Free Dead Man's Diary & A Taste for Cognac by Brett Halliday

the doorknob. It turned easily and the door swung open.
    The crumpled body of Beatrice Meany lay in the middle of the brightly lighted room.

 
CHAPTER SIX
     
    Shayne stood in the doorway taking in every detail of the scene. Beatrice was dead. Her eyes were open and glazed, her tongue protruded slightly from her lips and was bluish, her head was twisted in a manner indicating a broken neck.
    Shayne whirled from the doorway and lunged down the hall. He halted briefly at the head of the stairs, reaching up to touch the unlit light globe. The bulb was warm. He twisted it in, carefully touching it with two fingers near the neck of the globe. Light flooded the hallway.
    He strode on to a narrow rear stairway, went swiftly down to the rear of the lower hall and found the back door opening onto the alley standing ajar. He stepped out and looked up and down the alley, but saw no one.
    Back in the entrance hall, he put a coin in the wall telephone and called police headquarters. “This is Mike Shayne, and I’ve got a corpse for you.” He gave the address and hung up, turned and went to a door marked Janitor, opposite the stairway.
    He opened the door and called, “Jake.”
    A voice said, “Yassuh,” and in a moment a wrinkled Negro came to the door. “What yo’ want, Mist’ Shayne?”
    “Do you know how a woman got in my apartment?”
    “Yo’ sistuh? Yassah. Ah let her in, Mist’ Shayne. She said ’twas a s’prise like.”
    “What time did you let her in?”
    “’Bout a hour ago, Ah reckon.” Jake scratched his kinky head. “Jest after sundown. Ah was rakin’ the front yahd an’ she druv up in a taxi an’ asks me was yo’ heah an’ then could Ah unlock yo’ door so’s she could wait.”
    “Have you seen any strangers around here since you let her in?”
    “Strangers? Sho now—” He scratched his head again, then said, “Ah reckon yo’ mean that gentleman what come li’l while later. He asks has a gal come heah to see yo’ an’ Ah tells him ’bout yo’ sistuh waitin’. He jest snorts an’ goes up.”
    “How long did he stay?” Shayne asked sharply.
    “Ah don’ rightly know. Didn’ see ’im leave, Ah reckon. Ah got busy an’ didn’ take no notice. Is suthin’ wrong?”
    “The girl is dead,” Shayne said curtly.
    He heard car doors slam outside and hurried to the front door to admit Inspector Quinlan and members of the homicide squad.
    The Inspector barked, “So it’s you, Shayne. The Sergeant did get the name right. Where’s the body?”
    “Upstairs in my apartment.” Shayne led the way upstairs to his open apartment door. “In here,” he said. “I touched the outside knob opening the door, but didn’t go inside.”
    Quinlan nodded to his men to get to work, stepped back beside Shayne, and asked, “Who is she?”
    “Beatrice Meany, daughter of Mrs. Sarah Hawley. Lived out at the Hawley place with her husband and her mother.”
    “Mixed up in the Groat case,” Quinlan said.
    “She’s the girl who told me she’d asked Groat to come out last night, but denied seeing him arrive.”
    “What was she doing here?”
    “Your guess is as good as mine.” Shayne’s eyes brooded over the room. “She was too drunk to talk very straight when I was out at the Hawley house.”
    “So you invited her here to finish the interview?”
    “She invited herself.” Shayne told him about Beatrice’s phone call to his office to get the address of the apartment. “That’s all I know about it,” he ended bitterly. “She came here about an hour ago, evidently, and passed herself off as my sister in order to get in. A man came asking for me a little later. Jake told him I wasn’t in and only my sister was here, but he came up anyway. Jake didn’t see him leave.”
    “Did Jake give a description of him?”
    “He hadn’t got that far when you arrived. Here’s one thing more, Inspector.” Shayne showed him the light bulb at the head of the stairs. “That was unscrewed and the hall