“Presently,” Heimrich said. “Sit down, Mrs. Prender. Tell me about Miss Fowler.”
“Nothing to tell about Lucy,” Mrs. Prender said. “Except she’s just lit out. They’re afraid of dead people. Everybody knows that.”
“Not taking her clothes,” Heimrich said. “Or her suitcase. That’s what you told the trooper, isn’t it?”
“Her grip’s under the bed,” Mrs. Prender said. “There was room in the closet but she just pushed it under the bed. I don’t know about her clothes. Some are still in the closet. I told the other policeman about that.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “Did she take a handbag, Mrs. Prender?”
“I guess so. It’s not in her room, far’s I could see.”
“What does she look like, Mrs. Prender?”
“She’s a colored girl,” the square woman said. “Not very big. Maybe some would think she’s pretty, for all she’s a nigra.”
“Very dark? Her complexion, I mean?”
“Medium,” Mrs. Prender said. “Just brown I’d call it. Though now, from what I hear, they’ve all started calling themselves ‘blacks.’”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “Black hair, I suppose? Straight or curly?”
“Straight,” Mrs. Prender said. “Not black, really. Sort of brown like. She’d had something done to it, I shouldn’t wonder.”
Mrs. Prender’s hair was straight, too—straight and a rather streaky gray. She hadn’t had anything done to it. She wouldn’t —Heimrich scanned his mind for the phrase—she wouldn’t hold with having something done to her hair.
“A small girl, you told the trooper.”
“Shorter than I am,” Mrs. Prender, who was, at a guess, five feet five. “Doesn’t weigh much of anything. Nice little figure, I’ll say that for her. The poor lady set a store by her, seemed like.”
“She is—was—Mrs. Wainright’s personal maid, I gather?”
“Lot of people in, she’d help wait on people. And mostly she did her own room. Except when I make all the beds up fresh for the laundry.”
“Which you did yesterday, you told the trooper. And you told him you were pretty sure she hadn’t slept in hers last night”
“Lots of times she didn’t. Lots of times the poor lady had her sleep upstairs, in that dressing room of hers. Guess she did last night. But she was gone when I went in to wake the poor lady up. When—when I found what had happened I looked in the dressing room and the girl wasn’t there. Slept in the bed, all right, but wasn’t there then. I was going to tell her to go get Mr. Wainright. She wasn’t there.”
“I take it,” Heimrich said, “that Mr. and Mrs. Wainright had separate bedrooms?”
“Adjoining,” Mrs. Prender said. “But mostly the door between them was closed. When I did the rooms, anyway.”
“Separate bathrooms, I suppose?”
“Sure. This house’s got more bathrooms than you can shake a stick at. I told the other policeman all that.”
“I’m sure you did, Mrs. Prender. We do go over and over things. You see, we want to find Miss Fowler. Bad day to be wandering around in.”
“I can’t,” Mrs. Prender said, “see what where Mr. and Mrs. Wainright slept has got to do with this girl. She just got scared and took off, the way they do. Maybe she found the poor lady before I did and—and just got scared and ran. They don’t like dead people.”
“None of us does,” Heimrich said, but without hope of modifying the square woman’s encompassing “they.” “Were you and your husband up when Mr. and Mrs. Wainright and their guests came home last night?”
“Not us,” Mrs. Prender said. “Sam and I work hard. We keep decent hours.”
“They got in late?”
“Mister, I just said I don’t know when they got in. Because Sam and I’d been asleep from about ten o’clock. Working the way we do, we’ve got to get our rest.”
“Of course,” Heimrich said. “If Mr. Wainright isn’t up to talking to me—and I can see why he wouldn’t be; see what a bad time it is for him—I wonder if you’d ask Mr. and Mrs. Gant if I can see them?”
“What would they know about this girl you’re so set on finding?”
“I don’t know,” Heimrich said. “Tell them I’d like to talk to them, will you?”
“Well-”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “Go tell them, Mrs. Prender. Either of them or both of them.”
She looked up at him and he nodded his head firmly, like an inspector of police. She went up the stairs, and where the staircase divided she turned to the right. Heimrich could hear her walking, heavily, along a corridor above him. He could hear her knock at a door somewhere. He heard other footfalls and a tall, square-shouldered man came down the stairs. He came quickly down the stairs. He was a trim man. He wore a blue turtle-neck shirt and gray slacks. When he was at the bottom of the stairs he said, “Bruce Gant. Mrs. Prender says you want to talk to me. About poor Flo, I suppose. An awful thing, Inspector.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “A very sad thing, Mr. Gant. Unexpected death, the way hers was, is a hard thing to take. And something we have to check up on, naturally. Have to whenever a doctor can’t sign a death certificate, you know.”
“Clear enough, I’d think,” Gant said. “She took too many sleeping pills. Ought to be a law against the damn things, way I see it.”
“Oh,” Heimrich said, “there are certain laws, Mr. Gant. Not against their use, of course. Covering their distribution.” He had sat while he talked to Mrs. Prender. He stood up.
“Yes,” Gant said, “you’re right, Inspector. Drafty in here. It’s a hell of a day out. Hell of a day all around, come to that. Beth’s pretty much knocked out by the whole thing. Fond of Flo, she was. We all were. Doesn’t want to talk about it. So, unless you have to see her, she’d—”
“Probably won’t need to,” Heimrich said, and Gant said, “Come along, then,” and went through a doorway off the entry hall. Heimrich followed him into a big room with deep windows at the end of it. Through them there was an excellent view of driving rain and swaying trees and wet leaves blowing.
A small fire burned in a fireplace. Gant put a log on it and said, “Gets cold as hell all of a sudden up here, doesn’t it? Milder where I come from.” He motioned toward a chair, but he himself went across the room and looked out one of the windows. “Keeps up like this,” he said, “it’ll rain us out. Rain the whole damn show out.”
Heimrich stood in front of the chair Gant had gestured toward until Gant turned and shrugged his shoulders and came, lithely, back across the room.
“Got two hunters entered in the Ridgewood show,” Gant said. “One of them doesn’t like wet going. This keeps up too long and I probably won’t jump him. After shipping him all the way up there. Figuring him to be pretty much a shoo-in for the green working hunter championship. With Beth riding him.”
Heimrich’s interest in the green working hunter championship, whatever it might be, was minuscule. But there was no need to hurry things. He asked when the show was to be held. He was told it was to be Friday and Saturday. He said that it probably would dry up by then. He did not add that nor’easters thereabouts sometimes went on for days. There was no reason to discourage Bruce Gant or, for that matter, himself.
“All right,” Gant said. “There’s nothing I can tell you about poor Flo. Except, this doctor said, she’d probably taken an overdose of sleeping pills. She did forget things, especially when she’d been—” He stopped. “Probably took a couple of pills and forgot she had and took a couple more. And maybe waked up and took some more. Best way of looking at it, isn’t it? Best for Paul. Best for everybody.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “Probably the way it was. Usually, when it’s intentional, they leave a note. Not always, but usually. Also, she had an appointment to look at some fabrics.” He looked at his watch. “About now,” he said. “Doesn’t prove anything, of course. People change their plans.”
Gant said, “Fabrics?”
“My wife
designs them,” Heimrich said. “She was to have brought what they call swatches here today to show Mrs. Wainright. Tell me about last night, Mr. Gant. You had dinner at the Inn. Mr. Wainright came over to our table for a minute. You four were still there when we left. Then?”
“Can’t say I see what difference it makes,” Gant said. “However—”
They had, he told Heimrich, got home about eleven. Thereabouts, anyway. They had had nightcaps. About eleven-fifteen, Mrs. Wainright had said she was sleepy and that she was going up to bed. “Paul helped—Paul went along with her.” Wainright had come back down in about ten minutes and said that Lucy was “taking care of everything.” The three of them had had another drink. At about midnight, the Gants had gone up to their room, leaving Wainright sitting—“Where you’re sitting now, Inspector”—finishing his drink.
“All I know about it,” Gant said. “All Beth knows about it. Until this Mrs. Prender banged on our door this morning and said an awful thing had happened. Doesn’t help you much, does it? Just an ordinary evening.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “Mrs. Wainright seemed normal? Not upset? Or depressed or anything like that?”
“She seemed all right.”
“Mr. Gant,” Heimrich said, “had Mrs. Wainright been drinking a lot?”
“We’d all been drinking.”
“She particularly? Because, you see, if she’d been drinking a good deal it might—oh, might make her forget things.”
“All right,” Gant said. “She’d had a bit more than she could carry. Had been drinking a good deal since Beth and I’ve been here. New thing with her, far’s I know. Maybe not so new at that. We hadn’t seen them for about a year.”
“Since your niece was killed in the accident,” Heimrich said. “You and Mrs. Gant were visiting the Wainrights then, weren’t you?”
“Know about that, do you?”
“Yes,” Merton Heimrich said, “I know about that, Mr. Gant.”
“Beth and I weren’t married then,” Gant said. “Maybe you know about that, too? Seems to me, Inspector, you’ve been nosing into a good many things.”
“My job,” Heimrich said. “You’d known Mrs. Wainright for some time? Before she married Mr. Wainright?”
“Years,” Gant said. “All the time she was married to my brother. Lived at the place with them. Managed the farm, actually. Boblee had other things to do. What people called my brother, Boblee.”
“She didn’t drink then?”
“Of course she drank. Who doesn’t? If you mean too much, no. Kept fit and that sort of thing. Rode a lot. All the Tracys always ride a lot. It’s horse country down there. I breed horses. Hunters. Some Thoroughbreds. I suppose you know that too?”
Heimrich said he did know that. He said, “You know Miss Fowler’s missing, Mr. Gant? Hasn’t been seen since Mrs. Prender found Mrs. Wainright’s body?”
Gant said, “Miss Fowler?” Then he said, “Oh, you mean Lucy.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “Lucy Fowler. You know she’s missing?”
“Sure. Paul’s sort of upset about it. God knows the poor guy’s enough upset without this darky acting up.”
“She’s been Mrs. Wainright’s maid for some time? Was when they lived over near Brewster?”
“Before that,” Gant said. “Before Flo married Paul. A while after Boblee died, Flo had an apartment in New York. Wanted to get away from where she and Boblee had been together. She couldn’t find a maid to suit her. What it came to, the nigras around New York are uppity. So she had me send Lucy up from Virginia. The girl must have been—oh, fifteen or sixteen maybe. Flo married Paul and kept the girl on. Got sort of fond of her, the way we get fond of them.”
“You sent Miss Fowler up? She’d been working for you?”
“Sure,” Gant said. He paused for a moment, as if thinking something out carefully, preparing to explain something which Heimrich might find it difficult to understand. “Way it is,” he said, and spoke very slowly, “the Fowler people have been working for the family for a lot of years. Three, maybe four, generations they’ve worked for Gants. This Lucy’s mother cooks for us now, and old Tim, he’s Lucy’s father, is the butler. House is full of Fowler folks. Fields too, come to that. Lucy’s grandmother—maybe great-grandmother; hard to keep track of them—took care of me when I was a baby. That’s what they say, anyway. Good darkies, the Fowlers are.”
“Can you describe Lucy, Mr. Gant? You see, we want to find her. Want to find out if anything’s happened to her.”
“Just got scared and lit out,” Gant said. “When she found out poor Flo’d passed away. Like that, lots of them.”
“Could be the way it was,” Heimrich said. “What does she look like, Mr. Gant?”
“Little thing. Not very dark. Could be she’s part Gant herself, from way back. Nice little figure.”
“How does she speak? I mean, has she got a noticeable accent?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that. Pretty much like anybody else down our way. On account of, Boblee saw that she and a lot of the rest of them—she’s got umpteen brothers and sisters and a lot of cousins and whatnot—got educated. Lot of people thought he was spoiling them. Thought they ought to go to the nigra schools like everybody else.”
“Lucy didn’t? And her brothers and sisters and whatnot?”
“Boblee was funny someways. Lived up North mostly a good many years. Got the notion that our nigra schools weren’t good enough. So you know what he did?”
Heimrich shook his head.
“Set up a school for them. Right there at the Courthouse. What they call our place—the Courthouse. Always have, although the last courthouse must have been before the War Between the States. Anyway—he hired two teachers. White teachers, for God’s sake. Gave all these darky kids what one of them—one of the teachers—said was the equivalent of a high-school education. Boblee was sure as hell funny in some ways. Full of notions. Our nigra schools were all right, until a lot of you people got to messing around in things. Good as the white schools, lots of ways.”
“That’s fine,” Heimrich said. “So Miss Fowler is educated? Talks like an educated person?”
“Just hearing her talk, you wouldn’t know she was a darky. Apparently didn’t make her uppity, though. Poor Flo wouldn’t have had an uppity nigra around.”
“You happen to know whether there’s a picture of Miss Fowler around anywhere?”
“How’d I know that? I’m just visiting here, Inspector. Visiting family, on my way up to show some horses. Way it was last year when poor Ginnie got thrown off her horse. Damned strange thing that was. On a horse she was like a burr. Had been since she was a kid. Boblee taught her and Flo taught her, and when she was maybe fifteen she won a jumping prize. And was second for the horsemanship championship. Shows you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “It was strange she got thrown that way.”
“Horse fell,” Gant said. “Maybe he stumbled or something. Paul thinks he just refused the jump, but Paul doesn’t know a lot about horses. Grew up in the North somewhere. Indiana, I think it was. Took up riding after he met Flo when she was living in New York. Hacked around in Central Park, for God’s sake.”
The thought caused Bruce Gant to shudder slightly.
Heimrich said he was sorry to have taken up so much of Gant’s time and thanked him and went out of the big room, leaving Bruce Gant sitting by his little fire.
Mrs. Prender was waiting in the entrance hall, apparently to be sure that he left. She, with some reluctance, took him to the kitchen, where Trooper Henderson was still drinking coffee. Heimrich told Henderson to go back on patrol.
Mrs. Prender took Heimrich to Lucy Fowler’s room, which was small and neat and beyond the kitchen. It took Heimrich five minutes not to find a picture of Lucy Fowler.
He went out into the rain and drove back to the center and to the Old Stone Inn, where, unless something had come up to sidetrack him, Charles Forniss would be waiting. Nothing had come up to sidetra
ck Lieutenant Forniss. He was at a corner table, having a drink. Heimrich joined him and had a drink and listened to what Forniss had read in a textbook on forensic medicine and been told by Dr. Patrick Kelly.
They had ordered lunch when Lyle Mercer and Robert Wallis came in through the door to the parking lot—were more or less blown into the taproom and were noticeably wet.
Lyle flicked a hand at Heimrich, and Wallis came across the room to the corner table and jutted across it. He also dripped on it. He said, “Got anything for the press, Inspector? About Mrs. Wainright. Pat Kelly clams up.”
“Mrs. Wainright is dead,” Heimrich said. “Which you apparently already know. She died, the doctor thinks, of an overdose of sleeping pills.”
“Suicide?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Wallis. There wasn’t any note. Usually they leave notes. Probably her death was accidental.”
“You’re investigating, though.”
“Now, Mr. Wallis,” Heimrich said. “A formality. Required when the physician is unable to sign a death certificate. Mrs. Wainright had never been a patient of Dr. Kelly’s.”
“So,” Wallis said, “you clam up too. Autopsy?”
Heimrich hesitated a moment before he said, “Yes. Mr. Wallis. No results as yet.”
“You’re a help,” Wallis said, his voice grating even more than usual. “Who was it put you onto this, Inspector?”
“I don’t know,” Heimrich said, “that we’ve been put on to anything. That there’s anything to be put onto.”
Wallis, who seemed to be in a bad mood, used one word to answer that and jutted away from them to a table near the bar which Lyle Mercer had found for them. It was, Heimrich thought, a day to put anybody in a dark mood. The office of the Van Brunt Citizen was, he thought, not much more than across the street from the Old Stone Inn. Convenient enough for an editor and one of his reporters if they finished work at the same time and felt like having lunch together.
Heimrich and Forniss had lunch and sloshed to their car and drove back to the barracks. The rain wasn’t letting up, nor was Heimrich’s topcoat growing more resistant.
In his office, with wet feet, Inspector M.L. Heimrich took papers out of his IN basket and put his initials on them and put them in the OUT basket. An alarm was out for Lucy Fowler, about nineteen, colored, weighing perhaps a hundred and four pounds and standing about five feet four. No information on what she was last seen wearing. Reportedly pretty; features not noticeably negroid. Not much to go on. Nor were the license numbers of the Wainrights’ two cars, one of which she might have taken. She had not; both cars were in the Wainrights’ garage.
Risky Way to Kill Page 16
