Stand Up and Die

by Frances Lockridge

“Now Miss Monroe,” Heimrich said. “I do understand what you’re getting at.”

  “All right,” she said. “They kept their world. I’ve had to live in it. Well, partly live in it.” Momentarily she closed her own eyes. “Of course,” she said, “I could have ridden in the front seat with old Henry. That would have been all right. And of course, Guy’s having red hair was bad. That was a thing, really.”

  She seemed, momentarily, to lose herself in her own thoughts. Heimrich waited. Then he said, “Now Miss Monroe. There was more than that, naturally.”

  She nodded; only after several seconds went on.

  “One night he kissed me,” she said. “I’d been out some place in Miggy—just driving around, maybe. Virginia was home and sometimes when she was I just—well, just got away. It was a fine night. It was silly what a fine night it was. Guy was sitting out in front of the garage smoking a cigarette and got up and said something about he’d put Miggy away. I started to get out and caught my heel or something and lost my balance a little and he caught me. And then he kissed me.” She looked up. “It scared him almost to death,” she said. “He was a sweet sort of boy. Not very bright, really. But sweet.”

  She looked at Heimrich, who said nothing.

  “That was all,” she said. “Not a very good kiss, really. Not by the best Westchester standards, Captain. The light was on in front of the garage. He was flustered, and started to talk about it, and I told him it was all right, that it was fine, and went on into the house. Virginia’s room’s on that side of the house—was on that side of the house.”

  “Now listen, Liz,” Howard Kirkwood said. “Vee wouldn’t—”

  “Wouldn’t she, Howdy?” Liz said. “You think she wouldn’t? You didn’t know my sister very well, did you, Howdy? My sweet sister? My on top of the world sister?”

  She turned from Kirkwood, back to Heimrich.

  “I don’t know what she told grandmother,” Liz said. “Plenty, probably. That I was sleeping with the hired help, probably. That I wasn’t bright enough to take care of myself. That next it would be the man who collects refuse—they don’t collect garbage in East Belford, you know. Just refuse. That because I was going to have a lot of money, and was weak minded, and had round heels and—” She made the gesture again. “The hell with it, Captain,” she said.

  “Why would she do that?” Heimrich said.

  “Why?” Liz repeated. “Because it was fun and games. Because she enjoyed it. So I’d know who was boss.” She shrugged. “So grandmother wouldn’t get too fond of me, because everybody was supposed to be fonder of her than of anybody else. Because—what difference does it make? I’ve said enough, haven’t I?”

  “Too much,” Kirkwood said. “A lot too much.” He turned to Heimrich. “Vee wasn’t like that,” he said. “I don’t know what’s got into Liz. Why she says these things.”

  Liz’s square, expressive shoulders rose slightly and fell again. She spread her hands, in a gesture which abandoned the use of all of it, of any of it.

  “Why?” he demanded of Liz Monroe.

  “It’s true,” she said. “It doesn’t matter, Howdy. She was a wonderful girl. She was a saint. I’m a toy balloon that pops.”

  Heimrich closed his eyes. He listened.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kirkwood said, and Liz said, softly, “Oh, Howdy. Howdy.”

  “She loved you,” Kirkwood said. “She would have done anything for you.”

  “Oh yes,” Liz said. “Anything. Anything at all. Because I needed to be taken care of, didn’t I? Because sometimes she was really worried about me, wasn’t she? Because she sometimes felt almost as if she were my mother, didn’t she, Howdy? Because in some ways dear Liz is so young—so dreadfully young.”

  “All she wanted—” Howard Kirkwood began.

  “What was best for me,” Liz said. “I know. Don’t I know. When did she tell you about Guy, Howdy? After grandmother dismissed him?”

  “She—” Kirkwood said. This time he stopped of his own accord.

  “It would have been interesting to hear her,” Liz said. “She was always so good at hinting, wasn’t she? So easy to believe, too. You know, Howdy, sometimes I almost believed her myself? Isn’t that funny? What chance did poor grandmother have? Or you, Howdy? Such a lovely, sly mind she had. What chance did anybody have?”

  Kirkwood moved. Heimrich opened his eyes. Kirkwood had started out of his chair, he subsided into it.

  “You could wring my neck, couldn’t you?” Liz said to him, polite interest in her tone.

  “Sometimes I—” Kirkwood said, and gave that up. “You don’t believe this, do you?” he said then, and said it to Heimrich. “Liz doesn’t know what she’s saying. It’s—it’s the shock, or something. Vee wasn’t at all like that.”

  Liz Monroe stood up suddenly.

  “My sister,” she said, “was a completely malicious person. I don’t know what made her that way. I don’t know what she got out of it. She liked to dominate and she liked to hurt. I was handy.” She paused for a moment. “Is it all right if I go now, Captain?” she asked. “I’m bare enough, don’t you think?”

  “Now Miss Monroe,” Heimrich said. “Go if you like, of course.”

  She crossed the room. At the door she stopped and turned. She looked at Howard Kirkwood.

  “She did me one good turn, anyway,” Liz said. “Didn’t she, Howdy? That was a joke on her, wasn’t it?”

  She went down the stairs, then.

  Kirkwood had risen. He looked after Liz Monroe, shaking his head. He turned to Heimrich.

  “I don’t know what’s come over her,” he said.

  “She’s under strain, of course,” Heimrich said. He stood up. He said, “Well,” and started toward the door at the head of the stairs. He stopped.

  “By the way,” he said, “did Virginia Monroe tell you this story, Mr. Kirkwood? About her sister and the chauffeur?”

  Kirkwood hesitated a moment. Then, a little reluctantly, he nodded.

  “She did say something about it,” he said. “Asked my advice, in a way.”

  Heimrich nodded.

  “Since you and she were planning to get married,” he said, “it’s quite natural she’d speak to you, of course.”

  But he waited.

  “Well,” Kirkwood said, “we weren’t actually engaged then. It was a few months later that we—made up our minds. I suppose she told me because—well, because I was her grandmother’s attorney.”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said. “Well, thank you, Mr. Kirkwood.”

  “I’ll be seeing you again, probably,” Kirkwood said, and got, “Oh yes, I should think so, naturally.”

  Heimrich went down the stairs, his feet heavy on the treads.

  Chapter VIII

  Heimrich bought cigarettes at the Rexall store. He went into a telephone booth and dialed and listened to Sergeant Forniss. The autopsy was to be performed that evening, which demonstrated efficiently quick work. Forniss had found one or two things in Virginia Monroe’s papers he thought the captain might like to see, since their meaning was not at once apparent. And Dr. Paul Crowell had telephoned. He would like to talk to Captain Heimrich. Heimrich went out of the booth, consulted the telephone book, went back into it and telephoned the office of Dr. Paul Crowell.

  Dr. Crowell had been trying to get in touch with Captain Heimrich. Dr. Crowell’s office hours, which were from noon until two, were just ending. Perhaps Captain Heimrich would not mind dropping by? Or, if the captain would rather—

  Heimrich would drop by. He thought of a sandwich at the soda counter, and decided against it. When it was possible, Heimrich preferred lunch. He walked Main Street again, and realized that, as he walked, people looked at him with attention; knew that after he had passed, people speculated with one another as to what he was up to, where he was getting. In half an hour, half the village would know that he had turned in at the house—the big, white house—which was Dr. Paul Crowell’s residence and of
fice.

  The office was in the rear, a sign informed Heimrich. He followed the path. “Doctor Is In,” a sign on a door told him. Heimrich went in. A bell rang gently. He sat in a small, square waiting room, alone, not particularly comfortable. There were doors in two walls of the waiting room. Behind one door, apparently, there was a kitchen. There was movement there, and the sound of pans. Heimrich decided that Dr. Crowell’s lunch was in preparation. There was no sound from behind the other door at first; then Heimrich heard a murmur of male voices, but could not distinguish words, and did not try to.

  He looked at the magazines provided to divert waiting patients from the tedium, mixed with uneasiness, of a physician’s waiting room. Heimrich doubted whether these particular magazines would. Time was all very well in its way, but not Time two months fugit. Heimrich picked up a copy of Today’s Health, dipped into an article on peptic ulcer, read of symptoms and, almost at once, developed them. He put Today’s Health back, assuring himself that his only need was of food. He considered the April issue of Cosmopolitan and shook his head. He picked up and put down again a copy of a magazine called The Lancet, which also dealt with symptoms.

  The murmur of voices grew louder and appeared to approach. But then there was the sound of another door opening, of a man saying, “No, I wouldn’t expect any reaction,” of a door’s closing, of someone walking on a board floor. Heimrich looked toward the last sound and looked, through a window, to a porch. A tall young man, wearing a sports jacket over a blue shirt, walked in front of the window, went down the porch steps. He had a pleasant face. He had noticeably red hair. He was out of sight.

  The door into the office opened and Dr. Paul Crowell appeared in it. He wore a dark suit, a white shirt and a stethoscope. He looked at Heimrich and said, “Oh, good, Captain. Won’t you come on in?”

  Heimrich stood up. He waited while Dr. Crowell, after a glance at his watch, went to the outer door of the waiting room, turned over the sign which said “Doctor Is In,” and locked the door. “Come in all afternoon if I don’t,” he said, and recrossed the room. He picked up the copy of The Lancet and shook his head. “Wondered where that had got to,” he Said. “The maid sees a magazine—any magazine at all—and puts it here.” He led the way through the door by which he had entered, carrying the magazine. He led the way along a narrow corridor, with a bathroom on the right, into a larger room—a room with an examining table, with scales, with a desk. He put the magazine, with precision, on top of a neat stack of magazines in a rack, sat in a chair behind the desk and motioned Heimrich to a chair beside it.

  “Well,” he said, “how are you coming? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

  “The autopsy is this evening,” Heimrich said. “About eight. At the hospital.”

  “I know,” Crowell said. “The sergeant told me. You want me there?”

  “We’d appreciate it,” Heimrich told him. “As an observer, naturally.”

  “Very well,” Dr. Crowell said. “You’ll find death from natural causes. Her blood pressure killed her. But I suppose you feel you have to check.”

  “Now Doctor,” Heimrich said. “We were over that, weren’t we? The patient—I suppose he was a patient?—who just went out. Is his first name Guy?”

  “Guy Ober,” Crowell said. “Why do you—oh.” He looked at Heimrich and nodded a distinguished head. “You do pick things up, don’t you?”

  Apparently he had this time, Heimrich thought. He did not say so. He said, “He was Mrs. Saunders’s chauffeur for a while?”

  “That’s the man,” Crowell said. “Year ago last summer, I think it was. She let him go—scratched the sacred Packard, or something. He’s working—well, he was working—in a garage up on the Golden’s Bridge road. Dropped in for a tetanus booster.”

  Crowell was loquacious; he was unexpectedly loquacious.

  “Nice kid,” Crowell said. “Good with cars, they tell me.”

  “You say he was working at this garage?” Heimrich asked him. “Isn’t now?”

  “Got a better job, apparently,” Crowell said. “Over in New Canaan, I think it is.” He stopped; he looked intently at Heimrich. “You’re interested in him?” he asked.

  “Now Doctor,” Heimrich said. “Not particularly. You say Mrs. Saunders fired him because he scratched the car?”

  “Oh, I don’t actually know,” Dr. Crowell said. “I just supposed it was something like that. Maybe he drove too fast. Thirty, maybe. Poor Penina considered anything over twenty-five reckless.” He paused. “Maybe she was right,” he said. “This isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about, Captain.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “I hadn’t supposed so, naturally. What was it, Doctor?”

  Dr. Crowell, for a moment, played non-existent piano keys on his desk. The fingers he played with were strong, supple. Dr. Crowell seemed unconscious of his movement; he looked at his desk, and did not seem to see its polished top.

  “This is rather difficult,” Dr. Crowell said. “The trouble is—I wasn’t quite frank with you earlier. I’ve been thinking it over.” He shook his head, still without looking at Heimrich. “It’s extremely difficult,” he said. “Chiefly because it involves someone else.” He looked at Heimrich, then. It appeared he looked to him for help.

  “If you know something that will help us, Doctor, we’d like to be told,” Heimrich said.

  Crowell said he realized that. But he shook his head again. He said again that it was difficult. He said he hardly knew how to go about it.

  “You say, ‘that will help you,’” Dr. Crowell said. “That’s part of the difficulty. If I tell you it’ll look as if I thought it would help you. Actually, I don’t think that. On the other hand—” He seemed to have lost himself. He turned his sensitive hands palms up and looked at them, as if an answer were to be read there.

  “Now Doctor,” Heimrich said, “I’ll bear these things in mind, naturally. It’s nothing between you and a patient, I suppose?”

  Crowell shook his head decisively. He said that Heimrich ought to know better than that. If it had been that, there could be no question of telling anything.

  “Now Doctor,” Heimrich said. “I realize that. What is it, Doctor?”

  Crowell seemed to make a decision.

  “All right,” he said. “Here’s what it is. This morning you said something about an engagement between Virginia and Howard Kirkwood. I said I understood they were engaged. I suggested you talk to Howard about that. Remember?”

  “Oh yes,” Heimrich said. “You hesitated, you know.”

  “Did I?” Crowell said. “Yes, I suppose I did. I suppose I almost—well, told you the rest of it. I suppose I should have done that. But—” He shook his head. He shrugged, just perceptibly. Again he told Heimrich it was very difficult.

  “Go on, Doctor,” Heimrich said.

  “All right,” Crowell said. “They had been engaged. Virginia had—” He paused for a moment and then spoke with unnecessary rapidity. “Virginia had changed her mind,” he said. “She and I had talked it over and realized—well, that she didn’t feel about Kirkwood as she’d thought she had. That—this is extremely difficult.”

  Heimrich closed his eyes. He waited.

  “I’d been fond of Virginia for a long time,” Crowell said. “Not thought much about it. Then—I don’t know why, what caused it—suddenly I was in love with her. And a few weeks ago I found out she felt the same way. She was going to tell Howard that.” He stopped again. This time he waited so long that Heimrich opened his eyes. “She was going to tell him the night she was killed,” Crowell said. “That’s why she arranged to meet him at the movie. Afterward she—she was going to tell him. Of course, I don’t know whether she did or not.” He paused again, this time only momentarily. “He didn’t tell you this, did he?” he asked.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “But what made you think he hadn’t, Doctor?”

  “If he had, you’d have wanted to talk to me about it,” Crowell said. “Wouldn’t you?”

  �
�Probably,” Heimrich said. “Go on.”

  “I suppose she never did get to it,” Crowell said. “She said it would be a hard thing to do. It had—well, gone on a long time. Almost two years, you know. He felt strongly, I think—he must have to break off with—” He stopped again.

  “Go on,” Heimrich said.

  “I didn’t mean to put it that way,” Crowell said. “Howard and Liz had been seeing a good deal of each other two years ago. I thought they were pretty fond of each other. I was sure, anyway, that Liz was—well, in love with him. She was just a kid then, really, and didn’t hide things much. Thought she did, the way kids do, but—” He ended with a shrug.

  Heimrich waited.

  “I remember something she said, once,” Crowell said. “Margery—she was my wife, Captain—died that fall. It was just a little after Virginia and Howard had said they planned to get married. I was pretty hard hit when Margery died and everybody tried to—well, think of something to say, the way people do. Not that there was anything, of course. But I remember Liz’s saying something about knowing how I felt and then, because I suppose I showed that I thought she couldn’t, saying, ‘I do, you know. Oh, I do,’ and saying it so that I thought, ‘Why, she does. Knows something about it, anyway.’ Then I thought she was, really, talking about herself and Kirkwood.”

  Heimrich had closed his eyes. Crowell said he realized he was a long way from the point. He said he wandered.

  “Maybe Kirkwood wasn’t happy about it, either,” Crowell said. “Maybe, partly because of that, he’d pinned a lot on Virginia. She thought he had, anyway. I suppose when it came to the point of breaking off she temporized, avoided a—well, an emotional scene. People do, you know. Some people do. If she had broken it off, he’d have told you, wouldn’t he?”

  Heimrich opened his eyes, looked at Crowell for a second, closed them again. He said he didn’t know, naturally.

  “Of course,” Crowell said, “I suppose he might have thought—” He did not finish.

  “That it wasn’t the best time to have an emotional scene with Miss Monroe,” Heimrich said. “Perhaps a quarrel. You were thinking that, Doctor?”