The Uncomplaining Corpses

by Brett Halliday

  Shayne crooked a finger at his waitress, who appeared to have as many eyes as she had patrons for she glided to his table instantly. Shayne ordered a quart of 1932 Du Blanc Port and leaned back to light a cigarette. The lights dimmed again and a breathy female of large proportions gave a fair imitation of Sophie Tucker in a stepped-up version of Frankie and Johnnie.

  Shayne didn’t like Sophie and he detested fat women who imitated her. The crowd liked it, though. By the dim lights at the tables he saw them whisper, laugh boisterously, and applaud noisily the more vulgar lines. The dining-room was filling up rapidly and the smoky air held an acrid bite of marijuana along with the sickening sweet of Turkish blends.

  During the intermission, Shayne watched the close-packed dancers who swarmed onto the small square of polished floor. Many of them were obviously muggled with marijuana; Shayne guessed the cute little cigarette girls were peddling reefers openly among the patrons. That would account for the number of private rooms upstairs and the rumors that filtered out of the Tally-Ho.

  Shayne could see Dorothy Thrip alone at her table, her cold round eyes fixed on the door. She showed no symptoms of nervousness nor any hint that she feared Carl Meldrum might not come.

  Shayne’s waitress glided up and said, “Mona just got here. I told her a gentleman was asking for her and she’ll be right over.”

  Shayne thanked her and slid a dollar bill into her palm. He kept faced away from the rear toward the door for fear Mona mightn’t come if she saw who had been asking for her, and he was rewarded after a time by hearing someone stop at his table and utter a smothered gasp of recognition.

  He turned slowly, pushed his chair back, and stood up. Mona’s lips were twisted sullenly and there was a tight, hard look about her face. She looked as though she was on the point of turning away, then tossed her head and said, “It’s you. I might have known it would be.” Her voice was low, her body and manner as splendidly poised as when Shayne first saw her. Her copper hair gleamed, a becoming coiffure above an evening gown of purest white which gave her a deceptively virginal appearance.

  Shayne nodded to the hovering waitress to bring another wineglass. He drew out a chair for Mona, and after a moment’s hesitation she sat down. He gave her a cigarette and lit it, then poured her a glass of the excellent port.

  She drank the wine and made a face, complaining, “What kind of stuff is this for a redheaded he-man to be drinking?”

  “I’m just a sissy,” Shayne admitted. “I suppose you don’t think much of my cigarettes, either.”

  She grimaced and tapped her cigarette against the ash tray on the table. “They’ll do,” she said indifferently. “I don’t go for marijuana, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It wouldn’t mix so well with absinthe,” Shayne told her. He gestured toward the crowded dance floor. “Plenty of floaters out there, though.”

  “Sure. That’s one reason a hostess has a hard time being decent in this joint. Too much nonprofessional competition from the girls who get high.” Her voice held an undercurrent of discontent. It was as though she held back with an effort to keep from exploding.

  Shayne studied her face with frank, wide eyes. “Seen Carl Meldrum today?” he asked after a little silence.

  “Does it mean anything to you whether I have or not?”

  “Not much. You haven’t,” he answered for her after a brief study of her eyes. “Are you expecting him here tonight?”

  “I never expect him any more,” she said with some bitterness.

  Shayne motioned toward Dorothy Thrip sitting alone several tables away. “Looks as if Miss Thrip was waiting for someone.”

  Mona moved languid eyes in the girl’s direction. “Oh—her. She’s always getting in Carl’s hair.”

  “She’ll soon have a lot of cash at her disposal,” Shayne murmured.

  For a moment Mona’s defenses were down before a surge of emotions which seemed compounded of anger and fear. “She won’t have it long after Carl takes her over the hurdles.” Then, getting a firm grip on her emotions, she looked levelly at Shayne and said indifferently, “Why don’t you give up your crazy idea of hanging the old lady’s murder on someone else? Darnell’s already dead and buried. Why strain yourself to bring grief to anyone else?”

  Shayne’s eyes grew stubborn before her pleading gaze. “I told you how I stood on that. I’d just as soon have you as Renslow or Meldrum.”

  “That’s twice you’ve made that kind of a crack about me,” she slid out. “Where do you get that stuff?”

  “You’re one of my best suspects,” he told her cheerfully. “You’ve got the physical strength for it—and a snootful of absinthe does funny things to people. Carl is covering up for somebody—maybe it’s you.” Shayne set his wineglass down and opened the fingers of his left hand, began touching them off with the forefinger of his right hand. “Now, Carl could have let you into the Thrip home last night; or you might have made an impression of his key.” He touched the third and middle finger, saying, “You have got some string on Meldrum that makes you certain he’ll come to you with any money he picks up—you might have got tired of waiting for his notes to have any effect on Leora Thrip—and you’re willing for him to play the girl for her money. Hell,” he added, brightening and picking up his wineglass, “I didn’t know it did fit so well. He didn’t know what you were planning on, so he went ahead and mailed that note that night.” He raised the glass to his lips and drank. “Nothing like talking things over to make them come clear.”

  Mona’s eyes were wide upon him; in the dim light they seemed the exact color of her henna-colored hair. “What are these notes you’re talking about? First you accuse Buell Renslow of writing them—then Carl.”

  Shayne looked at her with a sort of vague admiration in his gray eyes. “Upon those notes, my dear possible murderess, hangs the solution of as weird a crime as I’ve ever tackled.” He poured both wineglasses full from the quart bottle, emptying it. “Renslow would be glad enough to hang it on Carl,” he went on argumentatively. “I hope neither of you thought I was fooling this noon when I said I was going to throw somebody to the wolves.”

  “And you don’t care whether it’s the guilty person or not,” Mona charged. “You’d frame any one of us if you saw a chance to do it.”

  “Sure.” Shayne drank some wine. “I’d frame any one of you I thought was guilty,” he explained. “But you’re wrong about thinking I’d hang anything on a person I believed innocent.”

  “Very generous of you,” Mona answered ironically, “but it would still be a frame.”

  Shayne emptied his wineglass and raised ragged red brows in a cynical grin. “I might have to manufacture some evidence to convince the police,” he admitted. “Painter is so bullheaded he’s going to take a lot of convincing.” He paused, then added musingly, “I had a hunch Renslow would offer you enough to overcome your objections to our idea of fitting Carl for the trap when I left you two together today.”

  “He did make me an offer.” Mona’s tone was sullen, brooding.

  “Not big enough to wean you away from your husband?”

  “Say!” Mona threw him a startled glance. “How’d you know—” She checked her words with a sharp intake of breath, after which she clamped her lips.

  “Smart guessing,” Shayne told her. “You said you were married and not working at it very hard. You seemed absolutely certain of your string on Carl.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t hard to dope out. Does Renslow know?”

  “No. Why should he?”

  “He might raise the ante if you told him how it was.”

  “We didn’t go into that very far,” Mona admitted. “Maybe he would.”

  “If you drank much absinthe after I left, you weren’t in any condition—” Shayne was looking past her and saw Buell Renslow standing in the entrance. He wore a dinner jacket and looked immaculate, but his eyes were bloodshot and veins showed in his face.

  Shayne glanced across at Dorothy Thrip and saw her lookin
g at her step-uncle without apparent recognition. Renslow saw Mona and Shayne sitting together. He moved toward their table after a moment’s hesitation.

  Shayne muttered, “Here’s your drinking companion now—coming straight toward our table. Want to duck out?”

  Mona turned to look at Renslow and pushed her chair back. With loud vivacity she said, “I’ve wasted too much time at one table, redhead. I got to be circulating.” She nodded casually to Renslow as she went away.

  When the white-haired ex-convict sat down heavily in the chair she had vacated, Shayne greeted him cheerfully.

  “You look like the fag-end of a misspent life, fellow. What are you drinking?”

  “Nothing for me, thanks,” Renslow’s eyes followed Mona across the room. He complained, “I’ve got the jitters.”

  “Absinthe?”

  “That’s all there was to drink after your bottle was emptied.”

  “And I’ll bet she’s the kind that’ll keep on at it indefinitely,” Shayne offered sympathetically.

  Renslow nodded. He seemed withdrawn, remote from everything about him, with that same quality of secretive stillness which had characterized his sister, Leora Thrip.

  “Did the party just break up?” Shayne asked after a while.

  “About an hour ago. I’ve been home washing the green taste out of my mouth with peroxide.”

  “Try a glass of beer,” Shayne suggested.

  Renslow shuddered. “Not yet. After a while maybe.”

  A uniformed attendant of the Tally-Ho was threading his way between tables toward them. As he passed, he paused at each table to ask a question, but evidently, Shayne noticed, he was receiving negative responses.

  Renslow puffed jerkily on a cigarette and he and the detective watched the attendant approach.

  Michael Shayne had one of his Irish hunches that destiny approached him as the man came on. He didn’t know what it was that told him, but there was an odd tremor playing over his spine as the callboy came up, asking, “Mr. Buell Renslow?”

  Renslow nodded and the attendant handed him a sealed envelope. Shayne tossed him a quarter while Renslow tore the message open. Shayne watched him unfold a single sheet of paper and read the few typed lines on it.

  Renslow kept staring at the paper and his fingers tightened spasmodically. His knuckles were white and the paper shook in his grip. A wave of sickness swept over his face and Shayne leaned forward to ask sympathetically, “Bad news, old man?” straining to get a glimpse of the words but seeing only the signature of Carl Meldrum in heavy pen strokes.

  Renslow looked up quickly, crushing the message in his hands. “No—it’s—” His expression hardened. He looked past Shayne and his eyes were tortured with something that went beyond the limits of physical fear. “It’s a joke,” he said hoarsely, “a—lousy joke.”

  His fingers folded the note and began tearing it in long strips. His gaze was still remotely on nothing, on a shadowy something which no other man could see. He said, “Excuse me,” and got up. He dropped the torn bits of paper on the table and walked away stiffly.

  Shayne watched Mona come up and intercept him on his way to the door. It seemed to him that she must have been watching, as though she had waited for something like this to happen.

  She spoke to him and he snarled an answer. Mona’s eyes widened and she appeared to protest.

  Renslow started for the door and she clung to him. He pushed her off, then deliberately slapped her face with the full force of a wide open-handed swing.

  She went to her knees crying out something unintelligible to Shayne. Renslow darted away while waiters began to converge on the spot. Shayne watched them help Mona to her feet, then he began gathering up the torn strips of paper the ex-convict had dropped.

  It was a laborious business getting them pieced together in order. It took him a full half-hour of concentrated work to put together this much:

  —Saw yo—urder Mrs.—rip—willing—talk it over—midnight—meet—at 306 Terrace Apt—Oth—wis—am go—to the—lice.

  He slid the pieces of paper into his coat pocket and jumped up. Pausing to drop a ten-spot on the table, he hurried out and retrieved his hat and coat. Dorothy Thrip had disappeared while he was working on the torn note.

  In his car he drove at savage speed down the boulevard to Ninety-Sixth, where he made a screaming right-hand turn to the Grand Concourse which angled down to Northeast Second Avenue.

  It took him less than five minutes to reach the Terrace Apartments in Little River, but he knew he was too late when he slowed to turn off the avenue onto the side street where he had parked earlier in the day.

  Police cars lined the curb in front of the apartment building and excited residents of the district crowded the wide lawn where children had played in the sunlight that noon.

  Shayne rolled past the police cars, cut his ignition, and parked. He lit a cigarette and sat behind the wheel for a moment, then shook his head angrily and got out. If he had trailed Renslow when he left—

  He hadn’t. Instead, he had stopped to put the note together. He got out and went toward the apartment building. His mouth was dry and he wondered where Phyllis was.

  Chapter Sixteen: A MAN SAYS THINGS—

  THERE WERE POLICE ALL OVER THE PLACE. A thick-necked sergeant recognized Shayne as he crossed the lobby, and he stepped forward to intercept him. He took Shayne by the arm and said gruffly:

  “What you wanta pop up here for, Mike? We got a pickup on you for the Beach in case you don’t know.”

  Shayne said, “I know, Shannon. Is the chief upstairs?”

  “Yeh. Three-o-six.” They moved toward the elevator together. “You could duck out the back way right now,” Shannon muttered. “I’ll see that the boys stay clammed up.”

  A frightened Negro operator was waiting to take them up in the elevator. He rolled his eyes at the burly sergeant with the redheaded detective, clanged the door shut, and went up to the third floor without waiting for an order.

  A couple of cops outside 306 were holding back an excited and morbidly curious group of chattering tenants. They stepped aside to let Shannon push Shayne through.

  A police photographer had his tripod set up and was shooting pictures of the interior of Mona Tabor’s apartment with the body of Carl Meldrum lying in the center of the floor. His forehead was smashed and there were dried trickles of blood on his heavy cheek. His mouth gaped open, showing bloodless gums. He didn’t look much like a dashing Don Juan. There was a bloody cognac bottle on the floor beside him.

  Two men were methodically getting fingerprints from objects in the room, and the sound of subdued voices came out through the open bedroom door.

  Shayne and the sergeant walked around the body to the door. Buell Renslow was sitting upright on the unmade bed, and Will Gentry stood solidly in front of him. Two detectives lounged in the background. Renslow’s wrists were handcuffed in front of him. His clothes were mussed and there was a bruise and a small cut under his right eye. Haunted eyes stared out of his ashen face and his lips twitched back from his teeth.

  Gentry was saying, “That sort of story isn’t going to get you anywhere. Nobody else saw any girl. You’re the only outsider the elevator boy brought up tonight. You might as well come clean and get it off your mind.”

  Renslow looked past him and his eyes lighted up when they saw Michael Shayne in the doorway. He croaked, “There’s Shayne. He’ll tell you when I left the Tally-Ho. He’ll tell you I couldn’t have got here in time to kill him.” His eyes appealed to Shayne, then his lids batted down several times in quick succession, as if he tried to send a secret message.

  Gentry turned slowly. He said, “Hello, Mike. I’ve been wondering when you would turn up.”

  Shayne nodded and stepped forward with hands in his coat pockets. He avoided meeting the frantic petition in Renslow’s eyes. He asked, “What goes here?”

  Will Gentry gestured disgustedly toward the prisoner. “We walked in on this bird red-handed and he
gives us a nutty story about getting here after it happened. He swears he doesn’t know a damned thing about it. Says you’ll alibi him.”

  “What about some girl?”

  “That’s the craziest part of his story,” Gentry snorted. His back was to Renslow and he dropped his right eyelid in a slow, significant wink for Shayne. “He claims this girl was in there with the corpse when he opened the door. She threw down on him with a .25 automatic and he jumped her. He says they wrestled over the pistol and he finally got it, but she sprinted out and did a neat disappearing act.”

  “That’s the way it happened,” Renslow said hoarsely. “She must have slipped down the stairs while you were coming up the elevator. If you’ll just look for her—”

  “We’ve got the description you gave us on the radio,” Gentry said patiently over his shoulder, then went on to Shayne: “This guy’s a quick thinker all right. He had a description of the girl on tap. If he’s telling the truth maybe you’ll recognize her—maybe you’ve run into her with your fooling around on the Thrip case. Here’s what he says she looked like…” He described Phyllis in, detail, while holding the detective’s gaze fixedly.

  Shayne’s frown became deeper and his expression more perplexed as Gentry finished He shook his head and said placidly, “Why, no, Will. I’m pretty sure there’s no one like that mixed up in this case. Just grabbing for an out, I guess.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Gentry told him briskly. “Just for the record, you might bust the alibi he claims you can give him.”

  “When did you fellows get here?” Shayne asked guardedly.

  “Eleven-fifty-five. We got a riot call from the landlady at eleven-fifty. She screamed murder in apartment three-o-six and a radio car was here in five minutes.”

  Shayne hunched his shoulders up and shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t alibi him. He left the Tally-Ho at eleven-thirty-eight—I looked at my watch. It’s an easy ten-minute drive.”

  An animal snarl came from deep in Renslow’s throat and twisted on his lips. “You dirty bastard! You dirty double-crossing cop. You’re all alike. Putting me on the spot, damn your soul to hell. Not me! Not this time!”