Free Framed in Blood by Brett Halliday

in this apartment, he reminded himself cynically, and must have known the angle of the mirror would reflect her body at certain positions in the room.
    Shayne’s wide mouth tightened. It hadn’t been an accident that she left the door open those few inches. If she wanted to put on a strip-tease act for him there was no reason why he shouldn’t look. She had just been informed that her lover was dead, he told himself, and who could blame her if she set about acquiring another?
    Suddenly he thumped the half-empty glass down on the glass-topped table and jerked himself erect. A sardonic smile twisted his lips, and he swore under his breath for having almost been taken in by a carefully calculated act.
    Marie re-entered the living-room wearing a canary-yellow blouse of heavy, satiny material, and a gray skirt. The neck of the blouse was round, cut low to reveal the even sun tan of her chest and shoulders, and the fullness beneath the youthful neck revealed only the tips of her breasts encased in an uplift brassiere. With heels, she was taller than Shayne believed possible, and her heavy make-up dispelled his former illusions of youth.
    “I think I’ll have a drink now,” she said. She disappeared through the swinging doors and returned with a glass full of ice cubes, poured a generous amount of whisky over them, and sat down in the club chair opposite Shayne.
    “Did Bert’s wife kill him?” she asked abruptly.
    Shayne sputtered on a sip of Scotch at the suddenness of her question. “What makes you think that?” he asked in a hostile tone.
    Marie was leaning back with her eyes closed, but the rise and fall of her chest was rapid beneath the bright blouse. “She was horribly jealous of him, you know. And there was that other man she’s been in love with for years.” Her voice was low, gentle as a purr, but, Shayne thought, more effective than wild hysteria.
    “What man?” he asked mildly, humoring her mood.
    “I don’t know his name,” she answered.
    “But you must have some idea,” he insisted.
    “If she didn’t actually kill Bert,” Marie continued softly, “she was responsible for his death. She drove him to it—nagging him all the time for money and always refusing to divorce him unless he paid her a big cash settlement.” Her eyes fluttered open. She picked up her glass and took a long drink, then settled back again with the glass in her hand.
    Shayne said, “Tell me about last night.”
    “There isn’t much to tell. Bert was drunk when he came here. He said you were going to help him get enough money to buy a divorce from his wife. I begged him not to do it, but he was determined.” Her voice was subdued, listless, resigned.
    “He made a phone call from here?”
    “Just before he left, about ten. He was terribly angry with me for trying to persuade him to give up this plan of his. He dialed a number and then muffled his voice so I couldn’t hear whom he asked for, but I gathered that the person wasn’t there or couldn’t come to the phone.
    “He talked to somebody,” she continued, keeping her eyes closed and her features in complete repose. “He said that you were working with him. He got terribly excited and insisted that it had to be done at once, and that if whoever it was didn’t call him back within half an hour with a proposition he was going to give the story to the paper—and if they refused to print it or if anything happened to him that you were going to turn all his information over to Timothy Rourke on the News. He gave his home telephone number for whoever it was to call, and hung up.”
    “His home number?” Shayne asked, surprised.
    “Yes. He left right after that. You see—”
    “Hold it,” Shayne interrupted with a scowl, jerking his rangy body erect and trying to fit this information into the facts he already knew. “Are you sure he was headed for home when he left here at ten o’clock?” Marie had her glass to her lips and was swallowing