The Kissed Corpse (3 page)

While Jelcoe issued crisp orders to his detectives, the police surgeon bent briskly over Young. He was a stout little man who whistled cheerfully as he went methodically about his task.

I couldn't stand Burke's silence as we stood there. “What do you make of it?” I burst out. “What do those marks on his cheek
mean
?”

Burke shook his head with maddening deliberation. The taciturnity of his cowpunching days still clings to him. “Guesses are for fools. But …” He paused, a puzzled look on his face, “I've seen such a two-barred cross somewhere.”

“Does Young's wife use lots of lipstick?” I broke in impatiently.

“Damned if I know,” Jerry murmured. “We'll ask her presently.”

Jelcoe had his men circling around looking for footprints or other tangible clues. He came sidling back to stand beside us as the surgeon straightened up and spoke.

“A small-calibre bullet into the brain from some distance. .22 or .25, I imagine. Bullet's lodged inside.” He stepped away, closing his medical case.

“How long …?” Jelcoe began eagerly, but the surgeon stopped him with a plump palm held up.

“I know. The one all-important question which no doctor can answer. I can narrow it down to comparatively brief limits this time. Death was instantaneous … not less than half an hour and not more than two hours ago. I may be able to do better after I get him in where I can go over him.”

“When did you find him, Asa?” Burke asked me.

Jelcoe's eyelids twitched while I looked at my watch. “Exactly thirty minutes ago. I looked at my watch.”

Burke was satisfied but Chief Jelcoe wasn't. From the beginning he hadn't taken kindly to the action of the City Fathers in bringing Jerry Burke to El Paso and installing him as the supreme authority over the police department; and the ridiculous showing he made in his mishandling of other cases on which I had trailed Burke around hadn't helped our friendly relations to any extent.

Now, he openly sneered: “Any witnesses around when you supposedly discovered the body?”

“A couple of Scotties,” I told him as calmly as I could. “And … I met a man just up the canyon as I was returning from a long walk. He might be able to verify the time.”

I purposely saved the identity of the man to tell Burke later, and Jelcoe pounced on my somewhat halting explanation with a gleeful sniff.

“A stranger, I suppose? One who will conveniently vanish in thin air if you attempt to prove an alibi by him.”

“What do I need an alibi for? Am I a suspect?”

“You were here. You reported finding the body.” Jelcoe's voice sounded as though that clinched it.

I nodded disgustedly. “And I kissed him on the lips and marked his face up with lipstick after bopping him.”

Chief Jelcoe shrugged thin shoulders, the expression on his face indicating that he wouldn't be at all surprised to learn I had done just that.

Jerry Burke put an end to the by-play by saying brusquely: “I'll answer for Baker for the time being.” Two men were bringing up a stretcher, and Burke stepped in front of them.

He said: “I'll go through his pockets before you take him away,” and leaned down to do that.

He brought out a little pile of keys, cash, and trifles, and laid them on the grass while Jelcoe stood by, rocking back on his heels and watching suspiciously.

Burke had an envelope in his hand when he straightened up, and he took a folded sheet of paper out while a photographer took several shots of the body.

Burke's body stiffened as he stared at the sheet of paper. Jelcoe and I stepped close on each side of him and peered at it.

It was heavy orange notepaper, giving off a faint perfume, and the message was written in black ink in a flowing feminine hand. But what I saw first, and what brought a gasp from my lips, was the inked symbol in the bottom left-hand corner. A cross with two bars!

Drawn free-hand with firm vertical and horizontal strokes of the pen; like this:

Identical with the crimson marks on Leslie Young's cheek!

The paper became a blur in front of my eyes, and I could have sworn it shook in the grip of Jerry Burke's fingers. But his voice was steady enough as he read:

April 13th. 1939.

Dear Mr. Leslie Young:

You are not acquainted with the writer of this note but I know much about Leslie Young. If you are interested in matters that used to interest you come to
Hacienda del Torro
tomorrow night at eight. You will not be known by any who are present, and there will be no danger.

Cross the Rio Grande at Zaragoza, turn left on the first road beyond Waterfill Gardens, drive ten miles to stone gateposts on the right with a bull on the archway.

Michaela O'Toole

Burke was silent for a moment as he refolded the notepaper and frowned at the envelope. “It was mailed in El Paso yesterday afternoon.” He replaced the letter carefully in its envelope and put it in his pocket.

“D-didn't you see those marks on the bottom?” Jelcoe sputtered.

Burke nodded. “The same symbol that's on Young's cheek … which gives us plenty to think about.” He turned to me, dismissing the chief of detectives.

“I'd better go up and break the news to Mrs. Young. Want to go along, Asa?”

I did. Very much. Walking toward Burke's car with him, I said:

“While you're getting turned around I'll walk down the road and send the pups up to wait by my car. I'm all packed and ready to leave.”

I whistled to Nip and Tuck and went on while he got in and started his motor. At the foot of the road leading up to the Martin cabin I stopped and told the pups to go up and wait. Burke came along as they trotted up the slope submissively.

Getting in beside him, I asked: “Do you know Mrs. Young?”

“Not very well. I've met her a time or two.” As he let out the clutch and we rolled ahead, he added heavily:

“Young has been doing some undercover work for me recently. Dangerous stuff, investigating Border activities. I don't know …”

His voice trailed off and he turned sharply to the left, climbing up steep ruts to a cottage of weathered logs standing in a clump of straggly oaks and jackpine.

A black Chevrolet sedan was parked in front of a low rock wall surrounding a cactus garden. Burke pulled up beside it and we got out.

The front door opened as we went up the path together. Myra Young stood full in the doorway watching our approach with dark sultry eyes. She was wearing a house dress of gay printed cotton material, and didn't show up to such advantage as when she was sunbathing. Her hair was still tousled, and her mouth looked sullen without any rouge on it.

Burke took off his hat and stopped in front of her. “Mrs. Young, I'm terribly sorry to bring you this news, but Leslie has … had a bad accident.”

Sharp teeth came down over her full lower lip, leaving it indented. That was the only visible sign of emotion on her face. “Thrown?” she questioned throatily. “I told him that horse was mean.”

Burke shook his head. “Shot. I'm afraid it's murder, Mrs. Young.”

A wild glint showed in her sultry eyes before she lowered her thick black lashes. “Murder?” Her fingers laced together in a quick spasm and her knuckles were as white as naked tendons. “I'm … not surprised,” she said.

I felt like a fool standing there waiting for her to go to pieces. Jerry, though, took it in his stride. “What makes you say that?”

She shrugged her shoulders. She cleared her throat, but her voice was still husky when she answered: “Plenty of reasons. That work he was doing for you. That crazy letter he got this morning, and the telephoned warning. And … playing around … the way he did.” Her body was shaking but she stood there obstinately gripping the door frame with both hands.

“Do you mean the letter from Mexico?”

“Of course. From that O'Toole woman. I
knew
something was going to happen when he insisted on going after being warned to stay away.”

“Tell me about the warning.” Burke's voice was gentle, as though he realized how close she was to hysteria and wanted to keep her talking.

“It came … over the telephone this noon. Leslie was visiting some pal of yours at that cabin across the canyon. A woman called … she wouldn't give her name, but she said Les would die if he insisted on going over to Mexico tonight.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her I knew Leslie too well to hope he'd be scared off by any such warning. Then she … hung up.”

“You should have temporized,” Burke told her. “There wasn't any use forcing the issue. Your husband might be alive now if you'd used your head.”

I was amazed at Jerry's tone. All at once it had become hard and relentless. Here was a woman freshly widowed.…

But she came back at him without turning a hair. “Why should I protect him? He hasn't paid any attention to me for months. Do you think I care what happened to him? I'm glad he got it! Do you hear! I'm glad!” She swayed as if a gale had suddenly struck her.

Burke made a quick step to catch her, but she pushed him off with clawed fingers, her face working convulsively.

“It's … it's all right.” Her voice had gone lifeless. She looked levelly at Burke with eyes that smouldered. “I guess maybe I do care. I tried not to. I tried to hate him.…”

Burke had backed a step away from her. “You'd better not stay here alone,” he urged. “Let me take you down to a hotel. Or I'll send a woman up.”

She shook her head. “I'm used to being alone.” Supporting herself with both arms outspread, hands pressed against each side of the door, she seemed a disembodied figure in the illusive half-shadows of the canyon, sagging forward, tortured eyes staring, as though she were the victim of physical as well as mental crucifixion.

While the toneless finality of her words, “I'm used to being alone,” still hung in the silence, Myra Young spoke again:

“Have you arrested Laura Yates?”

If Burke felt any surprise he didn't show it. He said, gently, “Not yet.”

“Leslie went to meet her this afternoon.” The widow's voice was a sullen drone like the distant roar of angry waters surging destructively and relentlessly onward. “She's responsible for everything. She made Leslie promise to go tonight.”

“Do you know where we could find Laura Yates?”

“No. I don't know where she lives.”

She slammed the door in our faces and we stood there looking at each other in the twilight. Then Burke said:

“I guess that's that,” and led the way back to his car.

I followed, doing a lot of thinking. How did it all tie up with Dwight and his telescope … the sunbathing?

“Suppose you run me over to the Martin cabin,” I suggested. “My things are all packed and I'm ready to leave. I'll trail you into town to my place.”

He gave me a sidelong glance. “I won't have much time for idle chatter this evening. I'll be busy on this thing.”

“That,” I told him, “is why I want you to stop by my place. I know some things you need to know.”

He didn't act surprised to learn that I had been holding out on him, but, then, he never does, so you can't tell. He pulled up to the Martin cabin in second gear, and as I got out, he said gruffly:

“I'll be at your place when you get there.”

I opened the back door of my not-so-late model car and let the pups in, then got in and pulled away from the spot with a jumpy feeling of relief.

But I knew it wasn't ended. Knew it just as certainly as though I'd seen the handwriting on the wall. I was mixed up in murder, and a man doesn't leave that behind him simply by driving away.

*
“Mum's the Word for Murder,” published December 1938.

4

Burke was just getting out of his car at my front gate when I pulled into the drive. He walked on in, knowing my front door is always unlocked, while I got out my typewriter and bag.

He was standing in the middle of the living room floor ruffling his stubby gray hair with heavy fingers when I came in. He looked depressed and worried.

Going past him to a bedroom with my bag, I said: “Open a bottle and pour us both a triple shot.”

He was sitting at the center table in front of a bottle of bourbon and two brimming wine glasses when I came back into the room. He lifted his glass and said heavily: “I don't like any of this, Asa.”

I knew what he meant. I sat down and swallowed a couple of fingers of the whiskey and said: “You're going to like it less when I finish spilling all I know.”

He nodded, taking out a stubby pipe and filling it with the rank tobacco he uses. “I gathered you were holding out on Jelcoe,” he said mildly. “You shouldn't do that, Asa.”

“Why not? God knows he always holds out on you when he gets a chance.”

Burke's heavy seamed face was placidly inexpressive. He sucked flame into the bowl of his pipe and said: “Two wrongs don't make a right.”