Burnt Offering Read online

  She smiled at that.

  “Well,” she said. “There it is, captain. You listen well. But it was a waste of time, wasn’t it? To drag up old things—” She shrugged, just preceptibly. “However,” she said, “there’s always the ten thousand dollars, isn’t there?” She leaned toward Heimrich, suddenly. “I’ll bet I know,” she said. “He left it to me so I wouldn’t slip any further. So even a part-Phipps wouldn’t—degrade the family by being quite so broke.” She shook her head. “God knows we’re broke,” she said. “Little Michael and I. God knows we can use the money. We can—”

  Then, all at once, animation drained out of Susan Faye. Something like fear came back into her gray eyes. She got up, suddenly, and walked to the door, and called into the big room beyond. Her voice echoed back, as she called, “Michael! Where—” But then she lowered her voice and said, “Oh, there you are.” And then, in another tone, “Michael! When it’s almost time for dinner!”

  She opened the door, and Michael came out. He was eating a slice of bread, heavy with jam. Some of the jam was on his face, but his expression of gravity was unimpaired.

  “I got hungry after all,” he said. “Mother, the man said to—”

  “Never mind that now,” she said, but she looked, involuntarily, back at Captain Heimrich, who had risen when she stood up. There was uneasiness in her eyes, and more than uneasiness. It was unconcealed, now; it was unconcealable.

  “No, Mrs. Faye,” Heimrich said. “It’s no good, is it? You may as well let Michael tell us.”

  She said, “I don’t know what you mean, Captain Heimrich.”

  “Now Mrs. Faye,” Heimrich said. “But you do, naturally. You weren’t speaking to Johnny’s mother when I came. You said, ‘Who is this?’ Don’t you remember? But—you were talking about Michael, weren’t you?”

  She turned and faced him, and her own face was white under the tan. The animation which had been there a few minutes before was quite gone now. Youth seemed to have drained away with it. She merely looked at Heimrich.

  “Michael has a message, I think,” Heimrich said. “Something he was supposed to tell you. I think he’d better, don’t you?”

  She waited a long time; Michael waited too, looking up at her gravely, absently continuing to eat bread and jam. Heimrich nodded his head slowly.

  She crouched beside the boy, then, and looked at him intently. Then she said, “Yes, Michael. What did the man say to do?”

  Michael finished the bread and jam. His mother took a paper tissue from the pocket of her shorts and wiped his lips, and Heimrich thought she hardly knew that she had done this.

  “He said, ‘Tell your mother this shows how easy it is,’ ” Michael Faye said, carefully. It was clear from the care that he was quoting something he had been taught. The boy looked at Susan. “That’s all he said, mother,” Michael said. “I got it right.”

  “It was just before he made me walk,” Michael nodded. “It was much hotter walking.”

  Susan Faye turned her head to look up at Heimrich, standing over them.

  “I think you’d better tell your mother what happened, Michael,” Heimrich said and then he squatted too, so that he did not have to be looked up to. “Don’t you, Mrs. Faye?”

  She hesitated. She breathed deeply, as if hoarding breath. She said, “Yes, Michael.”

  There had been a man in a car. Michael had left his friend’s house after lunch, and walked down the drive to the road, and along the road. “That would be Van Brunt Pass,” Susan said. “The Barkers live on the Pass.” A station wagon had been parked along the road, around a bend from the Barkers’. A man had been alone in it. He had invited Michael to ride.

  “He said it was too hot to walk,” Michael said, carefully.

  “Who was the man, Michael?” his mother said.

  Michael shook his head at that. He did not know the man. Was he young, or old? “Pretty old, I guess,” Michael said. He waited comment, and there was none.

  “So I got in,” he said. “And we drove around. Clear over to Cold Harbor and up in the hills. I said I was supposed to be home, but he said it was all right, that you would understand. And then we came back and he said I should walk the rest of the way. And I did.” He paused. “Oh yes,” he said. “I said, ‘Thank you.’ I didn’t forget. He let me out at the fork.”

  “The intersection up the road,” Susan said. “It’s almost a mile. It’s farther than the Barkers’.”

  “And I came straight home,” Michael said. “He said it was all right, mother.”

  “No,” Susan said. “It wasn’t all right, Michael. You shouldn’t take rides with people you don’t know.”

  “Shouldn’t I?” Michael said. “It was hot walking. The man said it was all right. He offered to buy me a cone, but I said, ‘No thank you,’ because I wasn’t hungry then. I got hungry later. Is it all right?”

  “Yes,” Susan said.

  “Then can I have a Coke?” Michael said. “I can get it.”

  “Yes,” his mother said. “Be careful when you open it, Michael.”

  Michael started. Heimrich said, “Wait a moment, Michael,” and the boy stopped and looked at Heimrich and waited.

  “The car the man was driving—the station wagon,” Heimrich said. “Had you ever seen it before, Michael?”

  The boy shook his head. “It was brown, though,” he said. “Not a very big station wagon. Maybe it was a Ford.” He thought. “It had brown sides,” he said.

  “All right, Michael,” Heimrich said. “Go get your Coke.”

  “Yes, sir,” Michael said.

  Michael went back into the house. Susan Faye swayed a little, as if she had almost lost her balance, and Heimrich steadied her. They stood up, then—stood quite close together. She breathed deeply again, her breasts rising under the white blouse.

  “A man called,” she said. “I was talking to him when you came. I didn’t recognize the voice. He—he threatened me.” She paused. Heimrich waited.

  “He said not to tell anybody what Orville told me. He said if I did, something—something would happen to Michael. He said—he said that they’d had Michael for an hour—more than an hour. So I wouldn’t think they were bluffing, he said. To show me how easy it was. What he told Michael to tell me. He said—‘Next time it’ll be another way.’ He said, ‘So watch it, sister.’ ”

  She looked up at Heimrich.

  “I’m frightened,” she said. “Terribly frightened.”

  Heimrich was conscious of a wish to put steadying hands on the slender, shaking shoulders. It was a wish most improper in a policeman. He kept his hands at his sides.

  “Nothing will happen to the boy,” he said. “We’ll take care of that.”

  “How can you?” she said. “We—we can’t just keep him shut up. How can you?”

  “We can,” Heimrich said, and his voice reflected certainty (or he hoped it did, since obviously she was right. There was no certainty). “What did Mr. Phipps tell you, Mrs. Faye?”

  “That’s just it,” she said. “Oh—that’s just it. He didn’t tell me anything. Not anything at all.”

  VIII

  Captain Heimrich has few hard and fast rules. Among them is not one against drinking on duty, since there are many circumstances which not only allow, but require, a drink or two. Nor is it against his personal rules to drink with those who may be considered suspect, if for no other reason than that, during an investigation, a police officer may associate almost entirely with the unexonerated. It was evident, for example, that Susan Faye remained a suspect, if for no better reason than that she—alone among those so far encountered—stood immediately to profit.

  So he had no scruples, when she suggested it, against going with her into the big room beyond the terrace doors. She had supposed it would really be cooler there, and Heimrich did not audibly remember that, a little while before, she had thought it would be cooler on the terrace. She had hoped he would not talk to the boy; her own anxiety had undone her hopes.


  Unquestionably it was cooler in the big room—in which the interior design of a barn was retained. A ceiling had been added. At the extreme rear there was a partition, with two doors, and Heimrich supposed one led to a bath and the other to a kitchen. Otherwise, for mother and small son, the enormous room was a place for all activities—for work and rest, for eating and sleeping. Certainly, it was big enough.

  They had gone inside when Heimrich had said, “No, Mrs. Faye. There are one or two more points,” in answer to an implied question. She had not protested; protest had gone out of her. Inside, where air stirred gently and there was no glare, where there was almost a dimness, she had indicated chairs. Then she said, “Can I get you something? Or, don’t you—?” Heimrich nodded.

  “Something cool then,” she said. “A Coke? A drink?” She paused. “Personally,” she said, “I’m going to have a gin and tonic. There isn’t anything else, really. Except Coke.”

  She went for the drinks through one of the partition doors, and came back with long glasses, pleasantly full of ice. She measured gin into the glasses, more into one than into the other, and added quinine water and gave the stronger drink to Heimrich. The drinks were sweet, then bitter, and very cold. She sat in a deep chair and curled her long brown legs under her.

  “Michael knows most of the men around here,” she said. “Those I know, that is. My friends—and the grocery men and the men in the drugstore and—I take him with me most places, of course.”

  “I supposed that,” Heimrich said. “He’s an observant boy, isn’t he?”

  “I think so,” his mother said. “A quiet boy, a book-reading boy. But he likes people. People like him. The man in the car must have been somebody from—from outside.”

  “Pretty old,” Heimrich quoted. “What would be ‘pretty old’ to Michael?”

  She smiled, then—smiled not entirely with her lips.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Susan Faye said. “To a boy of seven. Can you remember back, captain?”

  “With difficulty,” Heimrich said.

  She smiled again. She said she hadn’t meant that. Then, unexpectedly, she said, “You know? You’re easy to talk to. I suppose that’s—part of the method?”

  “Michael’s a nice boy,” Heimrich said. “Yes, Mrs. Faye. I see what you mean, naturally. To a boy of seven a man is ‘pretty old’ at twenty—or at forty or fifty.”

  “That’s it,” she said. “Maybe at sixty he begins to be ‘awful old.’ It doesn’t help much, does it?”

  Heimrich agreed it did not.

  “The voice wasn’t familiar to you?” he asked. “The voice on the telephone?”

  “No.” She paused for a moment. “It wasn’t what people call an educated voice,” she said.

  “Did you feel it was disguised?”

  “No. But—but I wasn’t thinking about that. Just about what he said. About Michael. But the man must have been the man who killed Orville, mustn’t he? And must have thought Orville had told me something damaging.”

  “It looks that way,” Heimrich said. “You’re sure he didn’t? Anything at all?”

  “Did I want a lift. It was a nice night. It was too bad about the fire. I thanked him when he let me out and he—well, he just made sort of a noise. To indicate he had heard. Then he drove off.”

  “Toward what you call the fork?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Where Oak Road goes off to the right and High Road goes left.”

  “If he took Oak Road it would, eventually, lead him back to the highway—to Van Brunt Avenue? And home?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’d been to see Mr. Jackson,” Heimrich said. “You knew that?”

  “Not then,” she said. “Sam told me, though.”

  “He was taking a normal way home? From Jackson’s place?”

  She hesitated. Then she nodded.

  “Sam lives on the Pass,” she said. “Beyond the Barkers’. Orville could have turned back on High Road, toward Route Eleven-F. Or gone the way he did and circled back. It wouldn’t make much difference, actually. But, the first way, he would have back-tracked and it’s natural not to, even if it doesn’t make any real difference. Isn’t that true?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said.

  (He found that Susan Faye distracted him somewhat from Susan Faye’s words. He closed his eyes. He could still see slender brown legs and wide-set gray eyes and a face which was not pretty—which obviously was not pretty. And which, with his eyes closed, he could still see much too plainly. This, Heimrich told himself, was entire nonsense. He was a policeman. Mrs. Faye was a source of information; was, possibly, even a suspect. It did not matter what shape she was, or how her eyes were set, or that they were gray, with very clear whites—)

  “Mother,” a young voice said, “the man’s gone to sleep.”

  Heimrich opened his eyes. Michael had an almost empty glass of Coca-Cola in his right hand. His left arm was around the neck of one of the largest dogs Heimrich had ever seen. The dog was so large that, standing, he seemed to look down on Heimrich, sitting. He looked with large brown eyes, which were sad, but withal kindly.

  “Because,” Michael said, “if he has, it’s almost the Colonel’s dinnertime.”

  The Colonel turned and regarded Michael. He turned back and regarded Heimrich. Heimrich hoped there was no confusion in the great dog’s mind.

  “The man’s awake again, Michael,” Heimrich said. “Why not the General?”

  “Because he’s named after someone my father knew,” Michael said. “Who was a colonel, not a general.”

  “Of course,” Heimrich said. “About this man, Michael. The man in the car.”

  “Yes,” Michael said, politely.

  “You’d know him if you saw him again?”

  Michael thought about this for a moment.

  “I don’t know, sir,” Michael said. “He had green eyes. Like mother has sometimes.”

  Heimrich looked at Susan Faye.

  “Green glasses,” she said. “Sun glasses. That’s what you mean, isn’t it, Michael?”

  “Glasses,” Michael Faye said. “He had a hat on.”

  “What kind of hat, Michael?”

  “Just a hat,” Michael said. He looked thoughtfully at Captain Heimrich. “We don’t know anybody who wears a hat,” he said. He considered further. “Mr. Phipps does,” he said. “But Mr. Phipps burned up.”

  Heimrich looked at Susan Faye, who shook her head briefly.

  “I didn’t tell him,” she said. “Somebody has, obviously. At the Barkers’, I suppose. He’s right about hats, or nearly enough.”

  “Uncle Sam never wears a hat,” Michael said. “Mother, the Colonel is hungry.”

  “He always is,” Susan said. “All right, Michael. Stay him with biscuits.”

  The small boy and the big dog walked, side by side, with dignity, down the long room and into the kitchen. The dog permitted the boy to be first through the door.

  “I wish,” Susan said, when both were through the door, “that the Colonel was a different kind of dog. More the guardian type. Then I’d feel—” She paused. The fear came back into her eyes. “What can I do, captain?”

  “You told this man who called that Mr. Phipps hadn’t told you anything?”

  “I tried to,” she said. “He—I don’t think he listened. He seemed very sure. But—how could he be sure? And what could Orville have told me that—that would be dangerous to anybody?”

  “Now Mrs. Faye,” Heimrich said. “I don’t know, naturally. Something had happened where he’d just been, perhaps. Something which, in view of what happened, would point to someone.”

  “He’d been at Sam Jackson’s,” she said. “It—do you suspect Sam?”

  She leaned forward with that; was more intent. Heimrich shook his head, and did not answer directly. Instead, he said that Orville Phipps might have told her where he was going.

  “He didn’t,” Susan told him. “He didn’t tell me anything.”

  “This is what so
meone may think happened,” Heimrich said. “Not what did happen. I’m only guessing. There are a great many guesses. Perhaps, while he was with the person who later killed him, Mr. Phipps began to suspect something. Perhaps he was frightened. Perhaps he said, something like, ‘Don’t try anything. People know where I am. I told Susan Faye.’ ”

  “Yes,” she said. “It must have been that.”

  Heimrich shook his head, and closed his eyes. He said there was no way it “must” have been; no way they knew yet. There were other guesses. Perhaps, to make one, the fire house had been set ablaze, Phipps had found out something, might be supposed to have told someone—told her. Perhaps the fire and the murder were part of a pattern.

  Susan shook her head, at that. She said she didn’t see what sense it would make. Why burn the fire house?

  “Oh,” Heimrich said, “to provide what it was hoped would be a cover for murder. But we ought to know about that soon. A couple of men were looking it over as I drove by. Underwriters’ men, probably. They’re due.”

  “And they can find out? When there’s so little left?”

  They probably could, Heimrich said. They were very good at finding out. Incendiaries, however expert, left traces. If this fire was set, it would not have been by experts. It would not be difficult—

  But the slim young woman with the gray eyes was not listening. She was looking at the kitchen door, behind which her son was with his big dog—the dog who wasn’t the right kind; the dog with mournful, friendly eyes.

  “The damn beast loves everybody,” Susan said. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He doesn’t even chase cats.”

  “If somebody hurt the boy—” Heimrich said.

  “That isn’t it,” she said. “Don’t you see? Somebody will ask him for a ride and—and the Colonel will just be a little disappointed because he isn’t asked too, and look sad about it and—” She turned back, suddenly, to Heimrich. “If I knew anything—if Orville had told me anything—I’d do what this man wants. Don’t think I wouldn’t. Nobody would get anything out of me. You hear that? Nobody—”