21-Not I, Said the Sparrow

by Lockridge, Richard

  Michael got up from a table near the door. He was alone at the table; he drained a cup of coffee as he stood. There was no sign of Joan Collins.

  “The ambulance hasn’t come, Dad,” Michael said. The words still seemed to tumble from his mouth—the mouth from which words usually came so distinctly and so gravely. “He—the body’s—in the lobby. They’ve covered it with something. I suppose—suppose you’ll want to look. It’s pretty awful, Dad.”

  Heimrich has seen many things which were pretty awful to see. He couldn’t remember the first time. He could remember how it had felt, how it had sickened and unnerved. He could feel, again, what young Michael was feeling now.

  He said, “Joan, Michael?”

  “Up in her room,” Michael said. “Mrs. Cushing’s with her. She—I’m afraid she’s terribly shaken up, Dad. She just cries and shakes her head. And sort of trembles.”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said. “I’ll have to talk to her, son. Have her tell me what she saw. Did Mrs. Cushing get in touch with the substation? With Charlie Forniss?”

  “The Lieutenant’s off duty, they told her. They’re trying to find him. A trooper’s on his way down from Cold Harbor, I think.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “We’d better go up and see Miss Collins.” He started toward the lobby and Michael went with him. But then Heimrich stopped and turned back to face the dozen people in the room. All of them were loroking at him.

  “I’m Inspector Heimrich of the state police,” he said. Not that all but two—the two who by their dress, were up from the city—didn’t know he was Inspector Heimrich of the state police, known to most of them as “M. L.” “There’s been an accident, and we have to look into it. I’d appreciate it if all of you would stay around for a while. Shouldn’t be too long. O.K.?”

  Nobody said it wasn’t O.K. Larry Newcombe, of Laurence Newcombe Associates, Realtors, said, “Sure, M. L.”

  Heimrich and Michael Faye went out of the taproom and into the small lobby. There was nobody in the lobby. Nobody living. The body of Samuel Jackson was on a narrow sofa along one wall. A damn uncomfortable sofa, as Heimrich remembered it. That wouldn’t be bothering Sam Jackson now. The sofa was barely long enough for his body, which was covered with a sheet.

  Heimrich lifted one end of the sheet and looked at the face of a longtime friend—at what was left of the face. It was, as Michael had said, pretty awful. The wheel which had gone over Jackson’s head had indeed had tire chains on it

  Michael did not look. He stood at the foot of a wide staircase and looked up it, and waited. Heimrich put the sheet back and joined his son—oh, stepson, to be sure, but it didn’t feel like that. They went up the stairs together, and down a corridor.

  There were two closed doors at the end of the corridor. Michael knocked on one of them and somebody on the other side of the room said, “Yes?”

  “Michael. And Dad’s with me, Mrs. Cushing.” He turned the knob and opened the door.

  The room was large. There was a heavy, darkwood double bed against one wall. At the end of the room there were two wide, double-hung windows, with curtains drawn partly over them. In one wall there was a fireplace, with logs burning in it—burning down a little. Joan Collins was sitting in one of two chairs in front of the fire and Mary Cushing was sitting beside her in the other. Joan wore a quilted white robe. Within Joan’s reach there was a round table with a lamp on it and, beside the lamp, a small brandy glass. The little glass was, Heimrich thought, almost full.

  Michael went across the room and crouched beside Joan. He took both of her hands in his and she put her head down on his shoulder. Her long hair flowed over his shoulder.

  Heimrich went down the room to the windows and parted the curtains over one of them. He looked out on the lighted parking lot, almost directly down on his own ice-glazed Buick. The ice on the pavement partly obscured the painted lines which marked parking slots.

  Rain was not slashing these windows on the south side of the inn. He could, however, see driving rain in the light from the floods, one fixed to the roof of the inn and the other on a pole across from it. Very bright and welcoming, the Old Stone Inn kept its parking lot.

  Heimrich turned back to the room. In the wall opposite the fire there was a door. The door was closed. A connecting door between this bedroom and the next, almost certainly. And the next room Michael’s? Probably.

  He went to the three in front of the fire. Mary Cushing got up and motioned. Heimrich nodded his head and smiled at her and took the chair beside Joan Collins. After a moment, she lifted her head and looked at him. She wasn’t crying at the moment. She had been.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he? The man I saw. He’d have to be dead, wouldn’t he?” Her voice was almost steady.

  “Yes, Joan,” Heimrich said, “he’s dead. It was Sam Jackson—the man we introduced to you at dinner.”

  “I’m sorry,” the girl said. “I’m terribly sorry.”

  “We all are, Joan. Feel up to telling me what you saw? If you don’t—well, it can wait awhile, I suppose.”

  “I don’t think it will get any easier if I put it off,” the girl said. She turned in her chair to face the big man beside her. Michael let go her hands. He did so very slowly. The release was almost a caress.

  “It was this way,” Joan said. “I came up early. Right after you and Mrs. Heimrich left. I was tired and—relaxed, I guess you’d call it. From being in where it was warm. And dry, of course. After that awful rain. Is it still raining, Inspector?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “It’s still raining. Not quite so hard, maybe. Michael didn’t come up here with you?”

  “I asked him not to,” she said. “I—I just wanted to go to sleep. And call Father first to tell him I wouldn’t get there tonight, and that I was all right. Before he started climbing walls. I told you he was like that, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, Joan. You said something about it. You called your father in New York and reassured him. Then?”

  “There was a fire burning. I sat in front of it—right here—for a few minutes. Then I went to bed. I went to sleep right away, I think. Then—”

  She had, she thought, slept only a short time. Not more than half an hour, probably. She wakened because she got too hot. “With the heavy blankets over me.” And there had not seemed to be any air in the room.

  She remembered, then, that she had forgotten to open a window before she went to bed. “I can’t ever sleep unless there’s air coming in.” She had parted the curtains at one of the windows, and pulled one sash up a little. She had thought cold, wet air would come rushing in. It did not. She raised the sash higher and, as she did so, looked out on the lighted parking lot.

  “A man came out. A tall man, wearing a heavy, short coat. He came out from the inn, I thought through the door from the barroom—the place where we all had dinner. He started to walk across the lot. Toward the street, I thought. He didn’t seem to be afraid to walk on the ice.”

  , Sam Jackson had been wearing heavy shoes, with ribbed soles such as Heimrich was now wearing, when he walked to his death. Walked confidently, it appeared. Heimrich waited. Joan had stopped speaking. She was no longer looking at Merton Heimrich. She was looking into the fire. When she spoke again, she seemed to be telling her story to the fire.

  “When he was about a third of the way across the lot, this car backed into him. Backed very suddenly. Its engine must have been running. It was as if—as if it had been waiting for him. Had known he was coming and been waiting. It hit him and knocked him down. I don’t think it ran over him. Not then. He seemed to be trying to get up.”

  The car—a big car—had backed around, and then gone forward. “It sort of jumped forward.” The big car had struck the tall man again. “This time it ran over him. Over—over his head, it looked like. And—just went on going. It had chains on, didn’t it? I heard them clanking.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said, “the car had chains on. Could you tell what kind of car it was, Joan?”
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  “It was a big car, I think. A big station wagon, it looked like. That’s what it was, I think. A big station wagon. And it didn’t have its lights on, Inspector. I think it turned them on just as it started to go out into the street. And then—well, then I began to knock on Michael’s door. Pounded on it, I guess. And to call to him. The door between my room and his, Inspector.”

  “I assumed Michael’s friend would be another boy,” Mary Cushing said, from a chair at the desk counter across the room. “You didn’t say, you know, when you called up about the rooms. If I’d known-—”

  “It’s all right, Mary,” Heimrich said. “No harm done. Made it easier for Miss Collins, actually. Michael had come up by then? Was in his room when you knocked on the door?”

  “I was there, Dad,” Michael said. “I’d just come up. Joanie was —well, in a sort of panic.”

  “With plenty of reason,” Heimrich said. “Notice what color this station wagon was, Joan?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. Dark-colored, I think. But it—it all happened so fast. It was so—unbelievable. It was—well, sort of all over before I realized it was happening at all.”

  “Things do happen like that,” Heimrich told her. “And, of course, with its lights off, you had no chance to see the license number?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought to look anyway,” Joan said. “I can’t pretend I would have. I’m not a very good witness, am I?”

  “Good enough, Joan. Better than most, matter of fact. The car stopped, I suppose. Before it went into the highway. After it turned on its lights. Did you see which way it turned? I mean, up or down. That would be north or south.”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t watch, Inspector. I—I was trying to get to Michael. To tell him what I’d seen happen.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Was there more than one person in this car, could you tell?”

  She couldn’t. It had been dark in the car.

  “But it was your impression, your feeling, that whoever was driving backed into Sam Jackson deliberately? And then deliberately ran over him?”

  “There’s a lot of light in the parking lot,” Joan said. “Even with all the rain, it was bright enough. I don’t see how anybody could have missed seeing him. He was so tall. So—visible.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Sam Jackson was a tall man. Can you show me where this wagon was parked?”

  Michael helped the girl up from the chair. She didn’t appear to need help. She was obviously not averse to a consoling touch. Michael went with them to the window.

  “About there, I think,” Joan said. She pointed to a place about halfway between the taproom door and the street. “It was nosed up to the logs.” Logs formed a barrier between lot and what, in summer, was a flower bed. “It was all by itself. The other cars were parked nearer the door.”

  “Nothing on either side of it,” Heimrich said. “And you think the motor was running?”

  “It must have been. It backed up so fast. And I didn’t hear the starter going. And—wait a minute. I remember now. Fumes were coming out of the exhaust pipe. I could see them.”

  “Yes,” said Heimrich. “A wet, cold night like this, the exhaust would show up. One exhaust pipe or two, did you notice?”

  “I’m not sure, Inspector. If I had to guess, it would be two. It—it all happened so fast.”

  “You saw a lot, Joan,” Heimrich said. “You’re a very good witness. I suppose you haven’t any sleeping pills with you?”

  “Sleeping pills?” She spoke as of something obviously alien, unheard of. “I never have any trouble going to sleep.”

  Heimrich looked at Michael, who shook his head. He looked at Mary Cushing.

  “No, M. L. But I can have some warm milk sent up. Warm milk and aspirin.”

  “That’ll be fine,” Heimrich said. “You get some sleep now, Joan. You too, son. I’ll pick you up in the morning. Though it probably will be later on before the roads are safe. Even if it stops raining and the sun comes out”

  “A train?”

  “There’s a seven forty-eight. But that’s pretty early. And with the power off, it may not be running. We’ll see in the morning. All right?”

  She nodded her head.

  “So,” Heimrich said, “drink the milk Mrs. Cushing will send up to you and take the aspirins. And Michael will be right next door. And I wouldn’t lock the door, son. So Joan can get you if she needs you. Not that she will, of course.”

  “We hadn’t planned to lock—” He broke off.

  Heimrich did not appear to hear him. He said, “Sleep well, both of you,” and went out of the room and down the stairs.

  The body of Sam Jackson still lay on the narrow, hard sofa in the lobby. Heimrich was not surprised. The Cold Harbor hospital has only two ambulances. On a night like this, with driving conditions what they were, the ambulances would have more pressing duties than the removal of corpses. The dead are dead; the living may yet be kept so.

  The brightness in the taproom reminded Heimrich of a question he had forgotten to ask, and should have asked. When she went to open her bedroom window, had she turned on the lights? Or found her way by the flickering light of the fire? He paused before he went on into the taproom. Should he go back up and ask?

  If I had been waiting in a car for a man to back into, to run over outside an inn, I’d have looked up for a lighted window, Heimrich thought. For somebody who might be watching; for the silhouette of that person. Such a check would be only prudent. Maybe I’d better go back and find out.

  He decided not to. His reappearance, his question, would further frighten an already tense young woman, a girl who already probably would be tormented by ugly dreams. Michael was a strong and remarkably quick young man. He would be in the next room and the door between the rooms would not be locked.

  Probably won’t even be closed, Heimrich thought, and went on into the taproom.

  Buy Dead Run Now!

  About the Author

  Richard Lockridge (1898–1982) was one of the most popular names in mystery fiction from the 1940s through the ’70s. He is best known for the prolific detective series he wrote with his wife, Frances, including the Mr. and Mrs. North Mysteries, Nathan Shapiro Mysteries, and Captain Heimrich Mysteries. Upon Frances’s death in 1963, Richard continued writing, delivering new and much darker Nathan Shapiro and Captain Heimrich books. His works have been adapted for Broadway, film, television, and radio.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1973 by Richard Lockridge

  Cover design by Andy Ross

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-5065-4

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