Exeunt Murderers

by Anthony Boucher

  Hagar observed coolly, “Clearly, Lieutenant, you are trying to erect logic on an illogical basis. What can you ‘deduce’ from the act of a wandering madman?”

  The Lieutenant shrugged. “I do not doubt,” he murmured, “that we will be hearing about that ‘wandering madman’ from the defense. But in the meantime—with all deference to your knowledge of crime, Mrs. Fuss—let us be honest with each other. In all likelihood, we must assume—”

  It was just then that the Sergeant came in with something wrapped in bloody newspapers. “Found it just west of here, Lieutenant. Halfway down the slope of the Arroyo. Also found this.” His other hand held a length of rope, such as comes around packing cases.

  “You will excuse me,” said the Lieutenant’s confidential voice. He rose, took the package from the Sergeant, and hastened upstairs.

  The Sergeant stood there in the doorway, looking from the rope in his hands to Alonzo and back again. Conversation did not flourish under the circumstances.

  When the Lieutenant returned, his voice came as near as possible to breaking the whispered monotony of his speech. It all but rose to excitement as he announced, “I have made a most interesting discovery. This will fascinate you as a student of murder, Mrs. Fuss.” He paused. I’ve never seen a man in authority yet that didn’t have a touch of ham. He held the pause, and finally said, “I have discovered that the head and the body do not fit.”

  I jumped. Hagar rose slowly to her feet. Alonzo stared at the rope in the Sergeant’s hands.

  “Does this mean, Lieutenant,” said Hagar, “that there is some fraud after all, some confusion?”

  “No fraud, Mrs. Fuss.” The whisper was eager. “A little confusion, yes. But I’m sure you can think it through.” He went on slowly, “They don’t fit. Because there is only a body, and a head. How could they fit?”

  I hated the man. He was enjoying this scene. But Hagar went calmly on, “Don’t they usually? Heads and bodies? Isn’t it the accepted thing?”

  “Not quite. You see, Mrs. Fuss, most use a neck to connect them.”

  He let that one sink in. I tried to think fast. The neck was missing. The cleaver had been used twice. The Sergeant began drawing the rope through his fingers.

  “Why?” came the whispered question. “The neck has been removed. Perhaps chopped in smaller pieces and … disposed of. But why? Surely there is one reason—because the neck would betray the murderer. Because something about that neck would prove the method of killing and point the accusing finger. Because …” Lieutenant Furman held his pause again. Then he whirled, carried away by his own words, and pointed the directly accusing finger. “Because the neck would prove that the corpse was hanged!”

  On the last words his voice for one instant reached normal volume. The effect was deafening.

  Alonzo rose slowly to his feet. He still looked past the directly accusing finger at the rope. His voice was hardly louder than the Lieutenant’s as he said, “One hundred percent …”

  He said nothing else as they took him away.

  We were alone in the house now, Hagar and I. The stretcher had gone, and so had the wagon. The lawyer had been telephoned, the plans had been laid for the insanity defense. Suddenly there was nothing but an empty hot day ahead.

  It was the first time that we had ever been completely alone. I looked at Hagar as though I had never seen her before. As indeed I hadn’t. Not this Hagar. Not this ripe, complete, fulfilled woman, with serene black eyes and passive fingers.

  I said, “You did it all, you know.”

  Hagar bowed her head gracefully. She said, “I know. It was cruel to bring them together. To make Alonzo face what he called his ‘failure.’ I might have foreseen … But I had to know.”

  “And now you know?”

  “More than you can dream.”

  “Not more than I can guess.”

  “Guessing is nothing. Nothing.”

  “I said you did it. That’s more than guessing.”

  She looked at me without expression. “Am I to blame? Any more than you are to blame for introducing me to Alonzo? Every meeting starts ripples—some place those ripples intersect at murder. This was only more … direct than usual.”

  “I said you did it. Not caused it.”

  She said nothing, but her eyes became interested. Nothing more than that, but interested.

  “The Lieutenant’s a glib ham. His reasoning doesn’t hold water for a second. Remove the neck to destroy the evidence of hanging? Nonsense. All removing the neck does is call attention to the neck. Bring to mind the idea of murder by the neck. Suggest hanging, in fact.

  “And the mere fact of hanging would be no direct personal proof. Sure, it would point to Alonzo. But only as a lead, not as proof. There’d be no sense to the neck gimmick unless it removed proof, unless the neck positively had to be destroyed because the neck itself was irrefutable proof of the killer’s identity.”

  “How?” asked Hagar calmly. “It’s next to impossible to get fingerprints from flesh.”

  “You’re on the track,” I said. “He was strangled, wasn’t he? That’s why the neck had to be destroyed. Because you can’t get prints, but you can get the size and shape of the fingers. And yours are unique.”

  Hagar glanced down at her incredibly blunt and stubby hands, still restful and twitchless. “You’re a clever man,” she said. “But there’s no point in making a Thing of it, is there? Poor Alonzo is obviously mad. I hadn’t counted on the shock’s doing that. But since he is… He has to be put in a place anyway; is there any reason why he shouldn’t carry … this along with him?”

  “None,” I said. Hagar smiled and rose. I stopped her. “Wait a minute, Hagar.”

  “Yes?”

  I don’t usually grope for words. I did a little now. “Hagar. Ever since I met you. That dinner. I’ve wondered.”

  “Wondered?”

  “Whether I hate you or love you.”

  “And now you know?” There was a smile on her lips. I’d never noticed her lips much before. I’ll swear they were never full like that, never so warm-looking.

  “Now I know.”

  “You hate me, of course.”

  “No.”

  I moved toward her. She stood still.

  I said, “You found what you were looking for. In its damnable way, it’s made you a woman. The twitches are gone. You’re real and warm.”

  She didn’t avoid my touch. She didn’t respond either. She said, “And why should I care what you think?”

  I said, “Because I’m what you want. I’ve almost said it before. And then I’d think, ‘Noboy. You don’t want her enough—not for that.’ But now I know. I know a lot of things. I know why you killed Willis Wythe. Because you thought you’d found it with him, and then you learned he was innocent. Not a murderer. And you hated him because you had been fooled.

  “But you’re not fooled now, Hagar. Because I’m what you want. I’m the Wythe murderer.”

  The words were coming easier now. They came almost too fast as I rushed on, “Uncle Herman was onto a racket of mine. It was too dangerous. I used the kid’s gun—it was lying around the house—and cleared out fast. I worried some when he was convicted. But hell, a man’s got to look out for himself. That’s what I told Willis last night. That’s why he jumped me, why I had to knock him out and leave him where you found him.

  “I’m it, Baby. I’m your thing, I’ve carried it in me all these years and now—”

  Almost imperceptibly Hagar moved away from me. She stood very straight and her body touched my arm but it was cold and unyielding.

  She said, “You’re what I wanted. Past tense. I was a fool. I thought I could know through a man. I never thought, I never knew …” The black eyes rested on me with something like pity.

  “Goodbye,” she said.

  When I answered the doorbell I found Lieutenant Furman. He said, “The alienists are working the old man over.” His voice was normal now, and I guessed the whisper was part of th
e whole ham set-up. “I’ve come back,” he added, “for the murderer.”

  I deadpanned. “I thought you proved from the neck, Lieutenant—”

  “Snap judgment,” he said. “Sometimes it gets results. But once I thought it over … Look: All that removing the neck does is to call attention to the neck. It’d be worth doing only if some vital positive clue …”

  I let him go on. It was my speech almost word for word and I had to admit I’d underrated the guy. When he was through, I said, “You’ll find her in there. And no complications this time. I’m admitting that the prints on her neck are mine.”

  They argued over me a while, the sovereign states of California and Iowa. Finally they decided that California had the stronger case if I should go and retract my confessions and who trusts a murderer?

  That was bad in a way. It meant the cyanide chamber.

  Alonzo wouldn’t have approved at all.

  (1947)

  The Smoke-filled Locked Room

  When the caucus was over, they went back to her hotel room. It was cooler there than in the ballroom, but it was still a Sacramento summer.

  “There’ll be people and things humming all over if I go back to my room.” Steve stretched his long legs on the bed. “I need peace.”

  “Sure,” Fran dead-panned. “That’s why you’re in politics.” She poured whiskey into the glasses on the dresser. “Shall I phone down for ice?”

  Steve grunted a no. “Don’t even want to see a bellboy. Just you.”

  Fran took the glasses into the bathroom for water. When she came back, Steve’s eyes had closed. She looked down at his face—suddenly, smoothly at rest. His hair was even more wildly tousled than usual; gentle compulsion itched in her fingers.

  “Your drink, sir,” she said.

  Steve sat up. The animation returned automatically to his features, the easy compelling charm that dwelt there so naturally. “How did it go?” he demanded.

  “Your speech was good,” Fran said judiciously. “Really damned good. You could’ve hit Fair Employment a little harder; this bunch would’ve taken it big. But you honestly socked ’em with that last part on a Bill of Rights for California.”

  “I don’t mean just my speech. How does the whole caucus look?”

  “You really want to know? Basically swell—and no thanks to you, my dear ex-Governor.”

  It might have been abashed humility on Steve’s mobile face. “I know. I went off half-cocked. It seemed like such a natural: California’s been legally entitled to a new Constitution for years, but the administration never calls the convention. So when I got the idea of a Constitutional Caucus of progressive groups to draft ideas, goad them into some kind of action—Look: it’s working already. They’ve already tentatively announced a convention for next year; and the ideas we’re drafting here can put them solidly on a nice hot spot.”

  “Sure, sure. But did you have to give out a press release before you’d even taken any soundings? If you knew the job I’ve had getting these farm and labor and minority people together … And because you put their backs up, we’ve got practically nobody from the regular party Demos.”

  “I know, I know …”

  Fran laughed. “Damn it, Steve, I can’t stay mad at you when you look like a little boy who’s stolen a dime to buy a comic book.”

  Steve leaned forward. “But seriously. I’ve learned a lesson. I should’ve known better than to try anything without consulting you … Egeria.”

  Fran shifted uneasily. “What gives with this Egeria stuff?”

  “We’ve been through a lot,” he answered indirectly. “Remember ten years ago when you were running precinct work and I came to you hat in hand to say please did you think I’d make a good assembly candidate?”

  “And you did, and you made a better congressman, and a but wonderful governor—until California stopped electing Democrats.” Fran went to the window. “Do you suppose if I let in some air it’d be even hotter?”

  “Some people call you my right hand; others say that I’m your puppet. And I just found there’s a word for that. Can I have another drink if I explain?”

  His trained voice projected easily over her bartending. “I was doing a Double-Crostic and one definition was: ‘A woman who advises a statesman.’ It came out Egeria. I looked the wench up. Did you ever hear of Numa Pompilius?”

  “Please,” Fran protested. “You ought to take a nap before your press conference.”

  “Numa P was the second king of Rome. The Romans expected him to codify the laws, and he wasn’t quite sure how you go about it. So he betook himself to a neighboring grove, where there chanced to dwell a bevy of sagacious nymphs—regular bluestockings, I gather. And one named Egeria took Numa P in hand and codified the laws for him and thus he became a great and venerated lawgiver.

  “Quite a precedent those two established,” Steve mused. “Look around you in politics today: There’s Henry and his Hannah, and Bob and his Ellenore, and that mystery writer up in Berkeley who thinks he’s playing politics … FDR had two—Missy Le Hand and Eleanor. And where any of us would be without—”

  Fran had tentatively opened the window. Now she slammed it shut, and her “Stop it!” topped even that bang.

  Steve stared at her. Her eyes were alight with something he had never seen before. Her body trembled, and she suddenly looked an alive and intense twenty.

  “Stop it,” she repeated more softly.

  The bland bewilderment of his “Why, darling?” was sincere.

  Fran forced a smile. “I can do puzzles, too, milord. I can even look up classical references … You don’t remember what else your Egeria did for Numa P?”

  She turned away. Steve rose with an unwonted expression of perplexity. He was standing close behind her when he asked, “What?”

  “All right,” Fran muttered. “The man asked for it, the man did. Now look at just how nice and pretty your analogy is: She went and fell in love with him.”

  This was in room 732 of the Hotel Legislator. In 504 the press was already gathering for the conference with the ex-Governor; one thing you had to admit about Stephen Darrow, he was always good copy. In such rooms as 221, quiet elderly couples like the Vardens were climbing peaceably into bed at the early hour made familiarly comfortable by a farm schedule. And in room 616, among many others, there reigned that happy chaos which so necessarily eases the strains of a convention.

  “Leave the window alone,” Peggy shrilled from the bed. “If the room isn’t smoke-filled, we’ll be thrown out of the politicians’ union.”

  Tony Packard wove his way elaborately back to the bar. “’Sgood,” he observed sententiously. “’Sgood to see such a broad-based group here to consider this constitutional problem. I move a toast to Steve Darrow for calling this caucus!”

  Peggy yelled, “Out of order!”

  “The chair,” Dr. Lackland announced with mock gravity, “rules Mr. Packard’s motion out of order. Any man who calls a caucus in Sacramento in the summer is obviously an enemy of the human race.” He mopped the sweat from his glistening black brow.

  Peggy wriggled her lithe little body in vain quest of a cooling position. “Just think though,” she added consolingly; “it might’ve been Fresno.”

  “But why?” Joe Hagedorn suddenly asked from the depths of his chair in the corner.

  It was the first time the labor leader had spoken in half an hour, and the others paid him proper attention.

  “Y’mean why’d Steve call it?” Peggy’s eyebrows shot up. “Don’t be crazy. You know, Joe—grass roots democracy; let the people speak.”

  Dr. Lackland grinned. “Sure, Joe. You don’t doubt our great progressive leader, do you?”

  “After his last campaign? And his sell-out on that old-age initiative? And that famous press-conference gag about CIO-PAC?”

  Tony Packard wavered. “Wha’ was that?”

  Peggy giggled. “It was a funny gag. Strictly ad lib, like most Darrowisms. ‘PAC …?’ he say
s. ‘Sure, I remember: Politically Ambitious Chaos.’”

  “The kind of gag,” Dr. Lackland added, “that’s funny among ourselves; but only Steve Darrow could pull it for the press.”

  Packard stopped and set down a just refilled glass. “You’re getting me worried.” He sounded almost sober. “You talk as if Steve … Hell, I’ll admit I’m pretty new to politics. But I always thought he was the … well, a leader for our kind of …”

  Peggy squirmed happily on the bed. “Look, baby. I’ve known Steve ever since when. I knew him even before he knew Fran Michaels. And what Steve does is but strictly for Steve. If he called this caucus, it’s mostly because there hasn’t been a front-page story on Darrow for way too long.”

  Joe Hagedorn nodded. “But the idea of the Constitutional Caucus is still good. Steve’s speech today was good. And if the panels really work tomorrow, we may come out with something sound. Only if Steve tries to pull a fast one on this deal… it’s going to be suicide.”

  The dimming glint of political idealism flickered in Tony Packard’s eyes. “Or murder,” he added tautly.

  In room 732, Fran Michaels stirred. She rose from the bed and smoothed her rumpled dress over the firm full lines of her body. “You don’t know, my dear,” she said gently. “You don’t know what it’s meant to hold you in my arms for ten minutes after these ten years. I … I’m very humble, Stephen.”

  Steve stood beside her. “You’ve never called me Stephen before.”

  “Steve’s a politician. Stephen is …” Her voice died away.

  “I love you.” His teeth grazed the lobe of her ear. “I need you.”

  She broke away. “Indeed you do. Among other things, to remind you that you’re due at a press conference in 504 in precisely two and one-half minutes. And that lipstick is not being worn to conferences this season. No, not your handkerchief—there’s tissue on the dresser there.”

  “You still think of everything.”

  “Everything about you … Now run along and dazzle ’em. No, not another—I’ve just put on fresh. Go ’long. Shoo.—Stephen!” she called as he reached the door.