21-Not I, Said the Sparrow

by Lockridge, Richard

  “At seven this morning I was asleep,” Ursula said. The stiffness was back in her voice. “I didn’t wake up until Joan came to tell me this Mr. Rankin was calling the police. And that it sounded as if something had happened.”

  Joan, Heimrich assumed, was the new maid—the maid who had overheard Rankin on the telephone. He said, “Mmmm.” Then he said, “By the way, Miss Jameson. I take it your room isn’t over the terrace?”

  “Of course not,” Ursula Jameson said, in a tone which seemed to accuse Merton Heimrich of stupidity. “On the other side of the house. The corner rooms at the back. My bedroom and dressing room, with a bath between. My brother has the same sort of rooms on the front corner. You won’t want to go poking around in our rooms, I suppose?”

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to poke around everywhere in the house,” Heimrich said. “And in the grounds.”

  “You’ll be wasting your time,” Ursula Jameson told him. “And suppose you do find the bow somewhere? So what?”

  “We like to find weapons,” Heimrich said. “Sometimes they tell us something.”

  “You won’t find fingerprints, if that’s what you’re after,” Ursula said. “Because people shooting arrows wear gloves. Anyway, a glove on the right hand. And a sleeve shield on the left. Everybody knows that.”

  Heimrich hadn’t, so he said, “Mmmm.” He looked at Forniss, who was standing by the fireplace. Forniss said, “Any time, Inspector. Three men outside. Waiting to poke around.”

  Heimrich said he might as well get them started, and Forniss said, “Yep,” and went off up the long room. Heimrich said, “About the servants, Miss Jameson?”

  “Over there,” Ursula said, and pointed to a length of padded velvet cord which dangled from the wall between the double doors and the fireplace. “Just pull it, and Barnes will come.”

  It was, Heimrich thought, like something out of the past. The whole house was like something out of the past. He crossed to the velvet cord and pulled it.

  “Do you want us to stay here?” Dr. Tennant asked. “My wife ought to be resting. So ought you, Miss Jameson.”

  “With policemen stamping all around?” Ursula said. “But—”

  Barnes was still a thin, dark man. He was not, now, wearing a white jacket. His jacket and his trousers were dark; he wore a white shirt and a black necktie. He came in from the rear of the room and, when he was close, he said, “Miss Jameson, ma’am?”

  “This policeman—” Ursula Jameson began, and the ringing of a telephone interrupted her. Barnes, without saying anything, went up the room. He took a telephone out of a small cabinet and said, “The Tor,” into it. He said, “I’ll see, sir.” Heimrich would have somewhat expected him to say, “I shall ascertain.” That would have gone better with the rest of it.

  Barnes came back down the room. He said, “The call is for you, Inspector,” Then he added, “Sir.”

  The call was from the headquarters of Troop K at the new Washington Hollow Barracks in Dutchess County. The pictures were ready. Should copies be sent down?

  Heimrich said yes. Then he corrected it. “No,” he said, “I’m not sure I’ll be here long. Put copies on my desk. Put others in the works. Any report from the lab?”

  “No prints on the arrow,” the barracks told him. “Smudges. As if somebody had rubbed along it with a glove on his hand. Hollow steel. Usually shot from a heavy bow, what they say. Only, Dr. Fleming has come in with a preliminary. The wound wasn’t deep. Just deep enough to kill him. Steel arrow from a heavy bow would damn well have gone right through him, they say. Come out on the other side, damn near.”

  “Depend on where it was shot from, naturally,” Heimrich said. “Hold the pictures. I’ll call in. Or come in.”

  He got a conventional, “Sir.” He hung up, and Forniss came out of the entrance hall. He said, “Start with Jameson’s office? And this room behind it?”

  “Wherever you like,” Heimrich said. “And do you want to take on the staff, Charlie? A hundred to one nobody’ll have anything that’ll help.”

  “Thousand to one,” Forniss said. “Yep.”

  Heimrich raised his voice and said, “Mr. Barnes?” and Barnes came up the room to them and said, “Sir?”

  “This is Lieutenant Forniss,” Heimrich said. “He’d like to interview the staff. Will you get them together?”

  “In here, sir?”

  “Wherever’d be most convenient,” Heimrich said.

  “Then, sir, I’d suggest our quarters. Off the kitchen, they are.”

  Heimrich told him that would be fine. Barnes said, “If you’ll come this way, Lieutenant?” and started toward the entrance hall. Forniss started after him, and Heimrich said, “I’m going in to Cold Harbor, Lieutenant.”

  Forniss said, “Sir.”

  Formality raises its head when in the presence of civilians. Forniss followed Barnes out of the room.

  Heimrich went back down the room to the three in front of the fireplace. Dr. Tennant stood up. He held a hand down to his wife and she took it, and he pulled her up to stand beside him. Very solicitous toward her, Heimrich thought. Miss Ursula Jameson remained in her chair.

  “If you’ve finished with us,” Tennant said. “This business is a strain on my wife. A very great strain.”

  Ursula Jameson looked up at him. Heimrich had a suspicion that she was about to say, again, “Nonsense.” She did not say anything.

  “There’s nothing more for now,” Heimrich said. “I’ll be back. I’d appreciate it if you’d all remain here in the house. And ask Mr. Rankin to stay too, for the time being. There’ll be troopers in and out, I’m afraid. And Lieutenant Forniss will be here.”

  Tennant merely nodded his head.

  “I hope,” Ursula said, “that this sort of thing won’t go on forever.”

  Heimrich said he hoped so too. He also said that, later in the day, it would be necessary for one of them—the dead man’s sister or his daughter preferably—to identify the body.

  “You mean,” Ursula said, “that you’re not sure it’s my brother?”

  There was a rasp in her voice again.

  “No, Miss Jameson,” Heimrich said. “We’re quite sure, I’m afraid. But there are formalities.” He paused. “Required by law,” he said, and went off up the room and through the square entrance hall and out of doors to his car. Outside the sun was bright, but it was still chilly. It wasn’t at all like summer any more.

  He drove down the long winding drive in the tunnel of tall evergreens. Sunlight trickled between the trees onto the smooth gravel of the driveway’s surface. On NY 11F Heimrich turned the Buick south toward Cold Harbor.

  He did not, as he had first planned, stop in Cold Harbor to talk to Dorothy Selby and her apparently redoubtable mother. He drove on through the village toward Van Brunt. On the way he used the telephone. It rang—at least he hoped it rang—in the house of Samuel and Mary Jackson. It was not answered. Too early for them to be at church, Heimrich thought. Anyway, he didn’t think the Jacksons were churchgoers. He dialed again and, after some time, got the country-club manager. Yes, the Jacksons were on the course. In a foursome. Probably still on the first nine.

  The ninth hole of the Van Brunt Country Club is near the clubhouse. The second nine lie beyond a road. Sure, the manager would see if he could flag Sam Jackson down as he finished the first nine.

  It was a little after eleven-thirty when Heimrich reached the Van Brunt Country Club. There were already a good many cars in the parking lot. Many of the club members are ardent golfers on Sunday mornings; even on Sunday mornings when the air is crisp and there is a wind blowing.

  There were half a dozen people on the terrace outside the bar. They wore sweaters; they sat with their backs to the northwest wind. Several of them were drinking coffee. One man, alone at a small table, had a glass in front of him half full of what Merton Heimrich took to be bourbon. Sam and Mary Jackson were not among the half dozen. Heimrich said, “Morning, Paul,” to the man with the bourbon. Paul
Stidworthy, chairman of the club’s admissions committee, said, “Hi, Inspector.” Heimrich went across the terrace and into the bar.

  There were three men standing at the bar. As a private club, the Van Brunt Country is exempt from the New York State Law which stipulates one in the afternoon as the earliest time, on Sundays, when liquor may be sold. At least, it assumed it was, and the assumption was not challenged. The local-election district member of the state House of Representatives was one of the men at the bar. He turned from his drink as Heimrich went into the bar. He said, “Morning, M. L. What’s this I hear about old man Jameson? Radio have it right?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said, “I’m afraid it did, Jerry. Seen Sam Jackson around this morning?”

  “Out on the course,” Jerry Blankenship said. “At the eighth by now. Foursome. They let Frank and me play through on the seventh.”

  “That’s right,” the man next to Blankenship at the bar said. “Morning, Inspector.”

  Heimrich said, “Good morning, Mr. Bishop.”

  “Mixed foursome,” Bishop said. “The Jacksons. Your wife, Inspector. John Alden, your nephew.”

  Alden is the husband of a Heimrich niece. Heimrich decided that Bishop had come close enough.

  “They’ll probably stop by here to warm up,” Blankenship said. “It’s blustery out there.”

  Merton Heimrich said he knew it was blustery out there. He went to a small table and sat so he could look out a window from which he could see the ninth hole. Two men and two women were walking toward it. Susan was wearing gray slacks and a red turtleneck. There was one ball on the green, and Heimrich hoped it was Susan’s but doubted it would turn out to be. The bartender came from behind the bar to Heimrich’s table and said, “Inspector?”

  “Manage a cup of coffee, Malcolm?” Heimrich said and the bartender said he could at that, and went back to the bar.

  Heimrich sipped coffee and watched the ninth hole. The ball nearest the cup was Sam Jackson’s, as he had supposed it would be. He watched Jackson tap it into the cup. He watched the wind catch. Susan’s approach shot and carry the ball into a sand trap. He watched John Alden’s shot land on the green and stop thirty feet from the hole. Mary Jackson’s shot hit the green and stopped companionably close to Alden’s. Heimrich finished his coffee, which he assumed had been made for a rather early breakfast for friends of members who were being put up at the club overnight, or over the weekend. He walked out of the bar and toward the ninth green. Susan got her ball, along with a good deal of sand, out of the trap. The ball hit the green and rolled toward the cup. It teetered on the edge of the cup, and Susan, slender and looking very young, used body English. The ball fell into the cup. Susan said, “Wow!” and then saw Heimrich and waved. But then an expression of anxiety came onto her thin face. She said, “Has something—” but stopped speaking because Merton was smiling at her and shaking his head.

  The other three saw Heimrich then. Mary Jackson clasped both hands over her head in the gesture of acknowledged applause for victory. Alden saluted. Jackson said, “You want us, M. L.?”

  “When you’ve finished,” Heimrich said. “No hurry.”

  They finished. Mary Jackson holed out with one long putt. It took Alden three to make it.

  They walked toward Heimrich. Susan said, “A fine invigorating morning. Do you suppose Malcolm will run to a hot buttered rum?” But then she said, “Is everything all right, dear?” and there was anxiety in her voice.

  “All right,” Heimrich told her. “Except for murder.”

  “Then it’s that,” Jackson said. “What Susan told us?”

  Heimrich nodded his head slowly. They walked toward the clubhouse. They found a table and ordered coffee. But after a few sips, Susan stood up. She said, “I think I’ll—” and looked across the table at Mary Jackson, who said, “Me too.” They both stood up. Then John Alden stood. He said, “And me,” and Sam Jackson and Heimrich were alone at the table.

  “Tactful of them,” Jackson said. “Well, M. L.?”

  “Jameson was killed,” Heimrich said. “Somebody shot an arrow into his neck. And I’ve already been told it’s hard to believe. By several people.”

  Jackson lighted a cigarette.

  “You were his lawyer,” Heimrich said. “Also his executor, Sam?”

  “No. First National of Cold Harbor.”

  “You drew up his will?”

  “Several of them,” Sam Jackson said. “Changed it several times in the last couple of years. After his second wife got herself killed, of course.”

  “The last one, Sam? Last night? After the party?”

  “The birthday party,” Sam said. “The public announcement party. Damned elaborate do, wasn’t it?”

  “All of that,” Heimrich said. “Followed by the making of a will?”

  He was told he was guessing. He said, “Naturally, Sam.” He was told the relationship between counsel and client is confidential. Heimrich said, “I know that, Sam. I suppose the will was duly signed and witnessed?”

  “Two of the maids,” Sam Jackson said. “In the testator’s presence and the presence of each other. The way the book says. All legal. Copies in my desk at home. Locked in the desk.”

  “Well, Sam?”

  “I’ll apply for probate. When that’s granted, the contents will be public property.”

  “Meanwhile,” Heimrich said, “it’s murder, Sam. And you’re an officer of the court.”

  Sam Jackson put out his cigarette. He lighted another. He looked at Heimrich through smoke. After a time he said, “All right. The hell with it.”

  Heimrich nodded his head and lighted himself a cigarette. He waited.

  “Ten thousand to Barnes,” Jackson said. “The same to the cook, Myrtle Miller. And—the same to his son. ‘Who has chosen to alienate himself from the family.’ He insisted on putting that in. Two hundred thousand to his daughter. Twenty-five thousand to a cousin who lives in London. Female cousin. I don’t remember her name offhand. Lucinda something, I think it is. Oh yes, another ten thousand to Mr. and Mrs. Frans Frankel. ‘For faithful service through the years,’ like the other staff people. The house and the acreage which goes with it—he wanted it called just “The Tor’ but I got him to be more specific. ‘The house known as “The Tor” and the real property appertaining thereto,’ to his sister.”

  “No money to her, Sam?”

  “She doesn’t need it, apparently. Their father willed her a third of his cash assets. The rest went to the son, along with the house and land. Now she gets the house too. And maybe a couple of hundred acres. I’m just guessing on that. I’ve no idea as to the size of the estate. I wasn’t his financial agent. Your guess is probably as good as mine. It’s been a rich family for generations, and lived like a rich family. As if there weren’t any bottom to the well.”

  “That’s all of it, Sam?”

  “No, M. L. ‘All other property, both real and personal, of which I may die possessed’ to the girl he was going to marry.”

  “As his wife, Sam?”

  Samuel Jackson shook his head.

  “As Dorothy Selby, at present a resident of Cold Harbor, New York.”

  “It will come to a nice round sum,” Heimrich said. “A million or so, maybe?”

  Sam Jackson shrugged his shoulders. He said, again, that he didn’t know what it would come to. Then he said, “Whatever it comes to, she had a less drastic way of getting it. And he may not have told her how he was going to draw up his will.”

  “She’ll be asked about that, naturally,” Heimrich said. “As to the less drastic way. Perhaps she didn’t think so, Sam. Perhaps she decided that marrying a man old enough to be her father was pretty drastic.”

  “Her grandfather, actually,” Sam Jackson said. “If everybody started reasonably early.”

  John Alden came back into the taproom. A few steps from the table he stopped. He said, “O.K.?”

  “Sure,” Heimrich said.

  “It takes girls forever, somet
imes,” Alden said. He sat down in his chair and sipped from his cup. He shook his head and then raised it to look at Malcolm. He passed his hand over the five cups on the table and Malcolm said, “Coming right up, Mr. Alden.”

  “The thing is,” Sam Jackson said, “they get to chatting. It’s a—”

  He did not finish that because Susan Heimrich and Mary Jackson came into the room and across it. It was Susan who said, “Conference all finished?”

  “All finished,” Heimrich said. Then he stood up. Susan said, “Oh,” disappointment in her voice. “I thought maybe we could all have an early lunch. Before the other nine. As a matter of fact, instead of the other nine.”

  “You four, dear,” Heimrich said.

  Susan raised her eyebrows. Slowly, he nodded his head. Then he said, “I’m afraid so, Susan.”

  He left them at the table, with Malcolm bringing hot coffee. He went out to the Buick. Then he got out of the car and went back into the clubhouse, but not into the taproom. He went into a telephone booth and looked at a number he had jotted down and dialed it. The number he had dialed rang four times and he heard “The Tor.” He said, “Barnes?” and got, “Barnes, sir.”

  “Inspector Heimrich. Lieutenant Forniss still around?”

  Barnes thought so. Barnes would see. “If you’ll just hold on, sir.” Heimrich held on. Charles Forniss came on.

  “None of the servants heard anything or saw anything,” Forniss said. “Or admits hearing anything or seeing anything. However, we found the bow, all right. A bow, anyway.”

  Heimrich said, “Go ahead, Charlie.”

  They had found a bow in the closet off Jameson’s office. They had also found fishing gear in the closet, and two tennis rackets, both warped out of shape, and a bag of golf clubs. Also, a pair of wading boots.

  “The bow looks pretty old,” Forniss said. “Not that I know anything about bows. There were also four arrows. Only there’s this, M. L. They’re wooden arrows.”

  Heimrich said, “Mmmm.”