At that moment a man entered through the wide door to the executive-office area, and we all turned our attention to him. He was short and stocky and wearing a gray suit, the vest of which was buttoned over a blue shirt and old-school-stripe tie. “Sorry to keep you waiting so long,” he said, “but there was some routine that had to be gone through first.” He glanced at Lillian still sobbing on the couch, and then looked over at me. “You’d be Matthew Booth, is that right?”
“Yes,” I said. “And you?”
“Lieutenant Garrett. Homicide.”
“Was Victor Schneider’s death accidental?” I asked him.
“Not likely. Medical examiner says he was struck in the throat by a blunt object about the size of a thumb, which pierced the skin and the thyroid cartilage, crushing said cartilage and closing the trachea. In plain English, he choked to death because he could no longer breathe. Nasty way to die.”
Lillian had raised her head to listen, but now she made a keening sound — one of horror and grief — and lowered her face into her hands again. I thought of saying something to Garrett about his insensitivity, but then I realized he knew exactly what he was doing. He’d been watching Lillian and the rest of us closely as he talked.
“Perhaps it wasn’t murder at all,” a voice suggested, and I looked over to see Ardis had entered the room; I’d been wondering where she was. “Perhaps the poor man tripped and fell against that thumb-sized something you mentioned.”
“I’m afraid not, Miss,” Garrett said. “Any such object would have traces of blood, and there are none.”
“Then you didn’t find the weapon either?” I asked.
“Not yet. But it’ll turn up eventually.”
“If Schneider was murdered, who could have done it?”
“We don’t make guesses,” Garrett said, which meant he didn’t have any idea who had done it. “Everyone in this room, it seems, has no concrete alibi for the time of death — except perhaps you, Mr. Booth. Anyone here could be guilty. Or none of you, for that matter. Although, as far as we can tell right now, no one else could have gotten into the store. And you few could play hide-and-seek for hours in this huge empty place.”
“What about motive?” Ardis asked.
“After we talk to everyone here, maybe we’ll know more along that line.” Another noncommittal answer. “Our first thought, of course, was robbery, since the murder took place in the Stamp Room with the Lorde’s Collection. But the collection appears to be intact; Mr. McCarthy is checking it now.” He frowned. “We don’t even know — yet — how the killer got into or out of the Stamp Room. The only key is still on Schneider’s key ring; and the windows are barred with half-inch steel that hasn’t been touched in thirty years.”
So there it was: what appeared to be a locked-room murder. I thought of Steele downstairs in his glass-topped coffin (the murder would spell the end of his two-week planned illusion; Lorde’s now had all the publicity it could handle, whether negative or positive). But Steele wouldn’t be too upset, I knew. Puzzles fascinated him; the more bizarre a puzzle was, the better he liked it. The man thrived on challenges, as I’d told Lillian earlier. Consequently life was never dull around Christopher Steele — but this was the first time I knew of a murder being part of the amalgam.
“I’d better go look at Christopher,” Ardis said. “He must be curious to find out what’s going on outside his little glassed-in world.”
“You’ll have to do it from inside, Miss,” Garrett said. “The uniformed officers at the door have orders not to let anyone out.”
“Really!” Mrs. Lorde said. “You don’t think any of us are going to run away?”
“It’s not that,” Garrett explained. “We may want to search each of you before you leave.”
“Looking for what?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“I’ll stay inside,” Ardis assured the lieutenant, and headed off toward the escalator.
“Why,” Garrett asked, “does she want to look at him?”
“I think she wants him to look at her,” I explained. “They have a sign language they use for a mind-reading act. You see—”
“Incredible! Absolutely incredible!”
We turned around. A small, gray man had appeared at the door and was waving a magnifying glass about. “Incredible! Who would have thought such? Impossible! Not even gummed!”
We all stared at each other while the lieutenant strode over to the little man. “Calm yourself, Mr. McCarthy. What is it?”
McCarthy thrust something tiny into Garrett’s face. “Here,” he said. “Look at this!”
“It’s a stamp?” Lieutenant Garrett asked.
“It is not! When you asked me to go through the stamps I said to myself this is a waste of time, a complete waste of time...”
“You said it to us too, Mr. McCarthy.”
“I was mistaken. It’s incredible. This is the Hayes Two-and-a-Half-Cent Vermilion. But it isn’t. It’s an imitation. And not even gummed! Looking at it through the glass, even an expert might have missed it. Incredible!”
“What’s the real stamp worth?” Garrett asked the old man.
“Priceless,” McCarthy said. “Whatever someone will pay for it. It’s one-of-a-kind.”
“Well, what’s it insured for?”
“I believe two hundred thousand dollars. But you understand its intrinsic value could be much higher, depending upon just how badly someone else wanted the stamp.”
“It looks like someone wanted it pretty badly,” Garrett said. “Let’s get that magician up here.”
“You don’t think—” I started.
Garrett looked at me. “What don’t I think?”
“Christopher Steele couldn’t have anything to do with this,” I said. “He’s been locked in a coffin in plain view of a crowd of people since ten o’clock.”
“That may be,” Garrett said, “but he’s the only one who was in the store at the time of the murder who isn’t here now, so we might as well have him. Maybe he can give us a little insight into locked rooms — professionally, that is.”
“I’d be delighted, Lieutenant,” Steele’s deep stage voice said behind us. We turned and saw him standing in the doorway with Ardis.
“Where the hell did you come from?” Garrett demanded.
“Ardis told me what was happening. I had her break the wax seal around the lid and let me out.”
“It was all news to you, was it?”
Steele smiled faintly. “I’ve been sealed inside that coffin for the past three hours, Lieutenant. I did see the arrival of the police vehicles, of course, but I had no idea what had happened.”
“I’d like to have a close look at that coffin of yours,” Garrett said. “Unless you have objections?”
“Certainly not.” Steele’s eyes began to gleam. “Did I understand you to say you’d like me to examine the locked room where the murder took place?”
Garrett thought about it. “That might be an idea,” he said. “You ever use a locked-room gimmick in your act?”
“Various effects that could be applied to a seemingly locked room,” Steele said. “But remember, there is no such thing as a ‘locked room’ in the sense we’re using the term. People cannot walk through walls.”
I suppressed a chuckle, and Steele glared at me. One of his best effects is to have masons come on stage and build a brick wall in full view of the audience. Then Steele proceeds to pass through it. Houdini invented that one.
Steele shifted his gaze back to the lieutenant. “Can I see that room now?”
“All right. It can’t hurt anything. In fact, why don’t we all adjourn to the Stamp Room. The lab crew’s gone by now.”