Let Dead Enough Alone

by Frances Lockridge

  “Clock in the kitchen,” he said. “Right on the nose. And, he didn’t have to set it. Makes it look—” Crowley stopped. It wasn’t his job to say what things looked like.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “It does, Ray. Will you get them all in here? If they happen to think we’re going to tell them it’s all wrapped up, and that we’re leaving, that will be all right. But, that isn’t particularly important.”

  Again Heimrich and Forniss waited. Dr. Brian Perry came in first, and Lynn Ross was with him. Margaret Halley came, alone. Tom Kemper was only seconds behind her. Boyd came alone and, this time after several minutes, Audrey Latham. The slender blonde, still in slacks and a closely fitting sweater, had been crying.

  “So you’ve got it all squared away,” Boyd said. “Didn’t take you long. I’ll say that.”

  Heimrich looked around at the others before he answered. Dr. Perry’s eyes, he thought, were narrowed behind the rimless glasses; the dark eyes of the tall Lynn Ross were merely puzzled. He could not read anything in Mrs. Halley’s eyes nor, and this a little surprised him, those of the well-set-up Mr. Kemper. Mr. Kemper had a very open countenance. He looked interested; he looked as if he were on his way to being very cheerful. Audrey Latham did not look at Heimrich, but looked, with an odd intentness, at Dr. Margaret Halley. Mr. Boyd appeared quite recovered from his headache. He had probably, Heimrich thought, enjoyed a hair of the dog—although, if what everyone said was true, the dog had been the merest puppy.

  “Just about, Mr. Boyd,” Heimrich said. “One or two little points I thought one of you might all help me on. Comparing notes, you know? So that we can get the report accurate.” Heimrich sighed. “They’re great on accuracy,” he said. “Want all the little details just so.” He looked around again, from one to another. “Like times,” he said. “They are very particular about exact times.” He sighed again, a man much put upon. (And trusted that no one would enquire, too specifically, who “they” were. But, in his considerable experience, no one ever had.)

  “It doesn’t seem to matter,” Mrs. Halley said. “Why should such things matter to anybody?”

  “I know,” Heimrich said. “I’m sorry to bother you. And the others too, naturally. It’s just that I have to follow the rules. If I don’t, they’ll have to send somebody else to fill in the gaps. I want to find out, as closely as I can, when Mr. Halley—went down to the lake. Whether anyone saw him go.”

  He looked around, again.

  “As Miss Ross remembers it,” he said, “she went up to bed a little after one. Perhaps as late as one-thirty. Miss Latham had gone up a few minutes before. Mr. Boyd a little earlier. Mr. Halley, Mrs. Halley, Mr. Kemper and Dr. Perry were still here, as she recalls it. Is that as you remember it, Mr. Boyd?”

  “I guess so,” Boyd said. “Fact is, I went to sleep for a few minutes. Right over there.” He pointed to a chair. “Something waked me up and I figured I wasn’t adding anything to the party and went up to bed. I didn’t notice the time. Maybe around one.”

  “And went to bed? And turned off your light?”

  Boyd appeared puzzled.

  “I don’t see—” he said. “But, sure. Been a long time since I was afraid of the dark.”

  “Miss Latham?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “How we can—sit here like this—go over and over and over things that don’t matter ….

  “And went to bed and turned off your light?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “I went up a few minutes after Miss Ross,” Brian Perry said. “I went to my room, which is on the front—toward the lake—and went to bed and turned off my light. As I was closing my door, I heard someone coming up the stairs and looked back and saw Kemper. I said, ‘Goodnight again,’ or something like that.”

  Heimrich looked at Kemper, who nodded.

  “Way I remember it,” he said. “I went in and went to bed and turned off my light. What’s so important about turning off the lights?”

  “Now Mr. Kemper,” Heimrich said. “They’re very insistent on all these little details. Nothing important. And you, Mrs. Halley—or should I say ‘Doctor’ Halley?” She merely shrugged. “Stayed up with your husband for a time and left him by the fire and went upstairs.”

  “I’ve told you that several times,” she said.

  “And went to bed and to sleep?”

  “And—turned out my light. I must say, I share Tom’s inability to—”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I realize how trivial it all is, naturally. How—almost unbearable at a time like this. All this—nibbling. However—have you any idea what time you went up, Mrs. Halley? Leaving your husband here by the fire?”

  “About two.”

  Heimrich closed his eyes. He spoke, next, without opening them.

  “Did any of you happen to bring a traveling clock along?” he asked. “An electric clock?”

  They looked from one to another. Heimrich opened his eyes.

  “I take it not,” he said. “And after two, none of you saw anything of Mr. Halley. Or—heard him go out, say? You, Dr. Perry? Since you had a room at the front of the house.”

  “No,” Perry said. “But—perhaps I can help a little. I don’t see the importance of this either, captain. But—I didn’t go to sleep at once. I seldom do. I was lying so that I looked out a window. I could see the light from the living room—this room—on the snow. It reflected into the room. I heard Dr. Halley come up and walk along the hall. Then I dozed. I woke up again, suddenly, an hour or so later. At first I didn’t know what had wakened me. Then I realized that it was a change of light in the room—John had turned the light off downstairs. I suppose I had subconsciously been waiting for that, because then I went to sleep.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “One other point. A very small point. Are there electric blankets in most of the guestrooms, Mrs. Halley?”

  “Electric blankets? I really don’t understand— But, no, captain. We don’t use them much in the country. Rural electric service is likely to be erratic. But, I wasn’t sure there would be enough blankets and comforters for everybody, so we brought up the one blanket from town.” She turned, quickly, to Lynn. “My dear,” she said. “Don’t tell me it didn’t work?”

  “It—” Lynn began, and Heimrich interrupted her.

  “It worked quite well,” Heimrich said. “Very well indeed.” He closed his eyes again. The silence was uneasy. They waited for him to resume. He did not.

  “Well,” Boyd said, finally, and his voice was unexpectedly loud after the quiet, “you’ve got all the details you want, captain?”

  Heimrich opened his very blue eyes.

  “All but one,” he said. “Which of you murdered Mr. Halley?”

  V

  Reaction to Heimrich’s statement had been various, and not in all cases what might have been expected. Struthers Boyd had lowered his head into his hands and said, “Oh, God!” in the tone of a man to whose many tribulations one more, and a ponderous one, had been added. Margaret Halley had stood up and said, in a strange, hard voice, “You must be out of your mind,” and, when Heimrich merely, slowly, shook his head, had added, “He killed himself, I tell you. I tell you he killed himself.” And then she had looked around at the others, her face white, and her mouth twisted. Then, very abruptly, she had turned and left the room. And Kemper had said, “Margaret, wait a minute,” and, when she did not, had gone after her. Heimrich merely watched.

  “You seem to be quite certain,” Brian Perry had said, in a voice without inflection, and to this Heimrich had nodded. Boyd had got up, said, “Oh, God!” once more, in a hopeless tone, and had gone out of the room. Audrey Latham had stood up, and she was not white, but flushed. Then the blood drained out of her face and she grasped the arm of a chair and swayed, as if about to fall. Ray Crowley reached her and took her shoulders, but she said, “No. I’m all right,” and then, to Heimrich, “I want to talk to you. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “I thought you might have,” Heim
rich said. He looked at Lynn, at Brian Perry. Perry said, “Yes, I see,” and stood up and Lynn stood too. “Wants us out of here,” Brian said, unnecessarily, and they went out of there. At the stairs in the entrance hall, Lynn hesitated. “Come along,” Perry said. “We’ll find something to eat.”

  She looked at him. She looked up at him.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s something we can’t get away from, Miss Ross. Come on.” He took her arm, gently. He directed her to the door of the dining room. In the dining room, at the sideboard, Struthers Boyd was pouring from a decanter into a glass. He looked at them, and shook his head. He said, “God, what a mess,” and returned to pouring. Brian Perry and Lynn went on into the breakfast room beyond.

  “See what I can do,” Perry said, and went through the door to the kitchen. He came back almost at once. He said, “She’s already fixing sandwiches.” He went to the window and stood looking out of it for a moment. He said, “Started to snow again. I was afraid it would.” He turned back and pulled a chair around and sat in it, facing Lynn.

  “What about the blanket?” he asked. He took off his glasses as she told him. (He looks so different with those glasses off, Lynn thought. Rimless glasses are so—) She finished telling him. She said, “I don’t see what it means.”

  “Neither—” Brian began, and stopped suddenly. He said he’d be damned. He looked at Lynn and she shook her head.

  “My dear girl,” Brian said. “Think about it. Use your pretty head.”

  “I did something wrong about the blanket,” she said. “Turned it off instead of on.”

  “I told you to think,” he said, somewhat sternly.

  “Oh,” she said. “The power went off?”

  “Precisely,” Brian said. “I knew—”

  The kitchen door opened. Mrs. Speed came in, carrying a plate of sandwiches and a pot of coffee. She set both down on the table, shook her head, sighed deeply and said, “Dear, oh dear!” Then she went back into the kitchen. Brian said, after her and absently, “Thank you.” He made no move toward the food.

  “The power went off,” he said, and talked as much to himself as to Lynn. But, it seemed to hold her attention. He reached out and took her wrist, gently, in a long-fingered hand. “John was still up. So, he did the inevitable thing. Went to start the generator. He told us there was one, but that it operated manually. Remember?”

  “Yes,” Lynn said. “I remember, doctor.”

  “Name’s Brian,” Perry said. “Same as it was last night. That’s the way they’ve figured it. So—” He stopped. “That’s not good enough, is it?” he said. “I mean, it explains why he was there, but not that he was murdered. Eliminates suicide, probably. But only makes an accident more likely. But this man Heimrich—what do you think of Heimrich, by the way?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Dogged? Slow and—”

  “I thought that,” Brian said. “Until the last thing he said. Now—I doubt he’s slow, my dear. Think that because he’s solidly built, probably. Nothing to do with the mind. I wonder—” He turned and reached for the sandwiches. He took one and raised it toward his mouth. He said, “Oh. Sorry, Lynn. Here,” and held the plate to her. She took a sandwich. Know men who would say that proves I was afraid of starvation as a child,” he said. “You’ll have to get used to it. I forget to pass things.”

  “Have to—” she said, and did not finish. “I don’t see either. About the power going off, I mean. I suppose he would—I mean Mr. Halley would—go out, even on that kind of night, and start the generator? Not wait until morning.”

  “My dear child,” Brian Perry said. “You’re in the country. Where do you think the heat comes from? Cold night, the wind rising—we’d have frozen in our beds. Worse. The pipes would have frozen.”

  “It isn’t heated by electricity,” Lynn said, and then was startled to find that she was blushing. “I’m stupid,” she said. “You have to have electricity for an oil burner, don’t you?”

  “Oil burner,” he said. “Water. Comes out of a well, my dear. Refrigeration. They may have a Deep Freeze. Probably have. If you’ve got a generator, you turn it on. John would have gone out, all right. Did go, evidently. But where does the captain get—” He stopped, abruptly. He said, “Of course,” in the tone of one just extricated from his own stupidity. He said, “We’re not very bright, my dear. The power didn’t go off.”

  Lynn took a bite of sandwich. She chewed very slowly and carefully. She swallowed. She said, “But you just said it did.”

  “Didn’t go off,” he said. “Was cut off. That’s it. Has to be it. You tell Heimrich about your blanket going off. He thinks, ‘Oh, that explains it. Power failed. Halley went off to turn on the generator. Fell in the lake.’ But, being a thorough man—they do like to know times, probably, although I doubt whether anybody’s breathing down the back of his neck about them—he calls the light company. Says, ‘When did the power fail in the Lake Carabec area?’ And they say, ‘It didn’t fail, captain.’ And he says, ‘A-ha!’”

  “Somehow,” Lynn said, “I can’t hear him.”

  “Words to that effect,” Brian said. “Probably, actually, he says, ‘So that’s the way it was done.’”

  Brian got up and poured coffee. He poured two cups, and brought one to Lynn. “Getting better, aren’t I?” he said. He sat down and began to drink coffee. “I’d like a little cream,” Lynn Ross said, breaking it gently. He laughed, briefly, at himself, and took her cream.

  “I suppose it’s clear,” Lynn said. “To Captain Heimrich. Apparently to you.”

  “A clear enough theory,” Brian Perry said. He looked at her, appeared to see doubt in her face. “Trouble is,” he said, “you don’t think. The idea was to get John to go out of the house, down to the lake, so he could be hit over the head and pushed in. Nice, simple plan. But how do you get him to do it? It’s no good going to him and saying, ‘How about taking a little walk? Let’s go down and look at the lake.’ Not on a night like last night. So, you get him to go by putting the lights out. Pulling the main switch, I’d suppose.” He looked at her doubtfully. “You know what a main switch is?” he asked.

  She said she supposed it turned everything off.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Somewhere—probably in the basement—there’s an electric panel. Fuses and things like that in a box. There’s another box—” He paused and looked at her.

  “I’ve always lived in apartments,” she said. “With superintendents.”

  “All right,” he said. “In this second box, there’s a—thing—like a little drawer. It fits tight. If you pull it out, you cut off all the current in the house. What Heimrich’s decided—if I’m right, that is—is that somebody pulled it out. Halley’s light went out. Halley changed his shoes, and went down to the boathouse to start the generator. Whoever it was, followed him. Probably walked in the tracks Halley had made in the snow. Killed Halley, came back to the house, put the switch back where it belonged, turned off the light in the living room and went to bed. Leaving a choice—suicide or accident. Clear now?”

  She thought, as he had told her to do. He watched her, and nodded. She said, “Wait a minute,” and he waited.

  “Whoever it was didn’t give Mr. Halley time to start the generator?”

  “No.”

  “Why? I mean—why not let him start it? Put this switch thing back in, but leave the generator running. Then, when Mr. Halley was—found—it would have been clear what happened. An accident. The police would—” She stopped. She said, “Oh. Perhaps it wouldn’t have worked with the power on?”

  “No,” Brian said. “You can think, can’t you, my dear? And, even if that weren’t true—or could be got around—the police would do just what they did do. Find out the power had not gone off. As it was done—if it was done this way—it would stay heads or tails, suicide or accident, take your choice. Only—your blanket went off. Something that hadn’t been counted on.”

  There was rather a long pause. This was, Lynn thou
ght, a very different Brian Perry from the Brian Perry of the night before. There had been a warmth, then. Gentleness. Or, she had thought so.

  “You’re very detached about this, aren’t you?” she said. “As if it were—an abstract problem. Instead of—wasn’t Mr. Halley a friend of yours?”

  He put his coffee cup down. He lighted a cigarette. He held the package out to her, and she shook her head.

  “Cold-blooded, you mean?” he said. “Yes—I’d known John for several years. We used to see quite a bit of the Halleys. Carla and I. Carla was my wife. We had a small place on the other side of the lake. Near the club. No, I’m not especially cold-blooded.” He reached for his glasses, which he had put on the table. He put the glasses on.

  “If I need to explain, there’s no point in explaining,” he said. “But—there’s nothing that’s made better by not thinking about it, Miss Ross.” He looked at her, thoughtfully. “All right,” he said, “the situation is emotional. You, for example, were emotionally shocked. Violence is emotionally shocking. I don’t mean you were grieved. I don’t know about that—I should think not, greatly. You didn’t know John Halley well. You call him ‘Mister Halley.’ But—shocked by violence. By the closeness of violence. Isn’t that true?”

  She hesitated; reached toward the package of cigarettes and was handed them. But she did not take a cigarette from the package.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “And now?”

  “A minute ago,” she said, “I was annoyed at you. At both of us. For—treating it all like a problem. From—outside.”

  “Good,” he said. “Best thing you can do with your mind, my dear. Use it. Best thing for it. Use.”

  “My mind’s all right,” she said. She took a cigarette from the package. He watched, politely. “I’m afraid I haven’t a match,” Lynn said. “I’m sorry,” he said, and held a lighter to the cigarette.

  Lynn said, “Was this therapy?”

  He laughed, briefly.

  “A very bright child,” he said. “But—no. Good for you but, as you say, your mind’s all right. No. I’m not particularly detached, either. Just want to get things straight because—it may be important. To me.”