Shayne said absently, “I don’t suppose our answer is going to be in the files.” He moved across the room slowly, circling the desk and seating himself in Fitzgilpin’s swivel chair which creaked softly under his weight. There was a flat center drawer, and three deeper drawers on the right side of the desk. He shrugged non-committally as he sat there, relaxing and letting his mind go as blank as possible. This was where the dead man had sat daily, where he had transacted his business, interviewed clients, and whatever else an insurance broker did during office hours. He had sat in this chair behind this desk last night while a succession of small-salaried people had come to his office after their own work was done, laying grubby bills and silver in front of him to pay up weekly premiums on their small policies.
Shayne reached down and tried the handle of the top right-hand drawer. It opened easily and he saw it was neatly arranged with letterheads and envelopes and invoices.
The other two drawers showed the same neatness, with sharpened pencils, stamps, a Notary Seal and other adjuncts to Mr. Fitzgilpin’s business. Nothing out of order. Nothing of a personal nature.
The center drawer was different. It was not, Shayne was certain at first glance, one that was attended to by Mrs. Perkins.
There were half a dozen loose cigars, an untidy miscellany of memoranda torn from small pads, a few old letters still in their envelopes, exactly the sort of things that accumulate for years in a man’s desk which he probably forgets as soon as he closes the drawer on them.
Shayne pawed through them idly and without much real interest. They told him nothing more about the man than he already knew. He pushed the scraps of paper aside and reached farther back inside the drawer, jerked his hand back involuntarily when the sharp point of a pin pricked the ball of his thumb. He opened the drawer wider and groped in to discover a restaurant menu with a single long-stemmed yellow rosebud securely pinned inside the fold with a corsage pin. He drew it out carefully, and several of the faded, dried petals fell from the bud as he did so.
He laid the folded menu on the desk in front of him and regarded it curiously. It was from a restaurant in Greenwich Village in New York, and the printed date on the cover was November 19, 1961. About a year and a half ago.
Shayne carefully removed the big-headed pin so he could open the menu out flat. A small photograph was between the folds. About two by three inches. The sort of souvenir photo that is shot by girl-photographers in night clubs and restaurants, developed on the spot and sold to patrons for an exorbitant price.
It showed a couple seated at a restaurant table facing the camera. The girl was young and radiantly beautiful, wearing a low-cut cocktail gown with a corsage of tiny rosebuds pinned on the left shoulder of the gown. The man was about thirty, dressed in a business suit and dark four-in-hand tie, and looking superlatively well pleased with himself. He had dark, lean, handsome features, with a crew cut. The single faded rosebud that had been pinned inside the menu appeared to have been taken from the corsage the girl was wearing.
Shayne frowned and turned the photograph over. It was blank. There was no writing of any sort on the menu. He settled back in the creaking swivel chair and tugged at his earlobe while he considered the three exhibits carefully. Roses for remembrance!
A sentimental souvenir of something. Of what? A dinner in Greenwich Village a year and a half ago.
He sighed and explored the rest of the center drawer without finding anything further to attract his interest. He closed the drawer and squinted down at the menu, the rosebud, and the photograph again. They seemed to be trying to tell him something. Something about the nature of the murdered man. An insurance broker who had kept this carefully in the back of his desk for more than a year.
He placed the flower inside the menu again, folded it together and got up, carrying the folded menu in one hand and the photograph in the other back to the outer office where Mrs. Perkins sat behind her typewriter again with her hands folded in her lap and a far-away expression on her nice face.
She looked up with a start as Shayne emerged from the inner office, her gaze going instinctively to the objects in his hand. “Did you find something?”
“I don’t know.”
Shayne laid the menu in front of her, still folded over the rose. He turned the photo around for her to look at. “Do you know this couple?”
She frowned down at it, slowly shaking her head while her eyebrows creased in puzzlement. “I don’t… think so. Neither one of them looks familiar at all.”
Shayne hesitated with one big hand covering the menu. “When you were telling me about Mrs. Kelly’s visit to the office, you mentioned the fact that she appeared to be interested in certain personal things about Mr. Fitzgilpin… including the frequency of his visits to New York and the last time he’d been there. Do you recall the date you told her?”
“Oh, yes.” Mrs. Perkins’ eyes brightened. “He’s only been there once since I’ve been in the office. To attend a convention in the fall of nineteen sixty-one. In November. About the middle of the month.”
Shayne nodded with satisfaction. He took his hand off the menu and opened it to show her the faded and brittle rosebud inside. “Do you know why he had this carefully preserved in his desk drawer? It’s dated November nineteenth, nineteen sixty-one.”
“Of course,” she said softly. “I remember it all very clearly now. The rosebud and the menu. And there was a picture of the bride and groom. I suppose that’s it, though I couldn’t be sure. He was the best man at a wedding at City Hall,” she explained to Shayne.
“It was all very romantic, and it was the high point of the convention for him. It was just like Jerome to do a quixotic, sentimental thing like that. He didn’t know the bride and groom from Adam and Eve. He just met the bridegroom the night before in the bar at the hotel where he was staying in New York while he was having a beer after a convention meeting. I’ve told you before how friendly he was, and interested in strangers. He’d just start talking to anyone, any time or place, and generally they’d end up by responding and confiding in him.
“Well, this night he got in conversation with this nice young man, who finally told him he planned to get married at City Hall the next day, but he was a stranger in New York and didn’t know a soul to stand up with him. Well, you can imagine what Jerome said to that?”
She paused, smiling expectantly at Shayne, and he made the response she evidently wanted. He grinned encouragingly and said, “From what I’ve learned about your boss, I suspect he offered to help them get married.”
“Not only that,” she said triumphantly, “but he went out and bought the bride a corsage of rosebuds the next day, and then ended up by blowing the four of them to an expensive dinner at this restaurant down in Greenwich Village. The bride lived in New York and had a friend, you see, to stand up with her. It was just the sort of kind, thoughtful thing Jerome would do. He was so pleased about it when he came back and told me all the details. He said they were a lovely young couple, so obviously desperately in love, and he was certain it was a real love match and that they’d live happily ever after.”
Shayne nodded slowly, staring down at the photograph of the newly-weds. “You don’t remember their names? Nothing else about them?”
“I’m not even sure he told me their names. He just met them that one time, you see. Why are you so interested? He never had any further contact with them that I know about.”
Shayne said honestly, “I don’t know. Mrs. Perkins, you don’t mind if I take these along with me?”
“Of course not. But I still don’t see…”
“Neither do I,” he told her frankly. “Right now I’ve got a picture of the friendliest and nicest man in the world who got himself poisoned last night. It’s not a pretty picture,” he added grimly, “and it may change a great deal before we come to the end of it.”