He looked across at her, down at her.
“I guess I just wanted to talk to you,” he said.
“Why do you say you’re mixed up?” she asked. “What do you mean by that?”
“That’s a long one,” he said. “You don’t want to hear about that. My father’d say it—” He stopped. “I’ll go along,” he said. “You get back to your flowers.”
“No,” she said. “What would your father say it was?”
“Combat fatigue, I guess,” he said. “He’s a doctor. A psychiatrist. They put names to the different ways people get mixed up, you know.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Mr. Gates,” Liz Monroe said. “I don’t think you killed anybody.”
“Oh yes,” he said. “I’ve killed people. I was going to be a doctor, but instead I went out and killed people. But not your sister.”
She waited, since he did not seem to have finished.
“You see,” he said, “if you pulled a blank, you wouldn’t know it, would you? That’s the whole point, isn’t it? You’d think you remembered everything, but really—” He ended by shaking his head. The muscle began to jump again. He was, she thought, very tired. For all the readiness which something—she supposed being in a war—had laid over his face, he was very young.
“Look,” she said, “have you had any breakfast?”
“What?” he said, and seemed for a moment not to understand her. “Oh—no. I’d better go get something.”
“I’ll get you something,” she said. “Come on, Mr. Gates. You’ll know I’m not afraid of you.”
He hesitated a moment. Then, lightly, he lifted himself to sit on the wall, swung his legs over it.
“Watch the peonies,” she said, and he pushed powerfully with his hands against the wall, and was over the perennial border, and beside her. He was very strong, she thought. He had powerful springs in his arms.
Inside, she left him in the library and went to the kitchen to find Mrs. Swanson. Mrs. Swanson was not there and, finding her not there, Liz remembered that always on Thursdays the Swansons went marketing, in the station wagon, for the week end and the freezer. (“You can’t tell what they’ll send you when you use the telephone. And you don’t know what they’ve got, miss.”)
So Liz Monroe herself got breakfast for the tall young man waiting in the library. She had to open a new can of coffee, and the ribbon of metal broke as it wound around the key. It took a little time to find a pair of pliers to pull the ribbon around the can. It all took a little time. She had been twenty minutes at it when she took a tray back into the library, with two cups for coffee, and a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon. He was sitting where she had left him, and rose when she came in, and thanked her and, when coffee was poured for both of them, ate like a hungry man.
The second cups of coffee they drank slowly, and it seemed to her that he changed, relaxed. The muscle no longer twitched under his eye. He put down the empty coffee cup, and wanted no more.
“I don’t know what gets into me sometimes, Miss Monroe,” he said. “I shouldn’t have barged in like this. Bothered you this way. I got keyed up, somehow, walking around and then I saw you there and—and needed to talk, I guess.” He smiled, then, for the first time. “A guy gets lonely,” he said. “I’m all right, now.”
“Everybody gets that way,” she said. “I do, anyway. Why do you say you’re mixed up? I mean, you’re worried now, and upset, of course. But you spoke as if there was more than that. ‘Combat fatigue,’ you said.”
He said again she did not want to hear it, but could be, and was, convinced she did. He told it more calmly than he had told it to Heimrich, seemed to be gaining confidence. But then a maid came to say that Captain Heimrich was there, and that there was another policeman with him, and that they wanted to see Miss Monroe.
Heimrich and Forniss came in before they were quite formally invited, and the two tall young people stood side by side, facing the door they came through. They made a striking couple, Heimrich thought, and did not show surprise at seeing them together.
“Mr. Gates came to say how sorry he is about Virginia,” Liz Monroe said.
Heimrich looked at the two and nodded. He said that that was very thoughtful of Mr. Gates. “I’ll get out of the way,” Gates said, but to that Heimrich shook his head. He said, “Now Mr. Gates. That isn’t necessary.” Then, to both of them, he said, “We’ve found the car. Your car, Miss Monroe. The one you call ‘Miggy’!” They waited.
“We may as well sit down,” Heimrich told them. They sat down. “The car was in the reservoir. It was pointed downhill and given a push.”
“There wasn’t—” Liz said, and paused.
“No, Miss Monroe,” Heimrich said, “there wasn’t anybody in it. We’re still dragging, naturally. Somebody might have been in the car and been thrown out. But I don’t think we’ll find anybody, Miss Monroe. Or—anything more than we’ve found.”
“Then the car wasn’t used to get away in,” Gates said. “Then—” He ended with a shrug.
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “Somebody disposed of the MG and—walked home. It does look that way, naturally.”
“That’s what you thought all along, isn’t it?” Liz Monroe said. “That it wasn’t the way it looked?”
Heimrich closed his eyes. He nodded. After a moment, he said he would have to ask Miss Monroe to do something, something not pleasant.
“We found some clothing in the car,” he said. “Probably your sister’s, Miss Monroe. I’ll have to ask you to see if you can identify it.”
Liz Monroe nodded. Heimrich had not opened his eyes, yet it seemed that he was somehow aware of her gesture. He said, “Show Miss Monroe, will you, Sergeant?”
The white silk dress hung, still wet, shapeless, from Forniss’s big hands. Heimrich opened his eyes, then.
“I don’t know,” Liz said. “There are so many dresses like that. I have one rather like it. But yes, Virginia had one.”
She was told to look at it closely. She took it from Forniss, held it out, then looked at the label, seemed not to see the stains.
“I think it was hers,” Liz said. “She bought things there.” She looked again at the dress. “It’s torn,” she said.
“Now Miss Monroe,” Heimrich said. “Cut, isn’t it? Rather than torn?”
She looked more carefully. She said, “Yes.” Then the dress fell from her hands. Her eyes widened. “Then—” she said.
“Yes,” Heimrich told her. “She was wearing it when she was killed, I think. Show her the other things, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Forniss held out the net brassière, the elastic girdle. These Liz Monroe did not touch.
“The knife cut the brassière, too,” Heimrich said. “You see where, Miss Monroe? You see what it means, naturally?”
“She was wearing them when she was killed,” Liz said again.
“When she was stabbed first,” Heimrich said. “At least, it looks like that, doesn’t it? You see where the wound would have been?”
“I see,” Liz said.
“It was afterward that her clothes were taken off,” Heimrich said. “The—other things done. To make it look like a different sort of crime, naturally.”
“You don’t know this,” Gates said. “You’re guessing.”
“Now Mr. Gates,” Heimrich said. “I’m guessing, of course. I didn’t see this happen. I think it did. I think the clothes were taken away, put in the car, because they contradicted the theory we were supposed to accept.”
“You found them quickly enough,” Gates said.
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “I realize that, naturally. Perhaps we were underestimated, Mr. Gates. That happens, you know. That happens rather often, actually. We count on that, of course.”
“Whoever did it was stupid,” Gates said.
Heimrich closed his eyes, then.
“It does look like that,” he said. “Or hurried, naturally. He would have been.”
“You found the car without any trouble,�
� Liz Monroe said, and got, “Now Miss Monroe. Now Miss Monroe.”
“We looked for some time, actually,” Heimrich said. “For a likely place—for a place the guard rail was down, for one thing. The sergeant and several others looked. From the time it got light this morning. Not without trouble, Miss Monroe.”
“Without much,” she said.
Heimrich accepted that.
“Where was it?” Liz asked, and he told her, as one gives directions—beyond a fork, on a road called Nob Pass. She nodded.
“There’s a guard rail where the road comes closest to the reservoir,” Heimrich said. “You remember that?”
She nodded.
“But,” Heimrich said, “a section of the rail was knocked down this spring. A truck skidded into it, almost went over but not quite. You may have noticed that, driving around?”
“I don’t think I remember it,” she said.
“No,” Heimrich said. “Well, somebody did. We found wheel tracks there, where the ground is soft, leading toward the water. So a man dived.”
“And there it was,” Gates said.
“Yes,” Heimrich agreed. “There it was. Not on the road, somewhere, as you suggested, Mr. Gates. With a psychopathic murderer in it. But quite well hidden, naturally. It’s a small car.” He turned to Liz. “I’m afraid the car’s rather badly damaged,” he told her.
She made a quick gesture, an impatient gesture.
“Why don’t you come out with it?” she asked him.
“Out with it?” Heimrich repeated. “Now Miss Monroe. Do I need to? I think your sister was killed quite deliberately, Miss Monroe. Not because she was merely, as you said yesterday, any woman in the dark. Because she was Virginia Monroe. Because somebody hated her. Because she was in somebody’s way.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “For one of the usual reasons,” he said. “Fear. Hatred. Greed.”
“It needn’t have been a man, then,” Liz Monroe said.
Heimrich’s eyes opened. They were very blue; they were not in the least weary.
“No,” he said. “That’s quite true, isn’t it? Anyone with a knife, who could get behind her. Anyone of whom she wasn’t afraid. A woman as easily as a man, naturally.”
“And the rest,” Liz said. “The—awful rest of it. To make it seem a man killed her?”
“That might be,” Heimrich said.
“You’ve been thinking that,” she said. “And that I’m quite strong, really? That perhaps I hated her? That she was somehow in my way?”
She stood up as she spoke. She stood very straight. And then Timothy Gates stood beside her. The cheek muscle jumped.
“Why don’t you leave her alone?” Gates asked, and his voice was harsh. “She’s had enough.”
“No,” the girl said. “That’s no good. Thanks, but it’s no good. Well, Captain?”
“Now Miss Monroe,” Heimrich said. “Now Miss Monroe.” He shook his head, closed his eyes. “Has your grandmother been told?” he asked. “I’d like to talk with her, if she has.”
“Answer me,” Liz said.
“No,” Heimrich told her. “I don’t know the answer. You’re not saying you killed your sister?” He watched her shake her head, heard her say, “No, I didn’t kill my sister.”
“Then I don’t know the answer,” he said. “Not yet. Has your grandmother been told?”
“No.”
“She’ll have to be, naturally.”
“When Paul says it’s all right.”
“Of course,” Heimrich said. “I realize that. I’ll speak to Dr. Crowell. I’ll speak to a good many people, probably. Now I’d like to see your sister’s room, Miss Monroe. And—”
He was interrupted. The library door opened almost violently. A plump little woman stood in it, her hands clenched, her face working.
“She’s dead, Liz,” the plump woman said. “She’s—dead. She just stood up and died!”
Chapter VI
Captain Heimrich had emptied pigeonholes and the desk drawer; he had amassed a considerable pile of paper. While waiting for Dr. Paul Crowell, Heimrich had begun to go through typed and printed, carefully written and hastily scrawled, notations on the life of Virginia Monroe. Such seeking as that to which Heimrich set himself was never pleasant, it was not too often productive, it was always necessary.
He had flicked through the desk calendar before Crowell came. There were many notations on the leaves which had been turned back into the past. At first glance they seemed to reveal nothing. Virginia Monroe had noted engagements; presumably she had kept them. She had, perhaps as she talked on the telephone, doodled on the day’s leaf, drawn small faces (not well), let a drifting pencil form meaningless agglomerations of squares and circles. For the evening of the day she died she had planned something at six-thirty—“G. 6:30.” They would want to identify “G,” whether place or person. On Wednesday, of the week to come, she had been going to have her hair done, or so Heimrich supposed—“Hair 2:30.” (There had been blood in her hair, as she lay in the ditch by the little lane.) The following day’s leaf held only numerals—“1000”—which for the moment were meaningless. (Which now, for all time, must be without meaning.) Life reached on, in hieroglyphics, after life had stopped.
Heimrich turned from the desk as the door opened. He had been wearing glasses, which he did when he read much. He took them off.
“You wanted to see me?” the man at the door said. “I’m Dr. Crowell.”
He was a tall man, dark-haired. He was a handsome man in a dark suit, dressed with the conventionality of his profession. He came into the room. He looked down at the pile of papers on the desk.
“You expect to find something there?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Doctor,” Heimrich said. “I have to look. Mrs. Saunders?”
“There was nothing I could do,” Dr. Crowell said. “She was dead when I got there. We had to expect it.” He moved his head slowly. “She was an old woman.” He paused for a moment. “And a very old friend,” he said. “A very wonderful person. You wanted to see me, Captain?”
“I have to see everyone who knew Miss Monroe,” Heimrich said. “As I have to go over this.” He indicated the papers. “Did you hear we found the car? And the clothing in it?”
Dr. Crowell nodded.
“Liz told me,” he said. “Also, of your theory, Captain. I must confess it surprises me.”
“Now Doctor,” Heimrich said. “Why does it surprise you? Doesn’t it conform with what you found?”
“Found?” Dr. Crowell repeated. “Oh—I didn’t do the autopsy.” His face set, muscles tightening under the skin. “Thank God,” he added.
“I realize that,” Heimrich said. “You saw the body.”
Heimrich was told he had his own man. A good man.
“Now Doctor,” Heimrich said. “I realize that, naturally. But you say my theory—I suppose you mean that the body was mutilated to throw us off the track?—surprises you. As a physician? Or for some other reason?”
“It’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to kill Virginia,” Dr. Crowell said. “She was a lovely girl.”
“As a doctor,” Heimrich said. “Are there medical reasons why the mutilation shouldn’t have followed the first thrust? The wound which killed her?”
Dr. Crowell shook his head.
“I didn’t examine,” he said. “I merely—looked at her. I assumed, of course, that she was alive when—when the other things were done.” He seemed to find it difficult to speak of. “At the start, at any rate,” he added. “But since the first wound reached the heart—”
“Now Doctor,” Heimrich said, “people have lived with heart wounds. For a little time.”
“Not often,” Crowell said. “And not long.”
“It needn’t have been long,” Heimrich said.
“Your man can tell you,” Crowell said. “Is that all you wanted of me?”
“Now Doctor,” Heimrich said. “I want whatever you can tell me. Any suspicions, even.”
“I have none,” Crowell said. “I find it almost unbelievable that she should have been murdered by intention.”
“You knew her well, Doctor?”
Crowell sat down, rather suddenly.
“I knew her from the time she was a child, Captain,” he said. “A pretty, laughing child. I was just starting practice then, taking over from my father. He had been the Saunders family physician.” He paused. “We’ve been the doctors here for three generations,” he said. There was pride in his voice. “The girls came to live here after their parents died. You knew that?”
“Yes,” Heimrich said.
“Liz wasn’t much more than a baby,” Crowell said. “Virginia was—oh, three or four years older. By the time they began to have the things kids have, my father retired and I took care of them. Yes, I knew them all very well, Captain.”
“And you know of nothing in the past—the immediate past particularly—which might help us?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“She was going to marry Mr. Kirkwood, I understand,” Heimrich said.
“I don’t—” Crowell began, and then stopped. “Yes, I believe she was,” he said. “At least—” He stopped again. Heimrich waited. “Howard can tell you about that,” Crowell said. “What’s it got to do with this?”
“I don’t know,” Heimrich said. “Probably nothing, naturally. By the way, Doctor, are you married?”
Crowell, who had been looking at his own hands, looked up quickly. Heimrich’s eyes were closed.
“I don’t see what you’re getting at,” Crowell said. “However, I was married. My wife died a year and a half ago.”
“Mine’s an odd sort of job, Doctor,” Heimrich said, without opening his eyes. “I try to get the whole picture, the background of the whole picture. Most of what I get is extraneous, naturally. Like your marital state, Doctor.” He smiled briefly, still with his eyes closed. “Like the cause of Mrs. Saunders’s death.”
“Old age,” Crowell said. “Specifically, high blood pressure. She’d had hypertension for more than a year. The chance of a thrombosis was always high. Her condition always precarious.”
Stand Up and Die Page 7
