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.