Let Dead Enough Alone

  Let Dead Enough Alone

  A Captain Heimrich Mystery

  FRANCES AND RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  I

  Asked why, Margaret Halley said because it would be good for both of them. She said this with decision, as she said most things. She said they needed a change of scene; to do something which they did not always do or, indeed, had ever done.

  “I have,” her husband said. “When I was younger, to be sure. Which is rather to the point.”

  He was told that he spoke as if he were an old man.

  “Which,” Margaret said, “is not good for you, John. Not in the least good for you.”

  “And going to the country in mid-winter, having a party—a New Year’s Eve party—there, would be good for me? It would—what, my dear?”

  “Stimulate,” Margaret said. “Part of therapy is to—”

  “Again,” John said. “There is nothing the matter with me, my dear. With all respect, of course. Speaking as a layman.”

  She made a quick gesture of rejection, as of a remark not worth listening to. She said that, of course, there was nothing the matter with him. As, she added, she told him perhaps too often, since, if one wanted complete accuracy, that was a statement which could be made to, and of, no one.

  “In the simplest terms,” Margaret said, “I should like to get away for a few days. You have imagination. You should realize that a steady diet of—” She did not finish, except by a movement of her hands. She had very attractive hands, John Halley thought. Still. She would not like the “still” and, in fact, its use—even its use in the quiet of his mind—was almost as unjust as it was ungenerous. She was, to be sure, a few years over forty. She was, in her fashion, quite beautiful. It was not necessary at all to say that she was “still” quite beautiful. In another fifteen years, perhaps. If she lived so long.

  “It’s what you want,” he said. “There would be no reason otherwise. As we both know.”

  “Of course,” she said. “As we both know. But not every day, day in day out. I see enough of what that does. Helps to do.” She smiled at him. They sat on either side of a bright fire—a fire which seemed all the brighter because it did not need to warm; a small fire, nurtured for its gayety. Her smile was as quick as one of the little, jumping flames. “There won’t be any strain in it,” she said. “We can get the Speeds. Have them there a day or two before. They’ll see to everything.”

  “Strain?” he said. “I hadn’t thought of it as a strain. Why do you call it strain?”

  “A chore, then,” she said. “It won’t be even that. And—it will be as good for you as for me.”

  She paused to light a cigarette. She was unhurried—fitted the cigarette carefully into a long holder, flicked flame from a table lighter, inhaled deeply. That done, she held the cigarette package up for an instant, and toward John Halley. He shook his head.

  “It’s a mistake to settle so completely into the familiar,” she said. “To accept the familiar as the inevitable. It can become a retreat—one of the retreats. A surface peace, but actually a kind of sloth. Underneath, in the subconscious, there can be a building up—” She broke off. She used her cigarette in its long holder as a kind of pointer at her husband. “We’re not old,” she said. “Not by any means. It’s not healthy to think we’re old.”

  “I haven’t thought that,” he said. “Or—that we—I, at any rate—are precisely young. After fifty—”

  His face was thin, and rather long. His hair had receded, so that now the heightened forehead added to the length of his face. There was a slight depression—hardly more than a flattening—of the bones at the top of the skull, and now this lay just, but only just, beyond the hairline. (The knowledge of this, then fully hidden, imperfection had worried John Halley when he had been much younger.) The skin of his face and forehead, and of his long, thin hands, was deeply browned.

  “In the simplest words,” she said. “In the layman’s words. You brood. That’s the reason, as much as anything.”

  “For this party?”

  “Specifically. For what it represents.”

  “What it represents,” he said, “is a drive of sixty miles or so. A house that hasn’t been lived in for months. The starting up of the furnace. The turning on of water. The—”

  “That’s it,” she said. “What I was getting at, John. The piling up of obstacles. Until they block the way. I told you, the Speeds will do all that. Go up several days ahead. Get in all we need. If the lake’s frozen, we’ll skate. Build a big bonfire and—”

  “I gather you’ve already arranged it? Written the Speeds or telephoned them?”

  She smiled, this time slowly.

  “So that now it is really easier to go than not?”

  Still smiling, she nodded her head. She had, had always had, the—the neatest head. The hair was like a black cap, the conformation of the skull under the hair delicately precise. A precision instrument, all of Margaret Halley, her husband thought. He said, “The lake almost never freezes before mid-January. Not for skating. At least, it almost never did, as I remember.”

  “Don’t go back into it,” she said. “It’s bad for you, all this going back into the past.”

  “You take your patients there,” he said. “That’s the—therapy, isn’t it?”

  “Under direction,” she said. “For a purpose. Under control, to find a cause, not a hiding place. But you know that. About the party?”

  “It seems to be settled, doesn’t it?” Halley said. He looked at his wife curiously, as if seeking to read in her face something beyond her words. He smiled faintly. “Why do you so often treat me as one of your patients, Margaret?” he said. He spoke with no insistence, as if the matter were of little concern.

  She looked at him steadily through eyes which were almost black.

  “Well,” he said, “how am I, doctor?”

  “You’ll be all right,” she said.

  “But aren’t now?”

  “You’re fine,” she said. “We’ll go up the day before, then? Thursday, that will be. Stay over Monday?”

  “However you’ve planned it,” he said.

  “Invite—whoever we invite—for Friday afternoon. So that, if they like, they can get there before dark. The three forty-two, for those who come by train. Speed can meet them in the wagon.”

  “However you say. But—it may be a little difficult to catch your guests, mayn’t it? They may lack enthusiasm. As I did.”

  She shook her head. She said she did not think so.

  “Probably you’re right,” he said. “Tom Kemper, I suppose? But naturally, Kemper.”

  “And Miss Latham,” Margaret said. “Dear Audrey.”

  “We’re both very understanding,” he said, with no particular inflection. “Both so civilized. So—what would you say, doctor? So well adjusted?”

  “Did you want it any other way? Ever?”

  He reached to a table near his chair and took a cigar from a humidor. He clipped the end of the cigar with the blade of a little silver knife, and held his hand toward Margaret, who put the table lighter in it. He thanked her before he held the cigar’s end in the little flame, leaning forward as he did so. As he started the cigar the flame lessened and grew bright, lessened and grew bright so that, in the softly lighted room, light wavered on his brown face.

  He had not answered.

  “You look tired,” she said. “Depressed.”

  “How could I be?” he said. “I do nothing. And, I have what I want. Have always had. As you mention so often. Kemper and Audrey, then. And—who else, my dear?”

  II

  The important thing was that she had been able to decide. That, she realized now, was always the important thing. Only those who
had been through it could understand; only those who had been in that dim, gray place where choice was impossible. Even now, with all of it over and not to recur—Margaret Halley said it would not recur—she remembered with that familiar twinge of terror, that sudden coldness in the mind. She sat again at a restaurant table, with the menu in her hands—trembling a little as her hands trembled. And she could not decide between creamed chicken and broiled spring lamb chop (one).

  If you tried to explain, explanation was ridiculous. But that was as clear to you as to anyone. The choice was trivial; it did not matter to yourself or to the waitress or to anyone whether you said, “The creamed chicken, please,” or “The lamb chop, I think.” But you sat there, the menu trembling in your hands, and your mind was numb, and full of fear. (Finally, she had sat shaking her head slowly from side to side, and then she had begun to cry at the dreariness of the world, and in pity for herself, and had got up, still crying slowly, and gone out into the darkness of a sun-flooded street. It was after that that her father had taken her to Margaret.)

  “The dark year,” she called it, in her mind, and it had been only a year, or a little more than a year. (A short piece of iron piping, probably fallen from a truck, was on the pavement in front of her. She could swerve the car to one side. She could straddle the pipe. Without thinking of it, she steered so as to straddle, and only after some seconds realized that she had done so, making this decision without thought, as such decisions must be made—without thought, without hesitation. Two years ago she could not any longer drive a car—or choose between black shoes and brown.)

  Asked by Dr. Margaret Halley whether she would like to drive into the country, to spend the New Year’s weekend in the big Halley house by the lake, she had chosen instantly, and chosen to accept. It was another proof of her complete recovery, another assurance that she was through the dark year, as Margaret had promised her she would be. It had only been necessary—but how difficult!—to understand that such things happened to minds, not only to hers but to many, and that this understanding, and time, would bring her back, and bring the sun back.

  She was Lynn Ross again—all of Lynn Ross. The little things which had worried her so much, the little failures, were no longer important. They remained parts of Lynn Ross, but she herself was whole. She was a tall—oh, too tall still—woman of twenty-four, driving northeast beyond Bedford Hills, where the parkway ended, following careful directions toward Lake Carabec. She would reach Katonah soon, and must turn north, to a fork three miles beyond, then right for another two miles to a fork. At the fork the road to the left led to the club, which was closed in winter; the road to the right, which she must take, circled the lake. Half way around the lake, opposite the clubhouse—which could be seen now that the leaves were gone—was the Halley house. The house was to the right, the boathouse to the left.

  It was three-thirty on the afternoon of Friday, December thirty-first. She would, easily, arrive before dark, although already the light was dimming. She flicked on the car radio and, after it had warmed, pressed the foot button which selected stations. The indicator stopped. “—are feared lost,” the radio said. “Here is the weather: Increasing northeast winds this afternoon and tonight, with a chance of some snow. Lowest temperature tonight in the upper twenties in the city and along the coast, and in the low twenties in the normally colder interior. Tomorrow partly cloudy and continued moderately cold. This is WNEW, the radio station of the Daily News, New York’s picture newspaper.”

  Well, you had to expect winter when it was winter. And in the country, particularly, some snow was appropriate. The newspapers that morning had, to be sure, said nothing of snow, in any quantity, but had promised fair skies and temperatures rising into the low forties. Apparently something had—

  It was evident that something had. Fine snow began to drive against the windshield, melting on the warmth of the glass. Lynn Ross switched the wipers on. She was glad it had held off as long as it had.

  The snow was not white, but a gray darkness. Lynn switched on her headlights. The light beams hit a curtain of snow and from it, bounced back into her eyes. She dipped the lights, and that was better. But now snow rushed at the windshield and, just before it reached the glass, swirled upward, dizzy with its own movement—and dizzying to her. Then there were street lights as she went into Katonah, driving now very slowly. The lights made a difference. She went past the station and, beyond it, turned left. After a block, she turned right onto Route 35. That was what Margaret had told her to do.

  The snow which had fallen blew toward her on the pavement, netting the black surface with tracings of white. There was still not enough to cause uneasiness, but soon there would be. She wished she had started half an hour earlier from the city; wished she had driven faster while she could. She watched her speedometer; the numerals which gauged the distance she had driven moved up into place with exasperating slowness.

  But finally she had driven the three miles, and the tires still had pavement to cling to. Beyond was a bridge. “Just before you cross the bridge.” She turned right, onto a road which climbed in a steep curve—a narrower road, but still black paved. Two miles now to a fork. The road climbed in an S-curve and here, for the first time, the car skidded slightly. She caught it, and the motor labored. She shifted down, very carefully, fearing the wheels would spin. They did not, and she ground slowly on. It was much darker, now, and even the lowered beams of light reflected into her eyes from what seemed a wall of snow. There was a center line of white, and she guided on that. A mile and one tenth—and two tenths—and three tenths. A mile and a half—a mile and six—a mile and—

  She came to the top of the hill, as the speedometer “9” climbed reluctantly in the column of tenths. Here the fork should be. There was no fork—yes, there was a fork. Here the road divided to circle Lake Carabec. She followed the branch to the right. For the first time, here, the snow lay smoothly on the road. But it was so light, still, that her wheels bit through it. In the mirror, she could see the tracks the car left as it ground slowly on the narrow, winding road.

  She came around a rock-outcropping, to which a single tree clung perilously, black against the snowy night. Then she was looking over the lake—a black lake which seemed to stretch endlessly into the falling snow. (But it was, Margaret had told her, only a small lake.) The road ran close to it; the guard rail between road and steeply pitching bank looked ancient—a guide, rather than a barrier. Skidding into it, a car—

  Well, the point was not to skid into it. She drove carefully, thankful that the lake lay to the left. She hugged the right side of the road. She skidded again, gently, and caught the skid, but then skidded—just perceptibly—the other way.

  She had come a mile since the fork. Another mile— Then, some distance ahead, she saw a lighted house. It was a big house, and there seemed to be lights in all its windows. “If it’s dark, we’ll light the place like a Christmas tree,” Margaret had promised. The road pitched down, and she let the motor brake. It levelled and she had not skidded. A mile and six—and seven—and—

  Something sparkled ahead and to the right, in the car lights. And eight tenths—and nine— The sparkling was from a reflecting sign. It read, “John Halley.” She turned into the driveway it marked, and now climbed again and turned again—and skidded. But now the skidding meant nothing, and she drove confidently toward the gayly lighted house. A porch light came on, and a man came around the house, from the rear, with a flashlight. He motioned, beckoned with the flashlight, and pointed with it to the right. She went as directed; a garage, open, was ahead. She drove into the garage, neatly between a station wagon—headed out—and a big sedan. She cut the motor and then the lights. She said, “Whew,” softly, drawing the sound in through pursed lips. The man with the light came to the side of the car.

  “Bad night, miss,” he said. “Bad and gettin’ worse. You got bags, miss?”

  She had. She got out. She unlocked the trunk and looked down at the small, round, man who
pulled her suitcase—“Dinner dress. Slacks and sweater. Nothing in between.” That was what Margaret had advised—and an overnight bag from the trunk of the little car.

  “Name’s Abner Speed,” the small man said. “You’d be Miss Ross?”

  “Yes,” the tall girl said. She was so much taller than this small man.

  “Take ’em in for you,” Abner Speed said. “Just gettin’ ready to go for the others.” He indicated the station wagon with a nod of his head. “Been putting on chains,” he said. “You got chains with you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Anyway, you’re here,” Abner told her. “Hour or so road’ll be bad without chains.” He started out of the garage. “Or with them,” he added. “Quickest just to cut across here, miss.”

  He cut across there, on a snowy path, toward the porch. The door opened, and Margaret Halley stood in it and called, “Lynn?”

  “Yes,” Lynn said, and remembered, and walked tall—walked as tall as she could walk.

  (“When you learn to do that,” Margaret had said, “you’ll have learned a lot. The highest heels. The straightest back. You’re—what, Miss Ross?”

  “Five ten.”

  “You carry your head forward. Did you know that? You slump your shoulders. You—yes, you wear low heels.”

  “I know. I’ve always been—gawky. ‘My big gawky girl. My giantess,’ Dad used to—”

  She had been lying down; Margaret had been sitting behind her, in shadows.

  “You’re beginning to understand,” Margaret had said. “Part of it. Part of what causes your depression—what we call a simple depression. Remember, when you get up, you’re six feet tall. You’re taller. You hold your head up and your shoulders up. And—you get shoes with the highest heels you can walk on.”

  “I don’t understand, doctor. I’ve always—”)

  Now she walked along a path, through the snow, in the highest heels she could walk on. (Which, just now, was of course a little silly. ) She tried to be as tall—as tall as a tree. Margaret came to the edge of the porch and held out both hands to her. “I’m so glad you could come,” Margaret Halley said.