But He Was Already Dead When I Got There

by Barbara Paul

The only thing Dorrie could think to say in her defense was: “Well, Nicole suspected me!”

  “Which one of us did you suspect, Lionel?” Nicole asked dryly.

  Lionel started, then laughed shortly. “Touché.”

  “You are all making a mistake,” Malcolm said firmly. “Stop this speculating. You can only harm each other.”

  “What possible difference could it make?” Simon asked. “Everybody suspects everybody else and nobody knows anything. I for one would be deeply grateful if the murderer would step forward immediately and save the rest of us from having to go through this nonsense all over again.”

  Lieutenant Toomey watched and listened, said nothing.

  “It could make a great deal of difference,” Malcolm said angrily. “Don’t you see we’ve been set up? The only reason they’re making us go through this charade is to get us to talk, to accuse each other. And you’re all cooperating beautifully! Tonight is just a fishing expedition and you keep going for the bait! Do try to show some discretion, all of you! We don’t have to—”

  “Get to the point,” Gretchen interrupted impatiently.

  “I’ve already made my point,” Malcolm snapped. “Keep your mouths shut.”

  For once they all listened to him and a silence fell over the room, much to Lieutenant Toomey’s disgust. Sergeant Rizzuto got up from the desk, stretched, and said, “‘Let’s kill all the lawyers.’”

  Malcolm whirled on him. “What? What did you say?”

  Rizzuto shrugged. “It don’t mean nothin’, it’s just a line from Shakespeare. Henry VI.”

  Everyone in the room was staring at him.

  “Part Two,” the Sergeant finished lamely.

  Toomey shook his head in disbelief. “Well, let’s proceed, shall we? And this is no charade, believe me—I want you to be careful to repeat your actions exactly. What did you do first?”

  “I took the file cabinet,” said Dorrie.

  “And I took the desk,” Simon added. He held up his gloved hands. “No fingerprints.”

  Sergeant Rizzuto resumed his position at the desk, and the others watched with reactions ranging from amusement to annoyance as the two Murdochs proceeded to reduce the formerly spotless library to a shambles. This time Godfrey Daniel did not bat playfully at the sheets of paper Dorrie was tossing up into the air. Instead he perched on an arm of the sofa and watched with an expression of infinite boredom. Old stuff.

  “Do you think you could dampen your enthusiasm just a trifle, Dorrie?” Gretchen asked through clenched teeth. “I’m the one who has to clean that up, remember!”

  Dorrie made a what-can-I-do gesture and went on tossing papers.

  Simon felt through Sergeant Rizzuto’s pockets until he found the billfold planted there; then he slipped an inexpensive watch off the Sergeant’s wrist. He paused a moment. “Dorrie, did I take the watch or did you?”

  “I did, darling. You took the billfold.”

  “Act it out,” Toomey commanded. They acted it out.

  Gretchen said, “I could have you both arrested, you know. For theft.”

  “Gretchen, I just knew you’d think of that,” Simon answered heavily. He and Dorrie gathered up the knick-knacks Toomey had told Mrs. Polk to make sure were placed about the room. Simon cocked an eyebrow toward Toomey. “I assume you want me to pantomime breaking the glass in the door?”

  Toomey shook his head. “Do it,” and before Gretchen could object: “Send us the bill.”

  With a put-upon expression, Simon dumped his loot on the sofa and went out on the terrace. He broke the glass from the outside. “Satisfied, Lieutenant?”

  “Lights?” Toomey asked.

  “On,” both Murdochs said. With their booty, they led the way along the terrace and out through the gate. Next door, the neighbor’s wife had joined him; they sat side by side in their lawnchairs, each holding a tall glass of something.

  “Three-twenty,” Toomey said, checking his murder watch. “A little less than an hour—the time’s only approximate, of course. Are you sure you didn’t forget anything?”

  “Why didn’t you take the painting?” Lionel wanted to know. “That Degas is worth a helluva lot more than all those little doodads you took.”

  “Too much to carry,” Simon explained. “Besides, we didn’t really want to steal from Uncle Vincent. Or from Uncle Vincent’s estate, I suppose I should say.”

  “From me,” said Gretchen.

  “From you,” Simon agreed. “Taking the Degas—well, that’s far more serious than just picking up a few doodads, as Lionel calls them.” He smiled sardonically. “There are limits to our criminality.”

  “I’m so glad,” Gretchen said archly.

  “You handled almost everything in that room,” Nicole mused. “Didn’t you wonder where the murder weapon was?”

  “I didn’t even think about it,” Simon answered ruefully.

  “I did,” Dorrie said. “I just assumed the killer took it with him.”

  “Him,” Lionel repeated ominously.

  “Oh, Lionel, don’t start,” Dorrie fussed.

  Lieutenant Toomey changed the setting on his murder watch. “It is now four in the morning. Mr. Conner, you’re next.”

  Without a word, Malcolm moved the ladder to the terrace wall, climbed over, waited for the others to walk around and join him, crawled in through the dining room window, led the way to the library, replaced the two pieces of the broken statuette, turned out the lights, led the way back out, and returned the neighbor’s ladder.

  “Well, that was boring,” Lionel said amiably.

  “Why’d you take the statuette back?” Simon asked Malcolm. “Why not just get rid of it?”

  “Because it is against the law to remove evidence from the scene of a crime,” Malcolm said with irritation. “Or doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “My, my, aren’t we touchy all of a sudden,” Simon muttered, letting his own irritation show. “If you were all that concerned about legal procedure, you would have called Lieutenant Toomey here. Or somebody.”

  “He’s right,” Gretchen said. “We all meddled, one way or another. None of us is simon-pure.”

  “I do like your choice of words,” Simon half-smiled.

  “Share the guilt?” Malcolm asked Gretchen. “Make it easier for everybody to bear that way? Do I have to point out to all of you that I was trying to restore the scene as nearly as possible to what it was when the murderer left? I couldn’t unfire the gun Nicole fired—but I could return the murder weapon and that’s what I did and I’m not going to apologize for it!”

  The other five suspects exchanged poker-faced looks and simultaneously broke into polite applause.

  “Et tu, Nicole?” Malcolm said, hurt. She laughed and gave him a hug.

  “You were getting a bit holier-than-thou, Malcolm,” Lionel smiled.

  “I do not understand how you can all take this so lightly!” Malcolm protested. “This is a murder investigation, can’t you get that through your heads? You’re all acting as if we’re playing some sort of parlor game and you’re giving it about as much thought as you would a game!” Lieutenant Toomey silently agreed.

  “Well, excuse us all to pieces, brother dear,” Dorrie huffed. “Only you know the proper way to behave—we should have known to take our cues from you.”

  “There—that’s what I’m talking about,” Malcolm retorted. “We spend more time sniping at each other than thinking seriously about what happened here and who is responsible.”

  “Be serious, be responsible,” Dorrie mimicked. “My god, how many times have I heard that!”

  “Too bad you never listened,” Malcolm snapped. “If you had, maybe you wouldn’t be in the mess you’re in now!”

  “I’m in a mess?” Dorrie screamed. “What about you? Look where your responsible behavior has landed you! Don’t you blame this on me, Malcolm Conner! You’re in just as deeply as I am!”

  “That’s tellin’ him, honey!” the neighbor’s wife call
ed out.

  “Oh, good heavens!” Dorrie gasped, mortified. “Lieutenant Toomey, do we have to stand out here where everyone can hear?”

  “No, I suppose not.” He checked his watch. “It is now five ay em—”

  “My turn?” asked Lionel. At Toomey’s nod, he pulled a key from his pocket. “This time we go in through the front door.”

  Lieutenant Toomey thanked the neighbors for the use of their ladder and told them the police wouldn’t be needing it any more. He suggested they go back to bed.

  Through the door, back to the library. Godfrey Daniel lay stretched out on the desk, lazily poking a paw at Sergeant Rizzuto’s outstretched arm, half-heartedly trying to get a game going.

  “The first thing I did was to check to see if he was dead,” Lionel said. He went to the desk and felt Rizzuto’s pulse.

  “Where was Godfrey?” Toomey asked.

  “Uh, I don’t remember. Not on the desk.” He shooed the cat off. Then he hunkered down and picked up a sheet of paper from the floor. “I looked at every piece of paper I could find.” Lionel was a sloppy pantomimist; he didn’t pick up every paper on the floor and he barely glanced at those he did pick up. Toomey told him to slow down, the timing would be all off. Lionel said the timing was already off, but he made the effort to slow himself a little.

  At last he finished. “Now comes the unpleasant part.” Lionel went back to the desk and wrestled Rizzuto into an upright position in the wheelchair. “Uff. You weigh more than Uncle Vincent, Sergeant.” Rizzuto didn’t answer, busy playing dead.

  Lionel wheeled him to the middle of the room. “I’m going to dump you now,” he warned Rizzuto. The Sergeant broke his fall with his arms and stretched out on the floor. Lionel took the automatic from the desk and thrust it under Rizzuto’s stomach. Then he stood in the middle of the room and looked around. “Something else?”

  “The blotter,” the corpse prompted.

  “Right.” Lionel stepped over to the desk and held up the blotter. Rizzuto had taken a red felt-tip pen and written the word “blood” on it in large letters.

  “Ugh,” said Gretchen.

  But Lionel wasn’t looking at the blotter; he was staring at the folder that had been concealed underneath. Toomey watched him carefully, as did Rizzuto as well as he could from his place on the floor. Lionel picked up the folder. “It’s Bernstein’s report!”

  “Thought you’d burned it?” Toomey asked innocently.

  “I know I burned it,” Lionel sighed resignedly. “What is this, Lieutenant, some kind of trick?”

  “You admit burning it, then?”

  “You just heard me admit it—hell, you already knew, or you wouldn’t have put the damned thing there in the first place. I burned the report. All it did was cause trouble.”

  Dorrie said, “So why bother burning it? Everybody knew about it anyway. About, well, you and Nicole.”

  “Yeah, but nobody likes something like that lying around. I just thought it best to get rid of it. This has to be another copy.”

  “It’s my copy,” said Toomey. “Are you sure there wasn’t another reason for burning it?”

  “Of course there was another reason,” Gretchen snarled. “He didn’t want anyone knowing why he went to England!”

  Lionel looked disoriented. “What do you know about—”

  “England?” Dorrie interrupted. “You mean about four months ago? He went to visit a relative—wasn’t that it, Lionel?”

  “He went to visit De Beers,” Gretchen said. “He went to apply for a, um, sightholdership, I suppose you’d call it—and he didn’t want any of us to know!”

  “Bernstein,” Lionel guessed. “Bernstein gave you a copy of the report too?”

  “What’s this about De Beers?” Malcolm asked. “Is it true, Lionel?”

  “Oh, hell, you might as well know. Yes, it’s true. I didn’t talk about it because I struck out. De Beers made it quite clear I didn’t qualify for their little club.”

  “Not so little,” Nicole murmured. “Didn’t you even tell your partner? Dorrie, didn’t you know?”

  Dorrie shook her head. “Lionel, why did you try something like that behind my back?”

  “It wasn’t behind your back,” Lionel protested. “I had this idea that if I succeeded in London, I could come back and say, ‘Guess what! We’re in!’ Dumb, I know, but I wanted to surprise you.”

  “Oh,” Dorrie said suspiciously, “you wanted to surprise me.”

  “Well, okay, I was hedging my bet as well. I didn’t know how things would go in London—Dorrie, I don’t understand what you’re so irked about. Don’t you see what a coup it’d be if we could get our rough stones straight from De Beers? We’d cut out all the middlemen!”

  “Like Simon,” Dorrie accused. “You were trying to take Simon’s business away from him!”

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” Lionel sighed. “It was Simon’s idea in the first place. We had it all worked out.”

  “Now that is a lie,” Gretchen announced firmly. “Simon didn’t know anything about it until I told him!”

  Dorrie glanced suspiciously at her husband. “You knew? She told you?”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Lionel objected. “There’s a misunderstanding somewhere. Simon came to me with the plan and—”

  “I’ll say there’s a misunderstanding,” Simon interjected. “Lionel, what do you think you’re doing? You know I didn’t come to you with any ‘plan’ for dealing with De Beers. What’s going on?”

  Lionel looked thunderstruck. “Are you saying you did not suggest I apply to De Beers and then you would act as my agent and—”

  “Stop!” cried Malcolm. “You’re doing it again! Don’t thrash this out in front of the police, for god’s sake.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Simon answered, ignoring Malcolm. “Your agent? Really, Lionel!”

  Lionel took in all the curious and/or accusing faces looking at him and muttered, “I’ve got to sit down.” He sat on the sofa.

  On Godfrey Daniel.

  Godfrey let out a yowl and wriggled loose. He leaped up on the desk, where he crouched hissing at his tormentor. The corpse sat up. “Ya know, I was wonderin’ ’bout that cat,” Rizzuto said. “He saw who killed has master. He ain’t gonna be too friendly toward—”

  “For Christ’s sake, I just sat on him!” Lionel yelled.

  “With Godfrey, you can’t tell anyway,” Dorrie volunteered. “I don’t think he was especially fond of Uncle Vincent anyway.”

  “Sensible animal,” Nicole murmured.

  Lieutenant Toomey took charge. “Let’s get back to this matter of De Beers. You lied about going to see them, Mr. Knox. And you destroyed the private investigator’s report that would have given you away. And you seem to have lied about Mr. Murdoch’s part in this—”

  “Seem to have lied?” Simon asked indignantly. “He’s trying to involve me in something I’m still not sure I understand.”

  Lionel sighed heavily. “Lieutenant, I told you yesterday I was embarrassed about my failure in London. We did talk about it, didn’t we? Or are you going to say I’m lying about that too?”

  “No, we talked about it.”

  “Okay. I knew then it would all come out eventually, but it didn’t seem so important any more, in light of all the other things that have been happening. I don’t know what Simon’s game is—I can’t explain that. But the dumb thing is, you’re all looking at me as if I killed Uncle Vincent when all I did was burn the report. And I didn’t burn it because of the De Beers business anyway! You’re all off the track. Way off.”

  “Then why did you burn the report?” Toomey wanted to know.

  “Oh, there was something else in there that could cause more bad feelings. Nothing really important.”

  “If it’s not important, then you can tell us about it.”

  Lionel didn’t want to say, but Toomey kept pressing him. “It was that part about Gretchen and Malcolm,” Lionel said relucta
ntly. “I didn’t see any reason for dredging that up.”

  Gretchen groaned. “Then you found out?”

  Lionel shot her a look of annoyance. “Gretchen, I knew at the time.”

  Malcolm, for once, could think of nothing to say.

  Toomey was lost. “What about Gretchen and Malcolm?”

  Lionel waved a hand toward the file folder. “They had an affair. It’s in that report.”

  Toomey flipped through the pages. “Not in my copy, it isn’t.”

  Rizzuto made a rude noise. “Bernstein held out on us.”

  Simon’s eyebrows had climbed up to his hairline. “Do I hear correctly? Malcolm and Gretchen? Oh, that’s too delicious for words!”

  “Knock it off, Simon,” Gretchen growled.

  “I didn’t know a thing about it,” Simon smiled broadly, clearly delighted with this further evidence of human folly. “Did you know, darling?”

  “Yes,” Dorrie said in a small voice.

  “Let me get this straight,” Toomey said to Lionel. “You burned Bernstein’s report not because of the De Beers business, but because Mrs. Knox and Mr. Conner are having an affair?”

  “Had,” two voices corrected him.

  “It’s over now,” Lionel agreed. “And yes, that’s why I burned the folder.”

  Nicole laughed softly. “Galahad lives.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Gretchen stated flatly.

  “And somehow, my dear estranged wife, that fails to surprise me,” Lionel said. “Believe what you want. I don’t care any more.”

  Estranged? thought Toomey. When did that happen?

  “So what are you going to do, sit there and pout?” Gretchen screamed at Lionel. “You’ve been up to something and I want to know what it is!”

  “I have not been up to something!” Lionel shouted. “I’ve told you everything and I’ve told you the truth!”

  Dorrie covered both ears. “Oh, do stop yelling!” she yelled.

  The library door opened. “Is everything all right?” Bjarne Pedersen asked with concern.

  “No, everything is not all right!” Gretchen screamed. “Go away, Barney!”

  But Lieutenant Toomey stopped him. “Ask Mrs. Polk to make us some coffee, would you, Barney? I think we could all use a pick-me-up about now.”