Ellery Queen’s Anthology. Volume 38, Fall/Winter 1979

Lawrence Treat A As in Alibi

A police procedural starring Lieutenant Decker, the Chief of Homicide himself, in one of the best stories in this fine series... Keep your eye on the clock — all the clues stare you in the face...

Lieutenant Decker, the lean, gray-haired, gray-eyed Chief of Homicide, sat behind the beat-up desk in his tiny office and felt old. Empty inside. Past his prime. Licked, washed up. Twenty years ago he’d have shot fire and brimstone, and blasted this overweight slob into a confession.

But now — what? Here was Frank London, a half-baked, itinerant bum of a folk singer, sneering at him, sneering at the police. Logic hadn’t worked, threats hadn’t worked, the tricks of the trade hadn’t worked. Nothing had even dented the guy, and Decker had nowhere to go. Not up, not down. Not sideways. Just stay put and molder away. Call the case a bust, put it in the Unsolved File, and know in his heart that he’d failed.

There was only one thing that Lieutenant Decker was sure of: Frank London had killed her. Decker knew it and London knew he knew it — which was why London had that smirk on his face. A big, round, oversized face with large agate eyes, cheeks like little red balloons, and that impossible, twisted handlebar of a blond mustache decorating his lip.

It was a grotesque mustache, braided like a quoit or a pretzel or a wicker carpet-beater. The Beatles had their hairdo, Groucho had his cigar — but this joker had his mustache; and he was making a monkey out of Decker and the Homicide Squad and the whole police department. And when they released London, somebody would be the fall guy and his name was Decker. William B. Decker, a cop for 35 years and head of Homicide for the last 15. The smart thing was to hand in his resignation, then go home and tell Martha, his wife. And move to Florida or California and never work, never worry, never be alive again.

Yeah? Not me, brother, not me!

Decker stared at the beefy hunk of beatnik in front of him and said, “Okay, let’s go over it once more. You got to the cottage around five, her folks were already gone, and so you and Jodie rehearsed for a couple of hours. You left her a little before seven, walked up the path to the top of the cliff where your car was parked, and nobody saw you. A damn freak like you, and nobody ever noticed you!”

“The invisible man,” London said tauntingly. His deep, resonant, troubadour voice separated every word and enunciated it with care. “I left, didn’t I? Or do you think I’m still there?”

Decker knew that the car had been driven away around seven, although nobody could identify London as the driver. “You got into your car,” Decker said crisply, “drove home and took a shower. Presumably to wash off the blood.”

“There was no blood.”

“What did you do with the towel?” Decker asked. That was one of the few points he had. London’s landlady was certain that a towel was missing from London’s bathroom, and Decker was convinced the folk singer had used it to wipe off the blood and then had disposed of it, along with the white polo shirt he’d been wearing. “What did you do with the towel?” Decker asked again.

“I buttered it, put pepper and salt on it, and cut it into terrycloth canapés. My usual dinner.”

That was the way the interrogation had been going. London kidding him, skating rings around him, and enjoying every minute of it. Always the showman, always putting on an act. And then London pulled a masterpiece of pure gall. He took the unbelievably long braids of that fancy mustache of his, pulled one ropy end straight up, over his nose, and stretched the other end at a right angle, to his right. With Decker facing him, the mustache now looked like the two hands of a clock, pointing to nine o’clock.

Nine o’clock — the crucial time.

He did it solemnly, deadpan, and then he twisted his mustache back into its usual pretzel shape, sat there with that maddening smirk on his face, and clammed up. That was his answer: nuts to you, Lieutenant Decker. And somehow, Decker felt he’d been given the clue to the puzzle — been given it by the man’s brag and conceit; but Decker was just too dumb to figure it out.

Restraining an impulse to smack the guy, the Lieutenant thought-back to the first, futile interview between them. He’d been pretty sure, even then. He’d asked questions, listened to answers, then sent London back to a cell for the night, while the Homicide Squad checked up on what London had said.

Orthodox procedure, and Decker thought he had the guy cold. Duck soup, he’d told himself. London’s alibi depended on the time when the murder had been committed, and so he had simply set a clock on the scene of the crime to the hour of his alibi. Which was a trick that had never fooled anybody, once a case was properly investigated.

Except this time.

Decker scowled. “Then you went to the Red Grotto for your evening performance. Jodie didn’t come, and you went on stage alone.”

“The show must go on,” London said smugly.

Decker’s adrenaline oozed out, and his face turned red. “You sang Frankie and Johnny,” he said tightly. “Then you sang a new song, one you say you had just made up. A few people remembered some of the words. It started off—”

He picked up the sheet of paper on which he’d scrawled the beginning of the ballad, as some of the audience had recalled it. He read it off starkly, prosaically. “ ‘My love has gone to a far country, My love has gone away from me, Sing die, goodbye, Oh, sigh, sigh, sigh.’ ”

“Nice song,” London said judiciously.

“Where’d you learn it?”

“I made it up as I went along. It came naturally.” London gave Decker a self-satisfied grin and added, “That’s genius for you.”

“You were singing her requiem. How did you know she was dead?”

“I didn’t. I felt sad. Maybe it was telepathy. Maybe her spirit was in me, for those few minutes. The audience was so touched that for a few seconds nobody even applauded. Then their cheers rang to the rafters. It was a great moment.”

The folk singer cocked his head to one side and grinned like an overfed gargoyle. “It was nine o’clock, exactly.”

Decker glared, then spun around in his chair. The swivel squeaked. He reached for the doorknob, twisted it. He swung the door outward and gave it a kick. “Okay,” he said in a dead voice. “You can go. You’re free.”

London jumped up with a shout and held out his hand. “Lieutenant, that’s great! Thanks, Lieutenant, thanks.”

Decker turned away.

“Look,” London said, “don’t take it like that. So you were wrong. Forget it. Enjoy yourself. I’m going to throw a party at the Red Grotto that this town’s going to remember for years. I’m going to have all my friends there, including you. Lieutenant, be my guest — the guest of honor.”

“Get the hell out of here,” Decker said, barely spitting out the words.

London shrugged, grinned, and left.

Decker frowned as he slid his finger along the pieces of paper on his desk — the sheets with the words of the song and the timetable of the murder.

It was years since he’d blown his top and let a suspect see how infuriated he could become. Alone now, Decker asked himself where he’d gone wrong.

His investigation had been thorough, he’d examined the facts exhaustively. There were no loose ends, no doubts in his own mind. Jub Freeman, lab man and forensic scientist and a damn good one, had gone over every inch of the cottage, and the Homicide Squad had spent days questioning everybody who had been in the neighborhood. The picture was clear enough.

The Dorkins and the Finleys lived together — they had lived together for 20 years in the big stone house on Dixon Heights. Hannah Dorkin and Natalie Finley were sisters — their relationship was close. In his own mind, Bill Decker called it beautiful, and they were beautiful women in the fullness of maturity. Prominent in social work, married to eminent men, Hannah Dorkin and Natalie Finley were kind, gentle, rich in forgiveness. Decker wondered whether they’d forgiven London. And whether they’d ever forgive him, Lieutenant Decker.

Jodie Dorkin was the only young person in the household, and the Dorkins told the Lieutenant that, as a child, Jodie had sometimes got mixed up as to who were her father and mother, and who were her aunt and uncle. She solved the problem by loving them all equally.

Her father and uncle were distinguished men. Judge Dorkin was gruff, blunt, rigorous in his honesty and rocklike in his adherence to high principle. Decker knew him professionally and respected him for his clear mind and incorruptible character. Dorkin’s clipped wit and his firm, impartial administration of justice had made enemies. No upper court appointment for him. Politics couldn’t take away his distinction, but it had kept him from the advancement he so richly deserved.

Dr. Richard Finley was a small gentle man, a world-famous cardiologist and surgeon. He was urbane, civilized, honored in his profession. You looked at him and wondered how such an unobtrusive little man could have risen so far. But when he spoke, you began to understand why, and when you noticed the delicacy and strength of his hands, you knew there was talent in them. He had the king’s touch, which cured.

The four adults had gone down to their river cottage early that mild, summery Saturday afternoon. The cottage was at the foot of the river bluff, just within the metropolitan limits. A dozen other cottages were scattered along the bank of the river — pleasantly cool refuges in the heat, each of them with a dock and a boathouse built over the water.

Jodie was already at the cottage — she’d gone there the day before and stayed overnight. At 18, she was interested in folk singing and had performed here and there as an amateur; but she hadn’t been serious about it as a career until she met Frank London. He had a good voice, he was an experienced performer, and on some level he and Jodie clicked. Their voices complemented each other, but more than that, they gave each other style. London’s stature grew as some part of him softened and gained understanding, while Jodie acquired some of his confidence and bravura. They were a team, and fast becoming the sensation of the small hootenannies.

Jodie had told her family that Frank was meeting her at the cottage, that they wanted to rehearse some new numbers. The older people had never liked London, but they realized you don’t have to like your colleagues in order to work with them. And Jodie had assured them there was nothing serious between her and Frank, and never would be.

“He likes me,” she’d said. “Maybe a little too much, but I know he’s a heel. Except the times we’re singing together, he rubs me the wrong way. So you’ve nothing to worry about, any of you.”

And they didn’t. They loaded the picnic basket in their boat, and went upriver. They didn’t take watches, didn’t know what time it was. That was part of the fun, part of what made their outings so carefree.

“We go upriver,” Dr. Finley said, “and land wherever we feel like, or else we just drift back. We do it every week-end. Sometimes we swim, sometimes we birdwatch, sometimes we just talk. We eat when we’re hungry. Occasionally we stay out overnight. We never know. But we’re free, we’re completely emancipated from time.”

Brother, Decker thought. What a day to be emancipated!

They had returned after dark. They had no idea what time it was. Ten — twelve — two — they couldn’t say. They’d been immersed in a dream world and their senses were drugged, suspended, heavy with sound and sight and the richness of their own living. Until they turned on the light in the living room of the cottage and saw Jodie.

She’d been stabbed with a kitchen knife. There was blood. There had been a fight. She’d resisted. Her clothes were torn. In the course of the struggle her foot had apparently caught the cord of the electric clock, unplugged it, and sent it crashing down. The cord was still hooked around her leg.

What the four grownups had subsequently gone through, they themselves could hardly relate. Dr. Finley had examined Jodie. Respiration had not entirely ceased. The doctor took over, and with the help of the others he improvised emergency techniques. First-aid equipment and some of his basic instruments were in the cottage, so he tried to accomplish a medical miracle.

There was no phone, and even if there had been, no one would have bothered to summon the police. Time was too important — a transfusion and manual massage of Jodie’s heart were the only possible hopes, and they had to be done immediately, without moving her.

Natalie Finley had formerly been a nurse. She assisted; she was familiar with the delicate and unusual operation that Dr. Finley had performed before, in hospitals. He made the incision and they stood by and did what he told them to. They gave blood, under primitive conditions.

How long Finley worked on Jodie, none of them could tell. An hour, three hours? They hadn’t the slightest idea. But it was dawn when Finley finally gave up and told Judge Dorkin to trudge up the hill to the nearest phone and notify the police.

When Decker got the call from headquarters, he tumbled out of bed and drove to the scene. He saw the two women briefly, then got the basic facts from Judge Dorkin and Dr. Finley. Frank London had presumably been there. The clock had always kept accurate time. Decker didn’t touch it. Jub Freeman would dust it for fingerprints and examine it and the cord for any possible physical evidence, no matter how minute. The hands pointed to nine o’clock.

Decker had four homicide men at the scene before he and Mitch Taylor left to pick up London. London was the obvious suspect and Decker woke him up, heard him mutter sleepily that he’d rehearsed with Jodie and left her around seven, maybe a little earlier, that she’d failed to show up at the Red Grotto, and so he’d gone on alone, and what the hell was this all about?

Decker told him and hauled him off to headquarters. Decker’s grilling was expert. London was reticent about details and insolent in his general behavior, but Decker thought he had a pretty good case. London had stabbed her, then set the hands of the clock to indicate nine, and figured he had a pretty good alibi.

He spent the day in jail while Decker gradually learned how a man can come to hate a clock.

His first theory — that London had set the clock after the stabbing-ran into immediate difficulty. The time-set button was jammed and bent, and couldn’t be moved. Decker decided it was jammed because, when the clock fell, the button had hit the arm of a wicker chair. Fragments of the wicker were wedged against the stem of the time-set, and there were clear marks on the chair to show where the clock had hit.

Microscopic examination made it seem highly unlikely that London had scraped off tiny bits of wicker and inserted them in such a way as to make the time-set inoperative. It was just one of those accidents. Therefore, London must have set the clock at nine before he committed the murder. That was Decker’s first conclusion, in what he now thought of as his hours of innocence.

Medical evidence was consistent with placing the time of attack between seven and nine p.m. London had been there until almost seven, and everything in his background was against him. He’d been a juvenile delinquent in Chicago and had spent time in a reformatory. Later, he’d gone to New York and had become something of a Greenwich Village character. He sang and strummed in bars, drank too much, got into fights. He’d been arrested for assaulting a woman, but she’d refused to prosecute. There were rumors of other, similar incidents, although they hadn’t got as far as a police blotter. He’d finally left New York, gone on tour, landed here, and met Jodie.

He was in love with her, according to everybody who knew the pair of them, but she would have no part of him. He’d made a few scenes at the Red Grotto, but she’d always managed to hold him off. To Decker, the picture of the murder was crystal-clear. Jodie and Frank London had been alone in that isolated river cottage. He’d tried to make love to her, she’d resisted, and he’d grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed her in a violent rage.

So much for London. But granting him his nine o’clock alibi, it was reasonable to believe that a prowler had walked into the cottage after London had gone. The Homicide Squad combed the neighborhood for evidence of a stranger who might have assaulted and killed Jodie. No trace of an intruder had been found.

Which brought everything back to the clock.

It was an old battered clock, hexagonal in shape, and the numbers on the dial were indistinct. Nevertheless they were there, and the clock had stopped at nine. Decker bought two similar clocks and offered five bucks to any of his squad who could figure out how London could have jammed the time-set button in exactly the way it had been found. Nobody collected the five bucks.

It was a noisy clock, and the judge told him the family used to joke about it, referring to its death rattle. But it kept good time and they were sentimental about it, so they never replaced it.

“The electricity might have been cut off,” the judge said.

“It wasn’t,” Decker said. “We checked that, for the last month. And we checked your fuse box. If it was keeping accurate time earlier in the afternoon, when you were still here, we have to assume it remained accurate.”

The judge frowned. “I can’t say that I really noticed.”

But his wife had. “It was not only keeping time,” Hannah Dorkin said quietly, “but the week before it had stopped making noises. I’m sensitive to sound, and I missed hearing the funny little rattle it always made. I mentioned it to Jodie, and she said she’d fix it, and she did.”

“How?”

“She didn’t tell me. We were making sandwiches and she was slicing some ham and she cut her finger. She went for a Band-Aid and we never finished the conversation.”

Decker was still clinging to the idea that London had set the clock ahead to nine, and then murdered Jodie. Finally Dr. Finley scotched that theory.

“You couldn’t set it,” he said. “I tried to do something about the noise a few months ago, and I dropped it and bent that time-set button. Couldn’t even turn it with a pair of pliers. But you couldn’t hurt that clock. I checked it by my watch on Saturday, before we went out on the boat, and the clock was accurate.”

The judge was philosophic in his point of view. “Lieutenant,” he said, “we’ve both seen a lot of murders. The unbalanced man, the psychopathic killer without a motive — sometimes he commits a crimeand isn’t seen. Years later he’s caught for something else and he confesses, and you just marvel at his luck, at the string of coincidences that made his escape possible.”

“Not this time,” Decker said. “London killed her.”

“What does the D.A. say?” the judge asked.

“That he won’t indict London until I can place him at the cottage at nine. And at nine... well—”

Decker turned away. At nine o’clock Frank London had been strumming a guitar at the Red Grotto and making public lament for Jodie Dorkin. He’d known she was dead, he’d practically advertised it. Therefore she’d been killed around seven — except that an unimpeachable clock said no.

Decker had traced Jodie’s movements in detail; he had looked for a jealous suitor, for some clue that would provide a name, another person to question. Decker drew a total blank.

On Friday, the day before her death, Jodie had had an all-day swimming party at the boathouse. About a dozen teen-agers had come in the morning and stayed until after dark, but most of them hadn’t even been in the cottage. Around 6:30, however, two or three of them had gone there with Jodie to get food from the refrigerator; but they hadn’t even noticed the clock.

Nothing unusual had happened. Nobody had got drunk. There were no fights, no incidents. Decker obtained a list of everybody who’d been at the party and checked out their whereabouts on Saturday. They could all account for themselves, and so it came back to London. Every time it came back to Frank London.

What, then, had gone wrong? Where had Decker slipped up?

Grunting, he yanked open the drawer of his desk. His favorite pencil, his personal diary. There on the bookcase, the small stuffed crocodile that brought him luck — or used to. He wondered whether to take it home with him, or to leave it here for his successor.

Fifteen years as head of the Homicide Squad, and what would he leave behind? What was personal to him in this tiny cubicle of an office that had held so much drama, had seen so many killers break down, confess, and walk out the door to their inevitable fate?

He sighed morosely. Tonight, London was setting up a celebration. He’d get drunk and shoot off his mouth about how he’d put one over on the police. Maybe Decker ought to go to that party, after all. Maybe London would give himself away.

Decker stepped outside and told the receptionist he was leaving for the day. In the corridor, he thought of going upstairs to the lab. Jub Freeman was working on that robbery case. The clock would be over in the corner, on the workbench near the window; but if Decker set eyes on the thing now, he was liable to smash it to pieces.

He went out to the parking lot, got in his car, and drove home.

Martha seemed to know. She’d suffered these many years through all his moods, all his triumphs and despondencies, all the tough cases that woke him up in the middle of the night and sent him down to his desk in the small book-lined den, where he might scrawl out an idea, put together some outlandish logic, or connect two bits of apparently unrelated evidence that finally solved the unsolvable.

Tonight, she seemed to understand. She was tender, quiet; she talked of small things in a low, comforting voice, while he sat on the couch and sipped at a double scotch. After dinner he stalked out, got in his car, and went driving.

Anywhere. Out to the river cottage. Past the Red Grotto. It didn’t matter where. He just wanted to be moving, to get away from himself and his problem.

He had a dozen bright ideas to explain how, although London had stabbed Jodie around seven, the clock had stopped at nine. Maybe it had still been going after she’d been stabbed. Maybe London had removed the glass over the dial of the clock after stabbing her, pushed the hands to nine, and then replaced the glass.

Decker swore. He was kidding himself with wild theories that no jury would take seriously. What he needed was a simple, down-to-earth explanation that would undermine the evidence of the clock and blast the cockiness out of London. He’d confess then. No doubt about it. Lieutenant Decker knew the type — he could handle guys like London.

Still driving aimlessly, Decker found himself rolling past headquarters. There was a light on in the lab — Jub Freeman was apparently working late. On impulse Decker swung through the arched entrance of the building and parked in his regular spot in the courtyard. He got out of the car, strode through the lobby where a sergeant was seated at the long high desk, and went upstairs.

Jub, a stocky, cheerful, round-cheeked guy, dimpled up in a smile as he greeted Decker. “Just checking up on a soil precipitation test that I started this afternoon,” he said, putting down a test tube. “Anything on your mind?”

“I got no mind,” Decker said. “When I give up on a jerk like London, I’m a nitwit. No brains. Low I.Q. Been lucky up to now, but I got found out.”

Jub corked the test tube carefully and placed it in a rack. “He’ll give himself away, some time. He’ll get drunk. He’ll brag about it to some dame. Just wait, Lieutenant. You’ll get him.”

“I can’t wait. You know what the papers are going to say tomorrow, don’t you? Then the Commissioner will have a little talk with me and—” Decker shrugged despondently, noticed the Dorkin clock lying on a workbench near the window, and stalked over to it.

“Who the hell left it at nine o’clock?” he demanded bitterly. “Somebody needling me?” He plugged the cord in, then picked up the clock.

Jub said, “You’ve been working too hard. Go away for a few days. Rest up. Things will blow over.”

Decker whirled, twisting his body. “Jub, don’t try to—” He broke off, aware that the clock had started making its distinctive rattling.

As the six-sided clock now lay in Decker’s hand, it was tilted 60°, one side to the left — that is, counterclockwise. The numbers on the dial were faded and barely legible. If you told time simply by the position of the hands, they now indicated about ten minutes to seven.

The Lieutenant gasped. He shifted the clock back one side, clockwise. The dial now read nine o’clock. The barely visible numeral six was now at the base, and the rattling sound had stopped.

“So that’s how Jodie ‘fixed’ it,” Decker said in a low, somewhat awed voice. “She just turned it one side to the left. Look, Jub. Stand it up the way it’s supposed to be, with six at the bottom, and it doesn’t make any noise. But if you do this—”

He shifted it to the next left of the six flat sides, with the barely discernible numeral eight at the base. The noise started, and the dial now seemed to show ten minutes to seven. “And nobody noticed that she left the clock standing on the wrong side. After all, lots of clocks don’t even have numerals and people tell time easily enough.”

Jub nodded. “She must have done it on Friday, when she was there all day. Then on Saturday, after he stabbed her and looked down and saw the clock, London realized what a terrific break had been handed to him. Standing in the correct position, with six at the base, the clock showed the wrong time — not ten minutes to seven when he stabbed her, but nine o’clock — time enough for London to give himself an alibi!”

Decker, wonderment still on his face, patted the clock and broke into a broad grin. “Until now — but now we’ve got him,” he said, “got him cold!”