Shayne shook his head angrily when the pieces wouldn’t fit into place, and began watching for Bayside Drive, which he knew was a short street, right-angling toward the bay and dead-ending there.
This was one of the oldest and pleasantest sections of the city which had successfully resisted encroachments of the boom period; the avenue was lined with beautifully landscaped estates, many of them running all the way to the bayfront, and most with huge old houses, set so far back from the street they could be only dimly glimpsed through luxuriant tropical foliage.
He slowed and turned right on Bayside Drive, found the entrance to number 316 guarded by high gateposts in a forbidding stone wall enclosing an area of several acres of grounds that long ago had been carefully planned and magnificently planted with exotic trees and tropical shrubbery.
There was a heavy chain suspended from one gatepost, but now unhooked from the other to allow entrance, and Shayne turned in on a gravel drive that curved back through dense vegetation that was now untended, giving a feeling of desolation and decay to the once proud estate.
The grass was untrimmed and what had once been a beautiful sunken garden on the left of the driveway had been allowed to run wild. It was a riotous mass of briers and flowers giving off a heavy fragrance that was almost stifling in the still hot air beneath interlocking branches that shielded the ground from sunlight.
Wherever else Leon Wallace was and whatever he was doing, Shayne thought grimly, he certainly hadn’t been earning his wages as a gardener at the Hawley place for at least a year.
The driveway curved from beneath huge Cyprus trees into bright sunlight that glared down pitilessly on a huge stone fortress of a house with cupolas and turrets and outside stairways of wrought iron that led up to second and third story balconies and embrasured windows. Shayne braked to a stop, directly behind a heavy black sedan that was at least five years old.
There was utter silence after he cut off his motor. The old house seemed completely withdrawn from the world and there was nothing to indicate that a single person lived behind the thick stone walls in front of him. He shivered, despite the heat, as he got out and climbed six worn stone steps to a wide veranda that had warped, unpainted floorboards. They creaked under his weight, and it was a welcome sound in the stillness. There was an ornate bronze knocker on the wide oak door, and he thumped it loudly after searching in vain for a more modern electric button to announce his presence.
He had a queer feeling that no one would answer the knock as he waited. There was a smell of desertion and decay that seemed to arise almost like a tangible effluvium from the untended grounds and the isolation of the old house, and his muscles twitched involuntarily when the door opened in front of him without warning and with the rasp of rusty hinges.
An ancient and wizened Negro peered out at him. His shoulders were bent and his hair was grizzled, but his eyes were very black and very bright and he wore a shabby but clean and freshly pressed uniform jacket of gray with a row of big, shiny brass buttons down the front and his voice was a soft admixture of subservience and dignity as he said, “Yassuh?”
Shayne said, “I’ve come to see Mrs. Hawley.”
“Nossuh. She ain’t receivin’ this mawning.” He started to swing the heavy door shut, but Shayne blocked it with a big foot.
“She’ll talk to me.”
“Nossuh. Not ’thout you got a ’pointment, she won’t.” The voice was the same mixture as before, but it was firm and unyielding.
Shayne kept his foot in the doorway. “Tell her I’ve come to talk about a gardener named Leon Wallace.”
Shayne thought he saw a flicker of apprehension in the black eyes, but the grizzled head moved from side to side gravely. “No one like that name here. No gardener neither.”
Shayne put his shoulder against the door and pushed. It opened inward, carrying the elderly servitor with it.
“I still want to talk about Leon Wallace.” A wide, high-arched hallway stretched the full length of the house in front of him. It was paneled in black walnut and there were no rugs on the polished parquetry floor. Two old-fashioned chandeliers, spaced twenty feet apart and set with low-wattage bulbs, lighted the gloomy hall dimly. The air inside the thick stone walls was at least twenty degrees cooler than outside.
The old Negro held onto the doorknob doggedly, interposing his slight figure in front of the detective’s bulk. “It ain’t fitten you should push in thisaway,” he continued to protest. “You wanna wait right yere, I go an’ ask Miz Hawley…”
A tall man carrying a briefcase in one hand and a panama with wide curling brim in the other emerged through a curtained archway on the right and demanded peremptorily, “What is it, Ben? You know very well that no one is to be admitted.”
“Yassuh, Mistuh Hastings.” The old man darted a harried look over his shoulder. “You explain to this gentleman how it is.”
The man was in his sixties with a mane of silvery hair flowing back from a strong, bony face. He wore a black broadcloth suit tightly buttoned all the way up, and a black string tie such as Shayne hadn’t seen for years. The Negro closed the door to shut out the light and heat, and the elderly man confronted the detective commandingly. “What is the meaning of this intrusion?”
Shayne said, “I think it’s time someone intruded.”
“Who are you, sir?”
“A detective.”
The bony face in front of him tightened with disapproval. “May I see your credentials?”
“Who are you?” Shayne countered bluntly.
He stopped to set the briefcase beside him and extracted a card from his breast pocket. It read: Hastings A. Brandt, Attorneys-at-Law. Engraved in the lower right hand corner was the name, B. H. Hastings.
“I am legal counselor to the Hawley family. I’ll have your credentials and hear your business.”
Shayne said, “I’m private and my business is with Mrs. Hawley.” He started to move forward impatiently, but the lawyer did not give an inch. Shayne halted with his face inches from Hastings’, who told him coldly, “Mrs. Hawley is in seclusion and seeing no one. Perhaps you are not aware of the tragedy that recently befell her only son.”
Shayne said stubbornly, “I know all about Albert Hawley’s death. More than she does, I think. That’s one of the things…”
“In addition to that bereavement,” the lawyer interrupted him, “I have just this moment completed the sad task of reading the will of her brother-in-law who died very recently. Surely you can state your business to me without disturbing the family.”
“Can you answer some questions about Leon Wallace?”
“I’m sure I don’t understand…”
“Neither do I,” said Shayne. He sidestepped past Hastings and went toward the curtained archway, deliberately making his heels loud on the uncarpeted floor. The lawyer hurried after him with a smothered imprecation, and caught hold of his arm just as Shayne parted the curtains on a large square room that without artificial light was darker than the hallway. There were four French windows at the end of it, but heavy draperies were drawn to effectually seal out the sunlight. A small fire blazed in the fireplace in the center of the right-hand wall, incongruous when one had just entered from the midday heat of Miami, yet sending out welcome heat and light into the gloomy room. An oriental rug on the floor was faded and worn, and the heavy antique furniture was dark and depressing.
There were three people inside the room who lifted their heads and looked with wordless surprise at Michael Shayne when he unceremoniously parted the curtains.
The dominant personality was an old lady who sat in a high-backed fireside chair facing him. She was tall and spare, and held her desiccated body very erect with tiny feet planted solidly on the floor, leaning forward slightly from the waist with both withered hands clamped on the knob of a heavy cane with a brass ferrule at the bottom. Everything about her came to a point-her long, thin nose, the high mound of white hair, her cheekbones and the prominent, jutted chin. Her eyes were cavernous, a slaty blue that reflected lights from the dancing flames beside her. She wore a high-necked, long-sleeved black dress that swirled down to the tips of tiny black shoes and she had a ruffle of white lace at her throat. Her voice was unexpectedly harsh and strong as she croaked, “Who is it, B.H.?”