If I Die Before I Wake

by Sherwood King

  ‘Anyway, it all worked out fine. She got Grisby first, and then took the speedboat back to Bannister’s beach – she was an expert, we found that out – and no one was the wiser. You confessed, as you were supposed to do, and the police just tried to make your story fit, that’s all. The only one who might have told them the truth, probably, was Broome—’

  ‘Broome! How?’

  ‘I don’t know how much Broome knew, of course, but there must have been a good reason for putting him out of the way. What probably happened was that he’d found out about the plot to kill Bannister, partly from your letter and partly from hearing her talk with Grisby. I could tell from Bannister’s testimony at the trial that the real reason for Broome being at the house was to watch those two and find out all he could. But supposing we figure that Broome had found out about the plan and hadn’t told Bannister at all, the way you thought, but had tried to blackmail her and get some of the money instead. He was louse enough. Or maybe he had just seen her walking up to the house after leaving the speedboat at the pier, and knew that she’d really got back at eleven-thirty or after and could have been down on Wall Street at the time of the murder. Incidentally, that’s probably why she kept insisting that you were back at eleven – not just to help you, but to make it seem that she was back at that time. But about Broome – whether it was blackmail or what, if she knew he was a detective, she knew what he was there for, too – to watch Grisby and her and report to Bannister. She might not even have known what he had found out, but why take chances with him lying unconscious on the floor from your blow? The police and Bannister were out looking for you in the swamp – what could be easier than choke him with his tie as he lay there?’

  Elsa began to show signs of life, but she didn’t open her eyes and he kept on rubbing her wrists.

  ‘And just as she tried to protect you – and herself – by setting the time she had seen you back at eleven – just that way she tried to handle Bannister’s death. She figured that if she could make it look like he’d killed himself – and with the same gun used to kill Grisby – it not only would get him out of the way, but seem like a confession of his guilt. That way she hoped to save you and protect herself, too, if anyone had suspicions that she was the guilty one. And that way she’d get the money from Bannister’s insurance, too – quite a piece of change, with the hundred thousand she’d get from the partnership insurance thrown in as a sort of bonus for good work.’

  Elsa opened her eyes. She hadn’t fainted at all.

  ‘It isn’t true,’ she said. ‘Any of it! Laurence, don’t believe him – he’s making the whole thing up!’

  ‘Well, maybe I am guessing some,’ said McCracken, ‘but it doesn’t matter. There’s no getting around the fingerprints on the gun. You’re on your way to the chair – right now!’

  She stood up a little unsteadily.

  ‘They’ll never send me there. They acquitted the woman who shot her husband when he was raiding the icebox.’

  McCracken shook his head.

  ‘I suppose that’s what gave you the idea. But there’s only one man who might have saved you – the one who saved her – the one who took you from the chorus – Bannister! And you killed him – you thought he would be better off dead!’

  She swept the red hair back off her forehead. Then she turned and looked at me, her lips twitching.

  ‘I guess,’ she said, ‘that it doesn’t matter now.’

  I couldn’t look at her. I bowed my head to hide the tears.

  They got her for it. There wasn’t anything anybody could do.

  Galloway said that she had planned the whole thing from the start – tricked Grisby into going for Bannister, then killed him to make it seem that Bannister or I had done it; then killed Bannister, when he’d got the insurance money, to make it seem that he’d killed himself to get out of going to the chair for Grisby’s murder.

  He said that she was the cleverest, the most cold-blooded murderess that he had ever seen or heard of, and that if she had stayed on the stage she would have been a great actress, because she had fooled everyone right up to the end.

  He had it all worked out, even about Broome and how he was trying to blackmail her ‘in more ways than one.’

  And he wound up by saying that she, not Bannister, was the one who would be better off dead.

  The jury agreed.

  I don’t know. All I know is that I’m down here in Tahiti soaking up the sun…

  Alone.