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

Norton told him. Kimball’s face, usually ruddy, turned deathly pale. He muttered incoherently, “Unspeakable... why did they also have to torture her!”

Norton nodded grimly. “Mrs. Forbes deserves all that’s coming to her.”

“Mrs. Forbes?” The name was a shock to Clement Kimball.

“What other woman had a motive for murdering Diana Clark? Mrs. Forbes was wearing a long, brown rabbit’s fur coat when I saw her and she recognized the button fastener the moment she saw it. She’s the sort of woman who would do anything to help her husband. Perhaps she rationalized the murder by telling herself she was protecting her child’s future.”

“No doubt, but—” Kimball passed a shaking hand across his forehead. “I’ve known Nancy Forbes all my life! I’m not a criminal lawyer and I’m not used to this sort of thing.” He rose. “I’d better phone the district attorney and see if he can come over at once. Excuse me—”

Alone, Norton finished his drink and helped himself to a cigarette from the box on Kimball’s writing table. As his gaze wandered around the room he wondered if he would ever be successful enough to own a home like this where hidden lights brought out ruby highlights in the gleaming surface of wine-red damask and old mahogany. Out here on the edge of the city it was extraordinarily quiet and peaceful. He heard no sound but the moaning of the wind outside.

Suddenly, Alec Norton saw the telephone on Kimball’s writing table — a perfectly ordinary dial telephone. Superficially, there was nothing alarming about it. But — Kimball had left the room in order to telephone the district attorney.

Why hadn’t he phoned from here?

Norton put the receiver to his ear. He heard the dial tone. The instrument was not out of order.

He replaced the receiver. Again his glance swept the room but this time it was alert, puzzled, searching. On the surface everything seemed normal — green-shaded reading lamp, book shelves rising row on row until they were lost in the shadows of the lofty, ceiling, cut glass decanter of whiskey glinting amber and gold in the lamplight.

Norton’s glance came to a halt. Mrs. Kimball’s wraps were still lying on the sofa where she had cast them down — a brown fur hat, brown suede gloves, and the dark, supple mink coat she had worn at Kimball’s office the first day he saw her. A long brown coat. A fur coat!

In four strides he crossed the room and seized the coat. Sewn to the rich brown satin lining was a label — Newton and Brill. In the pelt, under the button, where there should have been a neat slit, there was a wide, jagged tear. The button had been wrenched off and then replaced by someone ignorant of the furrier’s craft.

The lips of the tear were roughly basted together with brown silk and the tape on the under side of the button had been sewn to the surface of the fur. There was no button fastener inside. But the other buttons were held in place properly by a tape passing through a neat slit in the pelt to the inside of the coat. Under each button Norton’s probing fingers felt a round, flat disc concealed between fur and lining.

He snatched a pair of scissors from Kimball’s writing desk and sawed at one of the slits until it was two inches wide. Then he pulled the button. It parted company with the coat. On its under side, dangling from a loop of tape, was a button fastener — stiff and black, with a smooth, hard-rolled finish. Bindersboard!

A loud report shattered the stillness. Norton looked up. A bullet splintered a Florentine mirror on the opposite wall. The jagged glass distorted the reflection of a woman.

Margaret Kimball stood in the doorway behind Norton. She was aiming a small revolver at his back — a .22. Her painted mouth was crimson against cheeks that had gone chalk white. But the hand that held the gun was steady.

“You fool!” Her voice was as firm as her hand. “I heard everything you said to my husband. I came downstairs in my stocking feet and listened at the door. As soon as you mentioned the button fastener, I knew that you had to die.”

Norton summoned all his self-control. “Won’t you have trouble explaining a dead body in your living room?”

“My husband opened the door for you. The servants will swear they didn’t admit you by the front door. I’ll swear you attacked me and I shot you in self-defense.”

“I see.” Norton’s thoughts were racing. Any woman like Nancy Forbes who did all her own sewing and mending might recognize the black disc as a button fastener from a fur coat without knowing what particular fur coat it came from. She must have thought Norton knew the disc was a button fastener from a fur coat. She was wearing a fur coat herself and she had a motive for murdering Clark. She had been frightened for fear he would accuse her of the murder on the strength of those two things.

Lamplight struck a steady beam of light from a diamond ring on the hand that held the gun. Norton fixed his eyes on that beam. If he could say something to make it waver, just once.