Exeunt Murderers Read online

  Exeunt Murderers

  The Best Mystery Stories of Anthony Boucher

  Anthony Boucher

  Contents

  Part I: An Ennead of Nobles

  Screwball Division

  QL 696. C9

  Black Murder

  Death of a Patriarch

  Rumor, Inc.

  The Punt and the Pass

  Like Count Palmieri

  Crime Must Have a Stop

  The Girl Who Married a Monster

  Part II: Conundrums for the Cloister

  Coffin Corner

  The Stripper

  Part III: Jeux de Meurtre

  Threnody

  Design for Dying

  Mystery for Christmas

  Code Zed

  The Ghost with the Gun

  The Catalyst

  The Retired Hangman

  The Smoke-filled Locked Room

  The Statement of Jerry Malloy

  A Matter of Scholarship

  The Ultimate Clue

  About the Author

  PART I

  An Ennead of Nobles

  Screwball Division

  Detective Lieutenant Donald MacDonald, L.A.P.D., was newly commissioned and inexperienced. He had never been inside a priest’s study before. For the matter of that, he had never seen a murdered priest.

  While he listened to the housekeeper, he tried to keep his eye on the diocesan map of parishes, on the unfinished poster announcing a Baked Ham Dinner with Bingo, on the glaring chromo of the Sacred Heart; but his gaze kept shifting back to the body.

  “The poor dear old man all alone in the house,” the woman was saying. “Father Guerrero off on a sick call, and me hurrying out to the Safeway because we was that near out of flour and he did love his coffee-cake of a morning, the saint that he was.”

  There was no point in staring at the body. The photographer had taken it from half a dozen angles. The surgeon hadn’t got there yet. The body was their business between them. But a black cassock with a stiff white collar, a thin peaceful old face with a fringe of gray hair—these didn’t go with murder.

  “I’ll never forgive myself, that I never will. To leave him alone with the world full of Nazzies and Kingdom People and such like!”

  MacDonald brought his eyes back to the witness. “And you were gone how long?”

  “That I can’t tell you, officer, not to the minute. That nice young man at the Safeway, the blond one, he was showing me snapshots of his youngest and—”

  “But roughly?”

  “Well, say ten minutes. Fifteen maybe.”

  “And what time was this?”

  “I’m not one to look at the clock day in and day out, officer, like my poor sister’s husband that never held a job six months in his life, God rest his soul, but it was before dinner, that I know, because it was all in the oven and a good half-hour to go yet.”

  “And dinner was at what time?”

  “Six o’clock sharp, and Father Guerrero gets his sick call five minutes before I left, and he’ll come home without a bite in his stomach, the poor lamb, to find his pastor …”

  The woman had wept before, and it had taken ten minutes to bring her back to the questions. MacDonald hastily interposed, “That would make it about five-thirty you left?”

  She gulped a little. “Yes, officer.”

  “You got back some time around quarter of six?”

  The gulp was stronger. “Yes, officer.”

  “And found Father Halloran …?”

  The gulp won. She nodded silently and turned her streaming face away.

  MacDonald damned the surgeon’s delay and doubly damned the fascination of that cassocked corpse. The housekeeper was huddled in silent sorrow. MacDonald could catch the dry clicking of her lips as the beads of a rosary slipped through her fingers. He forced himself to stare at the body with what he tried to make an impartial and experienced eye, and lined up the facts.

  Entrance of a bullet below the heart to the right. Exit in left shoulder blade. Bullet found in back of chair. Priest had been sitting. Murderer then must have been kneeling to achieve angle of shot. Query: false pretense of confession? Memo: find out mechanics of confessional positions. Time of death: 5:30 to 5:45, pending surgeon’s report. Memo: check time with blond Safeway clerk. Time. …

  Lieutenant MacDonald bent over the corpse and pushed back the black sleeve on the left arm. Wristwatch. A bare chance. …

  MacDonald rose and looked at the praying woman. There was a new and speculative quality in his stare. The broken wristwatch had registered exactly 7:06.

  Detective Lieutenant Dan Barker, L.A.P.D., felt no compulsion to stare at the body on the bed of the seedy Skid Row lodging house. There was more blood on the face of the questioned witness. There was blood on the floor, too, and on the luridly prophetic tracts proclaiming the Kingdom; and the corpse had bled very little.

  Barker let another short right jab light on the unshaven jaw of the witness and watched the head bobble on its scrawny neck. “Come clean, friend,” he grunted. “You can’t get away with it.”

  The witness tried to stem his nosebleed with what might once have been a handkerchief. Barker slapped his hand down. “Come clean,” he repeated.

  “Honest to gar, copper, I don’t know nothing. I hears the shot and I looks in here and I says, ‘Wow! This is where the bulls come in.’ So I runs downstairs and I finds Finney on his beat and he takes a gander and calls in you boys. And honest to gar, copper, that’s all I know.”

  Barker looked him over reflectively and decided on the nose. A light tap jerked the head back and set the blood flowing at a doubled rate: “We’ve got you cold, friend. Why’d you kill this Marsden jerk?”

  The witness leaned over to let the red stream hit the floor. A drop splashed on Barker’s right shoe. The officer raised his foot and swung it at the witness’ fleshless left shank.

  “Keep your blood to yourself, friend.” His voice was toneless. “What’d you do with the rod?”

  The witness hopped on his right leg and held both hands clasped to his shin. He moaned. His hopping left bright discs of blood around the floor with spatter-drops radiating from them.

  “The rod, friend,” Barker went on calmly. “We’ve got you cold without that, but maybe we could make things easy if you’d help us.”

  “Honest to gar, copper… Oooo…!” The witness’ voice wavered like an air-raid warning as he hopped about.

  “Stand still and on both legs, you yellow-bellied stork.”

  The witness stood. “Honest, I don’t see no rod. I hears the shot and I says, ‘Cripes, that screwball next door took the short cut home,’ but then I looks in and I don’t see no rod, so I goes for Finney just like I says.”

  Barker smiled now. “You don’t see no rod, is that it, friend?”

  “Sure, copper. Just like I tells you. Honest to—”

  “For gar’s sake forget about gar for a while. And you didn’t see the murderer come out of this room either, friend?”

  “I don’t see nobody. Hell, copper, I ain’t covering for nobody. If I see ’em, I’d sing. I play ball. You ask Finney.”

  “I’m asking you. You don’t see nobody?”

  “Nobody. Honest to—”

  Meditatively Barker drove a right against the witness’ left ear. The head described a long arc on its skimpy neck and met Barker’s left at the end of the arc. The neck stood straight again. The head wobbled and the eyes were glassy. Barker laid a flat palm against the chest to prop up the body, and swore as blood dripped on his sleeve. His other palm slapped the bristly cheeks until a little life came back to the eyes.

  “O.K., friend. Now listen to what you’ve said. This room’s at the end of a hall. You’re in t
he next room down. You hear a shot, you think this Marsden creep has killed himself, you run out and look in here. You don’t see no rod, you don’t see nobody.” He mimicked the witness’ wavering pipe. “So, my friend, honest to gar, you killed him.”

  The witness started to open his mouth. A backhand slap closed it and opened his lower lip. Barker had more reasons than vanity for wearing a heavy ring.

  “You’re listening now, friend,” Barker reminded him. “You thought stashing away the gun was smart; they couldn’t pin it on you that way. That’s where you were wrong. A gun, and it could be suicide. No gun, and it’s murder. And you’re the murderer, because anybody else would have had to pass you in the hall.” Barker paused. “There’s one other thing that’s phony,” he added. “How can you be so cockeyed sure of the time?”

  The split lip thickened the witness’ speech. “I used to work in a watch factory. Sometimes I do repairs for Joe’s pawnshop over on Main.”

  Barker laughed. “Repairs. O.K. We know Joe’s a fence. You alter identifications for him. That’ll help you.”

  The witness decided not to argue. “So I’m setting this watch, see, when I hear the shot. That’s how I know what time it is. It’s just 7:06 when they get him.”

  Detective Lieutenant Herman Finch, L.A.P.D., sniffed the aroma of the secretary’s obviously custom-made cigarette and lit his corncob defiantly. Twenty years on homicide had still not put Finch completely at ease in any dwelling assessed at over fifteen thousand dollars.

  “And you don’t know of any threats against the judge?” he puffed.

  The young man smiled disdainfully. “Judge Westcott did not move in circles where threats against one’s life are a commonplace, lieutenant.”

  “Social-like, maybe not. But all the same the judge was on the bench. I’ve never known a court officer yet didn’t get threatened some time by some poor sucker.”

  The secretary tapped his cigarette into a delicate glass ashtray. “Judge Westcott was never threatened. I’m certain that in my confidential capacity I’d have been aware of such a development.”

  “Horsefeathers!” muttered Finch, whose slang never managed to catch up with the times. He looked around the lavishly furnished room. “What do you know about the judge’s will?” he demanded abruptly.

  The supercilious youth was unmoved. “I am afraid that’s a matter on which you should consult—”

  “Sure, formal-like, but you could save me a lot of trouble if you knew.”

  The secretary shrugged. “Very well. The servants and I receive nominal bequests. The residuary estate is divided among several charities. If you care to know their names …?”

  “Later on, for the record. No family?”

  “None to my knowledge. Judge Westcott was an orphan and a widower.”

  Finch poked his index finger into the corncob bowl. “Nominal,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon, lieutenant?”

  “Nominal. What’s it mean?”

  “What—? Oh, the bequests. As to the servants, I don’t know. In my case, as I have gathered from the judge’s hints, it means something between five and ten thousand. Surely …” He hesitated.

  Finch let the silence grow, then drawled out a “Yes?”

  “Surely you could not consider such an insignificant sum as providing me with—well, a motive?”

  Finch said nothing. There isn’t anything you can say to people who call five or ten grand insignificant.

  “I’m sorry not to be more helpful.”

  Finch roused himself. “No way you can narrow the time? Damned doctors always shillyshally—helpful if you can check up on ’em.”

  “No. The judge regularly spent the hours from six to eight in his study alone. He often dozed off. I found him when I went in to rouse him for dinner.”

  “Ground floor, French windows, large grounds.… I can see how anybody might slip in all right. But what about the noise?”

  “The curse of civilization,” the secretary sighed. “A shot can be so easily confused with—”

  “I know,” Finch cut in. “A backfire. Criminenty! If I had me a buck for every time I’ve heard a witness talk about backfires, I’d be retired and doing right nicely, thank you. But the shot wasn’t all. There was pretty much of a brawl in there.”

  “I heard nothing, and most of the time I was here in this adjoining library.”

  “You must have heard it. Hell of a rumpus.”

  “Then it must have happened before I came in here, around six-twenty, or after I went upstairs to dress at seven-thirty.”

  “Uh-huh.” Finch nodded abstractedly and walked over to the study door. The room was a shattered mess. Chairs overturned, ashstand spilled, telephone sprawling, clock …

  Finch puffed harder on his corncob and strode over to the clock. It was electric, and the struggle had jerked it loose from the wall plug. “Hot ziggety zag!” he murmured. The clock had stopped at exactly 7:06.

  Detective Lieutenants MacDonald and Finch, holders of the newest and oldest lieutenants’ commissions on the force, decided on another cup of coffee.

  Finch glanced up at the clock in the all-night lunch wagon. “They say the stuff keeps you awake. But when you finish work after midnight, you’ll sleep all right.”

  MacDonald frowned at the counter. “You know,” he said, “I had the damnedest thing happen to me tonight.”

  Finch grinned. “Watch it, Mac.”

  The younger officer half-answered the grin. “I know. You always say murder’s enough in the day’s business; keep it quiet after hours. But this is funny. I’d just like to know if it happens much.”

  Finch stoked up the corncob and said, “Shoot.”

  “I know it crops up in fiction, but it seems too blamed helpful to be a usual thing. I actually did have a corpse where the wristwatch broke in the fall and established the time.”

  “Check with the medical evidence?”

  “Close enough. You know doctors. But not with the one witness. Housekeeper claims she found the body an hour earlier, fainted, and didn’t get around to calling us for years. Puts me on a spot. I’d like to believe her; I’d like to believe the watch. Did you ever have anything like that?”

  “Can happen. Matter of fact, something like it cropped up today. Electric clock pulled out of the wall, stopped at 7:06 sharp.”

  MacDonald choked on a swallow of coffee.

  “Too hot, Mac?”

  “No. Only—That’s the same time as mine. The wristwatch. 7:06 exactly.”

  Finch removed his pipe.

  “What goes, friend?” a man down the counter called over.

  Finch waved a greeting. “Hi, Barker. Damnedest thing. Mac and I were both out on homicide cases today, and there were stopped timepieces in both cases. But that isn’t enough: they were both stopped at six minutes after seven.”

  Barker announced sharply that he would be violated in an unlikely manner.

  “Me too,” Finch agreed. “Can you tie that?”

  “Tie it? Friend, I can make it look sick. I arrested a Skid Row bum today for shooting the crum in the next room. He claims it was an accident and all he did was hear the shot—at exactly six past seven.”

  “Criminenty!” Finch muttered. MacDonald was speechless.

  “Wait a minute, friends,” Barker went on flatly. “That ain’t the half. While I’m booking this bum, a call comes in from a prowl car squad. They’ve just dragged a dentist out of his burning office. Toasted up pretty, he was, and a nice handy little smashed wrist-watch to show he collapsed at I’ll give you one guess what time.”

  There was a dead silence. Then Finch spoke, and with a certain quiet authority. “Barker, come over here.” He lowered his voice when the other approached. “Look. There’s something haywire, and if we three play our cards right we can make sense out of it. Four men don’t die at exactly 7:06 just for the hell of it. There’s a pattern here.”

  MacDonald nodded, but Barker let out a snort. “Balls,” he grunte
d.

  “Look, Barker. I know you’re smart. You’ve got a sweet record of convictions, and we won’t talk about how you got ’em. But I’ve been in this game since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, and I know a screwball setup when I see one.”

  “Balls,” Barker insisted. “It’s a chance.”

  “Four men’s too many for chance.”

  “Friend, nothing’s too many for chance. I’ve been at Padrino’s joint when the red came up twenty-three times running, and me with the money on the black all the time till I switch to red on the twenty-fourth. Then bingo! She’s black. That cured me. There’s no patterns. It’s all chance.”

  “Play in with us on this, Barker, and I’ll swear it won’t do your rating any harm.”

  “Deal me out, friends. I got better things to do tonight than play games with you. Or maybe you wouldn’t understand about that? Anyway, I’ve got my murderer, all locked up and softened and ready to sing. So balls to you, my friends.”

  Finch scarcely glanced after the departing officer. He headed straight for the pay phone and dialed the familiar number. “Finch speaking, homicide.… Look, boys, I need some dope. I reported a shooting tonight—Judge Westcott. Has the ballistics report come in yet?.… O.K., when it does I want it checked with the reports on the cases of Lieutenants Barker and MacDonald.… Check. Can you dig up now the report Barker just filed? … O.K., read me the high points.” He listened, nodding and adding an occasional query. “Thanks. And I want all the dope you can scrape up on a dentist that a prowl car found burned tonight… No, that’s all I know; you can dig it out of the records from that. All the details you’ve got on the man, and an extra careful autopsy. Five’ll get you ten there’s a bullet in that body; check it against the other three… No, I’ll phone back in an hour.… Check.”

  MacDonald started as Finch took his hat off a peg. “Where are you going? I thought we were going to talk this thing over?”