Mum's the Word for Murder Read online

  “I suppose,” Burke said to Jelcoe, “you’ve thrown out a net about the neighborhood.”

  Jelcoe nodded jerkily. “Every available man—as soon as the report came in. At exactly eleven forty-two, Burke.” The last words were spoken with a fierce intensity. The two men faced each other across Malvern’s dead body. I thought there was accusation in his tone—perhaps a faint note of triumph.

  Burke nodded and said flatly, “The murder was right on time.”

  He walked to the window and I went with him. We could see a concrete walk directly below the window, and a driveway leading to the garage beyond the walk. Beyond the drive was a thick, high hedge.

  Burke examined the screen, pushing on the wooden framework. It held solidly. Then his keen eyes detected a corner of a small white card wedged between the frame and the window-sill. Slowly and carefully he worked it through the crack and held it up. One side was blank, but on the other side were the typewritten words: Number 1. Mum’s the word.

  That was all. I read it over Burke’s shoulder. His mouth tightened a little. He said calmly, “Our man has left his calling card. First a notice of intention, then a card to prove he kept his engagement on the dot.” He handed the card to Jelcoe.

  The Chief of Detectives looked at the card, his eyelids twitching, and I noticed that his hand shook a little. “The advertisement was signed ‘Mum’ also, Burke,” he said.

  “So it was,” Burke muttered. He gave the flattened bullet to the sergeant with curt instructions to have it examined, and to check the card for fingerprints.

  We looked the rest of the room over carefully. It was a large room, evidently originally designed for a library. Malvern had it furnished as a study or office. Besides the desk, safe, and swivel chair, there were two steel filing-cabinets toward the windows from the desk. Farther back in the room were several comfortable, leather-upholstered chairs. A few good etchings hung on the walls, and three smoking-stands stood near the chairs. A comfortable, sedate room where a man might retire in the evening to entertain men friends with cigars and drinks, and where business affairs might be transacted tranquilly after the day’s rush was over.

  Burke sat down in one of the chairs and took out his pipe. He paid no heed to the crumpled figure of Charles Malvern on the floor in front of him.

  Jelcoe continued his nervous inspection of the room and, watching him, I wondered how he expected to uncover anything with such shifting eyes. It was a toss-up to discover which worked the faster, the twitching lid or the shifting eye.

  Burke studied the bowl of his pipe and said to Jelcoe, “Tell me who Malvern is and all you know about him.”

  I turned one of the chairs so I faced away from the body and sat down. Jelcoe flashed a questioning glance in my direction. Burke waved his pipe toward me.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said to Jelcoe, “for neglecting introductions under the stress of the moment. This is Mr. Baker, Chief Jelcoe. Asa is a close friend of mine, an author in search of material. I’ve invited him to sit in with me through this investigation.”

  Jelcoe nodded toward me and sat down abruptly. He said, “You’re new here, Burke, or you’d know Charles Malvern. He’s one of our wealthiest and most respected citizens. President of Malvern, Incorporated, general contractors. He’s a widower, I believe, and lives here alone. A public-spirited gentleman in every sense of the word. Prominently mentioned as the reform candidate in the next mayoralty election.”

  Burke nodded. “Political enemies?”

  Jelcoe shrugged his thin shoulders and took out a cigar. “He wasn’t a politician in the strict sense. There’s a possibility there, though I don’t believe he had aroused any antagonism strong enough to call for murder.”

  “You’d better check all the way down the line. Dig up every man, woman, or child who ever had a grudge against him. We don’t want to miss any angles.” Burke stood up and moved toward the door. “Let’s go into another room to interview the servants and get the facts as nearly as possible.”

  Jelcoe and I followed him. The policeman was still on duty outside the door. He told Burke that the woman he had seen trying to get into the study was the housekeeper and that he had sent her back to her room to get dressed. Burke told him to bring her to the living-room. The policeman went down the hall while we three went back toward the front and into a huge room on the right.

  The room was regally furnished, but the air was stale and musty. Burke flung open a French window, and I opened a couple more. Then I sat down in an unobtrusive position where I could see and hear.

  The policeman came to the door with the housekeeper. She had put on a cotton dress and her hair was tidied. Her eyes were red with weeping, and her plump hands fluttered nervously.

  Burke drew up a chair for her and she sat stiffly on the edge of it, wiping at her eyes with a soggy handkerchief. Watching her intently, I envisioned a time when she might have been a very pretty woman in a plump, maternal sort of way. Even now, under happier circumstances and with proper apparel, she might be attractive.

  “Your name?” Burke asked.

  “Amanda Perkins. I’ve been Mr. Malvern’s housekeeper for twenty-five years, and I—I—” She choked, and was sobbing again.

  Burke waited patiently. Jelcoe puffed on his cigar nervously and I wondered if, perhaps, long years of dealing with calm, slow-moving detectives like Jerry Burke hadn’t contributed materially to his fidgetiness. I was beginning to get restless myself.

  “Did you discover Mr. Malvern?” Burke asked the woman when she was quiet again.

  “Y-Yes, sir. To think that I—” She started to go off again.

  Burke said soothingly, “Take your time and tell us exactly what happened as you remember it.”

  “Well, sir—” She gulped and looked past him. “Me and Harvey went to bed about ten. Our room’s on the second floor in the back. Harvey’s my husband. He takes care of the yard and the heavy cleaning, and we were talking about that advertisement in the newspaper. I had a funny feeling—but Harvey wouldn’t listen. I recollect saying to Harvey just after he turned out our light, I said to him, ‘You mark my words now, there’s trouble afoot.’” She broke off suddenly, twisting her fingers together and staring past us.

  Jelcoe’s nose twitched with the eagerness of a hound savoring the sweet scent of an opossum on a frosty night, but Burke didn’t get excited. He waited a moment, then told her to go on.

  “I—Harvey and me couldn’t sleep,” she said nervously. “We both twisted and turned something frightful. Then there was the shot. Fearful loud, it was. Seemed like I was expecting it. At exactly eleven forty-one, sir. I switched on the light and looked at the clock.”

  “What did you do then?” Burke prompted when she paused.

  “I tried to get Harvey to go down and see if everything was all right, but he said it sounded like a blowout in front of the house. I knew it weren’t any blowout. I ran downstairs and—and there was a light in Mr. Malvern’s study. The door was cracked open and I—I looked in. I don’t know. I wasn’t surprised. Stunned-like, I guess. I screamed for Harvey and telephoned the police.” She looked appealingly at Jelcoe, then at Jerry Burke.

  Burke nodded and didn’t force the housekeeper to go into further details. Instead, he asked kindly, “Have you noticed anything different in Mr. Malvern’s attitude lately? Any indication of nervousness or fear?”

  I thought I detected the first indication that Mrs. Perkins was concealing something when she answered positively, “No, sir. Nothing at all. Mr. Malvern has been uncommon cheerful of late. Harvey and me was just speaking about it the other night.” There was a shade of defiance in her voice.

  Burke didn’t appear to notice it. He asked quietly, “And you say it is his custom to be in the study at night?”

  “Most every night. Up until midnight or later. It’s seldom he goes out”

  “Does he often have visitors?”

  Again that faintest suggestion of hesitancy. “Not often, sir.”
/>   “Do you know if he had a visitor tonight—or expected one?”

  She dropped her eyes and rolled the soggy handkerchief into a ball, gulped, and without looking up said, “He was expecting someone tonight. Early in the evening he asked me to tell Harvey to leave the front door unlocked—him expecting someone he’d let in himself.”

  “Did that person come?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir.” She met his gaze squarely. “We didn’t hear the doorbell ring.”

  “Would you have heard it after you went to sleep?”

  She hesitated, then said she thought not.

  “Was the front door locked when the police came?”

  “Yes, sir. I unbarred it myself and let them in.”

  That was all that could be got from Mrs. Amanda Perkins.

  Burke dismissed her and had Mr. Perkins brought in. He was a gaunt, stooped man of sixty, with a gray, drooping mustache and heavily lined face. His replies to Burke’s questioning were halting, but straightforward enough. As soon as he learned of the crime, he had run to his room for a revolver and searched the interior of the house, finding nothing. Burke dismissed him and ordered the maid brought in.

  The maid said her name was Lucy Travers, and she was rather pretty, with big eyes that tried to be coquettish and thin lips that had been too hastily rouged and were messy.

  She had a slatlike figure and bony knees of which she seemed to be rather proud, wriggling in her chair to get her skirt up above them while Burke questioned her: “How long have you worked here?”

  “Two years—almost. Gee, isn’t it terrible about Mr. Malvern? I can’t hardly believe—”

  Burke halted her with a gesture. “Did you hear the shot?”

  “No. I was sound asleep. I always go right to sleep as soon as I go to bed.” She offered this bit of personal information as though it were of tremendous import.

  Burke nodded gravely. “What did waken you? Tell us just what happened?”

  “Well I—I heard someone running in the hall and I was frightened. I called out and Harvey answered me. He said Mr. Malvern was dead and he’d come back to get his pistol. I got up and dressed and—that’s all.”

  And that was all. Burke asked her a couple of questions about the affairs of the household but she insisted everything had been perfectly normal all along. He thanked her and told her she could go.

  The chauffeur was next, a dour, silent man of forty. He had been Mr. Malvern’s chauffeur for eight years. He answered Burke’s questions stolidly and with a touch of impatience. He had retired at nine o’clock, and something had awakened him about 11:40. Perhaps it was the shot. He could not be sure. He lay in bed for a few minutes trying to recall what had wakened him.

  Then he heard Mrs. Perkins screaming from the house. Turning on his light, he saw it was 11:42. He got up and dressed and went to the back door, where Mr. Perkins admitted him and told him what had happened. Taking Harvey’s gun, he had made the rounds outside the house and found nothing.

  That was all. Burke fumbled for his pipe and Jelcoe beat a rat-tat on the arm of his chair.

  “A mysterious visitor, who may or may not have kept the appointment. That’s all we’ve got,” Burke said, stuffing his pipe with fresh tobacco.

  “A coldly planned and perfectly executed murder,” Jelcoe told him, studying the tips of his fingers.

  I kept silent. There had been something in Mrs. Perkins’s manner when the visitor was mentioned that made me believe she knew more about it than she admitted. I wondered if either of them had felt it. They didn’t mention it. It seemed to me that Jelcoe was secretly enjoying himself, if such a thing was possible for him. From his manner I deduced that he had not been particularly pleased to have jerry Burke brought in and put in a position of authority over him. Professional jealousy. Perhaps something more.

  A policeman came in to report the result of the investigation outside the house. Nothing had been discovered. Two neighbors had been found who had been awakened by the shot at 11:41. Both were positive of the exact time. Having read the advertisement, they had looked at their clocks immediately. No one had been seen skulking in the neighborhood.

  Jelcoe agreed with Burke that there was nothing else to be done that night. Police squads were scouring the city to pick up any suspicious characters. Further action would have to wait until the card and the bullet could be checked.

  It was one o’clock when Burke and I went out together and started to get into his car. A battered roadster drew up to the curb and stopped, and a man got out. Burke asked me if I knew who it was, and I told him it was Malvern’s son, Arthur. He was untidy and disheveled, and we watched him as he hurried into the house.

  “What do you know about Arthur Malvern, Asa?” Jerry asked.

  “Nothing much,” I replied, “except that he is a war veteran. Guess the war sort of got him like it did a lot of others. He hasn’t got the old man’s ambition by a long shot.”

  “Humph,” Jerry grunted and slid under the steering-wheel.

  I felt oppressively at sea. This was my first experience with murder. I wondered why they didn’t do something. My first detective novel, I thought, was going to be entirely too tame when compared with the tricks I had connived in a dozen Westerns to get bandits and murderers in just the right corners to be shot down by courageous, go-getting Rangers.

  I craved action. There were a thousand things I wanted to ask Burke. I waited for an opening as we drove slowly through the deserted streets toward my bungalow.

  He puffed away on his pipe and didn’t seem to be in a conversational mood. When we were halfway home, he took his pipe out of his mouth and said, “What about the story, Asa? Do you think it’ll do?”

  “I need a book, man,” I told him. “This is only material for the first couple of chapters.”

  “Don’t be impatient.” He spoke meditatively. “I’ve an idea there’ll be a lot more chapters before this case is closed.”

  I kept my questions in check, waiting for him to go on. He didn’t go on. He sucked on his pipe and stared straight ahead at the street. Once again my sympathy went out to Jelcoe. No wonder he was nervous and had a shifty eye!

  “I need some clues,” I said after a time. “What’s a detective novel without clues?”

  “You don’t need ’em half as bad as I do,” he rumbled. Nothing else was said until he pulled up at the curb in front of my place. He cut off the motor and asked, “Did you mention a bottle of Haig and Haig?”

  “I did. And there’s part of a baked ham in the Frigidaire.”

  I was glad to see that something could rouse him into action. He got out of the car and went into the house fast enough.

  Chapter Three

  “THERE ARE A LOT OF ANGLES to be considered,” Jerry Burke said, musingly, half an hour later. He lifted a tall highball glass and sipped the amber fluid. On a table between us were the bottle of Scotch and other highball ingredients. A tray formerly filled with sandwiches had been emptied and pushed back. A floor lamp at our backs threw a circle of light on the table. Nip and Tuck dozed on their rug in the corner.

  “First,” Jerry finally went on, “there’s the advertisement in the Free Press personal column.” He set down his glass and ticked them off on his fingers. “Then we have a coldblooded, obviously premeditated murder, on schedule. And the card beneath the screen—let’s not forget the card, Asa.”

  “I’m not forgetting it,” I burst out. “Number 1. Mum’s the word! What does it mean, Jerry?”

  “It could mean a lot of things,” he admitted, filling his brier pipe thoughtfully. “‘Mum’s the word.’ And the advertisement is signed ‘Mum.’ The killer wished to be sure Malvern’s death was identified with the ad.”

  “And ‘Number 1.’ Does that mean—?”

  Burke lit his pipe. Confound the man, why didn’t he go on! I could swear one of my eyelids moved involuntarily. Finally he said, “U-m-m.”

  “About the ad,” I went on hastily. “Couldn’t the murderer
be traced from it? Now that you know it’s no hoax?”

  Burke shook his head slowly. “We checked on that this afternoon. Either the classified advertisement clerk is uncommonly dumb, or destroyed the ad for some reason. It was mailed in—typewritten—with a dollar bill in the envelope. Both the typewritten ad and the envelope had been thrown away when we investigated.”

  “The card was typewritten, too,” I pointed out.

  Burke nodded. He took a long sip from his glass and settled back in his chair. “If you’re really interested in following this through and writing it up—” He paused.

  “I am,” I told him excitedly. “Good heavens, this is a perfect set-up! A godsend to me.”

  He grinned broadly. “It’s an ill wind—”

  I felt a little ashamed of my eagerness. “It’s rotten of me to exult about it. I realize it’s putting you on the spot. But, damn it, Jerry, here it is. Dropped in my lap. I’d be a sap not to take advantage of it.”

  “So you would,” he agreed. “Here’s what I was going to say: If you’re going to follow this thing through, you’ll need to understand in a general way the leads we’re following, and why, as we go along.”

  I settled back and waited for him to go on. My typewriter was sitting behind me with that blank sheet of paper in it.

  “The first point is that murder is a different proposition from any other sort of crime. Ninety-five per cent of the murders are not committed by professional criminals. Again, there’s the premeditated murder and the spur-of-the-moment murder. Malvern’s death, of course, falls in the first category.” He paused.

  “Have you thought,” I suggested diffidently, “that the murderer might have just been prowling about the city looking for a good chance to bump someone off at eleven forty-one—to make good on his boast? Couldn’t he have just happened to see Malvern sitting near an open window at the psychological moment? That would do away with your premeditation theory.”

  “A possibility,” Burke admitted. “Remote, but not to be neglected. In that case, we’ll have to look for a maniac, motivated only by the lust to kill. By far the most difficult situation a detective can confront.”