The Kissed Corpse (17 page)

A tremor passed over her mobile features, then they became wholly composed. But I looked at her hands and saw the fingers clasped together tightly.

She asked in a sudden throaty tone: “Where did you get it?”

“Dwight's murderer left it on his body for us to find,” Burke said bluntly.

She shook her head slowly and I would have sworn there was puzzlement in her eyes. “I have not seen that before.”

“What is it?”

“But, it is a cross.” Her fingers came unwound and she spread out her hands.

“A peculiar sort of cross. What is the meaning of the extra bar?”

“Why do you ask me this question?” Her eyes were wide and childlike.

“Don't evade the issue!” Jerry Burke's heavy fist pounded on the table in front of him. “There was a picture of this same cross on the note you wrote to Leslie Young. Why?”

Michaela said: “I know nothing,” in a tone that plainly said she had no intention of telling us anything.

“You don't deny tracing this identical symbol on the note you sent Young?”

“But no,” Michaela said serenely. “I would be foolish to deny what you know.”

“Then you must have seen this cross before … or one exactly like it!” Burke exploded.

“But yes.” She used the patient tone of one who was dealing with a child or a fool. “How else could I put it on my letter?”

“What message did it convey to Leslie Young?”

“Did it give some message to him?”

Jerry wiped sweat from his forehead and got rid of a disgusted, “Oh, hell.” He glared at his cold pipe, then laid it down and said to the girl:

“I'll put my cards on the table. Mr. Hardiman has admitted Dwight was holding something over his head, forcing him to use his official position to negotiate for a private settlement from your country on Dwight's oil claims. I'm not interested in any of that except as it pertains to two murders. You can help a lot by explaining how Leslie Young entered into the situation.”

“I have not said I wanted to help,” she reminded him.

I thought Burke was going to explode, but he didn't. He used up a couple of minutes getting hold of himself, then said resignedly to Jelcoe:

“Take her out and bring in Pasqual, the young Mexican.”

As Jelcoe opened the door, we heard the tramp of feet, and voices arguing with the butler in the hall. Jelcoe paused to report: “It's the homicide squad, sir. I'll get them started to work, and bring the Mexican in.”

Burke sat staring across the room, rubbing his stubby gray hair from front to back. I caught myself thinking about Laura Yates as we sat there silently. The whole thing was too hopelessly mixed up for me to do more than a spot of fitful thinking. Jerry hadn't asked Hardiman about the telegram … nor about the telephone message which the butler had thought came from Laura. Had Laura met Hardiman on the side lawn by prearrangement to warn him about the telegram, forcing him to take the desperate step of obtaining certain papers from Dwight's safe?

I came out of my brown study as the door opened and Jelcoe roughly pushed Pasqual inside. The young Mexican appeared sullen, but defiantly unafraid. He answered Burke's questions in curt monosyllables, corroborating Michaela's story of their presence on the outside balcony when the murder took place, and emphatically denying that they had heard a pistol shot.

He had perfect emotional control or had been forewarned about the cross, for his dark face showed no emotion whatsoever when Burke produced the silver symbol of death and questioned him about it. He denied knowing anything, denied ever having seen or heard of such a cross before. And he insisted that he knew nothing about Michaela's mission to El Paso, and refused to throw any light on the connection between Michaela, Senor Rodriguez, Dwight, and Hardiman.

Burke gave up after a time, and had the servants brought in one by one. They proved to be singularly devoid of helpful information. Indeed, I received the distinct impression that they had hated their employer and wouldn't have given any evidence pointing to his murderer if such evidence had been in their possession … though that feeling on my part may have been merely a subconscious reaction to my own dislike of Raymond Dwight.

Myra Young was next. She answered Burke's probing questions in a tone of disinterested finality. All she knew was that she had stepped into the dark outside room of Dwight's suite and called to him. He had answered her from the bedroom which was also dark. He had said only that Mr. Hardiman had left his room a short time before. When pressed by Burke as to the tone of Dwight's voice and the manner of his speaking, she hesitantly admitted that he had sounded peculiar, perhaps as a result of the first effect of the drug Hardiman had administered before leaving the room.

When Burke finished with her, he had Marvin Moore and then Desta brought in. The youth's air of truculent sophistication had deserted him and he was apparently only a frightened young man, completely awed by being a central figure in a murder investigation.

He testified that his guest room was next to Desta's, down the hall from her father's, directly across from the room now occupied by Hardiman. He and Desta had both gone to their rooms early, and he had dozed off into a half-drunken stupor from which he had not aroused until hearing the tumult in the hall occasioned by our discovery of Dwight's body.

Desta Dwight held herself erect with tottering dignity when Burke wearily had her brought in. She looked at us blankly as though she had never seen any of us before. Burke was strangely gentle with her, and only questioned her about the movements of Michaela and Pasqual after they took her back to her room.

There again, he encountered a blank wall. She dazedly told him she didn't know where they went or what they did after leaving her room.

After Jelcoe had let her out, Jerry looked at both of us and shook his head slowly. “Taking Hardiman's story for what it's worth, we have at least four people, exclusive of the servants, who were upstairs at the time of the murder and had access to Dwight's suite. None of them have the semblance of an alibi unless we count Pasqual and Michaela alibi-ing each other … which doesn't count.” He sighed and said:

“Let's have Hardiman again.”

Jelcoe went out looking pleased, as though the investigation was finally getting down to cases and he was ready to take a hand.

The tall diplomat showed signs of strain when he came in. He dropped into a chair without waiting for an invitation, and beads of moisture stood out on his high pale forehead. Burke swung around in his chair to face him, while Jelcoe stood a little back, poised on the balls of his feet as though expecting Hardiman to make a break for it through the nearest window.

“It looks bad for you, Hardiman,” Burke opened up conversationally. “Every other person in the upper part of the house has satisfactorily accounted for his whereabouts at the time of the murder.”

Hardiman leaned forward with a bony hand laxly clasping each knee. “Not every person, I think. If you persist in accusing me of murder, I owe it to myself to disclose certain facts upon which I would have preferred to remain silent.”

“He's had half an hour to think up a different story,” Jelcoe snarled.

Burke nodded agreement and said to Hardiman: “You weaken your position each time you start hedging. I'll go a long way for a man that comes clean with me but the law has a way of dealing with those who obstruct justice.”

Hardiman nervously lifted his nose-glasses and then replaced them. “I had no desire to involve another, perhaps innocent party, in a situation for which I am at least morally responsible. But someone slipped in that room and killed Dwight after I had drugged him. You've questioned everyone except … Miss Laura Yates.”

I jerked erect and swallowed hard while Jelcoe's eyelids fluttered up and down. Burke tamped tobacco into his pipe with a thick forefinger and asked with that damned stolidity of his:

“Was Miss Yates around? I understood she had left the grounds.”

“She returned.” Hardiman spoke with stony harshness. “She telephoned me that she had a matter of importance to discuss with me, and I arranged to meet her privately outside the house … at her suggestion—because she intimated she did not want to be seen by you.” He paused, twiddling with the ribbon of his nose-glasses.

“And you met her?” Burke prompted him.

“I did. She wanted a personal signed interview for a news story in the
Free Press
. I refused … naturally. I … was upset and angry, and she left me with the avowed intention of getting a statement from Mr. Dwight. I watched her slip in the side door where she could have gone upstairs unobserved, but when I went to Dwight's room soon afterward he denied having seen her. Where she disappeared to … where she may have been in hiding … I do not know. But I do know she is one person whose movements you have not checked.”

“No one else seems to have seen her,” Burke told him with a puzzled shake of his head. “We have only your word for it that she was even here.”

Hardiman inclined his head austerely. “I realize that. However, I feel you would do well to locate the young lady and question her.”

“We'll find her,” Jerry promised. “In the meantime … I'm afraid we'll have to hold you.”

“I quite understand.” Hardiman got up and turned to Jelcoe with a certain dignity that somehow touched me. The door came open as Jelcoe reached for the knob. It was a uniformed policeman and he held his hand out with palm upturned, a pearl-handled .25 automatic pistol lying atop his grimy handkerchief so no fingerprints would be spoiled. It had been fired once.

“I just found this, sir,” he reported excitedly to Chief Jelcoe. “In front of the house under a shrub in the grass right where it might've landed if it was thrown out of that window where the killing was done. And Doctor Thompson says it was a twenty-two or twenty-five that did the job.”

“Fine work,” Jelcoe exulted, with a triumphant glance at Burke to indicate that he had been getting results while Jerry stalled around. “Check the fingerprints,” he ordered, “and have the doc get that bullet out and see if it came from this gun.”

“Better have ballistics check it against the bullet that killed Leslie Young also,” asid Burke quietly.

Jelcoe's head bobbed up and down irritatedly. “Of course, of course. That's merely routine.” He went out with Hardiman and his human bloodhound, and Burke and I followed along behind.

We found the cops had all the guests crowded into the library. Jerry stopped in the doorway and was the recipient of an assortment of glares when he coolly announced that a guard would be placed around the house to prevent any of them from leaving the premises until the murder investigation was completed.

Senor Rodriguez bristled up with a vehement protest, but Burke waved him back with the flat statement that Michaela and Pasqual were both suspects, and Rodriguez's connection with them made it necessary to detain him for the time being.

Myra Young, however, followed us out into the hall and raised so much hell that Burke finally gave in and admitted that he had absolutely no case against her, and detailed a man to drive her home when she refused his offer of a downtown hotel room at the city's expense.

I heaved a deep sigh of relief when we at last stepped out into the night air. My stomach felt empty and forlorn, and I told Burke I had some dog-meat at home in the refrigerator that would make swell sandwiches.

He didn't even smile. “What's good enough for Nip and Tuck is good enough for me,” he agreed. “Let me drive ahead to the police barrier at the mouth of the canyon … and I'll trail you on to your place after getting you through.”

He got in his car and I got in mine. It had been one of the longest evenings I ever lived through … and it still wasn't ended.

17

Jerry Burke's plate was empty. He took a sip of beer, heaved a satisfied sigh and leaned back to fill his pipe. I was still eating. Scrambled eggs and hamburger are pretty fine eating for a bachelor at one o'clock in the morning.

It was peaceful and quiet in the living room of my bungalow. A shaded floor lamp stood near the table and the two Scotties lay on the floor just beyond the bright circle of light.

Blackmail and murder seemed awfully remote. I had a queer
good
feeling of impersonality about the whole business. Here, with the two of us to think it out, I felt we were going to hit on a solution.

I finished my eggs, and let the dogs scramble for the last bit of the meat which was rightfully theirs. Burke grinned as he watched Nip eagerly licking at a grease mark on the rug. He said:

“It's easy to see why you haven't married, Asa.”

“Why?” I was draining my glass of beer.

He gestured toward the dogs. “No self-respecting spouse would put up with them.”

“Who the hell,” I jeered, “wants a self-respecting spouse?”

“That's just it,” he said patiently. “Obviously, you prefer the dogs.”

I set my glass down and thought about Laura Yates for no reason at all.

Then I lit a cigarette and looked at the cross of silver with its extra cross-bar which lay on the table. Burke had brought it along in his pocket after the experts failed to find any prints on it.

I picked it up and studied it. It was about two inches long, and heavy.

“How does this fit into the pattern of murder, Jerry?”

He sprawled his long legs out and blew a volcanic blast of smoke toward the ceiling. “I don't know, Asa. But I'm convinced it's an important part of the picture. If we knew what the damned thing meant we might have the answers to a lot of other questions.”

“Do you think the same person killed both Young and Dwight?”

He hesitated over that, then said soberly: “Yes. It wouldn't make sense otherwise.”

“Hardiman?”