Paul Nathan was closing the front door behind him when they reached the foot of the stairs. He was a few years younger than the man Shayne had expected from the picture in the paper; smooth-faced with the ruddy glow of good health in his cheeks, wearing a dark suit and a neat, black bow tie. He had thinning, dark-brown hair, and he looked just about as distraught and harried as one would expect of a man who had been making funeral arrangements for an unfaithful wife who had taken her own life.
He moved toward them slowly, glancing at the maid and then to Shayne behind her with somewhat hostile curiosity, and then back to the maid again. He stopped in front of the open library door and said, “I see we have company, Alyce.”
“Yes, sir. This man, he’s from the police. You told me I was to…”
Nathan interrupted, “Of course, Alyce. I can use a drink, please.” He looked at Shayne again with lifted eyebrows. “Will you join me?”
Shayne nodded and told Alyce, “A straight brandy, if you have some on tap.” She turned toward the rear of the house and Shayne moved forward with hand outstretched. “I’m sorry to bother you at a time like this, Mr. Nathan.”
Nathan narrowed his eyes and his lips pulled away from his teeth slightly. He disregarded Shayne’s proffered hand. “You’re not from the police,” he exclaimed. “I recognize you now. You’re Michael Shayne. You… found them last night. What right have you to be here impersonating the police?”
“I simply told your maid I was a detective. She invited me in.”
“Did she invite you to go snooping around upstairs?” demanded Nathan angrily.
“I brought a nightgown of your wife’s and a pair of her bedroom slippers home with me,” Shayne told him coldly. “We went upstairs to be positive they were hers.”
Nathan’s face crumpled suddenly, and he turned his head aside, took a stumbling step into the library where he stood with his face averted.
Behind him, Shayne said in a gentler tone, “I’m doing a job, Nathan. You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to, but I think we can close the case fast if you’re willing to answer a few questions.”
“Close the case?” Nathan whirled on him, his face distorted. “I thought it was closed. God in heaven! Haven’t I suffered enough?”
“There are still a few loose ends.”
“What concern are they of yours? If the police are satisfied, what possible business is it of yours?”
“I told you I’m doing a job,” Shayne reminded him inflexibly.
“Old Eli, eh?” Paul Nathan spoke bitterly. “That old buzzard! I might have known he’d stir up a stink. Can’t let his own daughter lie quietly in her grave the way she wanted. Damn his meddling old soul to hell. He tried to turn her against me from the beginning. I hope he’s satisfied now that the whole world knows what his precious daughter was.” He turned away abruptly again, stalked across the library to a deep chair and dropped into it, breathing hard.
The maid entered unobtrusively, carrying a tray. She went directly to Nathan and he took a tall highball glass from it, and she turned back to Shayne with a large snifter glass and a small amount of cognac in it.
Shayne accepted it with a nod of thanks, and she left the room silently. He didn’t wait for an invitation, but moved to a chair in front of Nathan and sat down. “Did your wife leave you a note, Mr. Nathan?”
Nathan had the glass to his mouth and was avidly gulping the contents. He set it down beside him when it was half-empty, and his face hardened.
“If your wife left you a note under the same circumstances, do you think you’d make it public?”
“I’m not suggesting you make it public. If I could testify to the existence of such a note it would go a long way toward satisfying your father-in-law that further investigation would be useless.”
“You mean it would convince the old bastard that I had nothing to do with my wife’s death. Isn’t that what you mean?” sneered Nathan.
Shayne said cautiously, “He does harbor some such suspicion.”
“And he’s willing to spend a fortune trying to smear me though it wasn’t I who brought this about. It wasn’t I who broke up our marriage and shacked up with someone else. He can’t do very much about changing that fact.”
“Did she leave you a note?”
“Yes, damn it. And I destroyed it as soon as I read it after coming here from the morgue last night. It was a private communication between wife and husband, and I shall respect it as such.”
Shayne sighed and took a sip of cognac. It was fine, mellow stuff, but somehow it didn’t taste very good in his mouth. Nathan truculently lifted his glass and drank deeply from it again.
Shayne asked quietly, “Were you aware that your wife was having this affair?”
“God, no!” Nathan’s hand jerked and he set the glass down. “I hadn’t the faintest idea. I still can’t believe…” He lifted his left hand to his face and rubbed the spread fingers across it slowly.
“I understand she was always alone on Friday nights?”
“Yes. That was her idea. I was allowed that night out.” There was an underlying note of bitterness in Nathan’s voice. “You’d have to know Elsa to understand. She was always so logical. So… so right. She had it all figured out, you see. The basis for an enduring marriage. That we should each have one night a week on our own… with no questions asked on either side.”
“But it didn’t make for a happy marriage?”
“Oh, it was happy enough. At least, I considered it so.”
“Then why did you ask her for a divorce?”
“I?” Paul Nathan jerked his head up in astonishment.
“Some months ago, according to her father. And you demanded a quarter of a million dollars cash settlement.”
Nathan shook his head disbelievingly and then settled back with a short, harsh laugh. “That old bastard! It was Elsa who asked me for a divorce, and he knows it. Sure. I told her okay if she felt like putting out two hundred and fifty thousand. What’s wrong with that?” he demanded angrily. “Why shouldn’t a woman pay off to get a divorce just the way men do? They rave about equality of the sexes. Elsa was always harping on the subject. So I said, ‘Let’s make it a two-way street.’”
“And Eli knew this?”
“Of course he knew it. He egged her on to get a divorce. In fact, she told me that he offered to make up half the amount himself.”
“Why,” demanded Shayne, “did he want his daughter to divorce you?”
“Because she was his daughter, I’d guess.” Nathan laughed nastily. “Because he couldn’t stand the thought of anybody else sleeping with her, if you ask me.”
Although the “else” was deliberately stressed, Shayne chose to disregard it.
“At that time did you think that possibly your wife had some other man in mind?”
“Elsa? Hell, no! She wasn’t what you’d call… very sexy. I thought it was the old man’s idea entirely.”
“Does the name of Robert Lambert mean anything to you?”
“I never heard it until last night.”
“Then you have no idea when or how she met him… how long it’s been going on?”
“None.”
Shayne sipped at his drink and pondered. There were a lot of contradictions here. He thought back over his interview with Eli Armbruster that morning, and he wondered. Had the old man lied to him… twisted the facts in order to put Paul Nathan into a bad light? There was no doubt that Eli hated his son-in-law. Why?
He asked Nathan that question: “Why did Eli hate you?”
“Because he would have hated any man his daughter married,” Nathan told him promptly. “She was almost thirty-five when we were married, you know. An attractive woman with more money in her own name than she knew what to do with. Does it occur to you to wonder why she hadn’t married earlier in life?”
“Why hadn’t she?”
“She told me after we were married. Because the old man busted up every affair she had in the past. Twice, he put private detectives on prospective sons-in-law and managed to dig up enough dirt to make her change her mind. She thought it was because he suspected they were all fortune hunters. I had a different idea.”
Shayne didn’t ask him what that idea was. It was altogether too plain from Nathan’s attitude.
Instead, he asked, “What did you do with your Friday nights?”
“I went on the town.” Nathan gestured vaguely. “Night spots. Gambling.”
“Have any luck gambling?”
“Not much. I generally ended up loser. Elsa was very generous and forgiving.” Nathan’s mouth twisted sourly. “She bailed me out a couple of times when I got in too deep… with a nice long lecture on the value of money.”
Shayne said, “Let’s go to last night. Did you come home at all?”
“From the office, you mean? No. I scarcely ever did. I… went out for dinner, and then on to make the rounds.”
For the first time during the interview Shayne noted a slight hesitation on Nathan’s part. He didn’t press the point.
“Then you last saw your wife yesterday morning?”
“That’s right. We had breakfast together before I left for the office.”
“How did she seem then? Upset or anything?”
“Not that I noticed. She was a woman who didn’t display her emotions. Goddamn it, if I’d had any idea…” He sighed and relapsed into silence.
“When did you hear… what happened to her?”
“It was about two o’clock this morning. I was having a lousy run at the crap table at El Cielito here on the Beach. Fellow I know from the office, Jim Norris, came in and told me. He’d heard it on the radio. My God! I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t. Not Elsa. Any other woman… sure. But your own wife…” He shook his head angrily from side to side, then picked up his glass and drained it.
Shayne said, “I’d like to have a time table of your movements… from the time you left the office until your friend spoke to you at the crap table.”
Nathan glared at him angrily. “Do I need an alibi for God’s sake?”
“It would help,” Shayne told him equably, getting the paper from his pocket on which the police had noted a record of Nathan’s evening as he had given it to them.
“I told it to the police last night. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Shayne said, “Then tell it to me again. If it checks out, the case will be closed so far as I’m concerned.”
“I left the office about five.” Nathan screwed up his face in a look of concentration. “Stopped with Jim Norris and a couple of others at a bar for a few drinks. Drove over the Venetian Causeway to keep a dinner date at six-thirty.”
“Where? With whom?” Looking at the sheet of paper in his hand, Shayne noted that it did not mention dinner. The first entry was eight o’clock.
“What the hell does it matter? I understand nothing happened until about ten o’clock?”
“Then why do you mind telling me where you had dinner?”
“I don’t. That is… I don’t think it’s any of your damned business, but I ate at the Red Cock. I had a reservation for six-thirty.”
“By yourself?”
Paul Nathan colored slightly and wet his lips. “As a matter of fact, no. I was with a girl from the office. A secretary. But it was perfectly innocent and you can leave her name out of it. I drove her home at eight o’clock and left her without even a good-night kiss.” A sneer on his lips told Shayne to try to make something out of that. Shayne made a mental note to do exactly that.
But he said, “And after you left her?”
“I went to the Fun Club and played some blackjack and roulette. My luck was lousy. I stayed about two hours and went on to the Bay Breeze where I thought maybe the grass was greener. I know I got there a few minutes before ten because I looked at my watch and mentioned it to the girl when I bought chips. I generally didn’t make it there on a Friday night until about ten-thirty.”
“Do you mean you made the same rounds every Friday night?”
“More or less. Mostly more. You know how it is, gambling. You get to know the dealers and croupiers at certain places.”
Shayne said, “Go on.” He continued to check the list in his hand as Nathan mentioned the joints he had visited before two o’clock, with the approximate time he had spent at each place.
His statement checked closely with what he had told the police the preceding night, with a variance of no more than fifteen minutes in any instance.
“And that’s the story of my night,” Nathan concluded nastily. “Check them out if you like. I’m known at all those places. I should be, by God. I’ve donated enough money in the past year.”
Your wife’s money, Shayne thought, but he didn’t say so. Instead, he folded the paper and returned it to his pocket. “Just one more thing, and then I’ll get out of your hair. Do you know a man named Max Wentworth?”
“Wentworth?” Nathan shook his head. “No. I don’t recall the name.”
“Your wife knew him,” Shayne said.
“What do you mean?” asked Nathan uglily. “Was he another one of my wife’s secret lovers?”
“No. Max happens to be a private detective.”
“A private detective? What was my wife doing with a private detective?”
“I hoped you’d be able to tell me that.”
“But… how do you know?”
“There’s a stub in her checkbook upstairs. Dated about a month ago. She paid Max Wentworth two hundred and fifty dollars as a retainer. A retainer for what, Nathan?”
He said, “I’ll be damned,” his lower jaw drooping slightly, and reached for his empty glass. He lifted it half-way to his lips before he noticed it was empty.
He set it down and shrugged with an elaborate show of nonchalance. “Why don’t you ask Max Wentworth that?”
Shayne said, “I intend to,” and got up. “Thanks for bearing with me, Mr. Nathan. I hope I won’t have to trouble you again.”
Nathan said with forced lightness, “I hope so too. Find your way out?”
Shayne said, “I’ll manage,” and turned away.