Death and the Gentle Bull Page 12

  “If mother was—killed,” he said. “It looks like Smitty, doesn’t it? As if he’d got scared and—run?”

  “Why yes,” Heimrich said. “It does look like that, Mr. Landcraft.”

  X

  “Yes, Ray,” Captain Heimrich said. “It does look like Smith. About to get fired, maybe charged with theft and, they say, got a quick temper. Maybe he had an argument with Mrs. Landcraft and let himself get out of hand and hit her with something. It could be that way, naturally. And then staged the business with the bull. Got scared when we began to look into things and ran. Nice and simple that way. All we’ve got to do is catch Mr. Smith.”

  “But—” Ray Crowley said. He was driving them slowly along Old Road, between the Landcraft place and the Merritts’. It was a little after noon.

  “Oh,” Heimrich said. “I like things simple, Ray. If you can get them that way. Along here somewhere?”

  “Little farther on, at a guess. Couple hundred yards this side the Merritts’,” Crowley said, and drove a little farther on. He started, then, to turn right onto the shoulder, but was told to wait. They left the car on the road, which it almost blocked, and moved slowly along the shoulder, looking at it.

  “Too dry, I’m afraid,” Heimrich said. “All right, pull off, Ray.”

  Ray Crowley got back into the small sedan and guided it onto the shoulder, which was not wide enough for it. Then he joined Captain Heimrich, and pointed.

  “Down—” he began, and stopped as a car slowed on the road, went slowly around the police car. It was a Plymouth sedan; Wade Landcraft was driving it. He raised a hand in greeting, and drove on.

  “Going to see his girl,” Heimrich said. “Didn’t have any trouble recognizing us, did he, Ray?”

  “It was dark last night,” Ray Crowley said. “There was a lot of fog, captain.”

  That he realized, Heimrich said. He said that, in spite of the fog and darkness, people standing by the road might expect to be recognized, or think it possible.

  “You know how it is,” Heimrich said. “Fog’s always thicker when you’re trying to drive through it. Now—this quarry?”

  “Down that way,” Ray said, and pointed. He pointed to a field of goldenrod, bright in the sun, sloping gently away from the road. Heimrich sneezed, mildly.

  “No,” he said, “I haven’t, Ray. Sympathy for those who have. No sign anybody’s been through, is there?”

  There was not.

  “Well,” Heimrich said, “we may as well have a look, now we’re here.”

  They went through an unbroken field of goldenrod; they went for perhaps two hundred yards. They stopped abruptly. The gentle slope became an abrupt declivity. They stood on the verge of a precipice and looked down on sunny water, fifty feet below. At the most distant point of an oval lake, three young men and a girl were swimming. As they watched, the girl went to the end of a low diving board, bounced, and went in and splashed. The young men treaded water, laughed, slapped the water with their hands.

  “Very pretty place,” Heimrich said.

  The quarry had been worked into the side of a hill, so that the rock wall above which Heimrich and Ray Crowley stood became the sheer backdrop of an amphitheater—an amphitheater now deep in sparkling water. As they looked across the water, the bank most distant sloped gently into it, and it was there that the springboard had been rigged and the young men and the girl frolicked.

  “It would,” Heimrich said, “be an idea to fence this side, wouldn’t it? Quite a drop.” He pointed; below them rocks jutted from the water. “No happy landing,” Heimrich added.

  Ray Crowley nodded. He said there never had been a fence, and never any talk of a fence. But he had, he said, never heard of anybody’s falling.

  “People who live around here know about it,” he said. “Nobody else ever finds it, I guess. Hasn’t been worked for maybe fifty years. It’s always been a swimming pool since I can remember.”

  “Deep?”

  Perhaps twenty feet beneath the cliff; shallower at the other end. Crowley waited.

  “Wouldn’t be so pretty on a foggy night, would it, Ray? Fog coming up off the water. A gloomy place then, I’d think. A kettle of fog.”

  “It’s pretty enough in midsummer,” Ray said. “Get a good moon now and—” He stopped. He grinned at Heimrich. He remembered Heimrich’s rank; remembered their business. “You think Smith?” he asked.

  Heimrich slightly pursed his lips. Then he said he didn’t know. Then he sighed, and said there were so many things they didn’t know. He led the way back through the goldenrod to the car.

  Behind the wheel, Crowley awaited instruction. None was immediately offered. It was warm in the car, which stood in early afternoon sun. Captain Heimrich closed his eyes, and appeared to have fallen asleep.

  “The point, Ray,” he said, without opening his eyes, “is that we always get around too late. I do, anyway. What was Mrs. Landcraft like, Ray? Hard to get along with, apparently. Dominating. Not tactful, according to Miss Haskins. Wanted something, went out to get it. Didn’t approve of her daughter-in-law. Kept her younger son home on the farm, when he didn’t much want to be a breeder, perhaps. Threatened to fire Ballard, Miss Haskins says. And Smith, Ballard says. And to make trouble for Arnold Thayer, Miss Haskins says.” He paused. “Says a lot of things, doesn’t she? Quite a woman, Miss Haskins,” he said. “Mrs. Landcraft bored her about keeping records straight. I wonder why, Ray?”

  Ray Crowley said he didn’t know. Unless—

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “There’s that, Ray. But—there are so many things, aren’t there? You’d think breeding cattle would be a placid thing, wouldn’t you?” He sighed. He opened his eyes.

  “Under all that, Ray, what kind of woman was Mrs. Landcraft?”

  He appeared to expect an answer. Ray Crowley merely shook his head.

  “No,” Heimiich said, “we don’t know, do we? Heart of gold under rough exterior? Diamond in the rough? Or—rhinestone in the rough? That happens too, you know. Did she really want Bonita to make a slip; want to break up the marriage?”

  Ray looked at him.

  “The girl seems to think so,” Heimrich said. “But the girl was a little drunk, Ray. Saying what she meant because she was? Or more than she meant, because she was? She’s very much in love with her husband, apparently. Might go to lengths to keep him. But—did she need to? So we come back to Mrs. Landcraft. What kind of woman was she?” He opened his eyes. “We never meet them till they’re dead, Ray,” he said. “So we have to put them together from bits and pieces. And—it’s what they were we need to know, most times. Characters to fit the crime—but two characters to fit it, Ray.” He closed his eyes.

  “I guess I don’t help you much,” Ray Crowley said.

  “Oh, I talk a lot,” Heimrich said. “Helps straighten things out sometimes. How many would you say we had, Ray? As possibilities?”

  “Everybody who was there,” Ray Crowley said.

  It was a way of looking at it, Heimrich agreed. A very uncomfortable way of looking at it. They might, of course, have to take that way in the end.

  “In which case, we’ll need luck,” Heimrich said. “More than we’re apt to have. Because, at a party like that, there’s not much point in looking for exclusive opportunity, naturally. People all over the place, going every which way, never looking at watches. Wandering around, going down to look at the bull. Wade and Harvey ran down after they heard the bellowing—they say. Ballard was in another barn when he heard it—he says. So was Smith, apparently. Bonita had gone into the house—to the bathroom. Or, so she says. Thayer had gone up to a guest room to go to sleep—he says. The Merritt girl was sitting on the terrace. No cross check on any of it. All very disorderly.”

  He sighed again. He seemed, Ray Crowley thought, very disheartened.

  “And,” Heimrich said, “so many motives. Both the brothers get money. So, indirectly, do the girls. Harvey apparently needs it, if Miss Haskins is right, and probably she is
. Because anyone can buy a copy of Variety, naturally. Money will let Wade off the farm. But—how badly does he want to get off? And—Miss Merritt won’t have to live under a mother-in-law’s thumb, will she? How heavy would the thumb have been, d’you suppose? Comes back to Mrs. Landcraft, doesn’t it? It all does.”

  “You’ve got Smith,” Crowley said.

  The trouble was, they didn’t have Smith. Because he was guilty and had run? Or—

  “You see,” Heimrich said, “until we find Smith we haven’t got anybody. If we don’t find him, probably we’ll never have. He’s all the reasonable doubt anybody needs. There’s a murder—or we say there is. A man runs, or seems to run. Anybody else can thumb his nose, naturally.”

  “The description’s out,” Crowley said. “We’ll pick him up.”

  “Probably,” Heimrich said. “Did Mrs. Landcraft have something on Thayer? And—was she going to use what she had? Or—on Miss Haskins? On Ballard? And—was her bark worse than her bite, or wasn’t it? It all comes back to what she was and—” But then he stopped. For some time he said nothing. Then he said, “You know, Ray, perhaps it doesn’t. Because—the bull’s still alive, isn’t he?”

  “That’s right,” Crowley said, in a tone which meant nothing whatever, because the remark meant nothing whatever to Ray Crowley.

  “It might come down to that,” Heimrich said. “It just might, Ray. Let’s drop by the Merritts’ again.”

  They drove up the road, turned in the Merritt drive. This time, Evelyn Merritt and Wade Landcraft were sitting in adjacent lounging chairs, in a shady place near the drive. Heimrich, alone, walked across the lawn toward them, and they looked up—came tip, Heimrich thought, out of the depths of conversation. Wade started to get out of the chair, and was asked not to disturb himself. Heimrich would not be a minute; this time there was only a point.

  “The men you saw last night, Miss Merritt,” Heimrich said. “One of them—the taller—had his arm around the shoulder of the other. You said that?”

  “Yes,” Evelyn said.

  “In a friendly way?”

  “Why—yes, I suppose so.”

  “And—you’re still quite sure you didn’t recognize the men? Or—either of the men?”

  She nodded her head. “Quite sure,” she said. “If I had, why wouldn’t I tell you?”

  “Now Miss Merritt,” Heimrich said. “I don’t know, naturally. I’d think you would. Unless—” He stopped. He waited.

  “I was protecting someone?” Evelyn said. “Is that what you mean? But—from what, captain? They—they weren’t doing anything.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Apparently not. At least—” He broke off. “Or,” he said, “unless, you wanted to be sure before you said anything. Ask somebody you thought it might have been. Give somebody a chance before—well, before you told us.”

  “No,” she said, and at almost the same time Wade Landcraft did get up out of the chair, so that he faced Heimrich. He was a little truculent. He demanded to know what Heimrich was getting at, thought he was getting at.

  “Oh,” Heimrich said, “murder, Mr. Landcraft. What did you think?”

  And, without waiting for an answer, Heimrich turned and walked back to the car. He was a very solid man, viewed as they viewed him. He seemed to walk with great certainty, in the straightest of lines. Why, Evelyn thought, he’d walk over anything that got in the way. She found she was, suddenly, rather chilly.

  “Personally,” Wade Landcraft said, “I don’t think he’s getting anywhere. Nowhere at all.”

  She did not answer him.

  In the car, Crowley waited.

  “I’m afraid,” Heimrich said, “we’re going to have to drag that quarry of yours. Unless it can be drained somehow?” Crowley was surprised to hear the captain speak so loudly.

  “I don’t think there’s any way to drain it,” Crowley said. “You think Smith’s there?”

  They rolled down the drive.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “But—it’s a place to start, isn’t it, Ray?”

  For a man professedly so sceptical of results, Captain Heimrich became a man inordinately (it seemed to Ray Crowley) in a hurry to get them. It somewhat confused the trooper, who had thought Heimrich a policeman marked by patience—by patience, and doggedness. But now, in the matter of dragging a pool in which he apparently did not much hope to find anything, Heimrich became a man who could not wait. One would have thought that, if in the pool, William Smith might at any moment rise out of it and walk away.

  To township and county officials, with whom Heimrich talked first from the car radio, afterward by telephone, still later in person, the great need to rush the matter forward did not appear. If Heimrich wanted the quarry pool dragged, it would be arranged, although, patently, dragging was felt to be a nuisance. If he insisted, it might be done the next day; the day after at the latest. “Now,” Heimrich said, and as time went on said it with the air of a man who might, at any moment, go to the governor about it. “This afternoon.”

  He was reasoned with. Equipment would be required. Boats would be required. When it came to that, they would want to find a diver, if they were really going to do a job.

  “I can do that,” Crowley said, feeling it was time he could do something. “Use goggles and flippers.”

  He was looked at without enthusiasm, as one who throws a monkey wrench. Heimrich, however, was pleased. Heimrich told him to go get his stuff, as if all now were settled. “Tomorrow morning,” the county man said. “This afternoon,” Heimrich told him. “While it’s still light.” He was told he talked as if it were a matter of life and death; he was asked to consider the fact that, if William Smith were at the bottom of the quarry pool, a few more hours there would not further damage him. Everyone was entirely reasonable with Captain Heimrich. Heimrich was reasonable with no one.

  In the middle of the afternoon, a truck provided by the State Highway Department, and a second truck wrested from the Town of Southeast, trundled into Old Road from Route 6. Each truck brought a boat, and grappling equipment, and men. State troopers arrived. Six medium-sized boys, who had replaced the young men and the girl, were plucked from the water—and remained on its edge, fluttering with excitement.

  The trucks beat an uneasy way from the road to the shallow end of the pool; men hauled boats from them and set boats afloat. The scene was one of great activity; Old Road, a few hundred yards west of the Merritt house—where an unused trail made access to the pool just possible—was almost blocked by cars and police motorcycles. After half an hour, residents of the neighborhood formed small, observant groups. The medium-sized boys were particularly pleased with Ray Crowley, in trunks, wearing goggles, with rubber webbing on his feet, who dived here and there to peer through clear water, under rocks. Each time Ray emerged from a dive, he was generally applauded.

  But Captain Heimrich, who had started all this, was not among the observers. He saw it begun. Then he took the little sedan along Old Road, past the Merritt place, past—within half a mile—two other large places. After that, Old Road, not at its most vigorous a traffic artery, became the least distinguished of capillaries. The pavement worsened; in the end the black top dwindled altogether and the road became merely what is euphemistically called “hard surfaced.” It occurred to Heimrich, as he bumped on slowly, that it was hard in the wrong places. The New York State Gas and Electric Company had here, Heimrich noted, abandoned its contribution to rural electrification. Only the poles set up by the New York Telephone Company marched doggedly into this wilderness.

  But it was pleasant country. The houses, if small, were neatly white; the fields they stood among, if rolling and rocky, were for the most part cared for. But the mailboxes, like the houses, had grown smaller. They were no longer adequate for parcels posted from Bonwits and Saks Fifth Avenue. He looked for a box marked with the name of William Smith. After he had gone for almost two miles beyond the Merritt place, he began to think that he must have missed it. But he remembered that t
he term “mile or so,” as used by country people, can be elastic.

  He was nearer three miles beyond the Merritt place when he found the box, which was on the right of the road, which bore the name he wanted in amateur lettering. But there did not, at first glance, appear to be a house to go with it. The next house, only fifty yards or so farther on the road, had its own box—“J. C. Hendrix.” On the opposite side of the road, there was only a corn field.

  But a lane led in beside the Smith mailbox and, a little doubtfully, Heimrich put the car into it. It was two tracks, with weeds between—weeds which had swept the bottom of a car and been darkened by oil and grease. The two tracks led between parallel strands of barbed wire, supported on metal stakes. The lane went up a rise; weeds swished under the police car. Heimrich reached the top of the rise and went down it, reflecting that Smith had, evidently, a permanent right of way through land which fronted on the road. He went into a shallow valley and up another rise, wondering what happened when two cars needed, on this lane, to get past each other. He assumed they did not.

  A house came into view from the top of the second rise—a small, square house, painted white. At first, Heimrich saw no sign of any life; then he saw a solitary chicken, reddish in color, which was pecking in front of the house. The chicken paid no attention to the car or to Heimrich, who stopped the sedan and got out of it and went to the door of the little house—a door which opened on a low platform, in lieu of porch. His steps were noisy on the platform, and his knuckles on the door. Nothing happened. He walked around the house and knocked on the back door. He tried the knob of the back door, then, and the door opened. He was unsurprised by this; doors of small country houses are seldom scrupulously locked.

  He was in a kitchen, small and square and clean, with a kitchen range which used bottled gas. The refrigerator also used gas. But there was an electric ceiling fixture, with a pull cord. There was a table and on the table, held down under a salt cellar, a note. Heimrich read it:

  “Dear Bill, Gone to stay with Myrtle. You can find me there. If you want to.” It was signed, “Grace.” Heimrich thought it rather touching.