Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 31, No. 1 — January, 1948)

Keep the Killing Quiet by C. P. Donnel, Jr.

If that needle-nosed Sesame Warner had ever guessed that her quiet, self-effacing spouse Twiford held the key to the year’s most sensational gang killing, her razor-edged tongue would surely have slashed him to ribbons.

A tenet of psychology is that when a man falls out of love with his wife, his next choice is almost certain to resemble her physically. I am forcibly reminded of this on the occasions when I see my ex-neighbor, Mr. Twiford Warner, out for an evening walk with his current poodle.

In the twenty years I have known Twiford, he has always owned a poodle named Molly. When illness or old age accounts for one, he buys another, as exactly like her predecessor as he can. Upon each he lavishes a grave, undemonstrative affection.

That Twiford’s poodles invariably closely resembled his wife, Sesame Warner, there could be no doubt. Since it is obvious that no man could see Sesame Warner in a rosy light for many weeks after the honeymoon, I once suspected that Twiford’s choice of pup was a cruel, sardonic lampoon of his wife’s looks. When I got to know him better, I realized that I was wrong. Whatever obscure subconscious urge made him pick the first one, I am positive that he was not deliberate in his caricature of his spouse, however strong his dislike was.

Sesame Warner was a thin, acid woman, with a needle nose in a narrow face framed by drooping, untidy hair. Her tongue, too, was pointed and much feared in our quiet suburb. And her ambitions for her husband were selfish, unbounded — and unfulfilled.

Twiford Warner was quite content with his position as head of the bookkeeping department of Miller’s, Inc., a department store, and Sesame’s vigorous, ruthless maneuvers to make a Man of Distinction of him — as when she plugged him for City Council, or her unseconded (even by him) fight to run him for state senator, or her ridiculous and shameless politicking to have him named president of Miller’s when old Harvey Miller died — consistently came to naught. It is possible that Sesame knew, in her secret heart, that she was licked before she started. That, I have always believed, is why her bitterness nourishes itself on the sole occasion when Twiford achieved momentary notoriety, and inexcusably, to her way of thinking, muffed his chance to become nationally famous for a few days.

You must remember. The papers called it the most sensational gang murder of Prohibition. It was Twiford who returned from a long evening stroll with one of his Mollies to report that on a dirt road off Round Hill there was a bullet-proof limousine holding three bodies.

Once the bodies were identified as Dave “Speed” Oast, Chicago Lon Ucci, and Machine-gun Larkin, Oast’s chauffeur, the lid blew off. Chicago Lon Ucci was Capone’s sole rival in the Midwest. Speed Oast had reamed millions from the New York-New Jersey beer and artichoke rackets. Machine-gun Larkin had something over a dozen murders at his door, but no convictions.

Police ascertained that Oast and Ucci had met at a roadhouse on the Boston Post Road to cement a working agreement that would make them collectively stronger than any organization then operating. They were, the police decided, on their way to New York to celebrate the pact when, on a short cut that skirted the edge of our community, their car was forced to the side of the road — a mark on a telephone pole explained the dent in their bumper — by parties unknown who had then proceeded to crack their skulls with certain weapons never discovered and tried to hide the car and its cargo on a side dirt road. All three, the autopsies showed, had been drinking heavily, and Chicago Lon Ucci’s pearl-handled revolver had one shot fired.

Police and reporters swarmed in on us, and as quickly departed when the investigation shifted to New York and Chicago. The Capones were questioned — as usual without result. The Detroit Purple Gang and the St. Louis beer crowd knew nothing. There were no arrests.

I even came in for a pinch of flash-powder myself since it was to my house that Twiford Warner came to call the police. For this, Sesame never forgave him, even though it was plain that he did it in what was generally regarded as a laudable effort to spare her frayed nerves.

Sesame did not fail to make a point of this neglect. Twiford, she informed all and sundry, had “calmly showed up” with his “damned dog on a string” and never told her a thing until the police arrived.

Nor was Twiford’s subsequent behavior calculated to sweeten her. Not only did he refuse to dramatize himself, but he also turned down a swinging offer to describe his experience on a national radio network. He refused, too, to address seven eager civic clubs on his feat, and when the mayor, carried away by excitement, offered to put him on the Police Commission, Twiford reasonably replied that a mere accident hardly qualified him for the post. Sesame raved, but to no avail. Even Molly the poodle seemed affected, for she turned churlish and howled for three nights in a row.

I don’t know why at this late date the burden of Twiford’s secret should nag at me so much. Maybe it was cumulative effect, but it was now actually interfering with my sleep and my piece of mind. Finally, in desperation, I looked up an old college friend, Dr. James Barrington, who had developed quite a reputation as an expert in criminal psychology. I begged him to come to dinner, but we had drifted apart years ago, and I must admit that it was not until I dropped a hint of what was on my mind that he rather reluctantly agreed.

During dinner, I led up to it slowly. Then, over the coffee, my wife said: “I’ll never forget Twiford’s face that night when he came to the door to ask to use the phone. And Molly the Third — how she growled. She was usually so friendly”

James said: “Molly the Third?”

“Twiford’s poodle he had then. Harry, here, missed it. He was out in the back garden playing with his tomato plants, and then I think he took the car — didn’t you, Harry? — and went down to the drugstore to get something to read.”

I said: “Yes.” Then: “James, there’s still some light left. How would you like to leave the ladies to discuss nylons and meat prices, and stroll over to see the locus criminis?”

James agreed, so we went down the street to the dead end, to where the path cuts across the Higgins meadow to the road. On the way we passed Twiford Warner with Molly the Sixth on a leash, and he flourished his cane at us as he turned in at his place.

Halfway up Round Hill I showed James the pole into which the police said Oast’s car had been forced, and, a little further up, the dirt road where Twiford had come upon the car and bodies. Standing there in the twilight, watching James pull his lower lip and bring his judicial mind to bear on the problem, I had a very, very strange sensation, as though something inside of me, something alive, was trying to get out. It made me quite shaky, and my vision blurred. I seemed to be losing control of myself. Next thing I know, I was steering James to the dirt road, then down through the underbrush to Lost Creek. I peered about. The flat rock was still there; so large that I wondered how Twiford Warner and I had ever managed to lift it.

“That,” I heard myself saying huskily, “is Molly the Third’s grave.”

Said James, in an odd tone: “Just when was she buried there?”

“That night,” I said. And as I said it, I knew the live thing was going to get out.

“Is this Warner a close friend of yours?” asked James thoughtfully.

“Just a neighbor — an acquaintance.”

That was all a part of the unreality of the thing. As I began to talk, it all came back so clearly — why, I could even smell the warm, wet smell of the tomato plant around which I was rooting for cutworms at the moment when Twiford Warner called to me from the grape arbor. He had come in the back way. I could even see his white face, hear his voice as he said: “Harry, I wonder if you’d mind helping me clean up a mess?”

I said: “Sure, I’ll help,” and followed him, wondering what had got into the guy and where Molly the Third was.

Twiford led me across lots and up Round Hill to where the limousine stood sniffing the telephone pole. After a moment I said: “My Lord!”

“Yes,” said Twiford, in a flat voice.

The whitish object crushed between bumper and pole was Molly the Third. Across the ditch, a man lay on his back, his head against a rock. That, I learned later, was Machine-gun Larkin. Beside the car, one arm on the running board, was a big, blond man who later turned out to be Speed Oast, and the body subsequently identified as Chicago Lon Ucci was half in the ditch — a chunky man, face masked with drying blood.

“The car wasn’t damaged?” asked James in that same voice.

“Not a bit, outside of the bumper.” I had my eyes shut. I could hear Twiford Warner’s voice again; no inflections: “They swerved at Molly and me — just for fun, to make me jump into the ditch, I suppose. I jumped. Then I heard brakes. Molly got caught. I went up to the driver and told him to get out, that I was going to have the lot of them arrested. I was extremely angry.

“The driver got out and said, ‘The hell you are, buddy,’ and smacked my face. I hit him with my cane — it’s pretty heavy, you know — and he fell across the ditch and hit his head on that stone. When the blond man got out with a gun in his hand. I picked up a good-size rock. He shot — he must have been quite drunk, because...” Here Twiford showed me a rip along the collar of his coat. “Anyhow, I hit him with the rock as hard as I could while the third man was climbing out. The third man” — Twiford pointed to Chicago Lon Ucci’s body — “said he was going to kill me. He quite obviously meant it. I was still terribly angry and more than a little frightened, and I still had the rock, so...”

I swallowed hard. “You asked me to help you clean up, Twiford. Just what...? That is, the police...”

“I’ve thought it all over, Harry. No.”

For a second I thought Twiford was going to add me to this massacre. This queer little man, killing these three brutes... Then I realized he was quite calm and sane. “These three men,” he said, “are obviously criminals of some sort. I acted in self-defense, of course. But think of the fuss. And Sesame. Life with Sesame is difficult enough now, Harry. I don’t think I could bear to have her lionizing me as a hero, or playing the martyred wife, or — worst of all — going moral on me. Besides, I might lose out at Miller’s — the publicity, you know. No, Harry. I’m sorry to drag you into this, but I can’t lift this blond man...”

He was quite right about Sesame and Miller’s. Looking at him there in the deep gray dusk, spare, precise, controlled, I heard myself saying: “O.K., Twiford, what do we do?”

“Besides,” he said, as though he hadn’t been listening, “they killed my dog.” The words dropped heavily.

So that (I told James) was why we loaded them into the car. Twiford backed it into the dirt road. We washed his cane, threw the rock away, and buried Molly the Third by the creek. Then I went home and got the car out and made a record trip to the kennels and came back with Molly the Fourth. She was a shade lighter than Molly the Third, but Twiford said Sesame wouldn’t notice — she wouldn’t allow the dog in the house anyhow. He said this there on the road while he was snapping the leash on Molly the Fourth.

Then he said: “Thanks a lot, Harry. Good night.” And I said: “Oh, that’s all right, Twiford,” and went on home and fiddled in the garden, although it was just about dark. And a little later he showed up at the house and asked Amy if he could use the phone...

James said: “Very interesting, Harry.” That’s all he ever said on the subject. So we went on home. As we passed the Warner house, we could hear Sesame in the living room lecturing Twiford about something, and Twiford — he’s quite white now; must be near sixty, I guess — was looking up from his magazine and nodding vaguely.

Twiford’s heart isn’t too good, he told me the other evening. Some day, shortly after he dies, I’ll take my revenge on Sesame. I’ll tell her all about it.