The Corpse That Never Was (6 page)

On the following Friday evening at 9:15 Lambert had called the same Miami Beach telephone number as before, and last night he had again called that same Beach number at 9:25.

Shayne picked up a scratch pad and pencil from her desk and made a note of the only two numbers that had been called from the Lambert apartment. He asked, “Is there any chance that you overheard anything that was said on these calls? You or the other operator?”

She shook her head strongly. “We don’t eavesdrop.”

“Mightn’t you just hold on long enough to hear the answer… enough to know whether it was a man or woman he called?”

She hesitated, giving the appearance of trying to give an honest answer. “Sometimes, I suppose… I just might. If I weren’t too busy. But I don’t remember any of his calls.”

“Not even last night?” persisted Shayne. “Stop and think. You can’t be very busy at nine-thirty in the evening. You
were
on last night, weren’t you?”

“Happens I was. Nina… that’s the girl usually takes the switchboard at five to midnight… had a heavy date and I took over for her. Last night?”

She puckered her brow and thought deeply. “I think… maybe… a woman answered. And he said, ‘Darling’ or something like that. And then I cut out. Because I
don’t ever
try to eavesdrop,” she ended strongly with a glance at Mr. Barstow.

Shayne thanked them both for their cooperation and promised to keep them informed of developments. He then went out to the elevator and up to the third floor.

T
he police had put a new hasp and a padlock on the outside of the door that Shayne had crashed in the preceding night, and as he stopped in front of it to fit the key Lieutenant Hawkins had given him into the lock, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that the door directly opposite stood slightly ajar. The muted sound of a TV set or a radio came from inside the room, and he hesitated a moment as the padlock came open, wondering whether to try to talk to Mrs. Conrad now or wait until later.

She solved the problem for him by opening the door wider and poking her head out and saying happily, “Well there, now. It’s Mr. Michael Shayne, isn’t it. I recognize you from last night, you know. My! The way you did slam yourself against that door when all the rest of us were just standing around wondering how to get in. I said right then that you were just about the strongest man I ever did see, and after seeing you in action I know how you go about solving your cases all right. I said that very thing to Mr. Carmichael down the hall last night, and he sneered and said, ‘More brute force than brains,’ and I said, ‘Well, he’s got to have brains too, you bet your sweet life,’ to have achieved the national reputation
you’ve
achieved, and that shut him up all right.”

Shayne turned with a smile and said, “You’re Mrs. Conrad, aren’t you? The only one who was able to give the police any worthwhile information about your neighbor. It’s lucky you’re so observant.”

“I keep my eyes open and my wits about me.” She tossed her head importantly. She was a tall, thin-faced woman, with a long, sharp nose and beady eyes. “Not that I ever thought I’d be giving information to the police, you understand. Not about something like what happened in
there,
last night. But you never can tell these days. Goodness! Such goings-on in a respectable apartment building like this. From the very first time I saw that woman come traipsing up to the room late at night, I said to myself, I said: ‘Oh-oh. Monkey business, I bet.’ You could tell right off. There was something sneaky about her.”

Shayne glanced at his watch and said, “I wonder if you’d mind telling me all about it again, Mrs. Conrad. I’m expecting a couple of men from headquarters in about twenty minutes. If we could leave your door open so I’ll know when they come…?”

“You come right in and wait,” she invited him happily. “’Course we’ll leave the door open a little. I always do, you know. To make the air-conditioner work better. It says right on it that a window or door should be left open across the room for most efficient operation. And a good thing too, if you ask me. No one else around here sees very much that goes on.”

Shayne followed her into a starched, polished and hygienic sitting room, the same size and shape as Lucy’s on the floor below, but managing to look completely unlived-in. There were no books, magazines or newspapers visible. There were stiffly starched white doilies on every table, and immaculate white antimacassars on the back of the sofa and the two upholstered chairs, A large TV set dominated one end of the room with a picture flickering across it and the sound turned low, vying with the hum of an air-conditioner opposite the front door.

Shayne sat down gingerly in one of the chairs, with the feeling that she would probably leap at it with a vacuum cleaner as soon as he got up. She seated herself in the other chair and leaned forward to tell him:

“I tried to catch that nice Miss Hamilton downstairs early this morning to tell her how wonderful you were to take charge in such a masterful way last night, but she had left before I got down to her room. Such a dear, sweet girl. I’ve often told her how lucky she is to have such an exciting job working as your secretary and right in the middle of important crimes all the time.” Shayne repressed a grin, remembering what Lucy had told him about Mrs. Conrad last night, and said, “No one seems to know anything about the man across the hall, Mrs. Conrad. Except you. I’ve just been talking to the manager and his secretary downstairs. It seems the manager only saw him the one time when he rented the apartment, and the girl not at all. Did you ever speak to him?”

“I tried to. The first day he moved in. In the friendliest way possible. To welcome him as a new neighbor, you know. That was about a month ago. Less than a month, I guess.” She pursed up her thin lips and nodded. “Yes. It was a Friday, I know. Three weeks ago, it’d be. Because I saw him again that next Friday, and then last night. Just three times in all since he’s been here. And entertaining that same woman every one of those Friday nights until heaven knows what hour in the morning. You can take my word for it he was using that room for nothing but a love nest. And with a rich married woman in society and all on the Beach to boot. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard on the early news this morning that she was an Armbruster. Worth millions in her own name, they say. Well! What she saw in a man like him…”

“Let’s try to take it in order,” Shayne suggested desperately. “You saw him when he first looked at the apartment and rented it?” He got out a cigarette and fumbled for matches, then hesitated and looked around uncomfortably, aware that there was not a single ashtray in sight.

“Well, no,” Mrs. Conrad admitted. “Not when Mr. Barstow first showed him the apartment. That was in the afternoon and I wasn’t in. But that evening when he brought his suitcase up. You see, I didn’t even know the apartment had been rented. It had been vacant for more than a week, and I was wondering how long it’d be before someone grabbed it. Apartments don’t stay vacant in this building very long as a rule. The rates are reasonable and it’s in a very convenient location, and
very
well kept up.” She appeared not to notice the cigarette Shayne was holding half-way to his mouth, and he reluctantly replaced it in his shirt pocket.

He said, “That was the first Friday evening. What time, Mrs. Conrad?”

“Between eight and nine, I’d say. My door was open a crack like always and I just happened to notice this man set a suitcase down in front of the door there and fumble with a key in the lock, so I just peeked my head out to say a good evening and welcome to him, to make him feel at home, you know, and he just glanced sideways at me across the hall in a
most
unfriendly way, and then he muttered something and got the door open and picked up the suitcase and went in, and I won’t say he exactly slammed the door shut, but I will say he closed it
very
firmly right in my face.”

“What was your impression of him?”

“Well! That he wasn’t such-a-much, if you know what I mean. With those funny blue glasses and a little mustache. Nothing about him to make you look twice if you met him on the street. I couldn’t see what he had to be so high-and-mighty about, practically insulting me when I offered him a pleasant good evening, but that was before I saw
her
slipping up to his door, and then I said to myself, ‘Ah-ha. So that’s your game, is it?’ Because I realized right away why he was so standoffish. He didn’t want anybody being friendly and paying any attention to what he did. Having that woman up to visit him all hours.”

“How did you know it wasn’t his wife?” asked Shayne.

“You could just
tell
she wasn’t any wife. Not his wife, at any rate. Call it a woman’s intuition, if you like. Something sneaky and mysterious about her. I just knew it right off when I saw her that first night. Sidling up the hallway in high heels and trying not to clack in them. With that floppy black hat pulled down so you could hardly see her face.”

“What time was that? How much after you saw him go in?”

“Half an hour or so. Nine-thirty or ten, I’d guess. I saw her coming up the hall looking at numbers, and I just stepped up close inside my own door to see if I’d guessed right, and sure enough she stopped and knocked, not very loud… sort of secret-like… and he must have been expecting her and waiting because he opened it right off and she slipped inside like she didn’t want to be seen.”

“The same woman you saw last night?”

She nodded vigorously. “And the Friday before, too. Well, I couldn’t swear to it on the witness stand because I never did see her face hardly, those first two times, but dressed the same all three times, with that same black hat. I could swear to the hat. You don’t see many like that nowadays. They used to be stylish, but they’re old-fashioned right now. You have to have a lot of money to wear one like that and not care what people think.”

“You say you hardly saw her the first two times,” Shayne reminded her. “Does that mean you did see her face last night?”

“Yes. I thought it was funny at the time, because she turned and looked right at me across the hall after she knocked on the door. I recognized her picture right away when I saw it in the paper this morning. There was something funny about her eyes. She didn’t look frightened, exactly. More like she was defying me. I didn’t know then why she didn’t mind if I saw her face last night. My goodness, how could I guess she’d come here all prepared to drink poison? You can see that, can’t you?”

“You mean because she didn’t try to slip in secretly as she’d done before?”

“Yes. I can see it now. She didn’t care who saw her. So she just glared right at me and went in.”

“Back to the first night. You didn’t see her leave?”

“Not that night nor the next Friday either. The door stayed shut till after midnight both nights when I gave up and went to bed. And I never saw either of them go out the next day on Saturday either, when I was home from work and would have noticed them if they had.”

“And you didn’t see him come or go during the week?”

“Just on Friday evenings. It was the same all three times, including last night. He’d show up around nine o’clock or maybe a little after, and she’d turn up about ten on the dot.”

“Did you speak to him again?”

“I did not. Not after that first time. I left him strictly alone. I’m like that, Mr. Shayne. I’m not one to push in where I’m not wanted. If he wanted to carry on with a woman across the hall it wasn’t for me to interfere. Of course, If I’d known what I know now, maybe I could’ve… but you just never know, do you? Things like that going on right under your nose. My goodness! If I’d ever guessed. And when I heard that shotgun go off last night…”

“No one ever does know,” Shayne agreed, getting to his feet thankfully and taking out a cigarette as he heard the elevator stop at that floor and the tramp of feet down the hall toward them. “I think that will be my men now. Thank you for your help, Mrs. Conrad. You’ve cleared up a lot of confusing points.”

“Glad to do it,” she assured him, hurrying to the door behind him and peering out like a bright-eyed magpie at the two men from headquarters and the gangling reporter from the
News
as they stopped to greet Shayne in front of the other door. “What are you going to do in there now?” she asked avidly. “If you want I should come in, maybe I could…”

“I think not, Mrs. Conrad,” Shayne told her firmly, opening the door and motioning the others in. “This room will have to remain sealed until the police are completely through with it.” He followed the trio in and shut the door behind him, not exactly
slamming
it, he thought to himself with a grin, but unmistakably closing it very firmly in her face.

Sergeant Deitch and Garroway both carried their kits with them, looking like doctors’ emergency bags, and Rourke strolled forward into the living room with his hands in his pockets. Deitch was a middle-aged stubby man, with a cheerful, unlined face. He set his bag down and faced Shayne with a shade of truculence in his manner. “I still don’t know exactly what you want us to do here, Shayne. Like I said over the phone…”

Shayne said quickly, “What we’re going to do right now is to pretend there weren’t any suicide notes to conveniently solve the case for us. Both of you were here last night and saw the two bodies. Naturally, all of us reconstructed the events leading up to death in the light of what the notes told us. But suppose we’d come on them cold. There are a lot of things you two would have done that the lieutenant didn’t bother to do last night.

“Sergeant, I want you to check everything in this entire apartment for prints. The place was vacant for a week before Lambert moved into it, and probably had a thorough cleaning during that vacancy. He hasn’t had any maid so far as I know. So any prints other than those of the two corpses may be important.”

“There were half a dozen of us milling around in here last night,” Deitch pointed out stiffly.

“That’s why I wanted you for the job. You were here and know just about what they may have handled. Besides, you’ve got a record of all their prints right at headquarters. It shouldn’t be difficult to check them out. I want to know if anyone else has been in here during the past three weeks… particularly last night. That window in the bedroom for instance, that was open last night when I broke in. And the fire escape outside.”

“It rained about two o’clock this morning,” Deitch reminded him. “We won’t get anything from the fire escape.”

Rourke chuckled from where he stood a few feet away, listening. “Mike figures there was somebody in here with them who persuaded the woman to drink poison and then rammed the shotgun barrel into Lambert’s mouth and pulled the trigger.”

“Listen,” said Deitch hotly. “I checked that gun last night. Fingerprints on the barrel. Angle it was held at. Even to a smidgen of a big toe print on the trigger. You can’t tell me…”

“No one is trying to tell you anything,” said Shayne patiently. “Just get me what I want, Sarge. And you, Garroway. There are a dozen things they taught you to do in police school that you didn’t waste time on last night. I mentioned that stain on the rug where Lambert evidently spilled his drink. I want to be sure it had the same amount of cyanide in it as the drink she swallowed. And the bedroom. Make every test in the book on the bedding and the clothes Lambert left behind. Those he was wearing before he got into his pajamas, and everything in the drawers and the closet. Lint and dust in the pockets and cuffs.
Anything
that will tell us who and what Lambert was. Where he came from. What he did for a living. You know what I want better than I do.”