Headless Lady

by Clayton Rawson

  “Maybe they didn’t know that,” I said stubbornly. “And besides, their motive is much stronger than—”

  “No,” Merlini contradicted even more stubbornly, “that’s not so. I was suspicious all along that the inheritance of a circus—the outdoor show business being what it has been lately—was hardly motive enough for two murders and an attempted third. Circus management today is mostly a first-class headache—too much competition from movies and radio, I suspect—and no one in his right mind is going to undertake wholesale murder in order to inherit a headache. The real murderer’s motive is right here.”

  Merlini turned the stiff figure of the mummy over on its face and exposed a gaping hole between its shoulder blades.

  “You knew that the mummy was papier mâché and hollow,” he said, reaching in and bringing out neatly banded packets of United States currency by the handful. “This particular mummy classes as one of the most valuable side-show draws ever exhibited. He’s nearly filled with cash, and I haven’t seen a bill in the lot yet that is smaller than a C note. Most of them are grands.” Inspector Gavigan stepped forward and probed the body’s interior. His operative technique might have been open to professional criticism, but it got results. Merlini held a pillowcase, and Gavigan filled it with banknotes. Finally he produced two account ledgers, and his face beamed as he leafed through them.

  “The Weissman evidence,” he said. “More motive. To certain people these books are worth twice that cash. It means curtains for some of Maxie’s racketeer pals whom we haven’t been able to pin anything on. Especially Jerry O’Bryen, the Brooklyn real-estate operator—the two-faced crook who throws a smoke screen over his underworld connections by his donations to charity. The D.A.’s been hoping to get him with his pants down for a long time—and this does it. Maxie didn’t trust O’Bryen, and he’s put enough evidence in these books to send Jerry up the river until about the year 4000.”

  “Motive enough for half a dozen murders,” Merlini commented. “O’Bryen would pay plenty to get his hands on those books.” He paused a moment, and then continued, “Since you know who the murderer is, it’s obvious why the technique of the crimes was so expert, why so few clues that one could really get one’s teeth into were left.”

  “I don’t see them,” I said. “If, at this late date, you are going to turn into one of those psychic detectives who solve their cases by character analysis or plain and fancy hunches, you can find yourself a new Boswell, starting now.”

  “Do you think the Inspector would have let me pull anything as dramatic, anything that smelled as much of the footlights, as that ventriloquism stunt, if I had only hunches? There were just three really decent clues, but they were whoppers. It’s a practical possibility, even in this day and age of scientific detection and F.B.I. trained detectives with their spectroscopes, their moulage methods, and their vacuum cleaners, to commit one murder, perhaps even two, without a slip. It happens every day, somewhere. But if you try it with the investigators sitting right in your lap, and are forced to attempt a third and then a fourth murder, even a Napoleon of crime can be excused for making a misstep. It’s pretty nearly impossible, unless the investigators are complete dunderheads. The law of averages gets you eventually.”

  “Oh, so! Dunderhead, is it? Some day I’m going to cross you up and report one of your cases with you on the short end. It may be my last assignment, but I’ll have fun writing it.”

  Merlini looked down his nose at me, said, “Sour grapes,” and then continued on his explanatory way. If asked to explain one of his own tricks, the man is as close-mouthed as a clam, but when he begins describing the inner workings of a murderer’s hocus-pocus, he lectures in extenso, complete with prefaces, marginal notations, footnotes, and appendices.

  “The law of averages,” he repeated, “gets you in the end. Complications creep in, unforeseen hitches occur, snap decisions must be made. I doubt if even a lightning calculator could run that gamut. Our murderer, though an experienced criminal tight-wire walker, took three bad falls. Even then Lady Luck still smiled, because the evidence, though it completely exposed the criminal’s identity, was still not quite the sort that a good trial lawyer couldn’t fog with a lot of reasonable doubt. That was why I set the trap I did. That and the desire to avoid a messy court trial which would have put the fact of Pauline’s illegitimacy on all the front pages.”

  Impatiently Inspector Gavigan said, “Merlini, skip the long-winded introduction. I’ve heard you do them before. Your reputation as an impromptu lecturer is safe enough. Get down to cases. You told me earlier who the killer was and supplied some evidence. But I want to know how you arrived at those conclusions. Why—”

  “What’s your hurry, Inspector? The conflagration is over. You’re not going any place.”

  “But you may be,” Gavigan came back. “There’s still a blotter full of law violations hanging over your head, in case you don’t remember. Get on with it!”

  “Sour grapes from Ross. Ingratitude from you. I don’t know why I bother.” Merlini grinned, apparently little disturbed by Gavigan’s threat. Then he got to the point. “The missing head—I said more than once that it was the crux of the matter, that if we could find it—”

  “But we haven’t found it,” Schafer said. “Or did you?”

  “No,” Merlini replied. “If I had, there would have been no need to set the trap we did. How many good reasons are there for the removal by the murderer of his victim’s head?”

  “We discussed two,” I offered. “It might have been done to conceal the victim’s identity; in this case, to hide the fact that the body was the missing and wanted Paula. But that’s out, because, if it were the motive, the clothing labels would have been removed as well.

  “Secondly, as I said before, it might have been done for the exact opposite reason—to hide the fact that the body was not Paula—but someone else. You eliminated that on the score that no attempt had been made to remove Paula’s fingerprints from her trailer, or the hands from the body. The only other motive I can suggest is insanity.”

  “Which,” Merlini answered, “is improbable on more than one count. Separating head from body is a fairly unusual form for psychopathic body mutilation to take. Furthermore, everything else about the crimes indicated a cleverly operating, sane mind—always supposing that your definition of sanity includes the possibility of murder. There’s one other possible motive.”

  Captain Schafer said, “I get it now. The bullet was in the head, and the murderer knew that ballistics tests could link it to his gun.”

  “Exactly. The head was removed for the simple reason that it contained evidence that would have brought the murderer’s whole house of cards down about his ears. The bullet itself couldn’t be extracted because the murderer hadn’t the time or any decent probing instruments.”

  Gavigan nodded. “Yes. I’ll agree there. I’ve seen cases where the bullet ricocheted inside the skull, and the medical examiner had to do a complete cranial dissection in order to locate the slug. But how did that indicate identity? Several suspects were in possession of firearms.”

  “That wasn’t too difficult,” Merlini replied. “I merely asked myself why it was the murderer hadn’t gotten rid of the gun instead of troubling to saw off the head. You see?”

  “Well, yes. This hick town doesn’t offer any firearms stores where a similar gun could be purchased and substituted. You’d have noticed its absence. And the other boners?”

  “Were worse. The business about the gun couldn’t be helped. Fate played that card. But the other clues were out-and-out boners. The rubber gloves should never have been planted in the Headless Lady’s trailer to make us think that she had committed the crimes and lammed. The nitrate test is getting commoner year by year. Years ago few people outside the Crime Detection Bureau at Northwestern had ever heard of it. Now every dick who’s had the F.B.I. training can do it with his eyes shut.”

  “Stop editorializing,” I objected. “The test showed tha
t the gloves had been worn when a shot was fired. So what?”

  “So,” Merlini said, “if you hadn’t poked your nose down so close to that paraffin mold you’d have noticed that the nitrate stains appeared on the left hand! There was one person among our suspects who was obviously left-handed.”*

  “There were two,” Schafer corrected. “I’m not quite so blind that I missed the paraffin-mold clue. It was obvious as hell that the murderer was a southpaw. Burns saw it, too. But we didn’t mention it to you. We were saving that for your court trial. I thought that if you saw the molds, it might throw a scare into you.”

  Merlini said, “You thought I was left-handed?”

  “Sure, aren’t you? I saw you vanishing that half-dollar of yours with your left hand.”

  “Teach you not to make generalizations about queer people like magicians. Look.”

  Merlini took out his half-dollar, dropped it onto his open left hand, closed the hand, said “Abracadabra” three times, and slowly opened his fist. The half-dollar was gone. Merlini bent forward and took it from Schafer’s coat pocket. Then he dropped it on his right palm, repeated the whole process and spread both hands wide, fingers open, palms empty. “The coin is in your pocket again, Captain.”

  Schafer reached in sheepishly and removed it himself.

  “Oh,” he said, “both hands, huh?”

  Merlini nodded. “Ambidextrous. One result of the practice of conjuring. While the spectators watch the right hand doing some ordinary above-board action, the left hand is often busy getting in the dirty work. Magicians’ left hands consequently are well trained.

  “The third and final boner was the bit of information that, when it showed up in O’Halloran’s story, clinched the case. I told you the other night, Ross, that everyone had an alibi for the monkey business with the lights—except for Joy. She, Mac, and Keith were apparently the only ones on the lot who knew that Pauline was about to give the Sheriff some headline news. Then tonight Joy was with us when the sword was stolen, and she had an alibi at last.

  “But when O’Halloran, busily spinning a yarn aimed at making the Duke the fall-guy, got so engrossed in his careful pussy-footing between truth and falsehood that he stumbled and admitted that he had eavesdropped outside the trailer window, he elected himself as the murderer!

  “O’Halloran was the man who owned a gun distinctive enough so that he couldn’t, in a tank town like this, obtain a duplicate.** He was the man whose first-hand acquaintance with crime supplied him with an expert murder technique; whose first-hand acquaintance with violent death had hardened him to the point that he didn’t boggle at sawing off a corpse’s head to save himself; whose first-hand acquaintance with detection made him realize the danger that lay in that bullet if ballistics tests were ever performed. O’Halloran was the southpaw. You’ll remember that when I gave my demonstration of the gentle art of pocket-picking, I found his gun in his left coat pocket and his billfold in his left trouser pocket. It was possible that he might carry his purse there to foil pickpockets, but he would only carry his gun in a left-handed pocket if he was left-handed. O’Halloran also manipulated his cigarette with his left hand.”***

  “Your solution,” I criticized, “still has as many loose ends as a Spanish shawl. I still don’t see why he had to kill the Major. And why, once he did get his hands on the cash, didn’t he lam instead of hanging around waiting for us to catch wise?”

  “Because, Ross, when the locomotive initial event in this case pulled out of the station, all the others hitched on in logical order and rattled along behind. Briefly, O’Halloran’s thought processes must have gone something like this. Having run Paula to ground here on the circus, he tumbled to the fact almost immediately that the Duke was on the show. Casing Paula’s trailer as he was, he could hardly have missed the visits the Duke paid her—like that one we ourselves saw. He didn’t nab the Duke at once because it wasn’t the reward he was after, but the Weissman money. Since the Duke was living in the clown car, and since he noticed that both Paula and the Major always kept their trailers locked, he deduced that the money was hidden in one or the other —probably Paula’s. But she stuck to it too closely. Simple burglary, he realized, might not do the trick—he might have to get the money at the point of a gun. So, to eliminate it as much as anything else, he investigated the Major’s trailer first.

  “Using the glass cutter, he got in at the window. But, while he was searching the place, the Major and Pauline returned unexpectedly, trapping him there. He picked up the bull-hook and ducked into the wardrobe. When Pauline left, the Major opened the wardrobe to get his slicker. O’Halloran knocked him out with the elephant hook to prevent recognition. He finished his search and found that the reason the Major had always locked his trailer was because he had a bank roll there—the remainder of the Duke’s initial payment after Saturday’s salary payoff. But far worse, he found that the Major’s heart, which he hadn’t known was bad, had stopped.

  “He was in a jam. He didn’t want to lam without the money he had committed murder to get. An investigation would endanger his impersonation of Towne and probably scare off Paula and the Duke before he could hijack them. That left only one course. He had to make the murder look like an accident and no questions asked. He refrained from touching the Major’s money so its absence wouldn’t contradict the accident setup. We didn’t find it there later because Pauline had removed it the next morning, and Schafer didn’t find it when he searched Pauline’s trailer because she had it, with the will, in bed with her.

  “Then, when he thought his staged auto-smash had gotten by nicely, Harte and myself arrived; and he began to worry. Not knowing why Pauline had visited my shop or what was behind her apparent vanish from it, he couldn’t understand where we fitted into the case and decided we needed some investigation. Then, ironically, although he himself was familiar with pickpocket argot, he wasn’t aware that the real Towne knew any; and he made the mistake of denying such knowledge.**** He didn’t know this was an error then, but later he got a jolt when, listening at the trailer window, he not only heard us shoot holes in his phony accident but also heard Pauline announce that what she had to say would make headlines. He knew that meant that she suspected Paula and the Duke, and was intending to stool on them. This in itself, later proved to be a clue to the murderer’s identity since it meant that only someone knowing the Headless Lady’s identity could have translated Pauline’s cryptic statement.

  “O’Halloran still hadn’t gotten his dukes on the money, and he saw that unless he could quiet Pauline he never would. His flair for the impromptu showed itself here when he quickly concocted one of the year’s better pieces of dirty work. With Pauline engaged in her perilous and dizzy feats aloft, he unplugged the light cable—a murder attempt that left no clues at all, that was simple and direct to the point of genius. The only reason he didn’t plug the cable in again, making the light failure not only clueless but downright mysterious, was that he wanted to prolong the confusion the lack of light caused. Harte incidentally mentioned the point that a circus person wouldn’t have counted on Pauline’s being killed in such a fall. That was the reason I began to suspect that the murderer might not be a circus person—a deduction which made me give O’Halloran some serious consideration.

  “You will also notice that he made no serious attempt to dish up any alibis, but instead promptly did something of even more importance. He hotfooted it back to the Major’s trailer. Finding us gone, as he hoped he would, he destroyed or made off with all the evidence in the matter of the auto accident. He wiped away the rubber glove prints and took the hat, the broken lens pieces, and the photo. This effectively staved off any immediate official investigation.

  “The important thing after that was speed. I think, like ourselves, he saw the Duke enter Pauline’s trailer and decided against a holdup on the circus lot as being too risky. The Duke was the sort of person who would start shooting, and the battle would bring the whole show down around their ears. So he la
y low, thought hard, and during the night his criminally fertile mind hatched the plan of the chalked arrow which early the next morning sidetracked Paula down a little-frequented road. He held her up, handkerchief over his face probably, and knocked her out. This next, I’ll admit, is guesswork based on the finding of a gun among Paula’s effects. Mindful of the fact that the night before he had struck the Major too hard, he now pulled his punch too much; and, while he was in the trailer finding the money, Paula came to and put her head in at the door, gun in hand. O’Halloran managed to fire first—but got her in the head.

  “Dilemma. He now had the money, but also another body, a body whose head held a bullet from his gun. He knew only too well that the rifling marks on the slug could be matched with the gun. He couldn’t discard the gun without arousing suspicion, and he couldn’t get a substitute. He had neither time nor instruments to probe for the bullet. Someone might drive down that road at any moment and catch him red-handed. But if he conceals the body and removes Paula’s luggage so that she appears to have decamped, he again conceals the fact of murder. Then he got too fancy.

  “He had been the eavesdropper at our hotel-room door and had heard me deduce the use of the rubber gloves. He saw that if he planted the gloves and the torn envelope in the trailer, so that they looked hidden but would be sure to be found, suspicion might be switched to Paula, Harte, and myself; and the official investigators, when they arrived eventually, could be expected to ride off in all directions after a vanished and impossible to find Paula. In addition, since he now had the money, he could dispense with the false whiskers of the Stuart Towne impersonation, disclose himself as a detective, and join the hunt—with the quarry everyone is chasing, reposing secure, but dead, in the trunk compartment of his own car!”