Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 6, May 1963

* * *

Alec Norton was startled. He could only incredulously echo his chief’s words. “You mean you want me to sleep in a room where murder has just been committed?”

“Why not?” Dave Tanner, feature editor of the Syndicated Press, stood in his office his back to a window overlooking the harbor. His head was dark against the pale winter sky. A smile tugged one corner of his hard mouth. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of ghosts.”

Norton, grinned wryly as he stared at Tanner. “Fun’s fun, chief, but I’m no Mike Shayne. I’m a feature writer and—”

“You won’t be a feature writer for long unless you learn to take assignments without squawking!” snapped Tanner. “Listen, Alec, this may be a big story — bigger than you think. There’s been too many unsolved murders in Pearson City lately.”

“Okay, I’m a wage slave,” Alec Norton said, grumbling. “Let’s have the dope.”

“Diana Clark was murdered in a suite at the Hotel Westmore in Pearson City. There were signs of a violent struggle — chairs overturned, blood on the rug, blood in the bathtub where the murderer appears to have washed his hands. But there were no clues — absolutely no clues of any kind.” Dave Tanner paused.

Norton said slowly and distinctly, “Nerts!”

“That’s what I think. Where there’s been a struggle there are bound to be clues. But the police have dropped the case. I want you to go to Pearson City and find out why. Take the same plane Diana Clark took and get there at the same time. Go to the same hotel and occupy the same suite. Eleven hundred and five.”

“Will the hotel let someone have it so soon after the crime?”

“Why not? The police have finished with it. When a murder is committed in a hotel, the scene of the crime is always rented sooner or later. The number of the suite hasn’t been published in any newspaper. To the hotel people, you’ll just be an innocent transient who happens to ask for that particular suite. Once inside, keep your eyes open!”

“For what?” Norton was frankly skeptical. “The police will have gone over every square inch of the place with a fine-tooth comb. The hotel people will have scoured and vacuumed it. Ten to one, it’s been redecorated!”

“I’m betting on the chance they may have overlooked something,” said Tanner. “Interview the bellboy and chambermaid who waited on Clark. Study the topography of the suite. Try to imagine you’re going to be murdered yourself the night you arrive between eleven p.m. and one a.m.”

Alec Norton smirked. “Cheerful way to spend an evening! Hey,” he said, “suppose the murderer should return to the scene of the crime!”

Tanner’s eyes gleamed. He spoke softly. “That is exactly what I’m hoping for. After all, the murderer is still at large. And the key to the suite is still missing.”

A couple of hours later, on the plane, Alec Norton refreshed his memory of the Clark case by reading teletype flimsies — spot news stories about the crime sent out by the Pearson City Star, a member of the Syndicated Press.

Diana Clark was a promising young actress living in New York. Two weeks ago she had gone to the Texan border town of Pearson City. Daniel Forbes, her divorced husband, lived there. So did the firm of lawyers who had got her the divorce, Kimball and Stacy. She reached Pearson City at nine p.m. and went straight to the Hotel Westmore. She telephoned the junior partner of her law firm, Martin Stacy, and asked him to call at her hotel that evening.

At the time of her divorce Forbes had promised to pay her a lump sum in lieu of further alimony if she re-married. According to Stacy, Diana Clark told him she was planning to remarry and she wanted him to ask Forbes for the lump sum. Stacy replied that it would bankrupt Forbes who had just sunk all his money in a real estate venture.

Stacy said he left her hotel suite at nine forty-five p.m. She was in good health and spirts, but still determined to get the money from Forbes. No one saw Stacy leave. No other visitor inquired for Diana Clark that evening.

Next morning she was found dead in her suite with a bullet from a .22 calibre Colt revolver in her brain. According to the medical examiner, she was shot between eleven p.m. and one a.m. Her door was locked and the key was missing. So was the gun.

When Norton finished reading, his hasty surmise was that either Forbes or Stacy had killed Diana Clark. Forbes had a motive and Stacy an opportunity. Find a motive for Martin Stacy or an opportunity for Daniel Forbes and the case would be solved.

Arriving in Pearson City, Alec Norton found the Hotel Westmore to be one of the older hotels in town. Norton’s first impression of the lobby was gloomy, Victorian dignity — black walnut and red plush, a black and white tiled floor and Persian rugs.

He studied the night clerk as a man measures an adversary. “I’d like the suite I had the last time I was here.”

“Certainly, sir.” The clerk was young and limp with a tired smile. “Do you recall the room number?”

“It was eleven-o-five.”

The clerk’s smile vanished. “That suite is taken.”