Let Dead Enough Alone Page 16

  “No,” he said, when she did not go on, “that leaves Miss Latham’s death unexplained, doesn’t it? It isn’t that simple, is it? Where do you think your husband was when he—took the Nembutal, Dr. Halley?”

  “Why,” she said, “I suppose—here. Where I left him.”

  “But,” Heimrich said, “the capsules were upstairs. He would have had to take them down with him, before the party started. Take them loose in his pocket? Why would he do that? Take some out of the bottle, leave the bottle there?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Perhaps he went up to his room and took the capsules. Perhaps he was there when the power failed. Perhaps—what difference does it make?”

  Heimrich was shaking his head. She stopped speaking and looked at him.

  “You were awake,” Heimrich said. “Listening. Don’t you remember? You went down because your husband hadn’t come up.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I might have dozed off. But—what difference does it make? He—he died of drowning.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “He died of drowning. And Miss Latham of being beaten. But—the Nembutal came first, didn’t it? The start of the—yes, Mr. Boyd?”

  Struthers Boyd was no longer staring at the floor. Nor was he slumped in his chair. He had pulled himself up in the chair; was even leaning forward in it.

  (Now they all run, Lynn thought. See how they run!)

  “You’re trying to make out I gave him this dope in a drink,” Boyd said. “Is that it?”

  “Now Mr. Boyd,” Heimrich said. “I haven’t charged that.”

  “And, don’t,” Boyd said. “Did you hear what the doctor said? Half an hour to an hour. Did you hear that?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said.

  “If I mixed him a drink,” Boyd said, “it was longer than that—a lot longer—before the lights went out and he went to start the generator. If that was the way it was. I went up early. Margaret was down a long time after that, according to what she says. Any stuff I put in anything would have hit him a lot earlier.”

  “He might have let the drink stand,” Heimrich said. “But—yes. I hadn’t missed the point, Mr. Boyd.”

  “Well, then?” Boyd said. But Heimrich shook his head.

  “Only the start of it, Mr. Boyd,” Heimrich said. “Perhaps not even that, properly speaking. It’s conceivable Mrs. Halley is right—that her husband planned to kill himself. Was, in a way, interrupted in the process.”

  Boyd continued to lean forward.

  “Captain,” he said, “didn’t you ever hear of fingerprints? If I’d taken the capsules out of this bottle—and apparently somebody did—wouldn’t my prints be on the bottle and—”

  And again Tom Kemper laughed. He shook his head. He said, “For God’s sake, Boyd, use your head!” And they all looked, then, at him.

  “Of course he’s thought of fingerprints,” Kemper said. “Thought of them long ago. Don’t play innocent, Boyd. No prints on the bottle, are there, captain? Because—a schoolboy would know enough to wipe them off. Just as there aren’t any prints on the handle of the hatchet. For all his business about not touching it.”

  If there was a gesture, Lynn Ross could not see it. But she saw Forniss, massive yet stepping with an odd lightness, move closer to the circle—closer to Boyd? To Tom Kemper? Or—to Brian Perry.

  Heimrich did not move, did not change his position.

  “Mr. Kemper has a point,” he said, and spoke slowly. “But—there are numerous prints on the bottle, Mr. Kemper. Probably Mrs. Halley’s. Mr. Halley’s. Mrs. Speed’s. Probably, too the druggist’s, and anybody else who handled the bottle in the store. And—all badly scrambled, of course. Mrs. Halley unwrapped the bottle, probably. Mrs. Speed moved it in straightening up. Mr. Halley moved it again, no doubt. Or—may have held it while he took out capsules, of course. And on the hatchet handle—your prints are there, Mr. Kemper. Yours and Mr. Speed’s. But—yours overlie his”

  Slowly, his hands on the arms of the chair, Tom Kemper began to come out of it. His face was contorted.

  “So I’m elected?” he said, and his voice rose as he talked. “You have to frame somebody because you can’t find things out—because you’re no goddam good at your job—a lousy, crooked—”

  Forniss reached out. He put a hand on either shoulder of Tom Kemper’s, whose face was no longer the pleasant and open face of a man who lived by charm; whose face was ugly with violence.

  “Now Mr. Kemper,” Heimrich said. “Why wouldn’t your prints be there? You’d used the hatchet to split kindling, hadn’t you? Your prints could be there quite innocently.”

  Forniss kept pressure on Kemper’s shoulders. But now, it seemed to Lynn Ross, watching with wide eyes, that the pressure was not needed.

  “But you know they aren’t, don’t you?” Heimrich said. “Because you carefully wiped them off, didn’t you? So, if I said they were still there, you’d know I was lying. And—charge a frameup.”

  He waited. Kemper merely stared at him.

  “You couldn’t let well enough alone,” Heimrich said. “That was the trouble, wasn’t it? From the start. I was to say the handle of the hatchet had been wiped clean. So you could say, ‘Well, that lets me out. Because my prints would be there innocently. I wouldn’t need to wipe them off. But somebody else, who hadn’t chopped kindling—Mr. Boyd, say. Or Dr. Perry—he would have had to wipe his off.’ That was the idea, wasn’t it?”

  Heimrich reached out then and picked up the hatchet. No longer did he dangle it from the string. He took it by the handle, and turned it in his hands.

  “A little learning—” he said. “This is quite rough wood, Kemper. We wouldn’t have got usable prints from it—nothing that would have harmed anybody. Only a thread or two from the cloth you used. And—we didn’t take your prints, Kemper. For a man who’s so handy around the house, you’re not very handy at murder, Kemper. You do too many things you don’t need to do.”

  Kemper seemed, momentarily, to writhe against the commanding pressure of Sergeant Forniss’s hands. “You’ll never—” he said, in a voice high raised, shrill. But then he slumped again. “I suppose she told you,” he said. “It’d be all you’d have to go on.”

  “Miss Latham?” Heimrich said. “That she saw you in the basement? Is that what you mean?”

  “Tom” Margaret Halley said, and she was on her feet. “Tom! Can’t you see what he’s doing? What you’re—”

  “It’s no good,” Kemper said. “She had to see me. I didn’t have time to get out of sight. It’s no good, Marg. That’s all he needed. It was clear enough what she meant about the stairs. About what she saw when she was on them. I thought maybe she hadn’t told—” He broke off. “Can’t you see it’s no good, Marg?” he said.

  Margaret Halley sat again; she seemed to crumple into her chair. She put both hands over her face.

  “You fool,” she said. “You poor helpless fool. You—you’ve told him everything. Can’t you see? All he wants to know.”

  And then Heimrich said, in a flat voice, “No, Mrs. Halley. Not everything. Because—he didn’t know everything, did he?”

  Silence was deep in the room. The room, to Lynn Ross, seemed to darken with the silence.

  “Not even,” Heimrich said, “that he needed to kill no one. That Miss Latham hadn’t seen him—hadn’t seen anyone and—”

  Kemper, still held in the chair by Forniss’s heavy hands, made an odd, wordless sound.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “She didn’t see you, Mr. Kemper. She’d been walking around in the dark, you see. She tinned the basement light on and it was momentarily very bright. She said it was a bright light. But it isn’t, it’s quite dim. It was only bright enough to blind eyes which had got accustomed to the dark. She didn’t see you, Mr. Kemper. It wasn’t you she threatened.”

  He stopped. He closed his eyes. He said, “Miss Ross,” and Lynn said, in a voice not like her own, “Yes?”

  “You can�
��t remember any more about what Miss Latham said? When—just before she died. About the doctor—a doctor?”

  “I told you—” Lynn said, and hesitated. “‘The doctor had—’ I think that’s what she said.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “She’d remembered. Enough to frighten her—not enough, she thought, to prove anything. Because, of course, she didn’t know what it meant. Only—that she had remembered what she saw. That it must mean something, because it had been denied. So—she wanted to get away. Because she was afraid. Or, perhaps, because she planned some use, later, for what she remembered. Unless—had she already approached you, Mrs. Halley?”

  For a moment, Margaret Halley did not move. Then she sat erect in her chair, and again her face was expressionless. Nor did her voice have expression when she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Captain Heimrich.”

  “No?” Heimrich said. “Well, perhaps she hadn’t. I can’t be sure of that, naturally. Perhaps she was merely—a frightened girl. Trying to run from danger. Not knowing what the danger was. Because—at worst it would have been only her word against yours, wouldn’t it, Mrs. Halley?”

  “I don’t,” Mrs. Halley said again, “know what you’re talking about.” (But it’s as if she’s learned the words, Lynn thought.)

  “Oh,” Heimrich said, “the glass you were carrying up the stairs, doctor. The empty glass. The one that had had the rum punch in it. After you thought you’d killed your husband.”

  Her almost black eyes showed no expression as she looked at Heimrich. And she did not say anything. She merely shook her head, and that just perceptibly.

  But Tom Kemper began to laugh. His laughter was high-pitched, shrill and wild in the room. From the sound of his laughing, he laughed at a hideous joke.

  XII

  The Colonel sat with his back to the fire and looked thoughtfully at Captain M. L. Heimrich, New York State Police. It appeared that the Colonel’s thoughts were sad, bordering on the melancholy. It seemed not unlikely, indeed, that the Colonel might at any moment break into tears. “I don’t know,” Heimrich said, “what you’ve got to cry about.” The Colonel appeared to consider this, but he made no reply. Nor did he cease to look fixedly at Captain Heimrich, who found himself somewhat at a loss for further words.

  The room was extremely large. The fire, and the area around it, seemed an oasis of warmth and light in a vast dimness. Heimrich found his surroundings, not excluding the Colonel himself, entirely restful. He could not remember, indeed, when he had felt more pleasantly relaxed or—and this, actually, was an odd thing—more at home. A door at the far end of the big room opened, and Susan Faye stood in it a moment, looking back, saying something into the room she had left. She said, “You do that, Michael,” and walked down the room to where Heimrich sat. Susan Faye was slender in slacks and a sweater. No, put it bluntly; Susan was thin. Her face was thin, but it was not as tired, as strained, as it had been when Heimrich had first seen it. Her widely spaced gray eyes were still grave eyes. She had high, square shoulders. Heimrich stood up as she came down the room and sat down again when she was seated.

  “Michael has decided to think,” Susan Faye said. “I told him to go to sleep and he said, ‘I’ve decided to think a while first.’ He didn’t say what about.” She smiled at Heimrich. She had a wide mouth. “He’s a nice boy,” she said. “Even if my own.” She looked at the Colonel, who now was looking at her. “He’s not a very cheerful dog, is he?” she said.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “On the other hand, he’s very large.” He was mildly surprised to hear himself say this, since it did not constitute a responsive answer. He was not sure that it constituted an answer of any kind. But there was really no need to be responsive.

  “Perhaps that’s it,” Susan said. “To be so much larger than most probably puzzles him. You say she is very tall?”

  “She?” Heimrich said. “Oh—Miss Ross? Not in the sense that the Colonel is a very large dog. A little above medium height. Five ten, perhaps. Why, Mrs. Faye?” She looked at him. “Susan,” he said, comfortably.

  “And attractive?”

  “I suppose so. I didn’t think about it, particularly. It didn’t seem to enter in.”

  She nodded, her eyes unchanging in their gravity. But the corners of her wide mouth twitched for an instant. Heimrich, who is an observant man, observed this. He did not see that he had said anything to amuse her, but was pleased that he had. He was pleased with everything—he had been pleased since, telephoning Susan Faye earlier in the day, he had been invited to come to dinner. (If he didn’t mind what was in the house.) He had been increasingly pleased with everything as, driving between large boulders (the driveway did constitute a hazard; there was no blinking that) he had skidded slightly on the insufficiently plowed, too steeply mounting, road up to the house which had been a barn. He had been most pleased to see Susan Faye standing in an open door, with the light behind her; with young Michael, who now was going on eight, beside her; with the Colonel, who was large even for a Great Dane, peering between them and, it was evident even from a distance, peering morosely.

  Heimrich had felt, unexpectedly, like a man coming home after a long day at the office. It had been, later, quite natural that he should tell Susan Faye about his day at the office—although the “office” had been a large, wind-swept house some thirty miles away, and the “day” now some three days past. She had, of course, asked to be told—that was after Michael had retired to his room to do some reading. (“I’ve decided to read a while, now.”) She had heard most of it when it had been time to tell Michael it was time to go to bed.

  “Actually,” she said now, “it was all a mistake, in a way, wasn’t it? Mr. Kemper’s mistake?”

  It could be called that, Heimrich agreed. Not, naturally, that murder wasn’t always.

  “And neither knew what the other planned,” Susan said. “And either plan might have worked without the other. Except that the electric blanket went off.”

  Mrs. Halley’s plan to kill her husband might very easily have worked, Heimrich agreed. In a sense, it had worked.

  “As long as she doesn’t talk,” he said, “it’s very unlikely we can get an indictment. It’s unlikely we’ll even try, although she’s guilty of attempted murder.”

  “You know and can’t prove,” Susan said. “Does that often happen?”

  It happened rather often, Heimrich admitted. It would happen oftener if murderers were not so often talkative. Dr. Margaret Halley did not appear to be the talkative type. Thomas Kemper, on the other hand, talked rather freely, once he was got started. But, he could say nothing to help them against Mrs. Halley, because about that he knew nothing—and had known nothing at any time.

  “See if I have it straight,” Susan said. “She decided to kill her husband. She tells everyone that he is in a depression and may attempt suicide. She invites people all of whom have—or might be thought to have—some motive for killing him. Except Miss Ross? Why Miss Ross?”

  “Record of depression,” Heimrich said. “Unstable personality. Although she doesn’t seem to have, actually. Another red herring.”

  “Faint red,” Susan said. “And these—in case suicide wasn’t believed in? She was thorough.”

  “Very,” Heimrich agreed. “Second line of defense. Although, she shouldn’t have needed it.”

  “And,” Susan said, “puts Nembutal in the rum punch. Expecting him to drink it, go upstairs and to bed, to die in bed.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Otherwise, she’d have taken the bottle of capsules downstairs, naturally. As a matter of fact, she assumed he had gone up to bed. When she didn’t find him downstairs. Assumed everything had worked as planned. He’d drunk the rum punch. Therefore, he was dying.”

  “It’s complicated about the rum punch,” Susan said. “Or, I’m stupid.”

  “She poured two glasses of rum punch,” Heimrich said. “Put Nembutal in one and gave it to him. Took the other upstairs herself, telling him she was
going to drink it. Went down, when she thought she had allowed time enough, took the glass he had emptied, substituted the glass she had not touched. Took the empty glass back upstairs and washed it. That’s what the Latham girl was trying to tell Miss Ross. Not that something was like glass. That what Mrs. Halley was carrying was a glass.

  “So, one of two things happens. What actually did happen—Mrs. Speed finds a glassful of rum punch and pours it out and washes the glass. And so can prove that Halley didn’t drink the rum punch. Or, somebody else finds it—Mrs. Halley herself, perhaps. If she does, she makes a point of it. So proving the stuff wasn’t in the rum punch. Or, if circumstances indicate, pours the rum punch out but leaves enough for analysis. Again, proving Nembutal wasn’t in the rum punch.”

  They watched the fire. The Colonel stood up. He walked behind Heimrich’s chair and lay down between Heimrich and Susan Faye. The Colonel put his large muzzle on his enormous forepaws and gazed sorrowfully into the fire.

  “How did you know it was Kemper?” Susan said, to the fire.

  “Character,” Heimrich said. “The murder was opportunistic. It needed a storm. If the power had failed on a calm night, Halley would merely have assumed a minor breakdown somewhere. Wouldn’t have bothered to go down and start the generator. Mr. Kemper has lived by being an opportunist. Also—he’d been very busy around the house. He was the one who got the wood. And so would have known about the hatchet. Also, although he was always looking for ways to be helpful, he didn’t offer to go down to start the generator later. Boyd did that. Kemper knew it wouldn’t do any good. He knew where the rotor was. In the lake. Also—”

  “In other words,” Susan Faye said, “you guessed.”

  Heimrich considered that. He thought of amplifying—of explaining that one finds character to fit the crime. He said, “Perhaps it comes to that, Susan.” He observed that, again, the corners of her mouth twitched slightly. He had never, he decided, felt more at home anywhere.