Murder & the Married Virgin (11 page)

“What’s the angle, Shayne? You talked before about her luring you there to get you beaten up. Now you’re trying to make me believe she pulled this frame. There has to be a reason for a thing like that.”

“There is. A good one.”

“What?”

Shayne shrugged. “Another damned case.” His tone was depressed. “I was beginning to crack down—that’s all.”

“Anything to do with the Lomax emeralds?”

“Sort of,” Shayne admitted cautiously. “They tie together, though I’m damned if I know how.”

“Are you trying to make me believe that girl had something to do with Trueman’s death? That the whole thing was a gag to be sure you didn’t have any alibi for it?”

Shayne straightened up and stopped tugging at his ear. “Damned if I know. It’s hard to believe the whole thing was prearranged. No one knew I was going to have an argument with Dan Trueman and lay myself open to a murder accusation. What kind of a story did the morning paper run?”

“A full account of the whole thing. Your argument with Trueman was played up, and it was made clear that we were hunting you—for questioning at least.”

Shayne glared at him angrily. “Now, by God, that’s sweet publicity. You had to run to the newspaper with it—try me there before I had a chance to tell my story.”

Inspector Quinlan compressed his lips. “I don’t hand out that sort of stuff. A reporter happened to be in the barroom last night and saw the whole thing. He recognized you and brought the story to me as soon as the murder broke. Hell, I couldn’t tell him not to print it.”

“Could be it wasn’t a cold frame,” Shayne muttered. “If Lana woke up right after I left and read the paper—she’s smart enough to have seen I was going to need her to alibi me. So she fixed things to make a liar out of me as soon as the checkup came.”

“Could be.” Quinlan was noncommittal. “But you still lack any proof, and you haven’t given me any reason to think she’s lying instead of you. Can you prove her connection with Drinkley?”

“I doubt it. She’s probably disposed of his photograph, and the clerk at the Dragoon would probably deny that she went to Drinkley’s room if she asked for him at the desk. Which she probably didn’t.”

“Dragoon Hotel?” Quinlan asked.

“I told you I was on a case,” Shayne said. He got up, wincing slightly, flexed his body and thrust his hands deep in his pockets. “So?”

“Unless you want to give out more than you have—I’m holding you on suspicion of murder.”

Shayne nodded. He hunched his head forward and prowled the length of the office and back, stopped beside the inspector’s desk and asked hoarsely, “Have you got a drink?”

The inspector went to a filing cabinet and from one of the drawers took a pint bottle with only a couple of drinks gone from it. Shayne pulled the cork with his teeth, tilted it and gurgled. It was half empty when he handed it back to Quinlan and said, “Thanks.”

His eyes were brighter. He started his restless prowling again while Quinlan sat down and waited in silence.

After a time Shayne muttered, “You’re putting the pressure on, aren’t you?”

Quinlan didn’t reply. He appeared to be preoccupied with the ease with which he ran a fountain pen through his folded hand.

“You’ve got me over a barrel,” Shayne stated with anger and disgust. “You and Lana Moore. You know me too well to believe I’d be crazy enough to hand you an alibi I knew couldn’t stick.”

“It is out of character,” he admitted. “But there it is.”

“Yeh. There it is. It’s fallen in your lap and who are you to question a gift from the gods? That the way you feel about it?”

“You’re my only suspect thus far.”

“You’re after something,” Shayne reasoned bitterly. “You’re using this thing as a lever to pry it out of me.”

“I’m still waiting to hear the truth about your argument with Dan Trueman.”

Shayne sat down and said, “Look, I’m trying to make a living. Recovery of the Lomax necklace means over twelve grand in my pocket—if I do the recovering. Where’d I be in my business if I came to you cops with all my dope?”

“Then you’re admitting that Trueman was tied in with the stolen necklace?”

“Sure. I’ll admit that much.”

“I’ve been waiting to hear you say that,” Quinlan said quietly, “because I’ve been wondering—” He laid the fountain pen aside and got an envelope from a desk drawer. He opened it and carefully emptied a single small emerald on the desk blotter. “This was found on the floor of Trueman’s office.”

The green gem blinked malignantly up at them.

Shayne’s eyes blazed. He leaned forward and poked the emerald with his forefinger. “One of the Lomax beads?”

Quinlan eased his stoic face with a slight smile. “It’s an emerald,” he corrected, “torn out of its setting.”

Shayne picked it up between thumb and forefinger and dropped it into the palm of his left hand. His eyes were fiercely questioning between shaggy red brows. He rolled it around in his cupped palm, held it up to the light and squinted at it as though fascinated by its polished green facets.

After a time he handed it back to Quinlan without comment.

Quinlan put the gem in the envelope and returned it to the drawer.

Shayne said with heavy meditation, “So the sonofabitch had it there in his office all the time,” and stared fixedly across the room.

The inspector cleared his throat and said, “That’s one thing that didn’t get in the paper. Don’t you think it’s time for you to start talking?”

“Sure. I’ll talk. I knew Trueman had the necklace—or was acting as go-between for somebody who had it. He telephoned me yesterday and offered to sell it back to the company for forty thousand. He didn’t tell me who he was, but I recognized his voice when I heard it in the Laurel Club last night. I went to his office to put it up to him straight that there’d be no fix on this one. He denied knowing anything about it, of course. The act he put on about me coming with a gambling beef was for the benefit of anyone listening in.”

“I guessed that much as soon as I learned the dice had been good to you.”

“You’ve got it,” Shayne said. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? I didn’t see Trueman again. I spent the rest of the night unconscious in Lana Moore’s apartment.”

“Which she denies.”

“But I told you she had it in for me.”

“You haven’t told me why.”

Shayne drew in a long breath and made a gesture of exasperation. The lines in his hollow cheeks deepened. “What are you going to do?”

“Hold you for Dan Trueman’s murder.”

Shayne said savagely, “And Trueman’s murderer will be laughing at you while you’ve got me locked up.”

“Maybe. I’ll take a chance on that.”

“Sure. You’re a cop.”

“That’s right,” Quinlan agreed amiably.

His insouciance drove the detective to snarl, “If you lock me up now you’ll end up with two unsolved murders on your hands.”

“Why two?”

“Count ’em.” Shayne held up two long bony fingers and folded them down. “Dan Trueman and Katrin Moe.”

“The Moe girl committed suicide.”

“Sure,” he jeered, “you’re a cop. Close up a case and keep the public satisfied no matter how many murderers walk your damned streets unhung.”

“I’ve been over all the evidence on that—and the coroner’s report. It can’t be anything but suicide.”

“It was murder,” Shayne insisted shortly.

“What the hell makes you think so?”

“All the evidence that’s worth a damn,” Shayne said slowly. “She was a virgin and in love with a guy she was going to marry the next day. Where’s the motive for suicide?”

“Where’s the motive for murder?”

Shayne was silent for a long time. Then he said quietly, “Will you make a deal with me, Quinlan?”

“I don’t know. Give it to me.”

“If I can give you a motive for Katrin Moe’s murder—if I can show you how she
must
have been murdered—and then show you that her killer is also the logical candidate for the Trueman job, will you forget this stuff you’ve got against me and give me a chance to prove I’m right?”

Inspector Quinlan studied him with a cold blue gaze as he silently considered the proposition.

“Hell, you’ve always got your case against me,” Shayne went on rapidly. “You’ve got the affidavits. I’m not going to run out on you. If I fail, you can slap me in jail so fast it’ll make my head swim.”

“I’ll still have you,” Quinlan agreed thoughtfully.

“What have you got to lose? I don’t want any of the credit on either of the killings. I’m after a fee.”

The inspector nodded slowly. “You’re on. But you’ll have to sell me.”

Shayne said, “I will,” with greater confidence than he felt. He lit a cigarette and settled back to a complete recital of all the pertinent facts he had unearthed since the beginning of his investigation, telling the story in sequence from Lieutenant Drinkley’s impassioned plea in his office to the moment when the inspector’s man picked him up at his apartment that morning.

Quinlan listened with concentrated attention. When Shayne finished he said, “Looks to me like you’ve dug up a lot of stuff that points to a motive for Katrin Moe’s suicide. What’s her connection with the escaped convict whom she visited day before yesterday? Did
he
steal the damned necklace? One of the pair was riding out a term for burglary and they both seem to have been in New Orleans the night it was stolen. She might have fingered the necklace for them, either intentionally or inadvertently, and later got an attack of conscience and killed herself in a fit of remorse.”

Shayne said, “She might have—but she didn’t,” emphatically.

“And the relationship between her and Drinkley and Lana suggests that he may not have been as true to her as he wanted you to believe. She might have discovered that and turned on the gas as a way out. Or he might even have told her he was calling the wedding off—written her a letter that we know nothing about. So, she goes to bed the night before her wedding and quietly ends it all. You’ve really fixed up the suicide theory, Shayne. I wish my men were as thorough.”

“You’ve got suicide on the brain,” Shayne charged, “and you can’t see anything else. Hell, doesn’t all that suggest something else?”

“I still don’t see how it could be murder unless her killer turned himself into a gremlin and slipped in through the keyhole. Are you asking me to believe that?”

Shayne said grimly, “Here’s how. And here’s why.” He outlined the nebulous theory he had been laboriously building ever since his first visit to the Lomax house. He gave it a lot more solidity in the telling than it possessed, and spoke with a lot more assurance than the facts warranted.

“After that, the necklace had to be gotten back from Trueman,” he ended persuasively, “and Trueman’s murder resulted. I don’t know yet how the killer learned that Trueman was dickering to sell the stuff to the insurance company. That’s the only kink—outside of getting the actual proof to support some things that have got to be true.”

Inspector Quinlan said, “I’ll be damned if you don’t make it sound plausible, Shayne. But how? That’s still the rub. You can’t get away from that locked door and Doc Mattson’s findings.”

Shayne slumped wearily. “I think I can. I think we’ve walked into one of the damndest murder plans you or I have ever met. I accept the locked door and I agree she died as a direct result of inhaling gas fumes from an open gas grate—one that she must have opened herself. But it’s still murder.” He closed his eyes and felt the lump on his head tenderly.

The inspector said dispiritedly, “You’re only contradicting yourself.”

Shayne’s eyes popped open. They were very bright “No. I’m not. Think this over.” He sat up straight and leaned toward the inspector. “Katrin locks her door and gets ready for bed. It was a cold night and maybe she likes it a little warmer than the warm air system keeps it. Or a burning gas grate is cheerful. So she lights it and lies down to dream about her lieutenant and whatever else a young girl dreams about on the eve of her wedding. Anyhow, she falls asleep with the grate still burning.”

He paused dramatically. Quinlan was slowly rolling a pencil in his palms and listening attentively, a judicious frown between his eyes.

Shayne went on, talking fast. “Sometime during the night her grate goes out. She’s sleeping soundly. When the flow of gas starts again it mixes slowly with the washed air coming in from the furnace. The bulk of the gas is carried off by the cold air outlet so that the air in her room becomes tainted very gradually. So gradually that she doesn’t waken after the first numbing effect. She sleeps right on—with a smile on her lips as Doc Mattson said—and drifts from dreams to death.”

Quinlan struck the desk with his fist. “By God!” And again, more emphatically, “By God! Shayne. Maybe you’ve got something.”

“At least you’ll have to admit it’s a theory that meets every angle. And it’s the only theory that does.”

“Could be accidental,” Quinlan said. “Something might have happened to interrupt service for a short time.”

“That’s out,” Shayne said firmly. “Nothing happens to interrupt gas service these days. There’s always an emergency plant. If service was interrupted from the plant you’d have hundreds of casualties—not just one.”

Quinlan got up and paced excitedly up and down the room. “If the gas in the Lomax house was tampered with,” he offered, “all the other gas appliances inside the house would go out at the same time. They’d all have to be relit after the valve was opened again.”

“All right. I’ll check on it. And I’ll find out if Katrin made a habit of leaving her grate burning all night—and how many people knew about that habit. The killer must have had some way of being sure that she, and she alone, would have her gas burning.”

“That narrows it down to someone who knew her very well,” the inspector said, staring steadily at Shayne. “Someone who had access to the basement and knew the location of the gas lines and valves.”

Shayne nodded. “That fits three people—and the same motive can fit them all. And that’s the hell of it. That’s why I’ve been moving so slowly and why I need more time and freedom to investigate. If we jump into it and frighten them now we’ll end up with three suspects and not enough evidence to convict any of them. Are you sold? And will you keep hands off until I’ve had a chance to use my own methods? I’m not hampered by official regulations, you know,” he ended sourly.