First Come, First Kill

by Frances Lockridge

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s—he’s not telling the truth. Like about his being here and—’

  ‘A letter,’ Heimrich said, ‘in which your father might have told you about the new will.’

  ‘No,’ the girl said, and Brian Fields moved as if to push the table back, to stand up. She said, ‘No, Brian.’ She said, ‘He’s lying, captain. At least, I didn’t get any letter. Not Thursday—it would have come then, wouldn’t it?—or the next morning. I waited for the morning delivery.’

  ‘About being here,’ Heimrich said. ‘Yes. Mr Thompson didn’t tell the truth about that. But he does now. Admits he was here. Used the name Peters. And—was trying to find your father, Miss Mitchell. To persuade him to go back home. So that things—the estate, chiefly—could be straightened out.’

  ‘With Mitchell dead,’ Brian Fields said, ‘things are straightened out, aren’t they?’

  ‘Miss Mitchell,’ Heimrich said, ‘I understand you are a good shot. With a rifle.’

  ‘He covered the ground, didn’t he?’ Fields said. ‘A bit of a bastard, isn’t he?’

  ‘Now Mr Fields,’ Heimrich said. ‘That isn’t the point, is it? Well, Miss Mitchell?’

  ‘Yes,’ the girl said. ‘We have a rifle club. Yes, I’m rather good. From quite a distance I could hit a man, captain. Could kill my—’

  ‘No,’ Brian Fields said. The word was sharp. The word cracked. The girl put her head down in her hands, and Brian Fields put his arm around her shoulders. Fields looked steadily at Heimrich. ‘You’ve done enough,’ Fields said.

  ‘No,’ Heimrich said. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘He’s trying to make you believe—’

  ‘Now Mr Fields,’ Heimrich said. ‘I quite understand what he’s trying to do. But, again, that isn’t the point, is it?’

  He left it there, and left them there.

  She had had the answers ready, he thought, as he pulled his car out of the parking lot, waited for a crevice in the southbound traffic on Van Brunt Avenue. There was nothing especially unreasonable about the answers. It is always likely that a man who lies once may lie again. It is not, however, inevitable.

  Damn it all, Merton Heimrich thought, an individual annoyed—damn it all, why kill in the open? Damn it all, why shoot a dog?

  Killed in his borrowed shack, Heimrich thought, Mitchell might have lain dead for days or weeks, or even for months, before anyone knew of his death. Conceivably, there might, at some distant time, have been only bones to find.

  There was that, Heimrich thought. Bones are not easy to identify. Bones leave no fingerprints. Dead but undiscovered, Mitchell could disentangle no tangled affairs. As simple as that? He would leave no estate to anyone. That simple?

  Not quite, Merton Heimrich decided, as he drove past his turnoff into High Road. One may apply with greater confidence to have a man presumed dead if one is sure that he will not turn up living.

  Heimrich set his left-hand direction signals blinking and waited for courtesy from the southbound, and finally got it. He turned into a faint track and ground cautiously up into a field. When he was well off the road he stopped and walked through tall grass, crushed down where other cars had been.

  There were several cars in the pleasant field which the Van Brunt family was offering for sale. One of them was the red truck of the Van Brunt fire department; the new red truck, purchased when the old red truck burned up, with the fire station it lived in. That had been on Heimrich’s first visit to Van Brunt. It was then he had first met a too-thin young widow and thought her not really pretty.

  The red fire truck was pumping water into itself, through itself, out the other side. A stream of water pulsated from a hose, ran down a slope. Several men, one wearing a fireman’s helmet, stood and watched the truck approvingly. As Heimrich came up, the man who wore the helmet went to the open well and shone the beam of a flashlight into it. He swished the beam around. He straightened up and shook his head. He said, ‘Deep one.’ He looked at Heimrich. He said, ‘Deep one, captain.’

  Heimrich said, ‘Hiyah, Tony,’ to Tony Roccacino, who was one of the three authorized drivers of the Van Brunt Fire Department. Tony said, ‘Gravel all right, captain?’ Tony was Roccacino Brothers, General Contractors, when volunteer fire fighting—or volunteer pumping—was not to be done.

  ‘’Nother hour, anyway,’ Tony said. ‘You know it will fill up again, don’t you, captain? Seems like they never die out, some of them.’

  ‘I know,’ Heimrich said. ‘Come up with anything?’

  ‘Water,’ Tony said. ‘What did you figure out, captain?’

  Heimrich shrugged. He wondered what he had figured, save for water. He turned to another group of men, which was standing by the tumbled-down shed and looking at it with, Heimrich thought, reproach. Heimrich said, ‘Well, sergeant?’ and Sergeant Martin Collins left the group and joined him.

  ‘The old man’s shoe, right enough,’ Collins said. ‘Turned up two or three more prints, the boys did. No sign of the dog, but it’s dry except in that one place. Last print of the old boy’s shows him heading that way.’ Collins waved toward the west. ‘Which doesn’t mean anything, does it?’

  Which didn’t.

  ‘Any sign the dog was scratching boards?’

  ‘A dozen, could be,’ Collins said. ‘But—your dog? Hard to prove it was any dog at all. Splintery wood, after a lot of years. What do you expect to find in the well, captain?’

  Heimrich shrugged again. He didn’t know what he expected to find in the well. He no longer had much expectation of finding anything.

  ‘The old man was snooping around here,’ he said. ‘Maybe the dog was. I thought we might too.’

  ‘Nothing in the well,’ Collins said. ‘Yet, anyway. In the shed—junk.’

  Heimrich walked around the fallen shed. In the shed, junk; junk with loose boards piled on it, junk half hidden by fallen lumber. The shards of what was probably an old chamber pot. The remains of a cookstove, rusted into fragments. Nothing to arouse the curiosity of man or dog. They would get a potentially dangerous well covered, so performing a civic service. That looked very much like being the size of it. They knew where a man now dead had left footprints, but they did not know why he had left them there, or when.

  ‘When the boys get through pumping,’ Heimrich said, ‘get a cover knocked together for the well, will you, Marty? Plenty of lumber handy. Boards and a few rocks will do.’

  Tony came over and joined them. He said they were about at the bottom, and still only water. He said that if it had to be pumped really dry, it would be a trick, because water kept coming in and they were going to lose suction. He said, ‘Come and look, captain.’

  Heimrich went, was given a flashlight, and looked. The disturbed blackness of the water was far down in the well; the well was a good well, stone lined, smaller at the top; a bottle of a well. ‘A lot of good work went into it,’ Tony said, at Heimrich’s shoulder. ‘One of us can go down, but there won’t be anything. Six inches of water now and if there was anything—’

  ‘I know,’ Heimrich said. ‘No point to it, Tony.’

  ‘Looks,’ Tony said, ‘as if we’ve been barking down the wrong well, captain.’

  ‘It looks that way,’ Heimrich said, and gave Tony back his flashlight. They could call it a day, Heimrich said. The boys would put some boards over the well and weigh them down with rocks.

  ‘Won’t last,’ Tony said. ‘Way to do it, you cut down a few feet and take out a couple of courses, maybe, and get a flat rock big enough to cover and fill in over it and—’

  ‘I know,’ Heimrich said. ‘Tell the owners about it, Tony.’

  I’ve wasted the time of several men, Heimrich thought. Wasted my own time. Wasted gasoline belonging to the town of Van Brunt, county of Putnam. Criminal enquiry is a wasteful business. One barks down too many wrong wells.

  Heimrich backed his car, perilously, into the traffic of Van Brunt Avenue. He drove south for a quarter of a mile and turned right into High R
oad. Within minutes he turned right again, between two boulders, up a steep drive with a patch of very white, very new-looking, gravel on it.

  When he went over the hump of the drive he saw that Susan’s side of the garage was empty.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  She had left him a note where they left each other notes. It read: ‘Taken Michael to visit Col.—S.’

  Heimrich showered. The water ran brown at first. You drill two hundred and twenty feet at six dollars a foot and you get brown water. Iron again or—The water cleared. Sediment in the tank. Have to get the well people to send a boy, or a thin man, into the tank. Bark down the right well. Except that there wasn’t really any well in it—no well that mattered. A well of clear sweet water, not in any way contaminated. A well an old man had walked past on his way—on his way to die? No proof even of that. No proof of—

  Merton Heimrich, a big but tapering man, turned the shower off and heard the telephone ringing. It was characteristic of telephones; it was, on this frustrating day, characteristic of everything. Heimrich toweled his way to the telephone and dripped beside it, and what he said into it was ‘Yeah?’ and sounded grumpy. Then he said, ‘Hello, Charlie,’ and held the telephone with one hand while he toweled with the other. It is frustrating to towel with a single hand.

  ‘She did pick her car up Thurs—’ Forniss said, from Tonaganda, and Heimrich said, ‘I know, Charlie. Says she parked overnight in front of her apartment house. Also, she says she was a member of a rifle club, and was pretty good.’

  ‘And me,’ Forniss said, ‘slaving over a hot clue.’

  ‘Now Charlie.’

  ‘Thompson used to be a member of the same rifle club,’ Forniss said. ‘More coals to Newcastle?’

  ‘No. Was he good, too?’

  From what Forniss heard, all the members of the rifle club were pretty good. He could see no point in belonging to a rifle club if one wasn’t. ‘Not much point I can see in it anyway,’ he added. Mrs Thompson thought her husband still had a rifle around somewhere. Said she hadn’t the faintest idea where. Said he had dropped out of the club a couple of years ago.

  ‘Put away childish things,’ Forniss said. ‘As to the second letter—’

  As to the second letter, Mrs Wade Thompson was sure there had been one—one addressed as before, in the handwriting as before; one forwarded as before.

  ‘The girl denies it,’ Heimrich said.

  ‘Well,’ Forniss said, ‘Mrs Thompson denies they opened it. So there we are again, aren’t we? The girl’s car is a Chevy, two-door, five years old, big dent in right rear fender. Somebody might have noticed.’

  ‘Yes,’ Heimrich said, ‘I suppose you’d better, Charlie. Neighbors look out of windows. Somebody might remember its being parked overnight.’

  Forniss sighed deeply. He said, ‘Yep,’ on a note of great resignation.

  ‘All right, sergeant,’ Heimrich said. ‘You got a superior officer out of a shower.’

  Forniss said, ‘Tch, tch.’ He said, ‘Goodness, captain.’ He said, ‘Get back in it, M. L.,’ and hung up.

  Merton Heimrich put the telephone in its cradle and turned. Susan was standing in the bedroom doorway—slender in her sleeveless dress, smiling pleasantly. ‘I caught a big one, didn’t I?’ she said, in a satisfied tone. She could risk it, now. Her big one no longer thought that, in her eyes, he resembled a hippopotamus. She hoped. It had been months now since her big one had, unaccountably, withdrawn into his big shell—his shell of imagined awkwardness, of feared grossness.

  ‘It’s rather a pity,’ she said, ‘but you’ll have to put clothes on. Somebody’s coming for a drink. Colonel’s sitting up and taking notice. Understandably morose about things. But he always is.’

  ‘The boy?’ Heimrich said, and went to a chest of drawers. The drawer he pulled at stuck. Five minutes ago, it would have been another straw. Heimrich wrenched the drawer open with enthusiasm; he got shorts out of it and stepped into them.

  ‘Taking it well,’ Susan said. ‘Colonel licked him. He really likes Colonel to lick him. Boys are strange creatures. Michael called Vince Pope, “Doctor, sir.” Do you think we ought to do something?’

  ‘He’ll get over it. Who’s coming for a drink?’ He wrenched open another drawer and looked at shirts in it.

  ‘No,’ Susan said. ‘No tie, darling. Ollie Perrin.’

  Heimrich took a dark polo shirt out of the drawer and looked at it and turned and looked at Susan.

  ‘He telephoned while we were at the vet’s,’ she said. ‘To ask after Colonel. I thought it was—well, rather touching. Vince said I was there, and Ollie wanted to talk to me. Said he couldn’t see how he could have shot Colonel. Said he would have seen him—couldn’t see how he’d have missed seeing him. Said Colonel must have yelped when he was hit, and he would have heard him. Said it all half a dozen times, actually. I said he shouldn’t worry, because Colonel was hit with a rifle—’

  She stopped. Heimrich stood with the polo shirt dangling. He had, she thought, a very considering expression.

  ‘Bullet,’ Susan said. ‘Shouldn’t I have?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Heimrich said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No,’ Heimrich told her, and he smiled and moved across the room to her. ‘It really doesn’t.’ He put an arm around her and pulled her to him.

  ‘Then,’ she said, after a moment, ‘you’d better put your clothes on, hadn’t you? Before—’

  Heimrich kissed her. He put the polo shirt on, and slacks on. He said, ‘Because he was so kind about calling to enquire, you asked him for a drink?’

  Susan sat down and watched her husband put on socks and loafers.

  ‘Partly,’ she said. ‘Also, he’s leaving later tonight. Going into New York for a day or two and then flying to London to join Marian. A going-away drink, actually.’

  Heimrich said, ‘Hmmm.’ He stood up; looked down at his wife. Delicacy—that was the word.

  ‘Don’t,’ Susan said. ‘I’m made out of wire. Won’t you learn?’

  One learns a good many things, Heimrich thought. To get used to having one’s mind read, among them.

  ‘Steel springs,’ Heimrich said. ‘Hard as nails.’

  ‘Well—’ Susan said, drawing it out, with doubt. He laughed at her. ‘All the same,’ she said. And laughed up at him. Then she said, ‘We’re a silly pair. I wish I hadn’t asked him.’

  ‘No,’ Heimrich said. ‘I’m rather glad you did. Susan—have you heard any gossip about them? The Perrins?’

  She shook her head. Her eyebrows raised.

  ‘That he plays around?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  ‘You would have?’

  She raised slender shoulders. Perhaps. Perhaps not. If he had done local playing. But if he had played elsewhere—in New York, say—

  ‘After all,’ she said, ‘I’m not really the kaffeeklatsch type. The afternoon-of-bridge sort. No, Merton. Why, Merton? Surely you don’t think—’

  ‘Hi,’ a man said from outside. ‘Anybody home?’

  They went out to the terrace, where their guest waited. Tall and good looking and Ivy League; polo shirt and walking shorts and ribbed stockings hugging solid calves. A Casanova in Brooks Brothers garb? Why did Merton ask that, Susan wondered. It’s not like him to—

  ‘What’ll it be?’ Merton Heimrich said. ‘Long or short? Susan?’

  ‘Gin and tonic.’

  ‘Perrin?’

  ‘Hate to be a nuisance,’ Perrin said. ‘Scotch be too much trouble? Plain water?’

  It would not. Scotch would be no trouble at all. Heimrich went into the house, was gone briefly, came out with a big tray, mixed gin and tonic water twice, scotch and plain water once, squeezed lime into the tonic drinks.

  ‘Used to be a gin man myself,’ Perrin told them, and Susan made polite sounds of, she hoped, interest. ‘Plain laziness. Line of least resistance. Comfortable domestic rut.’

  Susan clutched at interest. It elu
ded her. She took consolation in the fact that, at long last, she was doing a neighbor’s duty by a lonely man. She looked down and away at the distant Hudson. The lowering sun was finding mirrors in the water; the broad river flickered. A tug indignantly towed two barges south. On the stern of the second barge there seemed to be a flag—no, several flags. No—laundry on a line. As the angry tug pulled its burden past, there was a sailboat, the sun behind it. The boat tacked and, momentarily, the sail glared white in the sunlight.

  ‘Had me scared stiff,’ Perrin said. ‘Couldn’t see how I could have, but there it was.’

  The dog again, Susan thought. So worried about the big dog, poor man. And going over and over it, as he had on the telephone.

  ‘You’re sure it was a rifle? Got the bullet?’

  ‘Yes,’ Heimrich said. ‘Rifle bullet. A bit banged up, unfortunately.’

  ‘Who, for God’s sake, would want to shoot a dog? A big harmless fellow like old Colonel?’

  Susan withdrew her gaze from the distant river. Oliver Perrin was leaning a little forward in a terrace chair. With a finger he was making ice cubes circle in his glass.

  ‘Hard to guess,’ Heimrich said. ‘I’d like to find out.’

  ‘If it was deer season,’ Perrin said, and looked up from the glass. ‘Some farmer? Deer can raise hell with crops. Isn’t there some way of getting special permission to shoot them?’

  ‘Yes,’ Heimrich said. ‘Not too many farms around here any more. But—yes, that’s possible.’

  ‘You don’t know where he was shot? I mean, where he was when he was shot?’

  Heimrich shook his head. He said they had tried to back-track on him, and lost the trail. He then, Susan noticed, closed his eyes. Once she had thought he closed them when he was bored. But it was, he had told her, so he could listen better. He had also told her that he closed his eyes, for the most part, without being conscious that he did. Susan could not, now, see that there was anything that important to listen to.