The Headless Lady

Chapter Twenty-one Blow-Off

Chief of Police Hooper was still not completely sold on Merlini’s innocence. However, after he had been assured that the next day’s headlines would give credit for the murderer’s apprehension to the local authorities and would contain no whisper of anything concerning a jail-escape, he led his captive off.

The rest of us crowded into Pauline’s trailer. We were a dripping, water-soaked crew; but the story Merlini had to tell made us forget that. He pulled back the covers on the bed and exposed the mummy of John Wilkes Booth. He showed us the length of white thread attached to the bandages covering the chin, and, kneeling by the bed as he had done before, demonstrated how the thread led invisibly down across the bed covers and ended in a loop around his right forefinger. When he pulled the thread the gauze over the mummy’s chin moved and Pauline’s voice, not nearly so illusive now that we knew it came from Merlini’s mouth, said:

“The principle of the ventriloquial dummy. The thread pulls the bandage down, and a rubber band beneath pulls it back again so that in the half-light enough apparent chin movement is created to attract the attention and complete the illusion. Ventriloquists, as I’ve said before, don’t throw their voices; they simply create that appearance.

“The joker in the whole business is, of course, the fact that Pauline never was an eyewitness to her father’s murder. She didn’t know who the murderer was until I told her when we were moving her over into Tex Mayo’s trailer. She not only didn’t stay behind to listen at the trailer window, but she admits now that Irma King did not go to the Major’s trailer Monday night. When Pauline accused her of that, she did so because she was burned up by Irma’s attempt to grab the show and by Irma’s public accusations of illegitimacy.”

“Well, anyway,” I said disappointedly, “I was right about the girl in the bandages not being Pauline. If only she had turned out to be Paula instead of a mummy my theory would have crossed the finish line. I still want to know why you were so sure Pauline wasn’t the culprit. Tex may not have been in love with Paula, as I had it, but he is in love with Pauline. Together they could have done it all.”

Merlini shook his head. “They couldn’t have accomplished Pauline’s fall from the high perch, Ross. With Tex’s presence at the back door established, it would have meant still another assistant to douse the lights. You can always solve a crime if you parcel out the various bits of dirty work to enough different people. But that’s not only bad fiction; it’s also bad practice from the murderer’s viewpoint. Too many criminal accomplices are dangerous because one of them might trip and get caught out, or might break down and confess. If you want to see that murder is done right, don’t delegate your dirty work — do it yourself.”

“Maybe they didn’t know that,” I said stubbornly. “And besides, their motive is much stronger than—”

“No,” Merlini contradicted even more stubbornly, “that’s not so. I was suspicious all along that the inheritance of a circus — the outdoor show business being what it has been lately — was hardly motive enough for two murders and an attempted third. Circus management today is mostly a first-class headache — too much competition from movies and radio, I suspect — and no one in his right mind is going to undertake wholesale murder in order to inherit a headache. The real murderer’s motive is right here.”

Merlini turned the stiff figure of the mummy over on its face and exposed a gaping hole between its shoulder blades.

“You knew that the mummy was papier mâché and hollow,” he said, reaching in and bringing out neatly banded packets of United States currency by the handful. “This particular mummy classes as one of the most valuable side-show draws ever exhibited. He’s nearly filled with cash, and I haven’t seen a bill in the lot yet that is smaller than a C note. Most of them are grands.” Inspector Gavigan stepped forward and probed the body’s interior. His operative technique might have been open to professional criticism, but it got results. Merlini held a pillowcase, and Gavigan filled it with banknotes. Finally he produced two account ledgers, and his face beamed as he leafed through them.

“The Weissman evidence,” he said. “More motive. To certain people these books are worth twice that cash. It means curtains for some of Maxie’s racketeer pals whom we haven’t been able to pin anything on. Especially Jerry O’Bryen, the Brooklyn real-estate operator — the two-faced crook who throws a smoke screen over his underworld connections by his donations to charity. The D.A.’s been hoping to get him with his pants down for a long time — and this does it. Maxie didn’t trust O’Bryen, and he’s put enough evidence in these books to send Jerry up the river until about the year 4000.”

“Motive enough for half a dozen murders,” Merlini commented. “O’Bryen would pay plenty to get his hands on those books.” He paused a moment, and then continued, “Since you know who the murderer is, it’s obvious why the technique of the crimes was so expert, why so few clues that one could really get one’s teeth into were left.”

“I don’t see them,” I said. “If, at this late date, you are going to turn into one of those psychic detectives who solve their cases by character analysis or plain and fancy hunches, you can find yourself a new Boswell, starting now.”

“Do you think the Inspector would have let me pull anything as dramatic, anything that smelled as much of the footlights, as that ventriloquism stunt, if I had only hunches? There were just three really decent clues, but they were whoppers. It’s a practical possibility, even in this day and age of scientific detection and F.B.I. trained detectives with their spectroscopes, their moulage methods, and their vacuum cleaners, to commit one murder, perhaps even two, without a slip. It happens every day, somewhere. But if you try it with the investigators sitting right in your lap, and are forced to attempt a third and then a fourth murder, even a Napoleon of crime can be excused for making a misstep. It’s pretty nearly impossible, unless the investigators are complete dunderheads. The law of averages gets you eventually.”

“Oh, so! Dunderhead, is it? Some day I’m going to cross you up and report one of your cases with you on the short end. It may be my last assignment, but I’ll have fun writing it.”

Merlini looked down his nose at me, said, “Sour grapes,” and then continued on his explanatory way. If asked to explain one of his own tricks, the man is as close-mouthed as a clam, but when he begins describing the inner workings of a murderer’s hocus-pocus, he lectures in extenso, complete with prefaces, marginal notations, footnotes, and appendices.

“The law of averages,” he repeated, “gets you in the end. Complications creep in, unforeseen hitches occur, snap decisions must be made. I doubt if even a lightning calculator could run that gamut. Our murderer, though an experienced criminal tight-wire walker, took three bad falls. Even then Lady Luck still smiled, because the evidence, though it completely exposed the criminal’s identity, was still not quite the sort that a good trial lawyer couldn’t fog with a lot of reasonable doubt. That was why I set the trap I did. That and the desire to avoid a messy court trial which would have put the fact of Pauline’s illegitimacy on all the front pages.”

Impatiently Inspector Gavigan said, “Merlini, skip the long-winded introduction. I’ve heard you do them before. Your reputation as an impromptu lecturer is safe enough. Get down to cases. You told me earlier who the killer was and supplied some evidence. But I want to know how you arrived at those conclusions. Why—”

“What’s your hurry, Inspector? The conflagration is over. You’re not going any place.”

“But you may be,” Gavigan came back. “There’s still a blotter full of law violations hanging over your head, in case you don’t remember. Get on with it!”

“Sour grapes from Ross. Ingratitude from you. I don’t know why I bother.” Merlini grinned, apparently little disturbed by Gavigan’s threat. Then he got to the point. “The missing head — I said more than once that it was the crux of the matter, that if we could find it—”

“But we haven’t found it,” Schafer said. “Or did you?”

“No,” Merlini replied. “If I had, there would have been no need to set the trap we did. How many good reasons are there for the removal by the murderer of his victim’s head?”

“We discussed two,” I offered. “It might have been done to conceal the victim’s identity; in this case, to hide the fact that the body was the missing and wanted Paula. But that’s out, because, if it were the motive, the clothing labels would have been removed as well.

“Secondly, as I said before, it might have been done for the exact opposite reason — to hide the fact that the body was not Paula — but someone else. You eliminated that on the score that no attempt had been made to remove Paula’s fingerprints from her trailer, or the hands from the body. The only other motive I can suggest is insanity.”

“Which,” Merlini answered, “is improbable on more than one count. Separating head from body is a fairly unusual form for psychopathic body mutilation to take. Furthermore, everything else about the crimes indicated a cleverly operating, sane mind — always supposing that your definition of sanity includes the possibility of murder. There’s one other possible motive.”

Captain Schafer said, “I get it now. The bullet was in the head, and the murderer knew that ballistics tests could link it to his gun.”

“Exactly. The head was removed for the simple reason that it contained evidence that would have brought the murderer’s whole house of cards down about his ears. The bullet itself couldn’t be extracted because the murderer hadn’t the time or any decent probing instruments.”

Gavigan nodded. “Yes. I’ll agree there. I’ve seen cases where the bullet ricocheted inside the skull, and the medical examiner had to do a complete cranial dissection in order to locate the slug. But how did that indicate identity? Several suspects were in possession of firearms.”

“That wasn’t too difficult,” Merlini replied. “I merely asked myself why it was the murderer hadn’t gotten rid of the gun instead of troubling to saw off the head. You see?”

“Well, yes. This hick town doesn’t offer any firearms stores where a similar gun could be purchased and substituted. You’d have noticed its absence. And the other boners?”

“Were worse. The business about the gun couldn’t be helped. Fate played that card. But the other clues were out-and-out boners. The rubber gloves should never have been planted in the Headless Lady’s trailer to make us think that she had committed the crimes and lammed. The nitrate test is getting commoner year by year. Years ago few people outside the Crime Detection Bureau at Northwestern had ever heard of it. Now every dick who’s had the F.B.I. training can do it with his eyes shut.”

“Stop editorializing,” I objected. “The test showed that the gloves had been worn when a shot was fired. So what?”

“So,” Merlini said, “if you hadn’t poked your nose down so close to that paraffin mold you’d have noticed that the nitrate stains appeared on the left hand! There was one person among our suspects who was obviously left-handed.”[6]

“There were two,” Schafer corrected. “I’m not quite so blind that I missed the paraffin-mold clue. It was obvious as hell that the murderer was a southpaw. Burns saw it, too. But we didn’t mention it to you. We were saving that for your court trial. I thought that if you saw the molds, it might throw a scare into you.”

Merlini said, “You thought I was left-handed?”

“Sure, aren’t you? I saw you vanishing that half-dollar of yours with your left hand.”

“Teach you not to make generalizations about queer people like magicians. Look.”

Merlini took out his half-dollar, dropped it onto his open left hand, closed the hand, said “Abracadabra” three times, and slowly opened his fist. The half-dollar was gone. Merlini bent forward and took it from Schafer’s coat pocket. Then he dropped it on his right palm, repeated the whole process and spread both hands wide, fingers open, palms empty. “The coin is in your pocket again, Captain.”

Schafer reached in sheepishly and removed it himself.

“Oh,” he said, “both hands, huh?”

Merlini nodded. “Ambidextrous. One result of the practice of conjuring. While the spectators watch the right hand doing some ordinary above-board action, the left hand is often busy getting in the dirty work. Magicians’ left hands consequently are well trained.

“The third and final boner was the bit of information that, when it showed up in O’Halloran’s story, clinched the case. I told you the other night, Ross, that everyone had an alibi for the monkey business with the lights — except for Joy. She, Mac, and Keith were apparently the only ones on the lot who knew that Pauline was about to give the Sheriff some headline news. Then tonight Joy was with us when the sword was stolen, and she had an alibi at last.

“But when O’Halloran, busily spinning a yarn aimed at making the Duke the fall-guy, got so engrossed in his careful pussy-footing between truth and falsehood that he stumbled and admitted that he had eavesdropped outside the trailer window, he elected himself as the murderer!

“O’Halloran was the man who owned a gun distinctive enough so that he couldn’t, in a tank town like this, obtain a duplicate.[7] He was the man whose first-hand acquaintance with crime supplied him with an expert murder technique; whose first-hand acquaintance with violent death had hardened him to the point that he didn’t boggle at sawing off a corpse’s head to save himself; whose first-hand acquaintance with detection made him realize the danger that lay in that bullet if ballistics tests were ever performed. O’Halloran was the southpaw. You’ll remember that when I gave my demonstration of the gentle art of pocket-picking, I found his gun in his left coat pocket and his billfold in his left trouser pocket. It was possible that he might carry his purse there to foil pickpockets, but he would only carry his gun in a left-handed pocket if he was left-handed. O’Halloran also manipulated his cigarette with his left hand.”[8]

“Your solution,” I criticized, “still has as many loose ends as a Spanish shawl. I still don’t see why he had to kill the Major. And why, once he did get his hands on the cash, didn’t he lam instead of hanging around waiting for us to catch wise?”

“Because, Ross, when the locomotive initial event in this case pulled out of the station, all the others hitched on in logical order and rattled along behind. Briefly, O’Halloran’s thought processes must have gone something like this. Having run Paula to ground here on the circus, he tumbled to the fact almost immediately that the Duke was on the show. Casing Paula’s trailer as he was, he could hardly have missed the visits the Duke paid her — like that one we ourselves saw. He didn’t nab the Duke at once because it wasn’t the reward he was after, but the Weissman money. Since the Duke was living in the clown car, and since he noticed that both Paula and the Major always kept their trailers locked, he deduced that the money was hidden in one or the other — probably Paula’s. But she stuck to it too closely. Simple burglary, he realized, might not do the trick — he might have to get the money at the point of a gun. So, to eliminate it as much as anything else, he investigated the Major’s trailer first.

“Using the glass cutter, he got in at the window. But, while he was searching the place, the Major and Pauline returned unexpectedly, trapping him there. He picked up the bull-hook and ducked into the wardrobe. When Pauline left, the Major opened the wardrobe to get his slicker. O’Halloran knocked him out with the elephant hook to prevent recognition. He finished his search and found that the reason the Major had always locked his trailer was because he had a bank roll there — the remainder of the Duke’s initial payment after Saturday’s salary payoff. But far worse, he found that the Major’s heart, which he hadn’t known was bad, had stopped.

“He was in a jam. He didn’t want to lam without the money he had committed murder to get. An investigation would endanger his impersonation of Towne and probably scare off Paula and the Duke before he could hijack them. That left only one course. He had to make the murder look like an accident and no questions asked. He refrained from touching the Major’s money so its absence wouldn’t contradict the accident setup. We didn’t find it there later because Pauline had removed it the next morning, and Schafer didn’t find it when he searched Pauline’s trailer because she had it, with the will, in bed with her.

“Then, when he thought his staged auto-smash had gotten by nicely, Harte and myself arrived; and he began to worry. Not knowing why Pauline had visited my shop or what was behind her apparent vanish from it, he couldn’t understand where we fitted into the case and decided we needed some investigation. Then, ironically, although he himself was familiar with pickpocket argot, he wasn’t aware that the real Towne knew any; and he made the mistake of denying such knowledge.[9] He didn’t know this was an error then, but later he got a jolt when, listening at the trailer window, he not only heard us shoot holes in his phony accident but also heard Pauline announce that what she had to say would make headlines. He knew that meant that she suspected Paula and the Duke, and was intending to stool on them. This in itself, later proved to be a clue to the murderer’s identity since it meant that only someone knowing the Headless Lady’s identity could have translated Pauline’s cryptic statement.

“O’Halloran still hadn’t gotten his dukes on the money, and he saw that unless he could quiet Pauline he never would. His flair for the impromptu showed itself here when he quickly concocted one of the year’s better pieces of dirty work. With Pauline engaged in her perilous and dizzy feats aloft, he unplugged the light cable — a murder attempt that left no clues at all, that was simple and direct to the point of genius. The only reason he didn’t plug the cable in again, making the light failure not only clueless but downright mysterious, was that he wanted to prolong the confusion the lack of light caused. Harte incidentally mentioned the point that a circus person wouldn’t have counted on Pauline’s being killed in such a fall. That was the reason I began to suspect that the murderer might not be a circus person — a deduction which made me give O’Halloran some serious consideration.

“You will also notice that he made no serious attempt to dish up any alibis, but instead promptly did something of even more importance. He hotfooted it back to the Major’s trailer. Finding us gone, as he hoped he would, he destroyed or made off with all the evidence in the matter of the auto accident. He wiped away the rubber glove prints and took the hat, the broken lens pieces, and the photo. This effectively staved off any immediate official investigation.

“The important thing after that was speed. I think, like ourselves, he saw the Duke enter Pauline’s trailer and decided against a holdup on the circus lot as being too risky. The Duke was the sort of person who would start shooting, and the battle would bring the whole show down around their ears. So he lay low, thought hard, and during the night his criminally fertile mind hatched the plan of the chalked arrow which early the next morning sidetracked Paula down a little-frequented road. He held her up, handkerchief over his face probably, and knocked her out. This next, I’ll admit, is guesswork based on the finding of a gun among Paula’s effects. Mindful of the fact that the night before he had struck the Major too hard, he now pulled his punch too much; and, while he was in the trailer finding the money, Paula came to and put her head in at the door, gun in hand. O’Halloran managed to fire first — but got her in the head.

“Dilemma. He now had the money, but also another body, a body whose head held a bullet from his gun. He knew only too well that the rifling marks on the slug could be matched with the gun. He couldn’t discard the gun without arousing suspicion, and he couldn’t get a substitute. He had neither time nor instruments to probe for the bullet. Someone might drive down that road at any moment and catch him red-handed. But if he conceals the body and removes Paula’s luggage so that she appears to have decamped, he again conceals the fact of murder. Then he got too fancy.

“He had been the eavesdropper at our hotel-room door and had heard me deduce the use of the rubber gloves. He saw that if he planted the gloves and the torn envelope in the trailer, so that they looked hidden but would be sure to be found, suspicion might be switched to Paula, Harte, and myself; and the official investigators, when they arrived eventually, could be expected to ride off in all directions after a vanished and impossible to find Paula. In addition, since he now had the money, he could dispense with the false whiskers of the Stuart Towne impersonation, disclose himself as a detective, and join the hunt — with the quarry everyone is chasing, reposing secure, but dead, in the trunk compartment of his own car!”

“And,” Gavigan added, “once that happened he’d have all the time he wanted to remove the incriminating bullet and dispose of the body miles away. He could even arrest the Duke to make his intentions look good and collect the reward! I hope I never meet any more murderers like him.”

“No, Inspector,” Merlini contradicted. “He’s the kind you want to hope for. He did make those boners, you know.”

Schafer said, “That sounds like a watertight schedule. Why didn’t he go through with it?”

Merlini said, “He couldn’t start that train of action until someone had found the empty trailer; and he’d rather not do it himself — though if he had, he might have pulled it off. He came back to the hotel and put on his shaving-in-the-bathroom act for my benefit. That was the nearest he came to attempting an alibi, and it was an error.

“Then Fate did him dirt. Because I happen to collect circus posters, I had to be the one to find the arrow on the pole and discover the trailer. I realized that the arrow pointed directly to foul play. If Tex, as Harte wanted to have it, had driven Pauline down that road to her death and a substitution of identities with Paula, there’d have been no necessity for the arrow. The arrow indicated foul play, and the absence of the rug suggested blood, and thus — murder.

“Later when we arrived on the lot O’Halloran was all set to announce his identity and carry on, but I perversely refrained from making any general announcement of having found an empty trailer, and he couldn’t without arousing suspicion, quiz me on the subject. Then, while he was impatiently champing at the bit, Captain Schafer and his minions arrived with a boy who had heard the shot; I announced that the Headless Lady had not vanished, but was murdered — and the fat is in the fire, sizzling like anything!

“Paula’s body hidden in his car was more dangerous than the sword that threatened Damocles. O’Halloran couldn’t do a thing but hope like hell that darkness would fall before the troopers started a search. His luck held that far, and when nearly everyone was in the cookhouse he got his chance to swipe the Swede’s sword. In the darkness behind the side-show top he hacked off Paula’s head and transferred the body and other things to my car. You’ll remember that his car was parked right next to mine.”

“And,” I added, “he placed the money in the mummy because it wasn’t likely that a search would include the interior of a corpse on exhibition.”

“But he didn’t put the head there,” Schafer said. “And my men are out there now trying to find it. They haven’t uncovered it yet, or I’d have heard about it. I wish you’d look into your crystal, Merlini, and give me the answer to that one.”

Merlini replied, “I rather think that tomorrow, after the show moves, if you’ll do a little excavating you may find it. I don’t think he put the head in the mummy because it was just possible that someone might stumble on that hiding place accidentally. O’Halloran would rather take a chance on losing the money than have Paula’s head found and lose his own. He cut off the head because he didn’t have the time nor tools to bury the whole body, and even so he couldn’t have done it without leaving too many traces. The head was less of a problem; he could manage to bury — wait, that’s bad too. Burial is better than the mummy, though there’d still be some danger of accidental discovery. It’s not perfect enough, and O’Halloran was a perfectionist. I don’t think he’d have let the head leave his possession until he’d removed that bullet. It must still be in his car.”

“But we searched it,” Schafer said. “Besides, if there were a hiding place in the car for the head, he’d have put the money there too.”

“You may have something there, Captain,” Merlini said. “The first time you searched the car you didn’t know what you were looking for. Look again. Look for a place where he could have put the head, but one in which it would be inadvisable to put the paper money.”

“I’ll be damned,” Schafer said. He strode to the door and put his head out. “Stevens!” he called. “Beat it in to town. O’Halloran’s car is parked in front of the jail. Give it a good going over — and look under the hood![10]

“O’Halloran,” Gavigan commented, “was certainly efficient enough. He got rid of the body and got you jailed all at one and the same time. Then, since he couldn’t follow his plan of chasing after Paula, he dealt another hand and tried to work the same stunt using the Duke. O’Halloran probably intended to warn the Duke to lam so he could appear to go chasing after him as soon as he’d lifted the money from the mummy again. But the Duke, who had taken a powder, gets himself caught and leaves O’Halloran high and dry.”

Merlini nodded. “Yes, and even then he still thought he was pretty safe because he only knew about one of the boners he had made — the gloves. Harte and I barged in on him in the Sheriff’s office when we were escaping and found him examining those paraffin molds. I suspect he was wondering if he could fake some blue specks on the right-hand mold and scrape them off the other. That was our tough luck. If he’d had time to attempt that we’d have had him.”

Keith said, “And at the finish he swiped a leaf from your book, Merlini, and desperately tried misdirection to make us think someone else had crowned him. He told us someone had taken his gun and fired, because once again there was a telltale bullet in the victim’s head.”

“Yes, and the blood on his face was from a self-inflicted cut. The case of the Headless Lady had two headless women and a headless man. But the murderer had a head and used it nearly every minute.”

“If guillotining,” Gavigan added, “was used hereabouts rather than electrocution, the case would end with a headless murderer after all.”

“And that,” Merlini said, “reminds me of a story Earl Chapin May tells. The Mabie Bros. show was playing through Texas, season of 1857. A booted, spurred, large-hatted sheriff came to the ticket wagon one afternoon and said. ‘See heah, sah. I’ve got a triple hangin’ on today. They’s a heap of folks driv into town from as much as fohty miles aroun’. They’s fond of hangin’s like they is of circuses. ’Less you give tickets to me and my prisoners, I’ll have my hangin’ when you open yoh dawes and I’ll get the crowd. I know my people!’

“The ticket agent was a practical psychologist too. The sheriff and his prisoners saw the performance, but the management wasn’t passing out paper for nothing. Near the end of the show when the concert was announced, ‘tickets for which will be sold by the gentlemanly agents who will pass among you,’ the announcer added: ‘Ladeez and gen-tul-men, immediately following our after-show the hanging will take place at the first big tree to the right as you pass out of our tent!’

“They all stayed for the concert and the hanging was held as advertised!”

“Getting back to a more cheerful subject and speaking again of heads,” Keith said, “I’m reminded of the fact that two are better than one — or, for that matter, none — and does anyone know where I can find a Justice of the Peace at this time of night?”

“Captain,” Merlini smiled, “can you produce one from thin air? It’s a conjuring trick you troopers always seem to be able to do whenever you make an arrest for speeding. It’s amazed me more than once.”

“I guess,” Schafer admitted, “that it can be arranged.”

A half-hour later in the only tent that still remained standing, the menagerie top, the personnel of the Mighty Hannum Combined Shows attended a wedding. Lohengrin was supplied by a band whose repertoire no longer included Suppé’s “Cavalry March,” and incidental sound effects were furnished by the “strange and wonderful congress of curious jungle beasts and zoological wonders” who paced their cages nervously, still apprehensive of the now-diminishing storm outside.

Once, when it was the bride’s cue to say “l do,” Rubber, the smallest elephant, lifted her trunk and answered for Joy. On circus lots they still ask Keith it he’s quite sure which of them he married.