Let Dead Enough Alone Read online

  III

  She was awakened by the sound of voices, the sounds of people hurrying in the house. Someone ran on bare flooring. She looked at her watch, and found it was only a little after eight. That was early, surely, for the morning of New Year’s Day. She could not, lying still in bed, under the electric blanket, make out words. She thought the voices were those of two, perhaps three, of the men. Then she heard someone—Dr. Perry?—say, “In here,” and realized that he must be speaking quite loudly. She heard the sound of a door closing.

  Something had gone wrong. There was wrongness in all the sounds—a hurrying excitement. Lynn Ross got out of bed, was aware of a sudden tenseness in her body and in her mind. She closed the window. Snow still was falling, but not, she thought, as heavily as it had fallen the night before, had been falling when she went to bed. Shivering in the cold room, she went to the closet and got a woolen robe she had hung there. She belted the robe tight about her, and went to the bedroom door. Warmth came in from the hall as she opened the door.

  A little way along the hall, nearer the stairs, Audrey Latham was standing, her slight body rigid, her entire attitude one of intent listening. She wore a sweater and slacks. She turned, quickly, when Lynn opened her door and stepped into the hall.

  “Something’s happened,” the slim blond girl said. “Something terrible’s happened.” As she spoke she moved toward the stairs. As she reached the top of the flight, she put a hand on the stair rail, steadying herself. “John,” she said. “I think it’s something about John.” She started down the stairs, moving slowly, holding to the rail. Lynn hesitated for a moment, then followed her.

  They were half way down the stairs, Lynn standing a few steps above Audrey Latham, when Brian Perry came from the living room into the hall and looked up at them.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” he said. “Nothing anybody can.”

  “What is it?” Audrey said. “What is it?”

  “Halley,” Brian Perry said. “He’s dead, Miss Latham. Somehow—God knows how—he got into the lake. We found him a little while ago.”

  Perry moved under the stairs. They could hear him lift a telephone receiver, whirl the dial. “I want the police,” Perry said. “The State police, I suppose. I have to report an accidental death.” There was a momentary pause. “I’ll hold on,” he said, and at the same moment Audrey Latham gave a little, shuddering cry, and swayed where she stood, holding to the stair rail. Lynn reached her, and held her. The girl’s slight body was shaking.

  “John,” she said. “He said—John!”

  “Yes,” Lynn said.

  Margaret came out of the living room into the hall. She was white. Even her lips were colorless, and she looked many years older than she had looked the night before—had looked in the soft light from the lamps, from the flickering fire. She looked up at the two on the stairs, and for an instant as if she did not recognize them. Then she said, “John is dead.” Her voice had a thin quality, but it was steady. “He drowned himself,” she said. “Went down to the lake and drowned himself.”

  “Margaret!” Lynn said. She released Audrey Latham, who clung to the rail, who stared down at Margaret Halley. Lynn started down toward the small woman who looked up at them with so fixed an expression.

  “You let him,” Audrey said. “You let him. You knew—you said you knew. And you didn’t do anything!”

  “No,” Margaret Halley said, in a voice without expression. “No, I didn’t do enough.”

  “The Halley house,” Brian Perry said. “On Lake Carabec. We found Mr. Halley in the lake this morning. He slipped, apparently. Struck his head on something. Drowned.” His voice stopped for a moment. “Several hours,” he said, and then, “Perry. Brian Perry. I’m a doctor, sergeant.” He listened once more. “No,” he said. “It won’t do any good. He’s been dead for hours, as I said.”

  He hung up the telephone. He came out into the hall and went to Margaret Halley.

  “As soon as they can get through,” he said. He looked up at Lynn and Audrey Latham. “It was an accident,” he said.

  Margaret Halley shook her head. The movement was slow, almost methodical.

  “It’s no good,” she said. “You know what it was, Brian. What I was afraid of. What we always have to be afraid of and—and try to guard against.”

  “I don’t know,” Perry said. “You did what you could. All anybody could do. There’s nothing now but to wait. We’d better have some coffee, Margaret.”

  “Of course,” Margaret Halley said, in the same thin voice. “Tell them, will you, Brian?” And then she started up the stairs. The two standing there drew aside to let her pass. But she stopped, level with them. Margaret spoke, but only to Audrey Latham.

  “I blame myself,” she said. “Quite as much as you could wish, Miss Latham. As even you could wish.”

  And then, her set face white, she went on up the stairs. She went up and they could hear her steps, steady, unhurried—in an odd fashion resolute—on the flooring of the upper hall.

  “Isn’t there something—” Lynn said, and Brian Perry shook his head.

  “Nothing, Miss Ross,” he said. “Come down and we’ll have coffee. Miss Latham?”

  But Audrey Latham seemed not to hear him. She brushed past Lynn and ran up the stairs, ran the few feet along the hall which took her to the room in which she had slept. The door closed, sharply, behind her.

  The dining room was across the central hall from the living room. Brian Perry, very tall indeed in slacks and a sweater over a woolen shirt, led Lynn Ross into it, and through it to a smaller room beyond. There, Tom Kemper and Struthers Boyd sat with cigarettes, coffee cups in front of them. Kemper was dressed much as Brian Perry was. He said, “Good morning, Miss Ross,” in a low, grave voice. “This is a terrible thing that’s happened.” Boyd wore a bathrobe which, when Lynn and Perry entered, he tightened around him. His heavy face was pale, now, and unshaven. It seemed to sag. He rubbed a hand along his face.

  “Old John,” Boyd said. “Hard to believe it.” He rubbed his face again. “Feel like hell about it,” he said. “Why would he do a thing like that? God—I feel like hell.”

  He seemed to include, this time, more in the statement than he had before. He pressed his hands against his forehead.

  “You get them, doctor?” he said.

  “They,” Brian Perry told him, were on their way. Because of the condition of the roads, it might take them time. Boyd stood up. He said, in a voice which drooped as his face drooped, that he’d better get some clothes on. He looked at Kemper; looked down at Kemper’s legs. Lynn looked too. Kemper’s slacks were wet to the knees. “If I were you,” Boyd said, “I’d get something dry on.”

  “He’s right,” Perry said. “Getting pneumonia won’t help anybody.”

  Reminded, Kemper shivered; said, “Hell yes.” He went out of the small breakfast room and Boyd went after him. Brian Perry touched a bell, and Lucinda Speed peered into the room through a partly opened door. She shook her head and sighed; and Brian Perry asked if they could have some coffee. She said, “I’ll get it,” and the door closed.

  “Kemper got him out,” Brian Perry said. He looked across the table at Lynn. He took his rimless glasses off and his eyes seemed larger without the glasses. He laid the glasses on the table beside his plate. “He wasn’t far from the bank, but Kemper had to wade in to get him.”

  “It’s so dreadful,” Lynn said. “After last night. We—we were all drinking to the New Year.” She discovered that her voice shook. Unexpectedly, Brian Perry reached across the table and, briefly, put one of his hands over one of hers. He had long hands, with very long fingers. He did not, otherwise, respond to what she had said.

  “Apparently,” Perry said, “he went down to the lake for something—or to the boathouse for something. Before he went to bed. He’d put on the outdoor shoes he kept downstairs. Somehow he lost his footing in the snow and fell into the water. He hit his head on something. A rock, probably. That stunned him
.”

  “It was—it’s clear what happened?”

  “I’d think so,” he said. “John could have stood up and the water wouldn’t have been higher than his waist.”

  “But the way Margaret talked—” Lynn said. Mrs. Speed came in, carrying a tray. She poured them coffee, indicated toast wrapped in a napkin. She sighed deeply and went out again.

  “Yes,” Brian Perry said. “She thinks he killed himself.” He hesitated for a moment. “He was in a depression, Margaret says. As a matter of fact—” He broke off. “But that doesn’t matter, now,” he said. “A person in a depression is very likely to try suicide. Part of the treatment is to prevent suicide. It’s possible that—”

  “I tried to kill myself a year ago—a little over a year ago,” Lynn said, quite steadily. “The world was—all gray. Formless. I took too many sleeping pills. And—now I’m all right.”

  He put his glasses on, and looked at her with care—looked at her, she thought, professionally. He took his glasses off again.

  “You’re quite all right,” he said. “You went to Margaret?” She nodded. “She’s very good. She was probably right about her husband. Of course, in a close relationship, it’s hard to keep perspective. She wanted me to talk to John, if he was willing. See if I agreed. Better drink your coffee, Miss Ross. And—here.” He pushed the plate of toast nearer. She looked at it. “Yes,” he said. She took a piece of toast. It was wrong to be hungry. Nevertheless, she was hungry.

  Margaret had, he told her, sipping his own coffee, been worried for some time about her husband’s state of mind. Toward the end of the party the night before she had become afraid that Halley was entering the depressive phase. She had tried, after the others had gone up, to get him to go to bed, but he had not been ready. She had left him sitting by the fire.

  “She went into his room early, to make sure he was all right. She found he wasn’t there. She went downstairs and found he wasn’t there, either. Then she called Kemper. Kemper got me up.”

  They had convinced themselves that John Halley was not in the house, and then had gone out into the snow. In the snow they had found soft depressions, almost filled—faint hollows in the surface, just perceptible; only possibly what remained of tracks made in the snow hours before. They followed the faint marks—to the boathouse, to Halley’s body. He had been dead for several hours. They had carried his body back to the house.

  “She must be right,” Lynn said, after a longish pause. Brian was lighting a cigarette. He let the match burn down. At the last instant, he shook the match out. “Margaret, I mean,” Lynn said. “Why would he go there, except—except to do what she thinks?”

  Brian Perry struck another match. He lighted his cigarette, this time. Then, belatedly, he pushed the pack toward Lynn. He leaned across the table, with still another match flickering. He said, “Sorry,” and held the match to her cigarette. Then he said, “I don’t know, Miss Ross. It is, I’ll have to admit, a little complicated. But I’m quite sure he slipped, struck his head, and lost consciousness. And that—”

  Outside, but very close, there was, briefly, the sound of a siren.

  “They made good time,” Brian Perry said, and stood up. He walked out of the breakfast room and through the larger room beyond—the now rather dreary room in which, last night, they had dined with candles on the table. Lynn, finishing her coffee, and her cigarette, heard the voices of men from the hall. After a time, the voices ceased and she heard the front door close. They had—she supposed they had—gone down to the lake.

  There was no one in the hall when she went into it; there might, from the silence, have been no one else in the house. She went up the stairs slowly, and toward her room. She reached the door of what, she knew now, was Audrey Latham’s room. She heard a voice behind the door—a level voice, Margaret Halley’s voice.

  “—will do no good to anyone,” Margaret Halley said. “I’m sure you will agree to that, Miss Latham. No possible good. Merely add needless unpleasantness to what—”

  “Leave me alone,” Audrey said, and her voice rose, sounded close to hysteria. “You think I don’t know about you and—”

  Lynn had, involuntarily, hesitated when she heard Margaret speaking. Now she went on—quickly but as quietly as she could, so that the two behind the door would not have the embarrassment of realizing that they might have been overheard. She closed the door of her room behind her, softly. It was still cold in the room. The little indicator light of the blanket still showed red. She had forgotten to turn it off. She turned it off, and shivered in the chill of the room. She went into the bathroom and found it warmer, and let water run and found it hot. She showered, then, in water as hot as she could stand, and afterward dressed in a warm sweater and slacks.

  What do I do now? she wondered. What can I do? She had planned, after she had changed, to go to Margaret Halley; to offer to do whatever she could do. But there had been something in Margaret’s voice, heard through the closed door—a quality which made her sure that, whatever Margaret felt, it would be useless, almost an impertinence, to go to her with conventional words.

  The “dark year” had left, somewhere deep in her mind, a tiny shadow of its darkness: a dread of indecision. Standing now in the center of the small room, that dread for an instant grew larger. What do I do? I must decide what to do. But she looked at the small darkness and it vanished. This was not the same; not in the least the same. There were not now, in a real sense, alternatives to choose between. Since she could do nothing, it did not really matter what she did. She chose, therefore, and simply, to go where it would be warmer.

  She went out of her room and along the hall toward the stairway. Tom Kemper came toward her. He had changed to a dark suit. He said, “I was looking for Margaret. Do you know where she is?” And then, “Somebody ought to be with her.”

  “She was with Miss Latham a little while ago,” Lynn said. “I heard her voice. In Miss Latham’s room.”

  “Why the—” Kemper began, and his youthful, open face was briefly knotted in an expression Lynn could not interpret. “That’s all right, then,” he said. “This is awful, isn’t it?”

  She nodded her head. There was no point in adding one meaningless word to another.

  He half smiled.

  “Aside from everything else,” he said. “Of course it is a hell of a sad thing—a tragic thing. Aside from that, I mean. I feel a lot in the way. Don’t you?”

  That was how Lynn did feel. It was a trivial way to feel, an inappropriate way. The human mind is by no means always equal to the tragic.

  “That’s exactly how I feel,” Lynn said. “As if—well, as if I ought to go back to New York. Just—disappear.”

  “Get out from under foot,” Kemper said. “That’s it. But—I suppose we can’t do that. Not right away.” He paused, then came on toward her. “The police have got here,” he said. “A trooper. Gone down to the lake, with the doctor. They have to check up on things like this, you know. Accidents. Or—” He did not finish.

  “Suicide,” Lynn said. “Margaret thinks Mr. Halley killed himself.”

  “I know,” Kemper said. “I’m afraid maybe she’s right. The poor old guy had these—these spells. Times when he got very down. Margaret’s been afraid for a long time that—well, that something like this would happen.”

  “If the police think that, they’ll want to ask questions, won’t they?” She said, “Whether any of us noticed anything? Whether he said anything? Find out what we know before we leave?”

  “I suppose so,” Kemper said. “It oughtn’t to take long.” He smiled again, faintly. “No use standing here, is there?” he said, and motioned to the staircase. They went down into the entrance hall. It was empty. The double doors to the living room were closed. They went into the cheerless dining room. Kemper went to a window. He said the snow seemed to be about over. Then he said, “Here they come,” and Lynn joined him at the window.

  A uniformed trooper was coming toward the house, wading slow
ly through deep snow. Dr. Brian Perry was with him. They came up on the porch and stamped their feet. At the window, Lynn could hear the front door open. “I’ll ask her to come down,” Brian Perry said, and they could hear him going up the stairs. The trooper came to the door of the dining room, and looked at Lynn and Tom Kemper. He was very young, Lynn thought. He said, “Good morning,” in a pleasant voice. He said, “My name’s Crowley. Trooper Crowley.” He waited, politely.

  Lynn told him who she was. Kemper said he was Thomas Kemper.

  “It’s a bad business,” Crowley said. “Very bad for everybody.”

  “Did he—” Lynn began, and the young trooper shook his head.

  “Don’t know much about it,” he said. “Could have been an accident. But why was he down there? Could have been suicide. But why do it the hard way?” He looked at them. “I suppose neither of you knows the answers?”

  “How could we?” Kemper said.

  “That’s right,” the trooper said. “Well, be somebody else along, probably. Detective captain, most likely.”

  “I gather,” Kemper said, “we wait till he comes?”

  “Wish you would,” Trooper Crowley said. “Might be something he’d want to ask you. Quite a snow, wasn’t it?”

  He seemed very young indeed. He seemed to be making conversation, and looked from one to the other. Kemper said it had been quite a snow.

  “Have the plows through pretty soon,” the trooper said. “Well—” He went out of the room, then. He closed the door behind him.

  Captain M. L. Heimrich, criminal identification division, New York State Police, was sound asleep. Then he was wide awake. There was no transition. Captain Heimrich, lying in bed in his room at the Old Stone Inn, Van Brunt (Town of Van Brunt, County of Putnam) looked at his watch, and was somewhat surprised. It showed him the time was ten twenty-five. No, ten twenty-seven. It had been years since he had slept so late. He could not remember when he had slept so late.

  But it had been years, also, since he had taken a young woman out for New Year’s Eve. The one thing had led to the other, naturally. Heimrich sat up in bed and lighted a cigarette, carrying the unusual one step further. He did not, normally, smoke before breakfast. He seemed to be walking new paths.