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.”