Mum's the Word for Murder

by Brett Halliday

  A tingle rippled up and down my spine when the spotlight picked out Ricardo and Conchita in their tango on the stage. Burke didn’t pay any attention to them. I wondered if they had any connection with what he waited for.

  “Let’s study the actual killings,” he went on as though he were discussing nothing more important than a reciprocal trade agreement with the West Indies. “By running down clues in each case, we come upon one man who profits or hopes to profit by each death. Each of these men has an indisputable alibi which cannot be shaken. What does that get us?”

  “Nothing,” I told him promptly. “I’ve studied every angle for weeks without getting anywhere.”

  “It took weeks for me to make anything out of it,” Burke admitted. “And I’m still not at all sure that I know any more than you.”

  “But what has this grandstand play to do with it? You’ve got something up your sleeve.”

  “I’m trying,” Burke grumbled, “to recreate a certain atmosphere. The Mum case is apparently a closed incident. Mum must feel pretty good about the way he got away with it. I’m attempting to recreate a psychological mood to trick Mum into betraying himself. My theory is too damned nebulous to back up any positive action. If the thing happens that I expect to happen within a few minutes—my theory will cease to be nebulous.”

  His damnably quiet voice grated on my nerves horribly. He sat there placidly waiting. My automatic was a dragging weight in my coat pocket. I was acutely conscious of the squad of Mexican police scattered about the room—of the increasing horde of unknowing diners as yet untouched by the fringe of whatever drama was about to unfold.

  Conchita and Ricardo completed their act in a burst of applause. The spotlight held them steadily as they bowed their thanks. Then the light went out and they disappeared from the stage.

  I looked across at Burke and divined that he wasn’t as placid as he seemed. The café entrance was the focal-point of his concentrated attention. I began watching it with him—and the minutes dragged by.

  A group of three Legionnaires came carelessly through the door. I stiffened as one of them faced me. I was looking through the fringe of palm fronds at the pallid face of Dick Devoe.

  I heard Burke’s whispered warning: “Sit tight. Don’t let them see your face.”

  I saw the other two as a waiter led them to a corner table. Arthur Malvern and Estevan Luzon. I glanced at Burke and knew everything was all right.

  Chapter Twenty

  “LET THEM HAVE A FEW DRINKS and get their celebration well under way,” Burke said. “There’s no hurry now. Juan and his men have them spotted. He has a full description of all three.”

  I was shaking like a leaf. I ordered another drink and said through set teeth, “Quit treating me like an infant! Am I in on this, or am I not?”

  “You are. I can go ahead with my recapitulation now without fear of making an ass of myself. What do the alibis of each of those three men make you think of?”

  “Stop asking me questions and give me answers!” I barked.

  The trio were seated about their corner table and appeared to be in a festive mood.

  “I didn’t get the hunch until a couple of weeks ago,” Burke admitted. “All the alibis have two things in common. They are absolutely puncture-proof—and they all bear marks of being prearranged to fit the exact time of murder. You’ll be getting it now,” he swept on, “but you asked me for the answers. Don’t interrupt.

  “It began to look possible that each man knew whom the murder advertisement pointed to—giving each an opportunity to provide himself an alibi that was going to be badly needed. On that basis, it had the stink of collusion—as though all three might have conspired together to get rid of the three persons whom they wanted most to get rid of.

  “With that line of reasoning, a lot of things became clear. First: The reason for the seemingly reasonless ads. It was obviously a means of communicating the scheduled time of murder to the one who was going to need an alibi without a possibility of tracing any connection between informant and the receiver of the important information.”

  Both of us looked across the room from our screened vantage-point to the three men sitting at their table. They were lifting drinks in a toast. I shuddered.

  Burke went on calmly: “That began to look like the most reasonable hypothesis. I did a lot of figuring. I don’t mind saying that the three methods of committing murder stumped me. Then I began to see it.

  “I told you a few minutes ago that I was seeking to recreate a certain atmosphere that I sensed had been a prelude to triple murder. One of the worst stumbling-blocks was the fact that in all of our investigations we didn’t turn up a solitary link between the three suspects. There wasn’t any indication that any two of them had ever known each other. Living in different parts of town, in three distinct strata of society. I even dug back into their boyhood and found they attended different schools.

  “That phase of it held me up for days. I damned near went crazy trying to find a connecting link between them. As soon as I discovered it, the whole thing became clear, like a fog lifting from a blurred landscape.

  “They are all war veterans.” Burke took his pipe from his mouth and pointed the stem at me. “That was the real breaking-point of the case. It tied up with the time the ads and cards were supposed to be typed and with the personal animosity toward me.

  “Cast back to St. Patrick’s Day. The Legionnaires are gathered to hear me get up and prate about how I’m going to stamp out every vestige of crime in the community. Can’t you see those three listening to me with sneers on their lips? Each one of them burning up to kill a certain person—and each one afraid to commit the crime because he knows the finger of suspicion will point to him at once.

  “Go on from that banquet scene. It’s not too farfetched to presume that these three veterans, thrown together by chance, drawn together, perhaps, by a force which you and I don’t understand—a subtle exudation of murderous desire and hatred for me—should have formed a small group and gone to a café to celebrate their reunion with a few drinks.

  “They might have come here. A check-up revealed that many veterans did come here for dinner following the St. Patrick’s Day celebration. Drinks induce a looseness of tongue. It might have started with a gibe at me. The others agree heartily. More drinks are in order. A hint here, a hint there. Each one recites his grievance and admits an upsurging desire to commit murder if he could be sure of going undetected. Not a pretty picture—but plausible.

  “The perfect crime flowers under the stimulus of alcohol and the peculiar bond of fellowship created by the lust for murder in each heart. Some one of the three proposes that each do the job for one of the others—each proposing to commit an unmotivated murder as the price of having his victim done in.

  “The names of the victims suggest the Mum by-line. Each one must be notified in advance in time to prepare a perfect alibi for himself. They agree not to see each other and not to communicate in any way except through the advertising columns of the newspaper. The ads and the cards are prepared and distributed among them, perhaps by lot, perhaps by agreement. See how it works out? Can you put your finger on a single flaw in my line of reasoning?”

  “For God’s sake!” I choked. “It’s a horrible hypothesis! Each one agreeing to kill a person he doesn’t know—probably has never seen!”

  “But it fits,” Burke insisted. “Even the three murder methods fit the characters of the three men. A rifle, a knife, poison. Devoe would coolly stand off and steady a rifle. Luzon, the Latin, would choose a knife. Malvern, the weakling, would select poison, which Luzon, being a chemist, probably suggested.

  “On that basis, I checked up quietly and discovered that Devoe was not in his usual haunts the night Malvern was shot. Luzon was not at work the night Dorothy Ullendorf was stabbed near this café. Malvern was mysteriously away from his home the night poison was put in Dr. Montgomery’s milk.”

  He paused, then went on in conclusion: “Wit
h Luzon’s photograph, I also established the fact that he had been seen in this café a number of times previous to Mrs. Ullendorf’s death; that he had struck up quite an acquaintance with Ricardo—which would have given him the opportunity of learning about the widow’s infatuation for the dancer, knowledge that she would be in Juarez on that fateful night, and a sample of Ricardo’s handwriting which enabled him to forge the note that lured the woman to her death on the street at midnight.”

  I felt sick at my stomach. Looking across at the seemingly unconcerned trio, I didn’t feel I could face them without being sicker. My vision got misty and I saw the figures of Arthur Malvern’s wife and children—the tragic figure of Mrs. Montgomery.

  “I was sure I was right,” Burke went on earnestly. “But I didn’t have enough definite evidence for conviction. I didn’t dare risk everything by going to them separately and trying to get a confession. I struggled for days to work out a plan to throw them back together in a casual manner, so they wouldn’t suspect they were being thrown together. I believed they would react to the correct psychological set-up just as they have reacted.”

  “Then this Memorial Day celebration wasn’t a coincidence?”

  “It took all the pull I had left to put it over. Particularly the stunt of coming over here to decorate the Mexican graves and dismissing that section of the parade at the Juarez cemetery. I took pains to have our three friends assigned to the section coming over here.”

  “I should think they would have been careful to avoid one another,” I protested.

  “I calculated on the morbid fascination of getting back together to discuss the triumphant outcome of their plans. Remember, they’ve been tense, on edge, all through the investigation. None dared to make the overt move of contacting another. Today’s demonstration was like a gift from Providence to them, affording them an opportunity to foregather here without suspicion of its being prearranged.”

  “Suppose they hadn’t come?”

  “Then I would have taken the bull by the horns and tried to wring a confession out of them separately. But they did come.” Burke stood up, his face ominously calm. “Let’s get the last act over with.”

  I stood up with him, not knowing whether my legs were going to support me or not. They did. He made a signal to Juan, and a dozen Mexican officers began unobtrusively closing in on the trio.

  Burke started toward the table and I lagged along behind him. Somehow there wasn’t the thrill in this that I had anticipated.

  All three men had had enough drinks to start them talking volubly. Their heads were close together and they didn’t notice us until Burke stood by the side of their table.

  Devoe looked up first. His animated face froze into an expression of incredulous horror. I saw Malvern looking at Burke with bulging eyes. His jaw dropped open and a little stream of saliva trickled down his chin. Luzon nerved it out. He cut a word off in the middle and stared at Burke. Mexican plain-clothes men with drawn pistols formed a cordon about the table.

  Burke’s voice grated into the silence. “I’ve got you dead to rights. Devoe for Malvern’s murder. Luzon for the Ullendorf killing. And you, Malvern, for poisoning Dr. Montgomery. All I don’t know is the man who planned it all. He’s the one I want. He led the others into it. They may get off with a light sentence. I want the man who planned it. And that man is you, Malvern.”

  He flung the accusation at the weakling of the trio. I held my breath, wondering if Burke’s ruse would work—wondering what we would do if it didn’t work, if Malvern didn’t break down and confess.

  But I needn’t have worried. Malvern blanched whiter than before and clawed for a glass of water with shaking hands. He couldn’t take his eyes off Burke’s face.

  “No! No!” His voice rose to a reedy shriek. “I didn’t! I tell you, I didn’t! He did!” The glass of water spilled as he pointed to Estevan Luzon.