21-Not I, Said the Sparrow

by Lockridge, Richard

  The trooper said it could have been that way, sir, he guessed.

  Heimrich looked at the bottom steps and at the path beyond them. Tennant had bled a good deal. But scalp wounds bleed freely. There was nothing further to be done there. They went back up the stairs, past the broken rail which jutted toward them, and into the house. It was Asa Purvis, Corporal, New York State Police, who opened the door for them. He said, “Inspector. Lieutenant.” There was something almost of awe in his voice when he said, “Inspector.” It was, after all, Inspector M. L. Heimrich who had helped him get into the State Police.

  Heimrich said, “Hello, Asa,” and went to find a telephone other than the one in the drawing room. There was one at the back of the square entrance hall.

  Dr. James Tennant was in surgery. The extent of his injuries had not been determined. They apparently included a fractured skull. He had not regained consciousness and in any case was anesthetized. It was too early for a prognosis. Brain damage was possible; it was, indeed, likely.

  Mrs. James Tennant had been given a room in the hospital. She was under mild sedation, against which she had protested.

  “I’ll be at the Jameson place for a while,” Heimrich said. “If there’s any change in the doctor’s condition, let me know, will you?”

  The hospital would. Heimrich made a second call. Washington Hollow Barracks would get technical men down.

  Heimrich and Forniss went into the long drawing room of The Tor. Asa Purvis was standing near the door. Miss Ursula Jameson and her nephew and Geoffrey Rankin were sitting in front of the fire, which had been let burn down. Miss Jameson, still in black sweater and black slacks, had a coffee cup on the table in front of her. She was sitting on the sofa which faced the fire, and Ronald Jameson was sitting beside her. He had a glass in his hand. Rankin, also with a glass, was in a chair at the end of the sofa. He got up as the two big policemen came down the room.

  Ursula Jameson lifted her coffee cup. Then she put it down again in the saucer; clicked it down into the saucer.

  “This is a bad day,” Ursula said. “A terrible day. You were on the phone out there. Calling the hospital?”

  “Yes, Miss Jameson.”

  She lifted the coffee cup again and put it down again. She said, “Well, Inspector?”

  “He’s in surgery,” Heimrich said. “They don’t know yet, they say. Probably a fractured skull. He’s unconscious.”

  “Somebody said the railing broke,” the woman in black sweater and black slacks said. “Was that what happened?”

  “It seems to have been,” Heimrich said. He pulled a chair up near Rankin’s. Forniss leaned against the fireplace stones.

  “I kept telling Arthur he ought to have something done,” Ursula said. “Over and over I told him. Finally he listened. Anyway, he said somebody was coming tomorrow to check on it. He never used it himself. He—he wouldn’t admit to needing it. So many things he wouldn’t—” She did not finish.

  “You’re talking about the railing, Miss Jameson?”

  “Of course. Frankel told me about it and I told Arthur. Kept telling him. Told him it was dangerous. And now look.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “You say Frankel told you the rail was rusting. You hadn’t noticed it yourself?”

  “It’s been years since I went down those stairs. Years and years. I knew when I was getting too old for that sort of thing. Arthur would never—” She stopped and shook her head. She lifted her coffee cup again and this time drank from it.

  “Suppose one of you tells me what happened,” Heimrich said. He looked at Ursula Jameson, but she merely looked into the fire. Heimrich doubted whether she really saw the fire she looked at.

  “We had lunch,” Ronald Jameson said. “A drink or two and then lunch. All of us. Right here. Sandwiches. That sort of thing. We—well, none of us was very hungry.”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said. “You, Mr. Jameson, and your aunt and Dr. and Mrs. Tennant. And Mr. Rankin. All of you.”

  “You told me to stay,” Rankin said. “I don’t know why. That’s what you told me.”

  “Asked you,” Heimrich said. “Yes. You had drinks and sandwiches here in front of the fire. About when was that, Mr. Jameson?”

  “Finished about two. Somewhere around then.”

  “And?”

  Ursula Jameson looked away from the fire. She looked at Heimrich.

  “I went out on the terrace for a minute or two. To get a little air. Then I went upstairs to lie down,” she said. “I took one of those pills Jim Tennant had been trying to get me to take. I think that I dozed off a little. And then Ron came up to tell me—to tell me what had happened. What else had happened.”

  “The rest Of you?”

  “What difference does it make?” Jameson said.

  Heimrich said he didn’t know what difference it made.

  “Well,” Jameson said, “I was out of cigarettes. Drove into town to get a carton. Took a while to find a place open. Close up tight on Sundays, these little places do. When I got back, there didn’t seem to be anybody around. I went on up to my room.”

  Heimrich said he saw. He said, “You, Mr. Rankin?”

  “Jim and Estelle and I sat here for a while,” Rankin said. “Just—oh, sort of sat around. Then Estelle said she was going up and lie down, and Jim said something about that being a good idea, and that he was going to get a little air and then he’d be up.”

  “Suggest that you come with him?”

  “No. Just went out through one of the doors over there. Estelle went upstairs, and after a while I did too. I’d brought some papers out I thought I might as well go over. And, if you want to know, Inspector, I felt like that fifth wheel they talk about.”

  “Mrs. Tennant apparently went out later,” Heimrich said. “Looking for her husband, does any of you know?”

  “I suppose it was that way,” Ronald Jameson said. Nobody else said anything. “First thing I knew, I heard Stel screaming. I had a window open, and my room’s on that side of the house. So I ran downstairs and—one of the troopers had got there first. He was holding onto her and she kept on screaming. They were at the top of those damned stairs and I—well, I looked down and could see what was making her scream. So I said something like I’d take her, and the trooper went down the stairs. She was shaking and I kept saying silly things like he’d be all right and she kept on screaming. But then she sort of—well, sagged, and I thought she was going to faint and brought her in here.”

  “About when was this, Mr. Jameson?”

  Jameson did not know exactly. He thought perhaps about three. He had got his half sister into the drawing room and in front of the fire. “She just sort of sat there shaking.” He had rung for Barnes and got him and one of the maids. Barnes and the maid had stayed with Estelle Tennant while he went upstairs and told his aunt what had happened.

  “I guess I woke you up, Aunt Ursula,” Jameson said.

  She seemed to come back from a long way off. She said, “What?” in a dazed voice and her nephew repeated what he had said.

  “I wasn’t really asleep,” Ursula said. “Not really.”

  They waited for her to go on. She went back to looking toward the fire.

  “When I came down,” Ronald Jameson said, “one of the troopers was on the telephone. Calling an ambulance. And then somewhere else. I know he said, ‘Better try to get onto him.’ That would have been you, I guess, Inspector?”

  “Yes. And you?”

  “Went in to see how Sis was making out. Because she kept saying, ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go to him.’ She sounded—well, pretty hysterical. They’d only been married a few years, you know.”

  “Three years,” Ursula Jameson said, speaking to the fire. “Three years last May. He’d been married before, of course.”

  Heimrich waited for her to go on. She did not go on. He looked at Jameson.

  “The maid was holding onto her,” Jameson said. “Barnes was saying, ‘You’d better not, Mrs. Tennant. You
’d better not. He’ll be all right.’ So I went in and held onto her and said—hell, I guess I wasn’t any better at saying anything. She kept trying to get up and I kept holding her. And after what seemed like one hell of a time the ambulance came. I told the maid to keep her there and went to the door and they—they were bringing him up on a stretcher. And then I heard Sis say, ‘Let me go, damn you,’ very loudly and then she ran up the room to the door and said, ‘I’m going with him. You can’t stop me!’ So—well, I didn’t try to stop her. Maybe I should have.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Anyway, she found out he was still alive. And went with him. Miss Jameson?”

  She turned slowly from the fire. She said, “What?”

  “You came downstairs?”

  “After a while,” she said. “When I first—first got up I was dizzy. That pill, I suppose. I was halfway down the stairs when I saw her run out the door and get into the ambulance. Then Ron said something like, ‘I couldn’t stop her,’ and helped me in here. I was still a little dizzy. Dazed, I guess you’d call it.”

  “Mr. Rankin?”

  “They put me in a room on the other side of the house,” Rankin said. “I didn’t hear anything until I heard the ambulance. The siren, I mean. I didn’t pay much attention. You’re always hearing sirens. But I opened my door and heard people talking, so I came down. The ambulance was just going down the drive. And then somebody—it was you, wasn’t it, Jameson?—told me what had happened.”

  Heimrich nodded his head. He said he thought he had got it clear enough. He stood up and started up the long room, and Forniss went after him.

  “They’ll be along pretty soon,” Heimrich told Forniss at the door. “The railing, of course. And anything you can get out of the staff.”

  Forniss said, “Yep.” He watched Heimrich go out to the Buick. He didn’t need to be told where Heimrich was going.

  The surgical resident at the Cold Harbor Memorial Hospital said, “We’ve done what we can, Inspector. He’s in Intensive Care. It’s too early to tell.”

  “His chances?”

  The surgeon shrugged and spread his hands. Heimrich waited.

  “Critical,” the surgeon said. “Fracture and some brain damage. Oh, he’s got a fair chance to live. But—” Again he shrugged and spread his hands.

  “We can’t tell yet,” he said. “Thing now is to keep him alive. We’re trying. There’s a neurologist—neurological surgeon—they know. We’ve got in touch with him and he’s coming up tonight. He’s a good man. One of the best in this part of the country. If anybody—” Once more he shrugged his shoulders. “Dr. Tennant is a neurologist himself, his wife says. Did you know that?”

  “I’d heard he was a psychiatrist,” Heimrich said, and the resident said, “Both.”

  “He hasn’t regained consciousness?”

  “No. Just stayed alive. Which was a lot, under the circumstances.”

  “Assuming he recovers, Doctor, will he remember what happened? Remember falling? Why he decided to go down that flight of stairs?”

  “Perhaps. Eventually. I keep telling you, just now the thing is to keep him alive. As to his ever remembering much about the accident, my guess would be he won’t. It may—well, it may be a long time before he remembers who he is. But that’s just a guess. I’m a general surgeon, not a specialist. Dr. Wenning—he’s the man from New York who’s coming up—may be able to make an evaluation. You’ll just have to wait, Inspector. You’re interested because of Jameson, I suppose? The cadaver downstairs?”

  “That enters in, naturally,” Heimrich said. “Mrs. Tennant?”

  “She was hysterical when they came in,” the doctor said. “We’ve—well, we’ve calmed her down some. Put her in a room with a special nurse to—well, to hold her hand is what it amounts to. Do what she can. After all, the injured man’s a doctor too. I won’t say that makes a difference, but—”

  He was a great man to shrug his shoulders, Heimrich thought.

  Whether he could see Mrs. Tennant would pretty much be up to the floor nurse. And the doctor on the floor, of course. And it was quite possible that Mrs. Tennant would be asleep. Which would, obviously, be the best thing for her. Still—

  “Third floor,” the doctor said. “They’ll tell you what room. And if she’s sleeping they’ll want you to wait until she wakes up. Elevator’s over there.”

  Heimrich went to the elevator. He waited while an elderly woman was wheeled out of it. A much younger woman was walking beside the chair. The younger woman said, “Yes, Mother. You’re really going home now.” Heimrich got into the elevator and pressed the button numbered “3.”

  The nurse in charge of the floor said that Mrs. Tennant was having no visitors. Mrs. Tennant was in shock. Also, she was under sedation. It would be much better if—

  Heimrich told her who he was. He said it was important. He said he wouldn’t stay long. The nurse said, “Well, I’ll see. If she’s awake—”

  She used the telephone and on it her voice was very low. She put the telephone back. She said, “Nurse Cunningham thinks that it will be all right for just a few minutes. But you’ll have to remember that Mrs. Tennant is in shock, Inspector.”

  Heimrich promised to remember. He walked along a corridor to Room 323. The door was closed. A nurse opened it when he knocked, very gently. “She’s awake,” the nurse said. “A little groggy from the medication. You must try not to upset her.” Heimrich promised he would try not to upset Estelle Tennant.

  Her black hair was still smooth against the pillow. Her brown eyes looked even larger than they had when he had first seen her. When he first stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at her, he thought there was almost no expression in her eyes. But then expression came into them.

  “You’re that police officer,” Estelle said. Her voice was very low and it shook a little. But then she tried to sit up in the hospital bed. The nurse said, “There, dear. Just—” and went to her, but Estelle Tennant ignored the nurse.

  “You’ve come to tell me something,” Estelle said and her voice went up. “That’s it, isn’t it? That Jim’s—”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “There’s been no change in your husband’s condition, Mrs. Tennant. No change for the worse. I’m just trying to find out what happened. Do you feel up—”

  He broke off because she had lain back against the pillows and closed her strangely large eyes.

  “He fell down those stairs,” Estelle Tennant said. “Those dreadful stairs. Why did he always go that way? Down those stairs, I mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Heimrich said. He pulled a light chair up beside the bed and sat down on it. “It’s one of the things I’ve been wondering about, Mrs. Tennant. Thought perhaps you might be able to tell me, if you’re up to it. If it’ll be too much—”

  “He went out for a walk after lunch,” she said. She opened her eyes and her voice seemed a little stronger, a little more certain. “He almost always does. After lunch. Between appointments. Even in the city. It’s—it’s just one of his habits.”

  “He went today,” Heimrich said. “And you went up to your room.”

  “I thought perhaps I could sleep. And—and forget what had—forget about Father. But I couldn’t, of course. I—I kept remembering.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. He waited.

  “I expected Jim to come back,” she said. “I kept waiting. I thought—I thought he ought to know I needed him. But he didn’t come. He just didn’t come. And all the time—”

  She closed her eyes and put her hands over them. Her body began to tremble in the bed.

  “I think,” the nurse said, “that Mrs. Tennant has had—”

  But the girl in the bed took her hands away from her face and opened her eyes. She said, “No, nurse. I’m all right. After a while, Inspector, I—I couldn’t wait any longer. I couldn’t wait there alone any longer. So I went out—to try to find him.”

  She shuddered again, but only for an instant. She said, “I’m all right, nur
se.”

  “You went to the top of this flight of stairs,” Heimrich said. “Why did you go there, Mrs. Tennant? Had your husband said anything about going down to the lake?”

  “He usually went that way,” Estelle said. “I suppose that’s why I went there first. And—and looked down the stairs and—”

  She moved her head back and forth against the pillow and again her slender body trembled under the light covering. The nurse said, “Inspector. I must—” but again Estelle said, “No, nurse,” and this time her voice was almost sharp.

  “When he left you and the others,” Heimrich said. “To go out for a walk. Were you surprised, Mrs. Tennant?”

  “No. Why should I have been surprised? I just told you he often went for walks. Almost every day.”

  “He just stood up and said he thought he’d go out for a little air? Something like that, as you remember it?”

  “Yes. He looked at his watch and said—pretty much what you just said. That he thought he’d get a breath of air. Something like that. And I said—oh, asked him not to be too long. Said I thought I’d go up and lie down. He went through one of the French doors and out onto the terrace. If you’re going down to the lake you go that way.”

  Heimrich nodded his head. She looked at him and her eyes were very wide.

  “You say he looked at his watch before he went out of the room,” Heimrich said. “As if—oh, as if he wanted to be some place at a certain time? As if, perhaps, he had an appointment at a certain time?”

  “I didn’t think that then,” she said. “He runs on a schedule, of course. I mean, patients are due at certain hours and he has to keep track. But up here—well, time doesn’t matter so much, of course.”

  “But this afternoon he did look at his watch. And you remember he did. Why, do you think?”

  “I don’t know why he did,” Estelle Tennant said. “Just—oh, everybody now and then wonders what time it is.”

  “I didn’t mean precisely that,” Heimrich said. “What I wondered was why you remember Dr. Tennant’s looking at his watch. Sometimes we remember things because they surprise us. Thinking back now, do you think that you remember your husband’s looking at his watch because you were surprised he did?”