Free But He Was Already Dead When I Got There by Barbara Paul Page A

to wake the dead; Lionel jumped a foot and Godfrey scooted to safety. Lionel’s mouth had turned dry; someone must have heard that godawful noise. He looked around the room hastily, thinking there was something else that needed to be done. But the cat’s cry had disconcerted him; he couldn’t concentrate. When he felt he couldn’t safely linger any longer, he switched off the lights and opened the library door a crack.
    And heard someone coming down the hall stairway.
    Lionel quickly shut the door again, and—because he couldn’t think in the dark—switched the lights back on. A small black-white-orange face watched him anxiously from under the sofa. There was only one other way out of the library. Lionel raced across the room—jumping over Uncle Vincent—and pushed open the double doors.
    The first thing he saw on the terrace was the wrought-iron table shoved up against the wall. He leaped up on the table and vaulted to the top of the wall—no mean feat for a man so unathletically disposed as Lionel Knox. He dropped down on the other side of the wall, twisting an ankle as he fell.
    The first light of dawn was beginning to show as Lionel got up and limped painfully away.
    Gretchen Knox was walking down the hallway from the bathroom when she heard the scream. She’d only just removed her earplugs after several hours of blissful silence, and the sudden noise unnerved her.
    The cat , she thought, it must be the cat . But the scream had had an almost human sound to it; and even if it were Godfrey Daniel, why would he let out a yowl like that unless something had happened to him?
    Gretchen knew she wouldn’t get back to sleep without finding out; it was almost morning anyway. She went down the stairs, calling the cat. A faint answering meow sounded from the library.
    She opened the library door, and a black, white, and orange blur streaked out past her. But Gretchen didn’t notice; she stood transfixed by the sight of the dead body lying in the middle of the floor. What on earth? She came out of her shock and hurried over to the corpse; one touch was all she needed to tell her he was thoroughly dead. “Oh, damn it, Uncle Vincent!” she said crossly.
    Her first instinct was to go back and shut the library door. “Now why did I do that?” she murmured. To give herself time to think, obviously. She picked up one of the sofa cushions from the floor, put it on the sofa, and sat down. For the first time she took in fully the utter mess the room was in. She sat there scowling, trying to figure out what it all meant.
    She looked over the room carefully, foot by foot. Gradually the scowl lines began to disappear from her face. Then she was almost smiling. Then she was smiling. She jumped up and started gathering the papers up from the floor, thrusting them any which way into the file folders. When she had all the papers collected, she put the folders back into the file cabinet.
    Next she replaced the other sofa cushions. She closed the double doors leading to the terrace, being careful of the broken glass. Then she put the desk drawers back, filling each one with the pens and paper clips and other paraphernalia that had been dumped on the floor. That done, she stood in the middle of the room and examined it again—and noticed a few things missing. She ran out of the room and came back a few minutes later carrying an ivory owl, a Donovan ironstone vase, an eighteenth-century music box, a small silver luster jug, and a brown and white sardonyx ashtray. These items she placed at appropriate places around the room.
    Once again she surveyed the room. At last she gave a satisfied little nod and left the library, turning out the lights and closing the door behind her. She started up the stairs and then changed her mind and used Uncle Vincent’s elevator instead. She’d just reached her own door on the second floor when the alarm clock went off in Mrs. Polk’s room