With One Stone

by Frances Lockridge

  “From New York?”

  “She says so. He says so. From a pay phone in the lobby of the building his office is in. Having meant to call from the office and forgotten it and not wanting to go back up. Which puts him a long way off, if true.”

  “And when Mrs. Bedlow was killed, he was in Chicago.”

  “Well—the next day he was in Chicago. That checks out, incidentally. Thursday night, he says, he was on the Century going to Chicago. Says he doesn’t fly if he can avoid it. Left Chicago Friday night, on a late train; got in Saturday afternoon. Went to his office to clear up some things—which can’t be checked out, he says, because the office staff isn’t there Saturday—and then telephoned and came up, getting there an hour and a half or so after Bedlow had been killed.”

  Forniss said there were holes in it.

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said. “Holes you could fly an airplane through. There are always holes in everything. But—why? Not so his wife would get the money. Because, if your friend Goodhue is right, she’s already got it, or as good as. Whereas, with Curtis, we’ve got motives, choice of. To say nothing of the best opportunity both times.”

  It occurred to Forniss that Heimrich did not want to make Norman Curtis “it.” This happens now and again; it has yet to dissuade Captain M. L. Heimrich, but still it happens.

  Forniss said, “Choice of?” not because he couldn’t guess.

  They could assume that Curtis was lying entirely, or telling the truth entirely, or doing a little of both. If he was telling the truth entirely, he had killed nobody. And, quite possibly, been framed. To which Forniss said, “Huh?”

  “When Mrs. Bedlow telephoned him Monday morning,” Heimrich said. “If she telephoned him Monday morning, to arrange this meeting, anybody in the house could have picked up an extension telephone and listened in. Could have thought, ‘That’ll be a good time to do it, and let Curtis take the rap.’”

  “Hm-mm,” Forniss said. “Just happened to pick a phone up?”

  “Now Charley,” Heimrich said, “lots of times people say to other people, in effect, ‘Excuse me a minute. I’ve got to make a phone call.’ Both the Parsonses, and Dinah, were in the house at the time. There’s also an extension in the guest house. Didn’t stint on telephones, Bedlow didn’t. Anyway—”

  Or, Curtis was half lying, half telling the truth. He had cooled off as far as Ann Bedlow was concerned, and had told her that, and she had been “upset.” And—threatened to tell her husband a story. Say that she threatened to tell a story of unwelcome advances; perhaps violent “advances.” The least Curtis could expect if she did was the loss of a good job and Bedlow’s influence against him in getting another as good. The influence might be considerable; modern-day newspaper publishers tend to flock together. Also—Bedlow had once seen that a man who made advances to a wife of his lost a good deal more than a job. So threatened, Curtis might have become upset himself.

  “And the old man?”

  Saw something. Guessed something. Charged Curtis with it and got killed for his trouble.

  Forniss considered. After consideration, he said, “Yep. Could be.”

  There was another thing to remember: If Mrs. Bedlow were still alive, she would have the best motive of any to kill her husband, particularly if (as Curtis said) she had grown bored with him; bored with an “old man.” Kill him, and she freed herself; kill him and she got a fortune all her own. Again, a classic pattern, flawed a good bit, of course, by the fact that she had got herself killed first. However—

  “Maybe,” Heimrich said, “Curtis hadn’t cooled at all, Charley. Maybe he was still as warm toward her—and toward a few million dollars. So they met at the guest house and said a few suitable ‘Darlings!’ and then got down to cases—how do we knock off the old boy? Arsenic in his tea, maybe?”

  “Now captain,” Forniss said, “let’s not get too damned classical.”

  Heimrich laughed briefly and went on, again as much to himself as to Forniss. Leave out arsenic, the classical. It didn’t matter how.

  Suppose it was Bedlow himself who had listened in as the two planned to meet in the guest house. Suppose he had attended the meeting—“from around five on, when Miss Winters left, he was alone in the office wing. He didn’t have to stay there”—listened in on the plot, let Curtis leave and killed his wife, in a kind of premature self-defense. Let Curtis alone, for the time, since with Ann dead Curtis had no further motive for action. Decided it would be a nice ironic bit if the police caught up with Curtis, and convicted him of killing Ann.

  “Two birds with one stone,” Heimrich said.

  Forniss said, “Well—”

  “Oh,” Heimrich said, “it didn’t work out that way, obviously. Possibly Bedlow tipped his own hand, for the fun of seeing Curtis squirm. And misjudged his man, and Curtis shot instead of squirming. You like it this way, Charley?”

  “The point is,” Charles Forniss said, “will our friend Knight like it? The peerless D.A. On account of, juries don’t like to pick and choose, you know. Like everything all neated up, juries do. This isn’t neat.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “And we can make it messier, Charley. Suppose Ann and Curtis didn’t plan anything—classic. Suppose they were just in love and met at the guest house—well, as lovers. Suppose Bedlow—again because he had listened in on their plans—surprised them and Curtis got away and Ann didn’t. Curtis, perhaps, figuring that Bedlow wouldn’t hurt a woman. And, when he found out he had figured wrong, killed Bedlow in—retribution.”

  He looked at Charles Forniss.

  “Before you say well—in that special way of yours, Charley,” Heimrich said, “remember that melodrama is what we deal in. Slice it thick or slice it thin—no matter how you slice murder it’s still melodrama.”

  “Well—” Forniss said, and Harold, the barman, called across the taproom, “Sergeant. Telephone call for you.”

  Heimrich had time to finish his drink before Sergeant Forniss came back.

  “Ned Dolan,” Forniss said. “Told him I’d be here if he had any second thoughts. Seems he has had. Seems now he thinks our friend Lynch was at the Shamrock Friday evening. Not Thursday. Seems he remembered something that reminded him of something else, and now it was Friday, and he’s pretty sure.”

  “Well—” Heimrich said. “Think of that, Charley. We’d better talk some more to your Mr. Lynch, hadn’t we?”

  XI

  Pilkins wouid be the man who would know. Pilkins had once got one himself, and Robert Lynch had helped him spend it. It had not been a lot, but that probably didn’t matter. Pilkins was the man to ask and Pilkins would know what, if anything, you had to do about it. And, most particularly, how soon you might expect to get it. He’d go around and see Pilkins. He hoped it wouldn’t take long. He couldn’t wait long. The best thing would be if he could go somewhere tomorrow—a lawyer’s office, probably—and say he was Robert Lynch, the brother, and pick it up at once. He supposed it wouldn’t be really that simple. People like lawyers had to make livings, so there had to be formalities. More likely it would take a week; perhaps even ten days. One couldn’t expect efficiency; not with things as they were and society as it was. A lot of prating about efficiency and “know-how,” of course. The real thing—never.

  As if he didn’t know, Lynch thought, finishing his second drink in the Shamrock Bar and Grill. As if he hadn’t experienced the fumbling, the hopeless incompetence, of the way things were run. In advertising agencies, for example. And by magazines. How some of these people who called themselves “art editors” got by with it, he’d never know. Put what they were looking for right before their eyes and they couldn’t see it. When anybody with half an eye—

  Well, that would be over in a week or so. He could tell them what to do. No, he wouldn’t bother. He’d do his real work and when he had his one-man they’d realize. And he’d laugh.

  Better get on with it. Better go see Pilkins, for a start.

  Oswald Pilkins had a one-room “apartm
ent”—which was to say he had a room—in a reformed tenement on Bank Street. It was three flights up. Robert Lynch went up the three flights quickly, being much more nimble than he looked. Beards can be misleading. He knocked. There was some sound of movement inside and Oswald Pilkins partially opened the door. Pilkins said, “Oh, it’s you,” which was what people usually said when called on by Robert Lynch.

  “Yes,” Lynch said, confirming. “Got a minute, Ozzie?”

  The “Ozzie” was retaliation. Pilkins preferred to be called Oswald, which was making the best of a bad bargain.

  “Sorry,” Pilkins said. “I’m working.”

  Which was the second thing most often said by those upon whom Robert Lynch called.

  “Those verses of yours,” Lynch said. “Won’t take a minute.”

  Oswald Pilkins was a poet. He had sold several poems, the last to the Saturday Review for seven dollars, which was the best yet. In his spare time—eight hours a day of it—he clerked in a grocery store. Like other people, poets prefer to eat.

  “Oh, all right,” Pilkins said, and this was third thing usually said, and almost always in a certain tone, by those upon whom Robert Lynch called. Pilkins opened the door somewhat more widely.

  Lynch went into a long, rather narrow, quite sparsely furnished, room. Pilkins looked at him.

  “What, no drawrings?” Pilkins said. There was a note of relief in his voice. Few people upon whom Lynch called had the opportunity to make this statement.

  The “R” which lurked in the word was not of Pilkins’s invention. It was, commonly, placed there by Lynch himself, with humor in mind—even with satire. By saying “drawrings” he punctured the pretensions of New Englanders. He had several other key words with which he punctured the pretensions of Southerners, Midwesterners, Madison Avenuers and, above all, Texans.

  “No drawrings,” Lynch said now. “That time you inherited money, Ozzie. Remember?”

  Oswald Pilkins certainly did remember. It had been almost ten years ago now, and it had been almost five thousand dollars. And what a damned idiot he had been, Pilkins thought with bitterness—often thought with bitterness—not to have hung on to it; put it in a bank and nibbled at it carefully. If he had done that he might by now have something written, something said. Eight hours a day weighing potatoes, getting soap flake boxes off shelves, takes it out of a poet.

  “Yes,” Pilkins said. “I remember. Why?”

  “How long did it take?”

  “Bobbie,” Pilkins said (Lynch liked the formality of “Robert”), “what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Listen,” Lynch said. “I’m going to come into some money. That sister of mine’s dead.”

  “I didn’t know you had a sister,” Oswald Pilkins said.

  “Nothing to boast about,” Lynch said. “A Mrs. Got-rocks of the worst kind. Half sister, really. Anyhow, she’s dead, and she’s left me some money. So, I remembered that somebody left you some money a while back.”

  “A long while,” Pilkins said. “What about it, Bobbie?”

  “This about it,” Lynch said. “You heard you were going to get it. How long did it take to get it?”

  “Oh,” Pilkins said. “Let’s see?” He considered. “A couple of years,” he said. “No—more like two and a half.”

  “That’s crazy,” Lynch said, and his light voice got even lighter. “What do you mean, years?”

  “Years,” Pilkins said. “Of twelve months and three hundred and sixty-five days each, unless one of them was a leap year. I don’t remember about that, Bobbie.”

  It seemed to him that Robert Lynch’s beard was quivering. This was a very interesting thing to observe. He had not realized that beards quivered.

  “They can’t get away with it,” Lynch said, and spoke shrilly.

  “Oh yes,” Pilkins said, “they can get away with it. They file accountings for tax purposes and assess the taxes and the federal government checks to see if the testator had paid income taxes for the year preceding death, and the state checks, and then the surrogate gets around to it, finally and—”

  “Two years,” Lynch said, and now it seemed to Pilkins that the brown beard was jumping up and down.

  “Or more,” Pilkins said. He was by no means a malicious man; malicious people, or even those with normal instincts of self-preservation, seldom permitted themselves much contact with Robert Lynch. But Oswald Pilkins allowed himself to be slightly amused at Lynch’s jumping beard.

  “There was something wrong with yours,” Lynch said. “Wasn’t that it? Complications—something like that? Search for missing heirs?”

  “No,” Pilkins said. “They tell me it was all very simple.” He paused. He resisted, but not successfully. “Simpler than most, they told me it was,” he said. “This Mrs. Got-rocks—she left you quite a bit, Bobbie?”

  “Well—” Lynch said, as wariness returned.

  “Because,” Pilkins said, “the more it is, the longer it takes, I imagine.”

  And Robert Lynch said something like “Ow!” on a rising note of agony. He did not so much leave as flee.

  Going back to his desk, Oswald Pilkins found that he was a little sorry for the small bearded man. Sometimes Pilkins surprised himself. Had his tolerance no limits? …

  There was a chance, of course, that Pilkins was lying. He was a malicious son-of-a-bitch, and, naturally, jealous, as a man of no talent—incomprehensible tripe, those verses of his were—is of a man with much. (Too much for the time he lived in, Robert Lynch realized. Pearls before swine was what he, Robert Lynch, cast.)

  But, by the time he had gone down the stairs—not so nimbly as he had gone up them—and reached the Bank Street sidewalk, Lynch realized that the chances were Pilkins wasn’t lying. This dragging out of simple things, so that a lot of people could get their fingers in the pie—that was what one had to expect; that was the way things were. By the time the money got to him—if he hadn’t starved to death by then—a lot of it would have stuck to greedy fingers.

  And more would have stuck than would have done if he hadn’t been the kind of man he was—an artist, not fitted, too sensitive, to cope with the crass commercialism of the age. (Lynch’s mind bristled with clichés, of which “crass commercialism” was a favorite. He also spoke often, with reprehension, of “commercialized entertainment.”)

  Lynch’s body walked a full block, to no special end and with beard bristling, before his mind walked into a full realization of the spot he had got himself. Ann alive had made him monthly “loans”—not adequate, but something—more or less on the condition that he would keep his distance. Ann dead became merely an unfulfilled promise—a promise of money in the very distant future. What the hell, Lynch asked himself, was he going to live on for the next two years? Years. Not, as he had planned on, days. Years!

  Well—he’d have to do something about it. Momentarily, he had some money. Fortunately, Sis had come through before she died.

  He got a subway to Grand Central. There was a train leaving for Brewster at a little before ten, which gave him ample time. He had a stew at the Oyster Bar. He’d always liked oyster stew. He still had plenty of time before the train left.

  XII

  She had gone to sleep very early; had been strangely, suddenly, overpowered by sleep. It had been as if sleep had crept behind her and struck her down, hit her over the head. (Do not think of anyone’s being hit over the head, of blood dripping.) And later, in the same fashion, as meaninglessly, complete wakefulness had overpowered her. Lay sleep to sudden exhaustion, not of the body? And wakefulness to—to what? To fear? To anxiety?

  It was now only a little after ten. Only an hour’s sleep, then. She must have fallen asleep about nine, perhaps before nine. They had separated almost at once after dinner. Formality, custom, had held them together that long, as it had brought them together earlier. It was as if custom had been a magnet which, as they finished coffee, suddenly lost power, or gained rejecting power, pushing them apart. Norman had said s
omething about a call to make, and said it obviously, with no real pretense otherwise, as an excuse, and had gone into the office wing. Mary had said merely, “Coming?” to her husband and Russ, in his soft, expressive voice, had said, “Of course, Mary,” and followed her up the stairs. And Dinah herself had almost at once gone up to her room, intending to read in bed—to escape into other lives, other thoughts. She had switched her telephone extension off and got into bed with a book and almost at once had been assaulted by sleep. And now could no longer sleep.

  Could not sleep, and could not escape. It had grown much warmer suddenly, as it sometimes does in April, and both windows of her bedroom were open. The shrill song of peepers, which means spring everywhere, rose and fell; there were the night sounds of the country—a dog barked somewhere; somewhere there was the sound of animal movement—the movement, from its sound, of a deer. Restful sounds and soothing sounds, even the sound the deer made. And her mind writhed, would not be quiet.

  It had been so unreal at cocktail time, so false, so like some kind of parody. And yet, at the beginning, it had been entirely ordinary; had seemed entirely ordinary.

  She had seen little of the others—nothing at all of Norm—after she had returned to the living room from answering Captain Heimrich’s questions—questions which seemed to skip around her like the paws of a playing cat; of a cat with claws in, but claws waiting. It had been as if, somehow, he surrounded her with questions, fenced her in with questions. (As a cat may fence a mouse with patting, lethal, paws.) Yet it had not seemed to her that the danger was hers; it had been as if she stood in front of someone, something, she tried to protect. (Mouse defending mouse.)

  Because, she had felt, it was always Norm the paws flicked at, the questions really circled. And that sudden question—was she in love with Norman Curtis? Did it show so? Had (in spite of the big, blue-eyed man’s denials) Norm said something that revealed? What? If he had said something, what? The little fool thinks she’s—no, not that. He would never have said that. We are in love with each other? Could he—in other words, perhaps only by some inflection, even some gesture of his quick hands (dear hands!)—have said that? For an instant, there was consoling warmth in her mind, but only for an instant.