Brady brought Irma King along a few minutes later; and then, when the concert performers had come out of the big top and the crowd inside was leaving, O’Halloran arrived with Tex Mayo. The latter produced a bottle, sat glumly on the grass, and proceeded with simple directness to make a start toward getting tight. He didn’t offer to pass it around, which may have been just as well. The keyed up nervous tension that held us all might have been produced by alcohol. Our voices when we spoke were a little too high and bright, our words slightly stilted as if their formation was a conscious effort.
Beyond the dark, lifted silhouette of the big top, I noticed a far-off flickering of light in the sky. Heat lightning. I paid little attention to it at first, but when it came again it was much nearer and brighter. Then I noticed that the hot breeze which had been blowing steadily for some time had increased alarmingly.
“We’re in for a blow,” Atterbury said. “By the looks of it, the sooner they slough that top, the better.”
The wind increased as he spoke, and the canvas top bellied. This time, the flicker of lightning was a sharp bright gash in the dark and there was thunder behind it…
Suddenly, from the dark beyond the edge of the square of light that fell from the trailer window, Merlini’s voice came.
“Ross,” he said, “you had the murderer all picked out Who is it?”
“What are you asking for? Information or corroboration?”
“Are you going to be difficult, too?” he asked a bit wearily. “Come, let’s have it.”
“I’ll make the same deal with you,” I replied, “that Gavigan did. I’ll trade even.”
“That’s fair enough. Talk.”
“No. Just for once let’s hear your answer first. We don’t want to have an anticlimax. This time I think I’ve got the solution that fills in the last chapter.”
“I wonder,” Merlini said. “It’s just possible that this is only the next to the last chapter. I warn you. If you want it to go on record at all, you’d better put it in now.”
I fully intended to stick to my guns, but I didn’t after all. I felt an underlying insistence in Merlini’s tones that seemed to telegraph a warning. Something in the swift, sharp glance he threw at me contradicted his easy manner and told me that he had a definite and important reason for wanting me to lead first. I thought: Okay, Mastermind. Here goes, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The canvas superintendent hurried past, pulling on an oilskin. A single swollen raindrop plopped against my face and ran down the side of my cheek. Someone within the tent shouted, “Get those flats on that truck, dammit! I’m striking this top now!” The tent rigging creaked and groaned with the strain of the flapping wind-swept canvas.
“Inspector Gavigan,” I said quietly, “was half right. The murderer is the unlikely invalid. Only, it happens that the woman on the bed in Pauline Hannum’s trailer is not an invalid—and she’s not Pauline!”
The reaction that got me was pure disbelief all the way around — except for Merlini, whose poker face was about as revealing as those on the statues of Easter Island.
“That is the reason the head was cut off,” I went on. “It was removed to conceal the fact that the body was not the one the clothing labels said it was. The headless corpse, like the invalid, is a timeworn fiction device too. Rule number four for readers says: ‘When the corpse has no head, it’s always the wrong corpse.’ I should have thought of it sooner, Merlini, but I didn’t, somehow; not until you made the statement that this case had a headless lady and a headless man. I realized then that it was far worse than that. There are two headless women! Pauline’s been as good as headless for the last twenty-four hours. No one has seen the face beneath those bandages. And she’s upset as hell any time anyone tries to set foot inside that trailer. It’s as plain as a twenty-four sheet. The woman on that bed is not Pauline, but her twin sister, Paulette, the much-wanted Paula Starr!”
Keith Atterbury shook his head dazedly. “But, Harte, why the devil would she—”
“She had plenty of reasons — good ones,” I answered. “Don’t you see that if you can successfully impersonate the victim of your murder — you’ve already got something? You will have vanished, your victim appears to be still alive, and no one even suspects that there has been a murder? Furthermore, Paula was in a spot. She was wanted by all the cops from here to Cape Horn. And I think she’d recognized Stuart Towne as the private dick who’d tailed her in New York the afternoon she contacted Pauline. She knew he had penetrated her Headless Lady disguise. It was her move. By changing places with sister Pauline, she made it look as if Paula Starr, the Headless Lady, had taken it on the lam. O’Halloran and any other dicks who picked up her trail could be expected to ride off in all directions on a wild-goose chase.”
Joy objected, “Paula wouldn’t have killed her sister for a reason like that. I never met her — but it’s — it’s too coldblooded.”
“All right,” I said agreeably. “If you don’t like that motive, I’ll give you another — the old standby — money. Pauline’s death automatically gives Paula a greater cut of the inheritance. And you’re a very lucky girl not to have had an accident on that swinging ankle-drop of yours before now. It would have come.”
“Are you saying,” Mac Wiley cut in, “that Paula gaffed those lights last night, expecting Pauline would be killed when she fell; and then, when that didn’t work out, finished her off at the trailer this morning?”
“Something like that, yes. Only she didn’t expect the perch fall to kill Pauline. That’s bothered me all along. But Paula and her intended impersonation explains it. It’s the only way we can explain the fact that a circus person would know that a fall of twenty feet or so is not a sure-fire way to kill off an acrobat. No. The fall was to make the bandages necessary so that, with a little hair bleach, the impersonation would be possible. Though they were twins, their faces weren’t greatly alike. But their voices were.”
I paused a moment. The neatly dovetailing facts were beginning to bring some of my audience over. But there was one reaction I still wanted. I went on.
“The brain behind these accident-murders is a diabolically clever one — so much so I’m not sure Paula gets all the credit. Detail after detail has been carefully planned and executed. Every—”
That did it. Tex Mayo pulled himself to his feet. He wavered a bit. “I guess I know my name when I hear it,” he said thickly. “I drove Pauline over from Waterboro this morning. But damn you, Harte; we didn’t make any stops on the way!”
I pulled my feet back under my chair and sat up a bit straighter, ready for action. Tex started toward me.
“It won’t do, Tex,” I said flatly. “Paula Starr made a few movies in Hollywood two years ago. That’s your bailiwick. Unluckily Paula was already married to the Duke. And you weren’t going over so well in the horse operas any more. You can’t sing or play a guitar. You needed money to keep Paula in the style to which the Duke had accustomed her. Just who thought of what and just who did what, I don’t know; but between you, you rubbed out the Major so Paula would get a piece of the show. Then you went after Pauline so the piece would be bigger. And you finessed that gambit in such a way it served to get Paula out of a tight spot as well. When you two start throwing stones you always try to get the whole flock with one rock. You’d have taken care of Joy next, and the Hannum circus would have served you as old-age security. The Duke was on the list too, of course. I should have thought you’d have seen to his untimely end first. Or was it because a clown’s job isn’t so dangerous and you had to wait for a good chance to fake a plausible accident?”