Show Red for Danger Read online

  The handsome, tall young man said, “How-ja-do, captain? Was the posture right?”

  “Approximately,” Heimrich said. “I suppose you two read the newspaper accounts?”

  They had.

  “The police re-enact scenes,” Chris said. “You know they do.”

  “Sometimes,” Heimrich said. “With suspects. How did you get in here?”

  “The door wasn’t locked,” Latham said. He had an easy, pleasant voice, an easy, pleasant manner. “Are we under arrest? For breaking and entering?” He did not seem noticeably disturbed by the possibility. He looked at Susan. He said, “Miss—?”

  Susan told them; told them both. She also said, “If you two had seen it, you wouldn’t feel so chipper. Also, that isn’t the right chair, Mr. Latham.”

  “We’ve taken the right chair,” Heimrich said. “What did you expect to prove? Either of you?”

  “We expected—” the girl said, speaking as a girl, and paused to consider. “To feel something,” she said, partly in the other voice.

  “There is one thing,” Latham said. “Did Peggy die—very quickly, captain? Or would she have had time—”

  “To arrange things,” Chris said. “To make herself look—graceful? Don’t think that wouldn’t have been the first thing in her mind. Even if she was dying she’d have—”

  “Chris,” Latham said. “Be your age.”

  It was, Heimrich thought, the injunction she would be least likely to relish. Apparently it was. Chris directed a glance at Latham; obviously a withering glance. Latham did not, however, perceptibly wither. “Baby,” he said, with affection. With, Susan Faye thought, at least affection.

  “Miss Belford was dead by the time she hit the floor,” Heimrich said.

  And then, as if for the first time she had realized that they talked of death, not of its mimicry on the stage, Chris Waggoner’s pale face lost the glow under the skin and the color on her wide, sensitive mouth stood out, unreal against pallor. And Latham moved to her quickly and put an arm around her shoulders. For an instant, she let him; relaxed to him. But it was only for an instant and, although she said nothing, Latham took his arm from around her.

  “Then,” George Latham said, “somebody must have arranged the body. Collins? Because—I shot a deer once. Only once. It didn’t fall —prettily.”

  “We had thought of that, Mr. Latham,” Heimrich said, and the young man flushed. He managed to smile while the flush still held. “I suppose,” he said, “we’ve been pretty silly. To think we could help.”

  “Now Mr. Latham,” Heimrich said, and added that perhaps he could, and asked the usual questions. Latham had not, he said, known that Brian Collins had been in the village the afternoon before. He had known that Peggy Belford planned to go to the Collins house—“to come here”—for a swim. They had all known that. He had been in his room at the Inn, alone.

  “I’ve got a scene coming up,” he said. “When we get back to the Coast. Tony thinks I haven’t quite got it yet, and I was going over it. In front of a mirror.”

  “All afternoon?”

  “From the time we got back from location and had lunch until— Oh, I guess about six. When I got thirsty.”

  “I don’t suppose,” Heimrich said, “that you’ve any idea who might have wanted to kill Miss Belford? If, of course, Collins didn’t?”

  “Which means,” Latham said, “you think he didn’t?”

  “Assuming,” Heimrich said. “Just assuming, Mr. Latham.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Latham said, “say that Peggy was universally admired. If she—well, knew where anybody’s buried a body— But—” He broke off; he looked at Chris Waggoner.

  “So,” she said, “you’ve come around to it,” and turned to Heimrich. “If it wasn’t Mr. Collins,” she said, and spoke as a girl, but firmly, “she was blackmailing somebody. All you’ve got to do is find out who, captain. Whose body she knew about and—”

  She stopped speaking very suddenly. And her widely spaced eyes widened; there was a fixed expression in her wide eyes.

  “Yes?” Heimrich said, after they had waited a moment.

  But she merely shook her head, slowly, but so that the heavy dark hair flowed with the head’s movement. Then, after several seconds, she said, “Nothing,” and now her various voices came to one—one flat voice, a voice without inflection.

  “What have you thought of, Miss Waggoner?” Heimrich asked her, but again she shook her head and again, in the same flat tone, “Nothing. Nothing at all.” The blankness remained in her dark eyes. It was as if they were focused on something very far away. Then she blinked, as if to blink back to the immediate and said, “George. I want to go.”

  She spoke like a girl—a girl a tittle over seventeen; an uneasy girl.

  Latham looked at Heimrich, and Heimrich said, “Of course.”

  “Come on, baby,” Latham said, gently, and in that moment seemed much older than the girl; much older, indeed, than he looked. “It was a fool thing to do,” he added, to nobody in particular, seemingly in explanation of what they had done. They went. Outside the car started; it backed out of the garage—why had they put it in the garage? Heimrich wondered. Of course, it was the easiest place to put it—and turned and went down toward Sugar Creek Lane, Latham driving.

  “She thought of something,” Susan said, and Heimrich said, “Yes, Susan.”

  “ ‘Whose body she knew about’ she said and then, thought of something.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “A very changeable girl, isn’t she? Let’s go look at this design, Susan. This wrong color.”

  They went along the corridor, into the studio. The nude on the easel had been uncovered. There were several used flashbulbs in a wastepaper basket. The photographers had been neat beyond their custom. “I’d think,” Susan said, looking at the portrait of Peggy Belford, “that it would be a little explicit for newspaper reproduction. However—I put it back over there.”

  She went “over there.” She pulled the drawing board out and turned it around. And they both looked, blankly, at an empty expanse of drawing board. The color-mottled paper was gone. In one corner, a strip of tape still held a corner of drawing paper.

  “Somebody—” Susan said, staring at the board; at the revealing triangle of torn-off paper.

  “Got here ahead of us,” Heimrich said. “Yes.” He looked away, around the room; looked at a big window in the side of the room— not the skylight; a window next to a narrow door. He turned back to Susan.

  “Susan,” he said, “when you were looking at it, seeing there was something wrong with it, do you suppose a person watching you could have realized you did see something wrong with it?”

  He saw surprise; consideration, on her expressive face, and his question was, he thought, answered.

  “Yes,” she said, “I suppose so. I looked at it carefully, from different angles. Studied it. Anyone watching me would have seen that. And—I suppose that something about it puzzled me.”

  “When you left, you went back through the main part of the house?”

  She told him about that; how she had avoided the reporters; pointed to the narrow door through which she had left the studio, told of going around the house to her car.

  “Then—” he said, but did not finish that, and said, “Wait a minute,” and went to the telephone on the table. He dialed and waited; he said, “Send out a call to Crowley. Send him here,” and hung up and sat for a moment looking at the telephone. Then he looked down. A drawer in the table was partly open. He opened it farther and leaned down and Susan could see his nostrils move as he sniffed the inside of the drawer.

  He looked up and nodded. “Oil,” he said. “Probably where he kept the gun. Anybody could have found it, without much looking. Collins might have mentioned it, shown it, to anybody he trusted. Somebody could have said, Don’t you get nervous up here so far from anybody else?’ and he might have said, ‘No, why should I? And, anyway, I’ve got a gun handy.’ ”

  He
stood up.

  “Merton,” she said. “Doesn’t this prove—pretty much prove, that it wasn’t Brian? Was somebody else? That Brian was trying to leave a message and that now somebody has—well, made off with the message? So that—”

  She stopped suddenly.

  “So that now you’re the only one who can be sure there was a message,” Heimrich said. “Can testify to what was wrong with the picture. The little flaw in the composition. It could be that way.”

  He looked again at the window. He went over and looked at the narrow door. The lock was of a familiar type—a plunger was set into the knob. Pressed by someone leaving, the plunger held and the door was locked. Unless, by intention or by accident, one turned the inner knob. When the knob was turned the plunger popped up, the door was no longer locked.

  Susan thought she had locked the door when she went out; supposed she had; tried to remember clearly and ended by shaking her head. It was something one did, if one did it at all, without thinking about it, the action almost reflexive.

  “Go out,” Heimrich said. “This seems to be a day for re-enactment. Try not to think what you’re doing. Think—oh, of the fact that the red was wrong. Wonder if it meant anything.”

  “That,” Susan said, “is what our youthful friends would call The Method. At least, as I understand—”

  She did not finish. She went to the door and opened it and stepped out onto a narrow, flagged walk. As her fingers left the inner knob, the index finger pressed the plunger. But—as her hand slid from the inner knob, moved to the knob outside, the inner knob turned slightly. Turned enough.

  “Damn,” Susan said, and reached back in.

  “Never mind,” Heimrich said. “Come back in. It’s very easy to do. It’s also pretty easy to lock one’s self out, accidentally. The old types were—”

  It was also a day for not finishing the obvious. Heimrich went outside and stood, among bushes, and looked in through the window, while Susan looked out at him. He looked down at the ground, bent down to examine, shrugged his shoulders and stood up and came back into the studio.

  “Earlier,” Susan said, “the light would have been on me. Did anyone drop anything? Like a cigarette of an unusual brand, imported specially for So and So?”

  Keep it light, she thought. He looks worried. About me, I suppose.

  “Nothing,” Heimrich said, not rising to it. (He really must be worried, she thought.) “The ground’s hard.” He stood and looked at her, but she was not sure he saw her.

  “It could,” she said, “have been one of the reporters. Or photographers. Or—could it have been somebody posing as one of them?”

  “Possibly,” he said. “The latter. I can’t see any reason why an actual reporter would want the design.” He regarded the nude. “That, maybe,” he said. “Not the design. Anyway, Crowley—” He let it trail off. “Somebody else. Somebody who watched you. You’re sure you can’t remember who was in the station wagon you had to back for?”

  She was sure. She said she had already told him she was sure. If lightness wouldn’t work, then—

  “Now Susan,” Heimrich said. “The point is, it couldn’t have been whoever was in the station wagon. I mean, if somebody watched you. Couldn’t investigate then because the reporters were here. Come back later, when they had left. Because whoever was in the wagon was a long time on his way and—”

  “Wait,” Susan said. “I forgot. There was another station wagon. Green, like the first one.”

  She told him of the tail of a station wagon which had rounded a curve ahead of her as she was driving toward home on Sugar Creek Lane. Which must have been—she paused for an estimate—at least twenty minutes after the first wagon had turned down the lane from the Collins driveway and, presumably, gone on its way. She said, “Presumably.” She stumbled over it.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Did you have Colonel with you?”

  She merely raised eyebrows at that, widened eyes.

  “Colonel stands out,” Heimrich said. “On that front seat—”

  “Oh,” she said. “He was. And—he goes to the shop most days. Always now Michael’s at camp. And sits a good deal of the time looking out the door, where anybody can see him. So even somebody who didn’t know me, didn’t recognize me could—put two and two together. Colonel and me.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “And, seeing you driving up toward the house—seeing Colonel anyway—and perhaps having heard some place that we—well—”

  She waited a moment, to no purpose.

  “Are casual acquaintances,” she said. “That if I found something of revealing importance, I might just happen to mention it to you.”

  And she finally made him smile. Not for long, not freely, but smile.

  “You put it very well,” Heimrich told her. “And—parked the car, walked back up, not necessarily along the drive—there may be a path—watched you through the window—ducked when you started to leave. I suppose it took you a few minutes to get your car out from among the others?”

  “Not long,” she said. “Yes, I’d think he’d have had time to get back to his car. If there’s a path, especially. Of course, I’m not sure it was the same car.” She shook her head. “First,” she said, “I leave the door unlocked. Would he have known that? Because, I take it, you think he went away without the design—didn’t come in as soon as my back was turned and grab it?”

  “He may have done that,” Heimrich said. “He would have been cutting it pretty fine. Also, there were a good many people around by then. I’d guess, if it was the man in the station wagon—and it’s all guessing, naturally—he thought it over after he left and decided to come back. He may have planned to force the door. Finding it unlocked was just a fortunate accident. Then—” He ended with a shrug. “All hypothesis,” he said. “Blow on it—poof. Probably it’ll turn out that Collins killed her and then himself.”

  “And the design?” Susan asked. “Stolen and destroyed by an outraged art lover.”

  “Now Susan.”

  “It couldn’t be,” she said, “that you are just trying to reassure a—”

  And a siren sounded, gently, very briefly. It was as nearly apologetic as a siren can make itself. They went back through the house and found Trooper Crowley about to come into it. He stopped, more or less at attention, more or less worried. He said, “Something wrong, captain?”

  “A little something,” Heimrich said. “Not your fault, that I can see. But a couple of things you can dear up. First—somebody picked up the Buick wagon. Who?”

  “But I thought you said—” Crowley began, and Heimrich interrupted, said, “I did, Crowley. Perfectly all right for somebody to get the car. Who was it?”

  And there was the first catch. Crowley didn’t know.

  His assigned task was to see that the reporters got in, see that they didn’t carry the house away when they left, lock up after them. He had got there half an hour or so before the reporters were due, on the chance that some one of them might be prompter than the rest, might seek to get ahead of the rest. He had got out and walked around, and sought a breeze. He looked at Heimrich.

  “Sure,” Heimrich said. “And?”

  He had gone out on the terrace to which, with the sliding glass panels open, the swimming pool opened. He had stood there, where there was a breeze of sorts, and looked down at the Hudson. There had been a little sailboat on the Hudson. He had been where, if he heard a sound, he could look back and see the head of the driveway, and anybody coming up it in a car.

  He had heard a sound—the sound of a motor starting. He had gone back around the house and had been just in time to see the station wagon starting down the drive. He had not been in time to see who drove it.

  “I’m sorry, captain. I—”

  There had been, Heimrich told him, no reason for him to think, then, that the driver of the car mattered. Marley could come for the car, send someone for it. He had been told that.

  “Of course,” Crowley said, “I wondered wh
y he’d walked up from the road, as he must have. Because somebody must have driven him over from the Center. But it didn’t seem important I supposed who ever drove the man who got the wagon had let him out at the foot of the drive. And—”

  He looked more worried than before.

  “Probably did,” Heimrich said. “Nothing out of the way about it. Then?”

  Then Mrs. Faye had come. He had let her in. A few minutes later, the first of the reporters and photographers arrived. He arranged that they wouldn’t block Mrs. Faye’s car off from the driveway. He had gone in with them and stood, as a sentinel, in living room and studio, and gone out with a couple of them to look at the pool. When they showed signs of being ready to go, he had gone back out to the turnaround and more or less counted them out.

  “Mrs. Faye’s car had gone by then?”

  It had.

  “I didn’t see you go out, Mrs. Faye,” Crowley said. “Maybe I was out by the pool.”

  “None of the reporters carried anything out?” Heimrich said. “Rolled up paper, probably. About so long?” He measured in the air with his hands.

  “No,” Crowley said. “I’d have stopped— So that’s what’s wrong? The picture of Miss Belford in the—” He stopped.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “A roll of paper, not canvas. You’re sure, Crowley?”

  “Nobody carried anything out he didn’t carry in,” Crowley said. “I’ll swear to that.”

  “All right,” Heimrich said. “You locked up after them?”

  He had. He had closed and secured the panels between pool and terrace, locked the back door—“the kitchen door”—locked the front door; gone back on patrol. As instructed.

  “The door from the studio?” Heimrich asked him. “Not the one into the house. The outside door?”

  He was looked at blankly for a moment.

  “Captain,” Crowley said then, “I’m sorry as hell. Nobody told me there was a door there but I—I should have checked.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Also, somebody should have told you about it”