Mostly Murder: A Short Story Collection

Plot It Yourself

Wasn’t it Shakespeare who suggested that we kill all the lawyers? Too drastic? Well, then, what about one lawyer?

I am his murderer.

Can you catch me?

I won’t lie to you. Oh, I might tease you a little. Do a bit of business over here with my left hand to hold your eye, say, while over here my right hand is doing, oh, maybe, murder.

A widely held misconception is that Beverly Hills is inhabited by movie folk. But only eight percent of the mansions on those wide, shady, deserted streets, drowsy with the swish of automatic sprinklers and the clip-clip of hedge shears, are owned by the Sly Stallones and the Jane Fondas. In the rest live doctors and dentists and psychiatrists and attorneys and clothes-hanger manufacturers and Rolls Royce salesmen.

Take that white mansion with stately southern pillars set well back from Beverly Glen on an acre of lawn. It houses — pardon me, housed — an entertainment law attorney named Eric Stalker. On the night of his murder, streetlights were going on as Stalker parked his Lagonda (one of twenty-four imported into the U.S. that year) behind a white Continental, a midnight-blue Rolls, and his stepdaughter’s red bat-wing Mercedes coupe.

Stalker was a handsome, gray-haired, vital fifty-six, with the tanning-salon’s all-over mahogany skin color and the spring to his step that only hours in the gym can give. As he closed the car door — a solid, monied clunk — an eight-year-old Chev Nova, with one fender a different color from the rest, crunched to a stop on the gravel drive behind the Lagonda.

Chuck Hoffe fit his machine: early thirties, tough-looking, mean of face and cold of eye, wearing the sort of off-the-rack suit associated in the popular mind with the honest cop.

“Chuck — you don’t mind if I call you Chuck, do you? I’m delighted that you—”

Hoffe shook Stalker’s arm off his shoulder almost testily. “If you invited me here tonight hoping I’ll change my testimony tomorrow—”

Stalker shifted his slim attaché case to emphasize it. “Let’s go to my study before we join the others, Chuck. I have something in here that you’ll find intriguing.”

Eric Stalker, leading this vice cop off toward the French doors to his study, is playing a dangerous game with Hoffe and with his other guests now congregating in the dining room. Did I say dangerous? Deadly, rather. Because, as Dickens once pointed out, if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers. Stalker is a very good lawyer. And his guests — well, they’re the sort of people who need very good lawyers.

It was a small formal dining room, the walls covered by Thirteenth Century tapestries depicting the cardinal sin of gluttony with all the hypocritically self-indulgent detail so beloved of the medieval artist. The chandelier was Czechoslovakian crystal and the flatware so solidly silver that the forks could be easily bent by hand if one were so gauche as to do so.

No nouvelle cuisine here: shad roe aux fines herbes, a duckling in Flemish olive sauce, and pork fillets braised in a nice spiced Burgundy, served with polenta. They had lingered over the fig-and-cherry tart. Stalker finally rose and tapped his water glass with his knife. Conversation ceased abruptly.

“Yes, of course. You each know why you’re here, don’t you?” He began walking slowly down the length of the table behind their chairs, all eyes moving with him. “I hinted—”

He stopped behind his stepdaughter, Merrilee, a sensual, spoiled-looking woman in her early twenties, not at all beautiful but with an obviously very bedable look about her. As he leaned over to speak above her, she stared straight ahead, a sullen expression on her face.

“Right, Merrilee? I no more than hinted—”

“Yes, Father. Only hinted.”

He paused behind Jon Norliss, a distinguished, white-haired man of about seventy who was lighting a cigar as if at peace with himself and the world. He seemed indifferent to Stalker’s face beaming over his shoulder.

“Yes. Hinted that I might give each of you something.”

Norliss nodded, turning his cigar to get it burning evenly. Stalker nodded also, and moved on to Andy Bowman, an obvious health addict in his mid-forties, with a handsome face and an assured, slightly sardonic air.

“Something that you want very much.” Stalker’s voice suddenly snapped. “Isn’t that so, Andy?”

“Yes, Eric,” said Bowman evenly.

Stalker had passed around the end of the table to Chuck Hoffe’s place. The plainclothesman was half turned to watch him.

“I have thought each of your situations over very carefully indeed,” said Stalker. “And I have decided that I’m not giving any of you one damned thing.”

He nodded, beaming, and slipped out of the room through the door behind him. Hoffe already was halfway to his feet, his face contorted, exclaiming, “I could kill you for this, Stalker!”

All of them, stunned, were on their feet by this time, crowding through the doorway after Stalker.

“You promised me!”

“I was led to believe—”

“Your own daughter, you couldn’t—”

But Stalker stepped into his study and closed the door behind him. They heard the bolt being shot home. Hoffe strode angrily to the massive front door, face set and eyes murderous.

What was it The Saint used to say Chief Inspector Teal from Scotland Yard was being afflicted with? Detectivitis, I believe. I can see you sharpening your wits for the challenge I am setting you, my friend. Beware of detectivitis — what is needed here is observation. Watch closely now. No detail is too miniscule to be unimportant Don’t let your eyes deceive you.

Stalker paused to grin at himself and fuss with his carnation in the ornate full-length mirror fastened to the back of the door. Then he crossed the thick oriental carpet to a painting beside the French doors behind his desk. He swung the hinged painting back against the wall and worked the combination of the safe it concealed. After opening the safe door against the back of the painting, he left it that way, taking nothing from it.

He sat down in the heavy leather swivel chair behind his desk and surveyed the room with a self-satisfied look on his face. He was quite alone. He took paper and an envelope from the top side drawer and began writing with an old-fashioned inkwell pen. The pen made scratching sounds in the silence of the study.

I told you I wouldn’t deceive you, so we will take a quick peek at the rest of the characters in our little drama as Stalker writes his rather nasty screed in his locked study.

Stepdaughter Merrilee is at the makeup table in her room on the second floor, shredding a handkerchief with her teeth and cursing her stepfather. She abruptly gets to her feet and starts for the door with great resolve.

Stalker’s partner in the law office, courtly looking Jon Norliss, is out in back by the pool, pausing to knock the ash off his cigar. He loses control, shreds it against the retaining wall. Now he is turning determinedly back toward the house.

Stalker’s Beverly Hills physician, the dashing Andy Bowman, is throwing up into the toilet on the second floor. He suffers a spastic stomach in moments of ultimate decision.

The vice-cop, Chuck Hoffe, has been walking in circles on the front lawn, smoking a cigarette down to the filter. He throws it away with sudden resolution and strides rapidly off.

Detectivitis, anyone?

Stalker looked up into the face of the person in the middle of the room. In that frozen moment of realization, he could see himself exactly as that person saw him.

A handsome, distinguished man, old-fashioned pen in his left hand, inkwell open on the upper-left-hand corner of the desk blotter. Behind him, the painting swung back against the wall to the right of the wall safe it usually concealed, with the safe door still open against the back of the painting. To the left of the opened safe were the French doors, drapes closed, door latched.

After a moment, as if there were no one else in the room with him, he turned over the sheet of foolscap to blot it, then folded it into the envelope. As he wrote on the envelope, he looked up into that face again.

“You can’t possibly think you’re going to get away with this, you know,” he said in a voice which strove for lightness.

There was no response. Was that perhaps a flicker of fear in Stalker’s eyes? He licked the envelope and put it in the desk, his hands resting on the edge of the still-open drawer.

“Take some time to reconsider?” he asked almost hopefully.

There was no response.

He shouted, “All right, then, damn you, get it ov—”

There was a single gunshot, shockingly loud in the enclosed room. Stalker was slammed backward against his chair by the blast, his arms flying wide with its force.

A smoking .357 Magnum thudded to the carpet several feet from the desk. Stalker was tipped back as if sleeping, legs splayed out under the desk, arms hanging laxly outside the arms of the chair. Red had blossomed on his shirt-front.

A silhouette loomed up against the French doors. Cupped hands circled a face pressed against the glass as the person outside tried to peer in through the closed curtains. The latch rattled, but held.

From beyond the bolted door of the study came confused sounds, muffled voices. Someone began beating on the door, then a key was turned in the lock. The knob was turned, rattled. The door would not open. The bolt held.

From the French doors came the sound of breaking glass.

In the hallway, Merrilee was still trying her key in the lock when the bolt was drawn from the inside. Bowman was crowding her shoulder as the door swung in to frame Chuck Hoffe and Jon Norliss in the opening.

“Stalker’s dead,” Hoffe said matter-of-factly.

Merrilee and Bowman shoved past him into the room without speaking, to get a glimpse of the body slumped behind the desk.

Ah, yes, my friend, these are the vital moments for the little gray cells, as Hercule Poirot was fond of calling them. Everything is laid bare for the inquiring mind that wants to know. Remember, there are only the study door and the French doors. Remember, also, that everyone is suspect.

“Look — don’t touch,” warned Hoffe. “I have to call forensics. But before I do—”

He stood on the other side of the desk from the dead man, the others ranging naturally behind him. He pointed as he spoke. “Just so we agree on the physical evidence. Stalker is slumped in his chair behind his desk, dead, shot once through the old pump. Powder bums around the wound. The inkwell on the upper-right corner of the desk has been overturned and the ink has spilled out. A .357 Magnum is lying on the floor approximately ten feet from the right edge of the desk. It is probably the murder weapon, probably dropped there by the killer. Okay so far?”

There were several assenting sounds. He went on.

“On the wall behind the desk is a hinged painting, swung open so it is lying against the wall to the left of a wall safe, which is also open. To the right of the safe, the French doors are now open. One pane is broken and glass is shattered inward across the floor. Those doors were locked when I tried them from the outside — I had to bust one of the panes to get in.”

No reactions. Hoffe wrapped a handkerchief around his hand to pick up the phone receiver. He tapped out a number. “Since we’ve agreed on the crime scene, I’ll call it in.”

No one dissented. Bowman, ever the physician, crouched beside the body to check the obviously dead wrist for a pulse. Norliss stared glumly at the body.

Bowman stood up and shrugged. “The Grim Reaper and all that.”

“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” intoned Norliss.

“Vengeance is a .357 Magnum slug through the heart,” said Hoffe, coming up beside them.

“Stop this! All of you!” cried Merrilee suddenly. They turned to look at her in surprise. There were tears in her eyes. “Sarcasm and platitudes when — when my father is dead. Murdered!” She turned suddenly on Hoffe. “And you just said, a few minutes ago, that you were going to kill him.”

For just an instant, Hoffe looked guilty, then his normal brash, cocky manner reasserted itself. He started striding up and down the carpet beside the desk, gesturing as he did.

“Sure, I’ll admit I was steamed. That’s why I went out to smoke a cigarette, to get control of myself. But then I heard this shot. I ran back, tried the French doors — they were locked, as I said. I looked through the curtains and saw him here — dead. So I—”

“You could have opened those doors earlier!” cried Merrilee.

“I didn’t like him any better than the rest of you,” said Hoffe patiently, “but why would I kill him?”

At that moment, a strange voice said, “Raoul, I want you to put your hand on her shoulder.”

See everyone look in different directions? Now look at the twenty-nine inch screen of the floor-model TV console in the corner. Yes, a pornographic film now flickers there! A bedroom with a handsome naked man in bed with a naked blonde girl who doesn’t look out of her teens. Might not this be a clue?

The man put his hand on the girl’s shoulder. The unknown voice said, “Turn her toward you—”

There was a loud click and the screen went blank. Hoffe had pushed past Bowman to the video-machine controls.

“I think we should see the rest of it,” said Bowman. “A porn flick — and Mr. Hoffe here is a vice cop.”

Hoffe, meeting nothing but stony dislike in any eye, stepped back with a shrug. “All right,” he said, “show the damned thing. See what it gets you.”

The porn movie flickered back on. But this time, as the man reached again for the naked girl, the director’s voice burst in, “Who the hell is this clown? Somebody get him out of here!”

The camera slewed wildly around the empty warehouse with the bedroom set and lights clustered in the middle of it, then focused on Hoffe and the young vulpine-looking director.

“She’s underage, baby,” Hoffe said, flashing his tin. “In this state, seventeen’ll get you twenty.”

“Take Jive, everybody!” yelled the director. In a stricken undertone to Hoffe, he added, “Hey, man, gimme a break!”

The camera maintained follow focus as they moved away from the set. The director took a roll of bills from his pocket.

“I can beat this thing in court — the girl’s older than she looks. But our production deadlines would suffer. I wouldn’t want you to lose by not making an arrest—”

Hoffe clicked the machine off again. “That’s when I busted him. So you see, Stalker didn’t have any knives sticking in me.”

“He told me he was going to force you to change your testimony in court tomorrow on this case,” said Bowman. After a beat, in an almost admiring voice, he added, “Our Eric was good at things like that.”

Hoffe sneered. “Not this time. I have this guy cold.”

But the porn scene flashed back on — Bowman’s work. “Oh, I won’t lose.” Hoffe pocketed the roll of money, then clapped cuffs on the startled director. “Because you’re under arrest, pal, for making pornographic films with an underage girl.”

The screen went to snow, then blank. Hoffe sneered at the distaste in their faces.

“Okay, so Stalker had me over a barrel with this film and made me promise in writing to change my testimony tomorrow. He said he’d give me the tape after supper, but—”

“But he didn’t and you killed him,” said Merrilee.

“Except the tape is still here, girlie!” sneered Hoffe. “Would I kill him and then not take it? Hell, no! This was a grudge job.” He turned suddenly. “And you had a hell of a grudge against him.”

Norliss, caught off-guard, wet suddenly dry lips. He stammered, “That’s nonsense. I don’t know what you might have heard, but that disagreement in his office was just business.”

Bowman, still crouched in front of the VCR machine to check the tape cabinet beneath it, had taken out Hoffe’s tape and inserted another. He pushed the PLAY button and stood up. “Maybe this will tell us what kind of business.”

On the TV monitor flashed Stalker’s office, taken from a hidden camera. Stalker was behind his desk, dictating a memo. The sound quality was excellent.

“He wired his own office!” gasped Norliss.

The door burst open and Norliss stormed in. He stopped in front of his partner’s desk.

“I arrived this morning and found my name removed from my door! I’m going to tell the Bar Association and—”

“Tell them about the Gorsuch case?” asked Stalker silkily.

“I... I don’t know what you mean.”

Stalker was on his feet, towering over the older, frailer man. “I don’t mind your suborning witnesses, Jon, but when you do it so clumsily that I have to spend a great deal of money to get back the evidence and save the firm’s name, well—”

“But, Eric, you’re the one who demanded I offer—”

“Just sign this letter of resignation, Jon, and I’ll turn over the evidence to you. Otherwise—”

The screen went to snow.

I believe it was Cervantes who said that the only comfort of the miserable is to have partners in their woes. But Jon Norliss found small comfort with his partner here tonight. I’m sure he expected to get back the evidence at dinner, and when he learned that he wasn’t going to, well, perhaps he—

But there, I’m displaying a touch of detectivitis myself!

Bowman chuckled and shook his head as he took the tape back out of the VCR. “So Eric stiffed you, too, Jon. Just like he did Hoffe. Had you sign the resignation, then kept the evidence against you. So typical. But—”

“What about you?” Norliss burst in angrily. “Your motive for wanting him dead was better than mine. He could have taken my past — but he planned to take your future.”

Bowman swept an angry hand across the tape titles in the cabinet. “Where’s the tape with my name on it, then?”

Before Norliss could answer, Hoffe shot a hand into Bowman’s inside coat pocket and yanked out a video tape.

“Right here,” he said, shoving Bowman roughly aside.

In a moment, Stalker’s office again came up on the screen. Now it was Bowman and the attorney facing each other across the familiar desk, seen from the familiar angle.

“I’ve decided not to invest in your clinic, after all, Andy,” said Stalker in an almost indifferent voice.

Bowman’s face crumpled.

“But... but, I... If you don’t give me the money — I pledged everything, my home, my—”

“I’ve just found out there was nothing wrong with my gall bladder that a change of diet wouldn’t have cured. But you—”

Bowman was pleading now. “Eric, please! Maybe the operation was marginal, but... but in checking the X-rays afterward I found a... a shadow on your lung. I’m not a specialist in that field, but it could be—”

“Malignant?” Stalker laughed coarsely. “You’d say anything to save the clinic, wouldn’t you? Well, crawl for me, Andy. Convince me. If you do, next week, maybe — just maybe...”

I think it was an ancient Roman who said it was better to use medicine at the outset than at the last moment. Poor Dr. Bowman! All those financial ills, and he went to Stalker for his medicine. And what did he get for his troubles? Being prime suspect in a murder case. Unless you believe him, of course.

Bowman was clutching his video tape anxiously to his chest. He gave what he thought was a little laugh. “Oh, Eric liked to make people sweat, sure, but I know he was going to back my clinic.” When nobody spoke, he went on, “If he did have cancer, he would have died in a few months. I’d have been a fool to risk a murder charge just so all his money would go to — her.”

His voice and gesture directed all eyes to Merrilee. They found her using the mirror on the back of the door to freshen her lipstick. She caught their reflection in the glass and laughed.

“Me? Kill Daddy? I loved him!” She turned to face them, a sneer on her full lips. “I don’t need Daddy’s money. I have the trust fund my mother left me.”

“Administered by Eric!” exclaimed Norliss. “He had full discretion to revoke the trust, and just last week he told me he was drawing up papers to that effect — to sign tomorrow.”

“And when I came down from the second floor,” exclaimed Bowman, “she was right beside that door, with the key in her hand. She said she heard a shot, and I believed her. But—”

“Well, well, well,” interrupted Hoffe softly. “The little stepdaughter had motive, means, and opportunity — the classic big three for premeditated murder.”

Merrilee had paled. She whirled back to the mirror and pressed her face against it, making a double image of herself. “Stop it,” she cried, “all of you! I did hear a shot, just like I said! And I heard Daddy in here talking with someone, but I couldn’t hear the words.” She faced them again, pale features contorted. “You can’t prove that Daddy planned to—”

She stopped, mouth gaping, as Eric Stalker’s rich, sardonic tones filled the room. “A tender — if drunken — scene.”

They looked at the corpse, then at the TV. Merrilee’s bed was wide, opulent, with a trail of scattered masculine and feminine garments leading to it across the floor. On it, two naked people were leaping guiltily apart.

“The tape was in the safe,” explained Hoffe from the VCR machine. “He had his own kid’s room wired for pictures.”

“Stepkid’s,” corrected Bowman almost lasciviously.

On the screen, boy and woman had gotten tangled up in each other and the black satin top-sheet had fallen on the floor beside the bed. Stalker entered the frame.

“You — out.”

The boy scrambled to his feet. “Hey, old man, I ain’t scared of you!”

“You should be. Now get out before I—”

“Jerry, do what he says,” said the film Merrilee.

“Stop it!” shrieked the real Merrilee.

“We've gone through it,” said Hoffe. “Now it’s your turn.”

On the screen, the boy stormed out with his clothes, slamming the door behind him. Stalker was staring at Merrilee as she hastily pulled on a robe over her nakedness.

“I’m cutting off your allowance, Merrilee.”

She tried to embrace him, fawning. “Daddy, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I had too much to drink and — you can’t!”

He shook her off. “I can and will. It was important to your mother that you be a decent person. I’ll revoke the trust if that’s what it takes to—”

Merrilee slammed her hand down on the VCR controls and the screen went blank. She turned to glare at the others. “All right, he’d taken my allowance and was threatening to revoke the trust. But he promised that if I straightened up he’d give it all back to me!”

“But tonight at dinner he told all of us that he wasn’t giving us one damned thing,” said Hoffe.

“It could have been any one of us,” breathed Norliss.

“Or all of us,” said Bowman.

“Sure — or none of us,” Merrilee added sarcastically.

Hoffe merely laughed.

What was it that Holmes told Watson? That when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? Of course, our suspects’ stories should have told you who I, the murderer, am — as well as why I did it. But if you’re still confused, remember those three classic elements of premeditated murder: motive, means, and opportunity.

“What are you laughing at?” snapped Bowman.

“You all act like this is one of those board games,” said Hoffe. “Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with a noose. But this is real murder, not—”

“Do you know who did it?” demanded Norliss.

“I’m a detective, aren’t I?”

“The police will be here any minute.”

“I didn’t call them yet. No use going down unnecessarily.”

“For — murder?”

“Nah, little girl — for taking a bribe. As for murder—” Hoffe began pacing beside the desk again. Their eyes followed him. “Was it Hoffe, the corrupt cop? No, I had to smash the French doors to get in here and Norliss was with me when I did. Which takes care of him, too. We alibi each other.”

Bowman broke in. “If you’re saying it was me—”

“You couldn’t profit from his murder — you’d still be ruined. And why give him a quick and easy death when he might face a long and lingering one? Besides, Merrilee was at the study door when you came downstairs.”

Heads swiveled back to Merrilee, cowering against the now-silent TV.

“Merrilee, the disaffected stepdaughter,” said Hoffe. “Motive, means, opportunity. Even had a key to get in here.” He grinned. “But the door was bolted on the inside, her key couldn’t do her any good. It’s just like she said. How’d she put it’ ‘Or none of us?’ Yeah. Or none of us.”

“But... but there wasn’t anyone else,” Norliss said.

“Sure, there was,” Hoffe told him. “Stalker blew himself away.”

But you knew I was the killer all the time, didn’t you? Because I was the only person who could have done it, from the moment I shot the bolt on that door. I warned you that no one could be eliminated as a suspect.

Who was I talking to just before I died? Why, to my own image in the mirror on the back of the door, of course. I even saw myself and the room reversed, if you will remember — pen in my left hand, inkwell on the left corner of the blotter, the picture and the safe door open to the right-hand side, the French doors to the left of the safe.

Hoffe, in repeating the scene after they broke in, listed each item in its proper place. The gun was ten feet from the desk — where my involuntary death spasm threw it. That spasm knocked over the inkwell. There were powder bums because I put the muzzle against my chest before I pulled the trigger.

Yes, I committed the perfect crime.

“Almost,” said Hoffe. He was holding the sheet of paper on which Stalker had been writing just before his death. On the opened envelope was written: To be opened one year after my death. “Lucky I don’t believe in dying wishes,” he added.

Then he read aloud from the letter:

“ ‘To whom it may concern: When this is read, I will be dead a year — by my own hand. Last week I was told I might have cancer, and yesterday confirmed the diagnosis with a specialist. Inoperable. Since I do not wish to be reduced to ridicule by pain and fear, I am ending it now, arranging it so that one of my so-called friends will be convicted of my murder. A conviction each of them more richly deserves than I do this death sentence passed upon me by nature.’

“That’s a matter of opinion,” said Hoffe.

There was the snap of a cigarette lighter. Stalker’s note started to bum. Each person already had his own videotape.

Damn! I should have foreseen that none of them would honor the last wishes of a poor, dying, betrayed man.

It was one of the Victorian novelists, I believe, who said that when you go into an attorney’s office, you will have to pay for it, first or last.

What I have realized only too late, alas, is that this holds tree even if you’re the attorney.