The Kissed Corpse

by Brett Halliday

  “Did you know her husband would be away at that time?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?” Burke was shooting out the questions like bullets.

  Raymond Dwight glanced uncomfortably down at Myra. She lay back with closed eyes and heaving breasts. It evidently wasn’t a pleasant session for her.

  The millionaire pursed his lips and blew out a cloud of smoke. “I realize this is no time for concealment or half-truths, Mr. Burke. I have a telescope mounted upon my front balcony. You can easily determine that through it I can be aware of every movement at the home of my neighbor across the valley.” He paused, fumbling for words, went on slowly:

  “Some time ago we arranged a signal which would indicate to me that Mr. Young would be away for an appreciable period and I would be … er … a welcome visitor. I was at the telescope yesterday afternoon and saw him ride away on horseback at two o’clock. Shortly thereafter, the signal was flashed to me by Myra. I walked across the old path leading directly to the cottage and was there within fifteen minutes. I did not leave until four o’clock.”

  “Is this true?” Burke threw the question at Myra.

  She opened her eyes but did not stir. “Why not? Did Les give me any reason to be faithful to him? What was he doing at two-thirty? I had as much right as he to step out.”

  Burke shrugged his shoulders. “This isn’t a morals hearing. Your statement throws the case wide open again, Dwight.”

  “I trust it will go no further.”

  “It won’t. Unless further developments make it absolutely necessary.”

  “You’d better check up on that Yates woman!” Myra sat erect and the words were hissed out between set teeth. “Les practically admitted he was going to meet her when he rode away from the house.”

  “He did meet her,” Burke admitted affably. “Perhaps she did steal that pistol, Mrs. Young.”

  I stared at him, wondering if he meant it. His expression didn’t tell me anything.

  Dwight was helping Myra up, bending over her solicitously. “I’m sure Mr. Burke doesn’t wish to detain you longer, my dear.”

  “No.” Burke didn’t get up. “But I’d like to think this thing out a little, Dwight. I may wish to question some of your servants.”

  “Certainly.” Dwight went out with his hand under Myra’s arm, and I had a funny all-gone feeling of not knowing what the hell it was all about.

  10

  “And that,” said Jerry Burke, “is positively that.”

  I grimaced at the doors which had closed behind the couple. “Things like that keep me thinking I’ve been smart to stay a bachelor.”

  “I guess no man ever knows about a woman. I would have sworn she was in love with Leslie.”

  “She had Dwight’s daughter fooled too,” I pointed out. “The girl thought there hadn’t been anything between them previously.”

  Burke’s fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. “The under-surface stuff dredged up in the course of a murder investigation continually amazes me.”

  “You weren’t surprised by her alibi,” I charged.

  “N-o-o. I had a hunch she had an ace up her sleeve. She was entirely too unconcerned about being suspected. Jelcoe didn’t worry her with those .25 bullets. She almost had to have an out that we knew nothing about.”

  “Where does it leave us?”

  “I’m afraid,” he said soberly, “we’ll have to start barking at Laura Yates’ heels.”

  I had felt that coming and was braced against it. Somehow, goddamn it, I didn’t like to think in that direction. It was something I hadn’t figured out. I hated myself for feeling physically attracted by Laura.

  Mentally, she irritated me. I felt that her outward calm was inhuman and that it had to be a pose … and I detest posing females. I couldn’t forget that she had listened to the story of Young’s death with as much emotion as she would have shown over the announcement that her car had a flat tire.

  And I couldn’t forget that she had kissed him a few minutes before he died. The memory of her kiss in the darkened upstairs room of the hacienda still plagued me, and I found myself wondering how much she would have emoted if I’d been shot five minutes later.

  “On the other hand,” Burke’s speculative voice recalled me to the present, “there are other angles. I can’t rid myself of the feeling that the warning for Young to stay away from the hacienda is definitely tied up with his death.”

  “Here’s a hunch!” I spoke excitedly. “Myra answered the telephone while her husband was absent and replied to the anonymous telephoner without consulting Leslie. In view of what we’ve just learned … that she was tangled up in an affair with her millionaire neighbor … we know she had a good reason for wanting Leslie out of the way. How do we know the voice over the wire wasn’t more specific than she admits … we have only her unsupported word for what was said. Instead of doing the natural thing … putting the woman off, promising to urge Leslie not to go, playing for time … she admits accepting the challenge, taunting the threatener with the announcement that Leslie would go in spite of the threat.”

  Burke was nodding. “That begins to make sense, Asa. There might even have been a definite threat which she hasn’t told us about. She might have watched Leslie ride away at two o’clock, knowing it was the last time she would see him alive.”

  “Then hurried to signal Raymond Dwight to come on over,” I carried the theory on. “Providing herself with a perfect alibi in case she needed it.”

  “Going on from that premise … we’d better start looking for a woman with a good reason for preventing Leslie Young from keeping his appointment in Mexico with the O’Toole girl.”

  We sat and looked at each other in silence until I said: “That certainly puts Laura Yates in the clear. Of all the females involved she had the strongest reason for hoping Leslie would keep the appointment.”

  “Unless,” Burke said drily, “she realized it was something big and didn’t want to split the story with him.”

  “But she wouldn’t have been waiting out in the rain for a man whom she knew to be dead,” I objected.

  “It would have been smart to pretend to be waiting for him. And if she was after a story, she had to get to the hacienda somehow.”

  Jerry Burke was like that, damn his soul. He has the uncanny faculty of looking beneath the surface for hidden motives not apparent to a guileless person like myself. I was suddenly glad I wasn’t cursed with a suspicious mind which couldn’t take any fact or person at face value. I said so, somewhat sulkily, I’m afraid.

  Burke was unmoved. “There’s only one basis for a murder investigation, Asa. We must assume the possible guilt of every man or woman even indirectly involved, and scrutinize every action of every suspect on the assumption that it may be motivated by murder. On that basis, we cannot yet eliminate Miss Yates.”

  “Let’s scrutinize the actions of some of the others on that same basis,” I muttered lamely.

  “Exactly what I intend to do. The anonymous telephonist was a woman, according to Myra’s testimony. Only four women are thus far involved: Mrs. Young, Laura Yates, Michaela O’Toole, and … Desta Dwight.”

  He smiled grimly when I started with surprise at hearing the last name on his list.

  “I’m not at all sure that she doesn’t know more than she’s told us. She admits knowing Leslie Young.”

  “She had just met him once,” I objected.

  “According to her statement.”

  There it was again. Another instance of my guileless acceptance of a statement as fact. I stammered something about making a lousy detective, and Burke agreed, with a grin which took the sting out of it. Then he settled back seriously to his theorizing:

  “Going back to our four women: Myra is out … she received the telephoned warning. I’ve conjured up a thin motive for Laura Yates wanting Young to stay away from the hacienda. Thin … but possible. Michaela O’Toole is definitely out. She wouldn’t write a note asking him to come, and then t
urn around and kill him to prevent it. That leaves Desta Dwight to be considered.”

  “What possible motive can you conjure up for her?”

  “Until we know the real object of the meeting of these various people at the hacienda, we can’t do much guessing. She let it slip that her father had some plan for bringing political pressure on Rufus Hardiman in regard to Mexican oil payments. We also know that Desta recognized Leslie Young as a stumbling-block in the way of forcing any such payments from Mexico. By her own admission, her father just laughed at her when she warned him against Young. What would be more natural than for a headstrong young girl like that to decide to take matters in her own hands and remove the menace to her father’s business dealings with the Mexican government?”

  “All I hope is that you don’t start analyzing me for a motive.”

  He grinned that slow grin of his, then said: “I’m interested in the identity of the Senor Rodriguez Desta mentioned.”

  “Dwight was talking with someone in another room when we first reached the hacienda,” I reminded him. “It could have been the unknown Senor Rodriguez.”

  Burke was refilling his pipe, an expression of intense concentration on his face.

  “I’m going to build up a hypothetical case and I want you to tear it to pieces if you can. It’s evident that Dwight’s daughter is more or less in her father’s confidence. Suppose she was aware that Rufus Hardiman isn’t simply vacationing here … that her father has brought pressure to bear in the right places in Washington and has persuaded the State Department to abandon their hands-off policy in regard to oil payments … that Hardiman is here in his official capacity to present a note demanding payment for expropriated property to an accredited representative of the Mexican Government … one Senor Rodriguez, shall we say? Secrecy is necessary because the demand for payment is being made only on Dwight’s behalf … leaving the rest of the owners of seized property to hold the bag … so they arrange to meet secretly at the Hacienda del Torro.…”

  “Aided and abetted by Michaela O’Toole?” I scoffed. “She’s on the other side of the fence, Jerry. She would be doing her best to prevent such a meeting.”

  “Exactly.” Burke’s eyes were shining. “Through some hold on Rodriguez she plans to be present and stop it if she can. Needing help and knowing Leslie Young by reputation to hold views similar to hers, mightn’t she invite him to join the conference? It would explain her rather strangely-phrased note. Young, not knowing what it’s all about, might mention the note to Desta Dwight who would immediately realize the importance of keeping him away from the hacienda. She tries a telephone message … then an automatic. Remember, there is well over a hundred million dollars involved. Enough motive for a million murders.”

  I was hanging on the ropes by that time, too confused by Burke’s relentless logic to offer a single objection. Also, I suppose I was ready to grab at any straw that pointed away from Laura Yates. I said:

  “You make it sound swell. All we need is to prove a few of those hunches.”

  “We’ll start right now,” he said as Raymond Dwight came back into the drawing room followed by a servant with a tray of glasses, whiskey, and a siphon.

  When the man had set the tray down and withdrawn, Dwight mixed whiskey and soda in three glasses and gave us each one.

  “I sent Mrs. Young home in my car to pack a bag and return,” he said casually. “It is naturally a strain on her to stay alone in that house with its unpleasant memories, so I’ve invited her to remain here as my house-guest for as long as she wishes.”

  Personally, I thought they had their nerve … with Myra’s husband not buried yet, but I guess a few million dollars make a man contemptuous of the conventions. Burke nodded as though it was a perfectly natural development, and said:

  “There are several points you can clear up for me, Mr. Dwight.”

  The financier settled himself with his glass. “I’m happy to cooperate, Burke. Though I don’t see what possible help I can give you.”

  “Did you know Leslie Young had been invited to be present at the Hacienda del Torro last night?”

  Dwight showed surprise at the question. “Indeed?” He glanced coldly at me. “I suppose that explains your attempt to impersonate him.”

  “A point which may have a direct bearing on his murder is that he was warned by telephone at noon yesterday by an anonymous person not to keep the appointment. I want to know who might have been interested in keeping him away.”

  Raymond Dwight’s face remained impassive as he realized the turn Burke’s questioning was taking.

  “I’m sure I can’t help you there,” he said stiffly. Then: “Who invited him to the hacienda?”

  “Miss O’Toole.”

  He had the blank face of a professional gambler. Not a flicker of emotion disturbed it. But his eyes were keenly alert. “Exactly what do you want from me, Burke?”

  “I want you to tell me the purpose of the meeting at the hacienda. That might give me a clue as to why someone wanted to be very sure Leslie Young was not present.”

  “I am not at liberty to tell you.”

  “You mean you won’t?”

  “Bluntly, yes. I will go so far as to say it was a private matter and could not possibly have any bearing on the murder you’re investigating.”

  “But the telephoned threat! What do you make of that?”

  Dwight smiled thinly. “I’m not a detective, Mr. Burke. You’ll have to draw your own conclusions.”

  Burke relaxed and stretched out his long frame. “Why is Rufus Hardiman a guest in your house?”

  “He came here at my invitation.”

  “Why did you invite him?”

  Dwight’s dark face flushed. “Need I explain why I invite a friend to pay me a visit?”

  “Oh. Is Hardiman a personal friend?” There was a peculiar inflection to Burke’s voice. I knew he was leading up to something but I’ll be damned if I could see what.

  Dwight said: “Of course,” impatiently.

  “A friend of long standing?”

  “Why … yes.”

  Burke blew an indolent puff of smoke toward the high ceiling. “That’s queer. Department of Justice agents in Washington answered my telegraphic query with a report this morning that questioning of Hardiman’s family and associates indicated that you and he were wholly unacquainted before he made this trip.”

  I couldn’t suppress a start of surprise. There was Burke for you again. Always about two jumps ahead of me.

  Dwight finished his whiskey and soda and set the glass down with a thump. “He is a friend of a friend, shall we say?”

  Burke nodded approvingly. “That’s thinking fast. I’m beginning to understand how you built a fortune out of nothing in the oil game. However, I take the liberty of assuming that his presence here at your house has more significance than a mere social visit.”

  “You assume a great deal, Mr. Burke.” There was an edge of roughness to Dwight’s voice.

  “That’s one of my bad habits,” Burke told him equably. “In this case I base my assumption upon nothing more definite than the meeting you have arranged between Mr. Hardiman of the State Department and Senor Rodriguez of Mexico.”

  That shot in the dark hit home. A bilious flush mottled the millionaire’s dark cheeks. “You’re welcome to your assumptions, of course.”

  “Thank you.” From Burke’s tone I knew he was enjoying himself. “How far is Rodriguez empowered to go in negotiating a private agreement for your benefit?”

  Dwight didn’t reply. Instead, he pushed an ivory call-button on the table. To the servant who came in response, he said harshly: “Show these men out.”

  Jerry Burke relaxed a little more comfortably. “We can find our way out without a guide, thank you. We’re not leaving just yet.”

  “I’ll have you thrown out,” Dwight blustered. “You can’t come here with your insinuations.…”

  “… that you are making a cat’s-paw out of Rufus Hardiman
to negotiate a favorable personal settlement for yourself with the Mexican government?” Burke finished for him coolly. “But I am here, Mr. Dwight. And that isn’t an insinuation. It’s an accusation.”

  I thought Raymond Dwight was going to have a crack at tossing Burke out unaided. That would have been worth seeing, but he got a grip on his anger and sank back in his chair.

  The servant was still waiting at the door, undecided and frightened.

  “Get out of here,” Dwight growled at him. “Bring the gardener and chauffeur with you if I ring again.”

  The man backed away, mumbling: “Yes sir Mr. Dwight, but …”

  “But what?” roared Dwight.

  “I was to tell you, sir, that Miss O’Toole and her escort are here to see you, sir.”

  Burke spoke before Dwight could answer. “Bring them in here.”

  His voice held an inflexible quality which silenced any protest Dwight might have offered.

  The man looked inquiringly at his employer, hurried away when Dwight nodded assent.

  Things had been happening too fast for me to keep up with them. I was sitting on the edge of my chair, breathing fast and wondering how far Burke could carry his bluff. A queer shiver went down my spine when the servant announced Michaela O’Toole. I had a hunch there would really be fireworks when she came in.

  11

  The ensuing silence was awkward and strained. It was clear that Raymond Dwight was restraining his anger with difficulty. I suppose it had been a lot of years since he had been pushed around by any man. Jerry Burke certainly had a way about him. I had never admired him more than while watching him handle the oil man. Without the slightest bluster, he was so damned sure of himself that he was a difficult man to oppose.

  We were all sitting there in strained attitudes when Michaela O’Toole and a male companion were ushered into the room. It was the man whom she had called Pasqual … the Mexican who had met us at the door and later herded Laura and me up to the locked bedroom.

  Michaela wore a simple dark dress which enhanced rather than detracted from the vivid quality of her beauty. I don’t want to go poetic, but Michaela did bring something into a room. Standing quietly inside the sliding doors with a questioning look for Burke, eyebrows raised in surprise as she recognized me, she was clothed in a tangible aura of glamour which vitalized the atmosphere.