The Kissed Corpse

by Brett Halliday

  I turned my attention to Jerry Burke after one glance at Michaela. More than anything else, I wanted to see how he would react to her.

  He stood up as Dwight went to her, his gaze gravely fixed on her face as he stood waiting for his host to bring her forward. He looked as stolid and unimpressed as though this was just an ordinary occasion. It wasn’t until she came close and unleashed the deep blue of her Irish-Indian eyes upon him that I saw a flicker of interest light his face.

  Neither of them smiled as Dwight said bluntly: “This is a policeman who insists upon questioning you, Miss O’Toole,” and I had the feeling that they were measuring each other. In the silence my quickened perceptions seemed to catch a ringing sound as of two unsheathed blades clashing dangerously.

  The moment was past and Burke was bowing stiffly. “I’m delighted to meet a friend of Leslie Young’s.”

  If he expected to catch Michaela off-guard he had underestimated her. In her liquid voice with its undertone of Irish blarney, she replied:

  “It is too bad to disappoint you, Mr. Policeman.”

  “Are you going to tell me you didn’t know Leslie Young?”

  “Why not?”

  “You wrote him a note asking him to come to the Hacienda del Torro last night.”

  She shrugged. “But yes.” The corners of her mouth were upcurved and I knew she was baiting Burke.

  The rest of us had been standing there like statues during the interchange, and Dwight suddenly took a hand:

  “We may as well sit down,” he suggested gruffly. “And allow me to finish the introductions: Mr. Baker, Miss O’Toole … and he assures me that Baker is actually his name. Senor Pasqual Morales, Burke and Baker.”

  Pasqual moved to Michaela’s side and nodded to us jerkily. His beady black eyes flickered from Burke to me with definite menace. He had a folded newspaper gripped tightly in his right hand, and looked uncomfortable in an ill-fitting suit of blue serge, but his manner plainly indicated that he was determined not to be intimidated by us nor by the unaccustomed luxury of his surroundings.

  We all sat down and Dwight rang for cracked ice and more glasses. Burke took a chair in front of Michaela and continued his questioning as though it hadn’t been interrupted:

  “Do you make a habit of writing letters to strange American men?”

  “But no, Senor Policeman. You make the joke, no?”

  “No,” Burke growled. “I want to know why you wrote Young that letter … if you didn’t know him.”

  Michaela had a way of opening her eyes wide with child-like simplicity. She used it effectively. “Must I give reasons for letters I write?”

  It was parry and riposte, with no advantage to either verbal fencer. Burke shifted his attack:

  “You know Young has been murdered?”

  “The police told me last night when I called for them to come and take this man away.” She glanced at me with her wide eyes, then back at Burke.

  “I have reason to believe your invitation to the hacienda was directly responsible for Young’s death.” Burke hammered the words at her.

  She merely looked surprised, but Dwight leaned forward and exclaimed:

  “I think you should explain that insinuation, Burke.”

  “I’m asking for explanations … not giving them,” Burke told him evenly, without taking his eyes from Michaela’s face.

  The servant came with a pitcher of cracked ice and two more glasses. Dwight’s big hands shook as he mixed a drink for his guests from across the border.

  “I’m still waiting for an answer,” Burke told Michaela.

  She shrugged her shoulders insolently and black lashes came down to shield her eyes. “I think you will wait a long time, Senor Policeman.”

  “Aren’t you interested in helping me find the murderer of your father’s old friend?”

  That thrust brought Michaela’s eyelashes up. You could almost see her readjusting her mental defences before she answered: “You are smart … for a policeman.”

  “Thanks,” Burke acknowledged grimly. “Policemen aren’t always as dumb as detective story writers would have you believe. I know some other things, too. For instance: Do you want to explain what you and your companion were doing up this canyon yesterday afternoon while Leslie Young was getting himself murdered?”

  The silence was electric. Dwight’s glass stopped halfway to his mouth. I sensed a furtive movement at my left and I glanced over at Pasqual in time to see his right hand gliding into his coat pocket. He leaned forward tensely, glaring at Burke.

  I was as surprised as any of the others. I didn’t see why in hell Burke couldn’t tell me things so I’d be prepared for them beforehand. This was my first intimation that Michaela and Pasqual had been north of the Rio Grande yesterday.

  “I have not said we were here.” Michaela sounded uncertain for the first time since the inquisition started.

  “But I know you were here. You stopped at a filling station at the mouth of the canyon at two-thirty to inquire your way to the Dwight estate. I have your description and the license number of your car.”

  “Perhaps we were coming to visit Mr. Dwight … if we asked the way to his house.”

  “Which puts you conveniently at the scene of murder just when it was happening.”

  “I cannot help that, Senor Policeman. I did not plan it so.” The girl was getting her second wind.

  “Just another coincidence,” Burke muttered bleakly. He swung from her to glare at Pasqual. “Your boy-friend doesn’t happen to be jealous of Americans to whom you write notes, does he?”

  Pasqual glared back at him, breathing heavily. His hand was lumped in his pocket and I knew his kind was as dangerous as a coiled diamond-back.

  Burke didn’t seem to realize the danger of pushing him too far. He got up and took a step toward the Mexican with outstretched hand. “There’s a law in this country about carrying concealed weapons. Better hand it over, Pasqual, before it goes off and hurts someone.”

  There was a long moment while anything might have happened. Then Pasqual’s eyes flickered toward Michaela and he must have received some signal from her for he relaxed visibly. His brown hand came slowly out of his pocket with a snubnosed revolver clutched in his fingers. Burke took it, glanced at it and dropped it in his own pocket.

  “Unfortunately, it isn’t a .25,” he said shortly, going back and sitting down.

  Michaela finished her highball and stood up. “If this is ended, Senor Policeman, I would like to speak to Mr. Dwight in private.”

  “We don’t seem to be making much headway, do we?” Burke stood up with an unabashed smile. “Baker and I will get out of the way, but I’m going to ask you not to leave the grounds, Miss O’Toole. We’ll continue our question-and-answer game later.” He nodded at me and strolled toward the door.

  I went out with him. Dwight followed us and slammed the sliding doors together.

  “Why the hell do you keep hiding things from me?” I asked him.

  “Such as what?” He was leading the way toward the front of the house and he sounded pleased with himself.

  “Such as Michaela and her shadow being here yesterday afternoon.”

  “I wasn’t at all sure of it myself. It was more or less a shot in the dark. It’s one of the things Jelcoe turned up in the course of his investigation yesterday afternoon. The filling station man remembered the beautiful girl in a car with a Mexican license.”

  He stopped a maid and asked her where the butler was. She took us to a curtained alcove off the front hall where the butler was relaxed in a deep chair with the top buttons of his uniform pants loosened. He jumped up and looked flustered when we barged in, but Burke waved him back to his chair.

  “Just checking up on a couple of unimportant items. What time did Miss O’Toole and her companion arrive here yesterday afternoon?”

  “I think it was in the neighborhood of three o’clock, sir.”

  “Was Mr. Dwight here to receive them?”

 
“No sir … that is, I couldn’t make any definite statement concerning Mr. Dwight’s whereabouts, sir.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Merely that I am not accustomed to inquire closely into the master’s movements, sir.”

  “But you showed the guests in, didn’t you? Give me a straight answer. Was Dwight here at the time or wasn’t he?”

  “I really cannot say, sir.”

  “Goddamn it!” Jerry Burke’s fist pounded down and an ink-well jumped an inch above the desk in front of the butler. “Did you announce them or did you just leave them standing at the door?”

  The butler stood up and faced Burke with the dignity that only a bloated belly can give a man. “I showed them to the drawing room, sir, and sent a maid to summon Mr. Hardiman who was resting in his room.”

  “Then they came to see Hardiman … not Dwight?”

  “Quite correct, sir.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place?”

  “You did not ask me, sir.”

  A low giggle from the hall outside interrupted this interesting dialogue. It was followed by a muffled voice:

  “Did you ever hear anything so utterly dumb in all your life? Even our butler twists him around his finger.”

  Burke jerked the curtains aside and caught Desta Dwight’s arm as she jumped back from her eavesdropping position with a little squeal of fright. Marvin Moore stood beside her with a vacuous grin on his face. They had both changed to sport clothes and it was evident that they had kept right on drinking after leaving us on the lawn.

  Burke said: “You need a paddling, young lady,” and Desta swayed close to him, gurgling, “Why, Mr. Burke.”

  “Leggo her arm.” Marvin tried to push between them, his peevish face abruptly hard—surprisingly so.

  Burke gave her an impatient shove into the arms of her escort. “Take her away,” he growled. Then, to me with a sigh: “What a madhouse. The logical way to hunt a murderer here would be to count them out with an eeny meeny miney moe. Come on outside where we can talk and try to think.”

  The sun was below the treetops when we stepped outside. The peaceful hush of evening lay softly upon the sloping hillside. Murder seemed remote and intangible. “How does it add up?” I asked Burke as we strolled across the velvety grass.

  He shook his head with a frown. “It doesn’t add worth a damn. Every time I untie one knot I come on two more tangles. It isn’t over yet.” He was talking more to himself than to me. He paused beneath a tree to light his pipe. A car was coming up the driveway, screened from our eyes by the thick hedge. His gaze rested somberly on the Young cabin across the narrow valley, and I wondered what he was thinking about.

  The front door slammed loudly behind us. We turned and saw Raymond Dwight hurrying across the grass, waving a newspaper over his head. He was apoplectic with anger.

  “Who’s responsible for this outrage?” His voice reminded me of a bull’s infuriated bellow. “Someone, by God, will pay for this.” He kept on howling unprintable threats while Burke reached out and took the afternoon edition of the El Paso Free Press from him. A two-inch headline screamed:

  SECRET OIL DEAL BARED

  While Dwight stamped up and down, pulling out his hair and cursing, Burke began reading aloud:

  On unimpeachable authority it was learned late this afternoon that a local oil magnate has brought pressure upon the State Department in Washington to arrange a private settlement with the Mexican Government on his personal claims arising from the recent expropriation of petroleum properties.

  An exclusive source of information to this newspaper brings to light what appears to be an unsavory conspiracy between persons in high authority in the two governments to arrange a secret settlement for the benefit of one man at the expense of other claimants.

  In a downtown hotel late today, Senor Rodriguez admitted to Free Press reporters that he is empowered by the president of Mexico to negotiate the settlement of certain property claims with a representative of our State Department, but refused to comment on the identity of the party or parties for whose benefit this secret deal is being arranged.

  Indignation ran at white heat in the breasts of honest citizens of both countries late this afternoon, and as we go to press the streets of El Paso and Juarez are seething with angry mobs carrying banners protesting the negotiation of any private settlement.

  There is more to this than meets the eye, and this newspaper is reliably informed that a thorough investigation will bring to light a connection between the parties to this iniquitous proposal and the cold-blooded murder of at least one public-spirited American citizen who sought to prevent this disgraceful incident from blackening the records of our diplomatic friendship with our Sister Republic to the south.

  If this charge is susceptible of proof, the Free. Press takes the lead in demanding the immediate arrest of the malefactor or malefactors that our citizens may know the power of unlimited millions is not stronger than the consciences of public officials sworn to uphold the torch of Justice.

  Jerry Burke is personally conducting this investigation and the Free Press will be interested to observe what facts he will find it convenient to bring to light.

  As an independent and fearless crusader for the Right, the Free Press will not hesitate to bring the truth to the attention of the people; and if corruption becomes evident in the mishandling of this case, as has been suspected in certain other unsavory incidents in Burke’s high-handed methods in the past, the Free Press will be the first to demand a grand jury investigation to determine whether or not criminal charges may be preferred against this self-styled Dictator in our midst.

  Burke folded the paper with a shrug and a grimace. “Someone seems to have been talking out of turn. The Free Press is still after my scalp and is using this as a basis for another personal attack. It doesn’t even mention your name, Dwight. What the hell are you raving about?”

  Raymond Dwight waved clenched fists above his head. “What am I raving about? Good God, man! don’t you realize that this publicity is likely to be absolutely fatal? People will be sure to misinterpret and condemn what is in reality a legitimate business coup. If I could get my hands on the dirty louse who caused these filthy insinuations to be printed.…”

  “I thought it was a pretty swell piece of reporting,” a cool voice interrupted Raymond Dwight.

  We all wheeled about to confront Laura Yates, who had come up behind us soundlessly on the thick grass. She had a mocking smile on her lips, and appeared as unruffled as though she were guest of honor at a pink tea and making a correctly late entrance.

  12

  I hadn’t thought of Laura in connection with the news story, but Jerry Burke didn’t seem at all surprised. He said:

  “You didn’t lose any time getting that stuff into print.”

  “It’s making headlines all over the country this minute,” she assured him, while Dwight glared at her.

  “Who is this woman?”

  Burke introduced her to Dwight and she said: “We met rather informally last night … south of the Rio Grande.”

  Dwight ignored that. He gestured fiercely toward the paper in Burke’s hand and asked: “Did you cook up this? Are you responsible for this outrageous and libelous attack?” A thick vein throbbed in his forehead.

  Laura nodded proudly. “Your name isn’t mentioned, Mr. Dwight, so it’s hardly libelous. I thought it rather good … considering how few actual facts I had to work with.”

  Raymond Dwight started toward her with a murderous light in his eyes. “I ought to choke the life out of you! By God, do you realize what your little item is likely to cost me?”

  Burke got in front of him, but Laura Yates stepped aside and asked tauntingly:

  “How many million, Mr. Dwight?”

  The oil man snarled, “Plenty,” and tried to shoulder Burke aside.

  Laura laughed. “You admit the private deal you were trying to put over with Rodriguez. Thanks. I’ll qu
ote you on that.” She whirled and started toward her parked coupe.

  Struggling with Dwight, Burke snapped curtly at me: “Stop her, Asa. Don’t let her drive away.”

  I caught her just as she was getting in her car. With my hand on her wrist I held her from getting under the wheel. “Hold it,” I panted. “Jerry wants you to stick around.”

  She gave me a withering glance and tried to jerk loose. “Aren’t you forgetting yourself?”

  It was the first word she had addressed to me since she had come up. She might just as well have slapped my face. I jerked her away from the car and for the first time in my life I understood how wife-beating husbands get that way. More than anything in the world, I wanted to crack that mask of cynical hardness on her face.

  “You have a hell of a way of respecting confidences,” I told her angrily. “How much did the Free Press pay you for the inside dope we let you in on last night?”

  “They paid quite well, thank you. With this additional verification from Mr. Dwight.…”

  Burke and Dwight came up together. Burke’s hand was tightly on the millionaire’s arm, and Dwight was wiping a slime of saliva from his lips with a silk handkerchief.

  “I’ll take care of her,” Burke was saying. “And you’d better send your limousine in for Senor Rodriguez. We’ll have a showdown, here and now.”

  “That’ll be just ducky,” Laura Yates said brightly. “I’ll be delighted to sit in on the conference … and I don’t believe there’ll be any more talk of libel when it’s over.”

  “How do you stand in this?” Dwight asked Burke, disregarding Laura with an obvious effort.

  “All I want is Young’s murderer,” Burke assured him. “I won’t interfere with any of your double-dealing unless it has some connection with the case.”

  Dwight’s limousine came purring up the drive just then. Laura’s eyebrows went up when she saw Myra Young getting out of the back seat. She had changed from her mannish costume to a white silk dress with a belt of red leather set jauntily about her hips.