Accent on Murder Page 16

  There had been no real effort, apparently, to hide the shotgun, both barrels of which had been fired. It was lying, partly under bushes, some twenty feet beyond the row of shrubbery which circled the turnaround. A person taking the quickest way—the quickest inconspicuous way—toward the road might have dropped it there.

  “It looks,” Forniss said, “as if our friend has decided to call it a day.”

  Heimrich looked at the gun without touching it. A good gun, a sleek gun. Fourteen gauge. A new gun, apparently. A gun, presumably, which had killed twice and been aimed to kill again. And then, tossed casually aside, to be found by who ever chanced to stumble on it.

  And this, Heimrich thought, did not make any sense at all. North Wellwood is in reservoir country. It is childishly easy, thereabouts, to dispose of any object of moderate size by taking it to the nearest reservoir and throwing it into deep water. If the murderer was done with the gun—because he had run out of subjects? because he had decided to change methods?—why not drown it in deep water? The answer was evident—he wanted it found.

  Presumably, it would turn out to be the gun from the Wilkins house, could be identified as that. Then—discarded to tie back to someone there? Or—by the very obviousness of the method chosen, to exonerate the most likely?

  “Never thought we’d see this one,” Forniss said, putting a finger on it. “Why?”

  “Now Charlie,” Heimrich said, and continued to wonder why.

  “One thing’s sure,” Forniss said. “There won’t be prints. It won’t be that easy. Gloves, unless it’s been wiped.”

  “I don’t suppose so,” Heimrich said. “Take it along in, Drury. Have the boys go over it.”

  Drury went off to one of the police cars, the gun dangling from the cord through its trigger guard.

  A small car came up the drive. A middle-aged woman, who wore a light coat over a white uniform, got out of it. The nurse had arrived.

  “Now?” Forniss said.

  Now they left somebody—somebody who would stay awake—and got what sleep they could. (Heimrich hoped that, this time, it would be safe to call it a day.) Tomorrow—but not really tomorrow; really later today—they would get on with it.

  “Anything in town?” Forniss said as, with a trooper posted, they went toward a car.

  Heimrich told him, as they drove to the Maples Inn, what there had been in town.

  “It doesn’t tie in too well, does it?” Forniss said, being told. “Looks like Dutch and his little orphan Opal are out of it. Just one of those things that bob up.”

  “Probably,” Heimrich said. “What brought Beale here, then?”

  “Came to see the lady,” Forniss said. “Maybe—had some business with her? Something phony about the divorce, maybe? Or maybe—just wanted to see the lady. And the commander found them together and misunderstood. Or—didn’t misunderstand. Got her first and Beale got away. But, didn’t get away far enough, or fast enough.”

  “And the professor?”

  “Saw the commander when he drove up. Could even have seen him go around back of the house with the gun.”

  “Now Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Brinkley wouldn’t have called that something not important.’ He told Lieutenant Kelley it wasn’t.”

  He didn’t, Forniss said, argue that there weren’t things to check out. But, after all, Commander Wilkins certainly had a habit of not being where you could put a finger on him.

  “Like a cricket,” Forniss amplified, taking Heimrich up with him to share a room at the inn for what little of the night remained.

  XIII

  WALTER BRINKLEY’S first thought on awakening was that he had seldom had so deep and restful a sleep and his second, somewhat confusingly unrelated, that it was still some days from the Fourth of July. Then why, Brinkley wondered, so large a firecracker, fired so close under his bedroom window? Particularly since it was years since anybody had set off a firecracker in the neighborhood, except, of course, at the country club’s annual celebration.

  It must be, Brinkley decided, around nine o’clock or possibly even later. The curtains, drawn across the wide window of his bedroom, did not quite meet, and the shaft of light which came between them—it was another bright day, which was pleasant—struck the mirror in the closet door. This gave him, if a little roughly, an idea what time it was. Better than the sundial by the garage, which had, unfortunately, no sun to dial until shortly before noon. (Why had he thought of the sundial?)

  And why, for that matter, had he gone to bed wearing a hat? He could feel it pressing, not unpleasantly but inexplicably, around his head. Yet there was no question that he was in bed—his own bed, and comfortable in it. Why, then—He reached up and touched the hat, which did, now he thought of it, seem a little tight. It was there, certainly. The Misses Monroe must think it rather odd of him to wear so tight a hat while taking them to lunch. The Misses Monroe—

  And then it came to him, devastatingly—came like another explosion in his mind. Here he was, lying comfortably in bed (to which he had worn a hat) and there was a thing of vital importance which he should have done hours ago. He had, with that realization, a sinking of the spirits such as he could not recall having had before in all of his life. When Grace had died there had been a sinking—deeper, a sinking into hopeless sadness, into defeat—but that had been different in quality. This was more nearly a sense of guilt. (In whom, just recently, had he watched, in sympathy, while such a guilt sense grew?) There was this thing which he should have done long ago and had not done. (Why had he not? Had he merely forgotten? Was it, inexcusably, something which had slipped from a fuzzy mind?)

  There would, Brinkley realized, be time for that later—self-recrimination, while justified, while all very well, would now amount to self-indulgence. Now, late as it was, he must try to make amends. And he must begin the try immediately.

  Brinkley swung his legs out of bed and stood up. Unexpectedly, the movement resulted in some dizziness, and this puzzled him, because he was never dizzy. A sign of age, of course—perhaps a precursor of something. But there was no time for that, either. When he had rectified his failure—his really vital failure—there would be time, along with self-recrimination, to indulge in self-pity. Not now.

  The dizziness passed. Probably not, then, really a warning of anything more dire to follow. He had merely got up too quickly. Might happen to anybody. Get dressed and—

  Walter Brinkley pulled the curtains apart. A really beautiful day. No time to stand, in pajamas, in front of a wide window and admire a beautiful day. Get dressed and—

  Walter turned quickly and found he was facing himself in the mirror of the closet door. Facing, more exactly, two of himself, partially super-imposed. Two semi-detached Walter Brinkleys, wearing white hats. White hats? He had never worn a white hat in his life. He would take it off at—

  He reached up to remove the hat and then remembered that he had been strictly enjoined not to take the hat off. Someone in authority had said, “Now you must leave that alone, professor.” Harry? It did not sound quite like Harry. He could not think who else it might have been and decided that that, too, was a thing which would have to be left for later. The point now was to get out of the house and away without letting Harry—the dear, solicitous man!—stop him. Harry would not let him go without breakfast. Harry would be at his most retainerly—was that a word?—and would say, “No suh, professor, not less you has your breakfuss first, suh.” Perhaps even “not less’n” if the mood was really on him. Circumvent Harry, therefore. Explain it to him later—say that what had to be done had been of dominant importance, nothing which could wait even on Harry’s scrambled eggs. What a way he has with scrambled eggs, Walter thought, a shade wistfully, and was at the same time pleased to notice that the two Walter Brinkleys had merged into one. (Still wearing a white hat, to be sure.) The thing to do was to move about very quietly, so that Harry would not hear him.

  Walter opened the closet door and found slacks and put them on over his pa
jamas. He put tennis shoes on bare feet—tennis shoes make very little noise. Harry must not hear him go down the stairs and out across the terrace to the garage. It would be difficult to open the garage door quietly. Probably the best thing to do would be not to try to be quiet then—he would have to chance it then; slam the door up and get going fast. The station wagon then—it faced out. When he had come back from talking with the Misses Monroe—what they must have thought of his wearing so peculiar a hat!—he had not bothered to back the M.G. in, but had run it in straight ahead. To take the M.G., although certainly it was much faster, would mean backing out and circling around, and by then Harry would be on him.

  He looked at himself—only one of himself still—in the door mirror. (It was certainly the strangest hat he had ever seen. When ever, why ever, had he bought a hat like that?) The pajama jacket was a bright yellow, with a black collar and black piping on the pocket. (What was one supposed to carry in a pajama pocket? Then, why a pocket at all? He relentlessly pulled his mind back from its tendency to dither. He would have to do something about his mind. Later.) He could hardly go out—go where he was going, especially, in a bright yellow pajama jacket with black accents. Particularly, he thought, black accents. (Don’t dither, professor!) He put on a tweed jacket over the pajama top. Much better.

  One thing remained. Where was it? On the top shelf of the closet. He was quite sure it was there, and stood on tiptoe and could just reach the top shelf. Not—yes, here it was.

  Walter Brinkley removed the protective wrapping—a felt bag which had originally swathed a silver coffeepot—from a .32 calibre revolver. He put the revolver in the right hand pocket of his jacket and the permit to possess it, which had been in the bag too, in the left hand pocket. He went to the bedroom door and listened for several moments and did not hear Harry stirring. Probably out in the kitchen, getting things together for breakfast making.

  Walter opened the door very slowly and carefully, so it would not squeak. He went out into the corridor and to the stairs and, on the stairs, very carefully down next the railing, because he had heard that, trodden on so rather than in the center, stairs tended to protest less.

  He found the front door open, and opened the screen as carefully as he had the bedroom door, and then went the long way around the house, because Harry might be setting the breakfast table up on the terrace, since it was such a fine morning.

  He still had the dash across the open area of the turnaround, the yanking up of the door—the time of speed, not of caution. With any luck, he would get away with it….

  It was not, actually, anybody’s fault that Walter Brinkley did get away with it. Trooper Townsend was stationed at the house not to prevent the escape of any of its inmates—nobody had supposed that any of its inmates would desire escape—but to stop anybody who tried to come in with the intention of doing Professor Brinkley further harm. There was, therefore, no reason why he should not have gone to the kitchen to make himself some coffee, as Harry Washington had suggested he might want to do, and for the doing of which Harry had provided.

  And it was not, to Bernadine Piper, R.N., as if the patient’s condition were at all critical. He was only a little concussed, and sleeping naturally, and probably would sleep naturally for hours. Breathing regular, pulse normal, everything in order. The patient might be a little nervous on regaining consciousness and need to be reassured—that was, she was quite certain, the only actual duty she would have, and that not for hours. Of course, if the condition changed—that was really what doctor wanted her there for. Well, it wasn’t going to. Not in the time it would take her to go downstairs and make herself a cup of coffee.

  Harry Washington had decided that he would be no good to the professor when the professor needed him if he was dead for sleep. He had therefore, quite sensibly, gone to get sleep. He slept late.

  “Good morning, officer,” Nurse Piper said to Trooper Townsend in the pleasant kitchen of the Brinkley house. “Two minds with but a single thought, I see.”

  It was very well put, Trooper Townsend thought, and he said, “Good morning, nurse. It looks like another fine day.”

  “Let me do that, officer,” Nurse Piper said, and took the tea kettle from him and continued to pour boiling water into the cone of filter paper. “Doesn’t it smell wonderful?”

  “It sure—”

  Trooper Townsend stopped on that. The banging sound of a garage door lifted violently, slapping against the bumpers at track end, was loud through the open window. Trooper Townsend jumped to the window and looked toward the garage.

  A station wagon leaped out of the garage. A plumpish man in his late middle years was at the wheel. He wore a white bandage around his head. He had the car going at quite a dangerous speed down the driveway.

  “Damn,” Trooper Townsend said, watching the departure of Professor Walter Brinkley.

  “Oh dear,” Nurse Piper said. “What will doctor say?”

  There is no use asking men trained as experts if they really mean what they say, have really found what they report having found. Captain M. L. Heimrich did not, therefore, ask the fingerprint man if he was sure—really sure—that he had found the almost perfect prints of a man’s four fingers and his thumb, together with that of part of the palm of his hand, on the barrel of a shotgun. If he said he had, he had. It was not his problem to explain them. There they were.

  A man’s right hand. On the gun not where a hand would have been held while the gun was fired. Where a man might pick up a gun to carry it. That was obvious.

  There were prints there and only there. None on the stock, none on trigger or trigger guard. None anywhere else on the sleek weapon.

  “Wiped off?” Heimrich asked, sitting in the parlor of the Maples Inn—and an odd place it was for such a report to be proffered, be received—looking at the gun and the man who held it.

  “Probably. Except there.”

  Which, obviously, made no sense. Or, more precisely, made only the sense of almost unbelievable carelessness. To use a gun in an effort to kill—actually to kill, in all probability; but that could not yet be proved—then to throw the gun away with a perfect set of fingerprints on it. To wipe off all the gun—

  “The shells?” Heimrich said. While putting shells into a gun one often leaves prints on them.

  “Clean,” the fingerprint man said.

  “You’ve lifted them? Made photographs?”

  The fingerprint man looked as weary as a sergeant may permit himself to look when a captain asks silly questions. Heimrich smiled and said he was sorry.

  It had been, then, a little after eight. Heimrich and Forniss had breakfasted. Forniss had driven the car to a filling station for gas. He had come into the parlor and heard what the fingerprint man had found. Forniss said he would be damned, and looked at the gun with some reproach. But he brightened.

  “Nice of somebody,” he said. “Puts it in our laps, doesn’t it. Not the kind of thing you expect.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “It isn’t, Charlie. Go to a lot of trouble and somebody puts it in our laps.”

  The captain, Charles Forniss thought, seems a little disappointed. Can’t say I blame him but—

  “All we’ve got to do,” Forniss said, “is to get us some nice prints to go with them.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “That’s all, naturally.” He held a hand out and the fingerprint man put a glossy photograph of fingerprints into it. They were very nice prints indeed; Heimrich doubted whether he and Sergeant Forniss, collecting as now they would have to collect, would come up with any quite so clear. But—they would get them clear enough.

  “Old Ash Adams,” Heimrich said. “His son, while you’re about it. Joe Parks. The professor, I suppose. Although I doubt he shot at himself. Harry Washington’s, naturally.”

  Forniss raised his eyebrows at that.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “I don’t, Charlie. Just thorough investigation of all possibilities, as it says in the book.”

  “You’ll
do the others?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I’ll do the others.” He paused. “Couldn’t have been a woman?” he asked the fingerprint man, in spite of himself. The sergeant, this time, allowed himself the semblance of a sigh. He said, very carefully, “No, captain. Not any woman I’ve ever seen.”

  Forniss took a copy of the photograph from the fingerprint man. He said, “I don’t envy you with the admiral.”

  Heimrich did not envy himself.

  They got up; they started toward the parlor door, Heimrich in the lead. Mrs. Lambert appeared, and occupied the doorway. Mrs. Lambert was comfortable, as an innkeeper should be.

  “Isn’t it a beautiful morning?” Mrs. Lambert asked them. “But so dreadful about the poor professor!”

  Heimrich has long since ceased to be amazed by the speed with which, in rural communities, news travels. He is now only, with each new example, mildly surprised. He agreed that it was dreadful about the professor, but that the doctor seemed to feel—

  “I know,” Mrs. Lambert said. “That’s such good news. But coming right on top of poor Mr. Beale and that dreadful, dreadful thing about the commander's wife.” Suddenly, as if all these things had only in that instant become real, Mrs. Lambert’s comfortable face fell into lines of discomfort, of unhappiness. “Here,” she said, in disbelief. “Here in North Wellwood!” Then, for the first time, she noticed that Captain Heimrich was carrying a shotgun. Her eyes widened at that. She said, “My goodness” and then, looking up from the gun to the man carrying it, “Is that—”

  “We don’t know,” Heimrich said. “But—almost certainly the gun that was fired at Mr. Brinkley. You don’t recognize it?”

  He asked that, because she looked as if she did. But she said, “Goodness no. One gun is just like any other to me.” And then, “But I mustn’t keep you.” She stepped aside.

  They started again. They had gone from parlor door to front door when, behind them, Mrs. Lambert said, “Oh. Captain.”

  They stopped. “Go ahead,” Heimrich said to Sergeant Forniss, and Forniss went ahead while Heimrich turned back.