Risky Way to Kill

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  Heimrich, who had been watching Wainright—and had seen that Wainright was twisting a dart between the fingers of his right hand—turned to Gant. He said, “You and Mrs. Gant were out looking for Miss Fowler today, Mr. Gant? In the Jaguar. Why?”

  “She’s one of our people, Inspector,” Gant said. “We aim to look after our people.”

  “And you, Mr. Wainright. You were looking for her too. Until quite late, wasn’t it? Until long after dark. Why?”

  “Like Bruce and Beth,” Wainright said. “Didn’t like the idea of her wandering around in the rain. Probably scared half to death.”

  “No,” Heimrich said, “I don’t think that was your reason. I think you wanted to stop her getting to somebody. Somebody like me. Wanted to keep her from telling what she heard last night. That’s the way it was, isn’t it? That’s why you tried to kill her and Miss Mercer. Blocked the road to my house if she came by car. Didn’t know how she’d come, probably. But even if she came on foot she’d have to go out to the ditch to get around the car, wouldn’t she? Bring her close to where you were waiting with that gun of yours. The one you used to kill the horse with, Mr. Wainright. After he’d failed a jump because you threw a dart into him just as he was gathering for it—failed a jump and killed your stepdaughter. Except—you had to kill her yourself, didn’t you? Had to make sure, anyway, because she might have caught herself before she hit the wall. That was what you had in your hand, wasn’t it? One of the loose stones that had fallen from the wall. That was what your wife saw in your hand, wasn’t it?”

  “She couldn’t have seen anything,” Wainright said. “She was in the next field. If she got some crazy notion—”

  He stopped. His face showed he knew he had not stopped soon enough.

  “If she got some crazy notion, you talked her out of it, didn’t you?” Heimrich said. “Talked her out of it for a year. Until young Pointer stirred it all up again with those ads in the paper. She wanted to hide from herself what she remembered, didn’t she? Try to believe what you told her. But when it was stirred up again she couldn’t any more. So you decided you had to do something about it.”

  Wainright was not facing the dart board any more. He was facing Heimrich and Lyle and Lucy Fowler. He held a dart between the fingers of his right hand. He held it up a little.

  “You’re a hell of a cop,” Wainright said. “You ought to write stories. Cock-and-bull stories.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Just read them, Mr. Wainright. Just read them.”

  “Make them up as you go along,” Wainright said. “Get girls like Lucy here to lie for you. What for, Inspector? To make yourself look like some sort of a big shot? When you can’t prove a damn thing and know damn well you can’t.”

  “Now, Mr. Wainright. The District Attorney may have different ideas about that. Up to him. After we talk to Miss Calvert. That’ll help, won’t it? Your sublet, as she calls herself. Very pretty girl, Miss Calvert is. You see, Mr. Wainright, things add up if you give them time. Get tied together if you give them time. Now Miss Fowler here remembered the license number of your car. Saw it while she and Miss Mercer were lying in a ditch. Being shot at.”

  “Nobody’ll-”

  “Where’s the rifle you used, Mr. Wainright?”

  Wainright did not move. But his eyes moved—moved to his right, moved, involuntarily, toward a narrow closet door.

  He realized what he had done as he did it. It was then he raised the hand which held the dart, cocked his wrist and moved the arm back a little.

  Bruce Gant was nearest, and it was he who moved. He brought the edge of his hand down hard on Paul Wainright’s wrist, and the wrist gave and the dart fell on the floor. It landed point downward and bit into the floor.

  “Can’t have you throwing those things at people,” Gant said. “Bad enough to have you throwing them at horses. Good horse, old Alex was.”

  Heimrich had his revolver in his hand and he held it loosely as he opened the closet door. There were three guns in the closet, including the one he wanted. He took it out, lifting it by the stock. Wood doesn’t take prints as well as metal. He sniffed it. Wainright hadn’t had time to clean the rifle.

  “All right, Wainright,” Heimrich said. “Attempted murder for now. After that we’ll see.”

  He dangled his own gun where Wainright could see it.

  “Nobody’ll believe the girl,” Wainright said. “About the license number. About anything else. There’s not a damn thing you can prove.”

  “Up to your lawyer,” Heimrich said. “He’ll say there isn’t, naturally. What lawyers are for. We know about where you were standing when you tried to kill Miss Fowler, Wainright. And Miss Mercer too, when you found there were two of them. We’ll know where to look for the cartridge cases, when it quits raining. See how firing-pin impressions match up with this gun of yours. Helpful things, they can be. Come along, Wainright.”

  Paul Wainright went along, ahead of Heimrich, who did not holster his revolver. Bruce Gant said, “Could be you’ll need a hand, Inspector,” and went along too.

  Lucy Fowler went up the stairs after them. They could hear her feet beating on the floor above. She was running. “To her room to hide,” Beth said.

  Beth Gant drove the Jag, explaining that Jags are tricky if you don’t know them. It was raining as hard as ever and, with Lyle directing, they rode streaming blacktop roads until they came to, and crept up, High Road to the Heimrich house. Neither had said anything except Lyle Mercer, who said, “You turn right here. Left at the next fork,” and “Here you go straight through.”

  The floodlight over the Heimrich garage was on. There were two cars standing under it—Lyle’s Volks and another, a station wagon.

  Beth swung the Jaguar so it faced out again. She said, “Run for it, Miss Mercer. I’ll go back and see that Lucy’s all right.”

  Lyle looked at her a moment.

  “Oh,” Beth Gant said, “we’ll take care of her, Bruce and I. Probably take her back home with us when we go. If she wants to go.”

  Lyle ran for it through the rain. The Jag roared as it was revved up, sent abruptly down the steep drive.

  The door opened as Lyle reached it, and Susan Heimrich, holding it open, said, “You’re wet again, dear. Come in by the fire.”

  Lyle went into the living room where a fire jumped in the fireplace.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “Just a little damp around the edges.” Then she said, “Oh!” because Robert Wallis was sitting in front of the fire with a black cat sitting on his lap. He put Mite down gently and Mite said, “Yah,” in a plaintive voice.

  Wallis jutted his way across the room and put hands firmly on Lyle’s shoulders.

  “You scared hell out of me, child,” he said, his voice grating. He looked down at her for a moment. “You ought to have sense enough not to go out in the rain and get shot at.” He held her shoulders hard. Then, gently, he shook her. “Child,” Robert Wallis said, and there was no harshness in his voice. “You are wet. Come over by the fire.”

  “I don’t—” Lyle said, and did not finish as she walked toward the fire.

  “Simple,” Wallis said. “Your mother called. She’d called the house and there’d been no answer and she got the idea I was keeping you at the office. Going to tell me off about it. ‘You ought to know better on a night like this,’ she said. Cross with me. I told her you’d gone home. Didn’t tell her you’d been gone long enough to get home twice. Told myself that and called your house and didn’t get an answer and—well, came here to tell the Inspector we’d lost ourselves another girl. Tell him we were getting damn careless here in Van Brunt.”

  He picked Mite up, and Mite, who was inclined to run from strangers, cuddled and purred. He had a loud purr. Of course, it had been a rainy day and one very dull for cats.

  “Mrs. Heimrich filled me in,” Wallis said. “So, naturally, I waited. Did you lose the Inspector?”

  “He’s taking a man to jail,” Lyle said. “Mr. Wainright”r />
  “High time,” Wallis said.

  “Because—” Lyle said, and Susan interrupted her.

  “Tell us about it later,” Susan said. “Go in and get out of those wet clothes. Your things are dry by now.”

  Lyle went into the bedroom, and Susan brought dry, if somewhat wrinkled, clothes to her. Wallis sat down again and Mite jumped onto his lap. This time, Mite dug his claws in to make sure. Wallis said, “Ouch, cat,” and scratched behind black ears.

  Lyle came out of the bedroom in dry clothes. “Because,” she said, “he tried to kill Lucy—and me, just in passing—because she—” Lyle broke off. “There seems to be quite a lot to it,” she said.

  “Tomorrow you can write it,” Wallis said, and put Mite down again. “I’ll give you a by-line. Come on.”

  He went to her, jutting as much as usual, and put an arm around her shoulders.

  “Got to call your mother and tell her you’re all right. My place is closest. Come on.”

  Susan Heimrich watched them go. There did not seem any special point in telling them that there was a much nearer telephone—a telephone merely across a room.

  16

  It was sunny Friday—sunny and cool, but most of the bright leaves had gone from the trees. Heimrich had not seen much of the day. He had spent most of the day in Carmel—in the office of the Putnam County District Attorney, who was not too happy about things, and before the Putnam County Grand Jury, which brought in an indictment charging Paul Wainright with murder in the first degree for the wilful killing, by administration of poison, of his wife, Florence.

  It was late afternoon when Heimrich ran the Buick up the steep drive and into the garage. He crossed the terrace, on which they would not sit much more that year, and went into the house where Susan had a fire burning. Susan got up from in front of the fire and came to him and looked up at him and raised her eyebrows.

  “Murder one,” Heimrich said. “The D.A.’s not happy. Wants more. Thinks it would be better if Lucy Fowler were sure it was Wainright’s voice.”

  “His wife, then,” Susan said. “Not his stepdaughter?”

  “His wife,” Heimrich said, and went over to the bar and started to pour. He poured bourbon for both of them, which was an admission that gin days had gone with summer. He brought the drinks back and sat with Susan in front of the fire.

  “We can’t tie him to the girl’s death,” Heimrich said. “I’m sure and the D.A.’s sure and a jury wouldn’t be. A dart to throw the horse off. Not a rifle from behind a wall, as I thought at first. Neater, from his point of view. Quieter. Also, naturally, he was there to make sure with a loose stone.”

  He sipped and closed his eyes and shook his head.

  “I almost muffed it,” Heimrich said and shook his head again. “Should have realized from the start that merely getting the girl thrown wasn’t enough. Too chancy a way to kill. Didn’t come to me until I watched him and Gant throwing darts at the Inn.”

  Once more he shook his head. He also sighed.

  “Could be,” he told the fire. “I’m getting old for this kind of thing. Grope up blind alleys.”

  “You grope fine,” Susan told him. “The girl because she was going to come into the trust fund, leaving her in a position to dole money out to her mother and her mother’s husband. Whom she resented?”

  “The shape of it,” Heimrich said. “The feel of its shape. No way of proving it. His wife saw it but—oh, didn’t want to accept it. But it haunted her—haunted her for a year. Grew dimmer, I suppose, until it was brought up again. Then she started to drink too much—a lot too much. Worried him, naturally. Got him afraid she’d blurt things out when she’d had too much. Blurt to the wrong people. People like me. Under her will, he inherits everything. Also, there’s this Ruth Calvert of his. Very definitely of his.”

  “She admits it?”

  “As good as, by the time Charlie’d finished with her. At first, just good friends. Oh, perhaps he did come around to the apartment, which she was subletting—was really subletting—now and then. But she’d never thought—never dreamed—of anything like this happening. Well, she had thought perhaps they’d get married after he got his divorce. But nothing like this. Well, yes, she did know he—anyway his wife and he—had a lot of money. No, he didn’t come in to the office very often. Well, no, neither did anybody else.”

  “A wife who might tell what she’d seen,” Susan said. “And who would leave him a couple of millions if she died. And a girl who would marry him. Young and pretty, this Miss Calvert?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Young and pretty. Oh, it’s all clear enough. Except, the District Attorney keeps pointing out, proving it. If Wainright had just sat it out—not tried to kill Lucy Fowler because of what he was afraid she’d overheard—well, he made it easier for us. They do sometimes.”

  “This D.A. of yours? He’s satisfied about that?”

  “About that,” Heimrich said, “everybody’s satisfied. Except Wainright’s lawyer, of course. Raked up the cartridge shells yesterday. Firing-pin impressions match up. Oh, they’ll dig up experts who’ll say they don’t. But they do. And we got a break. One of the bullets lodged in a tree across the road. Instead of hitting a rock and getting banged out of shape. It came from Wainright’s rifle. And Lucy’s memory of the license number and a jury’ll buy it. We’re pretty sure of that.”

  Heimrich put his feet on Colonel, who made an excellent footstool and who approved of being one with a fire going. Mite came over and sat in front of Susan and looked up at her and made a remark. “I’ve got to get dinner pretty soon,” Susan said. “But come on up if you want to.”

  Mite wanted to.

  “Lucy brought my clothes back yesterday,” Susan said. “The Gants are going to take her to Virginia with them. She wants to go. She says it’s too cold and wet up here.”

  They drank slowly in front of the fire. He’s getting rested, Susan thought. That thing of his about getting old!

  “Lyle Mercer had a by-line on her story about it,” Susan said. “Don’t put your claws in so deep, cat. It was quite a good story, I think. Shall I get it for you?”

  “I was there,” Heimrich said.

  “There’s that,” Susan said. “Mr. Wallis was in a state when he came here the other night to tell you she’d got lost somehow. As if—as if a world were lost with her.”

  “He’s a good deal older than she is,” Merton Heimrich said.

  “Men!” Susan said. “Could we do with another drink or do you want to eat?”

  Heimrich took his feet off Colonel and went over to the bar. He brought drinks back.

  “Be a shame to disturb Mite,” he said. “Just when he’s got settled.”

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Captain Heimrich Mysteries

  1

  It was not snowing on the morning of that thirtieth of March. Heimrich had gloomily supposed it would be; had envisioned a blizzard. But at seven-thirty in the morning the low house on a hill overlooking the Hudson merely shook a little in the northwest wind. The wind raced clouds across a sky which, at intervals, showed blue. The temperature was even a degree or two above freezing. The northwest wind would change that. Falling into the twenties by afternoon; probability of occasional snow flurries. They would be away by then.

  Heimrich put his electric razor in its case and the case in the space measured for it in a small, square suitcase. He closed the case. He made sure that the tag was on it. He carried it out to the living room and put it with the others by the door. There were a good many of the others, and the tags were on all of them.

  Susan was sitting by the fireplace, in which no fire was burning. The house was warm enough, but she was wearing her heavy winter coat. Merton Heimrich did not say anything. He did not even lift his eyebrows.

  “I’m fine, dear,” Susan said. “Just fine. I—I just put my coat on to be ready when he gets here.”

  She didn’t look fine, Heimrich thought. She was always slender; she was thin no
w. Her face was thin, and there was little color in it. Heimrich walked across the room and stood and looked down at her.

  “Just fine,” Susan said. “Really, darling.”

  He kept on looking down at her.

  She smiled at him. The smile was her own smile. A few weeks ago it had not been. It had been faint on her lips. Her lips were faint still under lipstick.

  “Sure you are,” Merton Heimrich told his wife, and sat down in a chair by hers and poured himself coffee. He drank from his cup. He said, “Sure you are.” He got what conviction he could into his voice. He knew he hadn’t got enough into it, and she reached across the table between them and put her hand on his. She said, “You make too much of things, darling. Really you do. Really I’m fine. It was just the flu. The flu everybody had.”

  “Sure,” Heimrich said, and turned his hand over so he could press it on hers. “Just the flu everybody had.”

  Not everybody had had the flu that winter. Merton Heimrich, Inspector, New York State Police, had not had it. But Michael Faye had had it, mildly, and so had scores in the hamlet of Van Brunt, County of Putnam, State of New York. It had been that kind of a winter east of the Hudson. The first snow had come before Thanksgiving. Since it had fallen, nobody had seen bare ground. The state plows had left snow ranges on the sides of highways; the town road from which the Heimrichs’ steep driveway climbs had been, at best, patchy with ice and rumpled snow, with sand strewn haphazardly on the steepest slopes. For three days at one time and two at another, Merton Heimrich had been snowed away from his office at the headquarters of Troop K, which is some miles south of Van Brunt.

  Nobody could remember a winter such as this winter had been and, for that matter, still was being. Susan Heimrich had grown up in Van Brunt and could remember no such winter. Merton Heimrich, who had lived in Van Brunt since its firehouse had burned down and a charred body had been found in its ruins, could remember no winter which approached this winter in sheer malevolence. And a good many people had got the flu and a few had died of it.