Not I, Said the Sparrow

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  “Unsteady on his legs, Doctor?”

  “An aneurysm reduces the flow of blood to the legs,” Wenning said, his voice full of patience for ignorance. “They graft in tubing to replace the damaged artery. Normal blood sufficiency comes back. Not all at once, of course. He”—he gestured toward the bed—“had corrective surgery about six months ago. Recovering all right. Supposed to walk a bit—quite a bit—after that kind of surgery. If I know Jim, he’s been taking his doctor’s advice. Slow process, all the same.”

  “Be obvious when you saw him walking, this unsteadiness?”

  “If you were looking for it,” Wenning said. “He isn’t a cripple or anything like that. Just, as I said, a little unsteady. A little—call it unsure. Tries to hide it, being the kind of man he is. Does most of the time, probably.”

  “Get off balance now and then?”

  “Possibly. And have pains in his legs now and then. Drag a person down, an operation like that. On the table four or five hours, from what Benson tells me. A bit more extensive than the X rays indicated, at a guess. Not my line of country, Inspector.”

  Heimrich said he realized that.

  “Speaking of your line of country,” Heimrich said. “What’s your prognosis about the head wound, Doctor?”

  “Oh, optimistic, Inspector. No real brain damage to speak of. Some bone fragmentation. May have to put a plate in. We’ll know more later.”

  “Damage to his mind?”

  “I hope not. I think not. Damn good mind, Jim’s got.”

  “He’ll remember about the accident? About what happened just before it?”

  Dr. Wenning shrugged his thin shoulders. He said, “You think we’re fortunetellers, Inspector? Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “Any idea when he’ll be able to talk?”

  Again, Dr. Frank Wenning shrugged his shoulders.

  “He’s asleep now. When he wakes up, he may try to get out a few words. Perhaps this afternoon. More likely, in a week or so. And, I won’t have him questioned. You understand that, Inspector?”

  “Yes. I won’t disturb your patient, Doctor. I’ll just wait a—”

  There were sounds from the man On the bed. At first they were merely broken, tortured sounds. Then, almost clearly, the sounds turned to words.

  Wenning was beside the bed by then, leaning over James Tennant. Heimrich stood up and moved a little closer to the bed.

  “Eating into your,” Tennant said, almost clearly.

  Wenning spoke, his voice very low and soft. He said, “You know where you are, Jim?”

  “Hos—” Tennant said, or something that sounded like it. Then, again, he began to breathe heavily. His breathing, Heimrich thought, was not as labored as it had been before.

  Wenning went around the bed to the telephone on the other side of it. He said, “X-ray.”

  The telephone clicked and rasped at him. Then, less raspingly, words came through. “X-ray laboratory.”

  “Dr. Wenning. I want skull X rays of Dr. Tennant. Now.”

  He hung up. He said, “You heard me, Inspector.”

  “I heard you. You think he’s coming out of it, Doctor?”

  “Could be,” Wenning said. “It just could be. The pressure may have let up a little. The pictures may show something. We’ll—”

  Dr. Frank Wenning’s “now” evidently meant “now” to the X-ray lab. There was a knock on the door, and the door opened and two men in white uniforms wheeled a stretcher into the room.

  Heimrich went out of the room. Sergeant Farmer sat on a chair just outside the room. He stood up when Heimrich came out.

  “They’re taking him to X-ray,” Heimrich said. “When they bring him back, take over inside. And listen.”

  Farmer said, “Sir,” and remained standing while Heimrich walked down the corridor in the direction, he hoped, of elevators. He found an elevator and it stopped when he pressed a button. He got into it and pressed another button, this one numbered “3.” He walked an aseptic corridor, a little slippery underfoot, to Room 323.

  The door was partly open. Estelle Tennant was fully dressed. She was sitting in a chair and smoking a cigarette. Her young, pretty face was drawn. She looked at Heimrich as he went into the room and fear widened her eyes.

  “He’s doing all right,” Heimrich said. “Dr. Wenning seems optimistic. He tried to talk, Mrs. Tennant. Even said a few words. Or almost said them.”

  “What words, Inspector?”

  “Oh,” Heimrich said, “nothing that seemed to mean much. ‘Eating into your’ was what it sounded like. Mean anything to you, Mrs. Tennant?”

  She shook her head. Then she said, “That pain was eating into him?”

  “Something like that, possibly,” Heimrich said. He drew a light chair up and sat facing her.

  “Dr. Wenning said something about your husband’s having had an operation a while back,” Heimrich said.

  “Six months ago. He’s been—he was getting along remarkably well, Dr. Benson told him. Making a really surprising recovery. We could both see that, too. We could all see that.”

  “Still a little unsure on his feet, Dr. Wenning thinks he may be. You’ve noticed that, Mrs. Tennant?”

  “For a while,” she said. “Almost not at all the last month or so.” She put her cigarette out in the ashtray beside her. Then she said, “Oh-”

  Heimrich waited.

  “You think it was that?” she said. “That his legs were—were not as strong as they had been. That that’s why he fell?”

  “It may have been, naturally,” Heimrich said. “You say you could all see how much your husband was improving. You mean everybody who knew him, I suppose. Including everybody in your family. Your father. Your aunt. Your brother.”

  “Of course,” she said. “We were all worried there for a time. It was—was such a long operation. Such a major operation. But he came through it wonderfully, Dr. Benson said. He’s a strong man, really. A very strong man.” She leaned forward in her chair and her voice rose a little. “He’ll come through this,” Estelle Tennant said.

  “I’m sure he will,” Heimrich said. “Dr. Wenning is sure he will. And, being a doctor, your husband will follow the advice his doctor gives him. Some people don’t, I’m afraid.”

  “Of course he will,” Estelle Tennant said.

  “As he has been doing about walking, I gather,” Heimrich said. “At Dr. Benson’s advice, according to Dr. Wenning. To help restore the circulation in his legs.”

  She said, “Oh, yes. Every day. Faithfully every day. In the city he managed to get walks in between patients. But hadn’t I already told you that?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I remember now, Mrs. Tennant.”

  “In town,” she said, “over from the office—it’s our house too, really—to Madison. Down Madison a block and along Central Park South to Columbus Circle and back to the house again. It’s in Sixtieth Street, about halfway between Park and Madison. About twenty minutes, it always takes him.”

  Heimrich nodded his head. “People who walk for exercise,” he said, “usually fall into patterns. Walk the same way each time, I mean. He took his regular walks up here too, I suppose. When you happened to be visiting your father and aunt.”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. Almost always the same way. Down—down those awful stairs to the lake. Then along the path by the lake and up the back way by the garden Aunt Ursula’s so proud of. And up to the house.”

  “Taking the same time for it every day?”

  “Within a minute or two. That’s—that’s why I got to worrying yesterday—was it only yesterday?—when he didn’t come up to the room when I expected him to. And—and went to look for him.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “You knew the way he usually went, so you looked down the stairs.”

  She said, “Yes,” and her voice shook. She said, “Do you have to make me remember, Inspector? Do you have to?”

  “I’m sorry,” Heimrich said. “I have to try to find out about things, you know. You went d
own from your room and over to the head of the staircase. That’s the way it was?”

  “I looked down toward the garden first, I think. To see if he—if he was coming. I didn’t see him, so I went around and looked—looked down those dreadful stairs. And—and—” She moved her head slowly from side to side.

  “I know,” Heimrich said. “Have you and your husband been spending much time at your father’s place, Mrs. Tennant? Since Dr. Tennant’s operation?”

  “A good deal of last month,” she said. “August’s always vacation time for him. A good many doctors take August off, you know. Specialists, I mean. Men like Jim.”

  “And while he was at The Tor, your husband took these daily walks of his? Down the stairs and around by the path and up that way usually?”

  “Almost every day,” she said. “Oh, if it was bad weather, he walked inside the house. Back and forth. Back and forth.”

  “At a certain time each day, Mrs. Tennant?”

  “After lunch,” she said. “Almost always after lunch.”

  “Did you ever go with him?”

  “Down those stairs? Since I was—oh, quite a little girl—I’ve been afraid of those stairs. So steep. And—and you can see such a long way down. They’ve always frightened me.”

  “Scared me too, a little,” Heimrich said. “The others at the house? Your father and aunt? Your brother?”

  “Dad did,” she said. “I don’t really know about the others. Oh, Aunt Ursula doesn’t ever, I think. She feels as I do about them. I don’t know about Ron. I don’t think he goes down to the lake much.”

  “Miss Selby use the stairs, do you happen to know?”

  “I don’t think so. Mostly she just came into the house and went through the living room to Dad’s office. We don’t—didn’t—really see much of her. Except Dad, of course. Inspector—is Dr. Wenning really—does he really think Jim’s going to be all right?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Tennant. That’s what he tells me.”

  “He wouldn’t lie to you, would he? He might lie to me—try to make things easy for me. But there’s no reason he should lie to you, is there?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “I’m quite sure he was telling me what he really thinks, Mrs. Tennant. That your husband’s going to be all right.”

  He stood up.

  “Are you going to stay here for a while, Mrs. Tennant?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she said. “I want to be near him. And—and I can’t go back home just now. Back to The Tor, I mean. I—I’ve always loved it, but now it’s turned bad for me.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I’m sure your husband’s going to be all right, Mrs. Tennant.”

  He found a telephone booth on the ground floor of the Cold Harbor Memorial Hospital.

  Lieutenant Forniss had left the Old Stone Inn about an hour before. He had left word for the inspector that he was going to the Jameson house. He had also left word that he’d got the Peekskill police working on it and that the city police had agreed to do what they could, when they had the men to spare.

  Heimrich drove north on NY 11F and up the winding drive to the big gray house on its hill. On its “tor,” since Arthur Jameson had wanted it that way. Or his English ancestors had wanted it that way.

  14

  There was a pickup truck at the top of the drive, and Heimrich parked beside it. The words FERGUSON’S NURSERIES were lettered on the side of the truck. Under them were the words, “Shrubbery, Garden Maintenance, Small Pools a Specialty.” From a short distance off, there was the clangor of metal on metal. Miss Ursula Jameson was finally getting the stair railing repaired. It was, Heimrich thought, rather late on for it. He went the other way, around the house and down toward the garden.

  Frans Frankel was working in it. He had laid the excavated glads out in a neat row on the grass and in the sun. He was pulling up and throwing over the fence what Heimrich took to be frostkilled marigolds. He had his back to Heimrich and did not look around.

  Heimrich found a downhill path and followed it. It was not too steep; did not plunge down like the steep brick staircase. It took him longer to reach the lake than it had by the stairs. The lake sparkled in the late afternoon sun, and Heimrich walked a path beside it until he came to the foot of the staircase and the pier with the boat tied to it. He looked up the stairs, and it was a long way up. At the top, two men were wrenching lengths of iron pipe out of stanchions.

  Merton Heimrich walked back the way he had come. The path toward the garden seemed steeper when you climbed it than when you went down. Frankel had finished with the marigolds. He was now pulling up what Heimrich took to have been zinnias.

  Heimrich rang the doorbell of the gray stone house. It took Barnes a couple of minutes to answer it.

  Yes, Lieutenant Forniss had been there. He had left word that, if the inspector showed up, he had gone back to the barracks. Yes, he had come in a police car with a trooper driving it. He had gone away in the same car.

  Heimrich drove the Buick down the curving drive and north on NY 11F and northeast on US 44 to the Washington Hollow Barracks. He did not hurry; he thought that they had probably about finished for the day. He wondered whether James Tennant’s mumbled words had been “eating into you” or whether there had been a final “r” on the word “you.” To be followed by what? “Mind,” perhaps? Dr. Tennant’s specialty was the mind. As a neurologist the whole nervous system, of course. As a psychiatrist that infinitely complex tangle of nerves and cells in which the mind lives.

  Heimrich parked the Buick in the space reserved for it; in the space with “Inspector Heimrich” painted on the pavement. Three spaces away was an outlined slot marked “Lt. Forniss.” That space was empty. When he went past it, Forniss’s small office also was empty.

  Heimrich went on to his own office, which, as at Hawthorne, was a corner one with windows on two sides. Sunlight slanted into one of the windows. They’d put the heat on for the first time that fall. Heimrich turned it off and opened one of the windows a few inches. The air which came in was chilly air. He lifted his telephone and asked that Lieutenant Forniss be sent in when he returned—from wherever he was—and got an obedient “Sir.”

  His In basket was loaded; nowadays it was always loaded. A policeman never has only one thing to do at a time. Heimrich unloaded the In basket and began to go over the papers. He went over them with half a mind, which was all most of them deserved. He put his initials on where they were required. He made a telephone call and assured the Office of the District Attorney, County of Putnam, in Carmel that, no, he hadn’t forgotten he was due in court Wednesday morning. He wondered where Charlie Forniss had got to. He thought that if Charlie didn’t show up pretty soon he might as well go along to Van Brunt, leaving word that Charlie could reach him there.

  Forniss came in a little before five. He sat on the opposite side of Heimrich’s desk and put a thin cylinder of brown paper on the desk.

  “Went over to Peekskill,” Forniss said. “Happened to remember a man I know works in a sporting goods store there. After I’d been to the Jameson house.”

  Heimrich said, “Yes, Charlie?”

  “They didn’t have fire in the living room or the dining room Saturday night,” Forniss said. “Warm night and too many people. Had big ornamental screens in front of both those fireplaces, because Miss Jameson doesn’t like empty fireplaces. Says they make a room look unfinished.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Even in summer we keep a fire laid in ours. The office fireplace?”

  “Fire laid there,” Forniss said. “Ready to be lighted. Fireplace doesn’t look as if it had been used much. Same in Jameson’s room upstairs. Rooms, actually—bedroom and what looks like a sort of den-dressing room. Fire ready to be lighted. Looks as if it could have been laid all summer. We’d been over the room. Been over all the rooms. Left them as near as we could the way they were.”

  “Miss Jameson didn’t object to your going over the house again?”

  “She wasn’t there, M.
L. Gone into Cold Harbor, according to Barnes. She and her nephew. To look at coffins.” “

  It’s something survivors have to do,” Heimrich said. “Go ahead, Charlie.”

  “The wind shifted around two Sunday morning,” Forniss said. “Cold northwest wind started up. Barnes laid fires in the living room and the dining room. Miss Jameson likes the house nice and warm, way he put it.”

  “And in Miss Jameson’s dressing room? Sitting room or whatever she calls it?”

  “He’d laid that earlier, he says. While the party was still going on. Carried logs and stuff up the back stairs and got the fire laid so she could light it if it was cold in the morning.”

  “As it turned out to be,” Heimrich said. “Foresighted guy, Barnes.”

  “She did light it, M. L. Just ashes in the fireplace. Barnes doesn’t know when. Says that, what with one thing and another, he’s got behind on things a little.”

  “One thing being murder,” Heimrich said. “The ashes were cold when you had a look at her fireplace today?”

  “Yep. They use heavy wood, and coals would last quite a while. Cold and dead when the trooper and I had a look. And pawed around some in the ashes.”

  Heimrich nodded his head and waited.

  Forniss unrolled the cylinder of brown paper. He took two objects out of it. One was a short sliver of blackened metal. The other object was charred and almost shapeless; burned out of whatever shape it once had had.

  “Thing is,” Forniss said, “this smells a little like leather. Burned leather. Half-burned leather.”

  He reached the shapeless object across the desk. Heimrich sniffed it. It smelled, he thought, like burned leather. It smelled of ashes.

  “The man I know in Peekskill,” Forniss said, “says he doesn’t know much about bows. Not much demand for them. They do carry a few. Haven’t sold any recently, far’s he knows. Golf clubs and tennis rackets, yes. Two bows in stock and a few arrows. No steel arrows. We had a look at the bows.”

  “And, Charlie?”

  “What he called ‘backed bows,’” Forniss said. “Reinforced on the belly side. Side that’s convex when you pull on the bow, I gather. The two they had in stock were backed with rawhide. Sometimes, he says, they use a tough wood, like hickory, for backing. And sometimes, M. L., they use a thin strip of steel.”