Accent on Murder Page 10

  “Who were you talking to?” he asked her.

  She tried, her mind no longer numbed, to remember. But, in the end, she had to shake her head. She could not even guess.

  “I didn’t really know any of the people,” she said. “Except the professor. And, after a while, the two little old ladies. The rest were—blurs. You know how it is.”

  “One person? Or a group of people?”

  “Several, probably,” she said. “There were most of the time little groups of people.”

  “That you and Carry both used the place?”

  “Oh yes. I must have.”

  “Did you tell Heimrich about this?”

  But then the film returned, and she shook her head slowly, tiredly. Because when she thought of telling Heimrich that she had mentioned “the place” at the party the fact that she had mentioned it seemed suddenly meaningless. He wanted real things; he wanted facts. This was—a wisp of vapor.

  “I will,” Alan said, and she said, “All right,” from a long way off.

  “When he gets back,” Alan said. “I’ll—”

  The bell of a telephone, ringing inside the house, interrupted him. He said he’d get it and Dorcas nodded her head, dully. He went in. After a time he came out. “Professor Brinkley,” he said. “Thought of something he wants to tell Heimrich. Doubts if it’s of any importance but—” He ended with a shrug, the approximation of Walter Brinkley’s hanging doubt.

  He went over and stood behind Dorcas and put a hand on each of her slender shoulders. She moved her head so that, for a moment, her cheek rested against his wrist. “I’ll be all right,” she said, and he said of course she would, but looked down at her and frowned. It was taking her a long time to come out of it, to be “all right.”

  Investigation of crime can be likened to a good many things and one of them (Captain Heimrich sometimes thinks) is the search carried on in turned garden soil for something lost there—a ring, for example. One looks with eyes and probes with fingers, but this is often not enough. The best way then is, patiently, perhaps more than once, to fill a sieve and shake it, also patiently, until what is of no importance has sifted out. Some tedium is involved, but in the end one is likely to find what is sought.

  There are, of course, quicker ways to get the result desired, and these are employed by all policemen when they are available. The quickest, of course, is to have somebody approach, in the ordinary run of such things, by stealth, and say, in effect, “P-sst! There it is. Don’t say I told you.” But a stool pigeon does not often come to hand in private crime. There is also the method of inspiration, which is fine if one happens to be inspired. It is Heimrich’s gloomy belief that he seldom is. A study of character is likewise important, but that is part of the sifting. It is also useful, at times, to prod the animals into motion, which is frequently revealing. But that comes only when one knows which animals to prod. By that time one is usually looking more for proof than for identification.

  While Lieutenant Alan Kelley waited to tell Captain Heimrich that anybody at the party might have known something—enough—of the cup of sunlight in which Caroline Wilkins had died, while Walter Brinkley, professor emeritus, waited to report something he supposed would be of no importance, Heimrich and Sergeant Forniss sifted. Others—everybody who could be rounded up, could be spared—helped.

  A trooper in plain clothes drove up to Wingdale to talk to doctors—talk slowly and carefully, trying to forget nothing, miss nothing, about the mental condition of an old man named Ash Adams, who saw sin in nakedness. Another went—had gone the night before—to drink a good deal of beer in a rather run-down tavern and ask questions and listen to answers. His over-all impression was that a man named Joe Parks had really shot his mouth off on Saturday night when, it is true, a good many men do.

  The matter of sifting Parks out might well, of course, be left to Sergeant Forniss, who was capable of discharging much more exacting tasks. Heimrich went himself, taking Forniss, for the simplest of reasons—he could not, at around noon on Wednesday, think of anything else specifically useful to do. Vice Admiral Bennett was somewhere in the air, and, with him, much information—most of which would have no value, but all of which had to be put into the sieve—about the past brief life of a dead girl. Lieutenant Commander Brady Wilkins was—if Lieutenant Harold Nelson knew what he was talking about—also somewhere in the air, bringing what he knew—and bringing, Heimrich supposed, bitter sorrow and helpless rage.

  “Taking Wilkins quite a while,” Forniss said as he drove the police car toward, and then along, Craig Lane. “Mostly when they use a ’copter it’s for short hops. Our cloak and dagger boy did say ’copter.”

  This was not a question. It was a reminder. It was something to say.

  “Yes, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “It is taking quite a while.”

  “A convenient setup, in a way,” Forniss said. “You’ve noticed that? Having where you were so secret that if you tell inquisitive cops the roof falls in. Imperiling national defense.”

  “Yes, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “I’ve noticed that, naturally.”

  “And,” Forniss said, “she had the money. Goes to him, now. Biggest chunk of it, anyway. They haven’t got hold of her lawyer yet?”

  Caroline Wilkins’s lawyer had offices in New York. He would know if she had drawn up a will. He was, however, in court. His return was being awaited.

  “Not yet, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Here it is.”

  Forniss started to turn into the driveway where a mailbox marked, austerely, “Craig” did sentry duty. He had to slow, then stop, to let a battered Ford, driven by a dark-haired man, come out. Heimrich glanced at the man, hoping he was not Joe Parks. From the description he had got of Joe Parks this man wasn’t. Younger by a lot.

  Forniss did not start the car immediately. They both looked across lawns at the house.

  “Why?” Heimrich said.

  “God knows,” Forniss said. “Mad architect, maybe?”

  “Or,” Heimrich said, “none at all. Somebody with a dream and a pile of shingles.”

  The gatehouse was just off the road, at the right of the driveway. Furniture stood on the porch; it was evident the Parkses were moving out and hadn’t yet. Forniss stopped the car in front of the gatehouse—brown-shingled, like the main house—and at once a small, gnarled man came out of it and stood and glared at them.

  The man was in his sixties, at a guess. His hands were thick and twisted. He had heavy gray eyebrows and not much hair. He said, “Got no time to talk to anybody.”

  He fitted the description.

  “Now Mr. Parks,” Heimrich said. “It won’t take long. What’s this thing about your threatening Mrs. Wilkins? At the tavern the other night?”

  “Lies,” Parks said. “G.D. lies. Bunch of G.D. liars. All I said was, she got the old bastard to fire me. After ten-twelve years. Make something out of that?”

  “Perhaps,” Heimrich said. “Mrs. Wilkins is dead. You’ve got a shotgun?”

  “Damn right,” Parks said. “Got it right handy.”

  “Parks,” Heimrich said. “We’re the police. You talk a lot about what a woman has coming to her. She’s found dead a day or so later.”

  He got out of the car. Forniss got out on the other side. They are both big men, with square and formidable faces. They stood facing the angry small man and looked down at him. He seemed to get smaller. Anger seemed to seep out of him.

  “Man like me,” he said, “gets no breaks. I didn’t kill nobody.” He paused. “Mister,” he added.

  They waited.

  “So,” he said, “I shot off my mouth. Had a couple. What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Heimrich said. “Tell me, Parks.”

  “Not a G.D. thing,” Parks said. “I work for the old bastard ten-twelve years. This Miz Wilkins has me square up an old fence. Says she won’t say nothing about it, on account the old bastard thinks he owns me. Even when he’s off gallivanting on a yacht. Or w
hatever. Think I was a slave or something.”

  It took some ten minutes. Parks was not direct. That, with anger drained away, he turned querulous, did not help. Boiled down: Caroline Wilkins had told the old bastard (Paul Craig) that Parks had done a little work for her. Craig—from whom nothing better was to be expected—had fired Parks on the ground, apparently, of dereliction of duty. “Did everything there was to do and he can’t say different.” Parks had been incensed; after a few drinks, he had shot off his mouth about Mrs. Wilkins and—at somewhat lesser length, since his hearers could be assumed to know what a bastard the old bastard was—about Craig. A long way from that to killing anybody.

  “Which it is,” Heimrich said, as they drove on up the drive, toward the monstrous house, with Parks glaring after them, regaining anger, shouting, “That’s right! Don’t take my word for nothing. Ask the bosses.”

  “One way to look at it, though,” Forniss said, “is that damn near anything is a long way from being worth killing for. If you’re sane. I notice you want Craig’s version.”

  “Now Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Since we’re here.”

  The driveway was long. The police car took it at a comfortable pace. In the turnaround in front of the big house a Cadillac was parked, and a big Chrysler. As Forniss stopped the police car at a modest distance, a slender young woman in walking shorts, a young woman with black hair in tight curls on a head proudly held, stood up from a chair on the terrace and took off sun glasses to look at them. Then, across the several feet which separated her from the car she said, in a young, beautifully clear voice, “I’m sorry. We don’t want anything.”

  That was unexpected, but only a little. It is almost the first thing people who live in country houses say to strange men in unimposing cars. Heimrich got out of the car and smiled at Margo Craig who said, “Oh, I’m so sorry,” and smiled too, and walked across grass toward him.

  “There was a man about storm windows,” she said. “And then, just now, a man with brushes. I am sorry, Captain—Heimrich, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. And he wondered if, for a moment, he could see Mr. Craig.

  She hesitated. She said, “Well.” She said, “The trouble is, captain, that Paul’s having a conference. With Mr. Knight and some others. About the new high school some of the—well, Mr. Knight calls them johnny-come-latelies—are trying to get built. Of course, if it’s really important? About this—this awful thing?”

  “Not particularly important,” Heimrich said. “Parks was heard to—say certain things. About Mrs. Wilkins. Under the circumstances, rather unfortunate things.”

  Her expressive face changed. It showed regret. She said, “The poor man. Poor Joe.”

  Margo Craig shook her head, regretting the plight of Joe Parks. She said, half to herself, “The poor old thing,” and then, to Heimrich, to Forniss, “Won’t both of you come and sit down? Perhaps, if you tell me what you want to know? Only, of course, I don’t really know much about Parks, except what my husband has told me.” She paused. She smiled faintly. “Actually,” she said, “I’m a johnny-come-lately too, you know.”

  They sat on the pleasant terrace. What they wanted to know was, what kind of a man was Joe Parks. Probably it was not important. It was one of the things which, having come up, must be disposed of.

  Again, she only knew what her husband had told her. Parks had worked for Craig for years; he and his wife had acted as custodians for the big house, as caretakers, during Craig’s many long periods of absence. Paul Craig had relied on Parks.

  “A big place like this,” Margo said, and something in her tone recognized, certainly did not apologize for, the rather absurd bigness of the place—“a big place like this has to be looked after. Paul trusted Parks. Even—”

  She paused. She said, “I’m really only repeating what my husband told me, after he had to let Parks go.” Heimrich nodded. “Well,” she said, “Parks is—getting along. And, I’m afraid, getting so that he likes to drink a little more than he should. Paul made allowance but—” She paused again. “We have to have a reliable man,” she said. “Someone who can really be trusted. Paul decided that Parks couldn’t be and—had to let him go.”

  “Because,” Heimrich said, “he—went absent without leave? To point up a stone wall for Mrs. Wilkins?”

  She supposed so. At least, that that was the immediate thing—the last of many things. That he had done that and, when asked, denied it. “My husband,” she said, “can’t stand being lied to. He never lies himself and—” She raised and lowered delicate shoulders.

  “Mrs. Wilkins did tell your husband Parks had worked for her?”

  “Oh,” she said, “I shouldn’t think so. That seems rather absurd. I don’t know that Paul even met Mrs. Wilkins before—” She stopped again. There was shock, now, in her expressive face. “Awful,” she said. “Such a terrible, hideous thing!” She paused once again. “But,” she said, “apparently poor Parks thought she had. I suppose, actually, that somebody saw him working on the wall and happened to mention it.”

  “Has Parks a bad temper?”

  She shook her head at that. She said that, on her few times of meeting him, he had seemed merely polite—almost too polite, perhaps. But she knew, really, very little about him. If it was important, she supposed she could interrupt her husband and—

  But then several men came through the french doors, onto the terrace. “Show these new people—” one of them, a short and red-faced man said, in a red-faced way, as they came out. He did not finish. He looked at Heimrich and Forniss somewhat balefully, for no reason Heimrich could think of—except that he probably was a baleful man.

  There were three other men—two of them (and one of these Craig) tall and lean and, in expression, austere. The man who was not Craig, in particular, appeared to look at the world with disapproval. Certainly, disapproval was in the brief attention he gave to Heimrich and Forniss. The fourth man was younger, and he was large and affable and he nodded pleasantly to Heimrich, as if he knew him or were, at the least, quite ready to know him.

  “Want me?” Craig said and Heimrich nodded. “In a moment,” Craig said and then, “We’ll work on it, Jerry,” to the red-faced man who said, explosively, that there was damn little time. The three who, Heimrich gathered, stood with Paul Craig against modem fripperies—such as new high schools—went out to the large cars and away in them. And, being asked, about Parks, Craig hesitated a moment.

  “You mean,” he said, “because of the things he’s reported to have said about Mrs. Wilkins? Threats, I gather?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said.

  “He blusters,” Craig said. “I doubt if it would go beyond that. Of course—” He let that hang. “For your information,” he said, “Mrs. Wilkins did not tell me that Parks had worked for her. It was hardly a thing she would have thought it worth while to bring up.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “It was because he did some work for Mrs. Wilkins that you decided to let him go?”

  “I employed him,” Craig said, and now the austerity in his manner was somewhat more extreme. “I expect complete loyalty from those I employ.”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said. “He neglected his work?” “Certainly,” Craig said. “And, in any case, there was a matter of principle involved. A matter of integrity.” He spoke somewhat as if he explained the obvious to the backward.

  Once more, asked once more, he said that he did not think there was real violence, but only bluster, in Joe Parks. They thanked him and drove away from the remarkable house—and, Heimrich thought, the somewhat remarkable man.

  “He,” Forniss said, “should have lived a hundred years ago.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “And, in a way, he does.”

  “Toe the line or walk the plank,” Forniss said. “Done that sort of thing before, apparently. Tough on Parks. No wonder Mrs. Craig talks so careful-like.” They drove for some time in silence. “Parks started off tough enough,” Forniss said, then, “Came off i
t, though.”

  “We’re cops,” Heimrich said. “Fairly large ones, Charlie. Might make a difference, naturally. A woman, lying face down, defenseless—there’d be a difference.”

  Forniss, uncharacteristically, looked momentarily from the road toward Heimrich.

  “No, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “I’d be rather surprised.”

  “The old man?”

  Heimrich shrugged. The old man had been there; the old man was, sometimes at least, irresponsible; when his mind reeled, the old man was an instrument against sin. How far the mind reeled, nobody—not psychiatrists or anybody—could do more than guess. The old man was obvious; the old man was opaque. The old man was easy, and murder is often easy. But—the old man did not really make it easy. You could come back to him only after you had been everywhere else, and then it would be a guess, and it would be a guess still if Ash Adams came to them and said, “Yes, I killed the naked girl,” because that might well be, again, only fantasy in a troubled mind.

  They stopped to telephone. Item: Caroline Wilkins’s attorney had returned from court. She had made a will. All of which she died possessed went to her husband, Brady Wilkins. Item: The doctors at the state hospital at Wingdale were agreed that Ashley Adams had never shown violent tendencies. Efforts to entice them further onto limbs failed, as was to be expected. Item: A man who said his name was Peel wanted to get in touch with Heimrich, in regard to the Wilkins case.

  “Why?” Heimrich asked.

  Peel had not said. He had had a bad telephone connection with the police barracks in Hawthorne, and had hung up before the line could be cleared. He had, however, said he would try again.

  Heimrich would be at the Wilkins place. If Peel called back, Peel could be told. “No first name?”

  Presumably, but the first name had been a blur. That was the connection. “A crank?”

  They could not help him there. Probably, of course, a crank—the less stable members of the public become very helpful in the investigation of crime, particularly a crime in which a young woman dies while lying naked in the sun. There would, particularly if a solution was not reached quickly, be more of them—many more of them, on telephone; offering counsel through the mails. The chances were a hundred to one, a thousand to one, that none of the counsel would be of value. The hundredth chance remained, the thousandth chance. So—Peel was to be told where Heimrich could be reached.