight. Blake has been expected home on the noon train from Miami, but I just talked to the hotel and they tell me he checked out at four yesterday. If you get over there right away you may find some of the delegates who know him. Get anything you can on his whereabouts last night… why he checked out. You can call me at… no, wait a minute. I’ll be moving around up here. I’ll call you in an hour. Got all that?”

  Shayne said, “I’m on my way.”

  Timothy Rourke hung up and stared moodily across the desk at Sunray’s chief of police. “You say you’ve got a man on the Blake house?”

  “Leroy Smith. He’s a real smart young…”

  “How do I get to the Blake house?” Rourke was on his feet and turned toward the door.

  “Wait a minute now. I ain’t one bit sure I want any newspaper reporters messing around…”

  “Nuts,” said Rourke dispassionately. “You’ve got one whether you like it or not.” He went out the door while Jenson was laboriously pushing himself upright.

  7

  Leroy Smith was a sober, serious and sincere young man of twenty-two with a crew-cut, and he wore his neatly-pressed khaki uniform of the Sunray Beach Police Department with prideful self-consciousness. Since the age of twelve, his one desire and ambition in life had been to become a member of the F.B.I., and he felt that his appointment by Chief Jenson as a probationary patrolman last year was the first major step toward achieving his ambition.

  One decent break was all he needed. One major case which he could solve triumphantly and single-handedly by application of the rules of Scientific Crime Investigation as set forth in his books on the subject might well bring him nation-wide prominence and a personal invitation from J. Edgar Hoover to appear in Washington forthwith.

  After eight months of patient waiting, Leroy Smith’s big chance had finally come to him. Here he was, in charge of a big important murder case. Well, practically in charge. There was no doubt in his own mind that the solution of the crime was strictly up to him.

  Hadn’t Chief Jenson said so this morning when he dispatched him to the Blake house to conduct a thorough and Scientific Investigation at the Scene of the Crime?

  “I reckon it’s up to you, Leroy. Fingerprints and all like that. Mighty glad I got a smart young man like you to take charge else I’d have to call in the State Police and have them traipsing all over and stealing the credit. Might be some footprints under that big front window you could get one of them there things of. I reckon that’s where he got into the house, all the other ground-floor doors and windows being locked.”

  “A moulage, Chief,” Smith had supplied eagerly. “Sure, I’ve got the material for taking impressions. I’ll stop by Mom’s to borrow a double boiler for heating it. And I’ll get her vacuum cleaner to help gather up clues. Might be stuff on the floor inside the window fell out of his cuffs when he crawled in. Distinctive grains of sand that’ll show a special region he came from, cigarette ashes that can be analyzed.”

  “Sure,” said Ollie Jenson vaguely. “You go right to it, Leroy. We’ll pick the son-of-a-bitch up, don’t you worry, and might be your evidence will clinch the case against him.”

  Unfortunately, the entire area beneath the front window had a thick layer of gravel over a hard surface that couldn’t possibly take a footprint, and a careful dusting of the interior and exterior of window and sill with his specially prepared fingerprint powders and an ostrich feather duster brought no discernible fingerprints to light. Neither did the living room floor inside the window provide anything that looked faintly like a clue although he went over it carefully with his mother’s vacuum sweeper equipped with a special filter attachment of methacrylate plastic using a 22-cm Whatman No. 1 filter which he had ordered personally from a specialty company in Berkeley, California, when he first joined the Force and had kept in readiness ever since for just such an emergency as this.

  There was one possible clue in the otherwise immaculate living room which Leroy observed, although he was inclined to discount the importance of it. This was the presence of two highball glasses sitting side by side on the low coffee table in front of the settee against the right-hand wall. Both glasses held a small residue of faintly amber-colored liquid which Leroy intended to test for alcoholic contents later on in his own laboratory at home, and he had carefully dusted both glasses for fingerprints and lifted several clean ones with scotch tape from each glass which were clearly from two different persons when examined under a magnifying glass. Those taken from one glass were clearly identifiable as the victim’s by comparison with other prints of Ellie’s which Leroy had lifted from articles on her dressing table and in the kitchen, while those from the second glass were surely from some person who had sat in the living room with her the previous night having a friendly nightcap.

  The reason Leroy didn’t have too much hope that eventual identification of the second set of prints would lead to the criminal was his disinclination to believe that Mrs. Blake could possibly have sat down in the living room to have a drink with the man who was later to strangle her upstairs in her own bed.

  Ellie Blake had been a real nice, quiet, home-loving wife and mother, who might take a social drink now and then with a friend who dropped in after supper, but she certainly wasn’t the type to have a drink with a strange hitch-hiker who had murder on his mind.

  As soon as news of her death spread through town, Leroy was positive in his own mind that whoever had that nightcap with her prior to her murder would come forward and report it to the police, and it was probably silly to save the fingerprints on the glass, but he had them carefully preserved nonetheless.

  Other than those two highball glasses sitting companionably side by side in the living room Leroy Smith had not discovered a single clue of seeming significance in the entire empty and silent house of death.

  There were only two doors leading into the house. The rear door into the kitchen was securely bolted on the inside. The front door, which automatically locked when it was pulled shut and required a Yale key to unlock it, showed no sign of having been forced. Dusting for fingerprints on both inside and outside knobs (going on the theory that the murderer might have simply walked out the front door and pulled it shut behind him) had brought negative results. There were fragmentary prints and blurs on both knobs, but nothing conclusive.

  So far as Leroy Smith could ascertain, there was nothing out of place, nothing to indicate that murder had been committed, although he had examined the entire
premises minutely and in accord with all the rules on Examination Of The Scene Of The Crime as set forth by the criminological experts who had authored all the volumes in his private library.

  The kitchen was neat and shining and spic-and-span, just as any good housewife would leave it after the evening meal was done and the child had been bedded down for the night. The dining-room was immaculate, and there were only those two empty glasses in the living room to give their mute evidence of an after-supper visitor.

  Upstairs, there were two bedrooms and a large bathroom between them, with a door entering into it from each bedroom. At the head of the stairs, which led up from the entrance hallway leading between kitchen and living room, you turned to the right to enter the master bedroom that had been occupied by Marvin and Ellie Blake. Directly on the left from the stair landing was a door leading into the only bathroom which was bolted on the inside. As previously noted, the bathroom could also be entered by doors from either the master bedroom or Sissy’s room, which was beyond the bathroom from the head of the stairs.

  So far as Leroy Smith had been able to discover, there were no significant indications or clues in the upper part of the house. To be perfectly honest, he had only opened the door of Sissy’s room and glanced inside hastily before closing it. What could even a Scientific Crime Investigator hope to discover in the bedroom of a six-year-old who had tenderly been tucked into bed the preceding night by her loving mother and slept until early morning when Sissy had wakened a little before six o’clock (according to her own story babbled tearfully to Aunt Minerva Wilsson) and gone through the bathroom to open the door into the master bedroom to discover the twisted, nude, cold, dead body of her beloved mamma stretched out on top of the double bed without a stitch of clothing or bedcovers on her?

  Horrified, and not at all really understanding why her “Mommy” did not respond to her, the little girl had run out into the hallway and down the stairs into the living room where she had dialed the Wilsson telephone number because it was the one most familiar to her. “Aunt Minerva” and “Uncle Harry” were the two adult persons in Sunray whom she knew best and trusted most, and felt the closest to in the entire town.

  No. One couldn’t expect to find any clues in Sissy’s bedroom. Leroy had contented himself with swiftly glancing inside, wincing and gritting his teeth as he let his imagination take hold and he visualized the little girl awaking that morning happily with the early morning sunlight streaming in the window, thinking to herself that this was the day her Daddy would be coming back from the convention in Miami and certainly bringing a present for his “best girl” (Sissy) with him, and slipping out of her bed in her cute, little nightgown and going through the bathroom to open the door into her mother’s room (probably hurrying because of the slight chill in the air) and gleefully and happily planning to slip into bed with her warm and sleeping “Mommy” (while Daddy was away and Mommy was all alone) and maybe even doing just that.

  And encountering cold and unresponsive flesh!

  A murdered mother.

  A mother who would never again turn slowly to her in the warm bed and welcome her with soft arms and murmured assurances of maternal love which were so much a real part of Sissy’s life.

  Shuddering, Leroy Smith had firmly closed the hallway door into Sissy’s room and backtracked to the Scene of the Crime.

  Here, it had been almost as difficult for the impressionable young man. Thank God, they had removed the body before he arrived. He was spared that, though his imagination could place the naked and murdered body of Ellie Blake squarely in the middle of the big nuptial bed in front of him.

  All of the top covers were thrown back, and the bottom sheet was fitted tightly at the corners. Certainly, there was no indication of a struggle in the room. Beside the bed in disarray lay Ellie’s clothing. At least, he supposed they were the clothes Ellie Blake had worn before retiring last night. He wondered if she generally tossed them aside carelessly on the floor when she went to bed at night.

  Probably not, he thought. Not on a normal night when her husband was there and they decorously went to bed together. But last night she had been alone in the house. Her husband was in Miami and maybe she had luxuriated in being alone and just wantonly tossed aside her clothes before getting into bed naked and alone.

  What kind of woman had she been, really, he wondered. Did a married woman get sick and tired of going to bed decorously every night with the same man? Had Ellie Blake been happy to have those few days alone in the house (with only her six-year-old daughter) while her husband was in Miami?

  It seemed to him that this bedroom should be able to tell him something. Murder had been committed here less than twelve hours before. Murder most foul. There should be something here for a Trained Investigator to get his teeth into.

  That was when he heard an automobile coming up the drive and stopping in front of the house.

  He crossed the bedroom swiftly to the window and looked down. He didn’t recognize the shabby coupe parked outside the front door or the gangling figure that got out of the driver’s seat and walked briskly around the front of the car toward the front door.

  He hurried out and down the stairs and was two steps from the bottom when the chimes rang in the living room to his left. They sounded loud in the empty and silent house and a queer sort of tingle raced up and down his spine, and he sternly disregarded it as he went to the front door and pulled it open.

  A tall man with thin features and cavernous eyes confronted him. He had alertly intelligent eyes and seemed perfectly self-assured as he looked at the young man in uniform and murmured, “Officer Smith? I’m the Press. Miami News.”

  It was the first time Leroy had ever been addressed as “Officer Smith.” It was also the first time he had ever actually encountered a reporter from a big city newspaper. In a shaking voice, he said,

  “Yes. I’m… Leroy Smith. Officer Leroy Smith,” he amended, getting some of the shakiness out of his voice.

  “Rourke.” Timothy Rourke held out a thin hand and winced as the young man wrung it with unnecessary vigor. “Your chief of police said you were in charge here, and suggested I get a statement from you.”

  “For the… Miami News? Say, you’re Timothy Rourke, aren’t you? I read your by-lined stories all the time in the paper. You want a statement from me?”

  “Whatever information you’re at liberty to make public,” Rourke told him urbanely. “I got the impression from Chief Jenson that he fully expects you to come up with a solution to the murder.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” Smith disclaimed halfheartedly. “I do have a few ideas, I guess. Come on in the house, Mr. Rourke. You want to go up to the bedroom where they found her?”

  “Let’s look around down here first.” Rourke walked into the hallway and glanced through the door into the neat kitchen, and then into the living room on the right. “Is that the window where you think entry was made?”

  “It was found unlocked and open a couple of inches. Everything else locked up tight. No fingerprints, though, and no foreign substances picked up from the floor inside by the special filter on my vacuum cleaner… so the findings are inconclusive. But there’s these two highball glasses in front of the sofa, Mr. Rourke. Fingerprints on one glass I’ve identified as belonging to the deceased… I don’t know about the others.”

  “You mean she sat here and had a drink with someone before she got herself strangled?”

  “Well, I… I guess she had a drink with someone all right. Don’t quote me as saying I think it was her murderer, though. More likely an innocent friend.”

  “But you’ve photographed the prints just in case?” insisted Rourke.

  The young policeman colored slightly. “I don’t have a proper fingerprint camera. But I did lift the prints with scotch tape and I have them for identification.”

  “Excellent.” Rourke nodded emphatically and the young man glowed. The reported jotted down some notes on a wad of copy paper. “Leroy Smith
. Is that right?”

  “That’s right. I was all prepared to make a moulage of any footprints outside the window, you could say in your newspaper story if you want, but unfortunately it’s all gravel outside as you can see for yourself if you look.”

  Rourke nodded absently and went back to the stairway after a last glance around the neat living room. “Upstairs, eh?”

  “The room to the right at the head of the stairs.” Smith followed him up eagerly. “The other bedroom with connecting bath is their little girl’s room. Only six years old and she was sound asleep all the time. Didn’t know a thing until she woke up this morning and went to call her mother and found her lying there, in the middle of the bed, cold and dead. It makes me sick to think of it.”

  “Had she been screwed?” Rourke asked callously as he stepped inside the bedroom and looked at the wide, smooth bed.

  “I… I… don’t know,” stammered Leroy Smith behind him. “I didn’t even see her body, and I don’t know how one would determine a thing like that.”

  “Any semen stains on the bed? You used ultraviolet, didn’t you? Or don’t you know…?”

  “I am perfectly aware,” said the young man stiffly, “that an ultraviolet light will cause the stains of semen and other physiological fluids to re-emit energy in the form of visible light generally known as fluorescence. Semen, indeed,” he went on didactically to cover an inward confusion, “will generally show a rather bright, blue-white fluorescence. Unfortunately, though, we have no ultra-violet equipment on hand.”

  Rourke shrugged and crossed the room to a large dressing table. “The doctor should be able to tell us that.” He picked up a double cardboard-framed photograph of a smiling man and a very attractive, calm-faced woman and studied it. “Is this a picture of the Blakes?”

  Leroy Smith glanced at it and nodded. “Taken when they were married, I guess. Marvin looks just about the same today, but Ellie is… was… a lot prettier today than then.”