Foggy, Foggy Death

by Frances Lockridge

  “None of it’s true,” she said, in the same weary voice.

  “Oh yes,” Heimrich said. “At least part of it’s true. Mr. Bromwell laid certain plans; Higgins knew something about them. It doesn’t work out any other way. Whether now you’re trying to protect Mr. Bromwell or Mr. Bromwell and yourself I’m not entirely sure. Yet. I wish you’d tell me. If you’re merely trying to help him, by not admitting you saw him with Higgins, I wish you’d tell me that. Of course, if you and he planned it together, I don’t expect you to tell me. You won’t, naturally.”

  She stood up suddenly.

  “I can’t—” she began. He opened his eyes and looked at her. She got control of herself. “I’ve told you everything,” she said, and again her voice was only weary. “I didn’t see Higgins. He must have stolen the earrings while I was asleep. I didn’t recognize the person who was with him. I—I didn’t plan to kill Marta. And—Scott didn’t. He only—”

  Then she stopped; stopped too suddenly and knew she had stopped too suddenly.

  “Only what, Miss Mason?” Heimrich asked. “Only what?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing. I don’t know what I was going to say. He would never kill anybody. Never, captain. Never—never—”

  She heard her voice going up, felt herself losing control Heimrich told her to sit down. He looked at her a moment.

  “Stay here,” he said then, and got up and left the library. He was back in a minute or two, and Stephen Nickel was with him. Heimrich returned to his seat behind the table, motioned Nickel to sit down. Nickel looked at him, then at Karen. The blond man’s face was without expression; there was a kind of wariness in the very lack of expression.

  “Last night,” Heimrich said, “when you opened the door to the storeroom stairs; threw your light down. Where was Miss Mason?”

  “Part way up the stairs,” Nickel said. “As I told you, captain.”

  “I remember,” Heimrich said. “I want her to hear you. You threw the light on her. What did she do?”

  “Put up her hands,” Nickel said. “Over her face.”

  “To hide her face?”

  Nickel hesitated a moment. He looked at Karen.

  “I thought so,” he said. “That’s what it looked like.”

  Karen did not move from her chair this time. But she said, “No. No, it wasn’t that. Why would I?”

  “Now Miss Mason,” Heimrich said.

  “But don’t you see,” she said, “it wouldn’t have done any good. What good would it have done?”

  “Oh,” Heimrich said, “none, naturally. You realize that now.”

  “It was just the light,” she said. “The light itself. In my eyes. It had been almost dark and the light—hurt. It was—I did it involuntarily. Not to hide anything. Just because the light hurt.”

  “It could have been that,” Nickel said.

  “Oh,” Heimrich said, “naturally. Your impression was, however, she was trying to avoid identification?”

  “At the time,” Nickel said. “Yes.”

  Now Karen did stand up. She faced Nickel.

  “What are you trying to do?” she said. “What are you here for?”

  “Nothing,” Nickel said, and he smiled faintly. “The captain brought me here.”

  “No,” she said. “Not now. I don’t mean that. Why are you here at all? What did you come for?”

  Heimrich closed his eyes. He did not interrupt.

  “Oh,” Nickel said. “You mean yesterday. To use the telephone. To get help in changing a tire.”

  Karen turned from him. She turned to Heimrich.

  “Do you believe that?” she demanded.

  Heimrich opened his eyes suddenly.

  “Why no,” he said. “I don’t, naturally. I doubt whether Mr. Nickel expects me to.”

  Now he looked at Stephen Nickel.

  “You came,” Karen said, “and—and Marta died. But before that, Lorry—Mr. Nickel! Where did you find Lorry? To bring him back?”

  “In my car,” Nickel said. He smiled again faintly. “As I told everybody. I suppose he wandered away, perhaps got lost in the fog, climbed into the car. He was actually asleep when I found him. As to why I came in the first place—”

  But Karen only half heard him. An idea crowded into her mind, filled it.

  “Mr. Nickel,” she said. “Is Lorry your son? He isn’t Scott’s. You’re blond as he is and Scott and Marta were both dark and—isn’t he your son, Mr. Nickel? Didn’t you come to steal him? Kidnap him? Didn’t Marta find out and—” She broke off and turned to Heimrich. “Can’t you see?” she demanded. “Ask him. Why don’t you ask him?”

  For a moment Heimrich said nothing, but he looked at Nickel, not at Karen. Then he said, “Well, Mr. Nickel?”

  “She’s—” Nickel began, and stopped. His eyes narrowed a little, as if he were thinking, deciding.

  “You see, Mr. Nickel,” Heimrich said, “you admit you knew Marta Bromwell four or five years ago. That would be about right, wouldn’t it? And—you’re sure Lorry isn’t Mr. Bromwell’s son, Miss Mason?”

  She nodded. She started to speak, but Heimrich shook his head.

  “I hadn’t thought he was,” Heimrich said. “And—I had thought of you, Mr. Nickel. Partly because Mr. Bromwell and his wife were, as Miss Mason says, both dark and Lorry is blond—as blond as you are. Partly—the part about finding the boy in your car is thin, Mr. Nickel. You realize that, naturally. So—you’d better answer Miss Mason, Mr. Nickel. Did you come to kidnap the boy? Did Mrs. Bromwell find out and—have to be killed?”

  And then Nickel laughed. He laughed as if he were honestly amused. They looked at him and waited.

  “Marta?” Nickel said. “Killed protecting her young? Marta?”

  “Why,” Heimrich said, “don’t you answer the question, Mr. Nickel?”

  “Why not?” Nickel said. “Yes—so far as I know, so far as Marta told me, the boy’s mine, not Bromwell’s. And—yes, I was going to take him away. Take him and Marta too.” He smiled down at Karen. “Does that make you happy, Miss Mason?” he said. “But it won’t help you, you know. Or Bromwell either.”

  Once started, Nickel showed no objection to going on with the story; he told it with an odd impartiality, as if it were a story about someone else; someone with whom he was not particularly involved. He was brief about the events of several years before; Marta had been at loose ends and so, in that connection, had he. Bromwell had been overseas. He had not. What resulted was, apparently to Nickel and no doubt equally to Marta, what was to be expected. Later they had seen less of each other; still later had not, for a matter of three years or so, seen each other at all. They had met again some six months before. They had not, at first, taken up where they left off.

  “Marta had other—involvements,” Nickel said. “So did I.”

  But the other “involvements” lessened and, in recent weeks, Stephen Nickel and Marta had seen a good deal of each other—not publicly, at her suggestion. “Frankly,” Nickel said, “it didn’t make any difference to me.” Whatever had been between them—Nickel did not define it, except to say, once, that Marta was a “hell of a good-looking girl”—rekindled. Finally Marta proposed that they go off together, and take Lorry. “She said, ‘After all, he’s ours,’” Nickel told them. “I didn’t care. I like kids well enough. I thought she probably wanted to make it as tough as she could for Bromwell, but so what? I thought her whole plan was partly to make it tough for Bromwell—to get back at Bromwell and his mother—but, again, so what? It wasn’t as if—” He did not finish that.

  It was Marta, he said, who worked out the plan. She was to leave the house on a designated afternoon—“yesterday afternoon, as it worked out.” He was to appear after she left, with whatever story he chose. He had called himself Hume on the chance that Scott Bromwell, or Scott’s mother, might have heard the name Nickel in connection with Marta. “We didn’t want a fuss,” Nickel said. “Anyway, I didn’t. I don’t like a lot of fuss ab
out things.” He was to get the child; they were to meet at his car and— “Well,” Nickel said, “that was going to be that.”

  It hadn’t been that, because Marta had failed to show up. He had been on his way back to see what had happened to her when he ran into Karen and Mrs. Lucretia Bromwell on the drive. With Marta dead—“Tough. She was such a damn good-looking little tramp”—Lorry was merely a problem, so Nickel returned him. Having done that, he realized that there would be more fuss if he tried to leave than if he stayed, so he stayed.

  “And cut your losses,” Heimrich said. “As simple as that.”

  “So?” Nickel said. “No laws broken. Wouldn’t have been in any case. Not kidnapping, since Marta was the kid’s mother. She wanted to take a lot of jewelry but I said no. Figured some of it might not be hers and there’d be a fuss about it. Told her I’d get her plenty more.”

  “You know,” Heimrich said, “I wonder if you would have?”

  Nickel shrugged.

  “Who knows?” he said. “It all depends on how things worked out, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re very innocent, naturally,” Heimrich told him.

  “Naturally,” Nickel said. “As I told you, I don’t kill people.”

  “Because there’s so much fuss about it?” Heimrich asked.

  “Among other reasons,” Nickel said. “Through with me?”

  “Now Mr. Nickel,” Heimrich said. “Why should I be? She’s still dead, you know. So is Higgins. I’m not through with anybody, naturally. How did you get the child?”

  “You know,” Nickel said, “he just happened to wander downstairs. One of those things.”

  Heimrich merely looked at him. Then Heimrich got up and went to the door. Standing in it, he called, “Sergeant!” and Forniss came down the East Room.

  “Get Miss James, will you?” Heimrich said. He closed the door and came back into the library. He did not say anything; neither Karen nor Nickel spoke for a time. Then Nickel said, “If I were you, captain, I’d think Bromwell got wise to Marta’s little plan and—stopped it. Maybe more for the kid than for her. She seemed to think he was pretty damn fond of the kid.”

  Heimrich looked at Karen Mason, but, dully, she shook her head.

  “However,” Nickel said, “there’s always Haas, isn’t there? And—” he looked at Karen and did not finish. “Even the old girl, when you come down to it,” Nickel added.

  Neither Heimrich nor Karen answered. The three were silent until Forniss came back with Pauline James.

  She was wearing again a gray dress which had the appearance of a uniform. But she did not look uniformed. It was, Karen thought, as if Pauline James had been playing a part and had stepped out of it, although she still wore the costume of the part. She was obviously tense; she was excited and uneasy. Yet there was a kind of vividness about her which had been absent before. It had, Karen suddenly decided, been kept down before; deliberately kept down.

  Pauline looked from one to another, and longest at Stephen Nickel. For a moment it seemed that the impassivity of his face faltered as she looked at him; another expression, which Karen could not identify, passed over it, and then was gone.

  “Oh,” Pauline James said as if, seeing Nickel and Heimrich there, and Karen, having herself been brought there, everything was at once clear.

  “The captain seems to think—” Nickel began, but Heimrich, his eyes wide open now, said “No. Don’t try it, Mr. Nickel.” Nickel hesitated, and then shrugged.

  “Miss James,” Heimrich said, “we’re talking about yesterday afternoon, naturally. About Lorry—and Mr. Nickel. About Mr. Nickel’s plan.”

  Nickel looked as if he were again about to speak. Heimrich looked at him steadily, and Nickel seemed to change his mind. He shrugged again.

  “I don’t understand,” Pauline James said. “Ste—Mr. Nickel’s plan.” Then she drew her breath in sharply.

  “Steve?” Heimrich said. “Or Stephen? Which, Miss James?”

  She looked at Nickel.

  “It’s no use, is it?” she said. He did not answer.

  “It’s no use,” she repeated, but this time to Heimrich. “Yes, Steve was going to take Lorry. And—I helped him. But Lorry’s his son and—”

  “What did you do, Miss James?” Heimrich’s eyes were closed again as he spoke. His voice was detached.

  “It was all worked out,” she said. “The time Steve was coming. Everything. I waited until I heard his voice when he was leaving. I carried Lorry down the back way and met Steve outside and—”

  “The little boy didn’t object?” Heimrich asked. “Start crying, or anything?”

  Pauline James looked surprised.

  “Why no,” she said. “Why should he? He’s not afraid of me.” She stopped and looked at Heimrich with a different expression. “I wouldn’t hurt him,” she said. “Don’t you realize that? It was—it would have been better for him. So much better. Away from his mother, from—” Then something in Heimrich’s face stopped her.

  “Didn’t you know his mother was going too?” Heimrich asked her. He opened his eyes.

  “But no—she—” Pauline said. Then she turned quickly toward Stephen Nickel. “Tell him, Steve!” she said. “It wasn’t—” Her voice trailed off as she looked at Nickel’s face.

  “Sorry, Paulie,” Nickel said.

  She turned back to Heimrich.

  “He’s lying,” she said. “I don’t know why, but he’s lying. I was going to join him after and—”

  Now Heimrich was shaking his head slowly.

  “Mr. Nickel’s told us the plan, Miss James,” he said. “Told us he was going off with Mrs. Bromwell. Taking the child because Mrs. Bromwell insisted. Planning—”

  “I tell you, he’s lying,” Pauline said. Her voice was quick, emphatic; the words hurried out. “I don’t know why. I was to join them later. Him and Lorry.”

  “Why later?” Heimrich said. “Don’t you see, Miss James. If that was the plan, why not go with him then? With him and the boy?”

  “Why,” she said, and now she spoke slowly. “To give him time. I waited a little and then said Lorry was lost and that gave him time. He planned so that—” This time she did not break off. Her voice seemed to run down.

  “So that you would wait,” Heimrich told her. “Give him time, yes. To meet Mrs. Bromwell.”

  She turned again to Nickel. She looked at him steadily for what seemed a long time.

  “Steve,” she said, “was that the way it was? I was just—”

  “Take it easy, Paulie,” Stephen Nickel said. “Take it easy. It wouldn’t have had to be permanent, you know. Not with Marta. She was a damn good-looking little tramp but—” He shrugged.

  “And I,” the girl said. “I’m just a little tramp? Somebody to string along. Somebody useful to—” She stopped. “You know, Steve,” she said, “somebody ought to kill you. There’s—there’s not enough of you to be alive. Somebody ought to take his thumb and kill you.”

  There was something deadly in the girl’s quiet; and there was something unexpected. It was as if Pauline James now accepted what she had known she would find; it was as if she now confirmed, in words, what she had already discovered in her mind. Karen looked at Heimrich quickly, and his eyes were open, but they were open narrowly.

  “Miss James!” he said. “Are you sure you didn’t know this before? Didn’t know it yesterday afternoon?”

  She turned slowly from her contemplation of Nickel. What Heimrich had said did not, at first, seem clear to her. She even began to shake her head as if she were puzzled, or had not heard him clearly.

  “Yesterday afternoon—” she began, and broke off. “So that’s it,” she said. “That’s the new idea!” Her voice was hard, bitter. “To leave me holding it. So I killed her to keep this—this—” she gestured toward Stephen Nickel, as if no word she could think of would finish the sentence. “That’s the new idea!” She turned on Nickel. “Something else you ran up, Steve?” she said. “Another of your damn—
operations?”

  He did not seem concerned. He even smiled faintly.

  “You know, Paulie,” he said, “I hadn’t thought of it before. Did you?”

  “To get you?” she said, and there was more in the word “you” than any epithet—of the epithets Karen realized she had been expecting—could lay on Stephen Nickel. Pauline James turned back to Heimrich.

  “She was jumped on from behind, wasn’t she?” Pauline said. “Stabbed in the back, in a way? Mr. Nickel’s the man for you, captain. It’s his stock in trade. Find out what she had on Mr. Nickel! And—find out how much Mr. Nickel was going to ask to give Lorry back to Bromwell!”

  Then Pauline James turned, looked again at nobody, and went out of the room. There was silence for a moment.

  “Gets upset easily,” Nickel said then, in a conversational tone. “Very excitable young woman.”

  Heimrich looked at him.

  “You know, Mr. Nickel,” he said at length, in a voice which to Karen seemed carefully devoid of expression, “you know, it would be interesting to find out that Mrs. Bromwell did have something on you. It would be very damn interesting. And whether you planned to sell your son back to Mr. Bromwell. That would be interesting.”

  Nickel seemed undisturbed. “No soap,” he said. “Paulie has pipe-dreams when she gets upset. Hope it doesn’t put you out too much, captain. You through with me?”

  Heimrich merely nodded. Forniss opened the door for Stephen Nickel, who used it.

  “He’s—he’s dreadful,” Karen said, after a time. “But—”

  “But you suspect he’s telling the truth all the same,” Heimrich finished for her. “Part of it, anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised, Miss Mason.”

  “And Miss James?” Karen said. “She was so—so—”

  “Violent,” Heimrich said. “Yes. I noticed that, Miss Mason. Naturally. And—a good actress, of course, since none of you noticed it before. She was good with the children?”

  “Yes,” Karen said. “Oh yes.”

  “If she did know yesterday what his plan was,” Heimrich said, “it would be interesting. But—do you think she did, Miss Mason?”