“Now Mr. Forrest,” Heimrich said. “We don’t know that. Not yet. Think about it, Mr. Forrest. We think we know that John Lockwood had advance information she wasn’t on a certain train. We think that’s—odd. Naturally. We think it corroborates her story.”
“What do we want?” Ray said. His voice was hard, exasperated.
“Oh,” Heimrich said, and now he leaned back and closed his eyes. “To find out who killed Mrs. Meredith. Don’t we?” He opened his eyes again. “Not that I don’t appreciate your—special interest, Mr. Forrest. I do.”
“Not Jane,” Ray said. He was direct, insistent.
“Why no,” Heimrich said. “Of course not, Mr. Forrest. Surely you knew that!”
“But—” Ray said. He felt as if his mouth were open.
“But I told you,” Heimrich said. “As good as told you. She was supposed to have been going from the house, Mr. Forrest. But the poison was back in the shed, you know. Put back after it was used. Why would she have been going from the house?” Heimrich shook his head, and made a slight clucking noise. “Why would she go back to the house and leave it again? Because she would have finished there, you know. Did you think she would have been a fool, Mr. Forrest?” Heimrich looked at the younger man and shook his head again. “Besides,” he said, “she didn’t catch cold, you know. She—”
Heimrich could move with the nervous speed, if not with the grace, of a cat. He moved now. It was startling to Ray Forrest, almost incredible. “Well!” Heimrich said, before Ray could turn to look at Sergeant Forniss standing in the door.
“Turner,” Forniss said. “Had him upstairs. He’s out cold. Slugged.”
“Damn it!” Forrest said. “The girl, sergeant! What are you—”
Forniss turned and began to run, and Heimrich was half across the room after him while Ray was still getting out of his chair. But Ray was at Heimrich’s heels as they went up the stairs.
Her fingers closed around the handle of the thermos and the man said, “Hurry! Hurry!” Her face was blank, white, in the beam from the flashlight; her eyes were half closed. The metal of the pitcher was cool to her fingers. It seemed to take endless time to close her fingers around the handle of the pitcher, to get it held firmly.
She had it, then. She was turned, now, partly on her right side, away from the man with the flashlight, and the fingers of her right hand were around the handle. She drew in her breath, filling her lungs, holding the breath in her lungs. And then, with all she had in every muscle, with the pitcher an arc above her, she hurled herself over and let the pitcher leave her hand. And she kept on rolling—across the bed, off the bed, landing heavily, only catching herself, on the carpet.
And the light went away. There was the crack of metal against metal and the flashlight, still sending out its white beam, went crazily toward one side of the room and at the same time the man who had held it swore and she heard, outside, somebody yelling. She thought it was Ray, calling her name, and then somebody was running across the room and she heard a window slam up. The bed was between her and the window and she could not see what happened there. The door of the room opened and faint light came in from the hall, but was almost blocked by men coming in. All the lights in the room seemed to go on at once, and Ray was pulling her to her feet, and into his arms. And she heard a voice saying “oh, oh, oh, oh!” in a kind of sob, and for what seemed a long time did not realize it was her own voice.
Forniss and Heimrich turned back from the window and Heimrich said, “You’re all right, Mrs. Phillips?” and then, “Of course. I see you are.”
She pulled back in Ray’s arms, but did not leave them.
“They poisoned the milk,” she said. “They—he—tried to make me drink it. I—I threw it at him.” And then, to herself horrifyingly, she made a giggling sound. “I threw it at him,” she repeated, and Ray held her close again. And she began to cry again.
“Very good idea,” Heimrich said. “Better than we did, sergeant. Turner—” Heimrich shook his head. “A school crossing,” he said. “A nice, easy school crossing. The children can see he doesn’t hurt himself.”
“All right, captain,” Forniss said. “When he comes to.”
“Well, Mrs. Phillips,” Heimrich said. “Tell us.”
Ray looked at him and shook his head.
“Oh yes,” Heimrich said. “She can tell us.”
She turned, then, and managed to lessen her sobbing.
“I thought it was Elliott,” she said. “I—I was sure. I didn’t see him, but his voice. And then—then it was wrong. Because—he wasn’t hoarse!”
“Naturally,” Heimrich said, and he nodded as if he were pleased. “Naturally, Mrs. Phillips.”
He stood for a moment nodding, and then he turned to Forniss.
“All right, sergeant,” he said. “All of them. In the living room. Let’s see somebody cry over spilt milk.”
No one was crying, but all of them were tired and strained; there was anxiety in all their faces. Ray looked from one to another, holding Jane close to him, knowing that she was keeping her eyes from the others of the family. It had taken a quarter of an hour to get them all there, and now they were waiting for Captain Heimrich. John Lockwood, in a dark dressing gown, was standing in front of the fireplace, his hands in his pockets. He seemed more confident than any of the others. Elliott and Grace Lockwood were sitting side by side on a sofa; her face was drawn and pale and she kept moving her hands together. Elliott was in slacks and a sweater and he sat with his hands on his knees, looking at nothing. Arthur Meredith wore slacks, too, and an ancient tweed jacket over a shirt open at the neck, and he looked at the floor, his amorphous face sullen. Frederick Meredith was fully dressed in a suit which did not look like the country, and he sat straight in a straight chair and looked, chiefly, at his wife. And Alice, seeming to perch on a chair not meant for perching, looked, more than any of the others, interested and alert, as if something exciting were going on, or about to go on. Then Heimrich came in, with Forniss behind him. Heimrich stopped just inside the door and looked at them, and then looked especially at John Lockwood.
“Sit down, Mr. Lockwood,” he said. “Sit down. This will take a few minutes.”
Lockwood did not move for a moment. Then he was unexpectedly obedient. He sat down. Heimrich took the place Lockwood had had, and leaned back against the mantel. He looked around and nodded.
“All here,” he said. “Good.” He nodded again. “I’ve been thinking about all this,” he said. “It’s been interesting. I’ve been wondering which of you killed Mrs. Meredith.”
He was matter of fact. He seemed to feel that they would want to know what he had been doing.
“And,” he said, “tried to kill Mrs. Phillips. I suppose with the idea we’d take it for suicide. Probably planned to report some sort of a confession. I should think. Happened by, heard her moaning, went in just in time to hear her confess killing her aunt.” He shook his head. “Stupid,” he said. “So stupid. A childish thing to do.”
He looked around at them.
“You know,” he said, almost confidingly, “you’re a very funny family. That’s made it a very funny case. Such—greedy people. All of you, I’m afraid. In one way and another. Greedy and—rather stupid.”
John Lockwood looked hard at Heimrich. “Get on with it,” Lockwood said. “Get on with it!”
“Now Mr. Lockwood,” Heimrich said, mildly. “Now Mr. Lockwood. You don’t think you’re a funny family? But you’ve been doing such funny things, you know. Some of you. And one of you killed an old woman and tried to kill a young woman—with a very sudden, nasty poison.” He nodded. “A very odd poison, in some respects,” he said. “One of you didn’t realize that.” He paused and looked slowly around at them. “Does one of you want to say something?” he said. Nobody seemed to.
“It’s been complicated,” he said then, nodding. “In one way and another. Hard to fit together. Until it occurred to me that it wasn’t meant to fit together. Not all of i
t. Some of it, naturally. Because you all, in a way, meant murder. Almost all meant murder, or were willing for it to be murder.” He looked at them, and there was no longer mildness in his face, and little in his voice. “And several of you are going to be luckier than you ought to be,” he said. “I’m sorry about that.” He turned now to Alice Meredith. “Damn sorry,” he said. “You, for example—you, Mrs. Meredith.”
“She didn’t die,” Alice Meredith said. “Poor dear Susan didn’t die of that.”
“So you’re lucky,” Heimrich said. “An old woman dying and you feed her food that will poison her. But it doesn’t kill her, and I don’t suppose even attempted murder would stand. But it could have been.”
“Dear captain,” Alice said. “It wasn’t, you know. And of course it was an accident, after all. Such an unfortunate accident.”
“Naturally,” Heimrich said. “An accident. To make her think she was being poisoned. To make it appear she was losing her mind.”
Frederick Meredith spoke, then. He spoke heavily, his voice tired.
“An accident,” he said. “Only an accident. You can’t prove anything else.”
“Now Mr. Meredith,” Heimrich said. “You think not?”
Again he seemed merely interested in what Meredith thought. It was as if, Jane thought, this solid, almost sleepy, man regarded all of them with the detachment one might feel while looking through a microscope at squirming, sub-human life. What Meredith thought, what any of them thought, was an aspect of that life. Heimrich turned back to Alice Meredith.
“Your husband may be right,” he said. “If it wasn’t more than that. If you didn’t go on to something else. I said you might be luckier than you deserve. Morally, it seems to me as bad as murder and—flippant. I’d think you capable of anything.”
“Dear captain,” Alice Meredith said, with a horrible kind of brightness. “So right, of course. Like Sunday school.”
Heimrich merely looked at her. Then he looked away.
“I don’t know how many of you knew about Mrs. Meredith’s little—little game,” he said. “How many of you approved it. But I think it was hers, originally. It seems to me like her.” He looked back quickly at Alice Meredith. “So like her,” he said. “Naturally.”
He turned toward Arthur Meredith, suddenly.
“You knew,” he said. “But after you came to us, probably. You wouldn’t have come otherwise. And you tried to reach Mrs. Phillips in Los Angeles. Why?”
“You say I did,” the boy said. He looked up and looked down again. “Maybe to tell her to hurry. That the old lady was dying.”
“Hurry home and get killed,” Heimrich said.
Arthur Meredith did not look up. He merely said, “No,” as if it were not very important, or very interesting.
“Perhaps not,” Heimrich said. “Perhaps you didn’t want her to hurry. Perhaps you wanted to find out if the other thing was working out.”
“Hell,” the boy said, “you don’t even know I telephoned. Who says I did?”
Heimrich looked quickly at Ray Forrest, and his glance held while Ray, almost imperceptibly, shook his head.
“Nobody,” Heimrich said, without disappointment. “But I think you did. However, it’s not very important. I’m not even sure it was part of the second scheme.” He looked around at them. “The second scheme,” he repeated. “There were three, you know. By now you all know. Perhaps some of you always did know.” He shook his head. “You’re quite a family,” he said. “Quite a family. You made it hard to put together, you know. To make it fit. Three schemes for death. For money. To keep Mrs. Phillips from seeing her aunt, becoming reconciled, perhaps having the old will re-established.” He nodded at his own words. “Naturally,” he said. He looked at Jane, and his look was different. “A compliment to Mrs. Meredith’s intelligence,” he said. “The old Mrs. Meredith’s. You were right to be afraid.”
“Get on with it,” John Lockwood said, and now there was tension, exasperation, possibly something else, in his voice. “We don’t have to take this—this sermon.”
“No?” Heimrich said. “Don’t you, Mr. Lockwood? Well.” He seemed then to wait for Lockwood to continue. But John Lockwood only looked at him.
“Three schemes with the same general purpose,” Heimrich said. “But, and this was confusing, apparently envisioning different circumstances. Mrs. Meredith’s scheme—this accident—intended to make the old lady seem incompetent, so that it wouldn’t matter whether Mrs. Phillips got here to see her aunt or not, or when her aunt died. That might have worked, you know. Except that Mrs. Phillips was delayed getting here—and that her aunt was murdered.” He looked at Alice Meredith. “One would think you hadn’t expected her to be murdered,” he said.
“Dear captain,” Alice said. “So thoughtful.”
“Or—changed your mind,” Heimrich said. “That was always possible. Until tonight. The three schemes could have been the schemes of one person, of course. A kind of trial and error. Or, they could have been the schemes of all of you together. A conspiracy.” He looked around at them. “Usually I’d reject that,” he said. “But with you—” He left it hanging. “However,” he said, “there were discrepancies in the textures of the schemes—the styles. Would you say ‘styles,’ Mr. Forrest?”
“I know what you mean,” Ray said.
“Naturally,” Heimrich told him. “Make the criminal fit the crime. For this flippant, vicious little thing—this shrimp accident—Mrs. Meredith. Stopping a little short of murder—of the honesty of murder. And for the scheme against Mrs. Phillips, somebody else.” He looked at John Lockwood. “Someone methodical,” he said. “Someone careful, who worked things out.”
“Well?” John Lockwood said.
“We talked to Carroll,” Heimrich said. “Mr. Forrest did. That wasn’t so careful, Mr. Lockwood. And seeing Mrs. Phillips here—now Mr. Lockwood.”
“You’re proving nothing,” John Lockwood said. “I’d laugh at you.”
“Here,” Heimrich said. “Quite possibly. In Kansas City—no, you wouldn’t laugh. If Mrs. Phillips wants to go on with it, you won’t. Kidnaping by agent, Mr. Lockwood.”
They all looked at John Lockwood, now. Even Arthur Meredith looked up from the floor. And then Arthur spoke, and his face was suddenly angry.
“God!” he said. “You—you bastard!”
Arthur’s father looked at him, seemed about to speak and then said nothing. “Dear Arthur,” Alice Meredith said. “Poor, dear Arthur.” There seemed to be a kind of contempt in her voice, along with a kind of pity.
Ray Forrest tightened his arm around Jane’s shoulders. He could feel her trembling still, but faintly. She was looking from one to another of the people in the room, as if she were seeing them for the first time. The poor kid, Ray thought. The poor kid. She wanted to come home.
“You’ve met a lot of odd people, Mr. Lockwood,” Heimrich said. “Crooks. Big ones and little ones. Thugs. Defended them. And they’ve scattered over the country, as they will. Crooked private detectives. The men they hire. It fitted you—if it happened.”
Jane looked at him. He nodded to her.
“Yes,” he said. “I thought it over, Mrs. Phillips. You have to start believing something, in my business. It was a place to start. Somebody didn’t want you to get here, but didn’t want to go too far. Didn’t want to—stop you. You felt that, I think. Just to make you late. And they would have, you know.”
She continued to look at him.
“In New York,” he said. “But—by then it didn’t serve any purpose, you see. She was dead.” He nodded, this time apparently confirming his own thoughts. “And that was hard to fit in,” he said. “You can all see that. Because the effort to delay Mrs. Phillips was obviously based on the assumption that Mrs. Meredith was going to die naturally. The doctor knew she would. He’d even guessed at the time. So, if Mrs. Phillips was suitably delayed, there would be no reason for murder. I could see that, naturally. But then there was murder. Puzzling, I th
ought.”
He shook his head.
“It didn’t fit,” he said. “It was a—different style. This second scheme, this delaying scheme, was so cautious, so elusive. It would be difficult to prove. And, it didn’t involve anything more drastic than a little kidnaping, with the victim unharmed. Only—didn’t your man take her the wrong way, Mr. Lockwood?” The last was snapped, suddenly.
“He was supposed—” Lockwood began. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“To go the other way on this road,” Heimrich said. “For a guess. This Route—what is it now? This Route Forty. But actually he kept her going the right way. I wondered about that. A stupid man, I suppose. Or vague instructions.”
“Prove this,” Lockwood said. “Any of it.” He paused a moment. “And you still haven’t got murder,” he said. “You make that clear yourself.”
“Naturally,” Heimrich said. “Caution. Slippery caution. The way a shyster works. The criminal and the crime, Mr. Lockwood. But stopping this side of murder.” He paused. “As originally planned,” he said. “Did you change the plan, Mr. Lockwood? When there was the slip in Kansas City—and in St. Louis—and when she went to Hudson Terminal?”
“There wasn’t any plan,” Lockwood said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Understand that.”
“Not murder,” Heimrich said, ignoring him. “And then there was murder. A different style again. Not flippant, vicious. Not careful and slippery. Hurried, excited. Would you say impetuous?” He looked around. “Violent, youthful. Would you say that, Arthur?”
The boy looked at him, and his eyes widened. Jane could see fear in them. She knew how fear looked in eyes.
“You’re lying,” Arthur said, but his voice went up. “I didn’t have any scheme. I tried to—to help Jane. Tell her to hurry. You said—”
“Violent,” Heimrich said. “Something a young person might do—a hurried, foolish thing. Like the attempt to kill Mrs. Phillips tonight. Done by somebody who couldn’t wait, who got rattled. The person who killed Mrs. Meredith was rattled, you know. Couldn’t wait. And, of course, didn’t know about Mr. Lockwood’s little scheme, which was planned to make murder unnecessary.”
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