16-Murder Can't Wait

by Lockridge, Richard

  Frank had told the man he now knew to have been Fleming himself, that he hadn’t got to know the October “Flemings,” and that people came and went. “Nasty drunks you get to remember,” he said. “Watch out for. Guys who come up to the bar for Cokes, when they could just as well go to the machine. Guys and their gals who damn near live at the bar, if they stay around long enough. Names, sometimes. If they come around often enough. Like to have the barkeep remember their names.”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “You didn’t remember this Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Fleming? Nothing about them?”

  “Look,” Frank said, “this guy was Fleming. You say that yourself.”

  “The couple who registered as Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Fleming,” Shapiro said. “The previous October.”

  Frank had not. He had figured they’d probably been in-and-outers, and could be people who didn’t drink. To which he added, “They say it takes all kinds.” He did not sound as if he thought it much of a saying; not if it was meant to extenuate people who didn’t drink.

  “Couldn’t help him,” Frank said, pinning that down. He took a drink to keep it down.

  “Did he try to prompt your memory?”

  “Huh?”

  “Give you any idea what he thought this couple, who had registered under his name, might have looked like?”

  Frank did not remember that he had. Frank said, “Look. This was a long time ago. And I couldn’t help him and that was that.”

  “You remembered his face when you saw a picture of it in the paper.”

  “Names you don’t,” Frank said. “Faces you do sort of. So as to say ‘Evening, sir,’ or could be ’ma‘am,’ as the case may be. Like you’d seen ’em before. Especially when a thing like this happens. Brings it back, you know what I mean.”

  He took another sip.

  Nathan Shapiro supposed he knew what Frank Pesco meant. If a man’s mind is a blur of faces, half remembered, the blur may lessen, a face grow sharp when it is pictured as the face of a murdered man. “Hell,” you may think, “I knew that guy. What do you know?” Which would not, obviously, stand as evidence. Shapiro doubted it would need to, but doubted his own doubt.

  Frank thought the man he now knew to have been Stuart Fleming had had a couple of drinks. He thought that, then, he had gone into the dining room. Could be he had asked people there about the couple who had registered as Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Fleming.

  Shapiro looked at Spiros, and Spiros shook his head. The dining room staff wasn’t back yet; most of it wasn’t hired yet. The waitresses were picked up where they could be found. A few were professionals, followed the resort seasons. More were local girls. The lodge did not, in any case, run to a big staff. “Come down to it,” Spiros said, “we’re small potatoes.”

  “Frank,” Shapiro said, “summer before last did you work—tend bar—at a club in North Wellwood? Place called—”

  “Willow Pond,” Frank said, “I did at that. And it was a nogood setup. On account they don’t allow tipping and when the place closes in the fall they make up a subscription list for the help and a guy who’s had a few maybe feels generous. See what I mean? But comes a time to write a check and he’s sober as hell. Also, they gave me a lousy room.”

  “On the third floor?” Shapiro said. “With—let’s see. The chef? The golf pro?”

  That was right.

  “Man named Steele was the golf pro when you were there? Big man?”

  “Surly son of uh,” Frank said. “Had a damn pretty wife, though. Yeah. Sure you don’t want a drink?”

  Shapiro was sure he didn’t want a drink. Frank was sure he did, and poured one.

  “Ever see him here?”

  “Nope.”

  “You know a Mr. Angus Fleming? Brother of this Fleming who got killed?”

  Frank sure did. He was a “mucky-muck.” Name a committee and he was almost sure to be the chairman. Only—

  “Didn’t drink much. Have maybe a couple of long drinks before dinner and nurse them.”

  “Ever see him here?”

  “Nope.”

  “Man named Patchen? Calls it J. Henry Patchen?”

  “Sure. Gin and tonic. With a twist of lemon ’stead of lime.”

  “Ever see him here?”

  “Nope.”

  “Mrs. Angus Fleming?”

  Frank had known her by sight. Like most of the women at the club, she had her drinks—when she had drinks—at a table. “One of the boys” would have waited on her, particularly if she drank on the terrace.

  Frank had never seen Mrs. Angus Fleming at the lodge.

  Shapiro drove away from the lodge half an hour later, and thought that he had acquired a double handful of smoke. He had also acquired a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk and his stomach was beginning to disapprove. But his stomach disapproved of almost everything. It was his mind which really bothered Nathan Shapiro.

  John Spiros, who remained co-operative—unusually co-operative, Shapiro’s smoke-filled mind felt—had dug out of files the registration card signed by “M/M Stuart Fleming” the October before. Shapiro had it in his pocket, and it was not going to help, because the name was printed. He had expected that; motels prefer printed names to signatures, the former being sometimes legible. He had a feeling, but only a feeling, that a woman had done the printing.

  When Shapiro drove away from the lodge he followed, as he had done earlier in the day, the route which would take him to the hilltop house of Captain M. L. Heimrich. Heimrich probably would be home by now; he might as well, before he went the long way home himself, tell Heimrich what he had learned and see what Heimrich made of it. Maybe Heimrich could condense the smoke.

  As he drove through the late evening, Shapiro asked himself questions and wished he could think of answers to go with them.

  Had Frank Pesco, as he slowly but doggedly subsided into an alcoholic fog, told him the truth? Shapiro was not at all sure.

  Had the man who, in January, enquired so assiduously into the identity of a couple who had registered in October really been Stuart Fleming? Shapiro was inclined to think he probably had. He could think of no special reason Frank would have had to lie about it, and go out of his way to lie about it. Unless—did Frank think the police already knew Fleming had been at the motel asking questions and want to establish that his questions had had nothing to do with, say, an attempted football fix? In which case, Spiros and his wife were in on it, whatever “it” might turn out to be.

  One’s mind asks farfetched questions when one’s stomach grumbles.

  Route 11F. Turn south here. Turn toward distant Brooklyn. Somewhere beyond the smoke the validity of Rose waited. Poor Rose.

  Had Frank actually recognized the couple of October and lied to Stuart Fleming about them? Or had he told Fleming who they were, knowing them from—from the club?—and was lying now when he said he had not? Or had Stuart Fleming himself acted out a role, laying a false trail? If, say, he had found out that the executors of his father’s will had discovered an actual “misbehavior” with a temporary Mrs. Fleming in a resort motel, it might have occurred to him to lay a backfire of sorts; by enquiry to establish that his name had been used fraudulently, to embarrass him. To, more simply, lose him money.

  ENTERING THE TOWN OF VAN BRUNT. Drive slowly now, looking for a half-hidden sign which would read: HIGH ROAD.

  Had Fleming, through Frank, discovered the actual identity of the “misbehaving” couple and was the discovery vital enough to them to lead to murder? Or, of course, to one of them? How farfetched can a smoke-filled mind become? A mind in any event not of the first, or even the second, order. Was Frank’s present purpose, possibly, a shakedown? Did he plan to tell somebody that the police were sniffing about and that he wasn’t going to get in bad—too bad—with the police unless it was worth his while? Was he going to say to somebody—a “Mr. Stuart Fleming” or a “Mrs. Stuart Fleming”?—that covering a shacking-up was one thing and covering murder another?

  HIGH ROAD. Turn he
re; climb a narrow blacktop which twists and turns, so that a car’s lights reveal more of bordering trees and bushes than of roadway.

  Watch for two boulders. Turn between them.

  XIII

  There was an iron sign on an iron spike and the sign read, CLAPPINGER. Up a short drive from the sign was what is, to Merton Heimrich obscurely, called a “ranch house.” The man who opened the door of the house, and opened it promptly, was a wiry man, neither very tall nor very short, and, both Forniss and Heimrich thought, he must have been very drunk indeed to have once taken a swing at Stuart Fleming. Four years ago, of course, but men do not shrink so much in four years—not when the four years brings them only to fifty or so.

  Dr. Clappinger was indeed Dr. Clappinger. State police?

  “Yes,” Clappinger said. “I did rather expect somebody like you. Come in, won’t you?”

  They went in.

  “My wife’s at her bridge club,” Clappinger said. “Can I get you gentlemen something?”

  He could not.

  “I was in town today,” Clappinger said. “Read in one of the afternoon papers about Fleming. I must say you’ve been very—expeditious.”

  He was, Heimrich thought, setting his own pace. That was all right with Heimrich.

  “I made a jackass of myself once about Fleming,” Clappinger said. “A long time ago. Water under the bridge since—much water under the bridge. But I suppose you have to—how do they put it?—explore every avenue.”

  “That’s what they expect us to do,” Heimrich said. The anonymous “they” is sometimes useful. “Did you happen to know that Mr. Fleming, with whom you’d had this disagreement, lived relatively near by?”

  “I could say ‘no’ to that, couldn’t I?” Clappinger asked them. “And you would be quite unable to disprove my statement.”

  “Probably,” Heimrich said. “Is the answer ‘no,’ Dr. Clappinger?”

  “The answer is ’yes.’ I did know he had moved to North Well-wood. It was in a local newspaper. Something called The Two-Counties Chronicle. You may have seen it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Full of items of excruciatingly little importance,” Clappinger said. “Someone unknown to everyone has died. A Stuart Fleming has opened a law office in North Wellwood. To me, that last, of entire unimportance. It would simplify things if you would believe that, captain.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Naturally.”

  “But you do not,” Clappinger said. “You think I went to North Wellwood in the middle of the night and killed a man because I once—shall we say lost my temper? I suppose you have learned about that? As I said, very expeditiously.”

  The man did not, Heimrich thought, seem at all under strain. He was making the most of his words. If he taught in prep school, he must be much mimicked by youth. A little fussy; a little pedantic. His eyes bright behind thick-lensed spectacles.

  “Of course,” Clappinger said, “I am married, captain. My wife and I share a bedroom. She can assure you that I did not leave the bedroom last night. Or early this morning. She is a light sleeper. But you would require more, would you not? A wife may be expected to support her husband.”

  “Now, Dr. Clappinger,” Heimrich said. “There is that, of course.”

  “Yes,” Clappinger said. “And if I told you that I have, in the last few years, come to regard poor Stuart as my benefactor, you would have only my word to go on, would you not? The word of a man who, four years or so ago, was—shall we say somewhat excitable? Possibly even a little unbalanced?”

  “How your benefactor?” Heimrich said.

  “Ah,” Clappinger said. “That is the pith of it. It was because of him that I realized that Estelle and I were most unsuitably mated. That too many years, and more than years, separated us. If matters had not come—shall I say to a head?—at about that time, before we had further damaged each other—well….” He shrugged. Then he said, “I am now most suitably, most comfortably, married.”

  It didn’t, Heimrich thought, sound particularly exciting. Probably Clappinger had had, four years before, all he could stand of excitement; rather, as it had turned out, more than he could stand.

  “So,” Clappinger said, “I was in Stuart Fleming’s debt. He was the loser, not I. It is, in a way, quite unfair, isn’t it. Since he did—shall I say intrude?”

  “The loser?” Heimrich said.

  “Financially,” Clappinger said. “But surely you know, captain?”

  Clappinger had been leaning forward in his chair. Now he leaned back, and in his new position light from a lamp was reflected from his glasses. The sparkle of it hid Clappinger’s eyes. Heimrich looked at him for a moment. One would have thought that the light would inconvenience Clappinger, but it did not seem to.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I know, doctor. How do you know?”

  “From his father,” Clappinger said. “His father was incensed at Stuart because of the—er—publicity. He—er—extended me his sympathy. Told me that he would see his younger son did not misbehave in that fashion in the future. A very crotchety man, Stuart Fleming’s father.”

  “He told you he was changing his will, setting up a revocable trust fund? Revocable if Stuart Fleming got himself into any more scrapes?”

  “Yes,” Clappinger said. “He seemed to feel that I had—shall I say been badly treated? Wanted me to know that his son would be—punished. I gathered this was not the first time Stuart had—shall I say brought discredit on the family?”

  “Now, Dr. Clappinger,” Heimrich said. “Say that if you like. Or—cost his father money to square things? Was that how he extended his sympathy? By check?”

  “Shall I say he felt that I should have some recompense for my loss? Which I then considered a considerable loss.”

  “In return for which you dropped the divorce suit? In which you had named Stuart Fleming as corespondent?”

  “Shall I say that, toward the rather shaken up old gentleman, I felt a reciprocal sympathy?”

  He continued to lean back in his chair, so that the lenses of his spectacles glittered at Heimrich.

  “Now, Dr. Clappinger,” Heimrich said. “Shall I put it another way? Shall I say he bought you off? That—how did you put it, Charlie?”

  “Traded his wife in on a new Cadillac,” Charles Forniss said.

  It is hard to tell much about a man when his eyes are hidden by glittering glass. Heimrich suspected, however, that Dr. Lucius Clappinger was amused.

  “Really, gentlemen,” Clappinger said. “Now, really.”

  Forniss looked at Heimrich, who had closed his eyes.

  “Doctor,” Forniss said, “you know a place called the Cavalier Motor Lodge? In a place called Hangerford?”

  “Yes,” Clappinger said. “I do indeed. A pleasant place. Expensive for a member of the teaching profession.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Once. Marian and I spent a weekend there. Most—restful. Marian is my wife. Last autumn it was. A little after the start of the fall term.”

  “Were the leaves pretty?” Heimrich asked, without opening his eyes.

  Clappinger leaned forward and looked at him, but Heimrich kept his eyes closed.

  “Very pretty,” Clappinger said. “Very pretty indeed, captain.”

  Clappinger appeared surprised to see them go; said he was surprised; had assumed they would want to question his wife.

  “Now, doctor,” Heimrich said to that, “another time will do.”

  Another time would do, they agreed as they drove west toward the barracks. Any time would do to listen to Mrs. Marian Clappinger assure them that her husband had not left their bedroom at any time the night before; that he had not, and had never had, a .38 automatic; that dear Lucius had told her all about that unpleasant incident in the South and how now he thought Stuart Fleming had, unwittingly, done him a favor. Some scripts policemen can write from memory.

  “I don’t like him much,” Forniss said. “Say he doesn’t send me, M. L.”<
br />
  “If you must,” Heimrich said. “Malice in the man, I think.”

  “He and his wife could have registered as Mr. and Mrs. Stuart Fleming. To cause Fleming a spot of trouble. To lose him money, maybe.”

  “Yes, Charlie. But—just leave it there? On the chance that one of the executors might stumble on it?”

  “Could be Clappinger had let Fleming know. Was playing cat and mouse.”

  “Now, Charlie,” Heimrich said, “almost anything could be. A great many too many things could be.”

  He turned the car into the drive of Hawthorne Barracks and put it in its slot.

  Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro had stopped by, on his way to Hangerford. He had picked up a glossy print showing the head and shoulders of the late Stuart Fleming.

  Corporal Raymond Crowley had just come in, after a day of varied activities, and was typing his report.

  “I’ll have a look at it in the—” Heimrich said, and changed his mind. “When he’s got it done,” Heimrich said, “ask him to bring it up to the house.”

  As, some twenty minutes later, he turned into High Road he had to slow to let another car precede him. When he reached the boulders which walled his own driveway, he had to slow again, while the car turned, cautiously, between the boulders. The car ahead had a very long antenna whip. So—

  It had grown cooler since sunset; it was, after all, still April by night, whatever it thought itself to be by day. But Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro and Susan Heimrich were sitting companionably on the terrace for all that, and drinking what Heimrich took to be coffee. (Actually, Shapiro was drinking Sanka, and even it with some doubts.) Neither boy nor dog was in sight.

  When Susan had come to Merton Heimrich, and been held and released—while Nathan Shapiro sighed briefly and thought of Rose—Susan said, “You’ve eaten?”

  Heimrich had not.

  “You’re impossible,” Susan told him. “I’ll get something.”

  She went to get something, and Merton Heimrich, still food away from coffee, made himself a drink.

  They put what they had together, and found they had questions without answers. “It’s extremely confusing,” Nathan Shapiro said. “To me, that is.”