Let Dead Enough Alone Read online

  The long living room was softly bright with the light of shaded lamps. From some place below there was a pulsation. It was like a heart beating. Think of that—that it is the heart of the house, But think of it prosaically—that is the oil burner, alive again. In time it will warm the house—this room, the halls outside—the storeroom where there is blood on worn linoleum. The pump will start—has started. In time there will be water in the house. A house lives by water as it does by heat. Think of the ordinary things.

  It was warmer already in the living room, but that warmth came from the fire. Tom Kemper was sitting on his heels in front of the fire, prodding the fire with a poker, pushing kindling under the logs. The kindling was broken pieces from a case. One of the pieces had a stencil on it—it had been part of a case which had held champagne. (But do not think of that—of toasts to a New Year, of dancing in Brian Perry’s arms, of the laughter of a bright-haired girl.)

  Kemper turned and looked at them when they entered the room. He merely shook his head, commiserating all of them, and did not speak. He leaned down and blew on the fire, and the kindling came alight and small, bright flames began to lick around the dark logs. (One of the logs was charred; it would catch quickly. Think of the ordinary things.)

  Tom Kemper wore a tweed jacket, with leather patches on the elbows, over a light sweater. He wore gray slacks.

  Forniss was in the room, standing near a light. The door at the rear of the room opened and the Speeds came in—small, plump people, at the distance and in the light oddly alike. They were fully dressed. Abner Speed wore a striped necktie.

  “You wanted—” Abner Speed began, and Forniss did not wait for him to finish, but said, “That’s right. Sit down somewhere.” They sat, side by side, on straight chairs, at the end of the room.

  Margaret Halley came in, after a few minutes. She wore a sweater and skirt; she was very trim, and looked much younger than she was—until one saw her face. Her face was white; her lips bloodless and unreddened. Her face was set, and had a curious, hard smoothness. It was as if the skin had been stretched tight over the delicate bones; as if it had shrunk against the bones. Margaret said nothing to the others in the room. She looked at Forniss, without expression, and at the others not at all. She went to a chair and sat in it and looked at the reviving fire.

  It was almost ten minutes later that Struthers Boyd came into the room—came slowly and heavily, wearing slacks and a coat sweater, which he had apparently put on over a pajama top. Boyd looked as if he had been dragged unwillingly from bed. He rubbed his eyes; he had the appearance of a man who has dressed in the dark and who has forgotten to brush his hair. Boyd pawed at his hair to flatten it.

  “Can’t believe it,” Boyd said, and his voice was as heavy as his body, as his movements. “That pretty kid. Can’t believe it.”

  (The back of her head was crushed. When she was dying she bled from her mouth, Mr. Boyd.)

  Tom Kemper turned, at that. His mouth was working.

  “Can if you try, Boyd,” he said, and his voice for the first time, was harsh. “I think you can—”

  (But you didn’t see it, did you, Mr. Kemper?)

  “Take it easy,” Forniss said. “Just everybody take it easy. Till the captain gets here.”

  They turned to look at him.

  “Plenty of time to talk,” Forniss said. “After the captain gets here. All the time in the world.”

  They continued to look at him, as if they expected him to go on, somehow to clarify. He looked from one to the other, and his eyes had no expression. (It was as if they had ceased to be people—people with names, with shapes which differed. It was as if, in Sergeant Forniss’s eyes, they had become so many objects.)

  Then that waiting—the wary, careful, observant waiting—began again. It was as it had been earlier. But now they moved less and Lynn, sitting tightly in a chair, thought that this was because no one wished to turn his back on the others—so to become defenseless; so to chance missing something, something inimical or revealing, which might go on while the back was turned. (And this time Audrey Latham did not, restlessly, prowl the room.) And this time Sergeant Forniss was not distant, by a window, seemingly indolent in his watching. Now he stood close, his face hard, his expressionless eyes moving from one to the other.

  It seemed that they waited for a very long time. The small movements all of them made became increasingly abrupt; when there was the slightest sound, they turned their heads jerkily toward the sound—all except Margaret Halley, who was motionless. Actually, it was a little over half an hour by the watch on Lynn Ross’s wrist. It had been twenty minutes of twelve (was it really so early?) when Forniss told them, in effect, not to talk to one another. It was a quarter after midnight when Captain Heimrich came into the room.

  He carried the hatchet. He had looped a cord around it, so that he did not touch the handle. The hatchet dangled from his hand. In the other hand, he carried a newspaper.

  He walked to a table on which there was a lamp, and spread the newspaper on the table. Then he dangled the hatchet down and let it rest on the newspaper. He released the cord and, for a second, rubbed his hands together as if rubbing off something which clung to them.

  “You two,” he said to the Speeds, in a voice at once weary and cold. “You two come up nearer. I want everybody to see this.”

  The Speeds got up, uneasily. They came closer to the fire. They stood and looked at the hatchet. “Use it to split kindling,” Speed said, dully, staring at the hatchet.

  The head of the hatchet was darkly stained—looked at, not touched, there seemed to be stickiness on the head of the hatchet. Involuntarily, Lynn’s hand went up to the breast and shoulder against which she had held Audrey Latham, so that the ruined head rested there.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “There’s blood on the hatchet. Blood—and brain tissue.”

  Lucinda Speed, who had leaned forward, peered shortsightedly at the hatchet, gave a little cry. She backed away, a hand to her mouth. Heimrich watched her. His eyes were wide open enough now, Lynn thought. They were very blue. (I had a little pitcher once; a pitcher of blue glaze. That’s the way his eyes are now. It must have been when I was a little girl I had the pitcher.) Lucinda Speed continued to back away. She shook her head; now she held both hands to her mouth. Heimrich looked away from her. He looked, in turn, at each of them.

  “Well?” he said.

  Struthers Boyd made a strange, gagging sound.

  “She was—” he said, and stopped and began over. “That’s the way she was killed? The little blond girl.”

  “There are a few hairs stuck in the blood,” Heimrich said. “From the girl’s head. Blond hair—yes, Mr. Boyd, Yes, that’s the way it was done. Somebody came up behind her, probably. At the foot of the back stairs. Struck her with the hatchet. Struck her several times. And yet—she lived a little while.”

  (I could feel life in her; the tenseness of life; muscles tense with life. And then there was—nothing. Then there was only weight. That is the way people die. They grow heavy.)

  “Miss Ross found her,” Heimrich said. “Tell them, Miss Ross. What you told me. And—how you happened to be there. Happened to find her.”

  (But I told you that. Didn’t I tell you that?)

  “Go on, Miss Ross,” Heimrich said. “You and Miss Latham were sharing a room. You woke up and—what? Found her gone, I suppose?”

  “I woke up,” Lynn said. “She had been beside me. She—she was gone. She wasn’t in the room and I looked in the bathroom and—I looked in the closet, too. Her things were gone.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “She took her bag with her. And wore her coat. The bag was near the back door. She’d put it there, apparently, and then gone back. To meet whoever she’d arranged to meet. Go on, Miss Ross.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Lynn said. “It happened the way I say. I just woke up and found she was gone.”

  “And,” Heimrich said, “went looking for her. And found her
. How did you know—”

  “Wait,” Lynn said. “I told you about the light?”

  Heimrich shook his head. He said, “No, Miss Ross. You didn’t get around to that.”

  They all looked at her—looked at her and waited. She told about the light, but found it hard to tell. She said it was like the ghost of a light. And at that, Heimrich nodded slowly.

  “If there had been someone at the foot of the stairs,” he said, “someone using a flashlight to—to see whether he had done enough—it might have looked like that. Reflected up the stairs, along the hall, very faintly. Do you think it was that, Miss Ross?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I—I suppose it must have been something like that. Wait—I thought that then. I remember now.” He looked at her. “I do remember,” she said. And then she said, quite steadily, “Do you think I killed her? Why would I kill her?”

  “Now Miss Ross,” Heimrich said. “Why do you say that?”

  “You said her hand was bruised. And—he” (she indicated Brian Perry with a movement of her head) “he said someone had hit me with—with a fist. And—you sent the man to watch me. Unless—”

  “Unless to protect you,” Heimrich said. “But, go on, Miss Ross.”

  “I found her,” Lynn said. “I told you that. And then someone hit me and put us—put both of us—in the storeroom. I don’t know why.”

  “To gain time, probably,” Heimrich said. “Go on. She talked a little—said words anyway.”

  “I told you.”

  “Again,” Heimrich said. “So the rest can hear, Miss Ross.”

  She repeated the words Audrey Latham had used. They all looked at her; listened to her.

  “Before that,” Heimrich said. “You were in the room with her. Did you talk then? You must have talked.”

  “A little,” Lynn said. “Nothing that seemed to matter except—she did say something about watching her step.”

  “She didn’t,” Heimrich said. “Did she say anything about leaving the house? Trying to leave the house?”

  “No.”

  “But, earlier, she’d asked you to help her get away. Isn’t that true?”

  “I told her it wouldn’t work. That it wasn’t possible.”

  “But she did ask you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And didn’t bring it up again. When you were together in the room?”

  “No.”

  He waited for a moment. Lynn could only wait, too.

  “That’s all that happened, then?” Heimrich said. “You talked for a few minutes. Then went to sleep?”

  “I went to sleep,” Lynn said. “I thought, from her breathing, she’d gone to sleep too. Now—now I suppose she hadn’t. Was pretending to be asleep.”

  “You didn’t waken when she got out of the bed. Got her things together?” His tone was skeptical.

  “No,” Lynn said. “Wait. She must have done that before. I remember now. Must have taken her things into the room I’d been in. She brought my things in before I went up. She must have planned it then.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “She’d made arrangements. Dr. Perry?”

  Brian Perry looked at Heimrich. The light flickered on his glasses, concealing his eyes.

  “You hadn’t gone to bed,” Heimrich said. “When Miss Ross called out, you got there as quickly as I did. From the dining room? Or where, Dr. Perry?”

  “The dining room,” Perry said. “That’s right, captain.” Heimrich waited. “I was sitting there,” Perry said. “In front of the fire.”

  “Waiting?”

  “Until it was time to kill Miss Latham? No, captain. I was just sitting there.” He paused for a moment. “Thinking,” he said.

  “Remembering?”

  Perry shrugged slightly. He said if Heimrich liked that better. He said that that had entered into it.

  “Going back over things?” Heimrich said. “Trying to remember if you had made a mistake? Whether you could—correct the mistake?”

  “Not as you mean it,” Perry said. “As I suppose you mean it. No.”

  “Some one of you did,” Heimrich said. “Thought Miss Latham’s death would correct the mistake. Decided that she knew more than she had admitted knowing. Probably, had seen more.”

  They all looked at him—all except Margaret Halley.

  “Miss Latham went downstairs last night,” Heimrich said. “After the rest of you had gone to bed. Or say you had. Went down to talk to Mr. Halley. At least, she said that. And—”

  “And saw me coming back upstairs,” Margaret Halley said. She did not look at Heimrich, or at anyone. “Coming back after I’d gone to see if John was all right.”

  “And,” Heimrich said, “coming back without having found out. And, she said, carrying something.”

  They had, Margaret Halley said, still speaking to the fire, been over that. She had been carrying nothing.

  “She imagined it,” Margaret said. “But—not enough of it, did she, captain? Because, she couldn’t remember what it was I was supposed to be carrying.”

  “She said she couldn’t,” Heimrich said. “When I talked to her. She may have remembered later. It may have come back to her. Or—she may have lied to me, naturally. Have kept something back.”

  He waited. Margaret Halley did not answer.

  “It’s dangerous to keep things back,” Heimrich said. “Some of you still are, probably. I mean the ones who didn’t kill, of course. Yes, Miss Ross?”

  (How did I show it? How does he know?)

  “Something that doesn’t fit,” Heimrich said. “Well, Miss Ross? You’ve remembered something? Something Miss Latham told you?”

  They looked at her. For the first time, Margaret Halley turned from the fire, and looked as the others did—warily, measuringly.

  “She said something about having been Mr. Halley’s protégée,” Lynn said. She spoke slowly. She did not look at any of them, although she knew that they continued to look at her—to wait for her words. But it was not important; it was only a little thing. “She said, ‘The way they mean it.’” She stopped.

  “She was lying,” Margaret Halley said. “And—the captain knows that already.”

  “That she was lying?” Heimrich said. “You said before that she might have misunderstood. That you thought she had.”

  “One thing or the other,” Margaret Halley said. “It isn’t important now. Not to you. Since both of them are—”

  She did not finish.

  Heimrich waited. Then he said, “Go on, Miss Ross. It’s true Miss Latham had told me that. And that Mrs. Halley said she and her husband had talked the situation over. Were in agreement on it. But—go on.”

  Lynn looked at him, then.

  “You said, ‘Something that doesn’t fit,’” she said. “She told me that. But this afternoon she and Mr. Kemper—in the hall upstairs—I’d gone to get my coat and started to come out of the room and—”

  Tom Kemper laughed. It was a kind of snorting laugh. He said, “Oh for God’s sake.”

  They turned to look at him.

  “She saw me with my arms around the girl,” Kemper said. “That’s the big surprise, captain. The—the what? The incident of the straying protégée?”

  Heimrich merely looked at him.

  “She was jumpy,” Kemper said. “That’s all it amounted to. I came along the hall and startled her and she well, she suddenly got shaky. I said something like, ‘Take it easy, lady,’ and the next thing I knew she was holding on to me. So I held on to her, and patted her shoulder and said, ‘There, there,’ the way one does. And—”

  But he had spoken more slowly, with less assurance, as he went on. And, when he stopped, he looked quickly at the others, and first at Margaret Halley. (Why, Lynn thought, he’s looking around to see whether we believe him. But one does that when—)

  “That’s all there was to what Miss Ross saw,” Kemper said. “When she opened her door and started out—and went back in again, full of tact and—”

&nb
sp; Again he stopped. He had resumed with special resolution. It had seeped from his tone.

  “Now Mr. Kemper,” Heimrich said, “I take it you saw Miss Ross? Since she said nothing about going back into her room.”

  He hesitated. He went on with a kind of stubborness.

  “Well,” Kemper said. “Yes—I got a glimpse of her. Didn’t occur to me she’d think it important enough to pass on.” He did not look at Lynn. He began to rub the finger tips of his right hand with the tip of the thumb.

  “I don’t,” Margaret Halley said, to the fire, “see the point of these trivialities, captain. If Tom wants to—comfort a pretty young woman. Surely, captain.” She turned, then, and looked at Heimrich. “Except, of course,” she said, “it bears out what I told you. That there was nothing between Miss Latham and my husband.”

  “Now,” Tom Kemper said, “wait, Margaret. I said—”

  “My dear man,” Margaret said. “We heard you.” For the first time in hours her voice was not dead. It was light, almost casual. “You made her jump. You—calmed her down.” She turned to Heimrich. “How,” she asked, “could anything be less important?”

  Heimrich closed his eyes. He waited.

  “What you ought to be trying to find out, captain,” Margaret Halley told him, “is what Miss Latham saw that she didn’t tell you. Not who—patted her on the shoulder. Who—” She looked at the hatchet.

  “Now Mrs. Halley,” Heimrich said. “The one she threatened. We all know that. Or—the one who thought her a threat, naturally. It comes to the same thing. It was because of what she said, of course. About the stairs. What she saw on the stairs.”

  Margaret Halley made a quick movement. She said, “I keep telling you.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “You do, Mrs. Halley. But—that may not be what she meant. Or—not all she meant. One of you thought it wasn’t, perhaps. You see—she was on a staircase herself last night. The stairs to the cellar. She said, ‘What I saw on the stairs.’ She might have meant you, Mrs. Halley. But—she might have meant what she saw from the stairs. When she was on the stairs. Looking for Mr. Halley.”