But He Was Already Dead When I Got There

by Barbara Paul

“Yea, team,” Lionel said glumly.

  They found the nightwatchman, told him they were through, and left.

  Simon wanted a shower. It had been a dirty evening.

  As he undressed, he ran over in his mind what he still had to do. Cash some securities tomorrow morning; that was the first thing. Next, take care of the diamonds. Then see a lawyer. Malcolm Conner was a competent enough attorney, but he was too closely involved in Ellandy’s affairs to maintain an objective point of view.

  Not for the first time, Simon wondered whether Dorrie had been wise to go into partnership with Lionel Knox. Simon liked Lionel, but Lionel did seem to get himself into hot water a lot. And this time Dorrie was getting splashed. An independent audit of the Ellandy books might not be a bad idea.

  Another thing. He was going to have to do something about Gretchen Knox. The way she kept coming on to him in public—well, it was getting out of hand. Simon was convinced Gretchen wasn’t interested in him at all; she just wanted to embarrass Dorrie. There was a lot of Uncle Vincent in his niece.

  Ask her privately to cut it out? She’d pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. Humiliate her in front of other people? Crude, but probably the only thing that would work. He’d give it some thought.

  He stepped into the shower and let the needles of hot water massage the tension in his neck and shoulders.

  Gretchen Knox sat at the small desk in her old room on the second floor of Uncle Vincent’s house and tried to draw the Maltese cross Dorrie Murdoch had been wearing that evening. She couldn’t do it; it kept coming out lopsided. She crumpled up the paper in disgust; a fitting end to one bummer of an evening. No material there to be stored away as a beautiful memory.

  Gretchen had hoped that the familiarity of her old room would offer some comfort, but it hadn’t worked. Mrs. Polk had already retired, so there was no friendly shoulder to cry on. Gretchen had bathed and put on one of her old nighties that had never made the trip from Uncle Vincent’s house to her own. She went through all the drawers in her room, looking for something to keep her from thinking about Lionel and Nicole.

  Lionel and Nicole! Gretchen would never have believed it if it hadn’t been for those pictures. If it had been Dorrie, Gretchen could have understood it, in a way. But Nicole? Ugh. Well, that was the final straw; she’d see a divorce lawyer tomorrow. Secretly, she was more than a little pleased that Uncle Vincent had provided her with such a dandy excuse. If she was going to have to choose between Lionel and Uncle Vincent, Gretchen knew which side her bread was buttered on.

  She lay down on the bed and started imagining sexy scenes, starring herself, as a means of relaxing. But every time she got a good one going, Lionel’s face would intrude. She tried substituting other faces, but nothing really worked. Simon Murdoch, for instance, had outworn his usefulness as a fantasy object weeks ago.

  Outside, a dog barked nearby. Then a little later a car door slammed and an engine started up. After a while Gretchen listened to what sounded like the rattle of garbage cans; who puts out garbage in the middle of the night? Almost immediately the blare of a transistor radio jarred her nerves, accompanied as it was by loud voices talking and laughing, voices that gradually faded as the music-lovers passed on by. The dog barked again.

  Gretchen slipped out of bed and felt her way across the dark room to the little desk. She switched on the lamp and rummaged through the lap drawer until she found what she was looking for: a pair of earplugs. She turned off the lamp.

  Earplugs in place, she lay back down on her bed and tried again. It was times like these that she saw most clearly the disadvantages of being so sensitive.

  Malcolm Conner couldn’t sleep. He thought he’d heard a car a while ago, but Nicole hadn’t come in.

  He reached for the remote control and turned on the television. He sat up in bed for a long while, staring at the screen but not listening as a football coach talked about his buddyship with God. Malcolm couldn’t stop replaying the scene at Uncle Vincent’s in his head.

  Legally, the old man had them; there were no loopholes in that promissory note. And as a result the two women who meant the most in the world to Malcolm were going to get hurt because of Vincent Farwell’s vendetta against Lionel Knox. There had to be some way of stopping him.

  Perhaps if Lionel could win Gretchen back and then she could win over Uncle Vincent—Malcolm knew that was foolish even as he thought it. The Knoxes’ marriage had been in trouble for a long time. Also, Uncle Vincent made no secret of the fact that he considered his niece a birdbrain whose opinion was not worth consulting on any subject whatsoever.

  Malcolm felt a sudden rush of pity for Gretchen Knox. His own brief affair with her had shown him what a basically focusless person she was. She didn’t really have anything of her own. She had no talent, as Nicole and Dorrie did. She did no work, meaningful or otherwise. She had no money, except what her uncle or her husband gave her. She had no purpose, no place to go. And before long she wouldn’t even have a marriage, unless something miraculous took place.

  But Gretchen’s problems were secondary; what happened to Ellandy Jewels was the only thing that mattered now. There had to be some way of stopping Uncle Vincent. Malcolm sat without moving, marshaling all his powers of concentration, seriously considering breaking the law for the first time in his life.

  4

  Godfrey Daniel stood on tiptoe and hissed at the dark-haired woman, a long and menacing hiss. When she ignored him, he tried growling instead.

  “Hush, kitty,” she said. Nicole Lattimer stood in Vincent Farwell’s library in front of Vincent Farwell’s desk. Staring at Vincent Farwell’s body.

  Uncle Vincent lay slumped across the desk, his head very efficiently bashed in. Blood discolored the desk blotter as well as the two parts of the broken alabaster Hermes. One piece of the statuette lay on the desk near Uncle Vincent’s head; the other had fallen to the floor. A few inches from the fingertips of Uncle Vincent’s outstretched right hand was an automatic pistol.

  The fire had long since died out; the ashes in the fireplace gave off no hint of warmth. Nicole shivered. When she was absolutely positively certain that Uncle Vincent was dead, she moved around to his side of the desk. She couldn’t find what she was looking for on top of the desk. After a moment’s thought, she untied the scarf she was wearing around her waist and used it to open the desk drawers. A hurried search through all nine drawers proved fruitless; a second, more careful search was equally unproductive.

  Distressed, Nicole looked around the room—and her eye fell on the file cabinet. Again using her scarf, she opened the top drawer and started going through Uncle Vincent’s files. Godfrey Daniel leaped to the top of the cabinet and crouched there, watching the dark-haired woman’s every move.

  Stock reports, correspondence, bank records. Nicole worked her way through the second drawer and then the third without finding what she’d come for. She sat crouched on the floor by the bottom drawer for a moment, staring up at the tortoise-shell cat watching her. Then she suddenly started beating her fists against the file cabinet in frustration. Alarmed, Godfrey jumped away.

  Nicole used the scarf to wipe the part of the cabinet her fists had touched. She stood up and hesitated. Then she went back to the desk and very carefully wrapped both pieces of the broken Hermes in her scarf, knotting the ends tightly. Once more she hesitated; then, shuddering, she put down the scarf and picked up Uncle Vincent’s right hand. She managed to get the dead man’s stiffening fingers around the automatic pistol and used his forefinger to press the trigger.

  At the sound of the report, Godfrey shot under the sofa, trembling all over. The bullet had gouged a shallow furrow along the top of the desk before disappearing in the direction of the fireplace. Nicole quickly picked up the scarf with its incriminating contents, turned out the lights, and left the library, closing the door behind her just as the clock on the mantlepiece struck two.

  Simon and Dorrie Murdoch crept stealthily along the outside of the
terrace wall surrounding Vincent Farwell’s house. Each was dressed in black turtleneck sweater, black trousers, black shoes and gloves. Dorrie wore a small backpack made of navy blue nylon. She didn’t have a black one.

  “This is insane,” Simon muttered.

  “Ssh.” Dorrie was looking for a good place to climb the wall.

  “I don’t know what’s got into you, darling,” Simon complained. “You come rushing in yelling that we’ve got to do something, you drag me out of the shower, you make me dress in this ridiculous outfit—”

  “You’re supposed to wear black when you break into someone’s house. Everybody knows that.”

  “We’ll go to jail!”

  “No, we won’t. Here.” Dorrie had found the part of the wall she wanted to climb; it looked no different from the rest of the wall to Simon. “Give me a leg up,” she commanded.

  Simon locked his fingers together and held his hands for Dorrie to step in. He flipped her up as high as he could, and she scrambled to the top of the wall. “Now what?”

  “Wait.” She dropped down on the other side.

  He waited. Before long a rope came sailing over the top of the wall and dangled down on Simon’s side. “I’m supposed to climb that, I assume,” he muttered.

  He managed it, although the rope began to slip a little just as he reached the top. He dropped down beside Dorrie and saw she’d tied the rope to the leg of a heavy wrought-iron bench. The streetlights caused the wall to cast a heavy shadow over about half the terrace, but beyond the shadow visibility was good. Dorrie picked up her backpack and started to creep along the outside of the house.

  “Wait a minute,” Simon stopped her. “Have you forgotten Uncle Vincent’s alarm system? Exactly how do you plan to get in?”

  “I thought of that.” Dorrie opened the backpack and pulled something out.

  Simon looked at the aerosol canister she’d handed him. “Redi-Whip?”

  She nodded. “You know how on television burglars are always spraying the alarm box with a white foam—to shortcircuit the wires or whatever? All we have to do is find the box and give it a squirt.”

  Simon felt his head reeling. “I think that’s shaving foam, darling.”

  “But you use an electric razor,” she explained patiently. “Whipped cream was all we had. Come on—help me look for the box.”

  Two circuits of the house failed to turn up any conveniently located alarm box. The Murdochs ended up by the double doors leading to the library, their ultimate destination. Simon folded his arms and arched an eyebrow at his frustrated-looking wife. “What now, Madame Burglar?”

  “Maybe the alarm isn’t turned on. We could try the doors and see. If it is turned on, we just get out of here fast and try to think of something else.”

  “What if it’s a silent alarm? The kind that’s hooked up to the nearest police station?”

  “But it’s not, darling—remember the time Gretchen set it off by accident? Made one hell of a racket.”

  Simon remembered. “But before we try the doors—hold on.” He put down the can of Redi-Whip and grabbed the edges of a rectangular wrought-iron table and, with much groaning and straining of muscles, carried it over and put it down flush against the wall. “In case we do have to make a quick getaway,” he said.

  “Darling, that’s brilliant!” Dorrie beamed at him. “Do you think you can jimmy those doors open with a screwdriver? The backpack wasn’t big enough to hold a crowbar.”

  “Let’s try the doorknob first.” Simon reached out and turned the knob; the door swung open easily. No alarm went off.

  “Hallelujah!” Dorrie cried softly, and dipped into her backpack again. “Here—I brought one for each of us.”

  Simon took the flashlight she handed him. “Why don’t we just turn on the lights?”

  Dorrie was scandalized. “You never turn on the lights! The idea!”

  “But with that wall blocking the view—”

  “No. No lights. Absolutely not.” Her voice was firm.

  Simon shrugged and turned on his flashlight, pointing the beam downward. He stepped into the library, Dorrie close behind. He played his light over the Sultanabad carpet and was startled when two yellow eyes suddenly blinked at him in the light. “The cat’s in here,” he told Dorrie. “Don’t step on him.”

  “Simon.” Her voice was high and tight.

  He looked to where her light was shining—and saw Uncle Vincent slumped over the desk in his own blood, grasping an automatic pistol in his right hand. “I think,” Simon said slowly, “we had better turn the lights on.”

  “I’ll do it.” Uncle Vincent disappeared as Dorrie’s light moved down to the carpet. She crossed the room and flipped the light switch. “My god,” she said as Simon stepped up to the desk and bent over the corpse. “Is he …?”

  “He certainly is.” Simon straightened up. “Most decidedly so.”

  Dorrie stared at the gun. “Did he shoot himself? Why would Uncle Vincent commit suicide?”

  Simon wrinkled his nose fastidiously and bent again for a closer look. “Don’t bullets make neat little round holes?”

  “I think so. They ought to.”

  “Well, I don’t see anything like that. It looks to me as if someone just hit him over the head with something.”

  Dorrie gathered up her courage and went to the desk to see for herself. “You’re right—that’s what it does look like.”

  “We’d better get out of here.”

  She put a hand on his arm. “Not yet. We came here to get that promissory note—now it’s more important than ever. Do you want to take the desk or the file cabinet?”

  Bravely, Simon chose the desk. Their search failed to turn up the ever-elusive promissory note; they even looked in the drawers of the two end tables in the room.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” Dorrie asked, dropping down on the sofa. “Whoever killed Uncle Vincent took it.”

  “Dorrie, I think we should leave. Right now.”

  “Wait, Simon—let’s think this through. It must have been Lionel, don’t you think?”

  “Or Nicole. She has almost as big a vested interest in Ellandy’s as you and Lionel.” Simon sat on the sofa beside his wife. “Lionel’s the more likely one, though, I should think.”

  Dorrie nodded. “And if it’s that obvious to us, it will be equally obvious to the police. What happens then?”

  Simon spread his hands. “Then they lock him up for the rest of his life. If he were a mass murderer, he’d get off with six or seven years.” Just then Godfrey Daniel jumped up into Simon’s lap and dug in his claws before he could be pushed away. “Ow! Blasted animal.” Simon tried unsuccessfully to disengage the claws, but Godfrey held on with determination; Simon gave up and accepted the situation. “Lionel will go to jail, and since a felon is not permitted to profit from his crime—I think that’s the way that goes—the loan will be called in and—”

  “Called in by whom?”

  “By whoever is appointed executor of Uncle Vincent’s estate, I should imagine.”

  “But how can the executor call in the loan if he doesn’t have the promissory note?” Dorrie persisted. “Simon, Ellandy’s just may be off the hook. I’ll bet Lionel’s already destroyed the note by now.”

  Simon shook his head. “How he hopes to get away with it, I’ll never know.”

  Godfrey meowed harshly, tired of being ignored. Dorrie stretched out a hand and stroked the cat’s back. “Yes, that’s the difficulty, isn’t it? If he doesn’t get away with it, Ellandy’s is doomed.”

  A suspicion began to dawn in Simon’s mind. “Dorrie …”

  “Look around you. Look at this room—everything in place. It doesn’t look at all as if, say, an ordinary, everyday sort of burglary has taken place here, does it?”

  Simon noticed she herself avoided looking in the direction of the desk. “Darling, if you have in mind what I think you have in mind—”

  “Say we make this place look as if a burg
lar broke in and Uncle Vincent surprised him. Uncle Vincent managed to get his gun out of his desk drawer, but the burglar was too quick for him. He bashed Uncle Vincent on the head and then made his escape! How does that sound?”

  “Dorrie, my love—are you absolutely certain you want to aid and abet a killer? Think about it.”

  Dorrie thought about it seriously for several minutes. “Yes,” she said.

  Simon’s half-smile returned, the first time since they’d found Uncle Vincent in his defunct state. “And I suppose there’s no chance of talking you out of it?”

  “No chance in the world.” She jumped up from the sofa. “Come on—let’s do it.”

  “I will if this blasted cat lets me get up.” Godfrey permitted it. Dorrie was already busy pulling out desk drawers and emptying the contents on the floor. “Wouldn’t a burglar actually take something?” Simon asked.

  “Oh—yes, he would, wouldn’t he? Why don’t you take that little jade horse? And that pearl inlay box on the end table. Whatever looks worth stealing.” Dorrie gritted her teeth and awkwardly removed Uncle Vincent’s expensive watch from his left wrist, needing to take off one glove to do so.

  “What about the Degas?” Simon suggested.

  Dorrie considered. “Too awkward. We have to carry all this stuff, you know.” She put her glove back on.

  “Billfold—I’ll bet the old boy carried his billfold with him around the house.” Simon went through the dead man’s pockets and found the billfold. “Aha!”

  “Don’t forget the credit cards.”

  Simon removed the cash and the credit cards and dropped the billfold in a conspicuous place on the carpet. Godfrey Daniel immediately pounced on the billfold and started knocking it around the floor with his paws. “Leave that alone, you wretched creature!” Simon hissed. “Do you want to spoil our evidence?” He toed the billfold under the desk where the cat couldn’t get at it.

  Dorrie threw a couple of the sofa cushions on the floor. “It still doesn’t look messed-up enough.” She pulled open a file drawer and started tossing papers up in the air. Godfrey loved that; he stood on his hind legs and batted at the falling pages. “Darling, shouldn’t those terrace doors look as if they’d been broken open?” Dorrie asked. “There’s a screwdriver in the backpack.”