Michael Shaynes' 50th case ms-50

by Brett Halliday

  Rourke said sententiously, “It’s always hardest on those who are left behind. Have you got any idea who might have done it, Mr. Wilsson?”

  “God, no! How could I? No one who knew them, certainly. Nobody in this town. It had to be a transient. Chief Jenson says he must have got into the house through the front window that was left unlocked. I told Ellie to lock up carefully while Marvin was gone, but she just laughed at me. Nobody does lock up in Sunray, hardly. First time anything like this ever happened.”

  “When did you see her last?” Rourke asked smoothly. “I suppose you dropped in and more or less looked after things while her husband was away… being such close friends.”

  “Well, Ellie knew she could call on me for anything she needed. But she was pretty independent that way. She stopped by the house yesterday afternoon with Sissy and that was the last time we saw her alive. We talked about Marv being at the convention and all, and I kidded her about how he was probably stepping out on her with some of those fancy city women, and she just kidded right back about how she didn’t worry about Marv in Miami. She didn’t come right out and say it, you know, but she practically said that old Marv knew he had something a lot better waiting for him right there at home than he was going to get from any woman in Miami. And then… oh, God!” Harry Wilsson groaned and spread out his hands and then ran his fingers through his glossy, black hair distractedly. “When you think about last night, and her up in her bedroom and sleeping there naked and dreaming, maybe, about Marv…” He groaned again and put the spread fingers of both hands over his face.

  Rourke settled back in his chair and reached down to the paper sack in his coat pocket containing the pint of Four Roses and wriggled the mouth of the sack open in his pocket, and said, “Then that’s the last thing either you or your wife saw of her… when she stopped by your place late yesterday afternoon? Just for the record, I guess maybe that’s the last anyone saw of her alive?”

  “I guess so.” Harry Wilsson took his hands away from his face and showed a strained and pain-racked countenance to the reporter. “Except Sissy, of course. And… whoever did it.”

  Rourke nodded and emptied his glass. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that more customers had entered the bar and the bartender was busy serving them. He pushed back his chair and got up with his empty glass in his left hand, and said, “I’ll get us a refill. What are you drinking?”

  “Bourbon. All right, just a shot. I’ve got plenty of beer.” Rourke nodded and put his right hand over the empty shot-glass on the table. He slid his first two fingers inside the glass and stretched them apart to lift the glass without touching the outside of it, and turned away quickly, transferring the glass to the paper sack inside his pocket and dropping it gently atop the pint of whiskey as he moved toward the end of the bar.

  There, he caught the bartender’s attention and pushed his own glass forward, ordering, “Another single with branch water for me, and another slug of straight stuff for Mr. Wilsson.”

  He got out his wallet and extracted a twenty while his drink was being made, and he pushed it across the mahogany when his drink and a full shot-glass were placed in front of him. He said, “Take them all out of that… not forgetting the pint,” and he waited to get his change and left a dollar on the bar when he went back and sat down again in front of Harry Wilsson.

  He pushed the man’s drink in front of him, and tilted his own glass up. He drank half of it and smacked his lips happily and said, “I never saw her, of course, but they tell me Ellie Blake was quite a piece. What I mean is,” he went on hastily, seeing storm signals in Wilsson’s black eyes, “she was the sort of woman that gave a man ideas about her whether she meant it or not. Which might, in a sense, explain what happened to her last night. Because some man got horny just looking at her.”

  “Ellie did have a way about her,” said Wilsson broodingly and uncomfortably. “If a man didn’t know her real well, he might easily get the wrong idea just by watching her walk down the street. But she didn’t mean anything by it. She was just as innocent as the day is long.”

  Timothy Rourke shrugged and said, “Some women just can’t help it.” He drained his glass and pushed back his chair and stood up. “Well, thanks a lot for your information, Mr. Wilsson. I’ll probably be seeing you around.”

  He walked out, lifting one hand in a wave to the bartender as he passed behind the backs of the men seated at the bar, went down the street outside to his car and got in and drove a block where he made a U-Turn and drove back on Main Street, slowing up in front of City Hall which housed the police department, and looking for a parking space.

  At that moment he saw Patrolman Leroy Smith coming down the walk to the street, and he double-parked and leaned out and waved to the young man, and Leroy saw him and hurried to the side of his car and said, “Hi, Mr. Rourke. Something you wanted?”

  Rourke unlatched the door and said, “Climb in,” waited until he was inside and then pulled ahead slowly. He said, “I’ve got a little job for you. Where’s your finger-printing equipment?”

  “I keep it all at home. I’ve got a little laboratory fixed up there…”

  “Which way is home?”

  “Just a couple of blocks. Turn to your right at the second corner. Matter of fact, I was going home for a snack. Then I have to go back on duty at headquarters at one. What kind of job, Mr. Rourke?”

  Rourke said, “I’ll show you when we get there.” He turned at the indicated corner and Leroy pointed out a neat stucco house in the middle of the block. “Turn in the driveway and stop. We can go in the side entrance.”

  The reporter followed him into a small, neat room with a bare porcelain table in the middle of it, a sink with running water, and shelves along one wall holding an array of neatly-labeled jars and bottles.

  “I know it doesn’t look like very much,” Leroy said hesitantly, “but I’ve got all my reference books here, and all the equipment I’ve gathered together ever since I studied chemistry in high school. What was it you wanted?” Rourke pulled the paper sack out of the baggy side pocket of his coat and laid it on the table. He took hold of the end of it with the pint inside and lifted it, and the shot-glass rolled out on the porcelain surface.

  “I want you to dust that for fingerprints,” he told the young policeman, “and then get your magnifying glass out and we’ll compare what you find with the prints you lifted off that highball glass in the Blake house this morning. A person doesn’t have to be an expert to make that sort of comparison.”

  Leroy Smith’s jaw drooped incredulously. “Do you mean you’ve found out who was there last night and had a drink with her?”

  “Get out your powder and duster and we’ll see. And be sure you keep it damn well under your hat if I turn out to be right,” grated Rourke. “Just because a man had a drink with her doesn’t mean he strangled her.”

  11

  At three o’clock that afternoon Harry Wilsson’s secretary entered the private office at the rear of his insurance agency and informed her employer that a Mr. Shayne was in the outer office and wanted to see him.

  The name meant nothing to Wilsson, and he asked somewhat irritably, “Is he selling something?”

  Miss Andrews said she didn’t think so. “He doesn’t look like a salesman, and he said it’s a personal matter of some importance.”

  Wilsson nodded and said, “All right,” and she went out, and he picked up one of the papers scattered on the desk in front of him and was pretending to read it when a tall, wide-shouldered man with rumpled, red hair and cold, gray eyes came quietly through the door and closed it behind him. Wilsson put the paper down and looked at his visitor with a questioning frown. He was certain he had never seen the man before, and he said somewhat brusquely, “Shayne, is it? What can I do for you?”

  “Just answer a few questions,” Shayne told him, pulling a chair close to the desk and sitting down without waiting for an invitation. “I’m a private investigator from Miami helping your local polic
e on the Blake murder case.”

  “Oh, you’re that Shayne? Michael Shayne. Well, I’ve heard about you, all right. I didn’t know Ollie would have the gumption to call someone like you in, but I’m mighty glad he did. Maybe we’ll get somewhere now.”

  Shayne said briskly, “I hope so. Right now I’m gathering a little background, and I understand you may have been the last person to see the victim alive.”

  “That’s possible. My wife and I, that is. Ellie Blake stopped by our house about four o’clock yesterday afternoon.”

  “And that’s the last time you saw her?”

  Wilsson nodded. “She stayed fifteen or twenty minutes, I guess.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about her, Mr. Wilsson? Was she nervous or upset? Anything at all to indicate that she had any reason to expect anything out of the ordinary to occur last night?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m not sure I know just what you’re getting at.”

  “I’m wondering,” said Shayne blandly, “if she might have had a date for later on in the evening. With some man, perhaps. I understand it was the last night her husband planned to be away from home and that Mrs. Blake was, well…” Shayne spread out his hands and shrugged. “An attractive woman to say the least.”

  “There wouldn’t be anything like that.” Wilsson looked properly shocked. “Not with Ellie Blake. No. I think you’re barking up the wrong tree there, Mr. Shayne. It was some stranger in town. Some sex maniac.”

  Shayne said, “You’re probably right, and that’s going to make it the most difficult sort of case there is. What did you do last evening?”

  “Me? Do you mean you want me to give you an alibi?”

  “It wouldn’t do any harm,” Shayne told him cheerfully. “What I would like to do is get a picture of what the people closest to Ellie Blake were doing last night. Every alibi I can clinch eliminates one more possibility. Nothing personal about it. Just tell me where you were.”

  “Well, let’s see. As a matter of fact I drove over to Turner’s Junction right after dinner, to try and see a man and sign him up for life insurance. That’s about forty miles each way on a back country road. I got home around eleven, I guess. I remember it was just after eleven. Minerva, that’s my wife, was sitting up watching the eleven o’clock news, and we went to bed right after it ended.”

  “Did you sell the policy?”

  “As a matter of fact, he wasn’t home when I got there,” Wilsson said disgustedly. “Jed Turner. He’s got a farm the other side of the Junction and I telephoned when I got there. No answer. I was pretty sore after making that long drive out to see him, and I hung around for about an hour and called twice more. Then I gave it up as a bad job and came home. I remember telling Minerva when I got back that that was a wasted evening if there ever was one. But that’s the way it goes in the insurance business.”

  “Did you see anyone you know while you were waiting in Turner’s Junction?”

  “No. It’s hardly more than a crossroads. There’s a beer joint and poolhall, but I didn’t feel like going in. I just sat in my car and smoked. Made my calls from a public telephone booth beside the road.”

  “Then you actually have no proof you were there last night?”

  “Good Lord, man! Do I have to prove where I was? I remember telling Minerva when I left that I was going over to see Jed Turner.”

  Michael Shayne settled back in his chair and said bleakly, “You’re lying, Wilsson.”

  “Now see here,” sputtered the insurance broker. “You can’t come in here and start saying…”

  “I am in here and I am saying,” Shayne interrupted him calmly. “Do you want to talk to me here in the privacy of your own office, or shall we go down to police headquarters? You see, Wilsson, right now my friend Tim Rourke, and I are the only ones who know you dropped in at the Blake house last evening and had a drink with your best friend’s wife while he was in Miami. I don’t want to pillory any man unnecessarily, but I’m working on a murder case and we’ll spread it all over town if you want it that way.” His voice was even and cold and utterly uncompromising.

  “But you’re all wrong.” Wilsson stared across the desk at him aghast. “I wasn’t near Ellie Blake last night. It’s a made-up lie if anybody says different.”

  “You left your fingerprints on a highball glass sitting in her living room beside the glass she drank out of. The police have those prints on file, but they haven’t got around yet to checking them against yours. When they do, everyone in town will know where you were last night.”

  Harry Wilsson crumpled up in front of his cold gaze and put his hands over his face and moaned softly.

  Shayne got out a cigarette and lighted it and smoked thoughtfully. When Wilsson took his hands away from his face it was a sick, gray color and he kept wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue as he poured out his story in a low, hoarse voice that trembled with self-pity.

  “I just stopped in for a drink. It was early, just past eight and I saw her light was on as I drove past and I thought I’d just go in and say good night and cheer her up maybe. And that’s what I did. We had one little drink in the living room and you can’t make anything wrong out of that. How could I know some murdering bastard would break in and kill her after I left?”

  Shayne said disbelievingly, “If it was so completely innocent, why didn’t you mention it to your wife when you got home? Wouldn’t that have been the natural thing to do?”

  “Not if you knew Minerva, you’d know it wouldn’t. She’s got a nasty mind and she’s always been suspicious of Ellie. I never would have heard the last of it, if I’d told her. She’d be forever prying and asking questions. Like: ‘Did you kiss her good night? Did she rub up against you?’ Nasty things like that. And then she would have told Marv as soon as he got home for sure,” he went on bitterly, “and maybe get him thinking Ellie and I’d been carrying on behind his back. No, sir, I certainly didn’t see any good reason to blab it out to Minerva last night.”

  “But how about this morning? After you found out what happened in the night. Didn’t you realize you had information that should have been given to the police?”

  “This morning?” Harry Wilsson gulped and swallowed hard. “God, I didn’t know what to do. People might think all kinds of things with Ellie dead like that. You know how it is. And I realized it was going to look funny when I told about driving over to Turner’s Junction and hanging around an hour without being able to prove it. Some folks, including Minerva, would be sure to think I’d spent all that time with Ellie.”

  “And,” said Shayne quietly, “I, Mr. Wilsson.”

  “What? What do you mean by that?”

  “Your story does sound fishy, you know. Look. We’re both grown up, and we both know the facts of life. Right now, we’re talking off the record. I assume you know that a medical examination of Mrs. Blake discloses that some man had intercourse with her at about the time of her death? Possibly slightly before… perhaps soon afterward.”

  “I didn’t know that,” muttered Wilsson, his face ashen. “Even so, it has nothing to do with me. I guess everybody assumes that she was raped while she was murdered.”

  “There’s one way you can prove it has nothing to do with you,” Shayne told him briskly. “What is your blood group?”

  “I don’t know. What has that to do with it?”

  “It is a medical fact,” Shayne told him, “that semen, along with most of the other body fluids, such as saliva and perspiration, can be tested for blood-grouping, just as is done with blood itself. If you want to prove you weren’t intimate with Mrs. Blake last night, give us a sample of your blood. If yours is a different group, you’ll be in the clear.”

  “But suppose it happens to be the same group?” cried Wilsson in agitation. “That wouldn’t prove it came from me. It’s like a paternity case. You can prove a man can’t be the father… but you can’t prove he is, just because his blood is the right group.”

  “That’s true,�
� Shayne agreed gravely. “However, there is another test, Wilsson, if you’re willing to have it made. Unlike blood, the spermatozoa in the seminal fluid have definite individual characteristics that are much like a man’s fingerprints. In other words, under microscopic examination it is possible to ascertain whether a certain sample of sperm originated in you or did not. Do you follow me? If you’re willing to give me a sample for comparison…”

  “Oh, God,” groaned Wilsson. “I didn’t know that. I never heard that before.”

  “You know it now,” Shayne told him coldly. “Why don’t you break down and tell me the truth about what happened between you and Ellie Blake last night? If you didn’t kill her, I assure you I’m not a damn bit interested in what else you did. But I need the truth from you at this point.”

  “Kill her? Good God! Me? Why would I kill her?”

  “Women have been known to resist a man’s advances,” Shayne said bleakly. “And men have been known to strangle a woman to get what they want from her.”

  “Good God in heaven, that’s not the way it was. Not that I want to say Ellie was forward, but she… she sure didn’t fight me off. Lord, I guess I better tell you the whole thing just the way it was.”

  “I guess you’d better,” said Shayne, “though I make no positive guarantee I’m going to believe you.”

  “Yeh… I… Well, it was just one of those things. You know, it had been building up for a long time without either one of us ever actually trying to do anything about it. You can’t, in a small town like this. There just isn’t any opportunity. And then suddenly last night there was an opportunity. Probably the only one there’d ever be, and both of us realized it. I didn’t know when I stopped by her house… I didn’t know whether anything would happen or not… whether she wanted anything to happen. But there we were together suddenly, all alone. With Marv due back today and both of us a little tight on account of, I guess, because she’d made the drinks pretty strong and neither one of us is used to drinking much. And so it just happened. I wish to God it hadn’t. I’d give a million dollars right now if I hadn’t stopped by to see Ellie last night. But I did! And then this morning when I heard what happened… My God, Mr. Shayne, how do you think I felt? Like I was sort of to blame, but… I don’t see how I could be. I swear she was perfectly all right when I left a few minutes before eleven. There wasn’t a sign of anything wrong. I was careful not to even turn on my automobile lights while I coasted down away from the house, and there wasn’t a soul around and I’m sure nobody saw me. So I don’t see what Ellie and I did had to do with what happened to her later, but I’ve still got that awful feeling inside me that if I hadn’t done it everything might be different. And I don’t know I can stand to face Marv when he comes home. Having Sissy there right in the house is bad enough. And if Minerva ever finds out…”