Burnt Offering Read online

  Burnt Offering

  A Captain Heimrich Mystery

  FRANCES AND RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  I

  The man who sat at the end of the long table and faced assorted taxpayers of the Town of Van Brunt, County of Putnam, was by no means a large man or a young man or a handsome man. He was noticeably thin; even as he sat it was evident that he was not noticeably tall. It appeared probable that, if shaken, he would rattle. His ears flared somewhat; his head was bald. His mouth was wide but the lips were thin. He did not open them appreciably when he spoke. He said, “Clerk’llread” as one word. The voice was younger and more vigorous than the man.

  “Matter-tax-anticipation-loan-first-national-sixty-days,” a man farther down the table, and so nearer the taxpayers thus to be anticipated, said, in a breath if not in a word. He was a medium man in a gray summer suit. “S’adoption,” a heavy man said from his seat at the right of the thin-lipped man, who immediately said, “Favor-signify,” whereupon all six men at the table produced a low-toned growl. “Dopted,” the thin-lipped man said. “Clerk’llread.” The clerk read. “Matter-variance-sought-by—”

  “It’s always like this to start with,” Marian Alden told the square-faced, broad-shouldered man who sat at her right—sat squarely on an inadequate folding chair, feet firmly on the floor. They sat in the last row but one, the most distant of assembled taxpayers. The solid man said, “Um-m.” The man on the other side of Marian Alden said, “Stuff they’ve got to get through.” He was a man alert of face, sandy of hair; burned by the sun and pleasantly crinkled. “Um-m,” Marian Alden said.

  “Zoning-board-arrange-public-hearing,” the man at the head of the table, which was raised on a low platform at the end of the room, said in his unexpectedly vigorous voice. “Clerk’ll—”

  There were some thirty men and women in the meeting room of the Town House of the Town of Van Brunt. They came, the square man on the inadequate folding chair had already observed, in most probable shapes and sizes. They wore sports coats from good tailors and unaccustomed business suits from Sears; they wore light summer coats from Bergdorf’s over summer cottons from Saks and heavier coats, longer coats, over house dresses. A woman in the third row—a woman, he decided, only to be thought of as “well set up”—wore a black silk suit and a black and red hat with a feather. The man next her wore a sports shirt in two tones, neither of them likely, and discharged army slacks. The man at the head of the table wore a blue suit—and a vest.

  A man in the middle of the room was standing up. He was a large man, from whom physical well-being emanated. His sports jacket fitted without wrinkle over heavy shoulders. “Mr. Phipps,” he said. “It was my understanding that the question of zoning was the purpose—precisely the purpose—of the meeting tonight. If I am right, it would seem to me—”

  “Paul Stidworthy,” Marian Alden said. “Chairman of admissions at the club. But he closes his house up in the winter.”

  “Unforgivable sin,” the sandy-haired man on her left said. “Be all right if he went to Florida but you know what he does? Goes and lives in an apartment in New York.” He added deprecatory clickings of teeth and tongue.

  Mr. Phipps hooked spectacles to his more than adequate ears. He considered the large man through them. He took them off.

  “I assure you,” he said, “that none of us have forgotten the purpose of the open meeting Mr—” He paused, just long enough for the pause to count. “Mr. Stidworthy,” he said.

  “Take that, Mr. Stidworthy,” Marian said to the square man on her right. “Teach you to close your house in the winter.”

  “Um-m,” the square man said, and turned enough to smile at her. He smiled with moderation, but with affection.

  “—until we get the whole matter talked out and voted on,” Mr. Stidworthy said. “How’s the zoning board going to—”

  “Jim Purvis wants to build a chicken coop,” Mr. Phipps said, and put his glasses on again. The glasses reflected light, sparkled at Stidworthy. “Do you want to talk about chicken coops?”

  “Well,” Paul Stidworthy said. He sat down, slowly, diminished. But then he straightened his back and leaned forward a little, in the position of a man who keeps his eyes on things. Orville Phipps, town supervisor, regarded him for an instant longer and removed his glasses. With things well in hand, he allowed himself tolerance. “There are only a few more items,” he said, to the assembled taxpayers. “Everybody’ll have his chance. Clerk’llread.”

  The clerk read. Captain M. L. Heimrich, New York State Police, off duty for the day and the night, supporting his niece and her husband in the acceptance of civic responsibility, settled even more squarely in the inadequate folding chair, placed his feet even more firmly on the floor. He also closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, uncle,” Marian Alden said, in a soft aside. “I thought it would be more interesting. But it won’t last long.”

  That had been part of the promise—that it would not last long. “We really ought to go,” Marian had said. “To show we take an interest. Particularly when we’re new in the community.”

  That had been over cocktails, before dinner, in a house on top of a hill, with a big window letting in the view of the Hudson Valley. They looked over trees toward the river; there—just there—was West Point. “We’re so lucky to be living here,” Marian told her uncle, told her husband, who nodded, who sipped. “We want to be part of it. And there’s this new school project, of course.”

  John Alden grinned at that. His face crinkled. He noted that they looked ahead. “Seven months and—when do kids start in school?” he said. His wife said, “You!” She said that she liked to look ahead. She said that it was because they looked ahead that they were where they were, instead of in Detroit, instead of in an apartment in New York. She mentioned putting down roots. Far below, hidden by the trees, a train hooted. It could, John Alden said, and looked at his watch for verification—it could be The Century. He stirred a new drink.

  The sun was still well above the hills to the west of the river. The days are long in mid-July.

  “No sign of rain,” Alden said, and sighed. It was a common remark that summer; the sigh was common, from Poughkeepsie south, and east through Putnam and Westchester. There was much sighing in Connecticut and not a little in southern Massachusetts. The reservoirs were down; lawns burned; lawnmowers remained unused. “Met a man on the train Friday,” Alden said. “His well’s conked out. New well, of course. But so is ours, when you come to that.”

  “Our well’s a hundred and—what? Seventy, isn’t it?” Marian said.

  “Yes,” her husband told her. “His was one ninety. It had a flow of fifteen. Ours is eight.”

  But they were not really worried, Heimrich thought, as he listened, relaxed, looking across the Hudson toward West Point. It would be somebody else’s well which would conk out, as it would be somebody else, not Marian, who might have a bad time during the next seven months. As, he thought—thinking “shop”—it was somebody else, always, who was murdered—never yourself, or your friends, always someone far away and unknown and, when you came to it, improbable. It was, of course, true that most deep wells did not go dry, most healthy young women reproduced without catastrophe and one’s intimates were seldom murdered.

  It was pleasantly relaxing, drink in hand, eyes on distant hills, half listening to pleasant people. Marian had grown up very well, he thought; she had married well. It must be mildly annoying to be named John Alden, and so subject to reiterated invitations to speak for yourself.

  “Of course there’s really no need for you to go,” Marian said. “You can just stay here and join us afterward at the Westlakes’. It’s very easy to find. It’s just that John and I feel—”

  She was reminded, with gentlen
ess, by her husband that they had been over that. It was, however, more than a matter of joining in, of showing that, as newcomers, they could be relied upon to take an interest. In the school project and, more immediately, in the proposed rezoning their interests were real, even monetary.

  Through here—Alden waved to indicate the location of “here”—the zoning requirements were stringent. “A very strict R-one.” A four-acre tract required, minimum average width of two hundred and fifty feet. Obviously, this kept people out; obviously, it was selfish. But— Alden shook his head. There was a movement to change a considerable section to a one-acre zone and to do away with the average width requirement. Long, thin lots, wearing long thin houses, could be envisioned. That— He shrugged. There was no need for him to be telling Heimrich this; Heimrich knew the area as, probably, he never would.

  “It’s always a question,” Heimrich agreed. “Beautiful country does get spoiled. But—a lot of people get air, and even little gardens. And property values go down. Except what the developers buy, naturally.”

  “Down there,” Alden said, and gestured in a different direction, “down in the R-two area, they’ve been stripping. Did you see that driving up? On Van Brunt Avenue, as we call it. Route Eleven-F, everybody else calls it. Before you come through The Flats?”

  Heimrich shook his head.

  “Somebody bought up twenty acres,” Alden said. “Maybe thirty. Nice land, sloping down to the road. So—they bring in bulldozers, strip off the top soil and truck it off and sell it. Down damn near to the subsoil, from the looks. Then—then they sell it for building lots. An acre’s enough there. And then what? Some poor devil tries to grow one of these little gardens. Some poor devil from the city who wants a little place in the country and thinks he’s going to grow his own vegetables.”

  “I know,” Heimrich said.

  “Why isn’t it theft?” Marian asked. “You ought to know. You’re a policeman.”

  “It’s not against the law,” Heimrich told her. “Not generally. Some towns have ordinances against it, require permits. Most don’t.” She looked at him. “Oh,” Heimrich said. “I agree with you.”

  “I,” Marian said, “think it’s as much murder as—as murder.”

  A buzzer sounded, suddenly, and with violence. Alden started, and a little of his drink sloshed. He said he doubted whether he would ever get used to it.

  “The range,” Marian explained to Heimrich, who had not started, but who looked mildly surprised. “It thinks dinner’s ready. I’ll go see. If it is, we can take drinks to the table. It’s all in one dish, and a salad.”

  Marian Alden went. Her husband regarded her. “Doesn’t show, yet, does it?” he said. Heimrich agreed that it did not.

  The range’s estimate was approved. They ate. It was, Marian Alden observed, surprising how worked up one could get over country things. “A year and a half ago,” she said, “if somebody talked about stripping top soil, I’d have said, ‘So what?’ Now look at me.”

  “Everybody gets worked up,” Alden said. “You’ll see that tonight, if you go.”

  Heimrich, who had seen it often, who no longer wondered at it, agreed that everybody did. There was no end to the circumstances which could get people “worked up.” Nor did the intensity of the emotions aroused bear any predictable relation to what, to an outsider, might seem the inherent importance of the cause. It was always desirable for a policeman to bear this in mind. Now, his feet firm on the Town House floor, Captain Heimrich dutifully bore it in mind, for want of alternative burdens.

  Mr. Stidworthy, to be sure, still sat alert, a man on watch, and elsewhere among the assembled payers of township taxes there was some restlessness, probably attributable to the hardness of the folding chairs. (Orville Phipps, town supervisor, and the members of his board sat in cushioned chairs.) The clerk read, adoptions were moved, board members growled briefly in unison and, it appeared, in approval. James Purvis, who wanted a variance in the matter of a chicken coop—too close to his property line, Heimrich guessed—got the school bus contract as—Heimrich knew from stopping obediently when yellow buses stopped, and reading what was lettered on them—he had for years. “Clerk’llread.”

  “Matter-of-change-of-name-of-Van-Brunt-Pass-to—” the clerk said, and then a thin and wiry woman in a suit which looked too heavy for a summer’s evening and a hat of unrelenting sobriety stood up and said she was not going to sit there. Orville Phipps put his glasses on and gleamed at her.

  “Miss Burns,” Marian Alden told Captain Heimrich, lips close to his ear. “Town librarian.”

  “I’m not going to sit here and let this go by default,” Miss Burns said. “You needn’t think I am, Orville.”

  Phipps’s glasses sparkled harshly.

  “And,” she said, “you needn’t hide behind those glasses, Orville Phipps. If you haven’t any feeling for tradition—for the—”

  “We,” Phipps said, “have been over this before. There’s a Van Brunt Avenue and—”

  “—our oldest family,” Miss Burns said. “A family that goes back and back. When all this was the Van Brunt farm and—”

  “—a Van Brunt Lane and—” Phipps said.

  “—the whole character of the community and—” Miss Burns said.

  “Don’t we know who the big shots are,” a man in a blue shirt said loudly, if ostensibly to the man next him.

  Mr. Phipps redirected his glitter. He said that if the gentleman wanted to address the meeting, he would stand up and be recognized. He added that Miss Burns had the floor. “Apparently,” he added, and redirected himself. “Although—” he said.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to,” Miss Burns said. “Thought you could just slip it through, along with Jim Purvis’s chicken coop. Why do you think I’m here?”

  “We’re all here,” Phipps said, “to consider a petition, duly signed by legal taxpayers, that the zoning laws of District C, between the road now known as Van Brunt Lane and—”

  “Now known,” Miss Burns said. “Now known. Before some people were ever heard of, Van Brunt Lane was Van Brunt Lane. Not Phipps Lane. Not Orville Lane. Now known, indeed!”

  “If we’ve got to talk about this,” a man in a blue suit said, “let’s talk about it and get it over. I come up from the city—train’s twenty minutes late, like always—I bolt my dinner and get here and what? Purvis’s chicken coop. Bunch of get-rich-quick socialists want to ruin property values, like they have down in The Flats, and all we talk about—”

  “Now listen,” the man in the blue shirt said, and this time he stood up. “Don’t think we don’t know who runs the town. Just because we live in the place you call The Flats don’t mean— To hear some people you’d think the Van Brunts—”

  Orville Phipps glittered, now, in all directions. He banged the table with a wooden mallet.

  “I insist,” Orville Phipps said. “I insist these matters be considered in an orderly fashion. I—”

  “That’s the whole point,” Miss Burns said, her voice rising triumphant over that of the town supervisor. “That’s just the point. The meeting’s for one thing and you try to slip through something else. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, Orville. Phipps Lane indeed! Why not the First National Bank and Trust Company Lane?”

  “Nobody suggested Phipps Lane,” Phipps said. “You know that, Myra. No one intends any disrespect to the Van Brunt family. I’m sure we all realize that.” He glittered this way, and that way. “Cornelia will be the first to agree, I’m sure,” he said, and focused on a woman who sat in a chair in the fifth row, near its end. She was white haired and plump; her smooth face was pink. She wore white gloves and the gloved hands rested quietly in her lap, one neatly on the other. As Phipps looked at her, so did the others. She smiled and shook her head.

  “Please, Orville,” she said. “It’s really of no importance.” She smiled across the room. “Please, Myra,” she said to Miss Burns, still standing, still embattled. “It really do
esn’t matter.”

  Her voice was low pitched but clear; it carried through the room. One didn’t hear that accent much nowadays, Heimrich thought, and thought it rather a pity. So that, he thought, was Mrs. Van Brunt—Van Brunt by birth and by marriage, Van Brunt of the Hudson Valley Van Brunts.

  “And there is so much to commemorate the family,” Cornelia Van Brunt went on, still speaking to Myra Burns. “I’m sure it must be confusing often to people who don t—that is, to those who have come here recently.”

  “Delivery men,” the man in the blue suit said. “I live on Van Brunt Pass. Half the time—” He stopped of his own accord.

  “Of course,” Cornelia Van Brunt said. “It must be so confusing. For those without our associations. Van Brunt Lane and Van Brunt Pass and Van Brunt Avenue and Van Brunt Point and—isn’t there another one, Myra?”

  “There was the brook,” Myra Burns said. “I’m afraid, though, it’s almost—That is, the club—”

  “Diverted when we put in the new courts,” Paul Stidworthy said. He spoke rather challengingly. “Dried up every summer anyway. Let alone a summer like this.”

  “The brook of course,” Mrs. Van Brunt said. “Such a pretty little brook. When I was a girl—oh, a very young girl—” She stopped and shook her white head. “It is so easy to remember,” she said. “And so—redundant, isn’t it? Like all the family memorials. To another way of life.”

  “Some of us,” the man in the blue shirt informed the man next to him, “some of us have to get up in the morning. Ain’t that right? Work for a living, some of us do. Like I say, some of us haven’t got all night.”

  Mr. Phipps used his little wooden mallet. Miss Burns looked at the man in the blue shirt and made a sound with tongue and teeth and shook her head and sat down. The man who had bolted his dinner immediately stood up. But at the same time, a thin woman in a black dress—a white-faced woman—stood, too, and said, “Mr. Chairman!” in a sharp voice and with a minimal movement of thin lips.

  “Miss Shively,” Mr. Phipps said.