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.”