The Distant Clue

by Frances

  “Now, Mr. Lenox,” Heimrich said, “did I say I thought anything like that?”

  “Did you need to?” He spoke as if he really meant the question as a question, but Heimrich did not answer it. He only waited.

  “Let’s see,” Scott Lenox said. “I’d be more comfortable living here than where I do live. Item, I could use whatever money he left. If I had a decent income I could give up writing so damn hard to make a living and write only what I wanted to write, when I wanted to write it. And probably I wouldn’t write any better than I do now. Probably a damn sight worse. But—item. I didn’t have exactly a filial attachment to the old man and he wasn’t my old man. Item, I suppose. I could have signed for books at the Forty-second Street library and gone away and left them on the table and driven back up here and killed the old men and then driven back to town again. If I’d put a slip in the books saying ‘Please do not remove’ or something like that they’d probably still be where I left them. And nobody the wiser. I—let’s see. I kill my stepfather and poor old Wingate walks in on it and I have to kill him too.”

  He looked at Captain Heimrich. He said, “Am I putting you to sleep?”

  Heimrich opened his eyes.

  “Now, Mr. Lenox,” Heimrich said. “No, I’m not especially sleepy. Go look at your stepfather’s body. Make a formal identification.”

  Heimrich sighed slightly and closed his eyes again.

  “We’re rather given to formalities,” Heimrich said.

  IV

  It was a little after six when Heimrich drove up the steep drive to a hilltop house which had once been a barn, and still looked rather like a barn, and which had come as a small bonus with Susan Faye.

  The summer things were on the terrace. Susan had wheeled them out, carried them out, since she got back from the shop. She must have closed the shop early. It is autumn when people are interested in fabrics, not spring. The ice container was in the shade, and there were bottles on the usual table and Susan Heimrich was stretched out on a chaise—had been stretched on a chaise. When she heard the car she turned, in fluid motion, long legs swirling under short white skirt. She wore a dark blue shirt.

  Drinks on the terrace. As if a ribbon were cut, officially, to open summer.

  Heimrich did not swing the car around so that it faced down the drive. It doesn’t prove anything, but it’s something, Susan Heimrich thought. He doesn’t know he’ll have to go away again. Maybe this time he’s really the man who came to dinner. My, he’s big. I ought to be used by now to how big he is.

  A great Dane, of rather preposterous size, had been lying, belly down, in shaded grass. Lying as he so often lay; probably, they always agreed, thinking what bad luck it was to be a dog. He sat up, after thinking it over. He put his tail between his legs and sat on it. He looked mournfully at Merton Heimrich, who walked across sunny grass toward the terrace.

  A boy of twelve came out of the house, with a bottle of Coke in his hand. He was a slender boy, and walked erect. I wonder if I know about boys? Heimrich thought. I wonder if, to her, I look the size of a hippopotamus?

  “Hi,” Susan Heimrich said, and stood up, and took a step toward the edge of the terrace. “Hi,” Michael Faye said, and continued toward the terrace. The big dog, whose name was Colonel, said nothing. He partly lay down again, but continued to regard Heimrich, keeping his heavy head raised.

  Everything was fine. “Hi,” Heimrich said, and picked Susan up to kiss her. Anyway, Susan thought, he no longer thinks I’ll break if touched. He put her down again, rather carefully. He said, “Gin and tonic?”

  ‘Time for it,” Susan said. “High time for it.”

  He mixed their drinks. Michael brought his Coke and poured it in a glass with ice, and sat down, being careful to wait until his mother was seated first. For several months now he had joined them at this hour, joined (if with Coke) in this pleasant ritual. It had been Merton Heimrich who suggested it; who said, “Why don’t you join us, Michael?”

  Michael had said, “Thank you, sir.” This was probably, Susan thought, because he read so much. Galsworthy? It might well be Galsworthy. Or, conceivably, even Jane Austen. On the other hand, he pitched for the Van Brunt Vikings, of the Little League.

  “It’s almost unthinkable,” Susan said, sipping her drink. “The Center is thinking of almost nothing else. Did they really kill each other?”

  “Apparently,” Merton Heimrich said. “Why unthinkable, Susan? Because you think they were too old for violence?”

  Susan looked for a moment toward the distant, shining river. Then she said she supposed so.

  “It’s hard,” she said, “to think of anything that would matter enough. You would expect them to—to have gone through all that. Through the times when things are desperately important.” She paused for a moment, and looked again toward the Hudson. “That’s not a very profound thought, is it?” she said. “It’s thinking in a pattern, isn’t it? An accepted pattern. Which is a way of not thinking at all. Perhaps, really, things matter more to the old. Because there is less time left for things.” She sipped. “All this,” Susan Heimrich said, “on two swallows. You’ve no idea what they quarreled about?”

  “No,” Heimrich said.

  “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”

  “Now, Susan,” Heimrich said. “As a policeman, no. As a policeman, I find certain physical facts, pointing to a certain conclusion. Two men fight over a gun. It doesn’t matter how the fight started, since both of them are dead.”

  She looked at him for some seconds. Her eyes were very like her son’s gray eyes. There was the same gravity in them, the same consideration.

  “Dear,” she said, “that’s nonsense, isn’t it?”

  Suddenly she smiled. He could never quite get used to the way her face lighted when she smiled. He did not want to get used to it.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “It’s nonsense.”

  “Because you won’t be satisfied until you have a reason. Because—because why, Merton? Aside from its being the way you are?”

  “Is it?” he said. “Perhaps it is. But—to exclude other possibilities, my dear. Everything fits one way. Is there another way things might fit?”

  “There are half a dozen different versions in the Center,” Susan said. “One of them, of course, is that they fought about a woman. Mrs. Anstruther is quite sure about it—quite sure and a little mysterious. She could a tale unfold. You know Mrs. Anstruther.”

  “I do indeed,” Heimrich said. “She doesn’t unfold? With a hint here and a hint there?”

  “There was some talk of wool pulled over eyes,” Susan said. “I got most of it secondhand. Reference, I gather, to young women who didn’t trust the United States mails, even when it meant a ten-mile drive. Sometimes even in winter.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Obscure. I took it to be Enid Vance. Creating opportunities to fall into the arms of Homer Lenox.”

  “My God,” Heimrich said.

  “My words exactly,” Susan said. “With further reference to slander. With passing reference to the advisability of Mrs. Anstruther’s not letting Scott Lenox hear her.”

  “It’s that way?”

  “I’m not above gossip,” Susan said. “Yes, I’ve heard it’s that way. She’s a nice kid. I’ve known her all my life—anyway, all of hers. Her family and mine dwindled away together. What did happen—what appears to have happened?”

  “Lenox drew a gun. His gun—a thirty-eight revolver. For which he had a permit. Aimed it at Wingate. Wingate hit his hand with something—I’d guess a cane, a walking stick, but there doesn’t seem to be one around. Perhaps only with the edge of his own hand. Knocked the gun out of Lenox’s hand. Grabbed it and shot Lenox, twice. Thought he had finished him. Put the gun where it would look as if Lenox had dropped it after shooting himself. Or after being shot by someone else, I suppose. Lenox had strength enough to get hold of the gun and—”

  “Sir,” Michael Faye said, “I’m quite sure the professor wo
uldn’t have done a thing like that.”

  They both looked at Michael, who was sitting straight in a straight chair, and had put his half-emptied glass on a table beside him. Colonel got up, in two sections, which was his way of getting up, and moved close to Michael and sat down again, and looked up at god.

  “Are you, Michael?” Susan said. She did not speak as if she spoke to a child. “What makes you sure? I know you go to the library often.”

  She sometimes wondered how anyone could read as much as her son read. She sometimes worried a little about his eyes. But she never expressed either the wonder or the worry to Michael.

  “He was a nice man,” Michael said. “He was kind to people. To us children, especially. I expect we bothered him sometimes because—well, we make noises and things, even when we don’t mean to. And he was quite old, wasn’t he?”

  “Quite old, Michael,” Merton Heimrich said. “He was never impatient?”

  “That’s it, sir,” Michael said. “People are, sometimes. I don’t mean you or mother. Some people.”

  A great many children did use the Van Brunt library. The children in Michael’s class were, enticed to it by their teacher, engaged in a contest to see who could read the most books before the end of the school year. (Susan had little doubt as to who would win.) A great many children can mar the equanimity of an elderly man.

  “He would never shoot anybody,” Michael said, and suddenly his light clear voice was no longer steady. “Would never have shot anybody,” Michael said; and Susan realized that he had changed a tense and was, with that change, saying farewell to a friend. She saw the muscles of the smooth young throat move as Michael swallowed. He almost never cried.

  “I’m sorry, Michael,” Susan said.

  “Yes,” Michael said. “I liked Professor Wingate. We all liked him. I’m really sure he wouldn’t have shot anybody, sir.”

  “If somebody points a gun at you, son,” Heimrich said. “You’re likely to do something. It’s human nature to do something.”

  “I know that,” Michael said and then, said, “I know that, Dad.”

  Now and then the usual “sir” was laid aside. It was usually when the boy was moved, for one reason or another. Neither Susan nor Merton Heimrich had ever suggested what the boy should call his stepfather. It was up to the boy.

  “I think anybody would try to make a man drop a gun,” Michael said. “I think Professor Wingate would do that. But if you got the gun yourself and shot this other man it would be because you lost your temper, wouldn’t it? And the other man would be unarmed then, wouldn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. The boy had been watching television, of course. But “yes” was still the answer.

  “The professor wasn’t like that,” Michael said. “I’m quite sure he wasn’t, sir. You can tell about people.”

  Neither of them told the boy you can’t. And perhaps, Heimrich thought, when you are as young as he, when not so many things have rubbed across your mind, made marks on your mind, you most nearly can.

  What a boy of twelve, however mature for twelve, thought of a man almost more than fifty years his senior was not, of course, a fact. Scott Lenox had thought the elderly librarian easygoing. Which did make easygoingness a fact. But—people themselves are facts. Not facts which can be put under comparative microscopes as the bullets from two bodies were, probably, now being put. (Except that the bullet which had gone through Loudon Wingate’s skull and lodged in the softness of his brain was probably too battered to show riflings.) People as facts are difficult to evaluate. Wingate was dead, as Lenox was dead. What, living, had they been as facts? What, now, people said about them? What a grave-eyed boy said about them?

  Not enough to go on, obviously. Too much to reject, naturally. Once you have disarmed a man, there is no need to shoot him. Not if self-defense is what you have in mind. Could a man ruthless enough to kill needlessly hide this ugly ruthlessness from a boy, a boy who looked at things carefully, without prejudice? The answer probably was yes. But still …

  I can try to find out more about him, Heimrich thought. I can talk to other people who knew him, burrow back into his past, as Homer Lenox was burrowing into a region’s past. Perhaps Lenox probed, too, into the past of Loudon Wingate, and found something there which it was dangerous to find. It seems a little improbable, but still …

  Nothing will be changed if I know, Heimrich thought, and sipped his drink. The exclusion of other possibilities—that is an excuse to be curious, and I know it and Susan knows it. Well, it is my trade to be curious. Captain M. L. Heimrich, the leaver of no stone unturned.

  “We are still here,” Susan said, as one who merely states a fact. “My glass is empty. Your glass is empty. This is still what DeVoto called “The Hour.’ Where is your togetherness?”

  Merton Heimrich said, “My dear” in what he hoped sounded like horrified rejection of the word, and mixed drinks. He was carrying his back to its table when, in the house, the telephone rang. Susan said, “Damn!” and did not need to mimic outrage. She said, “That Alexander Graham Bell,” and her bitterness was only half assumed. She watched her large man, who moved so gracefully for all his size and thought himself clumsier than an ox, walk toward the house. And double damn! A hundred to one this would mean he had to go away again. It almost always meant he had to go away again. It was what a woman got for marrying a policeman.

  He was not gone long. When he came out of the house he was carrying a bottle of bourbon and a glass and a small pitcher of water, and when she turned and looked at him he nodded his head and smiled.

  “Charlie’s coming by,” Heimrich said, and put the bourbon bottle and the glass and the water on the table which served as bar. “Finished at Far Top.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing that changes anything,” Heimrich said. He sat down by his drink and lifted the glass, but then put it down again, with a little clink on the metal table. “Check something,” Heimrich said, and walked back to the house. Colonel lifted his head, with apparent effort, and watched the big man. Then he put his head down on his paws and sighed. People are all the time disturbing dogs.

  Heimrich was gone no longer this second time, but when he came back his eyes were slightly narrowed. Something that doesn’t fit, Susan thought. Something that puzzles. Heimrich sat down and lifted his glass again, and this time sipped from it.

  “Apparently,” Heimrich said, “Lenox didn’t work on his book during the past week. At any rate, Charlie Forniss can’t find any manuscript to cover the period. But—Miss Vance expected to pick up the week’s work for copying. And she’s quite sure Lenox would have telephoned her if he hadn’t anything for her.”

  Susan said, “Mm-m-m.”

  “Precisely,” Heimrich said. “Only, he’d got up to the Van Brunts. In his book.” He closed his eyes. “‘It is now necessary to recount the unfortunate events,’” he quoted. “Apparently he was getting his facts from a book called Recent American Trials. Which is all water under the bridge, naturally.”

  “And so, not worth damming up. You think somebody could have killed him to suppress a dark secret he’d come upon? Not Professor Wingate, then?”

  She went too far, too fast, Merton Heimrich told her. Quite possibly, Lenox had been dissatisfied with his week’s work and torn it up. Had neglected to telephone Enid Vance. Or had telephoned her and failed to reach her. Or had decided to let her bring back what she had copied and pay her for her work. Or—

  “In other words,” Susan said. “It bothers you. It couldn’t have been anything about poor Mrs. Van Brunt. Who’s dead, anyway. Beyond hurting. But it bothers you. A piece is missing.”

  “Probably,” Heimrich said, “not a piece of anything, Susan. Probably he just took the week off.” But he sighed. “I suppose,” he said, “I’ll have to read the damn thing. Wingate’s family doesn’t come from around here, does it?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “If it was one of what Lenox thought of as the famili
es, you would have heard of it,” Heimrich said. “Coming from one of them.”

  “A very little one,” Susan said. “With an alloy of baser metal. But, yes, I suppose I would have. As a name, anyway. But—” There was great doubt in the inflection of the word.

  “I know,” Heimrich said. “Blot on the family scutcheon. Very farfetched, naturally. As farfetched as—” He remembered young Michael.

  “A triangle,” Michael said. “A crime of passion.”

  The things my son must read, Susan thought. But I must trust my son, remember his mind’s his mind; remember it’s a good mind.

  “Well,” Heimrich said, “yes, Michael.”

  “Professor Wingate wasn’t like that,” Michael said. “I’m quite sure, Dad.” Then Michael stood up and said, “Get your loop, Colonel.”

  Colonel got up with uncharacteristic speed and went under a bush. He came out with a loop of leather which god sometimes remembered to throw for him.

  There is no accounting for boys, Susan thought. Probably this is occupational therapy. Colonel, instead of bringing the loop back after the third cast, took it under the bush and began to chew it. There is very little accounting for dogs, either.

  “You never heard anything—er—incriminating about these families of Lenox’s?”

  “Anything?” Susan said. “Dozens of things. Sam Jackson’s great-grandfather—or great-great, maybe—was supposed to have been in the slave trade. Which is where the Jackson money came from. There’s a rumor that the first Mitchie who came to this country was an indentured servant. The people old John Mitchie went around with when he was in Paris in the twenties, and supposed to be painting, don’t bear thinking about, and as for the woman he married there and brought back here, the less said the better. An Upton married a woman from The Flats who was almost an immigrant, and you can imagine why he had to marry her. That was my Upton grandfather, incidentally. Leonard Mears had to resign from his New York club because they caught him cheating at cards, but everybody knew he was nothing more than a common gambler. The Stu Van Druytens can say all they want to that they adopted that boy of theirs from an agency, but it’s funny how much he looks like Stu, isn’t it? As for that mysterious operation Florence Lacey had to have a few years ago—”