Burnt Offering Page 3

  The sirens were closer now, coming from either direction. One was very close; red lights blinked over a rise. A State police car screamed up, and stopped, and two troopers got out. One of the troopers said, “Phew!” Then both of them began to tell people to stand back. They themselves advanced officially nearer the still leaping flames. Having done this, they stopped and looked at the fire. Heimrich smiled, faintly, in sympathy. Authority was baffled. After a moment, authority re-established itself.

  “Better get around back and see nobody gets too close,” one trooper said to the other trooper, who said, “O. K.,” and went. Heimrich approved; it is not wise for authority to appear completely at a loss. If any among the spectators contemplated suicide he should, evidently, be restrained. Heimrich supposed no one did, but still—

  The siren from the other direction was now close; now it was beyond a hill; now a fire truck followed its wail over the hill.

  The Cold Harbor men, although they also were volunteers, knew their business. They got hoses out; they pumped water from the gallons the truck carried—they sought and found a well behind the Ridgley Building and ran a line to that. After a little, they could get close enough to use extinguishers; after a time, the fire began to subside. In half an hour, it was possible to look into the building, which by then had no front, and see the charred remains of the Van Brunt fire trucks.

  “That’s the new one,” Sam Jackson said, and pointed. “That’s the old one. The new one was a good truck. Had it only five-six years.”

  The roof fell in, covering the remains of the truck with the remains of the building. The flames spurted up again, at that. But water calmed them, and now it grew darker at The Corners, and grew cooler. Now, from the fringe of people, some began to advance closer to the ruins, and to peer into them. But others, confident that the worst—but it had also been the best, of course—was over, trickled toward cars. Starters rasped, and motors caught, and taxpayers of Van Brunt, with their friends, backed carefully from roadside ditches into which they had driven, exuberantly.

  “Party’s over,” Sam Jackson said. “Well—”

  It was a little like that, Marian Alden agreed. One shouldn’t feel so, of course, but still—

  “Nothing like a good fire,” Jackson said. “See you at the Westlakes’?”

  Marian Alden said, “Well,” and hesitated over it, and looked at her husband, who shrugged. They both looked at Captain Heimrich, who said, “Naturally. If you like.” Only then did it occur to Marian Alden that Sam Jackson and her uncle remained strangers, at least technically. She introduced. Jackson said, “Oh, heard of you, haven’t I?” to which Heimrich could only say, “Possibly.”

  “Homicide man,” Jackson told him and, although this was not strictly true—Heimrich’s constabulary duties were by no means limited to murder—Heimrich let it go. Recently, in any case, it had been true enough. Jackson had not known that the Aldens were related to the police force. He promised that he would, hereafter, watch his step.

  “About the Westlakes,” Marian said, with this taken care of—fully taken care of, she thought privately. “Mr. Phipps won’t try to start the meeting up again? Because we hadn’t got anywhere, had we?”

  “No,” Jackson said. “Do we ever, come to that? Expressions of views, clerk’llread, and board act—as it was going to anyway. I’ll admit this was even less conclusive than usual—except that Edgar Noble had himself a time. But there’d be no point in starting up again—nobody’d talk about anything but the fire and then we’d have the old ‘why’s-the-fire-house-so-far-from-my-place?’ sort of thing.” He turned to Heimrich suddenly. “All the same,” he said, “I’m a great believer in democracy.”

  “Oh,” Heimrich said, “so am I, naturally.”

  “Yes,” Jackson said. “Well—bring the captain along, why don’t you?”

  In the end they took Heimrich, who went unprotesting. Already, he had gathered that what he had at first taken to be merely an after-meeting drink at the Westlakes’—whoever they might be—was, in fact, rather more than that Sam Jackson spoke as an associate host might speak, and he was not, Heimrich thought, a man to behave so without justification.

  “Tim couldn’t make it to the meeting,” Marian said, sitting between her husband and her uncle in the front seat of the Olds. “Tim Westlake, that is—he’s on a magazine and Monday nights there’s no telling. So we promised to fill him in, only—” She paused.

  “What it amounts to,” John said, and braked suddenly. An antlered deer, bound somewhere in a hurry, slid down a bank on the right of the road, hesitated an instant in front of the swerving car, bounded up the bank on the left. John Alden swore, in a resigned fashion. “Somebody,” he remarked, as he straightened the car on the road, “says the mountain lions are coming back. Mightn’t be a bad idea. I’ve had to give up late broccoli. What it amounts to is that we’ve got a little protective association making up. The Van Brunt Township Keep-an-Eye-on-Phipps Society.”

  He made a right turn on a road which mounted steeply.

  “Mr. Phipps is not universally beloved,” he said, as the car climbed. “You may have noticed.”

  Heimrich agreed that the meeting had been—restless. He had not noticed that Phipps was particularly a center of animus.

  “Actually,” Marian said, “I suppose it hadn’t shown much yet, unless you knew it was there. And some people think Mr. Phipps is fine, of course. Maybe he is. But—”

  Alden turned the Olds off the road, into a drive; stopped it behind the MG which had attended the fire. A light went on over the door of a low, modern house—not, Heimrich noticed with pleasure, of the ranch type—and a wiry man of middle height, wearing a yellow sports shirt buttoned at the neck, himself colored a copperish brown by the sun, stood in the door and held it open. They picked their way on a flagstone walk, went into a large room through which the night air moved at its leisure. Mrs. Timothy Westlake was small and quick and dark, and pleased to see Captain Heimrich there, had heard of Captain Heimrich, hadn’t she?

  “Possibly,” Heimrich said.

  Sam Jackson was already there, presumably an arrival by MG. He looked too long for it—he looked very long, unfolding himself from a low chair, noting that he had beaten them after all.

  Lights of another car swept the window on the road side, became motionless, and went off. Timothy Westlake made his quick way—both the Westlakes seemed quick people—to the door again. A very big man, and a rather big woman came in. Paul Stidworthy seemed more at home here than he had seemed at the meeting, although still a little large for things. His size might embarrass him, Heimrich thought; might even make him vulnerable to the more rapid manoeuvres of the waspish. Heimrich thought of Mr. Phipps, who had earlier undoubtedly diminished Stidworthy. Nothing of that, however, remained.

  Paul Stidworthy and his wife—Stella Stidworthy, which was perhaps a shade unfortunate—were delighted to meet Captain Heimrich and had, hadn’t they, heard of him. If he was going to be around, Stidworthy told him, they might get in some golf, if the captain played golf.

  “Very little,” Heimrich said. “Leaving in the morning, I’m afraid. Just a long week end.”

  It was a pity, Stidworthy told him, and Mrs. Stidworthy said it certainly was. “Paul’s got to make the most of his vacation,” she said. “Get in thirty-six holes a day. Wears everybody out.”

  “Got to take a little off,” her husband said, and agreed that he’d have a scotch. Again car lights swept the window, again Timothy Westlake opened the door. The motor of a car was noisy for a moment, stopped with rather alarming finality. In the silence, a woman’s voice—a young voice—said, “Damn! Oh, damn!”

  Heimrich noticed that, as he heard the noisy motor, Sam Jackson had stood up quickly. It was, Heimrich thought, as if he had been waiting for that. He walked toward the door now and stood behind Westlake and said, over him, “Never mind, Sue. We’ll all push.” And then both men stepped out of the door and a woman in her middle twenties came i
n. She was rather tall; she had square shoulders; she was too thin. She was smiling, when she was inside; she shook her head, ruefully, and said she had forgotten again. She had gray eyes, wide set, and brown hair which was close cut and her face was thin, the cheeks almost hollow. She looked tired; between her brows lines would set themselves soon, if she found in the world much more to bring a worried frown. Her chin was up.

  She was not pretty, Heimrich thought. But he was finding her fun to look at. So was Sam Jackson, who looked down at her, and did not hide pleasure. But she did not, herself, look as if she shared in the fun—did not until, briefly, she smiled up at Jackson. The effect was that of a sudden scattering of sunlight on a sullen day. It was as brief. Then, Heimrich thought, Sam Jackson, without using words, asked her something, and she shook her head quickly, just perceptibly.

  She was Susan Faye—Mrs. Susan Faye. If she had heard previously of Captain M. L. Heimrich, she did not find it anything to mention, although she smiled and again her tired young face brightened for the brief instant of the smile. She accepted a drink and sat in a deep chair—sat as if it were good to sit. Jackson perched on the arm of the chair, although he was over-long for perching.

  “If,” Marian Alden said, beside Heimrich, holding two drinks and offering one, “if it isn’t one thing for Sue it’s another. Now somebody’ll have to drive her home.”

  Heimrich took the drink. He waited.

  “It’s a wreck,” Marian said. “Has its own ways, you know? I don’t understand it, but if it stops a certain way it—it just stays stopped. There’s something you do, and she forgot.” She sipped. “I’m vague about it,” she said. “But everything happens to Sue. And she won’t—”

  Marian stopped. Timothy Westlake sat on the edge of a table, his feet dangling, a cigarette smouldering in a holder.

  “The point is,” Westlake said, “they’re up to something. Look at the list.”

  He offered no list to be looked at. It appeared that none was required. Jackson nodded and Stidworthy, in a voice as heavy as his body, said, “Sure they are.”

  “Everybody on it’s in Phipps’s pocket,” Westlake said. “Most of them always have been. If he’d’ve said, ‘Naughty, naughty,’ none of them would have signed. So—why didn’t he say it? He’s right across from there. If anybody’s property’s damaged, it’ll be his—his and the duchess’s.”

  “The Van Brunt place is in the zone,” Jackson said. “You’d think Cornelia—”

  “Exactly,” Westlake said. “Think she’d bring pressure. And she could. And—she doesn’t.”

  “She didn’t sign,” Stidworthy said. “Neither did Orville.”

  “His property’s not in the zone,” Westlake said. “Just across from it. He couldn’t sign. Probably wouldn’t have anyway, as town supervisor. That would have been a little too obvious, even for Phipps.”

  “You know what they’re talking about?” Marian asked Heimrich. They were both seated now. Heimrich said he had a glimmering.

  “The petition to rezone,” she said. “All the names on it are those of Mr. Phipps’s—side. The people who help him run the town. The—”

  “The machine,” Heimrich suggested. She nodded to that. “And,” he said, “if somebody, taking advantage of the rezoning, starts the wrong kind of development, Phipps stands to lose. And Mrs. Van Brunt, I gather. But he apparently is for it and she isn’t against?”

  “Yes,” she said, and for a moment they both listened. The moment was devoted to amplification, to reiteration. “It isn’t only that,” Marian said. “It’s the way the town’s run—oh, generally. High taxes—and holes in the town roads. Too much for our share of the school buses. Jim Purvis gets a permit for chicken houses almost on his property line, and it’s supposed to be no nearer than forty feet. The people down in The Flats have to send their children thirteen miles by bus now and if they build the new school where the Phipps boys want it, it’ll add another two miles. Poor Sue gets this barn almost fixed up and now she can’t live in it. That is, she is living in it, but she hasn’t got—what is it you have to have?”

  “Certificate of occupancy?” Heimrich suggested. “Why?”

  “Something about the drive’s being a hazard,” Marian said. “It does come out from behind a wall, sort of, but drives do, mostly. She needs a variance and can’t get it and—”

  The issuance of a certificate would not, normally, be directly within the province of the town supervisor, Heimrich told her. She laughed at that, briefly.

  “Find something in this town that isn’t in Orville’s province,” she said. “Just one thing. He hated Mike—Mike was her husband. Mike got killed in Korea and Sue’s got little Mike and no money—so now he’s taking it out on Sue. Phipps, I mean. Mike was in the reserve and he’d done enough and he shouldn’t have had to go, anyway.”

  “Now Marian,” Heimrich said. “You can’t blame Mr. Phipps for that, naturally.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him,” Marian said. “I suppose not, though.” She sipped from her glass. “When I think about people like Sue, I get so mad,” she said. Momentarily, her uncle thought, she looked it.

  “She can’t move the driveway?” Heimrich asked.

  “With what? She’s got pennies. She does a design—she designs fabrics—and if it sells they eat. She and little Mike and the dog.” She paused. “Of course,” she said, “it’s a damn big dog. A Dane. Little Mike rides it. A lot of dog to feed. But—people have to have something, don’t they?”

  “It’s better when they do,” Heimrich said, and closed his eyes. He was accused of being bored; he was told that there was, of course, no reason why he shouldn’t be.

  “You don’t live here,” Marian told him, further. “I suppose things get out of proportion. It all seems trivial to you, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. He looked around. “This is the opposition?” he said. “To Mr. Phipps?”

  “Part of it,” Marian said. “Too much of it, I suppose. And—most of us are new. Mr. Stidworthy is here only in summers. Not that he doesn’t have to pay taxes just the same but—” She lifted delicate shoulders and let them drop. “Sam’s the real old-timer,” she said. “His grandfather built their house, way back. It’s a beautiful house. Looks down on the Hudson.” She smiled. “Of course,” she said, “practically everything around here looks down on the Hudson. Except The Flats. But it’s a lovely house. Since his wife died—that was before we came, we never knew her—he lives there alone. If—” She stopped.

  She had been talking under the voices of others. Now she listened, and Heimrich listened with her, to Sam Jackson. He was still perched on the arm of Susan Faye’s chair. He spoke easily. It was evident he was answering something just said.

  “—normally I would be,” Sam Jackson said. “I’m what they call a ‘bleeding heart.’ It doesn’t bleed when big places get broken up and—”

  “We know, Sam,” Stidworthy said. “Century of the common man.”

  He grinned at Jackson, and his rather heavy face was lightened.

  “O. K.,” Jackson said. “You know how I feel, Paul. If this thing was done properly—decent size lots, with the top soil left on—honest houses people could live in decently—O. K., I’d be for it. But—” He shrugged.

  “There’s something funny about it,” Westlake said. “That’s what we come to. And we don’t know what.”

  “Take another thing,” Stidworthy said, “where’s the land coming from? Take out the Van Brunt place, and there’s another hundred acres in the zone—oh, maybe a hundred and fifty. Part of it’s already built up. And I don’t see the duchess selling.”

  “There’s fifty-sixty acres along the road,” Westlake said. “You cut it up fine enough, as they can if this goes through—put roads through, level off the knolls—”

  “And,” John Alden said, “cut down all the trees. Don’t forget that, Tim. Can’t have the land all loused up with trees.”

  There was enough laughter to acknowl
edge the phrasing. “John’s so fond of trees that sometimes I wonder,” Marian told her uncle. “Of course, he grew up in Kansas.” Captain Heimrich gave that as much smile as it warranted.

  Once again, the lights of a car swept the windows on the road. Westlake stood again and started toward the door, but as he did so he shrugged his shoulders briefly, as a kind of disclaimer. He opened the door and, after a moment, said, “Why, hello, Miss Burns,” in a tone just tinged with surprise.

  Myra Burns was like a small bird, Heimrich thought; as quick and restless as a little bird. She seemed to perch just inside the room, and she looked around with quick eyes, and she said, before anyone else spoke, “I know this is an imposition. A dreadful imposition. But—”

  It wasn’t, Agnes Westlake told her, and went quickly to her. Of course it wasn’t.

  “Just to thrust myself in,” Myra Burns said, and seemed about to take flight. She was restrained, gently, Agnes Westlake’s hand on her thin arm. They were about of a height—much of, Heimrich thought, what one might call the same “type.” There was twenty-five years difference in their ages, perhaps more. Agnes Westlake would be in her middle twenties; Myra Burns had, it appeared, had another quarter of a century of gentle drying.

  “You know we love to see you,” Agnes said. “I’ll get you something. Oh—this is Captain Heimrich. Marian’s uncle. He—”

  “Not the detective!” Myra Burns said, hopping, it appeared, to the uttermost twig of incredulity. Heimrich found himself faintly taken aback. He had not supposed he looked too much like a policeman—at least as Miss Burns no doubt imagined policemen. He was not commonly thought to. On the other hand, it had never occurred to him that he looked like a man who could not be a policeman. He said he was afraid he was.

  “How interesting,” Myra Burns said.

  There was no answer to that. Heimrich closed his eyes briefly; opened them and smiled.

  “But,” Myra Burns said. “Is there—something?” She looked around at the others, her glance darting, as a bird’s might. She appeared to find nothing in the faces of which she enquired and Heimrich, looking around, thought they were as puzzled as he.