Page 145 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Soaked to the Bone

Fern: No.
Labelle: Can you establish your whereabouts between four and
eight p.m. yesterday?
Alma: [Incomprehensible phrase: to me, at least—but now I could see
her, and she was keeping her face averted from Labelle and Fern]
Labelle: Ms. Grotteau?
Fern: Yes, I believe I can produce witnesses, receipts, whatever
you want. I resent the fact that you are demanding an
alibi of me.
Labelle: These are the facts in the case, Ms. Grotteau. You may
decide if cooperation is in your best interest. At 5:30
p.m. yesterday, G. Felton Fish was alone on these
premises, sitting in his hot tub, considerably inebriated.
Someone familiar with his habits and the household
routine entered the house no later than six o’clock. As
signs of forced entry are absent, that unannounced
visitor had to have a key and the know-how to disarm
the alarm system. Mr. Fish did not struggle with his
assailant. In fact, I would guess he was not surprised by
that presence: it was someone he knew well and trusted.
That may be surmised from the means by which murder
was made to appear accidental: alcohol in large
quantities. I would further propose that the visitor
poured a gallon of cheap vodka into the hot tub in the
guise of adding more hot water or while providing Fish
some other service—a massage, for example. [A gasp,
from which woman I could not tell] Unaware of the danger, he
did not react. The fumes overcame him and he passed
out. At that point it became a simple matter of gently
pushing his head and shoulders under water until he
drowned. The assailant assumed any traces of spirits
remaining the next morning would be attributed to Fish’s
well-known consumption of whisky in the hot tub. But
using up that much of Fish’s Jack Daniels might have
been noticed by any visitor who had seen the liquor
cabinet earlier in the day; so a cheap high-proof liquid
was brought in from the outside by the killer, purchased
no doubt at a convenience store many miles from here.

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