The Corpse That Never Was (2 page)

D
uring the many years spent in the active practice of his profession, Michael Shayne had encountered violent death in various forms and manifestations. But never, in all those years, had his eyes encountered a more gruesome sight than the one which confronted him now as he stood with his back against the door.

The apartment was identical in design and decor with that of Lucy Hamilton’s on the floor below. The dead woman lay in the middle of the sitting room, her limbs rigid and contorted in the death spasm, her features twisted in a grimace of terrible anguish.

She appeared to be in her middle thirties, with a svelte and well-fleshed figure, dressed in an expensive-looking cocktail gown of nile-green silk, and Shayne had a feeling that she had probably been an attractive woman in life. There were diamond rings on her fingers, a choker of what looked like real pearls about her throat, her reddish brown hair was carefully done, and her fingernails were manicured to a dull sheen.

With an effort, Shayne transferred his somber gaze to what was left of the man slumped half-in and half-out of a deep upholstered chair a few feet beyond the woman’s body and close to the window.

A twelve gauge shotgun lay on the floor beside the chair. Shayne had seen enough suicides in the past to know that the muzzle of the gun must have been in the man’s mouth when the trigger was pulled. The terrific force of exploding gases from the shotgun blast had literally blown the man’s head from his shoulders. There was not enough left of his features to determine whether he was young or old, blond or brunette.

He wore yellow silk pajamas and a brocade dressing gown, and was barefooted. There was a great deal of blood and bits of skull and brains were spattered on the wall behind him.

Michael Shayne stood against the door for a long moment without moving. The bedroom door stood open and a window in that room was evidently open because a light breeze was blowing into the sitting room, slowly dissipating the acrid smell of gunpowder which had been strong when he first crashed the door in.

An overturned cocktail glass lay on the rug a couple of feet from the woman’s body. There was no damp stain on the rug beside it, indicating that the glass had been empty when she dropped it there. Another cocktail glass lay overturned just this side of the open kitchen door. A large area of wetness on the rug in front of the glass was evidence that it had been full, or nearly full, when it was dropped.

On a low table at Shayne’s left near the front door were a neatly folded pair of lady’s dark silk gloves and a wide-brimmed hat.

When every detail of the scene of double death was indelibly implanted in Michael Shayne’s memory, he moved forward slowly, skirting the woman’s body, stopping beside the low coffee table in front of the sofa and looking down at two sheets of paper lying there, both carrying scrawled messages in ink.

Shayne sat on the sofa and leaned forward to read them, careful not to touch or disturb anything.

Both were in the same cramped handwriting, but one was shorter than the other. It said:

“To whom it may concern:

“When you read this Elsa and I will be together in death. I have prepared the drinks as we agreed and am waiting for her now to arrive to drink deeply of nepenthe with me.

“We believe God will forgive us because there is no other course open to us. We cannot continue to live without each other, and my wife’s religion makes it impossible for us to be together in life.

“After we quaff our final cocktail, we will be together, on another plane, for eternity.

“May God have mercy on the two of us.

“Robert Lambert”

The second note was longer and the handwriting appeared to be more agitated, racing across the sheet with little space between words, more disordered and slightly more incoherent:

“What a horrible, horrible thing I have done. My beloved Elsa lies before me, stricken instantly by the deadly potion which she tossed off boldly and happily as we had planned to drink them together.

“And I still live. Craven being that I am. Disgusting coward that I have discovered myself to be. I did not plan it so. I swear upon my honor that I did not plan it so.

“It was not the spirit that failed me when the moment of reckoning came. It was the flesh that weakened. We toasted death in our two drinks, gladly welcoming oblivion as we lifted them to our lips.

“To my utter shame and without my planning, my flesh rebelled as the glass touched my lips and it fell to the floor in front of me while I stood aghast and could not find the strength to cry out and halt Elsa in time.

“That moment was an eternity as I watched my dearly beloved sway and stagger and knew in my wretched heart what had come to pass. I knelt and cradled her head in my arms and sobbed out my love to her while she passed on into the vale of All-Knowingness.

“There is no cyanide left with which to mix another draft to allow me to join my beloved Elsa. But there is another way for me. My shotgun is in the closet. It will suffice.

“Be patient, Elsa. Do not despair or doubt me. Your resolution has strengthened mine. I shall not bungle it again. I cannot remain alive knowing that you await me in death.

“I am coming to join you.

“Robert Lambert”

Michael Shayne sighed deeply and leaned back on the sofa to tug at his left earlobe when he finished reading the second of the macabre messages from the dead.

Poor, goddamned, suffering, stupid, human wretches! To choose this way out of whatever sort of mess they had allowed their two lives to get into. Such a tragic waste.

Two corpses lying in front of him in the neat apartment that was a replica of the apartment one floor below where he and Lucy had spent such a completely happy evening together. While he and she were eating Lucy’s dinner and sharing an after-dinner drink, these two, just one floor above, were engaged in carrying out their bizarre suicide pact.

The shrill keening of a police siren in the distance told him that Lucy had gotten through to headquarters. He drew himself erect from the sofa and thrust both hands into his pockets as a reminder that Gentry would be happier if Shayne hadn’t touched anything before the police arrived.

He went into the kitchen and found it immaculate and shining, with only a tray of half-melted ice cubes standing on the sink, and a bottle of dark rum and one of crème de menthe, both uncorked, standing beside it.

He paused for a moment, looking at the two bottles and wondering what kind of mixture the unhappy couple had chosen as a vehicle for the cyanide in their final, suicidal drink, and the police siren wailed down to silence in front of the apartment house, and Shayne turned away from the kitchen to walk back through the living room and be standing near the front door when the advance guard of officialdom arrived.

This proved to be a very young and very fresh-faced officer from a radio patrol car, who shoved the sagging door open impetuously and saw Shayne standing there, waiting for him. He had his service revolver ready in his hand, and he trained it on the detective instinctively and snarled, “Put ’em up, you. We got a homicide report from here.”

Shayne casually lifted both hands shoulder-high in front of him and nodded in the direction of the two bodies. “That’s right. There they are.”

Keeping his revolver trained on the detective, the young officer risked a sidewise glance at the interior of the sitting room, and he stiffened while his face lost its fresh coloring. The muzzle of his revolver dipped unsteadily and he swallowed several times in rapid succession and pulled his gaze back to Shayne and stuttered, “Yeh. Yeh, I see.”

A burly sergeant came through the door at that point, glanced at Shayne and the younger man, and then at the two dead persons in the room. He said paternally, “All right, Rogers. The bathroom is on your left. Don’t touch anything… even to flush it.” And to Shayne, he said resignedly, “You knock the two of them off, Mike?”

Shayne grinned bleakly. “I was downstairs, spending a quiet evening with my secretary, when I heard the shotgun blast up here. I smashed the door in,” he went on, “and that’s all I know about it. So far as I’m concerned, it’s all yours, Sergeant O’Hara.”

The sound of retching came from the bathroom into which the patrolman had disappeared. O’Hara scowled in that direction and observed sourly, “One of Mike Shayne’s quiet evenings with his secretary, the good God save us.” He cocked his head to listen to sounds from below coming through the open door, and went on, “That’ll be the Homicide boys. Just stand right there where you are, Shamus, and tell it to them.” He moved swiftly toward the bathroom, calling out in a conspiratorial voice, “Finish up fast, Rogers, and get out here, if you’ll not be disgracin’ the uniform you wear.”

The Miami Homicide Squad arrived in force and took their photographs and collected fingerprints and made their diagrams, and a deputy medical examiner made a superficial examination of the two bodies and ordered them removed to the morgue; detectives were sent up and down the hall taking statements from all the tenants who were in, and Shayne told the lieutenant in charge briefly about hearing the shotgun blast and coming up to break in the locked and chained door.

All in all it was nearly half an hour before the redhead got away from the scene and started down the stairs where he knew Lucy would be anxiously waiting for him.

Half-way down the flight of stairs he met Timothy Rourke panting his way up. The top reporter for the
News
stopped short when he recognized Shayne, and asked, “What’s up, Mike? I didn’t realize this was Lucy’s building when I got the flash. Double murder, is it?”

“Double suicide,” Shayne corrected him. “You’re a little late, Tim. They’re about cleaned up in there. Why not come down and let Lucy give us a drink, and I’ll fill you in. You can get a complete report from headquarters in time to write your story.”

Rourke said, “Sure,” and turned to go back down the stairs with Shayne and into Lucy’s apartment.

When she saw the elongated reporter with Shayne, she hurried to the kitchen and brought back a bottle of bourbon for him which she set on the table beside the cognac. “What happened, Michael? You said a double homicide.”

“Suicide pact.” He poured himself three ounces of cognac and settled down on the sofa. “Damned messy.” He spoke to both of them while Rourke made himself a bourbon highball. “The woman drank off her cyanide cocktail like a man…He paused and frowned. “Why do I say that? Like a woman, damn it. And he goofed on his. Dropped his glass on the floor and watched her die in front of his eyes. But then he fixed everything up real nice by putting the muzzle of a twelve gauge shotgun in his mouth and triggering it with his toe. You know what
that
does, Tim.”

Rourke nodded with a grimace. “Bits and pieces left,” he muttered. “How were they able to reconstruct all that, Mike? I gather there weren’t any witnesses.”

“He left two suicide notes,” Shayne explained. “One had been written prior to her arrival.” He took a sip of cognac and a swallow of ice water, and quoted from the first note.

“He evidently had the two drinks prepared when she got there, and he’d used up all his cyanide. He got cold feet and dropped his on the floor while she tossed hers off. He watched her die in front of him, and then wrote another note explaining why he was forced to use the shotgun to keep up his end. The messes people get themselves into,” he ended angrily.

“Who was he, Michael?” asked Lucy. “Do I know him?”

“Robert Lambert. He seems to be a comparatively new tenant in the building and none of the people on his floor know much about him. A medium-sized, pleasant-faced fellow, they say, with a dark mustache and wearing very lightly tinted blue glasses.” He paused, regarding Lucy questioningly, and she said:

“I think… I may have passed him in the hall once or twice. But I never spoke to him.”

“Apparently no one else did either… except one lady directly across the hall. She described him as pleasant, but aloof. It’s her impression that he actually used the apartment only on weekends… to entertain a woman visitor who invariably arrived about ten o’clock and stayed until the lady across the hall gave up her vigil and went to sleep.”

Lucy laughed lightly and said, “That would be Mrs. Conrad. She can be trusted to know pretty much everything that goes on in this building.” Her face tightened momentarily and then she relaxed with a rueful grimace.

“Soon after I moved in here, Mrs. Conrad took it upon herself to admonish me that a single young lady would do her reputation no good by having gentlemen visitors who stayed until midnight or after. Meaning you, Michael. And I was forced to tell Mrs. Conrad that my reputation was my own affair, and none of hers. We haven’t been exactly chummy since that encounter.”

Shayne grinned and said, “Well, she just
happened
to have her door cracked open tonight at ten o’clock and saw her neighbor across the hall admit his regular weekly woman visitor… at least one wearing the same floppy-brimmed hat she has noted in the past.” He shrugged and took another sip of cognac.

“At the moment that’s all anyone seems to know about Robert Lambert. No wallet or identifying papers of any sort. One small overnight bag in the place, toilet articles and a couple of shirts and changes of underwear. Not even an extra suit or pair of slacks. Just the suit he was wearing… which he had removed incidentally… and put on pajamas and dressing gown to receive his visitor.”

Rourke said, “That sounds very much as though the apartment was just a convenience… to keep weekend dates.”

Shayne nodded. “That’s the way it looks.” He paused. “The woman is a different kettle of fish. Her handbag was there on a table… underneath her hat. I wonder if you’ll recognize her name, Tim. Mrs. Elsa Nathan… from Miami Beach.”

Rourke scowled down into his highball glass, swirling the dark brown contents around and around. “Nathan?” He shook his head slowly. “Seems it should strike a chord, but it doesn’t.”

“Nee Armbruster,” Shayne told him.