Stand Up and Die

  Stand Up and Die

  A Captain Heimrich Mystery

  FRANCES AND RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  To H. L. S.

  Chapter I

  The lane is little frequented, except by those who live along it in three big houses. Half a mile north of East Belford, the lane diverges from the main road to Golden’s Bridge, which is itself no more than a secondary black-top. The lane, which is best known as Plum Lane, although it is variously designated, heads at first toward the west. But beyond the drive leading up to the Tinsleys’ big house, it turns north, and thereafter it wanders absent-mindedly. The Belfords live on it, two miles or so beyond the Tinsleys; the Robinsons are a mile and a half farther on. Beyond the Robinsons, the lane turns rather decisively toward the east and, after a few more miles of rambling, rejoins the East Belford-Golden’s Bridge road.

  On a Wednesday morning in mid-June one may walk the length of Plum Lane and encounter no one. The rural mail carrier does not get to the lane until after noon; in the summer, Mr. Tinsley drives it, on his way to Golden’s Bridge and the station, only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But there is no reason to walk it, since it is by far the longest distance between two points, neither of which has any particular significance. Nevertheless, a man did walk it that Wednesday morning.

  He entered the lane at the intersection nearest Golden’s Bridge, and so was going the long way around toward East Belford. He said afterward that he had entered the lane because he liked the looks of it, which was generally felt to be no reason at all.

  And afterward, he insisted he could only guess at the time he had entered the lane, and guessed that it might have been eight-thirty or thereabouts. He had no watch, and when asked why, said that he had thrown it away two weeks before because it did not make any difference what time it was—not any more. If he told the truth, and if his guess was accurate, he had walked in the lane for more than two hours when he ran out of it. He ran up the Tinsley driveway, at any rate, at a few minutes before eleven. He ran hard; the leather of his shoes crunched hard on the gravel.

  Mrs. Tinsley had driven into East Belford some time earlier to join a Garden Club expedition; Mr. Tinsley was in the garden in the field beyond the house, helping the gardener get the second planting of corn in the ground. But even from the distance, Mr. Tinsley could hear the pounding on the front door. It was violent, peremptory and, although there was a maid to answer the door, Mr. Tinsley stood up, absently wiping his hands on his gardening trousers, and listened. When the hammering at the door continued he said, “Now what the hell?” to the gardener, and went to find out.

  The maid had reached the door before Mr. Tinsley, coming around the house from the field, got to a point from which he could see the man who had been pounding on the door. The maid was looking up at the tall man in front of her and before he heard anything, Mr. Tinsley saw her lift both hands to her head, pushing at her hair. She was so clearly upset, even frightened, that Mr. Tinsley began to run, although it had been years since he had run. The man heard Mr. Tinsley’s feet on the gravel and turned.

  He was a tall, dark man, broad-shouldered, deeply browned. A canvas duffle bag hung by its straps from his left shoulder. His black hair was a hard brush on his head. At first, Mr. Tinsley thought he was in his middle thirties, but as he got nearer he realized that he was wrong by, probably, ten years. The man, for all the maturity of his body, in spite even of a kind of experienced readiness in his face—the man, seen closely, was almost certainly in his early twenties.

  “Well?” Mr. Tinsley said, and went on toward the young man. “Why all the racket?”

  The tall young man looked at Mr. Tinsley as if he were making up his mind about him. What came of this, his expression did not reveal. But then Mr. Tinsley saw that under one of the boy’s narrowed eyes a muscle was jumping so that the eye seemed, incongruously, to be winking.

  “Well?” Mr. Tinsley said again. He raised his voice somewhat.

  “There’s a body up there,” the man said, and jerked a thumb toward the lane. The voice was tight, hard; it occurred to Mr. Tinsley that the boy was doing his utmost to keep expression out of it. He was really very young, Mr. Tinsley thought, at the same time he listened, heard the hard young voice continue.

  “In a ditch,” the boy said, moving down the two steps from the door to the drive, standing in front of Mr. Tinsley, looking down at him. “A girl. She’s been—” He stopped, and Mr. Tinsley could see him swallow. “She’s all cut up,” the boy said. “You’d think somebody’d used—” He stopped again. Again, Mr. Tinsley could see the movement in the hard young throat as the boy swallowed. There was something in the young eyes which met his, even while the disturbing winking went on, that sickened Mr. Tinsley. He found that he, too, was swallowing, needlessly; that for a moment his voice seemed to stick in his throat.

  The maid made, then, a low, moaning sound and she was, Mr. Tinsley thought, about to scream. He turned to her; he made himself speak with reasonable calm.

  “I’ll take care of this,” he said. “See what it’s all about.” The maid took her hands down; she had had them over her eyes. She looked at him. “You call the police,” Mr. Tinsley said. “The State police. It’s in the phone book. Tell them—” He stopped; he turned to the young man who was still looking down at him. “Where?” he asked.

  The young man gestured again. He said, “About a thousand yards.”

  “Up the lane,” Mr. Tinsley told the maid. “About—oh, about half a mile beyond our drive. Tell them that.”

  The maid started to speak. She managed to nod.

  “Tell them somebody’s been hurt,” he said.

  She nodded again.

  “All right,” Mr. Tinsley said to the boy. “Let’s see what this is all about.”

  He started down the drive toward the lane, and the boy came with him. After the first few strides, Mr. Tinsley found it difficult to keep up. By the time they reached the road, he had to tell the boy to take it easy. The boy said, “Sorry, sir,” and slowed his pace a little. It was still a fast pace for a man of Mr. Tinsley’s years; for a man who, during the last twenty-odd of those years, had not been often required to hurry.

  It had been hot walking down the drive; their feet had brought dust up from the gravel. It was cooler after they were in the lane, where the big ash trees grew on either side. There the road’s surface was only flecked with sunlight, and the flecks of light moved gently as the leaves moved. It was hushed in the lane, except for the birds talking in the trees. They were alien in the lane, Mr. Tinsley thought, hurrying to keep up. They were moving too rapidly; they were too insistent for the soft summer air, the dappling shadows. The tall youth still walked with long strides. As he walked, he looked about him with a kind of wariness; he looked from one side of the lane to the other, and seemed to walk tensely, although the actual physical movements were enviably relaxed.

  They went along so for about ten minutes, not speaking. The young man seemed to have no desire for speech; Mr. Tinsley, who had grown plump in his fifties, had no breath for it. Then, just as they reached a bend in the road, the tall man slowed his pace.

  “Around here, it ought to be,” he said. He looked down at Mr. Tinsley. “It’s a pretty nasty thing,” he said. “Maybe you—” But then he thought better of whatever he had been going to say, and walked on. Around the bend, he looked ahead, and to the right of the road, and then pointed and said, “There.” Then they went on, now down hill.

  The rains had been heavy that spring, and on this slope they had washed gullies on either side of the lane. The body lay in one of the gullies. A yellow coat was over it, covering the face, reaching to mid-thighs. It was such a soft coat as women wear in the cool of summer evenings. It was streaked, now, with di
rt.

  “I did that,” the tall boy said. “You cover them when you can, you know.”

  Mr. Tinsley had stopped a few feet from the body; he looked down at it. The boy waited for a moment. Then, when the older man did not move, he went to the body and crouched beside it. He waited a moment and then drew the coat away. He did this slowly, almost with tenderness.

  The wounds in the naked body were hideous. But the face was unmarked. Mr. Tinsley saw the face, after a moment. He started to speak, but bitterness was in his throat, and he managed to move a few steps from the body before he vomited. The boy was not surprised; he nodded slowly, when Mr. Tinsley could look at him again. He drew the coat back over the mutilated body, but left the face uncovered.

  “I know her, you see,” Mr. Tinsley said, and thought the words meaningless.

  “Yeah,” the boy said. “It makes it worse, a little. To know them, that is.” He pulled the coat further up, so that the face was covered again.

  “Her name’s Virginia,” Mr. Tinsley said. “Virginia Monroe.”

  “Yeah,” the boy said. He stood up, then. He seemed, to Mr. Tinsley, to have changed suddenly. He had led, before. Now he waited to be led. There was a curious impersonality in this attitude; it was not, Mr. Tinsley felt, that the boy waited for Mr. Tinsley, a somewhat plumpish gentleman in his middle fifties, to assume leadership. It was rather that he waited for leadership, as an abstraction, to be assumed.

  “We’ll just have to wait,” Mr. Tinsley said. “They’ll send somebody along.”

  In spite of himself, he looked at the streaked yellow coat which was over the body, at the long brown legs the coat did not cover, the gay yellow shoes on the slim feet.

  “The coat was over there in the weeds,” the boy said. “Wadded up. I didn’t see anything else. Any other clothes, I mean.”

  “You were just walking along and—saw her?” Mr. Tinsley said.

  “Yes sir,” the boy said. “Just walking along.” He seemed to wait for another question.

  “Going to Belford,” Mr. Tinsley said. “East Belford, that is.”

  “Not anywhere particularly,” the boy said. “Just walking. I came to this little road and liked the looks of it. That’s all. I wasn’t looking for—anything.”

  “She’s been living in East Belford,” Mr. Tinsley said. “With her grandmother. She’s been coming for several summers to stay with Mrs. Saunders. And her sister.”

  “Yes sir,” the boy said. He waited again.

  “It’s a fiendish thing,” Mr. Tinsley said, and was surprised at the word he used. It represented, he realized almost at once, an obvious association of ideas; it reflected a cliché, from which horror had long vanished. Yet what had been done to Virginia Monroe was altogether fiendish. Mr. Tinsley shut his eyes, closing them against what the coat hid.

  “It’s hard to take,” the tall young man said. “Gets you, the first time. Why don’t you sit down, sir?”

  Mr. Tinsley was glad to turn his back, to walk across the lane, to go carefully across the eroded ditch on the far side, finally to sit on the bank beyond.

  “When did it happen?” he asked, after a moment.

  He realized that the flickering muscle under the boy’s left eye had been quiet for some time. Now it jumped again; now there was, again, the strange winking. At the same time the boy narrowed both his eyes, so that they became almost triangular.

  “How would I know?” the boy said. His voice was harshly demanding. He moved a step toward Mr. Tinsley.

  “I didn’t mean that,” Mr. Tinsley said. “For God’s sake, man! I thought—” He hesitated. “Thought you might know,” he said. “Roughly, I mean. If you touched her to make sure.”

  “Make sure?” the boy repeated. “You saw her, sir. But—she’s cold, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s what I meant,” Mr. Tinsley said. “All I meant.”

  “Some time last night, at a guess,” the boy said. “Rigor’s started. You could see that.”

  Mr. Tinsley had not been able to see that. Nevertheless, he nodded.

  “They ought to be here before long,” he said then. “They’ll want to talk to you, you know. What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Gates,” the boy said. “Timothy.” He spoke quickly, almost automatically.

  “You’re not from around here,” Mr. Tinsley said. It occurred to him, instantly, that he did not know at all that Timothy Gates was not from around there. “Or are you?” he asked.

  “No,” Gates said. “I’m not.”

  Whether he was about to add something else did not appear, since at that moment he turned his head, as one does listening. After a second, Mr. Tinsley also heard the still distant sound of a siren. He knew, from the direction of the sound, that the car which was crying its approach was still on the East Belford-Golden’s Bridge road. But after a moment, he could tell that the police had turned into the lane. The siren continued to sound, presumably from force of habit. The sound, which carried uneasiness with it, even on a bright June morning, reverberated from the gentle hills of northern Westchester County. Mr. Tinsley stood up. He went back across the gully and stood in the lane. He felt, a little vaguely, that one owed so much to murder.

  Absently, as he waited, he looked at his hands. For an instant he was shocked, almost frightened, to see that his fingers were deeply stained. Then he remembered that, half an hour or so ago, he had been putting seed corn, black-brown with the coal tar of a crow repellent, into warm earth. He rubbed his hands absently on his gardening trousers as he waited. He did not have long to wait.

  A car brought two uniformed State troopers. A motorcycle brought a third. The siren of the car died as the car stopped, brakes going on hard. Troopers got out of it on either side; the third trooper remained astride his motorcycle. The two troopers from the car walked over to Virginia Monroe’s body. One squatted and pulled the yellow coat away. He said, “Jeeze!” in a sick voice and then, “Bad as a smash-up, isn’t it, Ted?” Ted, who was wetting his lips with his tongue, merely nodded. The first trooper replaced the coat. He stood up and faced Mr. Tinsley. He looked at Timothy Gates.

  “All right,” the trooper said, “let’s have it.”

  Mr. Tinsley looked at the tall boy, watched the muscle under the left eye twitch.

  “I found her,” Gates said. “I was walking along here and—saw her. I found the coat and put it over her. Then I went along to this gentleman’s house”—he indicated Mr. Tinsley—“and somebody there telephoned. This gentleman and I came back.” He paused a moment. “That’s all I know,” he said.

  “Just walking along,” the trooper said. “Just happened to see her. Never saw her before.”

  “That’s right,” Gates said. “That’s the way it was.”

  “O. K.,” the trooper said. He turned to Mr. Tinsley. “It was your house he came to?” he asked. “House back up the road?” He indicated with a thumb.

  “Yes,” Mr. Tinsley said. “One of the maids telephoned you.”

  “You name’s Tinsley, then,” the trooper told him, and Mr. Tinsley nodded.

  The trooper turned back to Gates.

  “Timothy Gates,” the tall boy said.

  “Sometime, maybe, they’ll learn to lock these people up,” the trooper said. “Keep them locked up.” He turned toward the third trooper, who still sat astride his motorcycle. “Want to call the sergeant?” he asked. “Use the phone at Mr. Tinsley’s house.” He looked at Tinsley and said, “O. K.?” Mr. Tinsley nodded.

  The trooper kicked at his motorcycle; it answered explosively. He half rode, half walked, it in a circle and went away violently, dust spurting behind.

  “I’ll have to ask you gentlemen to wait until the sergeant gets here,” the trooper said. “He’ll want to talk to you. Particularly to Mr. Gates, of course. Has to make reports, you know.”

  “I should think,” Mr. Tinsley said, mildly, “that we might as well wait at the house. Mr. Gates and I, that is.” He smiled. “Neither of us is
going to run away, of course,” he said.

  The trooper hesitated only a moment. Then he nodded, then he said, “Sure.” Then he said, “Matter of fact, I may as well run you back. Ted can stay here.”

  He ran them back along the quiet lane, up the sunny whiteness of the graveled driveway. He watched them go into the house. He swung the car in the turnaround, then, and cut the motor. He waited there, the radio in the car talking to him. As his car stood, it blocked egress from the Tinsley drive.

  Mr. Tinsley noticed this through a window of the long, cool living room into which he had led Timothy Gates. He did not mention it when he turned back from the window, looked, for the first time thoughtfully, at the tall young man. Gates wore what Mr. Tinsley took to be army slacks, and a blue polo shirt, with a lightweight windbreak over it. He had dropped the duffle bag in the hall. He was, viewed thoughtfully, a powerful young man. His face no longer twitched, but his eyes were narrowed, again forming triangles. He stood quietly, and Mr. Tinsley thought he looked very ready.

  “I could use a drink,” Mr. Tinsley said. “You’ll have one?”

  “Go ahead,” Gates said. “I know how you feel. But I guess not, for me, sir.”

  Mr. Tinsley went to the portable bar, opened it, and made himself a bourbon and soda, with little of the latter. “You’re sure?” he asked, as a host should, turning toward the young man. Gates had gone to a window and was looking out. From there, Mr. Tinsley thought, he can see the police car. Gates turned as Mr. Tinsley spoke and said, “No thanks, sir.” He turned back into the room, then. Mr. Tinsley sat down; he motioned toward another chair. After a moment of hesitation, Timothy Gates sat in it.

  “Could be I’m in a jam,” Gates said. He seemed to speak as much to himself as to Mr. Tinsley.

  “I don’t see why you should be,” Mr. Tinsley said. “You did all you could.”

  “Don’t you?” Gates said. “O. K., sir. Maybe I’m not. But it looks to me like I am.”

  “She was dead when you found her,” Mr. Tinsley said. “Had been for hours. Hadn’t she?”