21-Not I, Said the Sparrow

by Lockridge, Richard

  “We’d like a word or two with Miss Jameson,” Heimrich told him.

  Barnes was afraid Miss Jameson was not down yet. She was, he thought, having breakfast in her room. Mr. Jameson—it came out “Mr. Ronald”—was not down either. Rankin, however, had had breakfast and was now having coffee on the terrace. If the inspector—

  “Miss Jameson,” Heimrich said. “Will you ask her if she can spare us a few minutes?”

  “She don’t like—” Barnes said and stopped because Heimrich was shaking his head, firmly. “I’ll see, sir,” Barnes said, and went up the stairs.

  Heimrich and Forniss went into the big drawing room. There was no fire in it now, and it was rather dark. Slivers of sunlight came in through the French doors on the south. Heimrich fished the telephone out of its retreat and dialed.

  Dr. James Tennant had not regained consciousness. He had, however, been moved from the Intensive Care Ward into a private room. The surgical resident? Dr. Thompson was in surgery. Dr. Frank Wenning?

  “I’m afraid there’s no—”

  “The specialist who came up from New York,” Heimrich said. “To examine Dr. Tennant.”

  “Oh. Dr. Wenning. I’m afraid he’s left the hospital, Inspector. One moment, please.”

  Heimrich waited the moment.

  “Dr. Wenning has left, Inspector. He left quite early this morning, I’m told. To go back to New York, he told the night nurse. He’s expected back here this afternoon, the nurse says.”

  “I’d like to be told if there is any change in Dr. Tennant’s condition,” Heimrich said, said gave the telephone number of The Tor. “Also, I’d like to put a man in Dr. Tennant’s room so that if he-”

  “That would be Administration,” the Cold Harbor Hospital told him. “I’ll switch you to Administration. One moment, please.”

  Administration, which also was female, was doubtful. The patient needed complete quiet. Even the patient’s wife was not—

  “A man will be along in about half an hour,” Heimrich said. “He’ll be a quiet man. He will just sit in the room, out of the way, and listen in case Dr. Tennant says anything. He will be in civilian clothes and entirely unobtrusive.”

  “Well—”

  Heimrich hung up. He dialed Washington Hollow Barracks and arranged for a quiet and unobtrusive detective, in civilian clothes, to drive to Cold Harbor Hospital and sit in Dr. James Tennant’s room and make notes of anything Dr. Tennant, in delirium or conscious, might say.

  Heimrich went down the room and sat in a chair in front of the cold fireplace. He left the sofa for Miss Ursula Jameson, assuming she would comply with his request. Forniss sat in a chair at the other end of the sofa. They waited ten minutes, and Miss Jameson came into the room from the upper end of it. She wore a long black robe. Barnes came after her. She walked halfway down the room, her strides long. She stopped.

  “It’s cold in here, Barnes,” she said. “And dark. Turn on some lights and start a fire.”

  Barnes said, “Yes, ma’am,” and pressed a switch. Half a dozen lights came on in wall sconces around the long room. He went out into the entrance foyer. Miss Jameson came on down the room with the same long strides. She sat on the sofa left free for her.

  “Is this never going to end?” Ursula Jameson said. “Aren’t we ever to have peace?”

  Heimrich and Forniss had both stood up. When Ursula was seated, Heimrich sat down again. Forniss went over to lean against the fieldstones of the fireplace.

  “We’re trying to find out who killed your brother, Miss Jameson,” Heimrich said, his voice very low. “Once we have, we won’t bother you any more.”

  “You’ve been over it and over it,” she said. “I’ve told you over and over everything I know about it. I was asleep and—”

  “And dreaming,” Heimrich said. “Yes, I know. It’s not about that, Miss Jameson. About something that happened more than two years ago. About Mrs. Jameson’s tragic accident.”

  She had been looking into the lifeless fireplace. She turned, quickly, and looked at Heimrich. Her gray eyebrows went up, which gave a look of astonishment to her long-nosed face. She said, “What’s that—” in a raised voice and then stopped because Heimrich was looking past her, down the room.

  Barnes was coming up the room with the familiar full log carrier in his hand.

  They waited while he put crumpled newspapers into the fireplace and kindling on top of the paper. He arranged logs very carefully above the kindling. He was a man precise at laying fires, and laying this one took several minutes—several minutes of silence. Finally, he used a lighter to set the newspapers afire. He stood up and watched for a moment while the kindling caught and flames began to lick up against the logs. Then he said, “Will that be all, Miss Jameson?”

  “That will be all, Barnes,” Ursula Jameson said, and watched the growing fire for some seconds and turned toward Heimrich. She said, “What did you ask me, Inspector?”

  “We have to check back on a good many things,” Heimrich said. “Things, often, which don’t have anything to do with what we’re actually interested in. I said we wanted to get clear what happened more than two years ago—two years ago last Memorial Day weekend. When Mrs. Jameson’s horse threw her.”

  “I don’t see what possible bearing that can have,” Ursula Jameson said. “What possible bearing on my brother’s—my brother’s death.”

  “Probably none,” Heimrich said. “Was the late Mrs. Jameson a good rider?”

  “I’d always thought so. She was quite good at a good many things. Of course not—”

  She stopped. Heimrich waited.

  “You’re asking because she was thrown,” Ursula Jameson said. “Into that dreadful wall. Lots of good riders get thrown, Inspector. It’s a part of—well, of what people have taken to calling the game. A chance we all take, I suppose. Didn’t you know that? But then I suppose you don’t ride yourself?”

  It was rather more answer than Heimrich had expected. He replied to the last of it with, “Not much recently, Miss Jameson. Had Mrs. Jameson ever been thrown before, do you know?”

  She shrugged wide shoulders under the black robe.

  “I suppose so,” she said. “I don’t really know. I’ve had horses fall under me in my time, Inspector. With luck, you learn to land.”

  “As I get it,” Heimrich said, “Mrs. Jameson’s horse didn’t fall. He just refused to jump. Do you mind telling me what you remember about the accident, Miss Jameson?”

  “I told people what I knew then,” she said. “Told several men several times. Don’t people like you ever write things down? Things people tell you?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “We do write things down, Miss Jameson. And I’m sorry to have to ask you to tell it all over again. I realize it must be—distressing.”

  “Everything is now,” she said. “My brother’s dead. My dear brother’s—”

  She stopped and put her hands over her face, covering her eyes.

  “You and your sister-in-law decided to go over to the meadow and ride,” Heimrich said. “It was a nice day and you’d felt cooped up. Your nephew was coming up later for the long weekend. And Dr. and Mrs. Tennant. That’s what you told the trooper at the time, according to his report. The two of you were alone in the house, except for the servants—”

  He stopped because Ursula Jameson had taken her hands down from her face and was shaking her head at him. He waited.

  “And Miss Selby,” she said. “She was in Arthur’s office. I remember I could hear her typewriter.”

  “But your brother was in New York. To attend some dinner.”

  “On Fridays she types whether he’s here or not,” she said. “Does over what they’ve done during the week, I suppose. Makes what Arthur calls—” She stopped and shook her head. “I keep forgetting,” she said. “Arthur’s dead. I’ve—I can’t remember what he called it.”

  “A clean copy, perhaps,” Heimrich said. “Miss Selby was here when you and Mrs. Jameson went off to ride?
”

  “I think so. I think I heard her typewriter still going. But I can’t be sure. It was a long time ago. Is it important?”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” Heimrich said. “Mrs. Jameson said she was going riding. Asked you to come along. That was the way it was?”

  “Yes.”

  “You had Frankel row across and saddle the horses. You and Mrs. Jameson went around in the Jeep. That’s what the trooper understood you to say at the time.”

  “That’s the way it was. What difference does it make now?”

  Heimrich said he was just trying to get things straight in his mind. He said that in all investigations there were likely to be ramifications. Miss Ursula Jameson made a sound which was rather like a muted snort.

  “Left the Jeep near the stable, probably,” Heimrich said. “Mounted. Then, Miss Jameson?”

  “Rode over to the bridle path,” Ursula said. “It runs along not far from the fence. Runs through a gap in the stone fence—the fence Janet’s horse refused. She was riding ahead. There’s room enough on the path for two to ride abreast, but she went on ahead. Then she waved and pointed and went off to the left, up the hill. Ophelia—Ophelia was my mare—wanted to go along, but I wouldn’t let her. Janet rode up the hill and down on the other side—down toward the lake. It’s a little hard to explain. You see—”

  “We’ve seen the meadow,” Heimrich told her. “Mrs. Jameson rode up over the rise and down on the other side and out of sight from where you were. And you?”

  “Just jogged along the path. Went through a gap in the fence and to the end of the far field.”

  “Mrs. Jameson wasn’t in sight at any time?”

  “No. The ridge runs the length of both fields. Anyway, I wasn’t looking—trying to look. Ophelia was feeling frisky. She wanted to gallop, but I wouldn’t let her. When we came back she wanted to jump the fence instead of going through the gap. She was trained as a hunter, you know.”

  “I didn’t know,” Heimrich said. “You didn’t let her jump the fence?”

  “My days of jumping were over years ago, Inspector. I’m an old woman. I don’t need to tell you that. You can see that. An ugly old woman with nobody left.”

  She moved her head slowly from side to side. Her lips moved but her voice was hardly audible. “An old, old woman,” he thought she said. Heimrich waited. She said, “All right. I’m sorry.”

  “You rode to the far side of the other field,” Heimrich said. “Rode back along the bridle path. You were back about where you’d started from when you heard the other horse, Mrs. Jameson’s horse. I’m just trying to get things straight in my own mind. That’s the way it was?”

  “Yes. I started back up the rise toward the stable. I—I thought Janet would be there waiting for me. Then I heard the horse whinny—neigh—in the way they do when they’re frightened. I rode up to the top of the rise, and Alphonse—that was the name of her stallion—was—was grazing, Inspector. And Janet—it was awful, Inspector. It was—”

  She broke off and again covered her eyes with her hands, as if to shutter off the memory of what she had seen.

  “I know, Miss Jameson,” Heimrich said. “I’m sorry to have had to put you through all this again. To make you remember things you don’t want to remember. Let’s see if I’ve got it straight.”

  Briefly, he went over what she had just told him, which fitted well enough with what, almost two and a half years before, she had told a State trooper. She nodded her head in agreement with his summary. Yes, she was almost sure that Dorothy Selby had been in the house, at her typewriter, when she and Janet had left it in the Jeep. Yes, her nephew Ronald had been at The Tor when she drove back to it in the Jeep, having decided that there was nothing she could do for Janet. “Nothing anybody could do for her.”

  “After that—well, after that it’s all confused. Vague. They told me afterward that I fainted, or almost fainted. That I was—that I was talking without making sense. I don’t remember, Inspector.”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said. “It was a very shocking thing for you, Miss Jameson. Ronald Jameson was here when you got back. Dr. and Mrs. Tennant came a little later. That’s the way it was?”

  “I guess so. They must have, I suppose. It’s all—all mixed up in my mind.”

  “Of course,” Heimrich said. “There’s just one other small point, Miss Jameson. Then I’ll quit bothering you for now.”

  “I don’t see what all this has to do with—with Arthur’s death. What point, Inspector?”

  “From the time Mrs. Jameson left the path and rode up the hill,” Heimrich said, “about how long was it before you heard her horse neighing? Or, as you told the trooper at the time, almost screaming? And rode up the rise on your horse to see whether something had happened?”

  “I don’t know. Oh, half an hour perhaps. Perhaps a little longer than that.”

  “You didn’t keep track of the time? Because, I suppose, you and Mrs. Jameson wanted to be back here by the time your guests arrived.”

  “Wait,” she said. “I do remember. It was a long time ago, but I do remember. Because I thought of that—of Ronald and the Tennants coming up for the weekend—and looked at my watch. Half an hour at least before I heard Alphonse. Perhaps three quarters of an hour. I remember thinking it was time we got back.”

  “And during that half an hour, or forty-five minutes perhaps, Mrs. Jameson was out of your sight?”

  “Behind the rise. I told you that.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I think I’ve got it all clear in my mind now, I’m sorry to have had to bother you this way.”

  “I suppose you have to,” she said. “I don’t know why, but I suppose you have to. You’re going now, then?”

  “Not quite yet,” Heimrich said. “By the way, can you tell me what Mrs. Jameson looked like?”

  “Her portrait’s up there,” she said, and pointed toward the upper end of the long room. “He had portraits painted of both of them.”

  Heimrich nodded his head. He said, “Your nephew is still around, I take it? I’d like a few words with him. Be all right if I have Barnes or somebody ask him to come down?”

  “I’m going up,” Ursula Jameson said. “If this—this interrogation is over?”

  “Quite over, Miss Jameson.”

  “I’ll tell Ronald you want to see him,” she said, and stood up and walked away from the fire and up the long room. She did not, Merton Heimrich thought again, walk like an old woman. She went out of the room. After a minute or so, Heimrich got up himself and walked up the room.

  The portrait of Janet Jameson was in a heavy gold frame, like that of the portrait of Rebecca Jameson on the wall between the French doors. There was no resemblance between Arthur Jameson’s two wives, except that both of them had been beautiful. (Or, perhaps, made so by the painters who had done portraits of them. Heimrich thought that perhaps one painter had done both portraits. It seemed to him that there was a similarity in method. On the other hand, they would have been done at least twenty years apart. Susan would know, he thought. I can only guess.)

  Janet Jameson did not look to be past forty-five. Probably had not been when she sat for her portrait. Or, as it appeared, stood for it—stood in an evening dress which left her shoulders, and a considerable area of her breasts, bare. She had been tall and slender, unless a painter had been extremely flattering. She had had dark hair which fell to the bare shoulders. She had had blue eyes and a short, shapely nose. Her mouth had been a little large and was shaped in a smile—a warm and somehow glowing smile. When she had been painted she had been, at a guess, in her late twenties—possibly early thirties. But portrait painters can take years off of ages. (Or, of course, add years to them, if they choose. Heimrich did not suppose that they often chose so. Subjects are also customers.)

  He went back to the fire, which was leaping. It was too warm in front of the fire; the room had been warm when Ursula Jameson had come into it and found it cold. Forniss had left the fireplace and gone
to stand near one of the French doors. Heimrich went to stand beside him.

  “Five minutes at the outside to row to this side,” Forniss said. “And the fence is maybe two, three hundred yards from the stable.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said, and joined Forniss in looking through the net-covered glass of the french door. Geoffrey Rankin was sitting in a chaise at the far end of the terrace. A small table beside him held a silver coffee pot and a cup. Rankin was smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper, which Heimrich took to be the New York Times. He was wearing a tweed jacket and what looked like heavyweight gray slacks. He was sitting in the sun and in a sheltered spot.

  “Aunt Ursula says you want to see me.” The voice behind Heimrich and Forniss was heavy. Ronald Jameson hadn’t lost any weight either, and his black hair still bristled. This morning, Heimrich thought, Jameson looked a little younger than he had the day before. He wore a dark blue polo shirt. He did not bulge anywhere beneath the blue shirt. In his late forties or early fifties, Ronald Jameson was keeping his figure. He would never have the slender grace his father had had, but he had a symmetry of his own.

  He was not wearing a jacket.

  “The old girl keeps it damn hot in this house,” Ronald Jameson said. “Always has. Always did, anyway, when I was around as a kid. What do you want to see me about, Inspector? Something about Jan’s accident, my aunt says. She can’t think why. Neither can I, come to that.”

  “We like to get everything clear,” Heimrich said. “Way it’s laid down in the rules, you know.”

  Ronald Jameson said, “Yeah?” and put a good deal of skepticism into the word.

  Heimrich ignored the intonation. He said, “Yes. Waste a lot of time, probably. Maybe we could sit down some place? Over there?”

  He gestured toward the sofa in front of the fire.

  “Too damn hot,” Jameson said. “Terrace, maybe?”

  “Rankin’s on the terrace,” Heimrich said. “Reading the newspaper. I don’t think we want to interrupt him, Mr. Jameson.”

  Jameson went over to the window and looked out at Geoffrey Rankin. He turned back to Heimrich.