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.
6
The mold pictured in Chapter Sixteen, being concave and negative, is plainly that of the back of a rubber-gloved left hand. Noting this, Merlini remembered which suspect had an idle right hand and was thus left-handed.
7
O’Halloran was probably aware of the fact that his Metzger .32 not only had an individual ivory grip, but also, as I discovered later, could be easily matched with any bullet fired from it, since it is the only left leed (rifling twist) pistol made that has but five lands (raised surfaces between the spiral grooves). All other pistols known so far to have left leed have six lands.
8
O’Halloran, signaling Merlini with his right hand, is therefore holding his cigarette in his left. I accused Merlini later of having taken a terrific chance when he let O’Halloran fire at the mummy. The man might have taken pot-shots at the rest of us. Merlini’s answer was that, on the ride back from the jail when he had been in possession of O’Halloran’s gun, he had removed all but one bullet.