But He Was Already Dead When I Got There

by Barbara Paul

  “Yes, sir, I’ll go get her.” Bjarne left.

  “Coffee is not what I call a pick-me-up, Lieutenant,” Simon objected.

  “Nevertheless, it’s what we’re going to have,” Toomey said. “Now I want you all to calm down—we’re not going to solve anything by staging a shouting match. Sit down, everybody. Go on—sit.”

  Nicole and Malcolm sat on the sofa with Lionel; the others found chairs. Toomey checked his murder watch. The time schedule was shot to hell, but it was worth it if this new line panned out. He cleared his throat. “We have a glaring discrepancy here—Mr. Knox and Mr. Murdoch tell two different stories. Each one’s saying the trip to London was the other’s idea. Now, that’s not the sort of thing that could result from a simple misunderstanding, so that means one of you is deliberately lying. The question is, which one?”

  “Lionel,” said Gretchen.

  “Lionel,” Simon agreed. “But I think Malcolm is right. This is not the time or the place to thrash this out.”

  “I think Simon is lying,” Nicole said mildly, and shushed Dorrie when she started to protest. “Lionel wouldn’t have any reason to lie about a thing like that.”

  “And what reason would I have, pray tell?” Simon asked, overly polite.

  “Gee, I don’t know, Simon. To avoid embarrassment? To disclaim any responsibility for Lionel’s failure in London? You do tend to dissociate yourself from the rest of us whenever Ellandy’s has trouble.”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say,” Dorrie objected.

  “It’s not a very nice thing to do,” Nicole pointed out.

  Lionel spoke up. “Simon, you know damn well we had an agreement. You—”

  “Then produce the contract,” Simon demanded. “If we had a business agreement, there’d be a contract.”

  All eyes were on Lionel. “It was a verbal agreement,” he sighed, defeated.

  “He’s lying,” Gretchen said, meaning Lionel. “He killed Uncle Vincent.”

  “Whoa, that’s a pretty big leap,” Toomey cautioned. “You’ve all lied to me at one time or another. Even those two.” He nodded toward the servants, who were just then entering the library. Bjarne carried a tray with coffee pot and cups; Mrs. Polk had a platter of sandwiches.

  “What happened?” Mrs. Polk demanded in her high voice, appalled at the condition the room was in. “How did all those papers get on the floor? There’s no place to walk!”

  “Just walk on the papers,” Toomey told her. “Don’t worry about it.”

  The housekeeper sniffed with disapproval but did as she was told. She hesitated, and then indicated to Bjarne that they should place their burdens on the desk.

  “Everyone help himself,” Gretchen announced, in no mood to play hostess.

  “You stay,” Toomey said to Bjarne and Mrs. Polk. “And thanks for the sandwiches, Mrs. Polk.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” echoed Rizzuto, his mouth already full.

  Lionel didn’t want any coffee; he stood up and walked around nervously, his hands jammed in his jacket pockets, while the others crowded around the desk. Lionel’s fingers started playing with something sharp and hard they found in his right-hand pocket; it was the phony diamond Dorrie had found in the vault earlier in the day. He took it out and looked at it under the end-table lamp. Good imitation.

  “Don’t sulk, Lionel,” Gretchen said. “Have some coffee.”

  “I don’t want any coffee,” he answered testily. He tossed the fake diamond on the end table and sank back down on the sofa.

  “Now, Mr. Knox,” Toomey said, resuming where they’d left off, “did anyone else know of this ostensible agreement you and Mr. Murdoch had?”

  “No, just the two of us.”

  “Could anyone have overheard you talking about it?”

  Lionel thought back. “I’m pretty sure no one did.”

  Godfrey Daniel leaped up to the arm of the sofa, attracted by the bright shiny little thing that had suddenly appeared on the end table.

  “Then it’s just your word against his,” Rizzuto said, stating the obvious.

  “Simon would have told me,” Dorrie said loyally.

  “Thank you, darling.” He blew her a kiss.

  Godfrey’s paw shot out and flicked the phony diamond off the table. He leaped to the floor in pursuit.

  “Personally, I can’t see why either one of you should lie,” Malcolm offered. “What’s to be gained? In Lionel’s case, nothing more than passing the buck—involving Simon to share the blame for a business failure. In Simon’s case, to let Lionel shoulder the blame alone. Ignoble motives in both cases, unworthy of either Simon or Lionel. But one version has to be true. My point is that it doesn’t matter. Whichever is lying, that still tells us nothing of who killed Uncle Vincent. It’s not germane—”

  Dorrie laughed humorlessly. “Aren’t you the one who keeps telling the rest of us to shut up?”

  “I was simply trying to point out that we’ve gotten off the track.”

  Godfrey was scrabbling through the papers on the floor, making a lot of noise. “What is that cat looking for?” Toomey asked. “I’m not sure we’re off the track at all. The motive for killing Uncle Vincent was money, in the form of the loan agreement or perhaps something else. Everything’s connected.”

  “Oh, that’s helpful,” Nicole commented wearily.

  “You never know,” Rizzuto told her with an air of great profundity. Nicole sighed.

  “Shall I get more coffee?” Mrs. Polk wanted to know.

  Toomey told her no. “Somebody came in this room looking for something and ended up killing Uncle Vincent between ten-thirty and eleven o’clock. Mr. Knox, you have an alibi for that time, so you are not a suspect. Therefore you have nothing to lose by telling the truth. Do you wish to change your story?”

  “Watch out for tricks,” Malcolm warned.

  “I am telling you the truth,” Lionel said to Toomey. “My petitioning De Beers was something Simon and I worked out together, ahead of time. He did know about it—he suggested it.”

  “Not so,” Simon denied. “We have talked about De Beers, of course, but I never suggested that Lionel—get away, cat!”

  Godfrey Daniel was digging away with both paws at the papers around Simon’s left foot. Bjarne Pedersen walked over to where Simon was standing and bent down. When he stood up, he was holding the fake diamond. “Did you drop this, Mr. Simon?”

  “A diamond? No, I—wait a minute, let me see that.” He held the stone next to a lamp. “Oh, that must be one of the imitation stones. But I don’t carry them around with me.”

  Lionel glanced quickly at the end table where he’d put the stone and got a strange look on his face. “How did you know that was an imitation? What are you doing with fake diamonds?”

  Simon was annoyed. “I frequently handle imitations. Customers sometimes order copies of real jewelry they own, for insurance purposes. Dorrie, you’ve made up copies yourself.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, but the look on her face was the same as that on Lionel’s.

  Gretchen shot a look at Lionel. “Is that …?”

  He nodded. “Simon, that stone came from Ellandy’s vault. Dorrie found it, mixed in with the real diamonds.”

  “What’s this?” Toomey said.

  “In our vault?” Nicole asked.

  “I just found it today,” Dorrie explained.

  “What were you doing in Ellandy’s vault?” Lionel demanded.

  Simon wore an air of great patience at last wearing thin. “I’ve been in your vault on a number of occasions—you’ve taken me in there yourself to show me something or other. But I don’t know how this imitation got mixed in with your stones. I haven’t been in your vault for months.”

  “That’s not true,” Nicole said sharply. “You were in there the day after Uncle Vincent was murdered.” All eyes were upon her. “Don’t you remember?” she asked Lionel and Dorrie and Malcolm. “We were in Lionel’s office and Simon dropped by to take Dorrie to lunch. She�
�d left some diamonds in her office and Simon offered to return them to the vault for her.”

  “That’s right,” Lionel said, his eyes wide. “I remember!”

  “Good god,” Malcolm muttered. “So do I.”

  Simon paled.

  “Simon?” Dorrie cried fearfully.

  “Mr. Simon?” Mrs. Polk asked Bjarne. He held up his hands I-don’t-know.

  “No alibi,” Rizzuto reminded his superior.

  Toomey didn’t need reminding. “Mr. Murdoch—you told us you went straight home from the bar you all went to after that disastrous meeting Uncle Vincent called. Did anyone in the building see you come in? Did you speak to anyone?”

  Simon’s eyes darted around the room, assessing his chances. He made his decision. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t go straight home. I went to a movie.”

  “A movie!” The disbelief in Rizzuto’s voice was obvious. “So why dint you tell us that before?”

  “I was afraid it would make me appear insensitive—my going off to a movie like that while my wife was in at Ellandy’s worrying herself sick over the fate of her business.”

  “Insensitive,” Gretchen nodded.

  “What movie did you go see?” Toomey asked.

  Simon made an odd little throat-clearing sound. “Naughty Marietta. At the Alhambra.”

  Dorrie stared. “I’m married to a Jeanette MacDonald freak?”

  Simon looked pained. “I happen to be an admirer of Nelson Eddy.”

  “Godfrey Daniel!” Toomey exploded, incredulous.

  “Meow?” said Godfrey.

  “I’ve never heard you mention Nelson Eddy in my life,” Dorrie accused.

  Toomey asked, “Did anyone you know see you at the movie?”

  Simon did his throat-clearing bit again. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t go alone. Malcolm was with me.”

  “No, I wasn’t!” Malcolm shouted excitedly. “That’s just a story we made up to alibi each other!”

  Simon threw Malcolm a look of pure venom. “Oh, wonderful! Terrific. Good old reliable Malcolm!”

  Toomey switched gears to throw Simon off track. “The day after Uncle Vincent died—did you substitute fake diamonds for real ones in the Ellandy vault?”

  “Naw, he dint,” Rizzuto interrupted, violating a basic rule of police procedure by answering for the suspect. “He wasn’t takin’ real diamonds out—he was puttin’ ’em back.”

  Simon turned as white as Hamlet’s father. “How did you …?”

  “Putting them back?” Toomey asked, not sure he’d heard right.

  “How did you, how did you …?” Simon was having trouble completing his sentence.

  Rizzuto grinned. “Guessed right, huh?”

  “My god, Rizzuto,” Toomey said, awed. “You’ve solved the case!”

  Rizzuto kept right on grinning. “Yeah.”

  Simon had recovered. “How did you come up with a fantastic notion like that?”

  “What’s going on?” Gretchen demanded.

  “It’s no good, Mr. Murdoch,” Toomey said. “You’ve given yourself away. Just too many lies—they were bound to trip you up sooner or later. You’re under arrest. Rizzuto, read him his rights.”

  The only sound in the room was Rizzuto’s flat voice intoning the words of the Miranda Code.

  “It was Mr. Simon,” Bjarne nodded to Mrs. Polk. Dorrie wailed like a banshee and everyone started talking at once.

  Over Simon’s protests, Lieutenant Toomey pushed him down into a chair and drew up another one, sitting knee-to-knee. “This is what’s going to happen,” he explained in a reasonable voice. “Either I charge you with first-degree murder, or else you tell us what happened here and we try to work out a deal with the prosecutor’s office. Either way, you’re under arrest. So what’s it going to be?”

  “He has the right to consult with an attorney,” Malcolm said hastily. “Lieutenant, you can’t expect him to make a decision like that without having all his legal options explained to him. Simon, I advise you to say nothing at all until—”

  “Malcolm,” Simon said acidly, “shut up.”

  “Your choice,” Toomey went on. “First-degree murder means premeditated, and I don’t think you planned to kill him, did you?” Toomey gestured toward Rizzuto with his head and circled one wrist with the fingers of the other hand. Rizzuto pulled out a pair of handcuffs and clamped them on Simon. Simon held his hands up in front of his face, staring at the cuffs, horrified; Dorrie wailed again. “First-degree carries a lot heavier penalty than the lesser charges, like manslaughter,” Toomey said. “So what do I charge you with, Mr. Murdoch? Was it premeditated?”

  “No, of course it wasn’t,” Simon answered waspishly, finally accepting the fact that they had him. “It was an accident. I had no intention of killing him or anyone else! I didn’t mean to kill him even when I hit him!”

  “Ugh,” said Gretchen. “Tacky.”

  “Aw, Simon!” Dorrie was still wailing.

  “So why did you hit him?” Toomey asked, knowing the answer but content to go through the motions now that he had his man. “Why?”

  Dorrie wailed louder.

  “Because he pulled a gun on me!” Simon protested. “You saw it! What was I supposed to do, stand there politely and let him shoot holes in me? I just grabbed the closest thing at hand—Dorrie, my love, do stop making that ungodly noise!” She stopped. “I saw him taking the gun out of the desk drawer so I just grabbed the statuette and hit him. That’s all. There was nothing premeditated about that.”

  “How did you get in?”

  “The same way as Nicole and Malcolm. Dining room window.”

  “Where was Uncle Vincent when you got there?”

  “Not in the library, you can be sure. I thought he’d gone to bed—the library was dark, I had to turn on the lights. But he was still on the first floor somewhere. I don’t know whether he saw the light under the door or if he was coming back for something he forgot or what—I don’t think I made any noise. But he came in and found me looking through the file cabinet and … well.”

  “Simon killed Uncle Vincent,” Nicole said as if trying to convince herself. “He really did!”

  Gretchen suddenly laughed. “And Dorrie dragged him back here and made him go through all …” She trailed off when she saw Dorrie looking daggers at her.

  Rizzuto picked up the questioning. “So whyja go back to the library in the first place?”

  “To look for the promissory note, of course. Why else?”

  Gretchen gave a satisfied little nod. “To protect Dorrie.”

  “No, to protect himself,” Toomey said. “It had something to do with those fake diamonds. How would getting hold of the note help? You’d already substituted the fakes for the real thing, hadn’t you?”

  “Only two days earlier,” Simon admitted. “I needed a lot of money in a hurry—”

  “You stole from me!” Dorrie blazed suddenly. Everyone looked at her. “What kind of man would steal from his own wife? You knew Ellandy’s was in trouble and still you went in and helped yourself to my diamonds just because you wanted … whatever it was you wanted! You want, you need, it’s always you!” Dorrie’s voice was shrill and her face had turned red. “You low-down, sneaky, lying, underhanded—”

  Immediately Malcolm and Lionel and Nicole jumped in and started the work of calming Dorrie down. They said Now, Dorrie and Don’t get excited and Take it easy until she collapsed into a deflated silence. Lieutenant Toomey was astounded; it was the first time he’d witnessed one of Dorrie’s flare-ups.

  “Darling, listen to me,” Simon said in his most persuasive tones. “I had every intention of returning the real stones within a week or two, believe me! I only borrowed them.”

  “Without asking,” Lionel said disgustedly.

  “I wouldn’t steal from you, darling,” Simon assured his wife. “Please believe that.”

  “But you changed your mind and put them back the next day after the murder,” Toomey said. “Wh
y?”

  “I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said I had a change of heart?” Simon asked. “No, I didn’t think so. It was Uncle Vincent’s little bombshell that made me take them back. He announced he wasn’t renewing Ellandy’s loan, and Lionel immediately started talking about taking inventory. He and Dorrie and Nicole went in that night to get started—that was a very nerve-racking period for me, you can be sure. While they were checking the stones, I mean.”

  Lionel said, “You mean if we’d just stuck to it a little longer, we’d have found the phony diamonds?”

  “Undoubtedly. I thought if I could get the promissory note and turn it over to you and Dorrie, you wouldn’t need to go on with the inventory. Because once you found the fake stones, I’d be the first one you’d suspect. Lionel, you don’t even allow your sales personnel into that vault. I’m the only outsider who’s ever been in there.”

  “But you couldn’t find the note,” Toomey prompted.

  “No. So the only thing to do was return the real stones and get the imitations out of the vault.” Simon opened his right hand to reveal the fake diamond he’d been holding all this time. “I must have missed this one.”

  “Simon,” Nicole said icily, “I’m glad they caught you! That was a terrible thing to do!”

  “Oh, indeed? And have you told Malcolm how you got Dorrie and Lionel to make you a partner?” Simon asked bluntly.

  “I’ll tell him,” Lionel said, and did.

  Malcolm was horrified. Wound up, Lionel went on with the story of how the fourth partner had maneuvered her way in. Then they were all talking at once again, Lionel and Dorrie shouting at Gretchen even more than at Nicole, the two intruders. Mrs. Polk shouted at the others not to shout at Miss Gretchen. Bjarne looked embarrassed.

  Toomey and Rizzuto exchanged a long-suffering look and waited them out. Toomey was surprised to learn Gretchen was now a partner of Ellandy Jewels; he’d suspected Nicole of pulling some sort of fast one to get herself a partnership, but he hadn’t known Gretchen had weaseled her way in too. My, my, how things had changed. Eventually the furor died down. Malcolm was somehow reconciled to Nicole’s duplicity; in no position to preach, Toomey thought. Malcolm and Nicole stood in the middle of the room hugging each other.