The entries seemed ordinary enough; dry cleaner, a florist, a doctor bill, a $50 donation to a charity. She didn’t write a great many small checks. They were all for fair-sized sums, indicating that she waited for bills to be rendered monthly.
He stopped on the third page back, his eyes glinting with excitement. The stub was dated almost exactly one month previously. The amount was $250, payable to “Max Wentworth.” Beneath the name, the single word “Retainer” appeared.
Shayne knew quite a bit about Max Wentworth, none of it very good. He straightened up with the checkbook open in front of him, a questioning scowl on his face, when he heard a car coming up the drive fast, and slow with a protesting screech of brakes beneath the porte-cochere beside his own car.
Behind him, Alyce said hurriedly, “That will be Mr. Nathan now. Maybe I’d best go down…”
Shayne said, “I’ll go with you,” and followed her, leaving the checkbook open on the rosewood desk behind him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
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.”