With One Stone

by Frances Lockridge

  “Of course,” Heimrich said. “Wouldn’t take you long in that Thunderbird of yours, would it?”

  Parsons smiled widely. He had a pleasant smile. He said, “Traffic cop too, captain?” and Heimrich smiled back, although not so widely, and shook his head.

  “I take it,” Heimrich said, “that that was the only call to the house tonight. The point is—there was always a chance Mr. Lynch might have called and made—an appointment. Apparently he made it some other way. Or—some other time.”

  “Not with me,” Norman Curtis told the ceiling. “For the record.”

  “After dinner, Mr. Curtis,” Heimrich said, “where were you?”

  “In the office. Talking on the telephone, mostly. The office line. Talking to New York. I’ve still got a job, captain. Maybe I’d better put it—still had a job. And, as you’re no doubt thinking, Lynch could have called me there, on the office line, at the office number, and the house phones wouldn’t have rung. All nice and private, it would have been. Only—he didn’t call.”

  “There are extensions of what you call the house line in the office, aren’t there?”

  “Sure. Switched off so the bells don’t ring.”

  “But usable.”

  “Obviously.”

  It didn’t seem to Forniss that the captain was really getting much of any place. The idea was: You put pressure on, now here, now there, and eventually you found a soft spot; eventually something gave. It also seemed to Sergeant Forniss that the captain was already at the place he was, as a policeman, trying to get to, which was of course the reason it wasn’t working. Curtis was a cool customer. He wasn’t, Forniss thought, one of those who, pushed enough, break down and say, “All right, you’ve got me.” Anyway, they already had him. What more did the captain—?

  There was a considerable pause. It was as if Captain Heimrich had run out of questions. He closed his eyes.

  “Half an hour or so ago,” he said, addressing nobody in particular, “one of our men—the uniformed sergeant you saw me go out to talk to—brought me a couple of facts that maybe one of you can explain. One of them was—”

  (It was as if her mind snapped. “Uniformed.”—Clothing—)

  “Captain,” Dinah Bedlow said, “I’ve remembered something. Something—when you asked Norm—Mr. Curtis—whether Mr. Lynch’s body looked like—I don’t remember how you phrased it—was in the same position that—that Ann’s had been, he said he didn’t know because he hadn’t seen Ann.”

  She looked at Heimrich, who had opened his eyes. There was anxiety in her eyes, he thought; excitement.

  “Yes,” he said. “And—?”

  “But,” she said, “Russ knew how—how she looked. In the pool. He said so tonight—that she was wearing corduroy slacks and that her shoes were muddy and—and that there was a little dirty water in the pool where she was lying. Captain—how did he know? If he was on a train for Chicago—how did he know?” She looked at Parsons then. “How did you know?” she said. “Mary couldn’t have told you. She didn’t see either. And I didn’t. Only Father. He was already lifting her when Mr. Sarles got there. And—Father was dead when you got back.” She paused. “When you say you got back,” she said.

  Heimrich turned and looked at Russel Parsons, and his wife looked at him. But Norman Curtis looked at Dinah Bedlow—for the first time since it had started he looked at Dinah.

  “Now that,” Curtis said, “is what I call a very good question, kid. I’m glad you asked that question, baby.”

  XV

  But Russel Parsons said that he, too, was glad she had asked the question, if it was something that was bothering her. He didn’t remember precisely what he had said about how Ann had looked crumpled in the pool, but it was probably very much what Dinah remembered. He did remember having thought, having said something about, what an incongruous way it had been for a girl like Ann to die. And when he spoke to Dinah directly his voice was gentle—gentle and tolerant.

  “You see, my dear,” he said, “I’m a newspaperman. Did rewrite for years.” He looked briefly at Heimrich, including him. “Men covering stories,” he said. “Leg men, district men, telephone the facts in. Somebody writes them into a story. Only, if he’s any good at his job, it isn’t just the facts. He—what would you say, Curtis? Clothes the facts?”

  “It’s your story, Parsons,” Norman Curtis said. He did not look at Parsons. He continued to look at the slender dark girl—and watched eagerness, excitement, drain out of her face.

  “Tries to visualize the scene,” Parsons said. “If it’s that kind of story. Then tries to make a picture of it in words. Even puts in little details—physical details, mostly—that must have been there; things that make the facts real. Well, that’s all I did when I was talking about Ann. Picture it the way it must have been.”

  “You knew she was wearing slacks,” Dinah said. “The rest—I don’t know. I suppose you could have—what you call visualized it. How did you know she was wearing slacks?”

  “Because,” Mary Parsons said, and her voice was very cold, “because I told him, dear.” The ‘dear’ was an epithet. “Are you satisfied now?”

  It had drained out of her until then—confidence, the high feeling of discovery. It did not come back—the same thing did not come back. But something replaced it.

  “No, Mary,” Dinah Bedlow said, in a low but very steady voice. “I’m not satisfied.” She turned to Heimrich. “Captain,” she said, “are you satisfied? Because, if you are, why haven’t you arrested Norm?”

  Heimrich closed his eyes. Norman Curtis did not.

  “Dinah,” Norman Curtis said, with every intonation of delight, “you do ask the best questions. The very best, baby.” He looked at Heimrich and Heimrich, as if he had expected it, opened his eyes. “Doesn’t she, captain?” Curtis said.

  “Now Mr. Curtis,” Heimrich said. “She raised a point, certainly. But Mr. Parsons does seem to have—dulled it rather effectually. In any case—let’s get back to the scream three of you heard. What time would that have been?”

  Mary Parsons shook her head. Curtis said, “Around midnight.”

  “You’re quite sure, Mrs. Parsons, that it was a man who screamed?”

  She said, “Oh yes.”

  “Mr. Curtis?”

  Curtis was not so quick. He looked again, as if for advice, at the ceiling. “I thought so,” he said, then. “I can’t go beyond that. I can’t say I’m an authority on screams, captain.” He looked down, suddenly; looked at Heimrich. “You think it might have been a woman? I don’t—” He stopped. He looked from Heimrich to the big gardener. He said, “Oh.”

  “Now Mr. Curtis,” Heimrich said. “I think the scream was—interesting. Because Lynch was dead when he was dropped in the swimming pool—too dead to scream. And—had been for perhaps half an hour, the doctor thinks. And—wasn’t killed with the stone. The blood on the stone was put there to mislead. He was beaten with it, but after he was dead.”

  He looked around at them, as if expecting comment. There was none—none vocal.

  “He was killed,” Heimrich said, “by a single blow with an iron bar of some kind. A tire iron, perhaps. A thin crowbar. And—not at the pool side, apparently. Mr. Curtis—there is blood on the seat of your car. Not a great deal; wounds of that type don’t often bleed freely. But—enough.”

  “I didn’t use the car tonight,” Curtis told the ceiling. “It was in the garage. Unlocked. I don’t lock a car in somebody else’s garage.”

  “It’s unlikely,” Heimrich said, “that Lynch made any sound after he was struck. So the doctor tells me. Even if he did, he would have made it in the car, apparently. Has any of you heard a sound from outside in the last—five minutes? The windows are open.”

  “Not I,” Parsons said. The others shook their heads.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “I haven’t either. But, down by the car—your car, Mr. Curtis—one of the men has been yelling his head off. Got a good, carrying voice, he has. The car’s down
below a hill, of course. And—yes, Crowley?”

  A young trooper was coming down the stairs. They had not seen him go up. Of course, Dinah thought, vaguely—the back stairs.

  “Nope,” Crowley said.

  “Trooper Crowley,” Heimrich said, “took the liberty of going into your bedroom, Mr. Curtis. With the window open. He didn’t hear the man shouting.”

  “Listen,” Parsons said, “you’re saying that my wife is lying? She and Curtis both? That there wasn’t any scream?”

  “The hell there wasn’t,” Jason Sarles said, heavily. “I heard it too. And—”

  He stopped abruptly.

  “Mr. Sarles,” Heimrich said, “you still maintain you were alone in the tool shed? Asleep?”

  “Sure. I—”

  “That you didn’t, say, borrow Mr. Curtis’s car and drive over to Brewster and pick Mr. Lynch up? Because he had made an appointment to blackmail you. And, after you had dropped his body in the pool, scream yourself? To get Mr. Curtis to come down so that you could, as you put it, catch him cold? Hide in the bushes and jump him? And—”

  This time Sarles got all the way to his feet—a very redfaced, apparently very angry man—before Sergeant Forniss put two heavy hands on his shoulders and forced him down again. Sarles sat and glared at Heimrich.

  “Can’t get away with it,” he said.

  “No? Why, Mr. Sarles?”

  “Because I had a friend with me. And she heard this yelling the same as I did and—” He stopped. “All right,” he said. “So what have you proved?”

  “A bit,” Heimrich said. “Let’s look at it another way—Mrs. Parsons, you can drive the Jaguar, of course?”

  Mary Parsons looked at him blankly. Except, Dinah thought, that her eyes—her eyes flicker. Does he see that her eyes—?

  “Yes,” Mary said. “I can drive the Jag. I didn’t.”

  “No?” Heimrich said. “Didn’t do what I’ve said Mr. Sarles might have done? Carry Lynch up—he was a very light man, of course—and drop him in the pool? And scream and then run back to the house? Hide on the way if Mr. Curtis had already started; wait for him to pass; then go into her room and tell your sister—”

  “Heimrich,” Parsons said. “You’re nuts. Or—what’s your game?”

  “Oh,” Heimrich said, “it isn’t a game, Mr. Parsons. Well, Mrs. Parsons?”

  “No. Why are you doing this? And why—why would I have done any of it?”

  “With Mrs. Bedlow dead, your father dead, you inherit a very large sum of money.”

  She covered her face with her hands. She shook her head from side to side.

  “You’re crazy,” Parsons said, and got up and went to his wife’s chair and knelt beside it and put an arm around her. He said, “Leave her alone!”

  Norman Curtis was no longer looking at the ceiling. He was watching—watching as a spectator might. He looked now toward Heimrich, as one—as a spectator—looks toward the person whose turn it is to speak.

  “Very well,” Heimrich said, and closed his eyes. “For the moment. Mr. Parsons—a few minutes ago you said you were a newspaperman. That isn’t precisely accurate now, is it? Mr. Parsons—how did you come to leave the Chronicle? And—give up the syndicate? Because, it was a very good job, wasn’t it? From all I hear it was. And—a job that gave you great influence.”

  Parsons stood up. He stood and looked down at Heimrich.

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at,” he said. “Or what damn business it is of yours. I—got bored with it. And decided that there was more money—” He stopped. He looked quickly at Norman Curtis. It was, Heimrich thought, as if Curtis had interrupted him. But he had not.

  And then, briefly, Norman Curtis laughed. It was a strange sound in the big, dimly lit room.

  “You ask good questions too, captain,” Curtis said. “He didn’t leave, captain. I fired him. Put it up to the boss, and gave him a choice—I fired Parsons or he got himself a new editor.”

  “Why?”

  Curtis leaned back and looked at the ceiling. He said it was rather an odd thing—had been then, was now.

  “Parsons,” he said, “was working for two employers. The Chronicle. And—a group I won’t name. I don’t even know it’s got a name. It’s a kind of lunatic fringe of the extreme right, if that means anything. Its members have got a lot of money and—I imagine they were generous, weren’t they, Parsons?”

  “You son of—” Parsons said.

  “What makes it odd,” Curtis said, as if Parsons had said nothing, “is that they were paying for something they were getting already. And the boss—well, this side of lunacy, the boss was about as far on their side as a decent man can be. So he said, in effect—suppose Parsons is increasing his income? He’s still saying what he believes and what I believe, and you can still ride herd on him. So—what was the harm?”

  He still spoke to the ceiling. He spoke slowly.

  “I said,” Curtis said, “that I was a pro—a pro in a trade I’m not ashamed of, and don’t plan to be. That he owned the paper and that it was all right with me if it expressed his views—as long as it was a newspaper. I said that if its writers were for sale, even when they didn’t have to be bought, it wasn’t a newspaper any longer. Not from where I stood. It was a subsidized propaganda sheet, and he could get somebody else to run it.”

  He paused again.

  “I don’t think he got the point,” Curtis said. “Maybe there isn’t any, except to me and a few other pros. So I made it simple—I fire Parsons or you get another executive editor.” Curtis smiled faintly at the ceiling. “He got that point,” he said.

  “You’re nothing but a goddamn commie,” Parsons said. “That’s the point he didn’t get. You wanted to shut me up because—”

  Curtis sighed. He said, “Oh, for God’s sake,” in a tone of complete weariness.

  “And,” Parsons said, still standing, glaring now at Norman Curtis, “you won’t, will you? Because now you’ll be on the street, Curtis. Looking for a job. Because the paper goes to Mary, and we won’t have any damn commies—”

  He stopped, as if he had just heard his own words. And he looked at Heimrich, this time, and it was again (Heimrich thought) as if he had been interrupted.

  “Not the money,” Heimrich said. “That was always the catch, wasn’t it? Not enough need for money. But—to get a newspaper. That was it, wasn’t it, Mr. Parsons? So you wouldn’t be shut up. Wouldn’t lose—what would you call it, Mr. Parsons? You’re the man of words. The power of your words? Would that do, do you think? The power over men’s minds? And, of course, all the pleasant things—all the fame, would you say, that went with—”

  “You’ve gone crazy,” Parsons said. “Maybe you’re the same kind as Curtis. Maybe—”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “It’s no good, Mr. Parsons. Ann Bedlow, because she would have inherited if she had been alive. Mr. Bedlow—the sequence was set for you, of course—so that your wife would—”

  “Listen,” Parsons said. “When Ann was killed, and when the boss was killed, I wasn’t here. And—when Lynch was killed—”

  Heimrich shook his head slowly.

  “Now Mr. Parsons,” he said, “you underestimate us. You see—we noted down the mileages on both Mr. Curtis’s Jaguar and your car. Earlier today. We like to keep a check on things. Since then, Mr. Parsons, the Jag has been driven about eight miles. To the Brewster station and back, I imagine. And—the Thunderbird has only been driven five, Mr. Parsons. It’s sixty miles or so from here to New York, and the round trip would add up to—”

  Parsons seemed to have stopped listening. He swayed, and started to fall. Heimrich moved, but Forniss was on his feet, and caught the handsome man, whose expressive face had now no expression whatever, and lowered him into a chair.

  “Fainted,” Forniss said. He looked at Captain Heimrich. Merton Heimrich had closed his eyes.

  XVI

  One cannot take the evidence of a fainting spell into court and get anywhere with
it. And if collapse when accused is a kind of confession, Russel Parsons had not added to it. Heimrich did not really suppose he would. He did not suppose, either, that it would be necessary. Already, this Monday afternoon, they had found a stewardess on a Thursday midnight flight to Chicago who was pretty sure, from a photograph, that the man carried on the passenger list as Bernard Askew was, in fact, Russel Parsons. And they had found no Bernard Askew present, or known about, at the address he had given. Which was a step. There would be many other steps, but now the path was clearly marked.

  It was a little after four when Heimrich drove the police car between boulders, started it up a steep drive toward a house on a hill—a house which once had been a barn, and still looked a good deal like a barn. For the last ten miles, coming west from Carmel toward Van Brunt, he had driven rather faster than he usually drove. Which was, of course, absurd—she wouldn’t be there for a couple of hours, at best.

  It is a long drive from Port Royal, Virginia, to Van Brunt, New York. Very likely, it would be—oh, seven, before she got there; before he could even begin to expect her. There had been no need, no real excuse, to cut short a conference with Ferguson Knight, district attorney of Putnam County, on a pretext. It would be hours before—

  Their car was there. It stood there as if it had never been away. As Heimrich got out of the police car, the door of the barnlike house opened and she was standing in the doorway. Why, Heimrich thought absurdly, she’s just as I remember her. He started toward her.

  One of the largest of Great Danes pushed his way around Susan Heimrich and, for an instant, looked sadly at Heimrich. Then his sad eyes brightened somewhat, he woofed, he advanced. After the first few steps, he bounded. A friend—really and truly a friend! (Of which there are so few.)

  “Colonel!” Susan called. “You great fool! Merton! Watch out! He’ll—”

  He already had. He reared himself, enormous paws on Heimrich’s shoulders. Heimrich is a big man and he had braced himself. Nevertheless, he staggered somewhat. He grabbed the dog to steady himself. He was embracing—for God’s sake embracing—a Great Dane. When the idea had been—