Mum's the Word for Murder

by Brett Halliday

  Jerry continued to take it pretty hard. He didn’t give up his investigation for an instant, but it seemed to be all over. I sat with him while he interviewed hundreds of witnesses the next few days. We couldn’t dig up a single fact in Dr. Montgomery’s past life pointing to any other person than Luzon with a suspicion of a motive. Sifting every minute detail of Luzon’s life did not bring to light a hint of a possible accomplice.

  The source of the poison was a blind trail. It hadn’t been purchased from any retail establishment in the city. The dairy company proved conclusively that the poison did not go into the bottles before delivery.

  No amount of questioning could break Luzon’s story. He swore he had planned to spend the night with his sister, and on the way had dropped into a drinking place where he had one too many. His memory of the café episode leading to his arrest was hazy.

  There was nothing for it except to release him. The papers declared a Roman holiday on Burke when the truth came out—that the object of the most intensive manhunt in years had been lodged in the city jail all the time—during the commission of the crime and while the city was being combed for him.

  The Free Press ran a series of cartoons depicting Burke in various guises searching for Luzon, who was pictured in each of them as being underfoot while the search went on. The best of these was a caricature of Burke in Sherlock Holmes attire, standing on a hillock with an absurdly long telescope clamped to his eye—with Luzon supporting the telescope and smirking at him.

  Burke called me up the night that cartoon appeared. I hadn’t seen him for several days. He sounded pretty well whipped down. To my inquiry if there was anything new he sardonically replied by asking if I had seen the day’s cartoon. I told him I had, and he said that was the latest development, so far as he knew.

  I was glad enough to accept when he suggested that we go over to Juarez for dinner. What he needed, I told him, was to relax and forget the whole damned mixed-up mess.

  He chuckled with no great degree of mirth and agreed to do that very thing. He said he’d pick me up in half an hour, and I got ready to go with him.

  When he called for me there were lines in his face that I hadn’t seen before. He acted subdued—just as his voice sounded. I didn’t know what to do or say. A man like Jerry Burke doesn’t want sympathy when he’s up against a tough break. That is, not outward sympathy. I didn’t have to tell him how I felt.

  We drove across the bridge without saying much. On the other side, he turned a lopsided smile on me and asked if I’d like to go to El Gato Pobre.

  As a matter of fact, I would have picked any other restaurant if he had left it up to me. One that didn’t have so many reminders of the thing I wanted Burke to forget. I agreed, though. After all, it was Burke’s funeral.

  The place looked about the same as it had the last time we were there. The Mexican waiter remembered us and took us to a table near the corner where Burke shot the young fellow the morning after Malvern’s murder.

  It gave me a queer feeling to see the mirror still hanging on the wall, the one that saved Burke’s life. I mentioned it after the waiter had brought us a couple of Martinis. Burke glanced at it with quizzically cocked eyebrows.

  “That’s about the only aspect of the Mum case that’s been cleared up.”

  “Has it? You didn’t tell me.”

  “Are you still interested?” he asked.

  “Of course. I don’t want to leave any loose ends dangling in my book.”

  Burke laughed at that. Almost a genuine laugh. “In the name of all that’s holy, Asa, what good’s a detective novel without a solution?”

  I told him I was waiting for him to crash through with the solution. I guess I made it sound like the real thing, for he was pathetically grateful for my confidence.

  He tipped his drink up and said grimly, “You may have to wait a long time. But I’ve never failed to finish what I started.”

  “Any new clues?”

  He shook his head gloomily. “There ain’t no such animal.” He hesitated. “Dick Devoe has been released on bond on the extortion charge. And we checked his poker alibi for the Ullendorf murder. Airtight.”

  “I believe you’ve got something up your sleeve,” I protested.

  “Something so nebulous it won’t stand discussion. I lie awake hours every night and go over the bare facts. Something’s been trying to break through from my subconscious for days. When it does—I’ll have your solution.”

  That’s all I could drag out of him. He’s a stubborn cuss. That one mistake about Luzon had soured him on talking. I realized I wouldn’t get another word out of him until it was cut and dried.

  I switched the conversation back to the beginning. “Tell me about the Mexican fellow you shot in here.”

  “Nothing to it, really. More coincidence than anything else. I was pressing down pretty hard on the American connections of a dope-ring. They figured to rub me out and relieve the pressure. The kid was just a hired hand. We cleared up the entire mob while the Mum hullabaloo was going on. Got a confession on the attempted murder. No connection with the Malvern death. It was just a handy dodge to get me over here where the gun artist could get me.”

  We had another cocktail and studied the typewritten menus the waiter laid before us. I decided on roast mallard and started to ask Burke what looked good to him.

  I saw him staring at the menu as though he had never seen one before. The color oozed out of his face as I watched him. He laid the flimsy sheet of paper down shakily and stared at me. I knew he wasn’t seeing me. He wasn’t seeing anything that another human eye could see. For the first time in my life, I actually saw a mind at work.

  He said, “The crooked b, Asa.”

  I’m ashamed to remember that I thought he might have suddenly gone nuts. I tried to be very soothing, patting his arm and saying, “Take it easy old man. Don’t get upset.”

  “Upset!” Something faded out of his eyes and he was looking at me. He said, “Asa, am I a nut, or is there an old Mexican on the sidewalk outside with an outfit for turning out pen-and-ink calling cards on individual orders?”

  I thought a moment and remembered that there was. I told him so and started to ask him what was eating him.

  He didn’t give me time. He was up and striding away before I got my question well started.

  I stared after him, wondering if I should follow him, call for help, or what.

  He was back before I could decide, his eyes glowing with something that hadn’t been there when we came in. He had a handful of small blank calling cards with him. He laid them on the table and I tried to remember what they reminded me of.

  He chuckled when he saw my face. “I’m not crazy. This is the break. It had to come. I’ve studied the Mum typing exhibits so much that I can see them any time I close my eyes. One of the distinguishing features is an off-center b.” He lifted the menu and pointed out three typed b’s with a shaking forefinger. All were tilted at the same angle.

  “Mum used the same machine that typed these menus.” Burke’s excitement had passed. “He bought a handful of blank cards from the old man out there and typed them.”

  He beckoned our waiter and I helped him make the man understand that we had important business to transact—business which required a typewriter—the typewriter they used to type the El Gato Pobre menus would do splendidly.

  The man looked as though he resigned himself to the idiosyncrasies of all Americans, and took us to a table in the rear where an old office-model typewriter sat.

  Burke put the cards in and typed the two advertisements and the three death cards from memory. The same crooked letter b was evidenced. I didn’t see any other points of similarity, but Burke pointed out half a dozen.

  He wasn’t in any hurry after he had the precious cards in his pocket to take across the river for absolute identification.

  We went back to our table and dined regally on roast mallard. Burke turned aside all questions as to what this new development mig
ht mean. He promised to let me know as soon as anything definite resolved itself. That was all I could get out of him.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I CALLED BURKE THE NEXT MORNING and he told me there wasn’t the slightest doubt that the murder typing had been done on the Juarez café typewriter. That was all he would say. He didn’t hint at any immediate results. He didn’t sound exuberant about it. But the hopelessness was gone out of his voice. That was important. I had worlds of faith in Jerry Burke so long as he was sticking on the job.

  I thought about it a lot the next few days without getting anywhere. Finding the typewriter didn’t add up to a whole lot. After all, anyone could have done just what we did without attracting any particular notice—buy some cards from the old man and type them on the café typewriter.

  Of course, it brought Conchita and Ricardo back into my mind vividly. I knew they were still doing their dance act at El Gato Pobre. The publicity they got out of the Ullendorf murder probably raised the figures on their paychecks.

  I went over and over my notes on the entire case, checking every angle and getting nowhere. I checked up and learned that the Arthur Malverns had got the old man’s dough, all right, and had moved to a respectable section of the city. The kids were eating regularly, and getting a break into decent society.

  Devoe was out on bond, running the same poker game in his hotel room, with his case due to linger a long time in court, and with eventual conviction not any too positive.

  Luzon had filed suit in court to compel Mrs. Montgomery to turn over Dr. Montgomery’s records and laboratory equipment to him under terms of an old written agreement that he had produced. The little old lady evidently hadn’t got over her idea that Luzon had something to do with her husband’s death, and she was making him fight it out in court every step of the way.

  That’s the way things stood as the weeks of May slid past. The Mum case wasn’t mentioned in the papers any more. The Free Press continued its attacks on Jerry Burke without any particularly heavy ammunition to keep interest up.

  I heard rumors here and there that at any time he would be asked to resign. I didn’t pay them any credence because I knew Burke wouldn’t resign if he was requested to.

  After the impetus of Burke’s discovering the typewriter, I went to work and wrote a complete first draft of my detective novel—up to the next-to-last chapter. That was as far as I could go. I had foolishly written my publisher several glowing letters telling him what a knockout the book was going to be, and I began receiving sarcastic and then angry letters demanding a definite delivery date.

  I called Jerry Burke every time I received one of the letters, and read it to him over the phone. He professed to sympathize with me deeply, but refused to give me a hint of what was brewing.

  He was head over heels in a sort of civic good-will campaign during that period, and didn’t have any time for me. El Paso always goes in for Memorial Day in a big way (the Fort Bliss influence, I suppose) and this year they were planning a bigger and better demonstration than ever before.

  As an ex-Major and director of local police activities, Burke was chairman of half a dozen committees dealing with different phases of the impending celebration. Knowing his hatred for such public displays, I was pretty sure he wasn’t doing it because he wanted to, but because he felt his official position was so insecure that he had to bolster it up any way he could.

  He wasn’t, I noticed from the newspaper accounts, to be one of the speakers at the banquet following the parade. I wondered if that meant anything, recalling that he had been principal speaker at the last big local blowout of this nature, St. Patrick’s Day, when he made his initial bow to his El Paso public, sponsored by an approving mob of Legionnaires who carried him on their shoulders from the train to the speaker’s rostrum.

  The Legionnaires were again to be out in force on Memorial Day, but I didn’t see any mention made of plans to carry Burke on their shoulders or greet him with acclaim.

  I stayed at home on Memorial Day. Crowds and parades give me a headache. Nip and Tuck and I celebrated decorously by planting a small American flag on the little oval mound in the back yard where their mother is buried. She had died in battle like a brave soldier, defending her infant son and daughter from a real or fancied attack by a stray airedale. The airedale is also buried in my back yard, but we didn’t decorate his grave.

  Burke called me about six o’clock. His voice was brittle, charged with more tension than I had ever heard in his voice before. My hopes shot up. I had been beginning to think I would have to solve the murder somehow and get my novel in before my publishers cut off my drawing account.

  “Want to have dinner with me at El Gato Pobre?”

  From the way Jerry Burke said it I knew it was more than an idle dinner invitation. I said, “Of course,” and my hopes took another bound upward.

  His next question gave me a shivery feeling. “Have you got a gun?” he barked.

  “I think there’s a .38 automatic around the house somewhere.”

  “Better slip it into your pocket. Are you willing to chance a little shooting to get the end of your book?”

  “You know damned well I am,” I told him crossly.

  “All right. We’ve got to start moving. Be by for you.” He hung up and I went to a dresser drawer to rummage for the pistol, wondering what the hell was up.

  He had a grin plastered all over his face when he pulled up at the curb. I got in and he asked me if I had my shooting-iron. I showed it to him and asked if I was supposed to smuggle it across the Border.

  “That’s fixed,” he assured me. “You and I are on important official business tonight. Don’t forget that I deputized you if anything comes of it.”

  I refused to demean myself by asking questions. I knew he wouldn’t answer them until he was ready to.

  It was sundown when we parked on a side street around the corner from the café. Burke went in first, and he was met at the door by the Juarez policeman, Juan, who had been with us the night Dorothy Ullendorf was stabbed.

  He and Burke talked together in a low tone while I pretended I wasn’t interested in their conversation. Then Juan went to a group of Mexican policemen not in uniform and began distributing them about the room.

  “We’ll take this table.” Burke frowningly led the way to a table well hidden from the rest of the room by a potted palm. We both sat where we could watch the entrance through a rift in the palm fronds. Then Burke let the tenseness relax out of his body and threw me a tired smile.

  “We shall now see what we shall see.”

  I couldn’t hold myself in any longer. “Damn it, Jerry,” I exploded. “What’s all this about shooting and the end of a book?”

  “Maybe I’m wrong, Asa,” he temporized. “I’ll never forget doing my prophesying stunt just before we found out Luzon had spent the night snugly in our hoosegow.”

  “All right,” I said, “be mysterious.”

  “My resignation is signed,” he told me calmly. “If things don’t happen tonight, I’m handing it to the city authorities in the morning.”

  “If what doesn’t happen?”

  The smile faded from his face. “Don’t all detective novels end by disclosing how the hero master-minded the case?”

  “Those that are published end that way,” I said bitterly.

  “All right. I’ll bare the secret processes of what I flatteringly call my brain to you. By the time I finish—we’ll know whether I’m right or not.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “It’s what you authors call a recapitulation, isn’t it?”

  “A recapitulation,” I told him, “is supposed to lead to a solution.”

  He nodded and leaned back. His gaze was upon the entrance and I saw his body stiffen. Then he relaxed. Four American Legionnaires had just drifted in. He said, “They must have finished decorating the graves over here in Juarez and dispersed.”

  “A very touching spectacle of mutual good will,” I said caus
tically. “The papers hailed it as the foundation-stone of a new aspect of international relations. Whose bright idea was it to send a lot of Legionnaires across the Rio Grande to decorate Mexican graves?”

  “Mine,” Burke admitted. “I had a lot of trouble arranging it.”

  “You were going to recapitulate,” I reminded him.

  “So I was. Let’s go over the only definite things we know about the Mum case. Three murder advertisements—all sneeringly directed at me. Three murders—on time and to the dot. Three Mum calling cards. The cards and ads are our only concrete clues. Let’s see what we know about them:

  “They were all typed on cards procured from the old man outside the door—on the machine in this café—all written at one sitting, according to my experts. What picture does that give you?”

  “You’re telling me,” I protested.

  “So I am. All right. We can picture Mum sitting in this café planning the whole diabolic scheme. It must have been just about the time I made my much-publicized entry into the city—the date being further verified by the fact that the ads show a personal animosity directed at me. A sort of ‘Oh, yeah, Mr. Burke?’ at me and the big things I’m supposed to do.

  “Go on to the crimes. Malvern-Ullendorf-Montgomery. M-U-M. I’m inclined to think the victims were selected while the crime was being planned. That the by-line, Mum, was selected because of the initials rather than the initials selected to fit the by-line.”

  He paused and reloaded his pipe. I had a feeling that he was killing time, leading up to something he was ready to spring after an awaited event took place. The room was filling with diners. A lot of them were American veterans who had marched across the bridge that afternoon to pay their respects to the Juarez casualties of the war.