With One Stone

by Frances Lockridge

  Elimination had, in any case, been made fairly easy. Among the fingerprints, recent, which had been lifted in the kitchen and bedroom of the guest house were those of the man who had, it was quite apparent, been living there, having broken in there.

  Only—so far those prints helped merely in elimination. The local authorities had no record of them, which was not surprising. But neither had the New York State Police, nor the New York City police. Coded descriptions had been teletyped to Washington; sorting machines were now no doubt sorting. Possibly the man they wanted would come tumbling out. Perhaps it would be that easy.

  Forniss, walking up to the door of the house, did not for a moment believe it would turn out to be that easy. That they might get a man—yes. That if they got him he might help—again yes. But that he would be the man—that did not seem likely to Sergeant Charles Forniss, who couldn’t see a tramp wasting time with tricks—tricks that wouldn’t get him anywhere—with the reason a tramp would have to run. If, of course, there had really been a tramp.

  That there should be grief in the house, and that the grief felt should vary from one person in the house to another, was something to be expected. Dinah herself felt grief—felt, more accurately perhaps, an unhappiness which was akin to disappointment. She had not known her stepmother especially well; neither had sought anything closer than casual friendship, and Dinah had been seldom at home. Yet she found, as the morning passed slowly-dragged toward noon—that she kept remembering things about Ann; little things: a quick, amused glance Ann had shared with her once when both of them were bored; a sudden, uncharacteristic, chortle Ann had given once when, to her obvious amazement—amazement, Dinah remembered, entirely justified—a shot went perfectly off her racket, and ungettably past someone she was playing against. But it was, for Dinah, more nearly the general sadness—the general disappointment—one feels when, overnight, a bright flower turns ugly with decay.

  She supposed, as she waited in her room, tried to write a letter and gave it up, that her sister’s feelings would be much like her own—a generalized unhappiness. What her father would feel she could only guess at. He would feel more, infinitely more. I haven’t the experience to know what it means to him, she thought. I think he loved her—loved her very much, but I do not really know what it means to him to have her ended—to have it all ended. An emptiness, she supposed; one could imagine the emptiness. And beyond that—an idea came to her suddenly, and was somehow uncomfortable.

  Anger—he would feel anger. And bitterness. And this because something which was his had been taken from him. She did not know precisely what made her think this, and then thought that there was not any one thing which “precisely” made her sure of it, but a hundred little things—small actions, turns of speech, even the look in eyes—which now, quite suddenly, added to a decision about her father. He would be coldly enraged that what was his had been taken from him. Was it, Dinah wondered, a strange thing to think about one’s own father? An unkind thing?

  Was she right about Mary, she wondered then, with sudden doubt. Mary had known Ann better; had had a chance, at any rate, to know her better. She might feel more deeply. But I don’t, Dinah thought, suddenly, really know what my sister thinks about things. I used to think hers were probably very simple thoughts, and friendly thoughts—except possibly about Norman Curtis—but I don’t really know.

  And what Norman feels I don’t know either. I—it is none of my business what he feels.

  That there should be, in the big house, an atmosphere of grief was to be expected. But as Saturday morning dragged along, there was something—something almost tangible, although it could not really be tangible—which was more than sorrow and different from it. There was a kind of anxiety, which Dinah felt and was certain the others felt—Mary, Norman Curtis, almost certainly her father, too. Anxiety and, with it, impatience. It was like waiting in a doctor’s anteroom, anxious and at the same time fearful, wanting to get a dreaded thing over with, one way or the other. And to know that the doctor was not even in his office.

  Actually, they had been waiting since early the previous afternoon.

  They had learned after lunch, of which nobody had eaten much. The telephone had rung and Simpkins had returned from it and said, “A Mr. Knight is calling, sir,” and James Bedlow had gone to the nearest telephone, which was in the living room. He had been gone some minutes; he had come back heavily.

  He had spoken heavily, without inflection.

  “Ferguson Knight,” he said. “The district attorney. He says Ann—” his voice had checked for a moment there, but had not really faltered—“that Ann was killed. That it wasn’t an accident.”

  It had been, Dinah thought—the letter writing given up; standing at the window of her room on the second floor; looking down at the turnaround, at Norman’s Jaguar still parked in it—it had been like being hit in the face. For her it had been like that; she thought it had been much the same for the others. Norman Curtis’s expressive face had gone blank; Mary had said “Oh!” and put her hand up to her mouth. Even Simpkins, serving, had opened his mouth, as if to say something, and had said nothing but had left his mouth open.

  The big white-haired man who had told them this turned, with it told, and walked out of the dining room toward the living room. After a moment, Curtis got up and followed him. After some little time, Curtis came back to Dinah and her sister.

  “They think it was somebody who’d been hiding in the guest house,” he told them. “It means they’ll be asking a lot of questions, probably. Not this afternoon, apparently. In the morning. The men who were here before lunch, I suppose—the sergeant, anyway.”

  “Hiding in the guest house?” Mary had repeated, and Curtis had nodded.

  “That’s what they think,” he said and then, to Dinah unexpectedly, “That’s what this Knight says they think, anyway. What he told the boss they thought.”

  They had—all had, Dinah was certain—thought that the police would come early in the morning. There was no real reason for this expectation; Knight had merely said “tomorrow morning.” But they had not come early; not by nine, or by ten, or by eleven. And the exasperation of waiting had increased as the hours passed. They had lunched early, sketchily. James Bedlow had a sandwich and coffee in his office.

  During the morning, Bedlow himself had shown the exasperation–shown it in a certain quickness of motion, in frequent looking at his watch. He was not a man who expected to be kept waiting. And once he had said, standing at a living room window, looking out, “Hell of a note.” He said it low, said it to himself.

  Curtis had not said anything directly, but had wandered, somewhat restlessly and, making a telephone call to New York, to the man who was sitting in for him at the Chronicle, had spoken sharply and then said, “Sorry, Joe. I’m jumpy today.”

  By eleven, when still nobody had come, Bedlow had said, “Come on, Curtis,” and they had gone to the door at the far end of the living room which opened into the office quarters—the three sound-proofed rooms, in an annex, from which, with his secretary-stenographer in attendance, Bedlow carried on much of his business.

  I should feel relief, Dinah thought, as she saw the police car come up the drive, stop beside the Jaguar; as she saw a tall young man get out on one side and a taller, solider one, a not so young one, get out from behind the wheel. They paused and the older man—they were the same men who had been there the day before—looked at the Jaguar.

  It happened before, Dinah thought, and in the same moment realized that it had not—that before it was her father, going out to find his wife, who had stopped and looked at Norman Curtis’s car.

  I should feel relief, she thought. But—it isn’t relief. It’s almost—why, it’s almost as if I were frightened.

  V

  Sergeant Forniss had the usual words ready—the words of regret for intrusion at such a time; the words of explanation that, at such times, the police must go through the formalities established. “A few routine questions,�
�� Forniss would have added, had he used the usual words at all.

  But the long-faced man, wearing a white jacket, who opened the door was so clearly what he was, said “Sir?” from such a distance, that Forniss decided to save the words.

  “Sergeant Forniss. State Police,” he said. “I’d like to see Mr. Bedlow.”

  “Mr. Bedlow is—” Harry Simpkins said, from a distance which Forniss’s identification had merely enhanced.

  “I know,” Forniss said. “I quite understand how Mr. Bedlow must feel. Just tell him I’d like a few words with him, will you?”

  “Sir?”

  “Now,” Forniss said. “If you don’t mind.”

  Simpkins looked at him for seconds longer. He said, “Certainly, sir. If you’ll wait?”

  Forniss went into the foyer of the big house. Crowley went in after him. “We’ll wait,” Forniss said, and Simpkins said, “Thank you, sir,” and went between columns which provided formal separation of foyer and living room. He went down the living room almost to the end, opened a door, went through the doorway, closed door behind him.

  After several minutes, he came out again, and back the way he had gone, not hurrying—a long, deliberate man with a long face; a man maintaining distance.

  “Mr. Bedlow will see you,” he said, when he had come the long way, slowly, and stood in front of Forniss. “This other—er?”

  The “er” apparently was Crowley.

  “He’ll talk to you,” Forniss said. “And the other—members of the staff. O.K.?”

  “Very well, sir. If you will come this way, sir?”

  Forniss went that way—down the length of the big, softly carpeted room, toward closed double doors at the end. Just before they reached the double doors, Simpkins turned to the door in the side wall he had used before and opened it and stepped aside. Forniss went into a very wide corridor, at right angles to the living room wall. No, not a corridor, precisely—an anteroom; the anteroom of a business office. The corridor-anteroom was some forty feet in length. The far wall was formed of glass brick, through which light trickled softly. There was an almost palpable silence in the room.

  Set against the left wall—that toward the rear of the house—there were two small sofas. In the opposite wall there were three doors, widely spaced. The long man in the white jacket knocked on the center door and opened it and said, “The man from the police, sir.”

  “Let him in,” James Bedlow said. He had a heavy voice. Simpkins stepped aside again.

  Forniss went into a wide, but rather shallow, office. Here, too, the far wall was made of glass brick. A big man—wide shouldered, heavy shouldered, sat at a desk with his back to the translucent wall. He was reading what appeared to be a typescript. He looked up. He had gray eyes widely set in a broad face. He was deeply tanned. There was vigor in the man, Forniss thought—vigor even in his white hair. In his sixties, Forniss knew by then. Forniss hoped that by the time he was he would be doing as well.

  Bedlow looked up from the typescript. He jerked his head to show that he was conscious of interruption. But he returned to his reading; turned two more pages and finished it, clipped the sheets together and laid them face down on the desk blotter. He looked up, then.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Forniss. State Police.”

  “I know,” Bedlow said, impatience in his voice. “Well?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you under these—”

  “Skip it. Sit down and get on with it.”

  In his calling, Forniss, like all policemen, most often talk to the living about those recently dead—to women suddenly widows, men whose wives have died; to parents of the dead and children of them. Grief takes many forms—some are crushed by it and some only shaken; some sit with eyes staring, dry and wide, seeing what was and now is not. But now and then there is one whose response is anger—the bitter resentment of the wronged, the betrayed.

  James Bedlow, Forniss thought, faced the world with hatred. He would like to tear apart a world which had destroyed what he loved; taken from him what was his, and so defrauded him. Forniss sat down.

  “We think Mrs. Bedlow probably was killed by someone she came on near the house by the swimming pool,” Forniss said. “Somebody who had broken in and was living there. Hiding there.”

  “I know what you think. The district attorney told me. What do you want from me?”

  “I don’t know. Anything that will help us catch the man.”

  “She was killed. She was struck down and thrown into the pool. You people say she was. What more is there?”

  There was anger in the heavy voice. There was, too, a kind of contempt in it.

  “The one who did it,” Forniss said. “We’re doing what we can, Mr. Bedlow.”

  “I don’t know anything about this man you say broke into the guest house. Old Jason says somebody did. Your business to see they don’t, isn’t it?”

  “We can’t be everywhere,” Forniss said. “Guard everything. Look, Mr. Bedlow, you know that. And that I’m doing what I have to do. I’m sorry as hell it’s happened. Sorry to bother you. It’s the job I’ve got to do.”

  It was a long speech for Charles Forniss.

  He got a short answer. “Get on with it.”

  “You went out Thursday evening to look for your wife,” Forniss said. “Just why, Mr. Bedlow? Were you worried about her? Think something might have happened to her?”

  “She was late getting back. Wasn’t like her.”

  “She often went for walks about that time?”

  “When the weather was decent.”

  “Other times, had you gone out to look for her?”

  “What,” James Bedlow said, and there was anger in his voice, “has that got to do with it?”

  Forniss was patient in word. He let a little impatience creep into his voice.

  “If you don’t want to cooperate,” he said, “I can’t make you, Mr. Bedlow. If you felt more—say anxious—night before last than usual, it might mean something. You know whether it would or not.”

  “All I can say is, she was late. Sure, I’ve gone out and called her before. Not often.”

  “You didn’t have any special reason to worry this time?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t know the bath house—whatever you call it—had been broken into? Get the idea somebody might be lurking around there?”

  “No. To both.”

  “But, you did go in that direction. Instead of, say, down the drive.”

  “Curtis had just come up the drive. Not seen anyone.”

  It was now Bedlow who was being patient—in word.

  “Sergeant,” Bedlow said, “I went out to find my wife. I—found her. I wasn’t especially worried. I didn’t know—didn’t have any idea—somebody had broken into the guest house. That there was any danger. It was time for a drink and—I wanted her with us.”

  There was a difference in tone, then. The harshness went out of the heavy voice then. For the moment.

  “I went down the path toward the pool because I had to go one way or another. That happened to be the way. I found her in the pool and she was—I could see she was badly hurt. I called for help—called Jason Sarles. He helped. What else do you want?”

  “You knew Sarles was working in the garden?”

  “Didn’t know. Thought he might be. He’d said, that morning, that he was going to work on the asparagus unless there was something else special. I said there wasn’t.”

  “Mr. Bedlow, did you happen to look in the guest house? Go in, maybe?”

  “How’d you get that idea?”

  “It would,” Forniss said, “seem a logical thing to do. When you called and she didn’t answer.”

  “I looked in,” Bedlow said. “Sure.”

  “Naturally,” Forniss said, reminding himself of Heimrich. One picks things up. “Didn’t go in?”

  “No.”

  Bedlow would, it occurred to Forniss, have had to pass the pool to reach the guest house beyon
d it. He said, “You didn’t look in the pool when you passed it?”

  “Glanced in,” Bedlow said. “What are you trying to get at?”

  “The picture,” Forniss said.

  “Going down,” Bedlow said, “I’d look toward the shallow end of the pool. Did, I suppose. There—there was nothing to see. Coming back, I looked again. Toward the deep end.”

  “Sarles,” Forniss said, “says that he heard you call in an ordinary tone—call your wife’s name. Then didn’t hear anything for about five minutes. Then—you shouted for help.”

  “Well?”

  “Do you remember it that way?”

  “For God’s sake,” Bedlow said. “You think I timed myself? I called several times. Went and looked into the guest house. Through the door. Didn’t see anything. Started back up the path and—saw Ann.”

  “When you looked into the guest house, you didn’t see any signs that somebody had broken into it?”

  “No.”

  “Of course,” Forniss said, “you didn’t actually go in, as you say.”

  Bedlow merely looked at him. He had very cold eyes, Forniss thought.

  “Just looked into the living room,” Forniss said. “Through the door glass. Whoever had been living in the house apparently didn’t use the living room.”

  Bedlow said nothing.

  “You carried your wife back to the house,” Forniss said. “Thinking, of course, that she had slipped and fallen into the pool?”

  “There was a patch of ice at that end,” Bedlow said. “I knew she was hurt—hurt bad. What’s the point of all this? I’ve been patient—let you wander all over the lot. What’s the point?”