Christine was still clinging to her husband’s arm. She dropped her hands to her side and stepped forward. “Of course it was,” she said, “but now that this terrible thing has come up about Natalie, I want him to find the guilty person. With your permission, of course, Chief Painter.” She appeared to have gained complete control of her emotions, and she flashed a smile at Painter.
Painter nervously fingered his mustache. He said, “But you heard Mr. Shayne say he was catching the noon plane.”
“Just a moment.” Shayne sprang from his chair. He said, “Mr. Hudson, will you describe the maid-Natalie-to me?”
“Of course. She was something under thirty, I suppose. Quite blond, and-” he twirled a hand above his baldish head “and frizzly.” He turned to his wife and asked, “Rather nice looking, wouldn’t you say?”
Christine laughed lightly. “Any maid would look good to us, Leslie,” she said. “She had a rather pleasant face and she liked to laugh and talk. I’d given her some of my old gowns and she looked very nice in them. And,” she added, turning to her husband, “she helped herself to the lovely perfume you gave me.”
Shayne was watching Christine. Her light laughter and her smile and the glow in her eyes went away when she turned away from Painter. He said, “My trip to New Orleans isn’t really important. I can easily put it off a day or so if you really want me to look into this.” He knew, suddenly, that there was more involved than the IOU which Barbizon held against Christine, and he deliberately shoved aside the urgent telegram from Lucy Hamilton and the thousand-dollar retainer in the Belton case.
Leslie Hudson was saying, cordially, “We’d appreciate that, Shayne. Natalie was a maid who’d been with us only a short time, but we owe her that much.”
Shayne scarcely heard him. When Christine’s husband stopped speaking, Shayne said to Painter, “You’re conducting an investigation?”
The chief raised his padded shoulders a trifle straighter and warned him bitingly, “Just try pulling a fast one, Shayne. Just one. That’s all I ask.” He turned his back on the redhead, whipped out a notebook and demanded, “The maid’s full name?”
“Natalie Briggs,” said Hudson.
“Age?”
“About-twenty-eight,” Christine answered when her husband looked at her inquiringly.
“Height and weight?”
Leslie Hudson’s eyes were a mixture of green and gray. He drew his brows together between them, but didn’t look at his wife. “I would say about five-feet-eight or nine inches. She was tall.” He thought for a moment, turned to Christine and said, “A hundred and thirty, wouldn’t you say, dear?”
“Fifty,” Christine murmured, her long lashes half-closed. Her tousled dark head was nestled against Leslie’s arm, and she didn’t look at Shayne.
“Any relatives? Close friends?” Painter asked officiously.
Hudson didn’t answer immediately. He looked down at Christine and said, “None that I know of. She was sent to us by an employment agency a few weeks ago. You know how it is these days. But she was perfectly satisfactory,” he maintained stoutly.
Painter’s small black eyes flashed. “H-m-m. So you don’t actually know anything about her.” His tone indicated that they knew everything about her and were directly responsible for her murder. “When was she last seen by any member of your household?”
Christine lifted her head and spoke in a steady voice. “I can answer that. It was right after dinner. Leslie had gone to the plant, and she had a date. She came in to show me how a green dinner dress looked on her-one I had given her. I was reading the evening paper in the living-room. She said there was something she had forgotten to do and went upstairs. When she came down, I could smell the perfume, but I didn’t care about that. Naturally,” she ended, “I didn’t ask her where she was going.”
“Did someone call for her?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.” Christine seemed to remember all of a sudden that she was a hostess. She moved wearily toward a chair and said, “Let’s all sit down.”
She sank down on a love seat and her husband sat beside her. Painter stood in his tracks, his notebook in his hand and his pencil poised above it. Shayne dropped into a chair and crossed his legs.
“When Natalie wasn’t here this morning, I asked Mrs. Morgan if she knew anything. Mrs. Morgan was in the kitchen just before Natalie left.”
“Who is Mrs. Morgan?” Painter asked.
“Our housekeeper,” said Christine.
Painter raised his right hand which held his pencil and ran a finger over his thin mustache. “Why didn’t you report the maid missing earlier?” he demanded. “Was she in the habit of spending her nights out?”
Leslie Hudson said, “The maid’s room is in the house. We naturally gave her a key to the back door so she could come in on her night out. I suppose she stays out quite late, which is none of our business as long as she does her work the next day. We didn’t know she hadn’t come in until just before I left for the office this morning.”
“There was no wind last night,” Painter asserted, “and your maid was found floating in the bay a short distance from here. It’s my guess she was killed right here and dumped in the bay. Where were you two all evening?”
“There was a pretty high wind this morning,” Shayne said.
Painter’s small black eyes darted to Shayne. “You keep out of this, Shamus,” he snapped. He turned back to the Hudsons. “Where were you last night?”
Leslie Hudson looked at his wife quickly, but she was staring at her pink fingernails. He said, steadily, “My wife and I were out.”
“Where?” Painter asked caustically.
Christine lifted her eyes and looked steadily at Painter. She did not smile. She asked, “Are Leslie and I suspects?”
Painter again cleared his throat delicately. “Not yet,” he admitted, “but it’s just as well to establish an alibi if you can.”
Hudson tightened his arm on his wife and said, “We will see to that when the necessity arises,” stiffly.
Painter said angrily, “If you’re not going to co-operate, that’s the way I’ll play it. Now, who else is in the house?”
“Mrs. Morgan,” said Leslie Hudson, “and my brother, Floyd.”
“Where are they? I want statements from them, and-”
The telephone rang in an adjoining room. Shayne saw Christine stiffen. Her dark, terrified eyes met his for an instant. It was as though she expected the ring and appealed to him for help.
“I want to inspect the girl’s room and her possessions,” Painter was saying, as Christine sat on the edge of the love seat, and they could all hear Mrs. Morgan answering the telephone.
A moment later Mrs. Morgan entered the spacious living-room and said, “It’s for you, Mrs. Hudson.”
As Christine dragged herself from the love seat and went slowly through the open doorway to the telephone, Peter Painter turned on one heel to face the middle-aged woman. “Are you Mrs. Morgan?”
“I am,” said the woman, her hands folded across her ample diaphragm. Her calm blue eyes ran the length of the chief’s short stature.
“You can come in right now,” Painter said. “I want you to give me everything you can about Natalie Briggs. Try to remember everything-”
All of them heard a stifled gasp from the adjoining room, and the faint sound of a body crumpling to the floor. Shayne and Hudson rushed into the room together.
Christine lay outstretched on the floor beside the telephone stand in a dead faint.
Chapter Five: ALIBI OR RUSE
Mrs. Morgan followed Shayne and Hudson at once, took in the situation at a glance and went directly to a lavatory opening off the library for a wet cloth and smelling salts.
Mr. Hudson lifted his wife in his arms and carried her to a couch. Kneeling beside her, he stroked her hair and called to Mrs. Morgan to hurry. She was back in a few seconds and they administered cold cloths to the unconscious girl’s face and held the salts to her nostrils.