Mostly Murder Read online

  “A clue,” Gurney said, “is the most meaningless thing there is. Nine times out of ten it points the wrong way. It helps fill in a picture, though. See what I mean?”

  I said, “Like the blind men and the elephant. Know that old one?”

  “No. Should I?”

  I said, “You might as well. Four blind men went up to touch an elephant to see what one was like. One touched his trunk and thought an elephant was like a snake; one touched his tail and figured an elephant was like a rope; one got his hands against the elephant’s side and thought it was like a wall, and the fourth one got his hands around one of the elephant’s legs and thought an elephant was like a tree. They argued about it the rest of their lives.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Gurney. “Now that you tell it, I had heard it. But it’s good. It holds water.”

  “A lot of water,” I said. “I carried water for one once when I was a kid, to get tickets to the circus. Fifty buckets, unless they changed elephants on me.”

  Gurney didn’t even grin. “It points up what I meant. A clue doesn’t mean anything; it’s like what one of those blind men got hold of and—”

  The phone rang and Gurney picked it up. He said, “Yeah” about ten times at intervals and then for a change he said, “Okay,” and put the receiver back.

  He said, “Talking about circuses, there’s a guy dead over at the winter quarters of Harbin-Wilson Shows. Shot. Ringmaster. Some funny angles. Mutt and Jeff are handling it, and that was Mutt on the phone. He wants me to come over.”

  He was closing up his desk and putting on his coat while he talked, and I put on mine. He said, “Want to come along?” and I said, “Sure,” and we went down and got in his car.

  Mutt, I might explain, is Walter Andrews and he’s called that because his partner is Jeff Kranich and Jeff’s a little guy and Andrews is tall, so naturally they call them Mutt and Jeff.

  In the car Gurney said, “He was killed with a blank cartridge. A thirty-two caliber blank cartridge out of the pistol he used in the ring. There are some funny angles.”

  I said, “That one’s funny enough.”

  “Muzzle of the gun was held to his temple,” Cap said. “Even a blank shoots a wad and even if it didn’t, with the muzzle jammed right against a man’s temple, the blast alone would kill him.”

  “Could it be suicide, Cap?”

  “Could be,” Gurney said. “Gun was in his hand, but it could have been put there. Paraffin test to see if there were powder marks on his hand won’t mean anything because there will be anyway. It was a new gun, bought this afternoon, and he’d fired a round of blanks, just to try it out, Mutt says. Then he reloaded it.”

  “But Mutt doesn’t think it’s suicide,” I said, “or he wouldn’t have called you. Why isn’t it?”

  “Some funny angles. Three shots were fired out of the gun. All at the time of the murder. It’s hard to picture a man shooting off two blanks in the air and then the third into his temple. It doesn’t make sense.”

  I said, “It doesn’t make any more sense for a murderer to have done it. How do they know the three shots were all fired at the time of the murder, if it was murder?”

  “Two people heard ‘em,” Gurney said. “The three shots were within a space of ten seconds. Guy named Ambers heard ‘em from about fifty feet away, out in the arena. He’s an animal man. A keeper I mean, not a trainer. He was dozing and they woke him up. A watchman heard ‘em from the floor above—he says. One other guy was in the building—a bookkeeper, working late in the office. Says he didn’t hear any shots, and that could be because the office was fairly far away.”

  Gurney braked to a stop for a red light. He could have turned on his flasher and gone through, but he never did that unless there was a real hurry. I guess he figured the dead ringmaster would wait till we got there.

  I said, “I still say it doesn’t make any more sense for a murderer to fire two extra shots—with blanks—than for a suicide. You didn’t answer that.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Gurney said. “Because I don’t know. But Mutt says suicide’s practically out of the question, and that’s why he wanted me over there. He didn’t tell me how he figured suicide is out.”

  He stopped the car and started jockeying it into a parking space. He said, “The ringmaster’s name was Sopronowicz. Everybody under him hated his guts because he was an all-around louse. A sadist. The kind of guy anybody might want to kill, even with a blank cartridge.

  “Any one of the three men in the building at the time might have done it, far as reason is concerned. Especially Ambers, the annual keeper. Sopronowicz was cruel to animals, and Ambers loves ‘em. Ambers admits he’d like to have killed him, but says he didn’t. And there aren’t any powder marks on his hands.”

  “How about the others?”

  “Watchman is named Carle. He’s Sopronowicz’s father-in-law. There could be a motive there, even though Sopronowicz got him the job. The bookkeeper’s name is Gold. Sopronowicz—”

  “Let’s just call him Soppy from now on,” I suggested. “The ringmaster had arguments with Gold over bookkeeping. He had a slight percentage interest in the circus, and thought he was being cheated on his statements.”

  “Nice guy,” I said.

  Gurney said, “Everybody loved him.” We got out of the car and started for the entrance of the building.

  “Used to be a skating rink,” Gurney told me. “Harbin-Wilson has used it for whiter quarters for years now. You’ve heard of ‘em?”

  “Small circus, isn’t it? A one-ring outfit that plays the smaller towns and some fairs, the way I’ve heard it. But getting back to friend Soppy, Cap—”

  “You know everything I do,” Gurney interrupted me. “All I know’s what Mutt told me, and you know that now.”

  The door was locked and he hammered on it until Jeff opened it. Jeff said, “Hi, Cap. Hi, Fred. Come on, this way. It’s in a room off the arena.”

  We followed him down the hall and through a door that led to a high-ceilinged room almost big enough for a football field. You could see that it had been planned, originally, for an ice rink, although it looked more like the inside of a circus tent now. There was a clear space in the middle, with a ring laid out below, and trapezes and other aerial apparatus above. The animals were at the far end, and the place smelled like a circus, too—a very stale circus. There were a dozen horses in stalls, a somewhat frowzy elephant, and a couple of mangy big cats in cages.

  The elephant started across the concrete floor to meet us and a wizened little gray-haired man pulled her back gently with a bull-hook.

  “That’s Ambers,” Jeff said. “The little one. The big one is an elephant.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That all the menagerie they got?”

  “All the performing ones. A few more that go along for show don’t join up till they hit the road. Couple of weeks from now. There’s where the stiff is.”

  Jeff Kranich was pointing to a double doorway that led off the main arena. Both doors were wide open, hooked back against the wall. Through them we could see the body lying on the floor, back against a door on the far side of the room past the double doorway.

  Mutt was leaning gloomily against the wall, staring down at what had been the ringmaster. He didn’t greet us; he just started talking. He said, “It makes nuts. I haven’t moved a thing, Cap, except to lift his hand and put it down again in the same position. Three shells fired, all right. And we’ve questioned the only three men we know to have been in the building and their stories sound O.K., except that they were far apart and none of ‘em can alibi the others.”

  Gurney said, “You said it wouldn’t be suicide. Got a good reason?”

  “Plenty good,” Mutt said. “The guy was happy. He just picked a four-leaf clover. Gold—that bookkeeper—tells me he was getting a full partnership in the show when the season started. Walker died last year, and Harbin made Sopronowicz the offer. The show’s in the black. He’d have cleared thirty-forty thousand or more th
is coming season, more money than he ever had before. He was in good shape physically; just passed an insurance exam yesterday. And everybody I’ve talked to says he was so cheerful the last few days he was twice as mean as usual. Ambers says the bull’s got bookmarks to prove it; he was working the bull early this evening along with the trainer, a guy named Standish.

  “He wasn’t broke; he’s got over two hundred bucks in his wallet. And suddenly he kills himself for no reason at all? Nuts.”

  Gurney was looking around the room. There wasn’t much in it. A big wardrobe cabinet on one side, closed and padlocked. Two closed trunks and two folding chairs, both lying on their sides.

  “Chairs were knocked over that way?” Gurney asked. Mutt nodded. “I didn’t move anything that I didn’t move back. I been questioning people and getting nowhere. It makes nuts.”

  “Who found him?” Gurney wanted to know. “Ambers. But not right away. He was off the arena in a room that has a bunk in it down near the other end. He was taking a nap; says it’s O. K. for him to do that because he’s on damn near twenty-four hour duty here. He heard three shots, but figured Sopronowicz was just trying the gun again; didn’t think much of it. But he couldn’t go back to sleep again and twenty minutes or so later—that’s his guess—he came back out into the arena and wandered down to this end of it to get something. He saw the body lying there when he passed that double doorway.” Gurney asked, “How about Carle, the watchman?”

  “Heard the shots from the floor above where he was making the rounds. Didn’t think anything of it for the same reason Ambers didn’t. Says about half an hour after he heard ‘em Ambers came hunting him and told him to phone the police. That would fit, for tune. And Gold still didn’t know about it till we got here. Neither Ambers nor Carle thought to go back to the office to tell him.”

  “How do they figure it, or do they?”

  “They don’t, except they’re sure it isn’t suicide. Carle especially. Says Sopronowicz had a yellow streak a foot wide down his back, and that the only person on earth who wouldn’t want to shoot Sopronowicz was Sopronowicz. Besides, they both knew about the partnership and the big luck it was for him to get it.”

  Gurney jerked his thumb at the door—the only door in the room aside from the open double doorway. “Was that bolted like it is now?”

  “Yeah,” Mutt said. “Bolted from this side. And it’s a tight bolt. I could just barely get it open to see what was through there. It’s a hallway. I bolted it again.”

  I looked around again and then walked back to the arena. I walked down to where Ambers and the animals were. The wizened little man was using a currycomb on a beautiful palomino gelding.

  He looked around at me. “Got it doped out yet?” he wanted to know.

  “They haven’t,” I said.

  “Good. Hope they don’t. Ever.”

  “You got it doped out?” I asked him.

  “Me? Hell no. But if I did I sure wouldn’t tell anybody.”

  “The law says you should.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t tell me the law, son. I read Black-stone once when I was young. It didn’t take, but I remember one thing. You got to tell what you know, but you don’t got to tell what you think or guess. Now run along and peddle your marbles.”

  I didn’t run along and peddle my marbles, but I did wander back toward the others. I passed Mutt coming out of the doorway of the death room. I went in and Gurney was leaning against the wall at the same spot where Mutt had been leaning, staring thoughtfully down at the body.

  I asked him, “Mind if I straighten one of these chairs?”

  Gurney said, “Go ahead.” I put one of the chairs right side up and sat down on it. I asked him, “Got an idea?” and he said, “Yeah.”

  I asked, “What?” and he didn’t answer. So I tried to get an idea myself and I didn’t.

  Then Mutt came in, with a kind of funny look on his face, and he nodded at Gurney.

  Gurney said, “Good. You can wind it up then, you and Jeff.” He turned to me and said, “Come on, Fred. Let’s go.”

  “You got it?” I asked him.

  “Yeah. Come on; let’s have a beer and I’ll tell you about it.”

  But he didn’t, right away, even after we had the beers in front of us.

  He said, “To crime,” and we took a drink. Then he said, “You solved it, you know. That story about the four blind men.”

  “All right,” I said, “so you want to be coy for a while. So I’ll help you by floundering around myself. Here’s what I’ve got—or haven’t got.

  “I don’t think it was suicide because there wasn’t any reason for suicide and plenty of reasons against it. So there was a killer and he came in through the open doorway because the door to the hall was tightly bolted on the inside. Want me to play all of the four blind men for you?”

  “Go ahead.”

  I said, “The chairs were both knocked over, so there was a struggle. But I saw, as well as you did, that his hair wasn’t mussed, except right over the right temple from the blast. And his shirt wasn’t rumpled and his waxed mustache wasn’t mussed. So, said the second blind man, there wasn’t a struggle.”

  I took another sip of beer. I said, “The killer was pretty clever, since there wasn’t a struggle, to get hold of the gun and trick Soppy into letting him hold the muzzle to his temple. It would have to be by trickery unless Soppy was asleep. But the killer wasn’t very clever or he wouldn’t have gummed up things by firing two extra shots. They gummed the suicide hypothesis, even if lack of motive for suicide didn’t. And yet, said the fourth blind man, the killer tried to make it look like suicide by putting the gun in Soppy’s hand. As the fifth blind man, the one named Mutt, said, it makes nuts.”

  Gurney said, “Your trouble is with the blind men. You took the story from the wrong end. You missed the whole point of the story you told me.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “And what was the point?”

  “The point of the story was that it was an elephant,” Gurney said.

  He took a long draught of his beer and put the glass down empty. He signaled the bartender, and then he said, “What happened is simple. The elephant wasn’t staked out; you saw that. It happened to wander down to the door of the room where Sopronowicz was doing something or other. It saw him, and neither Ambers nor the trainer was around and it recalled whatever cruel treatment it had ever had at Sopronowicz’s hands. And Sopronowicz didn’t have a bull-hook.

  “It started through the double doorway to get him, and what happened from there on in took about ten seconds. The ringmaster saw death lumbering through the double doorway from the arena and he did the best he could. He fired a blank in the bull’s face to scare it and the bull kept coming. One or the other of them knocked over the chairs; probably the elephant, because the chairs were right there inside the double door.

  “Sopronowicz fired another shot, probably as he reached the single doorway that he could have got through and the elephant couldn’t. But it was bolted and the bolt stuck and anyway it opened toward him and he couldn’t have made it before the elephant got him.

  “And—well, it isn’t pleasant, I guess, to be killed by an elephant. You get all your bones broken and maybe a blunt tusk through your guts, and maybe you last thirty seconds and maybe three minutes, but it’s a bad thirty seconds or three minutes.

  “In the last second, he saved himself that. Probably the elephant’s trunk was going around him when he put the muzzle to his temple and pulled the trigger. So he falls down dead and the elephant probably sniffs at him with the end of his trunk and sees—or smells, or knows somehow—that he’s dead, and lets it go at that. And goes back about his business.”

  “It could be,” I said. “It makes sense. But—”

  “But nothing,” Gurney said. “While you were jawing with Ambers I remembered your story about the elephant and got the answer. So I sent Mutt to check with a little paraffin if there were powder marks on the elephant’s face and trunk. When he came
back and nodded that there were, that was that. So thanks for the story.”

  I finished my beer and ordered another one apiece for us.

  I said, “You still miss the point of the story, though. It was the conflicting impressions the blind men got, each from touching a different part of the critter. The fact that it was an elephant wasn’t the point of the story at all, damn it.”

  Gurney said, “But just the same, it was an elephant.”

  “Nuts,” I said. And we drank our beer.

  The Night the World Ended

  “BEER, MR. RAYMER?” Nick the Greek asked.

  Bill Raymer, rim man on the Courier-Times, put a foot up on the rail. “Yeah, Nick. How’s things? Halloran been in yet?”

  “Not yet, Mr. Raymer.” Nick flipped the suds off, shoved the beer across the bar. “Damn. I hoped I’d miss him.”

  Nobody liked Halloran, night-side city editor and general wise guy. His idea of a joke was to get somebody to break a leg. Like the time he sent a green kid who was trying out for a reporter’s job to get a story from Louis Goroni, the numbers king. He figured Goroni would give the kid the scare of his life and toss nun out on his pratt. Which is what happened—except being tossed out of a second-story window sent the kid to the hospital for three months. P.S. He didn’t get on the paper, of course. Halloran laughed about it for almost a week.

  Raymer was the only customer in the place. Johnny Gin was asleep in a back corner, and Metaxa, the cat, was examining a mouse hole with the care it deserved.

  Nick drew himself a short beer and tossed it off. “Any big news tonight, Mr. Raymer?”

  “Deadest night in years. Wish a big story would break, or else we’re going to have a lousy paper.”

  Nick looked thoughtful. “The biggest story that could break, what would that be?”

  “The end of the world, I guess, Nick.”

  The door opened to let another customer in. Raymer slid his glass in wet circles on the bar. “End of the World, Saturday Night,” he said, and took a long swallow of his beer.

  Somebody beat him on the back, then chuckled as Raymer choked. “What the hell is this ‘end of the world’ stuff? You been drinking out of the same bottle as Johnny Gin?” Halloran was in a good humor. Probably someone had just slipped on a banana peel he’d dropped.