He looked at her, and she hesitated. It would be easy to say yes; it might even help.
“No,” Karen Mason said, “I don’t think so, captain. I think she found out just now.”
Heimrich gave no indication whether he agreed with her. He closed his eyes. “All right, Miss Mason,” he said. “That’s all for now.”
Heimrich sat for a time, his eyes closed, after Karen had gone out. Then he got up and went to a window and looked out of it.
“It’s not thinning any, is it Charlie?” he said to Forniss. “Getting thicker if anything.”
“Also,” Forniss said, “it’s getting slippery as hell. A reporter just skidded and banged his car into a wall.”
That was too bad, Heimrich said, without turning from the window.
It very nearly had been, Forniss told him. The wall was at the intersection of the driveway and the road; it was across the road, so that if, coming down the drive, you failed to turn to right or left, the wall would stop you. Perhaps it would stop you; it had better, since beyond the wall there was a sizeable drop to rocks. The reporter had skidded driving out, but the wall had stopped him.
“That’s good,” Heimrich said, still not turning. “The press is here, then.”
“Yep,” Forniss said. “All of it. Keeping them down in the cottage by the road. They want to see you. So Nickel was trying to steal Bromwell’s child?”
Heimrich turned back.
“His child, he says,” he told Forniss, and told him the rest he had missed.
“Swell,” Forniss said. “Now we know everything.”
“Now sergeant,” Heimrich said. “Not everything. Not who killed them.”
He sighed.
“However,” he said, “one of them’s about due to make a move, probably. It’s about time for that, Charlie. We’ll just have to keep pushing them.”
“The Mason girl?” Forniss said.
“I wouldn’t wonder, Charlie,” Captain Heimrich said.
X
Karen had thought to go some place, to be alone, to try once more to understand what had happened, was happening. But Mrs. Bromwell wanted her. It was not phrased so by the maid who brought the message. When Miss Mason had the time, Mrs. Bromwell would like to see her. But, in short, Mrs. Bromwell wanted her. Karen went down the hall to the door of the big corner room and knocked. She began to open the door, still knocking lightly.
“Oh,” Mrs. Bromwell said, “come in, Karen.”
Lucretia Bromwell, wearing a heavy robe, was sitting at a table by one of the windows. Her breakfast had been cleared away except for a heavy silver coffee pot and two cups. She turned toward Karen, looked at her and said, “You’re worn out, child. Has that man been at you again?”
Karen nodded, and Mrs. Bromwell poured steaming coffee into one of the two cups. “Drink this,” she said, and nodded resolutely at the cup. Karen sat down in a low chair on the opposite side of the table and picked up the coffee.
“What’s he want this time?” Mrs. Bromwell said. “Goes over it and over it. Is he getting anywhere?”
“I don’t know,” Karen said. “I suppose so.” She put the cup down, the coffee untasted. “He suspects Scott,” she said. Her voice sounded dead, deeply weary, to her own ears.
“Fiddlesticks!” Mrs. Bromwell said. “The man’s incompetent.”
He wasn’t. That was the trouble. Karen shook her head slowly.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t any more sense,” Mrs. Bromwell said, and finished the coffee in her own cup. She filled the cup again. “No matter what she was, Scott wouldn’t hurt her. I would have given you credit for knowing that.”
“Oh,” Karen said. “I—I’m sure of that. It’s—you asked about the police. They think—anyway, the captain says he thinks—it was Scott. He thinks I may have helped him. Because—” She spread her hands, the gesture weary, almost hopeless.
“The man’s incompetent,” Mrs. Bromwell repeated. “Not that it wouldn’t have been better, all around.”
Karen looked and waited. Mrs. Bromwell picked up subjects as they occurred to her, and picked them up firmly. It was not always easy to follow her.
“You and Scott, of course,” she said. “He’d be in love with you if he had any sense. Probably is. It was a great misfortune that he ever met her. I often think very few people kept any sense of balance during the war. Under normal circumstances, Scott would not have dreamed of marrying her.” The emphasis expressed Mrs. Bromwell’s realism. “She was an impossible person. From Kansas.”
“Nebraska,” Karen said, more or less instinctively.
“Completely without principles,” Mrs. Bromwell said. “Completely without morals.” She drank coffee. She looked out the window at the fog, and her voice when she next spoke was changed. “It was tragic for my son,” she said. “And, of course, he came to realize that.” She turned back to Karen. “But he did not kill her. You realize that, child?”
“Of course,” Karen said.
(But it wasn’t that easy, that certain. Scott had planned—She could not talk about that to Scott’s mother. Mrs. Bromwell might know what Scott had planned; he might have told her. The very emphasis of her present avowals might be evidence of Mrs. Bromwell’s own fears. But Karen could not be sure of that; she could not risk finding out, since trying to find out would reveal her own knowledge—would reveal everything. There was no safe thing to say. Yet there was so much to say, so much to discover, and she had been feeling so much alone.)
“Mrs. Bromwell,” she said, “they say Lorry isn’t really Scott’s son. Did you—is that true?”
“Who says that?” Mrs. Bromwell demanded. Her tone was sharp.
“Mr. Nickel,” Karen said. “He says Lorry is his son. And—” She stopped.
“Scott told you?” Mrs. Bromwell said.
Karen nodded. “I didn’t know whether you—” she said, and left it there.
“Of course I knew,” Mrs. Bromwell said. “It wasn’t difficult to guess. A blond child, looking like neither of them; obviously not a Bromwell. So she finally told Scott?”
“Yes,” Karen said.
“An entirely dissolute young woman,” Mrs. Bromwell said. “So this Nickel claims the boy. He—what brought him here, Karen? Have they found that out?”
Karen told her what they had found out; what Nickel admitted; told her of the part Pauline James had played.
“Absurd!” Mrs. Bromwell said. “Not that meek, meaching little thing!” That, anyway, she seemed not to have guessed. About Pauline James, Lucretia Bromwell appeared to have been as mistaken as anyone.
“She’s changed,” Karen said. “Or—I suppose she was never what we thought.”
“A criminal!” Mrs. Bromwell said, with decision. “Hired by this man. This kidnapper! Who undoubtedly planned to sell Lorry back to us.”
It perhaps came to that, but it was not precisely that, Karen told Scott’s formidable mother, who sat erect in a chair which offered comfort and was spurned. At least, “hired” appeared not to be the right word. “She thought she was going to be with Nickel and Lorry,” Karen said.
“Marry him?” Mrs. Bromwell wanted to know.
Karen couldn’t answer that.
“Come to the same thing,” Mrs. Bromwell said.
For practical purposes, Karen agreed. But—Nickel hadn’t planned it that way. He’d planned on Marta, not on Pauline James. Mrs. Bromwell said “h-mm.” Then she said, “Now I wonder.” Karen waited, sipping the coffee, wanting a cigarette and knowing better than to light one.
“Has it occurred to this policeman that Miss James had an excellent motive?” Mrs. Bromwell said, finally. “If she expected to go off with this Nickel and Lorry and found that Marta was going instead? A person of her kind might easily decide to kill an—intruder. Has he thought of that?”
He had, Karen said. So had she. But she, at any rate, was inclined to think that Pauline James had learned only today that she had been left out, crowded out.
“It
is obvious,” Mrs. Bromwell said, “that she would seek to give that impression. It is evident she knows how to dissimulate. Even this policeman should see that. Or is he being taken in?”
That Karen could not answer. She did not know what he thought; she did not even know that to believe what Pauline’s attitude implied would constitute being taken in. This time Mrs. Bromwell’s “h-mm” was not speculative, but sharply skeptical.
“A competent man,” she informed Karen, “would have few doubts. Admittedly a criminal, of that class, she had a very evident motive and—” Mrs. Bromwell stopped suddenly, as if she had collided with an idea, or with a significant memory. “Karen,” she said, “I must see this policeman at once. Will you—” But then she broke off again and looked around the room, looked at herself in a lived-in woolen dressing gown. She stood up, and Karen thought how resilient, physically as well as mentally, Mrs. Bromwell was for the good many years she had lived. Mrs. Bromwell started to remove the robe, and Karen stood up.
“Sit still,” Mrs. Bromwell said. “You can stand an old woman. In any case, I’m partly dressed. And I want you to come along to this policeman of yours.”
When Captain Heimrich had become Karen’s was not clear; in, it appeared, that moment, Mrs. Bromwell merely assigned him.
Mrs. Bromwell was, as she promised, partly dressed; she was dressed outward to a slip. She changed slippers for country shoes, crossed to a closet and, for a moment, stood to regard its contents. Then she took out the black broadcloth suit she had worn, for a short time, the afternoon before, and laid the jacket on the bed while she put on the skirt. Karen watched her idly; looked out of the window as idly at the dreary day, looked back at Mrs. Bromwell. Mrs. Bromwell had returned to the closet and turned from it with the severe white blouse she had worn the day before with the suit. She started to put it on, looked at it, and gave a brief, annoyed click of tongue and teeth.
“Never,” Mrs. Bromwell said, severely, “did I know it to fail. You take something off, thinking you can wear it again, and hang it up. When you come to wear it again, you find it soiled. You’d think one would learn.”
Karen smiled faintly, the smile recognizing a shared experience. She said it did always happen.
“At my age one should have learned,” Mrs. Bromwell said, carrying the offending blouse across the room, its sleeves dangling long and abjectly, to the bathroom and the bathroom hamper. Karen heard the hamper lid shut upon a blouse which, left to its own devices overnight, had misbehaved. Mrs. Bromwell took off the skirt and hung it with its jacket back in the closet. She returned, this time, with a dark woolen dress. She put it on, sat briefly at her dressing table and slapped her short gray hair into submission. She powdered with the same quick, decisive motions. Karen finished her coffee.
“Come along,” Mrs. Bromwell said, leaving the dressing table and leading the way. “I want you to hear this, too. Where is he?”
He had been, Karen told her, in the library. Mrs. Bromwell continued to lead the way. She opened the library door.
“—in other words,” Heimrich was saying to Stephen Nickel, “you thought it suited—” He broke off. To Mrs. Bromwell he said, “Yes?”
“Captain Heimrich,” Mrs. Bromwell said, “I have something to tell you. Something you may consider important.”
There was no indication she saw Nickel. His invisibility seemed only to amuse the tall blond man; he shrugged, for Heimrich’s benefit, or his own.
“However you want to figure it, there it is,” he said. “I don’t have to figure it, you know.”
“Captain Heimrich,” Mrs. Bromwell repeated.
“All right, Nickel,” Heimrich said. “You’ll stay around, naturally.”
“From the looks of the drive,” Nickel said, “I’d think everybody’d stay around, captain. Sure. I’m not going anywhere.”
He did go out of the library. He was not entirely invisible; Mrs. Bromwell moved enough to let him pass. But she still did not see him. He shrugged again, this time for Karen’s benefit, and went on.
Lucretia Bromwell advanced into the room and sat down across the table from Captain Heimrich, who kept his eyes open. Forniss pushed a chair toward Karen.
“Miss Mason tells me Miss James was involved with that man”—her head indicated the door through which Nickel had just gone—“in a plan to kidnap my grandson.”
“The little boy,” Heimrich said. “Lorry. Yes.”
“I am quite aware that he is not, in the literal sense, my grandson,” Mrs. Bromwell said. “It is unnecessary to make the point, captain.”
Heimrich closed his eyes. He waited.
“I have no knowledge whether he is, in fact, that man’s son,” Mrs. Bromwell said. “In any case, the plan was criminal.”
“A matter for the courts,” Heimrich said. “If your daughter-in-law had accompanied him, as he says they planned, it might have been difficult—”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Bromwell said. “That has nothing to do with it.”
“As things worked out,” Heimrich said, “it is of no importance, naturally. You have something to tell me?”
“It is true that Miss James helped? That she thought that man was taking her, not Marta? That he was taking Marta?”
“As I am sure Miss Mason has told you,” Heimrich said. “Yes, Mrs. Bromwell. At any rate, it appears to be.”
“Then,” Mrs. Bromwell said, “it must be obvious who killed Marta. Not my son, as Miss Mason says you appear to think. Miss James. Because she was jealous. Or—merely to dispose of her, so that that man would—have no choice. Isn’t that obvious, captain?”
Heimrich closed his eyes. He waited a moment.
“Miss James appears to have discovered only today that Nickel was taking Mrs. Bromwell,” he said. “If that is true—”
“Which,” Lucretia Bromwell said, “it obviously isn’t. A child could see that.”
To this Captain Heimrich did not in any way respond. Mrs. Bromwell waited momentarily for a response.
“However,” she said then, “you agree that the other is possible? That she might have known yesterday?”
“Naturally.”
“That then she would have had a motive?”
Heimrich merely nodded.
“Very well,” Mrs. Bromwell said. “Then—I saw her.”
Heimrich opened his eyes, then. He opened them wide.
“Saw her?” he repeated. “Saw her kill your daughter-in-law?” His incredulity was not hidden.
“Certainly not,” Mrs. Bromwell said. “In that case I would hardly have waited until now. That must be obvious.”
Heimrich said he would have thought so. He continued to look at Mrs. Bromwell.
“Obviously,” Mrs. Bromwell said, “it is only now I realize the significance of what I did see. At the time, I paid no attention to it. Now I realize Miss James was following my daughter-in-law—to kill her. And that I saw her following.”
“When was this?”
It had been, Lucretia Bromwell said, the previous afternoon. She thought about five-thirty, perhaps a few minutes later. It was after Marta had gone out, saying she was going to the kennels; after “that man” had come to telephone. Before Nickel actually came in, Mrs. Bromwell had left the East Room. “Marta had been very trying, as she often was. I had no desire to meet an accidental stranger, as I supposed he was.” Mrs. Bromwell had gone into the library. (“Had come in here, captain.”) She had been annoyed by Marta’s behavior; the “whole weekend had been trying.” For a few minutes she had merely sat, where Heimrich was sitting then, glad to be alone, hoping to relax. But, after a time, she had gone to one of the library windows. “That one,” she said, indicating one of the two tall windows in the east wall of the room. She had looked out idly, as one does at bad weather, vaguely hoping it had changed—as it had not then and had not yet. She had then seen Pauline James walking in the fog. She was walking along the section of the drive which led to the garage. The kennels were beyond the garage.
“I know,” Heimrich said. “Go on, Mrs. Bromwell.”
“She seemed to be hurrying,” Lucretia Bromwell told him. “Not running, of course, but walking rapidly. As anyone might who had been cooped up all day; anyone young and healthy. I remember thinking how fortunate it was she could get out for a breath of air.”
“Yes?” Heimrich said, when there was a momentary pause.
“She was almost at the garage,” Mrs. Bromwell said, “when she stopped suddenly and looked around, as if she had heard, or thought she had heard, someone call her.”
“But you had heard nothing?”
“No. Of course, I might well not have. She stood there a moment, looking around—looking back at the house. It seemed of no importance at the time. But now, of course, I realize she may have been looking to see whether she was observed.”
“She didn’t see you, however?”
She had, Mrs. Bromwell said, given no indication of it if she had. After the pause—which had been brief—Miss James had gone on toward the garage; had gone, in short, the way Marta must have gone a few moments earlier, if she had in fact gone to the kennels.
“As I assume she did,” Mrs. Bromwell said, “since the path near which she was found begins at the kennels and goes through the swamp to the road.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “Then?”
There was little more; actually, there was nothing more. Mrs. Bromwell had turned away from the window before Pauline reached the garage, and could not say what the girl might have done after that.
“And you?” Heimrich asked.
“I?” Mrs. Bromwell said. “Oh—I went to my room to rest. As I said, the weekend had been trying.”
“Naturally,” Heimrich said. He closed his eyes. “What you tell me is very interesting,” he said, at length.
Mrs. Bromwell stood up. She said she realized that what she had seen was not conclusive. That, confronted with it, Miss James might merely flatly deny it or, more probably, explain her actions as harmless ones.
“As you first thought them,” Heimrich pointed out. “Naturally, I realize that, Mrs. Bromwell.”
“Nevertheless,” she said, “I presume you will take some action? That you are not committed to—to some other theory? Such as this absurd one involving my son and Miss Mason?”
Foggy, Foggy Death Page 14
