George shook his head shaggily. “I don’t seem to be thinking straight. Seems to me you’ve got a contradiction there, Dave.”
“I really think I ought to phone for a doctor, at least,” said Anthony.
Amaryllis stirred. She was wearing, I saw, my pale blue slacks and my best white lace blouse. She seemed shocked by David’s exploit. “No… I’ll go.”
“Not for me.” And George was rigid against a spasm of pain. “Wait’n hear what Dave’s got to say.”
“I’ll keep it short,” said David. “A contradiction, yes. I’m saying that the dummy was ejected, but everybody knows that if it was, in Konrad’s illusion, the bullet would’ve missed it, and plowed through both sides of the cabinet. That fits with the dummy not having a bullet in it, but as the bullet didn’t go through both sides, then it must have gone into the dummy. Did somebody say something?”
I’d heard it too, a moan, and it hadn’t been George. I looked round. There was a poise to all of them; no one stood near any of the others. All eyes were on David. He shrugged.
“No matter. I’m sure somebody was going to point out that Konrad could’ve thrown the dummy over there beneath the window, if the thing had failed. But could he? Look at it like this. One shot was fired – there was one crash as the cabinet fell over. Abel put it quite simply: somebody, either Konrad or his murderer, left the room after the cabinet fell. But we’ve exhausted all chances of Konrad having left this room and having been shot elsewhere. One gun, one shot, and I think everybody’s quite convinced that Konrad died with that shot. So it follows that he didn’t get round to throwing the dummy under the window.”
David looked round as though assessing the possibility. Fisher was proclaiming his uninterest by reaching through the window for the rope, tugging it tentatively.
“Hurry it up, Dave, huh?” George murmured.
“Sorry, George. Where was I? Yes. Konrad being shot in here. But there was only one shot, and that shot must have done three things: put a hole in the cabinet, lodged in the dummy, and killed Konrad.”
“But, Dave… there wasn’t any bullet in the dummy.”
David dragged his hands down his face. It left it smeared with blood, but he grinned. “Gets worse, doesn’t it! We’ve got a bullet that had to go into the dummy, because there was nowhere else for it to go, and we’ve got a dummy with no bullet in it thrown across the room to a position it wouldn’t have landed. And we’ve got the fact that the cabinet couldn’t have operated anyway if the dummy was still there to receive the bullet.”
“I’ve had enough of this,” said Fisher, and he headed for the door.
“Please stay where you are.”
I saw that David held George’s gun. To all intents and purposes it was the murder weapon – but the murderer had to know it could not fire. David and his petty tests? Surely not – he’d denigrated the subterfuge. But Fisher jerked to a halt. His head came up.
“That’s a criminal offence, using a weapon to restrain somebody.”
“I asked you… please.”
Fisher shrugged. “But it’s cold in here.” And Anthony laughed derisively. “Try stopping me!” he said, and moved casually.
The bullet slammed the door its last two inches.
“This is not the same gun,” said David calmly. “I’m only asking you to listen. All right?”
A gust of wind swirled rain through the window. They withdrew, I felt, more from the chill than from the gun.
“What we’re rather forgetting,” said David, “is that the mechanism in that cabinet operates when the door shuts. We’ve been rather brain-washed into the idea that the shot always had to come immediately after the door was shut. But it isn’t so. The shot doesn’t have to be related to the door at all. In fact, the door could have been shut after the shot, for once. Then the dummy could have been ejected with the bullet already in it. So, take that as a basic, and examine all the alternatives of sequence, and you have to come to one conclusion. The bullet must have penetrated Konrad’s chest first, right through him, then had sufficient force left to go on through the cabinet panel, and then lodged in the dummy. It’s the only thing. And if, after that, the cabinet door was shut, then the dummy, complete with bullet, would be thrown out. Of course, we’ve still got to explain why the cabinet crashed to the floor and then recoiled against the door. Well, what is more sensible to visualize than Konrad standing beside the cabinet when he was shot, the dummy inside and the cabinet door open, and when he fell or staggered, himself pushing the cabinet over backwards. So that was when the door shut and the mechanism worked.”
I saw that George was no longer able to make objections. I couldn’t do anything for him, but I could say what he would have said.
“But it leaves two of your queries unsettled, David. There wasn’t a bullet in the dummy and, according to you, it would’ve landed a few feet to one side of the window.”
“That,” he admitted, “is the big snag. But you see what it means: the dummy ejected and the dummy we found were not the same ones. They’d been exchanged. And I didn’t really realize I could prove that until I got into here in such an unconventional way.”
“Well!” Sundry stepped forward. He looked round for approval, and I realized how pompous he could be. “I think I’m speaking for all of us in this. If that’s all you’ve got to tell us I’d rather leave it until we get downstairs.”
“It’s not all,” David claimed easily. “Not if you think what it means. There was a shot and a crash and within two or three minutes there could be expected a rush of company. The gun had been picked up from the table, there was a simple and straightforward firing of it – and an attempted second shot, incidentally – and then… what? The cabinet was blocking the door, and time was running out with certain discovery – and what is done about it? The dummies are switched, that’s what. The blood-stained rug is rolled up, to hide the fact of murder, and probably hidden behind the dummy against the wall, and in the next two minutes one dummy is switched for the other. Imagine what that means in practice. The dummy was dressed in its outfit of tights, tails and a flat sort of top hat. All those would have to be switched over – in two minutes! – and the dummy chosen to receive them happened to be one with no bullet in it.”
They were staring at him as though he had gone mad.
“And the whole thing spoiled by leaving the new one beneath the window instead of a few feet to one side,” David added.
“Well… this is the craziest—” began Clarice.
But Anthony cut her short savagely. “Let him say it!”
“Anthony’s seen what I’m getting at,” David said with approval. “I think he’s known for some time. Why else did we get Coppélia?”
Clarice screamed at that point and caught at Amaryllis’s arm.
David smiled. “But of course, you’ll have realized, there’d be no point in switching dummies. We’re talking about a murder in this room, when we’ve explored every possible way of the murderer getting out or hiding inside. The second dummy, the one you discovered thrown beneath the window, wasn’t any attempt to hide or get out. It was a last desperate attempt to remain undiscovered while in full view. It was the only dummy who didn’t need changing into the outfit, because she was already wearing it. And because she, as Anthony kept reminding her, was the only one who could convincingly look like a disjointed dummy.”
Clarice was fixed in nervous tension, her fingers now dug deeply into Amaryllis’s arm.
David said: “Of course, the clothed dummy would’ve had to go out of the window, after Konrad’s body. She couldn’t have two clothed dummies in the room. And, when Clarice and Anthony left the room empty, she’d still have to work fast. This wasn’t planned, you see. It arose from frantic necessity, taking opportunities as they arose. Then she’d have to strip, and clothe one of the dummies from the cupboard, and leave it where she’d been lying, dash up to the room above to hide the rug – because she knew the room, in spite of Konrad’s show o
f indifference, as it was probably their meeting-place – and then rush down in time to appear in pants and bra in her doorway, which wouldn’t take a second because the bra would be all she’d have left on her.”
And I’d stepped over her at that window, and not realized!
Then at last Amaryllis swung her free hand vigorously, slashing Clarice’s fingers from her arm. She was fierce and proud.
“He’d got no right… he took everything I offered him, and that was every damned thing I’d got. There wasn’t anything left for me but Konrad, and then I discovered what he was going to do. Oh, damn him to hell… and because she was going to collect the insurance money, it had to be Clarice he was going away with secretly. And I’d never see him again! Oh, he was logical about it. The money, the money! All he bloody well thought of. I’d given him my life…”
And with Anthony as the sole reserve! With Anthony taunting her, telling her, afterwards, that he knew she had done it, teasing her with her own ballet music. He’d as good as given her no alternative. There was no way for her to turn.
She headed for the door. David said quietly: “No.”
She screamed openly at him, her face a distortion, all her misery there in that one frantic mime to the background of her scream. Then she threw herself towards the window. I could not move. David made a gesture of it, but she had the blind motivation of insanity. Maybe she reached for the rope. I don’t know. She disappeared, and as she fell there was no more of her scream.
Sixteen
It seemed logical, George’s hand being in plaster, that David should drive him home, while I followed in my Dolomite Sprint. But George sensed that I had at last sorted something out, and he insisted he could manage, his car being an automatic.
“Rubbish!” said David.
“No, it isn’t. I owe you something, Dave.” And he grinned at David’s frown of perplexity.
So at last, I got David alone. I was driving. I could feel he was uneasy.
“Say it, then,” he said at last.
“You knew, didn’t you David, long before the end, what she’d done.”
“Guessed.” He moved restlessly. “That was when George spoke about stripping the dummy from under the window, looking for a bullet. He said he couldn’t find a hole in the suit. But, Elsa, if Konrad had been switching the suit from one dummy to the other it should’ve had at least seven bullet holes in it. It got me wondering why it hadn’t.”
“And so… that wretched reconstruction you planned, it wasn’t because of the gun at all.”
“Well…”
“No, it wasn’t! You realized she’d left her outfit up in that room on the dummy. All you were doing was forcing her to dress up for the demonstration, or do something to cover up the fact that she couldn’t.”
“But I didn’t expect that,” he said firmly. “The fire threw me. It could have been somebody else, and with Anthony apparently hating her…”
“He loved her, you fool!”
“If you say so. Anyway, I don’t suppose she intended to burn herself like she did.”
“You’re talking round it,” I said sharply. “The point is – you told me a lie. You said it was all for the gun.”
“I was going to explain.”
“But you didn’t!”
“I would’ve done, but then the fire started, and afterwards…” He stopped, fumbling for his pipe, embarrassed. I risked a glance.
“Afterwards?”
“Well… there was only you to stay the night with her, Elsa. So how could I tell you I thought she was a murderess? I mean…”
I screamed the car to a halt.
“You rotten devil!”
He looked at me anxiously. “But, Elsa, she only killed men. And she liked you.”
“She hated me.”
He reached over and ran a hand down my cheek.
“Elsa my love, when she went out of her way to show you what Anthony was like! That fight… it could’ve been at any time, anywhere. But she’d seen you were fascinated by him, that his least touch did things to you…”
“Oh, blast you, David.”
I’d have said more, but he stopped my mouth in the most effective way there is.
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Author’s Note
I feel I should apologize to the Magic Circle for introducing two illusions without reference to their archives. But I am sure I would have been told that the one was not possible to stage, and the other I have invented purely for the purposes of my story, and was never intended to stage.
Needless to say, any reference to persons living or dead is not intended, but partly in reparation this book is dedicated to the Magic Circle, in memory of so many splendid illusions that have baffled me and given me pleasure, and have worked so much better than mine.
R.O.
More Dead Than Alive (David Mallin Detective series Book 15) Page 14