16-Murder Can't Wait

by Lockridge, Richard

  “This op C. S.,” Shapiro said. “He around, Sean?”

  “Spotty,” O’Brien said. “Cecil Spotswood, for God’s sake. Yep. Ought to be.”

  He used the telephone. He said, “Come along in, Spotty.”

  Cecil Spotswood, in spite of his name, was inconsiderable in appearance—he was the kind of man one could see a dozen times and not see once.

  “This woman who seemed to synchronize with Patchen,” Shapiro said. “Always—”

  Spotswood blinked pale blue eyes—or perhaps they were gray eyes. He said, “Synchronize?”

  Shapiro explained.

  Spotswood said, “Yes. Anyway, looked the same. Wore pretty much the same clothes. Last two weeks, that is. Blue coat; hat. Nice figure, near as I could tell. Nice legs, anyhow.”

  “You say last two weeks,” Shapiro said. “This had been going on longer?”

  “Long as I was on it,” Spotswood said. “That’d be—” He looked at O’Brien.

  “Five weeks altogether,” O’Brien said. “Fleming called us off week ago yesterday. Owes me—” he paused for mental calculations. He said, “Five hundred fifty-five, counting expenses.”

  “Cold as hell first three weeks,” Spotswood said. “This dame wore a fur coat. You got something on the dame?”

  “Nothing on anybody,” Shapiro said. “The dame—blonde or brunette?”

  “Told you,” Spotswood said. “Wore a big hat. Listen, you tailing somebody you don’t go around sitting in laps, do you?”

  There was that, Shapiro agreed. It was too much to hope that Spotswood had got a picture of the woman, but Shapiro asked. It had been too much to hope. Nobody had said anything about a woman. Spotswood had never seen “Miss X” and “Subject” together.

  “Sean,” Shapiro said, “Fleming didn’t give you any idea why he wanted Patchen tailed?”

  “Nope,” O’Brien said. “All right, I wondered, sure. Usually the other way around. Trail the dame. Only, says in the papers this guy Fleming wasn’t married. So, no skin off my tail. Long as he pays.”

  “This report went along to Fleming? The one before it? Maybe two before it?”

  “End of first week; end of third; end of fifth. With statements. Yep.”

  “Borrow this,” Shapiro said, as a statement of fact. He fluttered the flimsy sheets. O’Brien shrugged heavily.

  “Address of this apartment house in the Village?”

  Spotswood gave him that.

  “Co-operate,” O’Brien said. “That’s what we do, Nate. Put it in the book.”

  “Sure,” Nathan Shapiro said. “It’s in the book, Sean.”

  It didn’t, Shapiro decided, look like tying in with his part of it. Possibly with no part of it.

  He telephoned the Hawthorne Barracks, and Captain Heimrich was out. Forniss was in; Forniss listened.

  “Doesn’t seem to make too much sense, does it?” Forniss said. “Unless-”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said. “It’s all yours, sergeant.”

  Nathan Shapiro took the shuttle to the Seventh Avenue subway and went uptown to look, in the vicinity of Dyckman University, for two undergraduates who might, conceivably, have been approached by a man who used the name of Jones.

  The doctor was with Mrs. Enid Fleming. Heimrich found the Fleming kitchen and looked into the icebox. Trooper Nicholas had been quite right. There was no milk in the icebox. A half pint of cream, unopened; a carton of eggs; a pound of butter. (They had not really needed the butter, Heimrich thought. They had already had half a pound.)

  He went back to the living room and waited for ten minutes or so. Then Dr. Blaney came down the stairs, still a man in a hurry. Heimrich went to the hall when he heard Blaney’s feet on the stairs.

  “All right,” Blaney said. “You can. Seems to be out of shock. Get the autopsy report?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said.

  “Well man we could have pulled through it, maybe,” Dr. Blaney said. “Poor Angus went—” He snapped his fingers to end the sentence.

  “You’d prescribed Nembutal?”

  “For use as directed. Which meant up to him. As it is in any case, obviously.”

  “Mrs. Fleming is all right this morning?”

  “Told you,” Blaney said, and picked up the bag he had put down. “Out of shock. And—got something on her mind. Why you’re here, isn’t it? Young woman. Healthy. Considerable bounce. And she’d known a long time her husband was dying. Adjusted to it. So? I’ve got patients—”

  “I know, doctor,” Heimrich said, and watched the doctor go out, walking rapidly. He started up the stairs, but Enid Fleming came down them.

  Black was good on Enid Fleming. The dress shaped itself to her. Her blue eyes looked very large in her palely tanned face and, as she came down into brighter light, it seemed to Heimrich that they were not quite focused. Then they focused on him, and Enid Fleming said, “You’re the officer in charge of—of all this? There were others before.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said, and told her who he was. She nodded her shining head and then, at the bottom of the stairway, seemed for a moment physically uncertain, and put out a tanned, longfingered hand to the banister rail. But then, before he could say anything, she said, “I’m all right. It’s—I suppose it’s from what the doctor gave me. But I’d better sit down, I think.”

  She went across the hall into the living room, and Heimrich went after her. She sat in a deep chair, looking small in the chair—small and vulnerable. Heimrich sat where he could face her, and waited. She had put on lipstick, lightly. Her lips trembled and she put her right hand up so that the fingers touched her forehead, and for the moment her eyes were shielded. Then she said, “I’m sorry. This is not good, is it? My husband killed himself, didn’t he, captain?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Heimrich said. “That’s the way it looks, Mrs. Fleming.”

  “He wasn’t himself,” she said. “Hadn’t been for a long time. A year ago—no, longer than that—almost two years ago he—I think he felt he had everything. Do you know what I mean? And then slowly—oh, terribly slowly—everything began to—to fade away. It was—it was terrible, captain. A well, strong man—he loved to do things with his body; to play golf—everything—and then it—it ebbed away. And after a while he knew that it—all of it—would never come back. It was a bitter thing.”

  She spoke so that her words made little clusters, with breaks between them. She had gone over what she wanted to say in her mind, Heimrich thought; it had not fully coalesced in her mind. He said that what her husband had gone through was a bitter thing, and asked if it had made him bitter.

  “That’s it,” Enid said. “You understand, don’t you? How—how it changed him? The last few months—he was a different man. So bitter. Sometimes—often, lately—he couldn’t—well, couldn’t control the bitterness. He wasn’t sane the last few months. That’s why—”

  She stopped and covered her eyes with her hands. A diamond glittered on the left hand. She said, “This is very hard. Harder even than I—than I’d thought it would be.” Then she took her hands down and looked at Heimrich steadily, and her shoulders moved back and her breasts lifted as she took a deep breath of resolve.

  “I think Angus killed his brother,” she said and her voice was level, uninflected. “I think that’s why he killed himself. Because—because he couldn’t live with what he’d done.” She paused. “There,” she said. “It’s said. The awful thing’s said. I—I was never going to say anything. Whoever was—whoever was hurt. But it can’t hurt him now, can it? Nothing can hurt him now, can it?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Nothing can hurt him now, Mrs. Fleming. Why do you think your husband killed his brother?”

  “He had a gun,” she said. “A—I think what they call an automatic. He kept it in the drawer of his night table. The table by his bed?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said.

  “It isn’t there now,” she said. “I—after what happened, I looked. He—he ‘didn’t bring it back. Stuar
t was shot with what they call an automatic, wasn’t he? Somebody said that.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “An automatic pistol. Why did your husband have an automatic, Mrs. Fleming?”

  “We’re a long way from other people,” she said. “The house is. A good many men get permits to buy revolvers.”

  “You said he ‘didn’t bring it back,’” Heimrich said. “Back from where, Mrs. Fleming? I don’t follow you.”

  “I wasn’t going to tell anybody, ever,” she said. “I—I’m betraying him. Can’t you see I’m betraying him?”

  Heimrich closed his eyes. He said, “He’s dead, Mrs. Fleming. Other people are alive. Back from where?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Don’t really know but—”

  She steadied then, and this, Heimrich thought, she had put in words before. She spoke rapidly, and in a monotone. Heimrich opened his eyes and looked at her. She seemed to be looking beyond him.

  It had been the morning before. She thought it had been about four o’clock. She had heard the car go into the garage, heard the motor cut off. The sounds had wakened her, confused her. “I was still half asleep for a few seconds,” she said.

  Then she had heard the front door open, and had gone out of her room to the head of the stairs.

  “He was coming up the stairs very slowly,” she said. “Holding onto the railings. We had a second rail put in when—when he began to get so weak.”

  “With both hands?” Heimrich said. “A hand on either rail?”

  She said, “I just told you—oh, I see what you mean. Yes, both his hands were free. He wasn’t carrying—anything.”

  She had said, “Angus! Angus, darling,” she told Heimrich, in the monotone, still speaking rapidly. “He said, ‘Oh, sorry I waked you up. Couldn’t sleep. Went out for a drive.’”

  “Had he ever done that before, Mrs. Fleming?”

  He had done it sometimes, but not recently.

  “The doctor had given him something to take,” she said. “The—what he finally killed himself with. Sleeping pills. Wasn’t that it?”

  “That’s the way it looks,” Heimrich said. “You think about four o’clock yesterday morning?”

  She thought about three or four in the morning. She had not looked at her watch; the time hadn’t made any difference. Not then.

  She had said to Angus, “You shouldn’t go—” and he had cut her off.

  “He seemed upset, angry,” she said. “But—recently, it’s often been like that. He said, ‘I’m all right. Leave me alone, can’t you?’ Something like that. Something—a way he would never have spoken to me before—before he began to be so sick.”

  He had gone into his room and shut the door. But then she heard his voice. “He had such a—a strong, wonderful voice.” She covered her eyes again when that was said, and for a moment was silent. Heimrich waited.

  “He said, ‘Damn, damn, damn’—over and over in—in an awful, hopeless sort of way. I went to his door and said, ’Angus. Isn’t there something I—’ and he didn’t let me finish. He said, I said leave me alone. Leave me alone.’ And then—then he locked his door. We used to love each other so-so much. And he locked his door.”

  Momentarily her slim body trembled. She put a hand on either arm of the chair and steadied herself. She said, “I’m sorry, captain. It’s been very hard for me.”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said. “You think he had driven to his brother’s house? Killed his brother?”

  “He lied to the other officers,” she said. “Said he had been asleep—taken pills and been asleep. But, even before that—when I first heard about Stuart. When—what’s his name? The sergeant?—anyway, when he came to tell us. I—I was so terribly afraid.”

  Later the previous morning, while Angus Fleming was downstairs—“he seemed all right then; as all right as he’s seemed for a long time. He didn’t say anything about the night before, and I didn’t”—she had gone into his room and looked in the drawer where the automatic was kept. It had not been there.

  But the day before it had been. She had gone to the village pharmacy to have a prescription filled—“for the sleeping pills he took”—and had put the bottle in the drawer of the night table. And the automatic—“that awful gun”—had been there.

  “I—then I was terribly afraid,” she said. “I thought he must have—have shot Stuart and—and thrown the gun away. In—in a reservoir or somewhere. There are so many places.”

  That Heimrich knew very well; that fact had often been troublesome.

  “Why would your husband have shot his brother, Mrs. Fleming? Why—well, you must have had some reason to think it possible. That your husband would have a reason to want his brother dead.”

  She covered her eyes again and this time spoke, her voice very low, her voice shaking, without moving her hand.

  “I told you how—how strange he’d become,” she said. “He—he had strange ideas—insane ideas. He thought—it was part of the way he’d become—part of his mind’s breaking up—that—”

  She stopped, and for some seconds did not speak. Her hands shook in front of her eyes.

  “That Stuart and I were having an affair,” she said, and spoke in so low a tone that Heimrich leaned a little forward to hear her. “He—he said dreadful things. To me. I think to Stuart too. Dreadful—hideous things. He—Stuart was my brother-in-law. We—of course we saw each other. And—oh, we laughed. Made jokes. People can’t be gloomy all the time.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “People can’t be gloomy all the time. And, sick people—hopeless people—aren’t always rational, naturally. But I have to ask. There was no truth in what your husband thought?”

  She took her hands down then, and now her big eyes focused on Heimrich, and her voice was stronger.

  “None,” she said. “I told you that, didn’t I? Stuart was my husband’s brother. He loved my husband—looked up to him. And—and I loved my husband, captain. I loved my husband.”

  XV

  When Sergeant Charles Forniss found J. Henry Patchen’s house his first thought was that Patchen seemed to be doing well enough selling cars. Not that it was a large house; it was smaller than the house Stuart Fleming had rented and died in. But it was rather like Stuart Fleming’s house—a new house with a lot of glass.

  There were two cars parked in front of the house. One had dealer’s plates, the other had Connecticut plates. So evidently Patchen was home, as the sales manager he worked under in Brewster had thought he would be. Home, and probably with a prospect. The car with Connecticut plates looked as if it were about due to be turned in. Being a thorough policeman, Forniss noted down the number on the Connecticut license plate before he went up to the front door of the shining small house and rang the bell.

  They were certainly backing into it, Forniss thought, as he waited. Coming around to ask a man why he had been followed by private investigators at the instructions of a man now dead. Patchen could say, and get away with it, that he had no idea he was being tailed, and that he didn’t know why he’d been tailed, and that Stuart Fleming must have been nuts. He could say, and probably get away with it, that he’d never been in the apartment house in Greenwich Village some snoop said he’d seen him go into, and as for a “Miss X” who went in a few minutes after he went in on two Tuesday and two Thursday afternoons and came out a few minutes after he did—well, nuts, man. A couple of other people, officer.

  A tall young man with sun-bleached hair opened the door and smiled pleasantly enough—he had rather a boyish smile, Forniss thought; in fact he had a rather boyish face—and said, “Yes?”

  “State police,” Forniss said. “Name’s Forniss. You’re Mr. Patchen? Let’s see—J. Henry Patchen?”

  “That’s right,” Patchen said, and continued to block the door. “Told this other guy—captain something—everything I know about poor old Angus.”

  “Yep,” Forniss said. “We’ve got it all down, Mr. Patchen. This is something else.”

  He
did not actually step forward to go into the house. But his body weight shifted forward and he let Patchen see it. Patchen hesitated a moment, but then he shrugged his shoulders and said, “O.K. Come in and spill it,” and moved back and let Forniss walk into the living room of the little house. More squared-off furniture which didn’t look very comfortable to Sergeant Forniss. There was nobody else in the room; no sign of the owner of the car with Connecticut plates. Of course, that car could be Patchen’s own car. On the other hand, Patchen lived in North Wellwood, and North Wellwood is in New York.

  “Know any reason Stuart Fleming should have you followed?” Forniss said.

  Patchen’s eyes widened and his mouth opened slightly and he said, “Followed?” Then he said, “What the hell’re you talking about?” Then he said, “I sure as hell don’t.”

  “Hired a detective agency in New York,” Forniss said. “Been trailing you around for the past six weeks or so. Any idea why?”

  Patchen still sure as hell hadn’t.

  “Have you got an apartment in New York?” Forniss asked him. “Down in the Village. At …” and gave him the address, which was on Barrow Street.

  “No,” Patchen said. “I sure as hell haven’t. What the hell’s all this about?”

  “Hoped you could answer that,” Forniss said. “Didn’t make a habit of going to this address on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons? Meeting a woman there?”

  He watched Patchen carefully. Patchen’s face didn’t reveal anything, except youth—more youth, Forniss thought, than the man’s years would justify. After a second or two, Patchen’s face belatedly revealed something. At a guess, either astonishment or outrage, or both.

  “Look,” Patchen said. “What are you trying to pull? You say you’re state police. Let’s see your badge.”

  Forniss showed his badge. Patchen took it and examined it and handed it back.

  “I still don’t get it,” he said. “Somebody say I had a place down in the Village? Haven’t been in the Village in—hell, in years.”

  “That’s what somebody says,” Forniss told him. “Says four times, two Tuesdays and two Thursdays, you went to this place early in the afternoon and left late in the afternoon. Says each time a young woman went into the building a few minutes after you did and came out of it a few minutes after you did. Same woman each time.”