“Put them both under surveillance,” Painter said promptly.
“Surveillance, then arrest, then a long sensational trial and a good possibility of conviction. But if they had nerve enough to hang on for a week or so, they could work out some kind of accident at sea to dispose of Dotty in a way that wouldn’t require them to produce a body. Meanwhile, they could be transferring cash. All they had to do was make it seem that Mrs. De Rham was still aboard and her husband was the one who was missing. De Rham was an accomplished mimic. Somebody mentioned the Pudding show-that’s a show put on by the Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard, with boys playing girls’ parts. Mrs. De Rham was known as a heavy drinker. She wore sun glasses and a wig. And of course they had no real choice. They had to try it. De Rham stayed below most of the time, and only came out at night to phone. He had three visits, one from the cops, one from me, and one from the lawyer who drew the new will. His signature was a little shaky, but there was no reason it wouldn’t stand up.”
He sat down beside Brady. “I don’t know if you’ve heard all this, Paul. I hope so, because it will save us time later. You didn’t want to move too fast. De Rham had to call Loring, imitating his wife’s voice to establish the fact that she was still alive. And he heard some bad news. She had already changed her will before she sailed. He used me to plant a motive for changing it back-as bait for the runaway husband.”
Rourke said, “Can you skip to what happened this morning, Mike? I ought to phone the paper.”
“In a minute. Everything went fine until Petrocelli started getting suspicious. He brought in the cops. Brady and De Rham were getting ready for the big climax, and they didn’t want cops hanging around. I was brought in to find the missing husband and prove he hadn’t been murdered yet, one of the easiest assignments I’ve had in years. I called Luke Richardson off and reported to Loring that the little three-person group was apparently still intact. But Loring thought his god-daughter was being blackmailed because of the cash transfers, and he kept me on. Last night, when I came back to the Nefertiti, they did some fast thinking and invented an errand to keep me busy. Henry swam ashore and set up an ambush, a half dozen tough kids with bicycle chains.”
“That explains that,” Rourke said impatiently. “Now bring us up to date.”
Shayne turned to Painter. “Did your men find a rented car at Haulover Park?”
“Yes, a Hertz Chevy rented to Henry De Rham.”
“That was the logical place. Here’s what they planned to do this morning.”
“Finally,” Rourke said.
“Mrs. De Rham, with her mental instability and her history of arson attempts, was going to get a few miles offshore and set fire to the boat. Henry gave his Mrs. De Rham imitation for the benefit of the neighbors in the marina. Wig, woman’s clothes, sunglasses, gin. It was dark, and even an observant girl like Sally Lyon never doubted that she was looking at Mrs. De Rham. It was still dark when they went out through Haulover Cut, where Henry was supposed to glue on his beard and swim ashore. This would leave Paul alone on board to finish it up, but it wasn’t really too complicated.”
“They used a dummy!” Rourke exclaimed.
“Sure, with a burned face so it didn’t have to look too lifelike. It had to be wearing Mrs. De Rham’s clothes, and by that time the jacket had a bullet hole in it. But the dummy was supposed to disappear, so Paul didn’t think it would matter. The sequence was supposed to be-start the fire, call the Coast Guard, wait till the helicopter was overhead, jump in the water with the dummy wearing Mrs. De Rham’s wig and clothes, flounder around until rescue was close, and let the dummy sink. It could have worked. The trouble was that neither Brady nor De Rham really trusted each other. They were on each other’s nerves. That reconciliation at the end of the tape had a hollow sound to me. Would Paul be satisfied with a hundred and seventy thousand, when he’d done most of the staff-work and made all the really dangerous moves? Do you want to comment on this, Paul?”
Brady remained motionless and silent.
“De Rham used the word blackmail,” Shayne went on, “and it must have been very much on his mind. At the same time, Brady would be scared that De Rham would do something dumb or impulsive. If you were one of these two characters, would you want the other one tied around your neck the rest of your life? They both decided, independently, to do something about it. Brady finally used his little. 25. He shot Henry point blank, undressed him, and dropped him in the water. He wouldn’t bother to weight the body because he’d have nothing to worry about when it came ashore. Henry, meanwhile, had rigged a nasty surprise for his old friend. I had a look at the burning boat through binoculars. One side of the wheelhouse was blown out. A simple little home-made bomb and a bottle of acid inside the radio. After the fire was burning nicely, Paul switched on the radio to call the Coast Guard. Bang. Acid in his eyes. He was blinded and helpless. He couldn’t put out the fire, he couldn’t call for help. Henry assumed he’d go down with the boat or swim around helplessly until he drowned. And Henry would be rid of both his wife and his good friend, and he could take it easy the rest of his life. Paul did what he could when he heard the helicopter, but he couldn’t see the Panther and his timing was off.”
“Great,” Rourke said, sticking his notes in his side pocket. “Where’s the phone?”
“There’s more,” Shayne said quietly.
He had heard a car arrive. Shayne had arranged many confrontations in his time. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn’t, but this one worked very well.
Raphael Petrocelli, unshaven, his hair uncombed, was hustled in by the detective Painter had sent for him. Katharine Brady hastily covered her mouth, but there was no place to hide.
“Mrs. De Rham!” Petrocelli said in surprise. “They were talking about you on the morning news. The announcer said you were drowned.”
CHAPTER 19
“You must have known it wouldn’t work when they pulled you off the plane,” Shayne said.
“I still had hopes.”
Her lips were pursed. She was still one of the coolest people in the room. Painter jumped to his feet.
“Shayne, I warn you. One of these days you’ll go too far. If you knew who she was all along, why in God’s name didn’t you say so?”
“I didn’t know who she was. All I knew was that she wasn’t Katharine Brady.”
She turned to Painter. “I want to talk to Mike alone.”
“You aren’t talking to anybody alone, madam!” Painter snapped. “From this point on, I’m asking the questions. What were your relations with Tom Moseley?”
She smiled and remained silent.
Shayne said, “Moseley worked for the Loring law firm. He handled her income tax. He was in the same Harvard class as her husband and Paul Brady. I believe they were lovers.”
She looked at Shayne, amused, but her fingernails were digging into her palms.
“Moseley was getting more and more nervous about what he’d let himself in for,” Shayne said. “She’d already tied him up in one killing. That was his limit. He wanted her to surface and stop the action before anything bad happened, and the way it was going, something bad was bound to happen. But she couldn’t bring herself to call it off. She killed him with a gin bottle. She left a piece of false beard to point to Henry. In a way that wasn’t too clever. We can use it to prove premeditation.”
“Was he involved in your disappearance from the boat, Mrs. De Rham?” Painter said.
“Ask Mike. You can see that I’m not doing any talking.”
Painter hesitated, then turned to Shayne. “Was he?”
“Obviously. She couldn’t have worked it without help.”
“Mike-” she said.
“Did Henry ever play you the statement the night watchman from the Winslow plant made before he died? I have it. They steered me to it. They didn’t think it mattered because they thought you were dead and they couldn’t get any more mileage out of it. In my hands it would back up the fire-at-sea story.”