Risky Way to Kill

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  “To,” Heimrich said, “a man named Pointer. Andrew Pointer.”

  Pointer, who was a script writer for television, had been a house guest of the Wainrights. He was in his middle twenties; he had not ridden with the hunt that morning, or any morning.

  After they had got a Jeep into the field and taken Virginia’s body to the Wainright house in it, Wainright had got his rifle and ridden back and killed the stallion.

  “A bay stallion,” Wallis said. Heimrich closed his eyes. He said, “Yes. A bay.”

  “The girl,” Susan said. “Was there a physical description of her?”

  “Blonde,” Heimrich said, without opening his eyes. “Five feet five or thereabouts. Blue eyes. Weight about a hundred and four.” He opened his eyes and looked at Susan.

  “Yes,” Susan said, “a size ten, at a guess. Perhaps even an eight.”

  “Only,” Lyle Mercer said, “there wasn’t any wedding dress.”

  “Did anybody besides Wainright see the horse refuse? And throw the girl?” Robert Wallis asked Heimrich. He leaned forward toward Heimrich, so that the light chair tilted under him.

  “The girl’s mother, apparently,” Heimrich said. “She had slowed in the next field to wait for the others to catch up. She looked back, she says, and saw it happen. Not very clearly. She was a hundred yards or so into the field. Saw the girl falling and her husband jumping his horse back over the wall.”

  “So,” Wallis said, “it went down as accidental death? Your men—I mean the State Police men—were satisfied?”

  “Our men,” Heimrich said. “The coroner. They have coroners in Putnam County. Yes, Mr. Wallis. Accidental death.”

  “Why,” Wallis said, “would anybody want to bring it up? A meaningless, tragic thing?”

  Heimrich did not know. A crackpot—the world was full of crackpots. Conceivably, someone who was fanatically against hunting. People are fanatically against a great many things. More probably, somebody who wanted to hurt Paul and Florence Wainright.

  “There is evil under a good many surfaces,” Heimrich said. “A kind of evil the law can’t touch. Until, unless, it becomes evil in action.”

  “This is,” Wallis said, in his grating, angry voice.

  “Not to the law,” Heimrich said. “Wainright is right about that, Mr. Wallis. It’s nothing the law can reach. If the Citizen gets any more advertisements that look phony—and, naturally, appear to involve Wainright—let me see them before you print them. I doubt if you’ll get any. The bolt’s been shot.”

  “And gone home,” Lyle Mercer said. “The poor troubled woman. It’s all—all so cruel. So—needless.”

  “This kid who was going to marry the girl,” Wallis said, and stood up. “I’d like to talk to the kid. You said his name is Pointer?”

  “Andrew Pointer,” Heimrich said.

  “And that he writes television scripts?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Yes, he does come to mind, doesn’t he? A year ago he was living in the city, Mr. Wallis. In the East Forties.” Heimrich closed his eyes for a moment. “East Forty-sixth,” Heimrich said. And gave an address.

  5

  As he drove her back to the country club to pick up her car, Robert Wallis was a silent man. He leaned forward over the wheel as he drove. He always, Lyle thought, seems to lean forward, to thrust at things. He drove fast and he drove well. There were a good many cars in the club’s parking lot, as there usually were on Saturday evenings. He remembered where Lyle had put her Volks, which was more than she remembered, and pulled up almost beside it. He turned, abruptly, and looked at her. He said, “Make anything of it, child?”

  He sounded angry, she thought. He sounded demanding.

  “Something like a practical joke,” Lyle said. “Played by somebody with a grudge against the Wainrights.”

  He continued to look at her for some seconds.

  “It doesn’t feel like that to me,” he said, then. “The way it feels to me, somebody wants to bring the girl’s death up. Without involving himself in bringing it up. Use your head, Lyle.”

  It was a command, brusque.

  “It was an accident,” Lyle said. “The horse refused. The girl wasn’t set for that. Horses do, sometimes.”

  “I don’t know a damn thing about horses,” Wallis said. “Or want to. You ride them, child?”

  “Since I was ten,” Lyle said. “Not much recently.”

  “Jump them?”

  “I used to. It isn’t difficult. Mostly the horse knows what to do.”

  “The one this girl was riding sure as hell didn’t,” Wallis said. “Somebody wonders why, maybe. Wants other people to wonder.”

  “It was a year ago,” Lyle said. “You mean, somebody thought it wasn’t an accident? And waited a year to bring it up. And then brought it up in this roundabout way. This devious way. Hoping what?”

  “That people would see the advertisement about the wedding dress. Because it was—well, the more you think about it the stranger it feels. The more it sticks out. ‘Size ten, never used.’ There’s a poignancy about it, isn’t there?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Hoping somebody would get curious and —look into it. And bring something out. But if there’s something to bring out—or somebody thinks there’s something to bring out—why not be direct about it? Go to the police?”

  “Somebody with nothing tangible to go on,” Wallis said. “With—just call it an uneasy feeling.”

  “It was a cruel thing to do,” Lyle said, and pulled up her door latch.

  “Growing out of bitterness,” Wallis said. “Who would be likely to be bitter, child?”

  “Oh,” she said, “the man who was going to marry the girl. The man you told the Inspector you want to talk to. What’s his name?”

  “Andrew Pointer,” Wallis said. “As in a breed of dog.”

  “Pat,” Lyle said. “And, apparently, a man who makes up stories for television.”

  She got out of the station wagon. She turned back and spoke again through the open window.

  “And waits a year to do anything,” she said.

  “You’re an argumentative kid,” Wallis said. “We don’t know he waited a year, do we? For all we know, he may have needled the Wainrights every hour on the hour. And got nowhere.”

  “Probably,” Lyle said, “because there’s nowhere to get.”

  “Go home,” Wallis said. He started the motor. “And hide that pretty head of yours in your sandpile.”

  He’s very difficult, Lyle thought, getting into the Volks. He gets fixed on things, she thought, driving the Volks home. He’s a scratchy man, she thought, taking a shower. I wonder whether he was this way before his wife died. I wonder how his wife put up with him. He must all the time have made mountains out of molehills. The way he’s doing—

  The telephone interrupted her and she answered on the extension in her room, because her parents had gone to the Petersons’ for cocktails. She was supposed to join them there, but had been doubtful about it. Reggie Peterson was a nice enough boy, but he was at the pawy stage. And, she thought, so very young about it. She said, “Hello?” into the telephone.

  “Miss Mercer, please,” a woman said.

  “This is she.”

  “This is Florence Wainright,” the woman said. “I wanted to tell you how thoughtful it was of you to come to us this noon. About that strange, tacky advertisement.”

  “Mr. Wallis was worried about it,” Lyle said. “He felt we—that is, the newspaper—should have checked before the advertisement was published.”

  “I’m afraid I was a little vague when you came, honey,” Florence Wainright said. “Headaches like I have make me sort of muzzy. After I’d had my nap I waked up and thought, I was rude to the sweet child. Really rude.”

  She didn’t, Lyle thought, sound ‘muzzy’ now. She didn’t make any special sense, but she didn’t sound muzzy.

  “You weren’t at all,” Lyle said. “I shouldn’t have barged in on you like that when you weren’
t feeling up to things.”

  “Oh, but you should,” Florence said. “And we do appreciate what you tried to do. You and your Mr. Wallis. It was a kindness, really. We both feel that.” She paused for an instant. “Mr. Wainright and I, I mean, dear.”

  “It was—” Lyle began and was interrupted.

  “What I really called for,” Florence Wainright said, “was to see if we couldn’t have dinner together. Paul—my husband, that is—has had to go into the city to see a client. And—well, I want to talk to somebody. But I suppose you’re all tied up. A dear, pretty young thing like you.”

  “You mean this evening?”

  “I surely do, honey. Because—” She paused again. “It would be so dear of you if you could possibly. Because—well, sometimes it’s kind of upsetting to be alone with nobody to talk to. And Paul’s had this engagement for simply weeks and it’s dreadfully important to him. Business.”

  She gave the last word deference in her tone.

  “I’m not very good at being alone,” Florence said, not waiting for Lyle to say anything. “Back home there was always somebody to talk to.”

  “I am free,” Lyle said. “Should I come there, Mrs. Wainright?”

  “It’s just too wonderful,” Florence said. “No, honey. There’s nobody but Lucy today, and all she can do is frozen things. I’d say the club, but there’s a do or something, isn’t there?”

  “The Saturday night dance,” Lyle said. “Special because it’s Columbus Day.”

  “So buzzy,” Florence Wainright said. “The Inn? I’ll call Mrs. Oliphant, and I’m sure she can take care of the two of us. In —what time is it, honey? My watch has stopped again. He says it’s because I forget to wind it. He says I’m always forgetting things.”

  Lyle’s watch was on the dressing table. She could just reach it.

  “It’s almost six,” Lyle said.

  “Would six-thirty be too early? Or seven, if that would be better.”

  “Seven,” Lyle said.

  “You’re a dear,” Florence said. “Really a dear, honey. I’ll call Mrs. Oliphant.”

  The telephone clicked with finality, and Lyle put her own receiver back in its cradle and sat for some seconds looking absently at it. The invitation, out of the blue from a woman she had met only once, was puzzling. Her acceptance was equally puzzling. It would have been so easy to say that she was tied up for the evening; it would have been partly true, if one counted the Petersons. She had been told to put her head in her sandpile. A strange, jarring man, Robert Wallis. Put her head in her sandpile. What a thing to say. No, that wasn’t precisely what he had said. Put your “pretty” head in your sandpile.

  A breeze came through an open window, and the breeze, unexpectedly, was cool. It’s almost like summer today, she thought, but it’s really mid-October. The evening is reminding itself of that. And me, she added, shivering slightly. She got a robe and wore it while she put a face on. When she dressed, she put on a gray wool dress which had a V of yellow at the neck and yellow cuffs. It was time to think of autumn clothes.

  It was not cool when she went out to the garage, but it was not warm either. As she drove down the drive she switched the car lights on. She didn’t really need them yet, but she didn’t quite not need them.

  By the time she reached the Old Stone Inn she needed the lights. The parking lot was almost filled, but the Volks was undemanding of space. She walked in through the side door, the taproom door, of the Inn. Probably Mrs. Oliphant would have given them a table there.

  There were a good many people in the taproom, which had been rearranged since the hunt breakfast. Most of the people in the long room were men, and near the bar, men were throwing darts at a target and making a good deal of noise about it. Of course—Saturday night here, as well as at the country club. On Saturday nights, as her father said, the Old Stone Inn changed into the village pub, even to the extent of a dart game. On Saturday nights even the locals ate—if they ate at the Inn at all—in the main dining room, on other nights left by locals to “off-the-roaders.”

  Lyle crossed the taproom to the door which let into the small lobby. Mrs. Oliphant would be stationed there, probably abetted by Tony, who would be wearing a dinner jacket in honor of Saturday night. Instead of the maroon jacket he wore as a waiter on lesser nights.

  It was Mrs. Oliphant, in a black dress with a white collar. Mrs. Oliphant said, “Hello, Lyle dear. Are your parents with you? Because if they are I’m afraid I’m going to have to keep you wai—”

  “No,” Lyle said. “Mrs. Wainright was going to call for a table. Just for two.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Oliphant said. “She didn’t say you were the other one. I supposed—anyway, it’s all ready, dear.”

  Lyle followed Mrs. Oliphant across the big dining room, which was filled. Most of the men were wearing city clothes; were off-the-roaders. It was an open room, with a good many tables in the middle of it. (Which was one reason most of the locals preferred to eat in the comparative snugness of the bar.) But the table Mrs. Oliphant led Lyle to was in a corner. Mrs. Oliphant took a “Reserved” card off the table and said, “Here you are, dear,” and there Lyle Mercer was. She was still a little puzzled as to why she was.

  A waiter she had never seen before, and whose maroon jacket didn’t fit, said, “Cocktail before dinner, miss?” Lyle said she was meeting someone and would wait, and the imported waiter said, “Of course, miss,” but not much as if he meant it, and went away.

  She had got to the table at a little after seven. She waited for almost fifteen minutes.

  It was noisy in the big room, and there were a good many children. Some of the men were not wearing neckties, and two of them—two in sight—were not wearing jackets, either. Standards relaxed themselves on Saturday nights, a fact over which Mrs. Oliphant gloomily shook her head. “You’d think,” she had once said, bitterly, to Lytton Mercer, “that there was a Come-as-you-are sign out front.”

  Mrs. Oliphant, looking a little as if she were herself wearing a dinner jacket, came across the room, and Florence Wainright came after her, on very high heels. She wore a black dress which, even when it was still halfway across the room, looked to Lyle like Saks or, perhaps, Bergdorf’s. She wore a black jacket over the sleek black dress, and the jacket was fringed with fur. She looked city, and as if she would not approve of tieless men, let alone men who did not wear jackets, in restaurants.

  She sat down. She said, “Honey. May I call you Lyle? It was so sweet of you. On the spur of the moment, this way.”

  “It was good of you to ask me,” Lyle said, for want of anything better and with the feeling that there should have been.

  This was, Lyle thought, a different Florence Wainright. Earlier in the day, in a loose robe, there had been a physical looseness about the blonde woman. She was much tighter now; she also seemed appreciably younger. Early forties now; not late forties. Of course, she had had a headache earlier in the day. A headache at the least.

  “I hope your headache’s gone,” Lyle said.

  “Headache? Oh, of course. They come and go, honey. An hour’s rest and an aspirin or two. Shouldn’t we have a little something to drink?”

  She did not wait to be answered. She turned in her chair and said, “Oh, miss,” to a waitress who was passing, leaning a little to her right under a heavy tray. The waitress nodded her head, somewhat crookedly, and continued to pass.

  “They’re very busy Saturday nights,” Lyle said.

  They waited for several minutes, and during them Mrs. Wainright turned several times in her chair, keeping watch. Finally, the imported waiter in the jacket which didn’t fit too well stopped at their table and said, “Yes, ladies? A cocktail before dinner?”

  “Bourbon and water,” Mrs. Wainright said. “Not too much water.” She turned to Lyle, hostess again. She said, “And you, dear?”

  Lyle hesitated a moment; thought, transiently, of ordering a Shirley Temple. She shooed the thought away. She said, “A martini, please. Very dry,
please.”

  The waiter went away.

  “I can never drink martinis,” Mrs. Wainright said. “They go right to my head. Paul drinks them, but I always say that men are different.”

  Lyle stopped herself from saying, “Do you?” and merely nodded her head.

  “I’m so terribly sorry I had that mean headache this afternoon, dear,” Mrs. Wainright said. “When you went to all that trouble to drive way out there to ask about that mean, tacky advertisement. Who could have done a dreadful thing like that?”

  Lyle said she didn’t know. She said, “We should have caught it. Mr. Wallis is upset about it.”

  “Just a typed name,” Mrs. Wainright said and shook her blonde, now-shining head. “My husband’s name. How could anyone?”

  “I don’t know,” Lyle said. “Somebody’s who’s not quite right, probably. What Inspector Heimrich calls a—” She stopped herself, clearly not in time.

  “Inspector Heimrich?” Mrs. Wainright said, and it seemed to Lyle that the soft voice, with its Southern overlay, sharpened. “You don’t mean that policeman?”

  Her voice repelled the thought of a policeman.

  “Yes,” Lyle said. “I guess I do, Mrs. Wainright. They live in Van Brunt, you know. They’re very nice people. Mrs. Heimrich has the fabric shop on the avenue. ‘Susan Faye, Fabrics.’”

  “A shop?” Mrs. Wainright said. “Gracious. Faye? It almost sounds Irish.”

  “Her first husband was named Faye,” Lyle said. “He was killed in Korea.” She paused for a moment. “He was an Air Force captain,” she added. It seemed something Mrs. Paul Wainright would want to know.

  “And she keeps a shop,” Florence Wainright said, with some disbelief in her voice. But her voice had become soft again.

  “Her family has lived around here for a long, long time,” Lyle said. “I’ve known her since I was a little girl.”

  Florence Wainright said, “Well.”

  The waiter came; he took drinks off a tray and put them on the table. Lyle said, “Thank you,” for hers. The waiter said, “You want to order, ladies?”