The Charlatan Murders

by Jennifer Berg

  Riggs walked around the room and surveyed the scene. “This crime could have been premeditated.” He turned and looked at the neighboring high-rise across the street. He had noticed it the first time he was in the penthouse, but this time he studied it carefully. “That top floor is nearly as tall as this one, and with all these windows, if anyone happened to look this way, they would’ve had a clear view of the crime.”

  “But the murderer would have closed the curtains,” Fisher objected.

  “If it was premeditated,” Riggs agreed. “But if Paul lashed out in a moment of anger…” He left the sentence unfinished and pointed to the neighboring high-rise. “I want you to knock on those doors over there, just to be sure. Maybe someone did see something, probably not the actual murder, or they would have reported it, but they may have seen something else.”

  Riggs walked over to the small table behind the sofa. There were several objects that were heavy enough to use as a weapon.

  “By the way,” Fisher said as he slipped his notepad back into his pocket. “Did you pick up the lamp before they took it? It looked like it was made of porcelain, but the damn thing was as solid as a rock.”

  “But it was still plugged in,” Riggs said as he raised an eyebrow as he remembered how the lamp had been lying on the floor. “You think the lamp could have been the murder weapon?”

  “Dr. Hara thought of it first.” Fisher put his hat back on. “He said the injury didn’t seem to match anything else in the room, but he’ll know more later.”

  The offending lamp had already been taken down to the lab, but its twin was still standing on the matching table at the other end of the sofa. It was a large table lamp made of smooth white porcelain with a thin steel trim around the top and bottom. From the look of it, Riggs guessed that it probably weighed about three or four pounds, five pounds at the very most. But when he picked it up, he realized it was at least fifteen pounds. And like Fisher said, it was solid. Riggs turned it over to examine the bottom. What looked like delicate porcelain was actually a white enamel, baked onto a cast metal core.

  He set the lamp back on the table and stared at it for several moments as he rubbed his mustache. “Okay, let’s say that you’re Paul Abbott. You’re impulsive and prone to violence. You’re with Camille Sinclair, and the two of you are having an argument. You’re angry. No, you’re furious with her. She’s said or done something so terrible that you want to kill her. She’s probably sitting here.” Riggs indicated the part of the sofa nearest to the lemonade, the script, the toppled lamp, and where Camille’s body had been found.

  “You want to hurt her,” Riggs continued. “What do you grab?”

  “The telephone cord,” Fisher suggested. “We can’t get fingerprints off a cord.”

  “Paul doesn’t know that. He’s angry, and he wants to strike. What does he use?”

  Fisher looked at the scene and frowned. “Well, the telephone itself there would do the trick, and we reach for those all the time.” Fisher reached out and grabbed it by the base, but then he frowned. “No, that’s awkward, especially with my left hand. I’d probably grab one of these marble bookends—just look how well they fit in the hand.” Fisher picked one up and felt the weight of it, then he set it down and kept looking. “Of course, if Paul Abbott wasn’t in a blind rage and had time to think about it, he probably would have used this brass statue thing in the hallway. But if he’s standing here, how about this big glass ashtray. It’s hefty enough to finish someone off.”

  “Why wouldn’t you grab the lamp?”

  “It looks too fragile to do the job.” Fisher shrugged. “And it’s bulky. Especially compared to these other things. I mean, look how solid they are. Besides, how am I supposed to grip the lamp? If I’m standing in front of her, it’s a bit of a reach. And it’s plugged in. How do I know I’ll have enough leeway to really swing it?”

  “It’s an awkward weapon.” Inspector Riggs nodded. “And yet it seems as though Sinclair was struck with the lamp.” Riggs picked up the ashtray and the statue to feel their weight. The little brass statue fit in his grip perfectly. “So, why did the murderer choose the lamp?”

  The telephone rang, and Riggs picked up the receiver.

  “Riggs here…You found him? Hmm…hmm. I’m glad.” He checked his watch and nodded. “I’ll be at the station in ten minutes.”

  “Well, that’s it,” he announced, grabbing his hat. “They found Paul down in the marina, and they’re bringing him in. He claims that he spent the night on his sailboat.”

  * * *

  Riggs walked into his office and hung up his hat. Paul was already sitting in a chair. His hair was untidy, his sports jacket was wrinkled, his necktie was crooked, and he was past due for a shave. He seemed to be suspended between a state of heightened agitation and a sort of dazed misery. Riggs glanced significantly at the two officers standing in his office, and they both stepped out to the hall to wait.

  Paul looked up miserably. “Inspector Riggs, it’s true then, about Camille?”

  The inspector sat down behind his desk. “Yes, Mr. Abbott, I’m afraid so.”

  “But…how…?” Paul stammered, gulped, and struggled to catch his breath. “I mean, when did it happen?”

  Riggs paused and studied the other man. Paul Abbott’s brow was furrowed, and his hands were gripping the arms of the chair. Even his breathing felt forced and irregular.

  “I was hoping you’d be able to tell me, Mr. Abbott.”

  Paul shook his head. “Look, I know this looks bad, Inspector. I know how it must seem. But I swear to you, when I left Camille yesterday, she was alive and well.” He wrung his hands. “I was mad at her, mad as hell,” he admitted quickly, “and I said some horrible things, but I swear, I never hurt Camille!”

  Riggs took a deep breath. “Mr. Abbott, can you give me an account of what you did yesterday?”

  “Yesterday?” Paul repeated dumbly. “I was at work most of the day. I came home early, about half-past three.” He swallowed with effort and continued. “Camille was reading a new play manuscript. She had been looking over new roles, parts for next winter. I don’t know how, but somehow, we got into an argument. I’m still pretty shaken up about my mother’s murder, and I was, well—I was afraid that things were looking bad for me. As usual, Camille couldn’t care less about my troubles. She always put herself in the spotlight, and she thought I was overreacting. Anyway, we got into a shouting match.”

  “What exactly did you argue about, Mr. Abbott?”

  “Everything,” Paul explained desperately. “Then Camille wanted to get married. That’s what set me off. Even with everything that I’m going through, my mother’s murder and other things, the only thing Camille cared about was having her own way. She was behaving like a spoiled child. I don’t think she wanted to get married, but she wanted to feel like she could control me.”

  “How?”

  Paul stopped and looked down. “I don’t know.”

  Riggs frowned, and Paul continued, “We both said some awful things, and I left. I took a cab down to the marina on Lake Union, and I spent the night on my sailboat. I wanted to be alone so that I could think clearly. But I couldn’t sort out my thoughts. I laid awake most of the night. I wasn’t even thinking about Camille, just my mother and her murder and how horrible everything is. My family is going through the mud, and it’s my fault.”

  “How is it your fault?” Riggs asked.

  Paul took a deep breath. “Because I’ve got myself in the newspapers before; the gossip column. I just kept lying there thinking about how everything is worse because of me. It was getting light out before I finally fell asleep. I must have been sleeping pretty soundly because the next thing I know, a couple of your boys were coming on my boat, and then they told me—”

  Riggs leaned back in his chair. “You were surprised to hear the news?”

  “Of course I was!” Paul scowled. “My God, if I’d stayed there, if I’d only stayed there and insisted that she let me ba
ck in…” He buried his face in his hands. “She’d still be alive. If I hadn’t left Camille, she would still be alive.”

  Riggs waited until Paul raised his head again. He looked tired, beaten.

  “What time did you leave your apartment?” Riggs asked.

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t home for very long, maybe half an hour. It must have been close to four o’clock when I left.” Paul looked down and clenched his hat. “Why, when did it happen?”

  “We’re still waiting for our doctor’s report.”

  “My God!” Paul moaned, and again his face fell into his hands.

  “Mr. Abbott, did you have any scotch while you were home yesterday?”

  “No, I was too upset to drink anything. Just water, I mean. Besides, I was hardly home two minutes before Camille started laying into me. We fought, and I left within twenty or twenty-five minutes.”

  “And you can swear that Miss Sinclair was perfectly healthy when you left her?”

  “Yes, yes. She was angry and shouting. She called me a bastard and a louse. Ask the neighbors. They can tell you that Camille always acted like that when she wasn’t getting her way. I shouted back, and I told her what I thought of her, then I slammed the door, and she kept shouting. After a minute, I tried to get back in, but I’d forgotten my key, and Camille had bolted the door. She told me I could go to hell. So, I finally just left.”

  “One last question, Mr. Abbott. When you were home yesterday, did you happen to spill any pepper on the kitchen floor?”

  Paul looked at the inspector in complete confusion. “Pepper? No, I didn’t spill anything. I went into the kitchen, but there wasn’t any pepper.”

  “Are you absolutely sure? The pepper shaker and a pile of pepper were found on your kitchen floor this morning.”

  Paul’s brow was furrowed. “I’m positive. I got some ice from the icebox when I came home, but that’s all. Besides, if there was anything on the floor, Camille would have cleaned it up right away. She has—had a thing about clean floors.”

  Paul gripped his hat so firmly he was nearly crushing the brim. He cleared his throat and asked, “Inspector, are you going to arrest me?”

  Riggs slipped his hand into his pocket and took out his pipe. The chief wanted an arrest, but Paul wasn’t the right Abbott. The inspector put the pipe back in his pocket and stood up.

  “Not yet, Mr. Abbott. But I will have to ask you not to leave town.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Riggs Plays with Fire

  As soon as Paul was gone, Fisher came into the office. “You’re letting him go?”

  Riggs scowled.

  “The chief will have your badge if he’s guilty,” Fisher said.

  “Never mind that,” Riggs said. “What did you find?”

  Fisher frowned and flipped open his notepad. “The bartender at the marina saw Paul Abbott heading down to his sailboat at about half-past four yesterday. No one else saw him coming or going. I only found one witness, an old woman whose apartment is almost even with Paul and Camille’s penthouse. The old lady doesn’t know them personally, but she has a front-row view of their place, and she can describe them well enough. She says they keep crazy hours, they have lots of parties, and she insists that their living room curtains are always open.”

  “So, she knows their habits well.” Riggs leaned forward.

  “Except yesterday,” Fisher continued. “She says the curtains were open all day as usual, but when she turned on her television to watch Ozzie and Harriet at 4:30, she noticed that the curtains were closed.”

  “Did she see who closed them?”

  Fisher shook his head. “She had a cup of tea and watched her television program, When she got up half an hour later, the curtains were open again.”

  “That’s it!” Riggs tapped his desk. “So the murder happened between 4:30 and 5:00, at least half an hour after Paul left the apartment. Who did she see in the apartment?”

  “She says that she didn’t notice anyone in the apartment all day, not even Camille. And with the reflections on the glass window, that makes a lot of sense. In broad daylight, you can see into the apartment, but mostly it’s not very clear. Anyway, the old lady wouldn’t have seen anything after five o’clock because she closed her curtains and went out to dinner.”

  Riggs drummed his fingers as he considered the report. Someone passed his office and Riggs jumped. But it wasn’t the chief.

  “By the way,” Fisher said. “I believe the old lady, but she wouldn’t last long in a witness box. As soon as she found out that someone had been murdered, she began second-guessing herself. And by the time I left, she was questioning whether or not the curtains had been closed at all.”

  The seagull landed on the window ledge and paced back and forth. Odds were still on Victoria killing her mother-in-law, but he couldn’t see her killing Camille Sinclair, and yet, he couldn’t see Paul doing it either.

  “It’s too bad,” Fisher continued, “cause I think she’s right. With all those windows, that penthouse feels like a fishbowl. I can’t imagine anyone leaving those curtains open if they were going to batter someone.”

  Riggs kept staring out the window and after a few minutes, the junior officer cleared his throat. “Listen, Riggs, I think we’ve got enough to arrest Paul.”

  “I can’t afford to make mistakes.” Riggs kept staring out the window. “The Chief is ready to give this case to Cheshire. If he does, I’ll never get a big case again. But if I arrest Paul and it turns out he’s innocent, I’ll be demoted to traffic cop.” Riggs turned around to look at Fisher. “Besides, what makes you so sure that he’s our man?”

  “Oh, come on, the man’s guilty!”

  “Is that your gut’s opinion or do you have some proof?”

  “Both. We know Paul Abbott is desperate for cash and his mother was about to disown him, so he takes the easiest route available and bumps her off. But his girlfriend was in on it; she probably helped him by unlocking the office window or something. Now that the deed is done, she realizes she has the upper hand, and she starts getting cute. Paul realizes that he can’t trust Camille to keep her mouth shut. So he waits until his cook’s out of town and he lets the neighbors hear them having a row, and him storming off. Then all he has to do is to come back later, quietly finish her off, and spend the night on his sailboat. It’s a weak alibi, but it’s something.”

  “What about the scotch glass,” Riggs objected. “Paul said that yesterday, he only drank water.”

  “He’s lying!”

  “Murderers lie and make mistakes all the time,” Riggs said, “but those lies and mistakes have to match the crime and the murderer. If Paul planned to murder Camille, he would have gone overboard; shouting to mark the time, but he also would have cleaned up his scotch glass, and he would have poured a glass of gin or something else, and he would have talked to at least a dozen people to establish an alibi. But if he’d murdered Camille in a blind rage, he would have tried — rather clumsily I suspect — to stage it like a burglary. He’d make a mess of everything and he would steal things. Maybe he’d force the lock. And what about the pepper on the kitchen floor? How does that fit in?”

  “It’s just pepper.” Fisher waved his hand. “It doesn’t have to fit. Miss Sinclair wasn’t murdered in the kitchen.”

  The telephone rang and Riggs answered it. He grunted a series of monosyllabic responses. Fisher adjusted his tie, and within a minute, Riggs put the receiver down.

  “Doc Hara says Camille Sinclair was probably killed between three and five o’clock. But it could have been as early as two or as late as six o’clock.”

  “With the neighbor lady’s evidence, we can be sure that Sinclair was killed between four-thrity and five o’clock,” Fisher concluded.

  “And that happens to be the same time that Paul was seen at the marina.”

  At that moment there was a hurried knock on the door, and Victoria Bell burst into the office. The sudden movement startled the seagull and it flew off the ledge.
Victoria stood in the doorway for a moment. She studied Inspector Riggs’ face and then looked over at Fisher.

  “People are saying Camille Sinclair’s been murdered,” she whispered. They didn’t respond, and she closed the door behind her. “Do you know who did it?”

  Riggs shook his head and indicated the wooden chair in front of his desk. “I’m afraid the Abbott family is in for a rocky ride.”

  Victoria sat down and put her handbag on her lap. The inspector took a deep breath.

  “Now, look here, Bell. You know I have to ask you questions.”

  “Of course.” She glanced at Fisher, and back to Riggs, then pulled off her gloves. “I only met Miss Sinclair two days ago at Marcus and Julia Shrubbs’ house. Before that, I hadn’t seen Paul for several months. In truth, I haven’t seen much of the Abbott family at all.” She set her gloves on her handbag.

  Riggs sat down. “Did you like her?”

  “Not especially,” Victoria said, “but I had no reason to murder her, and I don’t know anyone who did. But I do know something. When we were all at the Shrubbs’ home on Wednesday, Camille Sinclair said something strange. It might be important.”

  “Oh?” Riggs leaned back. He watched her face closely. She was agitated, but she was maintaining her composure. Or maybe it was all an act.

  “I don’t remember it word for word,” Victoria began, “but Camille was talking about the police, specifically you, and that blonde hair you found in Mrs. Abbott’s office. And then she said, ‘If I had something to hide from the police, I would be very careful.’”

  Riggs glanced up at Fisher. The junior officer repeated the phrase and wrote it down.

  “I’m not positive about the exact wording,” Victoria went on, “but that was what she said, and now in light of what’s happened — ”

  “And what about Paul Abbott? Exactly how well do you know him?”

  Victoria took a deep breath and crossed one leg over the other. “I met him through a colleague a little over a year ago. We know a few of the same people. He introduced me to Walter. Other than that, I don’t know him especially well.”