by Barbara Paul
Simon’s place of business was about a twenty-minute drive from Malcolm Conner’s law offices. Simon Murdoch and two other diamond merchants shared quarters and facilities, and a guard at the door would not let them in until both Toomey and Rizzuto had shown their badges. The guard directed them to a cubicle containing several unfamiliar instruments resting on tables. Simon Murdoch was seated at another table with a small pile of diamonds on it, one of which he was examining through a loupe.
Toomey was amused to see that Simon’s hair was the same off-shade of blond as his wife’s. And the tie he was wearing was the same soft green as Dorrie’s pantsuit. A color-coordinated marriage, Toomey thought. My, my. He cleared his throat. “Mr. Murdoch?”
Simon removed the loupe from his eye, put down the diamond, looked straight at Lieutenant Toomey, and said, “Fisheye.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Simon gestured toward the diamond he’d been examining. “Dead in the center. No fire. From your air of quiet authority, I would say you must be Lieutenant Toomey. And you are …?”
“Sergeant Rizzuto.”
“I’ve been expecting you,” Simon nodded, brushing the diamonds into a small paper packet that he folded and slipped into a pocket. “Unfortunately, there’s only one extra chair in here. We can go to my office—”
“I’ll stand,” Rizzuto said, and leaned in the doorway as Toomey took the chair. The Lieutenant remarked on the absence of display cases.
“We’re all wholesale merchants here,” Simon explained. “We buy rough diamonds and sell them to retailers, so there’s no need for display cases and all that foofaraw. Actually, I do deal in polished stones on occasion—it depends on what comes my way.”
Toomey said, “I see. You go to that place in London to buy diamonds and then bring them back—”
“No, I’m not a sightholder,” Simon interrupted. At Toomey’s puzzled look, he went on, “There are about three hundred diamond merchants in the world who are invited to London for periodic ‘sights’, as they’re called. The London operation is run by the De Beers Corporation, which decides who can buy and who can’t. If you’re a sightholder, you go to London and you’re shown a packet of rough and told the price, which can range anywhere from eight hundred thousand to five million. There is no dickering. You are not permitted to buy some of the diamonds in the packet and leave the others—you have to take the lesser goods to get the premium stones. Your only choice is to accept the whole packet or refuse. No one refuses. After all, De Beers controls about eighty percent of the world market. I’m part of the other twenty.”
“Ah. So where do you get your diamonds?”
“Antwerp, Brazil, from other dealers—anyplace I can. I don’t know a dealer anywhere who wouldn’t give his right arm to find a good, steady source of diamonds that would make him independent of the De Beers people. The world will eventually run out of diamonds, you know. Some say soon.”
Toomey turned the conversation toward Vincent Farwell’s murder, and listened one more time to the same story of the preceding night’s activities. Simon said he thought the fire had gone out by the time they’d left.
“You went directly home from Danny’s Tavern?” Toomey asked.
“Directly.”
“What time did Mrs. Murdoch get home?”
“Around twelve-thirty or one. Excuse me, Lieutenant, but this sounds suspiciously as if you are investigating Dorrie or me. Or both of us—heaven forbid! I understood from Lionel Knox that a burglar was responsible for Uncle Vincent’s death.”
“That’s Mr. Knox’s conclusion and not necessarily mine. Right now I’m trying to pin down everyone’s movements. Exactly why were you at that meeting, Mr. Murdoch? You have no connection with Ellandy’s other than being married to one of the partners, do you?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Simon murmured. “Ellandy’s buys their diamonds through me—they’re one of my regular clients. But last night had nothing to do with that. It was a courtesy invitation, Lieutenant. I was there not as a diamond merchant but as Dorrie’s husband.”
“Vincent Farwell was given to extending courtesies, then?”
Simon smiled thinly. “I don’t think Uncle Vincent knew the meaning of the word. I should have said he knew I’d come with Dorrie whether I was invited or not, so he just went ahead and included me in the invitation.”
“I see. Then you must know a lot about the inner workings of Ellandy Jewels.”
“Fairly much. Dorrie talks freely about the business.”
“What about Nicole Lattimer and Lionel Knox?” Toomey asked, meaning did they talk freely too.
“Oh, you know about that, do you?” Simon answered with raised eyebrow. “You have been busy, Lieutenant. It’s my understanding that it was more a fling than a real affair, and it was over long ago. Of course, Gretchen didn’t quite see it like that.”
Rizzuto dropped his notebook. Toomey waited until he’d recovered it and then said, “She was upset?”
“She was furious,” Simon laughed shortly.
Toomey nodded. “So she decided to stay the night at her uncle’s house instead of going home.”
“I suppose she needed some time to think things over,” Simon nodded back. “It may have been old news, but it was new to her.”
Toomey couldn’t let it end there. “How did Vincent Farwell find out about the, uh, fling?”
“He’d hired a detective.” Simon Murdoch seemed to find the thought vastly amusing. “Usually it’s a suspicious spouse who hires the detective, isn’t it? Not a suspicious uncle.”
Toomey waited until Rizzuto had picked up his notebook a second time and asked, “What was the detective’s name?”
“Bernstein,” Simon said promptly. “I don’t remember his first name.”
Paul Bernstein, Toomey thought. “I thought the meeting was to discuss the loan. How did this other business come up?”
“You have to understand about Uncle Vincent, Lieutenant,” Simon drawled, his half-smile firmly in place. “He enjoyed playing with people. He liked the feeling of power it gave him. Holding that loan over Ellandy’s collective head—well, that was Uncle Vincent’s idea of good clean fun. He reveled in the role of decision-maker, judge. But it was all warped, the way he did it.”
“How so?”
“Well, look at the way he treated Gretchen. He was supposed to be her benefactor, but he hurt and humiliated her by revealing before a roomful of people that her husband had cheated on her. He made her feel like a fool and reinforced his own authority at the same time. Uncle Vincent was not,” Simon said dryly, “a nice man.”
Rizzuto spoke up. “Is that why nobody seems to care he’s dead?”
“He was not what you would call ‘beloved’,” Simon answered indifferently.
Toomey asked if he thought Vincent Farwell would have renewed the loan.
“Probably. Once he’d gotten all the fun out of it he could.”
“There must have been a penalty clause for late payment, wasn’t there?”
“That I don’t know. Lionel Knox could tell you—or Malcolm Conner. Malcolm drew up the contract or promissory note or whatever you want to call it. You might want to ask him about the loan when you talk to him.”
“I’ve already talked to him, and he didn’t have much to say. A very tight-lipped man, Mr. Conner.”
“Tight-lipped? Malcolm?” Simon’s half-smile spread into a full-blown grin. “You must have intimidated him, Lieutenant. Usually he takes ninety words to say what could be said in seventeen.”
Toomey had no comment on that; and after a few more questions that revealed nothing more, he and Rizzuto left. “I’m thinkin’ about drawin’ up one of those family trees,” Rizzuto muttered as soon as they were alone.
“Why?”
“They’re all so damned interconnected,” Rizzuto complained. “It’s hard to keep ’em straight! Ellandy’s borrowed money from Vincent Farwell, who was the uncle of the wife of one of Ellandy’s owne
rs. The other owner’s husband sells them diamonds and her brother is also Ellandy’s lawyer as well as the lover of one of Ellandy’s employees, who wants to be an owner her own self and who once had a fling-a-ding with Owner Number One. Sheesh. D’you think Malcolm Conner knew about Nicole and Lionel before Uncle Vincent sprung it on ’em last night?”
“You’re doing it too,” Toomey laughed. “Calling him ‘Uncle Vincent’. Farwell had them all crying Uncle!—in more ways than one. I’m finding it harder and harder to believe in our anonymous burglars who just happened along on the one night Barney Peterson got so roaring drunk he forgot to set the burglar alarm.”
“The Knoxes next?”
“I want to talk to Paul Bernstein first, and I think we’d better get Farwell’s attorney to open that bedroom safe before we do any confronting of anybody. I wonder why Farwell hired Bernstein in the first place? Just because he suspected some extramarital hanky-panky? I can’t see him being that concerned about Gretchen’s happiness.”
Rizzuto said, “Well, if Simon’s right, he coulda done it to embarrass Gretchen. D’you think he was really that mean? Gretchen dint like him much, and Lionel sure wasn’t grievin’ none. What about the other two women?”
“Nicole and Dorrie? Politely startled, I’d say. More interested in getting on with business than in mourning. Malcolm was the only one even to express any regret.”
“Simon sure dint give a damn.”
“What names these people have!” Toomey exclaimed out of the blue. “Simon and Lionel and Malcolm! Whatever happened to plain, simple names like Ed or Henry or Ralph? And Gretchen and Nicole—both foreign names, aren’t they? And what about the oh-so-fancy Dorothea/Dorrie Murdoch?” Toomey suddenly smiled. “Ah, but we musn’t forget Dorothy/Dot Polk! That’s more like it. And Barney Peterson—now there’s a good honest American name for you!”
“So what’s so great about that?” muttered Sergeant Salvatore Rizzuto.
Mrs. Polk had been no problem. She’d calmed visibly under Lionel’s reassurances that she’d always have a place with the Knoxes, regardless of whether Uncle Vincent’s house was sold or not. Lionel felt a brief flash of resentment at having to do the job alone; after all, the housekeeper was not his “Polka Dot.” Gretchen should have been there.
But Gretchen had been out when he reached home, so Lionel had first made a visit to a mortuary to arrange for Uncle Vincent’s burial and had then gone back to the old man’s house. Carry on for now was his message to Mrs. Polk. But Barney Peterson was another matter.
Lionel was of two minds about Barney. Barney should be fired; no question of that. But Lionel found himself reluctant to give the manservant the gate. He’d always liked Barney; the man was the one person in Uncle Vincent’s house he’d felt comfortable talking to. And Barney had done them all a favor, in a shameful sort of way; it seemed a pity to punish him for that. Lionel climbed the stairs, the habit of not using Uncle Vincent’s elevator still with him, and knocked on Barney’s door.
“It’s open,” came a muffled voice.
Lionel went in. The manservant was standing looking out the window, his back to the door. Godfrey Daniel lay sprawled out on the bed, lazily washing his face; when he saw the visitor was the one who’d stepped on his tail the night before, he ceased his ablutions and gave Lionel his full attention.
Lionel cleared his throat. “Barney, we have to talk.”
Bjarne Pedersen turned from the window, his face a perfect tragic mask. “Nine years,” he said. “The first time in nine years I failed to turn on the alarm. And look what happened.”
Lionel made up his mind right then. “It may not have been a burglar, you know. It may have been … someone who knew him.”
Bjarne was puzzled. “Not a burglar?”
Lionel sat down on the side of the bed, trying to think of the best way to put it. Godfrey decided that to forgive was divine and draped himself gracefully over one of Lionel’s thighs. “It makes a difference,” Lionel said cautiously, stroking the cat. “If someone was determined to kill Uncle Vincent, then the alarm wouldn’t have stopped him. Or her. The killer would have broken in anyway. And if not last night, then some other time.”
“Someone who knew him?” Bjarne repeated, dumbfounded.
Lionel took a deep breath, let it out. “I think the police suspect one of us, one of the six who were here last night.”
“Oh, Mr. Lionel!” Bjarne cried. “They couldn’t think that!”
Lionel ran his free hand through his hair. “To tell you the truth, I don’t really know what the police think. But they’ve started investigating us. I’m sure Uncle Vincent made a lot of enemies in his younger days, but since he retired … well, there just don’t seem to be a whole lot of suspects around. Except us.”
Bjarne was alarmed. He didn’t have too much faith in the police to begin with; that Lieutenant Toomey’s investigative techniques weren’t anything at all like Basil Rathbone’s. No other suspects, Mr. Lionel had said. The manservant thought rapidly. Should he …? “Well, there was that man who came here last week.”
“What man?”
“Fat man, gray hair, had a deep voice,” Bjarne said, inventing freely. “I didn’t get his name. But he and Mr. Vincent had an awful quarrel,” he improvised. “I could hear them yelling at each other right through the library door.”
“This was last week, you say?”
“Wednesday or Thursday,” Bjarne lied. “Mrs. Polk was out.”
Lionel fought down the urge to grin; he’d always looked on the manservant as an ally and it seemed he’d not been mistaken. “Have you told the police?”
“No sir, I didn’t think of it until now,” Bjarne said truthfully. “Do you think I should?”
“Oh, I do, definitely I do, indeed, yes.” Lionel gave Godfrey Daniel one final pat and stood up. “And don’t worry about your future, Barney. Gretchen and I still have some decisions to make, but you’ll have a job with us as long as you want. Don’t worry about a thing.”
“Thank you, sir,” Bjarne said with immense relief.
Lionel felt a lift of the spirits as he went out of Bjarne’s room and started back down the stairs. With the manservant’s mysterious caller to chase after, the police might ease up on Ellandy’s. It had been a fruitful little chat—and just in time, Lionel thought, as he saw Mrs. Polk open the door to admit Lieutenant Toomey and his sergeant. And a dignified, briefcase-toting elderly man with thin white hair, a man Lionel didn’t know.
“I see you and Godfrey have made up,” were the Lieutenant’s first words.
Lionel glanced over his shoulder to see Godfrey Daniel bouncing down the stairs behind him. “This afternoon he loves me,” Lionel smiled. “He has a mercurial temperament, that cat. What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”
“You might like to witness the opening of Mr. Farwell’s safe. Do you and Mr. Dann know each other?” He introduced Richard Dann, Vincent Farwell’s attorney. “Mr. Dann has the combination to the safe.”
“My condolences on your recent loss,” Mr. Dann said—a bit coolly, Lionel thought.
“Thank you. Do you want to go straight up?”
They did. “Rizzuto, you might as well get started,” Toomey said. The Sergeant nodded and moved off toward the library. “He’s going to try to restore order to Mr. Farwell’s files,” the Lieutenant explained.
“Restore order?” Mr. Dann frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“His papers were all misfiled,” Toomey said. “And not very neatly at that. As if the file cabinet had been emptied and then everything just shoved back in any old way.”
“Dear me,” said Mr. Dann, while Lionel concentrated on looking amazed.
“Well, we might as well get to it.” Toomey started up the stairs.
“Do you suppose we might use the elevator?” Mr. Dann asked. “I’m not supposed to climb stairs.”
Godfrey Daniel watched Sergeant Rizzuto go into the library and leave the door open. Then he watched Mrs. Polk dis
appear in the direction of the kitchen. Then at the last second he darted into the elevator with the three men who were going upstairs.
They passed Bjarne Pedersen’s room on the way to the master bedroom, which was almost twice the size of the manservant’s. “I’ve been in this room only once,” Mr. Dann told the others, “but as I recall, the safe should be right over … oh, good heavens!”
They all saw it at the same time: the framed picture that normally covered the safe had been removed and was on the floor, leaning against the wall. The safe door gaped open.
“Damnation!” Lionel muttered.
“The same burglars who were here before, no doubt,” Toomey said dryly. “Don’t touch anything,” he cautioned Mr. Dann, who was hurrying toward the safe. The Lieutenant trotted to the head of the stairs and bellowed, “Rizzuto!” He went back to the bedroom.
“There are papers still in there, Lieutenant,” Mr. Dann said anxiously. “I’ll need to check to see if anything’s missing.”
Toomey went over to the safe and, using his handkerchief, carefully lifted the papers out of the safe and spread them out on the bed. “Don’t touch them,” he warned Mr. Dann.
“No,” the elderly lawyer agreed. “I’ll just get my list—shoo, kitty.” Godfrey Daniel had jumped up on the bed and was trying to help. Lionel lifted him off the bed and dropped him on a chair as Mr. Dann opened his briefcase and took out a file folder.
“Well?” Toomey asked impatiently.
“Just a moment, please.” Mr. Dann wouldn’t be rushed.
Sergeant Rizzuto appeared in the bedroom doorway. “Yeah, Lieutenant?”
“We’ve had a break-in,” Toomey told him. “And a burglary?” He looked at Mr. Dann.
“Everything seems to be here except a promissory note for one and a half million dollars,” Mr. Dann said, studying his list. “For a loan to Ellandy Jewels.”
“Uh-huh,” Toomey grunted. “Call in a burglary, Rizzuto. And get a fingerprint man over here. That safe, the picture leaning against the wall, and those papers on the bed.”
“Right.” Rizzuto turned and was gone.