Let Dead Enough Alone

by Frances Lockridge

  “To you?” she said. “Why to you, Brian?”

  “Because John died by drowning,” he said. “In this particular lake.”

  “You waited to be sure everyone was asleep?” Heimrich said. The slim girl in slacks and a sweater sat on the edge of a chair, leaning forward. She sat, now, with her hands pressed against her forehead. She nodded her head.

  She had begun almost defiantly; had said, speaking hurriedly, as if the words had long been formed, could no longer be retained. She had said that she and John Halley had loved each other. And then, “That’s why she killed him.”

  “She?” Heimrich had said. “Who, Miss Latham?”

  “His wife,” she said. “Margaret Halley. Doctor Halley. Because he loved me, not her. Haven’t you heard her? ‘It must have been suicide. He was in a depression.’” She mimicked the clipped enunciation of Margaret Halley, the level voice. “Laying the ground work,” Audrey Latham said. “I thought you realized all the time. I—I thought that’s what you meant.”

  “Now Miss Latham,” Heimrich said. “I meant only what I said. That someone—someone in the house now—killed Mr. Halley. I don’t know who. Yet.”

  “I just told you,” Audrey said. Her voice was a little shrill. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I heard you. You accuse Mrs. Halley of killing her husband because he was in love with you. Of having laid the ground work, as you say—prepared an explanation in advance—by saying that he was in a depression, and so might kill himself. But, it needs more than that.”

  “There is more,” she said. “I saw her. Coming back upstairs after she had killed him. Oh—I didn’t realize it then, of course. That she had finally managed it. Somehow got him to go down to the lake and—pushed him, I suppose. So that he slipped. I don’t know all of it.” She stopped suddenly. “I don’t understand about Miss Ross’s blanket,” she said. “I’ll admit that.”

  Heimrich closed his eyes. He said, “When was this? That you say you saw Mrs. Halley?”

  “When I was going back to my room.”

  Heimrich sighed. “Suppose,” he said, “you give it to me in order. You went upstairs a little earlier than the others, except Mr. Boyd. You went to your room. And?”

  “I waited. We had arranged it, John and I. He was to wait—wait until all the others had gone. Then I was to go down. He—he had something he wanted to tell me. About something he had planned for us.”

  “You don’t know what?”

  “How can I?” she said, and then she put her hands up to her head and sat crouched on the edge of the chair. “How can I? Ever? Ever in the world?”

  Her voice shook. Heimrich waited. He said:

  “You waited to be sure everyone was asleep?”

  She nodded her head. “Go on, Miss Latham,” Heimrich said. He closed his eyes to listen. Now and then, as she did go on, he prompted her with questions.

  She had gone out of her room, she thought, at about three o’clock—a little before or a little after. The house had been still, yet had talked faintly as houses do—talked in small creakings, in little, inexplicable, cracking sounds. A house is never tired of talking to itself. And she heard the wind outside. It seemed much louder than it had earlier in the night.

  She first made sure the others were asleep, or as sure as she could make. Shoeless, carrying slippers—and wearing a robe, now—she went on bare feet, carefully, along the upstairs halls. “If there’s a light, it shows under the doors,” she said. “The doors have cracks under them. You know?”

  Heimrich nodded.

  Satisfied that the others were asleep, that she and John Halley would not be interrupted, she had, finally, gone down the back stairs. The stairs came down into a hallway off which the pantry and the big kitchen opened. There had been no one there. She had gone that way so that she could be sure the Speeds were not still around.

  “Did you have a flashlight?”

  She had not had a flash. But it was not really dark in the house; not once you got used to it. “There was a—a kind of glow. Coming through the windows. Almost like moonlight.”

  Heimrich nodded. Behind the snow clouds there had been a moon the night before. The light of the moon had seemed to seep through the clouds, reflect softly from the fallen snow. He had noticed it, driving back to the Old Stone Inn after he had taken Susan home. The night had been luminous. There had been light enough to seep into rooms through uncurtained windows.

  She had left the backstairs area by a door which opened into the central hall. She had gone softly through the hall and, seeing no light from the living room when she neared it, she had assumed those doors closed. But when she did reach the doors, they were open, and the big room was dark—dark except for the red flickering of the dying fire. She had thought, at first, that John Halley was still there, waiting by firelight. But she had seen almost at once that he was not sitting in front of the fire.

  She had gone a little way into the room and spoken his name in a whisper, and there had been no response.

  “I thought—I don’t know what I thought,” she said. “That I had misunderstood him—must have misunderstood him. Because I knew that if he had said he would wait, he would wait. I was sure of that.”

  There was, Heimrich thought, sitting with closed eyes, an odd emphasis in the last words. Even now, she was assuring herself of that—of something which, twelve hours or less ago, she had sought with sudden anxiety to assure herself.

  She had, she said, thought that perhaps she had misunderstood the place of the meeting—that the arrangement had been that he would come to her room, after it was certain the others were asleep. He might have gone up the main stairway as she, too cautiously, had gone down the back stairs. He might, as she spoke his name so softly in the living room, be puzzledly speaking hers in the room upstairs.

  She had started, quickly, back the way she had come.

  “Why not the front stairs?” Heimrich asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just went back the way I had come down.”

  At the rear of the central hall, under the main staircase, near the door from the kitchen, were stairs leading down to the cellar. They were not closed off by a door; there was a rail across the top of the flight, and it was closed and latched into place. As she passed these stairs she had heard sounds from the basement.

  “Sounds?” Heimrich asked. “What sort of sounds, Miss Latham?”

  “I thought, somebody moving,” she said. “I thought, for a moment, John’s gone down there to do something.”

  She had stopped and listened. As she listened, and peered down into the darkness, she had become less sure of the nature of the sounds she had heard. It was possible, she thought, that she had merely heard “house sounds”—or the furnace popping as it cooled a little. Or, perhaps, some animal, which had gone into the basement for warmth. Nevertheless, she had gone part way down the stairs and, again, she had whispered John Halley’s name. There had been no answer from the darkness below.

  She had gone back up a few steps, until she could reach a light switch. She had turned the light on. “A very bright light,” she said. “Hanging down from a cord.”

  Heimrich opened his eyes, then.

  “The light went on?” he asked her.

  “Why,” she said, “of course. Why wouldn’t it?”

  “No reason,” Heimrich said. “I take it you saw no one?”

  She had not. She could not see all of the basement—she had gone no farther, even with the light on, than half way down the flight. The light left many parts of the big basement in dense shadow. But, she had seen no one. Nor had she, again, heard the sounds. It had been very quiet among the shadows. She had said, once more, “John?” and again got no answer. She had then gone back up the basement stairs.

  “Did you turn the light off?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “I suppose I did.”

  Then she had gone up the back stairs, returning to the second floor. Sh
e had gone up them slowly, cautiously, still in her bare feet. She had groped her way along the upper hall, had come to its juncture with the hall which ran from front to rear of the house, and started into it. There was more light there. From where she stood, she could see the top of the main stairs.

  “Mrs. Halley was coming up them,” she said. “I—I didn’t want her to see me. I drew back.”

  But not so far back that she could not still, from the relative darkness, watch Margaret Halley.

  “She was carrying something. I couldn’t see what. Something in her right hand. She kept her left hand on the stair rail.”

  When she reached the top of the stairs, Margaret Halley had gone through the hall toward the front of the house, and then to her left and out of sight in the hall at right angles to the central hall. “The Halleys’ bedrooms open off it,” Audrey Latham said. Telling the story seemed to have steadied her; she still sat on the edge of her chair, and leaned a little forward, but she seemed less tense. “Her room’s at the end of that hall,” Audrey said. “A corner room.”

  “You couldn’t see what she was carrying?”

  “I said I couldn’t. Something you could carry in one hand.”

  “Did she see you?”

  “I don’t know.” Her eyes went blank for an instant. “I don’t think so.”

  When Mrs. Halley had gone out of sight, and Audrey had waited until she could no longer hear her footsteps, Audrey had gone on along the hall to her own room; had entered it and, once more, said, “John?” And once more she had not been answered. She had turned on the light. The room was empty.

  “And then?”

  “I went to bed. I couldn’t understand what had happened but—I supposed it was something about Margaret’s being up, which—which had kept John from waiting for me. I remember I thought, it will be all right in the morning. There’ll be another time. And—after a while I went to sleep.” She put her head in her hands again. “Went to sleep!” she said. “Just went to sleep. And she—she was coming back after she’d killed John!”

  “Now Miss Latham,” Heimrich said. “What you tell us doesn’t prove that. You see that, naturally,”

  “What?” she said. She looked hard at Heimrich; did not see what, apparently, she had hoped to see. “It’s you who don’t see,” she said. “Won’t see. Why? Because she’s well known? Because the Halleys have a lot of money? Or—John had a lot of money? Is there something—sacred about ‘Doctor’ Halley?” Her tone put quotation marks around the word Doctor.

  “Now Miss Latham,” Heimrich said. “What was Mrs. Halley wearing when you saw her?”

  “Something dark,” Audrey said. “A dark coat.”

  “Or, a dark robe?”

  “Look,” the blond girl said, “she had to go out in the snow to kill him. Down to the lake. She’d wear a coat, wouldn’t she?”

  “What you saw,” Heimrich said. “Not what you think it must have been. Could it have been a dark robe?”

  She hesitated. Finally she said she supposed so.

  “But,” she said, “it must have been a coat. You’re trying to protect her.”

  Heimrich opened his eyes.

  “Did she see you? Could she have seen you, Miss Latham?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But—whoever was in the basement. If anyone was. Whoever it was could have seen you, naturally. When you were standing on the stairs?”

  She supposed so. But she did not, now, think there had been anybody in the basement.

  “What are you going to do?” she demanded.

  Heimrich sighed.

  “Find out who killed Mr. Halley,” he said. “Is there anything else you want to tell us?”

  “About—” she began, and suddenly stood up. “What’s the use?” she said. “I’m wasting time, aren’t I? You’re so high and mighty—so sure—you find out the rest.”

  And, very abruptly, she left the room.

  “Upset,” Heimrich said. “Natural she should be, of course. For one reason or another. I suppose the electric panel is in the basement, Charlie?”

  “Suppose so,” Forniss said, and looked at Ray Crowley, who went to find out. It took him only a few minutes. He returned and said, “Yes, it is.”

  “We’ll have to print it, I suppose,” Heimrich said. “If we don’t, somebody’ll ask us why we didn’t. No point in having to say, ‘Because we didn’t want to waste time,’ is there?”

  “Nope,” Forniss said, and went out to the car for what he needed, and to the basement, to waste the approved amount of time. He used a flash to augment the faint light from a dim, dangling bulb.

  The telephone rang while Forniss wasted time. At a nod from Heimrich, Trooper Crowley answered it. He came back to say that Dr. Kramer was on the wire, and had news. Heimrich went into the hall, and talked to the county pathologist. He learned that examination of the viscera of John Halley disclosed that, shortly before his death, he had ingested a massive overdose of a barbiturate—probably Nembutal. The total dose might prove to have been as much as two and a half grams, which would have proved fatal, failing immediate and drastic treatment.

  It had not proved fatal, because Mr. Halley had drowned first.

  “Have a good time,” Dr. Kramer said pleasantly, and hung up.

  VI

  Struthers Boyd stood in the doorway of the breakfast room. He had a drink in his hand; it was not, Lynn found herself thinking, the drink he had been pouring when they passed him at the sideboard. He stood in the doorway and looked most sad, his face drooping. Although Lynn was not young enough to think him aged, he did seem appreciably older than he had the night before. Joviality had seeped out of him; he was no longer hearty.

  “Old John,” Boyd said. “Good old John. Oh, God! Best friend a man ever had. Remember in our senior year—” The memory appeared to overcome him.

  “Come on in,” Brian Perry said. “Have some coffee.” Perry felt the pot. “Still pretty hot,” he said.

  Boyd came in, carrying his glass. He shook his head gloomily at the coffee pot.

  “Just make things clearer,” he said. “This is better.” He put the glass down on the table and patted it. “Best friend a man ever had.” He seemed to be puzzled by his own words. “John, I mean,” he said. “Do anything for you. What I mean, anything. Remember in our junior year—”

  “Here, Struthers,” Perry said, and poured coffee into a cup. “You’d better, really.”

  “You’re the doctor,” Boyd said. He sat. He picked the coffee cup up and looked at its contents and put it down. He picked his glass up. He drank from it.

  “What’s he mean, somebody murdered old John?” Boyd asked. “You know what he means? You know what he means?” He addressed the question first to Lynn, then to Brian Perry.

  “What he said, I suppose,” Brian said. “Somebody wanted John dead. Hit him on the head. Knocked him into the lake.”

  “Nobody would do a thing like that,” Boyd said. “Not to old John. You know what he did?”

  They shook their heads.

  “In which year?” Brian asked, gravely.

  “Which year?” Boyd said. “Don’t know what you mean by that, fella.”

  “I’m sorry,” Brian Perry said. “I thought you were talking about college, Struth.”

  “Classmates,” Boyd said. “I tell you that? Class of ’twenty-two.” He looked at Lynn and shook his head. “Before you were born,” he said. “Getting along, poor old John was. But you wouldn’t have known it. That right, Brian? Wouldn’t have known it, would you?” He drank further from his glass. “Girls didn’t know it either,” he said. “Like Grace says—” He stopped. “My wife,” he said, to Lynn. “In Florida. Did I tell you what John did?”

  “No,” Lynn said. “I don’t think you did, Mr. Boyd.”

  “I got hold of this—thing,” Boyd said. “Know what I mean?”

  The question was presumed rhetorical.

  “Plastic thing,” Boyd said. “Can’t tell you an
y more than that. See why I can’t, don’t you?”

  Lynn looked at Brian Perry. Her expression said that this, added to the rest, was quite definitely too much. Her expression accurately reflected her thought. But she was surprised to see that Brian Perry was leaning a little forward, watching with an odd intentness the big man with the sagging face; listening intently to the big man’s wandering words.

  “A secret thing,” Perry said. “Sure, we understand, Struth. Something you’ve picked up the patent on? Are going to manufacture?”

  “That’s it,” Boyd said. “Going to revolutionize—can’t tell you what it’s going to revolutionize, can I?”

  “No,” Perry said, “you can’t. What did John do?”

  “What I said,” Boyd told him. “I just told you, didn’t I?” Brian merely shook his head. His eyes, behind the rimless glasses, were unreadable.

  “Put up the money,” Boyd said. “All I’ve got’s tied up in this and that. You know how things are?”

  “Sure,” Brian said.

  “Thought at first I’d have to let it go. Then I thought—why not let old John in on it? Remembered how in our sophomore year—” He shook his head, seemingly overcome by remembrance. “Put it up to John. Know what he did?”

  “Came through,” Perry said. “That’s what he did, wasn’t it?”

  “Knew I’d told you,” Boyd said. “Went to him and put the cards on the table. Said, ‘Here’s the picture, John.’ Told him what I needed to swing it. How much he’d be cut in for. Know what he said?” This was entirely rhetorical; no answer was invited. “Said, ‘We’ll worry about that when we come to it, Struth, old man.’ Meant the cut, you understand. Sat down and wrote me a check. Just like that. That’s the kind of man old John was. Best friend a man ever—”

  He shook his head; he finished his glass.

  “Don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “Never had anything hit me so hard, Brian.” He stood up. “Nobody knew John better’n I did. You can see why, can’t you? Why’d anybody kill a man like old John?”