The Corpse That Never Was ms-45 Read online

  “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 creme 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.

  “Good God!” Rourke sat up tensely, excitement glittering in his deep-set eyes. “Elsa Armbruster! Only daughter and sole heir of old Eli Armbruster. Been married to a man named Nathan about a year. Society with a capital S. Sneaking off to a dump like this. Sorry, Lucy,” he added quickly. “It’s not really a dump, but… for a woman like Elsa Armbruster…”

  Lucy nodded indulgently. “You don’t have to dot your I’s, Tim. Goodness! She could buy and sell every person living in this building fifty times over. What on earth would she be doing here?”

  “Take Tim’s capital S and put it in front of e-x,” Shayne suggested with a cynical lift of one red eyebrow, “and I think you’ll have the answer. Society millionairesses are apparently just as susceptible as parlor maids.”

  “But… but…” sputtered Lucy. “Think of a woman like that committing suicide. With all the money in the world. Everything to live for. It’s incredible.”

  Shayne said somberly, “Apparently there was one thing that all the money in the world couldn’t buy for her. The man she wanted. His note said that his wife had religious convictions which made it impossible for him to get a divorce. Love,” he said angrily, “is a many-barrelled as well as many-splendored thing. The damned mess it can make of some people’s lives! By God, Lucy. Let’s be thankful that you and I have remained sensible and refused to get caught in a trap like that.”

  She looked at him wonderingly for a moment, and Timothy Rourke chuckled and said drily, “Yeh. Keep on being sensible, you two.” He finished his bourbon and unfolded his emaciated frame. “I’ll be on my way. Thanks for the drink, Lucy.” He moved toward the door and said softly over his shoulder, “And God bless you, my children.”

  They sat very still until the door closed behind him, and then Lucy turned with a soft little cry of, “Oh, Michael,” and threw her arms about his neck and buried her face against his shoulder.

  Shayne held her tightly and banished the memory of the upstairs room from his mind.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Although the next day was Saturday, Shayne had promised Lucy the night before that he would go to the office that morning to sign some checks she had ready, so he was up before nine o’clock.

  He put water on to heat for the dripolator, then got the morning paper from in front of his door and opened it out on the center table in the sitting room.

  The headline across the front page said: SLEUTH SMASHES DOOR ON SUICIDE PAIR.

  He left the paper there and went back into the kitchen to put coffee in the drip pot, pouring boiling water on top of it, and then he scrambled three eggs and made toast while the water dripped through.

  Carrying his breakfast in to the table, he ate with relish and sipped strong, black coffee while glancing through the front-page story. Actually, there was less printed about the case than he already knew. Neither of the suicide notes was quoted, and it wasn’t clearly explained why both poison and a shotgun had been used in the two deaths. Robert Lambert was referred to as the “mystery man,” and the identity of his paramour had been handled as discreetly as possible, with the name of “Armbruster” not even appearing, though there was a picture of the dead woman wearing the same floppy black hat Shayne had seen on the table in the death room.

  The story was continued on the second page, and there they had a picture of the cuckolded husband as he was leaving the morgue after identifying his wife’s body. He was an open-faced young man, wearing a scowl as he faced the camera, his sport jacket and shirt open at the throat.

  Shayne put the paper aside, took his empty plate into the kitchen where he ran hot water over it, poured another cup of coffee and reinforced it with cognac.

  He was sitting back and sipping this pleasurably when his telephone rang. Lucy Hamilton answered when he picked it up. “Are you coming in this morning, Boss?”

  “Sure. In about half an hour.”

  “Mr. Armbruster is here to see you,” she told him briskly, and he knew the man must be standing beside her desk. “Mr. Eli Armbruster. He is very anxious to see you.”

  Shayne said, “Tell him fifteen minutes, Angel,” and hung up with a frown. He had never met Eli Armbruster, but the name was well-known to anyone who had lived in Miami for any length of time. In the early twenties he had come to Miami as a young man and bought extensive holdings on the ocean side of Biscayne Bay which was then barren scrubland. Through the boom-and-bust of the twenties, he had simply sat back and held onto his property, neither buying nor selling during the period of frenzied speculation, and by sitting tight and holding on he had eventually become one of the wealthiest men on the peninsula when prosperity returned to the area in the late thirties.

  He was a widower and had only one child, his daughter Elsa. He was prominent in civic affairs and charity drives, but had never entered politics, though he probably wielded more behind-the-scenes influence on Dade County politics than any other single individual.

  Michael Shayne sighed deeply and finished off his coffee royal. He did not look forward to meeting Eli Armbruster this morning. The memory of the twisted body and contorted features of the old man’s daughter was still vivid in Shayne’s mind. What do you do, what can you say, to comfort a father who has lost his child under these circumstances?

  Shayne shaved and dressed swiftly, and entered his office fifteen minutes after Lucy’s telephone call. She was typing at her desk beyond the low railing across the reception room, and she looked fresh and young and vital as she smiled at him and said demurely, “Mr. Armbruster is waiting in your office, Mr. Shayne.”

  Shayne nodded and dropped his hat on a hook near the door, and crossed to the open door of his private office.

  A tall, slender, elderly man sat stiffly erect in a leather chair at one corner of the wide, bare desk. His feet were planted firmly together on the floor in front of him, blue-veined hands were placed precisely on his knees. He had scanty, white hair and a bristling, white military mustache, and a pair of the clearest, most penetrating blue eyes that Shayne had ever encountered.

  He didn’t rise as Shayne came in and closed the door behind him, but inclined his head slightly and said, “Mr. Shayne,” and lifted his right hand to offer it to the detective. “I am Eli Armbruster,” he said precisely, “and I am pleased to meet you, although I could wish the circumstances of our meeting were different.”

  Shayne took his hand and felt his own gripped in a
surprisingly firm grasp. He looked down into the bright, blue eyes and said, “I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am, Mr. Armbruster.” He hesitated, but looking down into those blue eyes, knew this was not a man with whom to mince words, “Suicides are hell,” he said flatly, “for those who remain behind. One can never understand…”

  “Nonsense, Mr. Shayne,” snapped Armbruster. “This isn’t suicide we’re faced with. It is murder.”

  Shayne released his hand and walked around the desk to seat himself in the swivel chair. He got out a cigarette and lit it thoughtfully. He said, “I realize that’s a natural reaction from a father. But I’m afraid we have to face the facts in this case.”

  “That’s what I suggest you do, Sir.” His visitor’s voice was firm and placid. “The simple fact is that my daughter, Elsa, did not take her own life. It is unthinkable… impossible. I know my daughter, Mr. Shayne. She could no more take her own life than… than I could. She was a strong woman. Headstrong and willful. She might, now I grant you, she might decide to have an affair with another man. If she did so decide, she would have entered into the arrangement in a calm and practical manner. Elsa was not one to throw her cap over the windmill, to lose her head over any man. I know that girl, Mr. Shayne. It would have been utterly impossible for her to commit suicide. She carried my blood in her veins. An Armbruster could never take that way out.” He spoke with quiet, unshakable conviction which was very impressive.

  Shayne tugged at his left earlobe and asked, “Have you talked to the police, Mr. Armbruster?”

  “I came directly here from Chief Gentry’s office. I know Will Gentry, Mr. Shayne. I respect him as a conscientious and fairly efficient public servant. On the other hand, he is a dolt. Two and two always make four to Will Gentry. He does not possess a mind capable of conceiving that two and two may sometimes add up to three or to five.”

  Shayne tried not to smile at this characterization of Chief Will Gentry. It was a perfect summing up of Will’s character, but the hell of it was that two and two did add up to four.