“I won’t—”
Lyle was interrupted. A blonde woman—a somewhat plumpish blonde woman—came through a doorway and into the entrance hall behind the maid. She wore a summer robe which was yellow and black and floating. She walked carefully on the waxed oak floor of the entrance hall. She said, “Lucy. You mustn’t send people away. It isn’t hospitable.”
Then, to Lyle, she said, “Do come in, dear.”
There was South in the blonde woman’s voice. There was also, Lyle realized, a considerable blur in it. The blonde woman swayed, very slightly, and put a hand on top of the high back of a hall chair.
Lyle said, “Mrs. Wainright?” and Mrs. Wainright said, “Of course, dear. Did you say you were from this newspaper? But I’m sure we already subscribe, dear. Don’t we take the newspaper, Lucy?”
Lucy said, “Yes’m. We take the newspaper.”
“I’m so sorry, dear,” Mrs. Wainright said and took her hand from the back of the chair and swayed slightly and put the hand back on it. “We already take the newspaper.”
“Mrs. Wainright,” Lucy said, “you oughtn’t to be up with that headache of yours. You ought to be sitting down, anyway.”
“Headache?” Mrs. Wainright said. “I haven’t got a headache, Lucy. And this pretty young lady’s come all the way up here to get a subscription to the newspaper and it’s a warm day and I’m sure she’d like something cool to drink.” The “something” was almost “someshing.” Mrs. Paul Wainright then said, “Juleps,” on a note of triumphant recognition and went back through the doorway she had come out of. But then she reappeared, partially, in the doorway and said, “Do come in, dear. I haven’t seen anybody all day. Plenty of ice, Lucy.” She then receded into the room.
Lyle looked at the pretty girl in the blue uniform and Lucy shrugged her shoulders slightly. Then she said, “She wants you to, miss. She gets sort of upset when Mr. Wainright’s away.”
Lyle Mercer was somewhat upset herself, but did not say so. She went into the room Mrs. Wainright had vanished into.
It was a big room. Decorator-furnished, Lyle thought. With no regard for its cost. There were French doors along one side of the room, and sunlight slanted through them and lay warm on a yellow carpet. Through the French doors she could see a maple tree, resplendent with autumn.
Mrs. Wainright was sitting in a deep chair with her back to the sunlight. There was a tall, half-empty glass on a mirror-topped small table by the chair.
“It isn’t about a subscription, Mrs. Wainright,” Lyle said, and realized that she had followed the blonde woman into the room to clear that up. “It’s about an advertisement your husband put in the Citizen. We—that is, the publisher, Mr. Wallis —is a little worried about it.”
“Worried?” Mrs. Wainright said. “About what, dear? You said, ‘advertisement?’”
“A want ad,” Lyle said. “About having a wedding dress to sell.”
Mrs. Wainright looked at Lyle with widening blue eyes. She picked up the glass beside her and drank from it and put it down again. Then she said, “Wedding dress?”
“Size ten,” Lyle said. “Never used. That’s what the ad said.”
“But how touching,” Mrs. Wainright said. “To think of some poor child—” She did not finish. She shook her head and put her hand on the glass again, but did not lift it to her lips. She had small, plump fingers and reddened nails. She shook her head again and said, “Somebody put an advertisement like that in your newspaper? But what a tacky thing to do, dear.”
The word “tacky” rattled briefly in Lyle’s mind. “Tacky” meant sticky; paint not entirely dry is “tacky.” But apparently the word meant something else to Mrs. Wainright. “Mean?” Was that what the word meant to this soft woman; this almost pretty woman? In, Lyle thought, her late forties.
Lyle had brought the tear sheet with her. She went over to Mrs. Wainright and held the sheet out to her, and Mrs. Wainright took it and held it very close to her eyes. She looked up and shook her head, and Lyle leaned down and pointed to the ad about the wedding dress.
“That’s what it says,” Mrs. Wainright said, after she had peered at it. She spoke as if Lyle had come for confirmation to a person more experienced in reading.
“Mrs. Wainright,” Lyle said, and spoke slowly. “The advertisement was sent in to the paper by your husband. It was signed by him. That is, there was a typed signature but it was your husband’s name. And there was money in the envelope to pay for the insertion. There was another envelope with the text of another ad typed in it and also signed ‘Paul Wainright.’ It’s the other one Mr. Wallis checked. There.”
She pointed again, this time to the advertisement which offered a horse and a rifle for sale.
“Alex was a bay,” Mrs. Wainright said. “But he’s been dead ever since—”
She began to cry. She groped for her glass and touched it so that it swayed. But then she closed her plump fingers on the glass and held it fast and after a second lifted it and drank from it. She put it down again, gropingly, and went on crying. Lyle waited, wishing she were somewhere else.
Mrs. Wainright looked up at her. “There wasn’t any wedding dress,” she said. “It wasn’t time yet for that.”
She put her head in her hands, covering her eyes.
There were footfalls behind Lyle. They were rather heavy as they crossed the strip of polished wood between door and yellow carpet; softer on the carpet. Lyle turned and looked up at a tall lean man in riding clothes. The slanting sun shown on his brilliantly polished boots.
“Florence dear,” Paul Wainright said, “you promised —promised to stay in bed with the shades drawn. And to take aspirin. Not to—” He did not finish that. He said, “You’re Miss Mercer, aren’t you?” to Lyle. “I’m sorry, but my wife really ought to be in bed.”
He turned, then, back to the door and said, “Lucy,” raising his voice.
Lucy had evidently followed him from the entrance hall. She was in the doorway. She said, “Yes, Mr. Wainright?”
“Mrs. Wainright should be in bed,” Wainright told the pretty girl in the blue uniform. “Taking aspirin. She forgets to.”
Lucy said, “Yes, sir. I told her that. Her headaches are bad things.”
She came into the room and went to the crying woman. She said, “Now you come on and lie down, ma’am. Like Mr. Wainright says.”
“She came about that ad in the paper,” Florence Wainright said, in a choked voice. “That awful tacky advertisement. She says—”
“Never mind, dear,” Paul Wainright told his wife. “I’ll talk to Miss Mercer.”
“I’m sorry,” Lyle said. “I—I came at a bad time.”
“She gets these headaches,” Wainright said. “She won’t take care of herself. She forgets to take her medicine.”
He went over to his wife’s chair and stood behind it and lifted his wife up. When she was on her feet she swayed a little, and he steadied her. He said, “There, Flo. There, honey,” in a soothing voice and moved his head sharply as a signal to the maid.
Lucy put an arm around Florence Wainright and said, “Now you just come along with me, ma’am. Get you all tucked in.”
Florence Wainright groped down and picked up her glass. Then, with Lucy’s arm around her, she went across the room and through the doorway. She walked steadily enough. She held the still half-full glass carefully so that its contents would not spill.
Paul Wainright watched his wife and Lucy until they had gone through the doorway and out of sight.
“Very bad things, these headaches of hers,” he said then. “A kind of migraine. Make her rather dizzy sometimes. What did she mean about a tacky advertisement, Miss Mercer? In the Citizen?”
“Yes,” Lyle said. “Mr. Wallis thought we ought to ask about it. I’m afraid I came at a bad time.”
“You had no way of knowing,” Wainright said. “An advertisement, I gather, that has something to do with us? But sit down, Miss Mercer. Can’t I get you something?”
&nbs
p; “Nothing, thanks,” Lyle said. “The advertisement—there were two of them, really—was inserted in your name, Mr. Wainright. Mr. Wallis didn’t see them until today. We would have verified them if—well, if anybody had noticed. They were printed last Thursday. Here.”
She held the tear sheet out to the tall man, who took it and motioned her toward a chair. She sat down and looked up at him. She said, “The ones checked, Mr. Wainright.”
He read. She watched his eyes move as he read each of the check-marked advertisements a second time. Then he looked at her and shook his head.
“The one about the wedding dress is odd,” he said. “The other—somebody just wants to sell a bay hunter and a rifle. I’m sorry, Miss Mercer. But I don’t see how we—well, how we come into it.”
She told him how the Wainrights came into it. He said, “God damn it to hell. Some God-damn—” and stopped and read the advertisements again. He looked at her again and said, “Whoever sent these in stipulated the date of insertion? You said that, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“The issue of October tenth,” he said. “It—somebody is being very cruel, Miss Mercer. Viciously cruel. Had my wife seen these before—before you showed them to her?”
“I’m sure she hadn’t,” Lyle said. “You—you didn’t send them in, Mr. Wainright. Somebody used your name. Just—just to hurt you?”
“Some very cruel person,” Wainright said. “Some—unspeakable person. Who knew a date.”
Lyle looked up at him and slightly shook her head and waited.
“A year ago Thursday,” Wainright said, “our daughter was killed. In a hunting accident. We—we saw her thrown. She was riding a bay. He broke his leg when he fell with her and he had to be shot. With a hunting rifle. A twenty-five Winchester. This was when we were still living near Brewster. Riding with the Brewster Hunt.”
“Your daughter,” Lyle said. “Was she engaged to be married?”
“Yes,” Wainright said. “I say ‘our’ daughter. Virginia was Florence’s daughter, really. Virginia Gant, her name was. But we both always—always thought of her as our daughter. I think she had come to think of herself in the same way—as our daughter, I mean. I don’t mean she ever forgot her own father. She was sixteen when he died. He’d—oh, taught her to ride and everything. She—”
He stopped and shook his head. He said, “I need a drink, Miss Mercer. You’re sure I can’t—?”
“Really not, Mr. Wainright,” Lyle said. “I’m sorry I—”
She stopped speaking because he was walking across the big room. He walked toward a bar at the end of it. She watched him pour Scotch into a glass and add a little water. He brought it back and sat in the chair his wife had been sitting in. He raised his glass toward Lyle and drank from it.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m going over and over it. The way some bastard planned I would—planned both Flo and I would. It’s nothing to harrow you with, Miss Mercer. And—nothing to be printed.”
“I’ll have to tell Mr. Wallis,” Lyle said. “I’m sure he won’t print anything about it. But—”
She broke off. He took another swallow from his glass, and, when she did not go on, said, “But what, Miss Mercer? Writing about it would only make things worse for us. Be another cruelty. A meaningless cruelty.”
She had not, she told him, been thinking of that. She had been thinking that something should be done to find out who was responsible for so cruel an action. “Because,” she said, “whoever wants to hurt you and Mrs. Wainright will—well, he might think of some other way to hurt again. You’ve no idea who might have done this, Mr. Wainright?”
“None. No, none at all. Just somebody who wants to hurt us. I’ve no idea why.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “if you went to the police they could do something.”
“I don’t know what,” Wainright said. “Or that putting an advertisement in a newspaper and signing somebody else’s name to it is a legal offense. Something the police would feel they had to do anything about. And what could they do? Have you still got these envelopes the ads came in? Or the paper they were written on? For—oh, I suppose, fingerprints and that sort of thing?”
“No, I don’t think so. Mr. Wallis would have told me if we had. But—it was a dreadful thing to do. As you said, a vicious thing. Somebody ought—” she paused and shook her head. “Somebody ought to do something,” Lyle Mercer said. “It’s like—oh, anonymous letters. Obscene telephone calls. Things that ought to be stopped.”
He shook his head slowly.
“There isn’t anything anybody can do,” he said. “Nothing the police or anybody could do. Somebody wanted to hurt us. I don’t know who or why. Well, he has. Probably that will be the end of it, Miss Mercer. We’ll get a few answers to these ads, probably. Not many, I shouldn’t think. I can just tear them up. Not show them to Florence. Not upset her any more. Hope that —that this will fade out of her mind the way things do. If there’s anything else—” He shook his head again. “But probably there won’t be,” he said. “We’ve been reminded of a tragic thing—reminded to be hurt. I can’t imagine why. Can’t imagine who would want to do such a thing.”
“We’ve been made a party to it,” Lyle said. “I mean the Citizen has.”
“Innocently,” Paul Wainright told her.
“Carelessly, Mr. Wallis will think,” Lyle said. “He’s very proud of the paper. And he’s a very curious man, Mr. Wainright. Hates to have things hanging in midair. Things unresolved.”
“You mean,” Wainright said, “that he’ll think there’s a story in it.”
“Partly that. Mostly that the Citizen has been used. Look, there’s a State Police inspector who lives in Van Brunt. He’s very good, everybody says. A man named Heimrich. I know him. Know his wife better. If you told him about this he might be able to do something.”
Wainright shook his head again. Then he said, “It’s not a crime, Miss Mercer. It’s a—a private thing. Not a thing for the police. Something Florence and I will just have to take. Take sitting down. You can’t fight shadows, Miss Mercer.” Then, in a dim way, he smiled at her. “Oh,” he said, “I realize you’re of an age not to accept that. An age to fight shadows. This editor of yours. I suppose he’s older. Has learned to accept things.”
“I suppose,” Lyle said, and thought of the black-haired man who spent his Saturdays not accepting things which had crept into the Citizen. “No,” she said, “he isn’t, really. Oh, he’s older than I am. But he still fights shadows. And he’ll feel that the Citizen is part of—part of this ugly thing.”
“And try to do something about it?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to tell him about it.”
“You said,” Wainright told her, “that you thought he wouldn’t print anything about it. Be party to dragging it up again. She was a gay, live thing, our daughter. And—snuffed out because her horse refused a jump. Can’t it rest there, Miss Mercer?”
“Somebody doesn’t want it to,” she said.
“Some psychopath. Some sadist.”
“People like that can be dangerous, Mr. Wainright,” Lyle said. “You ought to go to the police.”
“There’d be no point to it,” Wainright said and then, rather abruptly, finished his drink and stood up. He said, “I’m going up and see if my wife is all right, Miss Mercer. Tell your editor what you’ve found out. Tell him I hope he doesn’t print anything about it. Will you do that?”
She said she would do that, and he walked with her to the door. They looked out at the blazing hills and down toward the sparkle of the Hudson.
“It’s such a pretty day, isn’t it?” Paul Wainright said. “There was fog this morning, but it’s all burned off.”
He watched the little black Volks go down the drive before he went back into the house.
4
The afternoon sun slanted on the terrace and they lay side by side in chaises, facing the sun. From where they lay they could look down a wooded slope, bright wit
h color, and see the Hudson glittering far below. It was, Susan Heimrich said, almost like summer except that in summer, real summer, the sun would be at this hour way up there. She pointed way up there. “Summer slips through our fingers,” Susan said to the big man beside her. “I want to clutch it.”
“A habit it has,” Merton Heimrich said. “Did Joe Clifford say he’d bring the wood?”
“Tuesday or Wednesday,” Susan said. “Which probably means Friday or Saturday. And could we take a cord and a half while he’s got it? I said we could.”
To which Inspector M. L. Heimrich, New York State Police, said “hmmm.” Then he said, “They’re very horsy, aren’t they?”
“Very,” Susan said. “And did they keep telling you about this fox they call ‘Grandpa?’ The one who’s quit showing up?”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “They seem quite worried about Grandpa. Talked a lot about mange. Perhaps he just got bored with them. Same people, same hounds. Perhaps he just got old.”
He held a hand out to her—to a wife who seemed to him so much younger, so inappropriately married to an aging hippopotamus. She took the large, square hand which belonged to her large solid man. Neither of them said anything about it. For some time neither of them said anything, but sat quietly in the slanting sun.
“Colonel’s more than usually depressed today,” Susan said, after a time. “Mite’s very disappointed in him. He won’t play.”
“Colonel’s getting along too,” Heimrich said. “He is putting away childish things.”
Colonel, who is out-sized even for a Great Dane, was lying in the shade of an ash tree, just beyond the terrace, on the grass. He had his great head down on his paws. Hearing his name, he slightly moved his tail, which was inadequate for a dog his size. He made a sound which was like a minor moan.
The all-black cat, whose name had once been a good deal more appropriate than it was that afternoon, jumped at the moving tail. Colonel sighed deeply and quit moving it.
Risky Way to Kill Page 3
