by Blake Banner
“Something like that. Young Charles was born nine months after they were married. He was a lovely, bright, happy baby. She stayed at first because she hoped that the baby would bring them together. It had the opposite effect. He ignored them both and started having affairs, and flaunting those affairs in front of Pam. She became depressed, obviously, threatened to leave him, but somehow lacked the strength. He had alienated all her family and she had nobody to turn to. One month became six, became a year, became ten… Now she can’t imagine herself without him.”
“And you?”
Bee laughed. “Oh, I certainly can’t imagine myself without the old goat. I don’t even want to. His affairs don’t bother me. He was never a very good lover anyway, far too self absorbed. I just need to be near him, bask in his badness. He is such a naughty man.”
Dehan was quiet for a long while, watching Bee. Bee avoided her eye, squinting out at the trees in the hedgerow that were now beginning to toss and bow. Overhead the swallows swooped and skimmed, snatching their tiny prey from the air. Finally Bee said, “I know what you are thinking, Carmen.”
“What am I thinking?”
“You’re wondering if I slept with the old man.”
“And did you?”
She didn’t answer for a long moment, then she said, “Well, of course I did. Old Man Gordon was a monster, but he was twice the man his son is.” She gave Dehan a mischievous smile. “And a much better lover.”
Dehan smiled. “And I’m naughty…”
“Darling, you should have known him. He was so intense!”
“So who else did he sleep with?”
“Believe me,” she laughed. “There was no sleeping involved.” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “I think he made a point of shagging every girl his son was with…”
“Even his fiancée.”
“Especially his fiancée. Both of them.”
Dehan sighed. “What a family.”
“Dysfunctional, toxic… all those words pseudo psychologists and social workers love to trot out these days. He was a very bad man, driven by intense passions, appetites and desires. But he was alive, and when you were with him, dear me! He made you feel alive!”
Dehan chewed her lip for a moment, looking up at the sky. “Well, you certainly had all the ingredients necessary for a murder.”
Bee studied her for a moment. “Yes, yes, there was that.”
“I’m just surprised there hasn’t been another one in the last thirty years.”
“So far,” said Bee, holding her hat with both hands as the wind gusted and the air turned suddenly dark. “We’ve all wanted him alive, until now.” She stood and staggered as another gust caught her. “Darling, the storm is here, let’s go inside and have some tea!”
They went inside, closed and secured the French windows, and the mounting gale became a muted bluster. Brown was there setting out the plates, cups and saucers. He was alone but for the red-haired maid, who was lighting the fire in the huge fireplace. Bee flopped onto the sofa, removed her hat and started arranging her hair. “Brown, will Mr. Gordon Sr. be joining us?”
“I believe he will, m’lady.”
“And where are all the men?” She gave Dehan a smile.
“I’m afraid I don’t know, m’lady. A little while ago I served coffee to young Mr. Gordon, the major and Mr. Stone in here. But I am not sure where they have gone. Shall I go and look for them, m’lady?”
“No, thank you Brown, no doubt they’ll show up before long.”
“Very good, m’lady.”
He made to leave with the maid in tow when the door opened and the massive form of Charles Gordon Sr. filled the doorway. He ignored Brown and the maid, eyed Bee and then stared for a moment at Dehan with a look that was nothing short of a leer.
“Good afternoon,” he said and moved into the room. Brown and the maid left and closed the door behind them. “Your husband has left you alone and unguarded.”
“I don’t need guarding, Mr. Gordon.”
“Call me Charles, then I can call you Carmen.”
Bee sighed and gazed at the flames that were beginning to enfold the logs in the fireplace.
Dehan smiled at Gordon. “That’s OK, Mr. Gordon. I still get a kick out of people calling me Mrs. Stone.” She smiled down at Bee. “It reminds me I just hit the jackpot.”
Gordon gave a humorless grunt. “Good lord!” He moved across the room toward the salver with the decanters on it. “Oh for the naivety of youth, though I do declare that even when I was at your tender age I was not naïve about love. Were you, Bee?”
“No, Charles, you know I wasn’t. You robbed me of all my innocence when I was just sixteen.”
He poured himself a whiskey and turned to her with a wolfish grin. “And didn’t we both enjoy that!”
They both laughed, but Dehan thought Gordon laughed with more pleasure, and Bee more trying to please. He turned to Dehan. “Believe me, Carmen, naivety is nothing but an inhibitor to pleasure. One lusts after dreams and illusions that can never be realized. How much more satisfying to lust after what is carnal and real!”
She rested her ass on the arm of a chair and raised an eyebrow at him. “Mr. Gordon, I think you are trying to convince me that you are bad. But I don’t believe you are bad…”
“Oh really?” He leered at her again. “I wouldn’t be too sure…”
Dehan shook her head. “No. Bad? Bad was Mick Harragan, who raped and murdered my mother while I was forced to watch. Bad was Maria Garcia, in the first case I ever worked with Stone[1]. She drugged Nelson Hernandez and his three cousins so they were conscious but they couldn’t move. She then shot each one of them with a pump action shotgun before cutting off Nelson’s head and balls and placing them in the middle of the table where they were playing poker.” She chuckled and shook her head. “No, you’re not bad, Mr. Gordon. You’re not even naughty. You’re a pussycat.” She grinned. “But, I’m sorry, my attention drifted, right about the time where the Ivy League heir to daddy’s fortune was going to explain to the Bronx born-and-bred Jewish-Latina detective all about naivety, reality and carnality. Please, go ahead and educate me, Mr. Gordon.”
Bee squealed with laughter and reached out and grabbed Dehan’s hand. “Oh, Charles, I do believe you have been put firmly in your place.”
Gordon stared at Dehan with baleful eyes. “I am not amused, Mrs. Stone.”
Dehan stood. “Get back in the sandpit, Charlie. I eat men for breakfast who make you look like a sissy’s bitch. I’m going to find my husband. You may have seen him around. He’s a man.” She grinned and held out her hands like she was holding two watermelons. “And he has balls.”
With that she stepped out of the drawing room, left Bee wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes, and took her attitude across the hall to the study, where she had an accurate hunch she would find me.
What can I say, I guess I’d hit the jackpot too.
NINE
Charles, the major and I had left our coffee to get cold in the drawing room and crossed the hall to the study. The door, like the drawing room door, was solid walnut with a brass lever handle and a chub lock underneath. Charles pushed it open and stood back for me and the Major to go in.
“This is where it happened,” he said.
I stepped inside and stopped to have a look around. The room was large and roughly square, though perhaps a little wider than it was deep. I estimated it was almost thirty feet across, and twenty-something from the bay window on the right, at the front of the house, to the wall at the back, on my left. The window, flanked on the right by a credenza, overlooked the drive, and opposite, in the center of the wall, there was a large, granite fireplace, about six feet high and five feet across, with a large iron grate backed with red firebricks, blackened by centuries of burning wood. It was laid with large pine logs on a bed of kindling. On either side of it there was an old, burgundy chesterfield. The floor was carpeted in deep, red Wilton.
The far wall,
opposite the door, was taken up with a dark mahogany bookcase. In front of that, almost dead center of the room, was a huge, oak desk with a black leather chair behind it.
Charles came in and closed the door behind him. I asked, “Is this how it was when he died?”
“Precisely. My father didn’t change a thing. And when I took over and started using the study as my own, I didn’t see any need to change it. I think this is the best use of the space.”
I turned and looked at the door. “A chub lock. They are easy to pick.”
“Oh, yes, without a doubt.”
The major coughed and took a step forward. “Thing is, Detective, if I may, and do remember I was there at the time, the key was still in the lock, which makes it impossible to pick unless you remove the key first. Also, and this was what convinced the police, the latch was in the locked position, and had torn out the wood from the doorframe. Two hundred year-old door frame, I may say. Damn shame.” He pointed at a slight discoloration in the wood around the latch. “You can still just see where it was repaired.”
I nodded. If Henry had been satisfied that the door was locked, I was satisfied too. I turned back to the desk, then glanced at the two chesterfields by the fire. The desk was not quite dead center, and the fireplace and the chairs were at a slight, diagonal angle. I looked at the major and pointed at the black leather chair behind the desk. “That’s where he was sitting?”
He nodded vigorously. “Exactly. Shall I demonstrate?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, in two long, thin strides he was behind the desk, arranging the chair and placing himself in it.
“He was seated, like so, up against the desk as though he had been writing or reading. And in fact, he had on the desk in front of him an open tome on the history of the Scottish clans. He was slumped forward slightly, like so…” He leaned forward and allowed his jaw to sag onto his chest. “His left hand was upon the book and his right hand was hanging down by his side. And the revolver was just there…” He pointed a couple of feet from the chair. “:ying on the carpet. I shall never forget it. Such an eerie sensation. The oddest things seem to become so important, tiny details stand out, don’t they?”
I was staring at the two chesterfields and asked, absently, “Like what?”
He didn’t get up. He stayed in the chair, staring at the ceiling. “Oh, I don’t know, foolish things. I remember worrying that Charles would tread dirt and grass into the Wilton, which had just been laid new. Not this one, obviously, a previous one… And how red the blood looked on the old man’s shirt cuff.”
I turned to look at him. “It’s true, in those moment our senses are heightened. Which cuff?”
“Eh?”
“Which cuff did you notice the blood on?”
“Oh, yes, his right arm, hanging down. He had two or three large, round drops on his cuff.”
“Round?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Quite big and round.”
I smiled, moved to the desk and picked up the stapler. I handed it to him and said, “Pretend this is a gun and hold it to your head as though you are about to shoot yourself in the head.”
He looked a bit surprised, glanced at Charles, shrugged and held the stapler to his head. “Like this?”
“Yup.” The door opened. Dehan stepped in and closed it softly behind her. I smiled at her and carried on. “Charles, come here, a bit closer. Now I want you to run a movie in your head, slow motion, OK? Imagine he pulls the trigger. The revolver bucks, a cloud of GSR is instantly ejected by the weapon and covers his hand, his sleeve, his head and his shoulder. A nanosecond later, the slug impacts his temple, on the horizontal plane, kicks his head to the left and draws all the blood and gore into the wound with it, while the burning gases from the muzzle sear the edges of the hole and the skin around it. The slug then erupts from the left side of his head, creating a large exit wound and spraying blood and gore out over his left shoulder, the carpet, et cetera. The next instant, his head kicks back to the right, propelled by the force of the exit would, and simultaneously his hand drops to his side, releasing the gun, and then, after the heart has stopped beating, a small amount of blood will ooze from the wound, down the side of his face.”
Charles was looking at me with some distaste. “I see.”
“Now here’s the problem. With his right hand held up and to the right side of his head, how did he get large blood droplets on his right cuff?”
Charles’ eyebrows shot up and he looked down at the major, who still had the stapler held to his head. I carried on.
“Here’s another small problem. Let’s say that by some freak of physics, some drops of blood were kicked back onto the cuff. Within half a second, his arms had dropped down by his side, these large droplets are fresh, liquid. By the time, Major, you got to see them, they would not have been circular, they would have been tear-shaped, because the arms was hanging down. So how did they come to be circular?”
“My word…!”
I took the stapler from him and set it back on the desk. “But what we have is not a bullet wound on the horizontal plane. We have the bullet entering at an almost forty-five degree angle. So, Major, can I position you like this, reading a book…”
Dehan stepped over to the bookcase, pulled out a large tome, opened it and set it before the major. I took his hands and placed them with his left forearm resting on the desk and his right wrist as though he were ready to turn the page in a moment or two. Then I took the stapler and went and sat in the chesterfield on the left of the fireplace and pointed it at his head, as though it were a gun.
“If I were to shoot you from here, we would have just about the correct angle for the entry wound, you would have no GSR on your hand and cuff, the entry wound would not be scorched and, as you sagged forward, a few droplets of blood might well fall on your cuff. What do you say, Dehan?”
She was nodding as I spoke. “I’d say, given the characteristics of the wound, and the absence of GSR, that is pretty much how it went down. But if that’s correct, you have one hell of a problem. Unless he was shot by someone from the Enterprise who was then beamed up, I don’t know what happened to your shooter.”
I nodded back. “That is, indeed, the problem.” I looked at Charles. “But I have to say, Charles, in my opinion there can be no doubt that your grandfather was shot while he was reading, from over here.”
The major was frowning. “Well that makes perfect sense, but, as um… um…” He squinted at Dehan. “Dianne says, what happened to the blighter who shot him?”
I stood and looked around the room slowly while Dehan spoke. “Right down to basics, Stone, if you kill somebody in a locked room, you have to stay in the locked room with them. That is the whole basis of the locked room problem, right?”
“Right.”
“So, either: one, there is a concealed exit, two, he was killed from outside, or three, the room was locked from outside after the killing. There is no fourth alternative.”
Charles gestured toward the chair where I had been sitting. “Well, we have already seen that the shot came from over there. The only way the shot could have come from outside would have been through the window, in which case the window would have been either open or broken, and the shot would have entered the other side of his head, which it didn’t. So that leaves either a secret exit, or the door being locked from the outside, after the murder.”
The major nodded doubtfully. “Houses of this period did have secret passages, often…”
I pointed at the bay window. “That goes straight out onto the drive.” I pointed to the door. “That leads into the hall, so that would make no sense. That wall there,” I pointed at the huge bookcase, “leads out to the steps down to the kitchen, which leaves only that wall there, where the fireplace is…”
I looked at Charles. He shook his head. “That leads onto the ballroom and a brook cupboard, I’m afraid. The police did a very thorough search for secret doors and passages. Your friend, Green, he was convinced, l
ike you, that it was murder. But they never found anything. I’m afraid the secret passage theory is a non-starter. There is simply nowhere to put one.”
Dehan sighed. “Which leaves the theory that the room was locked from the outside after the murder.”
I returned to the chesterfield, sat, and gazed at the major a moment. “What time did Charles Sr. go in to see his father?”
“Mid morning, around eleven o’clock.”
“They talked for over an hour. Then…” I looked at Charles. “your father came out, went running to the kitchen, hugged cook and spread the good news, before leaving to tell Pam about his father’s change of heart. He was gone two hours, which brings us to about two o’clock, when he returns, and as he approaches, through the window he sees Old Man Gordon sitting at his desk…”
Dehan said, “Which gives us a window from 12 o’clock, when Charles Sr. last saw his father, to 2 o’clock, when he returned and saw him through the window.”
I looked at her, thought a moment and then carried on. “He entered the hall and presumably came straight to his father’s study. Did anybody see him?”
The major shook his head. “Not at that stage. I was out on the lawn chatting with Bee. We saw Charles Sr. arrive down the drive and go into the house, and as far as I know the staff were all in the kitchen. First anyone knew about Charles trying to get into the study was when the butler heard him kicking down the door.”
I nodded. “So Charles kicked open the door, rushed in and found his father as you have described him, with his arm hanging down and the revolver on the floor.”
“That’s correct.”
“Was it normal for Charles Sr. to lock the door?”
The major nodded. “Oh yes, he used to have… um…”
He glanced at Charles Jr., who smiled. “It’s all right, Major. My grandfather used to have affairs, and he would often have private conversations with them on the telephone, so it was quite normal for him to have the door locked. Also, when he worked, he didn’t like to be disturbed. However, apparently my father knocked several times and got no reply, and that was when he became alarmed.”