16-Murder Can't Wait

by Lockridge, Richard

  “I don’t know,” Heimrich said. “I came to find out. She called you, I gather, when she couldn’t waken her husband?”

  “You gather wrong,” Patchen said. “I still don’t—all right, what do you want to know? Oh, come on in. She’s upstairs with—with Dr. Blaney now. And the ambulance men. There’s nothing much to tell. We were playing golf and—”

  They had left Angus Fleming on the terrace of the clubhouse. “Likes to go there. Sit and watch things.” He had seemed well, as seeming well went with him. He had urged Enid to play.

  “She worries about leaving him,” Patchen said. “About playing at all. You know he’s a sick man? And now this thing about his brother. But he was the one wouldn’t let her stop doing things. See what I mean?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “You went the full eighteen? Came back to the clubhouse? And?”

  Angus Fleming had not been there, the blond young man told Heimrich. Not on the terrace; not inside at the bar. But he had left a message at the bar—a message that he had decided to go home and rest, perhaps take a nap; that he had taken the car, but that he was sure she could get somebody to drive her home.

  “It wasn’t unusual,” Patchen said. “The poor guy tries to keep going, but sometimes—well, sometimes he can’t stick it out. And poor Enid worries a lot about him.”

  “She was worried today?”

  Patchen said, “Yes,” and seemed to think for a moment and then said, “More than usually. She—” Then he stopped again and seemed to think again.

  “She was upset,” he said. “I tried to make her see there was no reason she should be but— Well, she’d felt guilty all the time we were on the course. Kept saying things about it—that she shouldn’t have left Angus. That with things the way they were—with his brother dead—she was doing a wrong thing. And I tried to make her see that—well, that the forms didn’t matter. That I knew how she felt and that there wasn’t anything she could do. That it was better to try to walk it off. Oh—the things one says.”

  “She was fond of her brother-in-law?”

  The blond young man shrugged his shoulders. He said he supposed so, as one is fond—sometimes fond—of a relative by marriage. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t how Enid Fleming felt about Stuart Fleming.

  “Of course, it was an awful thing to happen to Stu,” he said. “To happen to anyone. She felt that. Everybody feels that. But it was a thing that had happened. A thing nobody could do anything about. Her husband was different. He—”

  He paused again.

  “She kept saying, ‘They were so close. I shouldn’t have left him alone with it.’ She meant Angus and his brother were close. I guess they were. I didn’t know Stu well at all; he’s been around only since last fall. I’ve known Angus for years, of course. But—well, it’s only a couple of years since I stopped calling him ‘Mr. Fleming.’ He’s a good deal older than I am.”

  For a man who had started antagonistically, this tall young golfer was turning loquacious, Heimrich thought. Loquacious and not too apparently relevant. But you let them talk when they want to talk. You do try to guide a little.

  “It’s quite understandable that Mrs. Fleming was upset today,” Heimrich said. “She asked you to drive her here?”

  She had. That was what he was telling Heimrich. She had asked him to hurry, and neither of them had taken time to change. They had driven fast.

  “Didn’t take more than five minutes,” Patchen said.

  She had called her husband’s name as soon as she went in the door. Called it twice and then run up the stairs, still calling out, “Angus! Are you all right, Angus?”

  “I waited down here,” Henry Patchen said, and gestured to show he meant the room they were sitting in. “Then I heard her moving around upstairs and—well, it sounded as if she was hurrying. Getting things. Know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said.

  “So I began to get worried,” Patchen said. “I hadn’t been before. Only sorry she was upset. You see—well, I’d just supposed he’d got tired sitting at the club. He gets tired pretty quickly, the poor guy. That he’d come home to take a nap. He does most afternoons, she says. But—”

  When he heard the hurried steps above him he had gone out into the hall, to the foot of the stairs. He had called, “Enid? Everything all right?” and when he had not been answered he had started up the stairs.

  But he had gone only a step or two up when Enid Fleming was at the top of the stairs, holding to the banister rail, leaning down toward him.

  “Only had to look once to know something had happened,” Patchen said. “Then she said, ‘I can’t wake him up. I can’t wake him up!’”

  Patchen had gone on up the stairs, into the room where Angus Fleming was sleeping.

  “Lying on his back,” Patchen said. “Wearing a pair of shorts. God, the poor guy’s thin. Year ago—” He shook his head; did not finish what he had started to say. “First I was afraid he was dead. Then I could see he was breathing, hear he was breathing. She kept calling him and I got cold water on a cloth and put it on his head. I thought maybe—I don’t know what I thought. That you throw water on somebody to bring him to.”

  After a few minutes of trying they had realized they were doing no good.

  “I said we’d better get help, and she phoned Doc Blaney and of course he was out making calls. The answering service girl said she’d try to get him, but didn’t know how soon. And—well, it looked to me as if he weren’t breathing as strongly as he had been, so—”

  So, he had made an emergency call to the state police, asking help. A trooper had come within minutes; an ambulance not much later.

  “They’re up there now,” he said. “Trying oxygen, I guess. Looked like some sort of emergency breathing gear. And the poor kid’s up there, blaming herself, and Doc Blaney’s showed finally and …”

  He shrugged his shoulders and opened his hands and looked at Heimrich. He said, “Well, that’s what happened. What I know about what happened. I still don’t know what it’s got to do with you.”

  “Now, Mr. Patchen,” Heimrich said. “Quite possibly nothing. We have to find out a lot of things that don’t matter. How long were you and Mrs. Fleming on the course, at a guess?”

  At a guess, a couple of hours.

  Heimrich checked through his mind. It had been fairly early afternoon when he himself had left Angus Fleming sitting on the club terrace, a glass in front of him. Then Patchen and Enid Fleming had only started their round—had been walking away for perhaps five minutes, out of sight for perhaps another five. Two hours or a little more would work out well enough.

  “Did the bartender—I suppose Mr. Fleming left his message with the bartender?—say when Mr. Fleming left?”

  “She asked him. He said, couple of hours, maybe. So probably he came here right after we teed off and—”

  There were footfalls on the staircase. Heimrich got up and walked to the door between the living room and the entrance hall. The youngish man with a black bag was coming down the stairs, and a state trooper was coming down behind him. Heimrich said, “Dr. Blaney?” and the doctor came on down and stopped and then, after looking at Heimrich, said, “Yes,” and waited.

  “Your patient?” Heimrich said, and Dr. Blaney said, “Who are you?” and Heimrich told the doctor who he was.

  “He slipped out of my hands,” Blaney said. “In other words, he’s dead, captain. Adrenalin, oxygen. No good.”

  “You expected he might die at any time?”

  “Yes. With the type he had—any time. Didn’t respond to what little we’ve got to use.”

  “You expected sudden death?”

  “Wasn’t sudden,” Dr. Blaney said. “He’s been dying for months. What are you getting at?”

  “Did he die of leukemia?”

  “Thought you were,” Dr. Blaney said. “That’s what’s indicated.”

  He had put his bag down on the floor. Now he picked it up. And Heimrich waited.

  “A
ll right,” Dr. Blaney said, “If I’d come on him cold—” He paused. “Not a very good choice of words, is it?” he said. “If I had not been familiar with his condition, with the extent of his illness, I’d have diagnosed an overdose of one of the barbiturates. A fairly massive overdose, if what Mrs. Fleming tells me about the time element is accurate. Of course, poor Angus didn’t have much resistance left. Not to anything.”

  “Autopsy?”

  “Would be helpful. If Mrs. Fleming consents. She’s in no condition to be asked now. Pretty close to hysterical. Blaming herself, although I don’t know why. Except people usually do. I gave her a sedative. Got a nurse coming to look after her for tonight. We’ll see in the morning. Meanwhile, I’ve got people I can maybe do something for.”

  He went across the hall and out the door, moving quickly—and moving, Heimrich thought, like a man a little tired.

  Two men in white came down the stairs, one of them carrying oxygen equipment. They went past Heimrich incuriously. Heimrich went to the door and watched them load the equipment into the ambulance. He watched them start to take a stretcher out of it.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Not yet.” They looked at him. “State police,” Heimrich told them. “We’ll take care of things.”

  They looked at each other, and one shoved the stretcher back into the ambulance. He said, “O.K. Nasty flight of stairs anyway.”

  Every trade has its problems, Heimrich thought, and told the trooper to go back upstairs and see that things were left as things were, and telephoned the barracks. He told the barracks where he was, and to send the boys along. He put the receiver back and the tall young man with sun-bleached blond hair was standing beside him. He looked, Heimrich thought, uncertain. He said, “I feel there’s something I ought to do.” He looked at Heimrich as if to be told what to do. After a moment, Heimrich said, “I don’t know what anyone can do, Mr. Patchen.”

  “That’s it,” Patchen said. “With a nurse coming and all. But look at it another way, just to walk out.”

  “Now, Mr. Patchen,” Heimrich said. “I’ll be around for a while. And the nurse probably will be here soon.”

  He thought Patchen was relieved to hear that.

  “There ought to be somebody in the family,” Patchen said. “Or, anyway, some close friend. Far’s I know she hasn’t any family. But, point is, I don’t really know much about either of them. Just—oh, you know. People I knew at the club. She and I—well, we were going to play in the mixed foursome and so we went around the course now and then to—oh, get a sort of fix on each other’s games. Today—well, today, because she was upset, was the first time we’d talked about much of anything but golf.”

  A loquacious young man, Heimrich thought. Explaining himself needlessly; explaining why he didn’t, any more, want to be mixed up in this. A naive young man, as he looked to be.

  “I don’t see any reason you should stay around,” Heimrich told him.

  “Doc Blaney said something about sleeping medicine,” Patchen said. “You don’t think—well, the poor guy took an overdose? Being as sick as he was and now his brother?”

  “Now, Mr. Patchen,” Heimrich said. “A thing we’ll find out about. The doctor will find out about.”

  “A hell of a thing,” Patchen said.

  Heimrich didn’t say anything.

  “Well,” Patchen said, “I’d better get out from underfoot, hadn’t I?”

  “Why don’t you, Mr. Patchen?” Heimrich said and Patchen, who seemed to have a special talent for the needless remark, said he guessed he would, and then, finally, he did.

  A little, Heimrich thought, going up the stairs, like a very young person who doesn’t know how to leave a party. Odd in a car salesman; car salesmen ought to have self-confidence. Idly, Heimrich wondered how good a car salesman J. Henry Patchen was. Not, he supposed, that it mattered. But it was always difficult to tell what did matter. Naturally.

  The corridor at the top of the stairs was wide. It was almost a room on its own. There were two small-paned windows and sunlight was coming through them—the light of the lowering sun. The trooper was sitting on a chair in the sun and stood up when Heimrich stepped into the corridor.

  “All right, Nicky,” Heimrich told Trooper Ralph Nicholas. “No reason to stand up when you don’t have to.”

  Heimrich went to one of the windows and looked out and down. Patchen was getting into a low black car with a dealer’s plates on it. You can’t tell one car from another any more, Heimrich thought, and remembered how when he had been a boy he always could. Which was, Merton Heimrich thought, a time ago, and hoped Susan didn’t mind that too much, and turned back.

  There was a door on either side of the widened hallway. One of them stood partly open; the other was closed and behind that one a woman began to sob, dryly, rackingly.

  There was nothing to do about that. It takes a sedative a while to work.

  He went to the other door, which was across from the one behind which Enid Fleming was crying, and pushed it farther open and went into the other room. It was a large and pleasant room and sun would have poured into it, as into the hallway room, except that someone had pulled down heavy, almost opaque blinds. Respect for the dead, Heimrich assumed, and let one blind flip up so that he could see what there was to be seen.

  Somebody had pulled a sheet over Angus Fleming’s body, covering the face. Heimrich pulled it down.

  Angus Fleming had been emaciated beyond ready acceptance. A long body—a long sick body, naked except for a pair of shorts. Not sick any more; a body quiet, lying on the back. Heimrich wondered whether there had been a body’s contortion against the indignity of death and whether somebody had again paid the respects due death. Not, Heimrich supposed, that it would matter greatly.

  The chances were that the deaths of the two brothers within so short a time was nothing beyond coincidence. Coincidence can never be shut out. Angus Fleming had been dying for a long time; a day of death had had to come, and this one as likely as any other. Perhaps the shock of his brother’s murder had hastened it. He would have to ask whether that was possible.

  And if Angus Fleming, being tired of slow dying, being beaten lower by his brother’s death, had taken more of some barbiturate than he could survive, and taken it by intention, it was still not a case for Captain M. L. Heimrich, New York State Police.

  He covered the body with the sheet. The dead should not, needlessly, be stared at. Enough indignity awaited Angus Fleming’s body.

  There was a single, wide bed in the room, and Fleming’s body was on it. There was a wide, modernly designed chest of drawers, and there was a table on either side of the bed and a lamp on each. There was a deep chair under one of the windows, and a reading lamp next it; beside it was a table piled, loosely, with books.

  A telephone—one of those which seem to curl around themselves—was on one of the bedside tables. On the other there was a vacuum jug, its stopper out, and a glass from which, by the looks of it, Angus Fleming had been drinking milk. The jug, which held a pint, was a little more than half full of milk. Heimrich touched neither jug nor glass and hoped nobody else had, and thought it probably wouldn’t matter greatly.

  There was a closed drawer in the table with the jug and glass on it, and Heimrich fixed a pencil behind the knob and pulled the drawer open. There was a dark bottle lying in the drawer, label down. Heimrich turned it over with the pencil and read the name of a pharmacy, and a prescription number, and “As directed” and the name “Dr. K. Blaney.”

  Presumably the barbiturates Blaney had spoken of. In which case not “one of the barbiturates” to Dr. Blaney. Unless Blaney was obsessed with scientific caution. He’d ask Blaney, if it came to seem important. The fingerprint boys would tell him who, if anyone other than Fleming himself, had handled the medicine bottle or the jug or the glass. And the lab boys would tell him what had been in the glass, and in the vacuum bottle. Nothing more for him to do here at the moment.

  He thought of one thing. He tou
ched a knuckle to the glass rim of the vacuum jug. It was faintly warm. Warm milk, drunk to hurry sleep to a man tired of being awake? Or any liquid to wash down capsules of, most probably, Nembutal.

  He went back into the hallway room and Trooper Nicholas stood up again. The woman in the room across the hall—it was evident, and understandable, that the Flemings had occupied separate bedrooms—was no longer sobbing. He heard a car outside and looked down again, and watched a woman in white, with a light coat over her uniform, get out of a Volkswagen and reach back into it for a black bag. Arrival of nurse.

  The nurse was middle-aged, rather long of face, and very firm. She had no idea when Captain Heimrich—as she spoke she seemed to quote his name as if she doubted its authenticity-might see the patient. That would be entirely up to the doctor. It was her understanding that the patient was in shock, and under sedation. Having put Heimrich in his place she went solidly up the stairs and, from the hallway, he could hear a bedroom door close firmly.

  So Mrs. Enid Fleming was taken in hand. The “boys” who were coming knew their business; there was nothing he could tell them about their business. Oh yes—

  “Tell them to look around for an automatic, Nicky,” Heimrich said, up the stair well. Not that they would find one. Or find the right one. Sometime before he retired, Merton Heimrich idly wished, there’d be a case in which somebody would leave the right gun, complete with its revealing rifling, handy to be found. Nothing to do here. Heimrich drove back to the Willow Pond Golf and Tennis Club. It took a little more than five minutes, Heimrich noted, for no reason he could think of. It had taken Patchen less, if Patchen estimated rightly. But in Patchen’s car a woman’s anxiety had pressed the pedal down.

  It was a little after six, and there were more people on the terrace, having drinks. More of them were men—some of the men still in city clothes; men who had called Friday a day, in town, in early afternoon. None of the people on the terrace paid any attention to Heimrich as he walked around it. Probably think I’m a new member, Heimrich thought. Probably don’t care one way or the other.