Mum's the Word for Murder Read online

  The manager wet his lips and said he would give what assistance he could.

  Questioning by Burke brought out the following facts: Dorothy Ullendorf had occupied Apartment No. 52 at the Obispo for almost five years. She had a lease which was renewed annually, and she simply locked the door when she went on frequent trips. She quite often had elaborate parties in her suite, mild carousals which lasted through the night and often into the next day, attended by many of the most prominent members of El Paso’s hard-drinking younger set. As to any particular intimacy with any men, the manager could not or would not give specific information. Her financial affairs were handled by the trust department of a local bank, and her checks were always honored, no matter how large and frequent they were.

  That was all we could learn from the Obispo manager. He resolutely insisted that the management made no effort to exert the slightest influence upon the personal affairs of their guests so long as outward appearances of propriety were maintained.

  Burke then switched the questioning to Anthony Gray. He had been at the Obispo a little over a year, paid his bills promptly, and conducted himself in the manner to be expected of a wealthy young bachelor in pursuit of pleasure. It was common knowledge that he had been going about with Mrs. Ullendorf a great deal, but the manager insisted that he had no knowledge of a more intimate relationship between them. Burke then asked to be admitted to Dorothy Ullendorf’s apartment, and the manager got a passkey from the porter and took us up to the fifth floor. A flatfoot was camped on a stool before her door. He saluted and reported that nothing had occurred since he came on guard at three-thirty.

  Windows were closed and shades drawn in the beautifully furnished living-room of No. 52 when we entered. The manager explained that Mrs. Ullendorf lived alone without any servants, relying upon the hotel maids and catering service to care for all her needs.

  An atmosphere of melancholy hung over the suite. Raising the shades to let in sunlight helped a little. I couldn’t get over the morbid feeling that the rooms were waiting for an occupant who would not return. Burke went about in a businesslike manner, and I set myself to remembering that it was business.

  We went through all the rooms first to orient ourselves. The living-room was a corner room. A wide opening at the right, hung with heavy portières, led into a thickly carpeted hall running the length of the suite. Opening off the hall on the right was a large dining-room, with butler’s pantry and kitchenette. Beyond, on the same side of the hall, was a library or intimate lounging-room.

  On the other side of the hall were two bedrooms with tiled bathroom between. The one next to the living-room contained a double bed and was evidently the one used by Mrs. Ullendorf. The guest bedroom had twin beds and was in a state of order indicating long unoccupancy.

  Burke frowningly led the way back to the library after we had completed our tour of the apartment. The manager suggested he had pressing affairs to attend to in his office and that he would leave us if we did not need him further. Burke thanked him for his courtesy and he and I went into the library together while the manager departed.

  One end of the room was lined with glass-fronted bookcases filled with books which had the appearance of being unread. A comfortable leather lounge occupied the opposite end of the room. There were four comfortable lounging chairs with a smoking-stand and floor-lamp by each, and an oval mahogany table in the center of the room with straight-backed chairs standing around it. A spindly writing-desk or escritoire stood in one corner. It was one of the sort in which the writing-tray is hinged and turns up to enclose the entire desk and form a front.

  Burke went to it and I followed him. It was closed, but there were marks showing that the mahogany front had been rudely jimmied open. Burke caught the crack with his finger tips and it opened downward easily. The frail lock had been broken. The inside of the desk was a confused mass of pulled-out drawers and scattered letters and papers.

  He gazed at it grimly and started to fill his pipe. I grinned, remembering Malvern’s study, and said, “Jelcoe seems to have stolen another march on us.”

  Burke didn’t grin. He said, “I don’t think it was Jelcoe this time.” He lit his pipe and gingerly began sorting the chaotic mess of papers. Every drawer had been pulled out and emptied. I drew up a chair and sat down to watch him.

  Methodically he examined the papers and letters, making a pile of personal letters, bills and receipts, and various business documents. There was a little stack of odds and ends, notations on scraps of papers, addresses and such.

  I watched Burke’s face and tried to figure out what he expected to find as he went through the items. His stolidity was beginning to get my goat. Not a word about the desk being jimmied open. He didn’t think it was Jelcoe. Then who the hell did he think it was? Or didn’t he think? I was beginning to wonder.

  The outer door hadn’t been forced open. The intruder must have entered before the cop was stationed at the door and he must have had a key of some kind. Or maybe Dorothy Ullendorf might have broken into her own desk. The last idea wasn’t as fantastic as it seems. I had an idea she was the sort of woman who would force open her desk if she happened to mislay the key.

  Burke grunted and smoothed a sheet of notepaper out on the desk. Scrawled on it in ink in a heavy, masculine hand, were the words: Dr. Gipson, Medical Bldg. 3:00 p.m. tomorrow. Don’t forget you are Mrs. Gray.

  That was all. Considering Dr. Gipson’s reputation it was enough. His practice was reputed to consist of practically nothing except illegal operations. The authorities and medical associations made periodic efforts to convict Dr. Gipson of illegal and unethical practices, but had thus far failed.

  The meaning of the notation was damnably clear. A man had made an appointment for Dorothy Ullendorf to meet Dr. Gipson and she was to represent herself as Mrs. Gray.

  Burke folded the sheet of paper and sighed. “Either our burglar overlooked this, or he was after something else. It’s nine o’clock. Let’s go up to Gray’s apartment and see if they’ve come with him yet.”

  He put the sheet of paper in his pocket and we went out, closing the door on the night-latch behind us. There was a stairway at the end of the hall and we walked up instead of waiting for the elevator. An American detective sergeant and a Mexican policeman stood by the open door of No. 62, directly above Mrs. Ullendorf’s apartment.

  We went in and found another Juarez officer with Anthony Gray, and Jelcoe, in the living-room.

  Gray looked terrible. One night in the Juarez jail had played hell with him. His eyes were bloodshot and his jaw was slack. His suit was rumpled and a beard was beginning to sprout on his thin cheeks. He sat in a chair near the corner window and stared at us with less defiance than he had shown last night.

  Jelcoe stopped interrogating him as we came in and greeted us with a fluttering eyelid. “He’s gone mum on us,” he spat out.

  The word “mum” gave me a shock. I looked at Anthony Gray huddled in his chair and tried to fit him into the picture as the cold-blooded killer we had been looking for. Mum! Could this abject man be our Mum?

  Burke didn’t waste any time. He went over to Gray and handed him a fountain pen and an old envelope from his pocket. “I wish to make a little test if you are willing, Mr. Gray. Please write the words: Don’t forget you are Mrs. Gray on that envelope.”

  Gray’s body seemed to grow smaller. A sudden light blazed in his eyes like that of a cornered rat. He licked his lips and the light died out of his eyes. He said, “All right,” with a touch of his former defiance, and scribbled the words shakily on the back of the envelope.

  Burke took the envelope and stepped back. Jelcoe and the Mexican crowded in curiously to read it with him.

  The atmosphere in the room was stifling somehow. I moved to the open window to get a breath of fresh air while Burke took the sheet of notepaper from his pocket and compared it with Gray’s handwriting.

  I knew it would match. I knew Gray had written the notation. I felt we had come to
the end of the trail—and there wasn’t the drama in the moment that I had anticipated.

  I couldn’t look at Gray’s twitching face. I stared out the window, down at the quiet street scene six stories below, feeling a little bit sick at my stomach at this sordid ending of the whole mess.

  I heard Burke say soberly, “You have some explaining to do, Gray. I don’t have to tell you the contents of this memorandum we found in Mrs. Ullendorf’s desk—because you wrote it.”

  I turned involuntarily as Gray leaped up from his chair with a choked snarl. “I was trying to help her! It wasn’t my fault but I was trying to help her! You won’t believe that.” His voice went up hysterically. He was edging toward me with a crazy light in his eyes. “No one will believe me! All right. Believe what you damn please!”

  I grabbed at him as he jumped for the open window. I don’t know. I don’t think I tried very hard to hold him. I’m not cut out for scenes like that. In the back of my mind was the thought that the poor devil deserved a chance to end things his own way.

  Chapter Thirteen

  BURKE BARKED AN ORDER to the detective at the door and the rest of us crowded to the window to look down at the crumpled body. He lay sprawled on the pavement without moving. A woman began shrieking hysterically from a downstairs window. Three little children playing on the lawn looked at the body without understanding, and tiptoed timidly away.

  The detective came running across the lawn as we watched. He bent over Gray and made a brief examination. He shook his head and shouted up to us with hands cupped over his mouth, “Curtains!”

  “Stay with the body,” Jelcoe shouted back at him. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

  He called headquarters on Gray’s telephone and issued the needful orders. I slumped down in a chair and closed my eyes as realization of horror got hold of me. Burke filled his pipe with damnable calmness. Jelcoe hung up the phone and faced him with a queer look of envy on his face.

  “So, you’ve cracked the case?” His voice wasn’t pleasant. He still didn’t know what it was all about. It wasn’t easy for him to face the fact that Burke had stolen the entire show from him.

  Burke said, “I’m not so sure.” He smoothed out the sheet of notepaper with a frown.

  Jelcoe came to his side to read it again. “I only got a glimpse of it before the guy went batty and jumped,” he complained.

  Burke showed it to him. The Mexican officer listened alertly, without questions. “The handwriting checks,” Burke said to Jelcoe.

  The detective chief read the notation with fluttering eyelids. “It’s open and shut,” he declared enviously.

  “Do you think so?”

  “Of course. Gray knew the game was up. He couldn’t stand the gaff. Here’s the best possible motive. He realized that a post-mortem examination of the body of Mrs. Ullendorf would bring out the truth. He couldn’t stand to see the mess smeared all over the headlines.”

  “It looks that way, all right.” Burke nodded and puffed on his pipe.

  “He had the motive and the opportunity,” declared Jelcoe. “Don’t forget Summers’s conflicting testimony last night. I’ve been over all the testimony. Summers didn’t see Gray running back. He didn’t see anyone else running away. No one except Gray saw this imaginary attacker. Probably the woman was using her condition to blackmail him. He lures her to Juarez and knifes her.”

  Burke asked, “What about Malvern?”

  Jelcoe was pacing up and down excitedly. “Gray was fiendishly clever enough to plan another murder as a prelude—or maybe he actually had a grudge against Malvern. They were both in big-money political graft from time to time. Those ads in the papers—the calling cards—don’t you get it?” He snapped his fingers and faced Burke. “I can read the whole case like an open book.”

  Burke said, “Go ahead.”

  “It’s the perfect set-up,” Jelcoe assured him. “I’m surprised that you can’t see it. Even leaving any motive for killing Malvern out of it, it’s perfect. From the very beginning of Mrs. Ullendorf’s condition, Gray must have planned to get her out of the way. He realizes he’s likely to be suspected, so he picks out a man for his first victim. In that way he leads us to believe the second murder will be unmotivated.”

  “It’s a swell theory,” Burke admitted. “It’s yours. You get the credit if Gray is Mum. Here.” He handed the sheet of notepaper to Jelcoe. “I got this from Mrs. Ullendorf’s desk. It had been jimmied open, but this hadn’t been taken. Feed your story to the reporters if you wish. Perhaps you’d better conduct an autopsy first to establish your facts beyond question.”

  I listened to him with my mouth hanging open. I admit I thought he was being a perfect ass to hand the publicity and credit over to Jelcoe. Just at the moment when he had turned the tables and solved the case under the chief’s sharp nose. I confess, I didn’t get Burke. He acted as if Jelcoe’s theory about the series of deaths hadn’t occurred to him. And it was one of the first theories he had advanced.

  I’m all for generosity and big-heartedness—but I don’t hold with turning the other cheek for a guy to keep on slapping you. Jelcoe had been doing his best to low-rate Burke since the beginning of the case. This just didn’t make sense.

  I think Jelcoe was as surprised as I. His eyes bulged and his mouth hung open. He had been frenziedly trying to think up a way to horn in on Burke’s glory—I felt sure of that. And here it was handed to him on a silver platter. I could see his mouth watering as he grabbed the notepaper and the sample of Gray’s handwriting. He wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Muttering something about taking charge of the body, he hurried away. The Juarez officers lingered behind until Burke told them they could release all the other suspects and witnesses, as far as he was concerned.

  I lit into Burke when we were alone. I didn’t see the sense of his making a martyr of himself. I reminded him that he was under fire plenty in the newspapers, and that his job practically hung in the balance.

  He let me rave on until I finished. Then he smiled oddly and knocked out his pipe.

  “I’m not Jesus Christ, as you seem to think, Asa. Don’t think I don’t know Jelcoe is out to knife me.” His face got grim and bleak. “A bird like that will always hang himself if you give him enough rope. I’m supplying the rope.”

  “It looks more like a crown of glory than a rope to me,” I sputtered.

  “Jelcoe is too nervous,” said Burke placidly. “He jumps to conclusions. He made a fool of himself with Arthur Malvern. Think how much worse it’ll be after he spouts off about Gray—and the true solution finally comes out.”

  That did floor me. I hadn’t suspected for a moment that he didn’t think Gray was our man. I stammered that I didn’t understand.

  “I told you,” Burke rumbled, “that I play hunches to the limit. I’ve a hunch Gray was telling the truth about last night—and the other.”

  “Then why the devil would he commit suicide? That’s not the act of an innocent man.”

  “Half-guilt,” Burke conceded. “Look at it this way. Gray sees himself trapped by circumstances. There’s no doubt in my mind that he and Mrs. Ullendorf had been intimate—and that she was in trouble. He sees the truth come out. He’s been in jail all night, sobering up and brooding over the story the papers will make out of it if the truth becomes known. Look at it from this angle: Even though Gray didn’t murder her, the papers can make out a powerful case against him. Disgrace and possible conviction are all he can see. What more natural than to step out of a window?”

  “I can see that,” I admitted reluctantly. “On the other hand—what makes you think he didn’t do it?”

  “A hunch. Three hunches, to be exact. First”—he ticked them off on his fingers—“I’ve felt from the beginning that this was going to be one of my toughest cases. It won’t be solved by a suicide. Second: There’s that jimmied desk in the lady’s apartment. Everything points to its having been done between the time Mrs. Ullendorf went out last evening a
nd when I stationed a man at the door. Probably before the murder. By one, let us guess, who knows she is going to be murdered and has to get incriminating papers out of the desk before a search is made. Mr. Mum is the only one in a position to know who is marked for death at midnight. That leaves Gray out. He had no opportunity to break into the desk. And if it had been Gray or his emissary, he would have been after the notation I found—and he would have found it.”

  “That’s two hunches.”

  Burke nodded. He rubbed his jaw and asked, “Aren’t they enough?”

  “You said you had three.”

  “I’ve talked enough,” Burke growled. “My third hunch is a whole lot less tangible than either of the others. Perhaps I’m a doddering fool. But I don’t believe Gray killed Malvern, or Mrs. Ullendorf.”

  “So you’re being cagey and letting Jelcoe take all the credit for solving the case? Or discredit, if it eventually proves that the case isn’t solved.”

  “That’s it. He’ll shoot his head off to the newspapers, playing me for a sucker to have given him the opportunity.”

  “It’s a long chance,” I warned him. “Your name will be mud in these parts if Gray does turn out to be Mum.”

  “I know.” Burke’s eyes were twinkling. “I like long chances. And I don’t think I’m wrong.”

  I got up and went to the window as the scream of a siren sounded in the street. A gang of cops were clearing away the throngs of curious spectators so the stretcher-bearers could get to Gray’s body. They put him on a stretcher and into the ambulance as I watched. The ambulance sped away and the crowd started to disperse.

  Jelcoe was standing at one side, surrounded by reporters. They were spouting questions and he was snapping answers back at them. His face was lit up with an expansive smile and he was enjoying the center of the stage.

  I went back to Burke and asked him what was next. I guess I sounded a little worried and hopeless. He stood up and put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t let it get you, Asa. The more Jelcoe shoots off his mouth now, the deeper he’ll be in a hole when the thing is cleared up. We’ve got a lot of things to do.” His manner became curt, decisive. “We’ve got to find out who broke into that desk. I want to know all about Devoe since the divorce. We’ll go to the bank and look over Mrs. Ullendorf’s financial affairs.”