Foggy, Foggy Death Page 4

  “He told me to take the Caddy into town,” Bill Higgins said, and rubbed his nose, which was inclined to drip, with the back of his hand. The hand was red and roughened, as if it had been much out of doors and seldom gloved. “He said, ‘Bill, you drive her in, see? You leave her at this place, see?’” The police were unimpressed; direct quotation, they felt, did not add verisimilitude. On the contrary. “He told me,” Bill Higgins said. “You ask him. You just ask him.”

  That, the police told Bill Higgins, they would certainly do.

  “That’s right,” Bill said, with increased feeling. “You just ask him.” But he looked quickly around as he spoke, as if looking for an aperture into which to escape. The desk sergeant looked at Patrolman Fleury and smiled openly.

  “Better have a look in the car,” the sergeant told Fleury. “See Mr. Higgins here didn’t leave anything. Like a gun, maybe.”

  “Now listen here,” Bill said. “He told me to take the Caddy.”

  The sergeant said, “Sure he did,” and Fleury went out into the damp grayness to look over the car. In the course of looking he found a glove compartment unlocked and looked into it. It was almost filled by a heavy, leather-covered box, which looked to Fleury like a jewel case. The remainder of his search was hasty and turned up nothing. He carried the box in and, since it was unlocked, the sergeant opened it. He looked into it and, in tones of awe, appeared to seek divine guidance. Fleury looked into the box and echoed his superior’s words. Then both of them looked at Higgins, and the sergeant shook his head thoughtfully. Higgins still looked like a small-timer to the sergeant; he looked like a man who might alternate odd jobs—spading up suburban gardens, for example—with a little ineffectual burglary. But here he was making off not only with a Cadillac, but with what the sergeant, thinking of future headlines, characterized in his mind as “a fortune in gems.” (The jewels were subsequently valued at more than a hundred thousand dollars, which gave the sergeant no reason to modify his characterization.)

  “Well, Higgins,” the sergeant said, after prolonged inspection of the little man, “quite a haul, wasn’t it? And here you had to go and get color blind at just the wrong time.” He made a commiserating sound with his tongue and teeth.

  “I swear to God—” Bill Higgins began, and was told, abruptly, to save it.

  “Listen, lieutenant,” Higgins said earnestly, and wiping his nose even more ardently on the back of his hand, “listen, I never seen that box before. Never even seen it.”

  The sergeant merely shook his head, pityingly.

  “Suppose I borrowed the car,” Higgins said. “That don’t mean nothing. What’uz that mean?”

  “Grand larceny,” the sergeant told him.

  “Listen,” Higgins said. “It was just standin’ there, see? I wasn’t stealin’ nothin’. Mr. Bromwell knows I wouldn’t steal nothin’.”

  “He wouldn’t steal nothing,” the sergeant told Patrolman Fleury. “Just a Cadillac. Just maybe a million dollars’ worth of jewelry.”

  “He’s a Sunday school boy,” Fleury said. “That’s what he is, sure enough. Maybe we should give him a gold star.”

  Both policemen found this amusing. Bill Higgins did not.

  “I just found it standing there,” he said. “Backed up in this place like somebody was hiding it. So I thought, ‘Bill,’ I thought, ‘that’s Mr. Bromwell’s car and he wouldn’t want it jes’ standin’ there,’ so I says, ‘Bill, what you ought to do is—’”

  But the sergeant had pressed a button and another man in uniform came in.

  “Store this one for a while, Jimmy,” the sergeant said. “He’s been stealing Cadillacs.”

  “Sure enough?” Jimmy said. “Who’d have thought it? Come along, you.”

  Bill Higgins went along. He managed to say “take it back to Mr. Bromwell” just before the door closed behind him.

  The sergeant, his mind uneasily on the fortune in gems, passed the case along at once. The captain to whom it was passed had heard of the Bromwells, and passed it to an inspector, who passed it to an assistant district attorney who had once spoken—on “The Woman’s Place in Law Enforcement”—at a club over which Mrs. Lucretia Bromwell firmly presided and had afterward had tea at the Bromwell house.

  It was because of this, as much as anything, that normal procedure was not precisely followed at this stage of the Bromwell case. Normal procedure would have been to get Scott Bromwell on the telephone and invite him to come in and pick up a Cadillac car registered in his name and identify a quantity of jewelry, presumably also his or his wife’s, found in the car—and have a look, meanwhile, at an insignificant man in a windbreaker and unclean corduroy trousers who told two unlikely stories, both pretending some acquaintance with Mr. Bromwell. But the assistant district attorney felt that this might unduly, and needlessly, inconvenience a Bromwell and so arranged to be driven to the Bromwell house himself, in a county car, following the Cadillac and Bill Higgins, both in custody of State policemen. The jewels remained behind, in a safe.

  As a result, Bill Higgins was hauled out of the station-house lockup shortly after he was thrust into it. As a result, also, law officers arrived at High Ridge only a few minutes after Hume had returned a sleeping, fair-haired little boy called Lorry for short. This rather incongruous promptitude surprised everyone, and led, at the start, to considerable misunderstanding, since the doctor, and a few minutes later Scott—it had taken some time to round up those who were searching for Lorry—talked about an accident of which neither the police nor the assistant district attorney had heard a word, while the attorney insisted on talking about a Cadillac, jewelry and someone named Bill Higgins.

  It was this unexpectedly prompt arrival of policemen, Captain Heimrich of the criminal investigation division of the New York State Police afterward assumed, which kept Everett Hume from going on about his business after he had brought Lorry back. He was there when the first police arrived, with recovered Cadillac and Mr. Higgins, and while he might have left at once it was to be assumed he had thought this inadvisable. By the time the police, and the assistant district attorney, discovered they might have something more serious to deal with than a stolen car—even a Cadillac—and a “fortune in gems,” Mr. Hume’s presence was required, since he had been second on the scene of Marta Bromwell’s death and had, as Karen told them, seemed to feel the death was not accidental. If Hume had left, which would have been incautious of him, things might have been simpler. On the other hand, Heimrich was in the end forced to admit, they might not. Heimrich, whose sphere of activity was state-wide, and whose headquarters were in Albany, happened to be at the Hawthorne Barracks of Troop K when a report came in that one Marta Bromwell, of High Ridge, Town of Poundridge, had been found drowned under circumstances which were not clear. He went over with Sergeant Forniss, several uniformed men and part of the technical squad. He was surprised to find that Assistant District Attorney Frazee of Westchester County was already there and had decided not only that Marta Bromwell had been murdered but that he had the man who had murdered her.

  “Not much to it, captain,” Frazee said, almost before Heimrich knew there was anything to it at all. “Killed for the car and the jewelry by this man Higgins.” He indicated Higgins, who had been brought in, handcuffed. Then Frazee looked at him again. “Doesn’t look it,” Frazee admitted. “But of course they often don’t.” This last seemed to renew momentarily shaken confidence. “Leave you to fill in the details.”

  “Naturally,” Captain Heimrich said, in a low-pitched, grave voice. Momentarily he seemed to close his eyes. He opened them again. “Doesn’t admit it, I suppose?” Heimrich said and then added, “Naturally.”

  “Listen, captain,” Higgins said. There was now a desperate whine in his voice. “What’re you trying to do to a guy? What would I kill anybody for?”

  “A Cadillac,” the assistant district attorney said. “Jewelry.” He looked at Higgins again. “Or a ten dollar bill, probably,” he added. “Haven’t you got a hand
kerchief, for God’s sake?”

  “I didn’t kill nobody,” Higgins said, taking this last question as rhetorical. “I gotta have a lawyer.”

  “For some reason,” Arthur Frazee told Heimrich, “Mrs. Bromwell—the young Mrs. Bromwell, of course—was sitting in her husband’s car. Perhaps down at the end of the drive. For—some reason—” He paused over that and looked at Heimrich with meaning. “For some reason, she had almost all of her jewels in the car. This man”—he indicated Bill Higgins—“comes along, sees a chance, grabs her and gets her to the brook and drowns her and makes off with the car. Probably didn’t know about the jewelry, although she could have had it out looking at it or something. And then he passes a red light.” He looked at Higgins again. “That he does look like,” Frazee said.

  “There are details,” Heimrich said. “You see that.”

  His voice was very quiet. He regarded Frazee and Higgins with, apparently, equal interest.

  “Won’t you listen to a guy?” Higgins demanded, his voice almost a sob. “This ain’t Russia, is it?”

  “Oh,” Heimrich said. “We’ll listen. Naturally.”

  “Not me,” Frazee said. “I’ve heard it. You get the details, captain. Keep me filled in. I’ll get along back.”

  Heimrich was not surprised. He said, “I’ll do that” and, through half-closed eyes, watched Assistant District Attorney Frazee go from the library into the larger room beyond, which Heimrich was later to discover was called the East Room.

  Heimrich was a substantial man, with a square face, and no one could have pretended he did not look like a policeman—especially, of course, after one was told that he was a policeman. (He might as easily have been a business man who had played football at college and golf since, the latter with an enthusiasm which took little account of weather conditions.) He sat comfortably in a comfortable chair, and looked briefly at Bill Higgins, who sat on the extreme edge of a straight chair.

  “All right,” Heimrich said. “I’m listening.” But he thereupon closed his eyes, which did not encourage Bill Higgins. Higgins made a premonitory sound and stopped to see if the policeman’s eyes opened. “Go on,” Heimrich said, without opening them.

  “I was walkin’ along this road, see?” Bill Higgins said. “Maybe three-four o’clock. And I came across this car, backed off the road, sort of, into a gap in one of these here stone walls. Behind the wall. Dry stone wall.” He paused, hopefully.

  Heimrich sighed. Higgins was to be one of those who built things up, diligently providing the small details which are supposed to bulwark the improbable. “Go on,” Heimrich said. “You came across this car.”

  “It looked like Mr. Bromwell’s, see?” Higgins said. “So I says to myself, ‘Bill,’ I says—”

  He had said to himself that it would be only the act of a good neighbor to return the car, abandoned here in the foggy dampness, to its owner. There were guys around there (and this was said darkly) you couldn’t trust, not as far as you could see them. But being as how he was a friend of Mr. Bromwell’s, having worked on the place, he had again addressed himself, assuring himself there was only one thing a guy could do Get in the car and drive it home.

  Heimrich opened his eyes briefly, regarded Bill Higgins and closed his eyes again, as if the sight of Higgins pained them. He said, “Go on.” His tone was very weary.

  It did not encourage Bill Higgins, nor were the closed eyes helpful. When you couldn’t see a guy, not really see him, you couldn’t tell how you were doing. That was the size of it.

  “So I gets in the car,” Bill said, “after I looks around to see that Mr. Bromwell wasn’t there, nor nobody, and there wasn’t no flat or nothin’, and sure enough it was unlocked, see? So I says to myself, ‘Bill,’ I says, ‘Mr. Bromwell would do as much for you, if you had a Cadillac,’ see, only I ain’t, just an old jalopy, see, about fifteen or twenty years old and so I—”

  “Drove around for a couple of hours. Drove to White Plains,” Heimrich said, without opening his eyes. Then he opened them suddenly. “This isn’t getting you anywhere, you know,” he told Higgins. He closed his eyes again. “Nobody gets burned for stealing a car,” he said, stating an abstract truth in a voice of abstraction.

  “Stealin’!” Higgins said. “That’s all you guys can think of. Listen.” But then he paused, giving Heimrich nothing to listen to for several seconds. “Can’t see a guy might just want to take a little ride?” he said. “Got to make it stealing.” He was aggrieved. “Fact is, I said to myself, ‘Bill,’ I said, one of these days Mr. Bromwell might want you to drive for him, see, and you ain’t never driven one of these here big Caddies, so how’s it to take a little drive, sort of, since anyway he ain’t using it now, or why was it there?’” He paused and looked hopefully at Heimrich, who kept his eyes closed.

  “How’s a guy to know it’s all full of joolry?” Higgins demanded. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Heimrich opened his eyes then and regarded Higgins for some seconds, rather as if Higgins, also, were an abstraction. Then he got up, moving with a quick lightness one would hardly have expected, and went to the door and opened it. A man several inches taller than he, and giving a little the impression of something carved out of hard wood, said, “Yes, captain?”

  “Ask Mr. Bromwell to come in a minute, will you, sergeant?”

  Sergeant Forniss moved into the East Room. After a moment, which Captain Heimrich spent regarding Bill Higgins, Forniss came back with Scott Bromwell, whom Captain Heimrich was sorry to trouble.

  “You know this man?” he asked.

  Scott Bromwell looked at Higgins.

  “In a jam again, I see,” he remarked. “Yes, he’s done odd jobs on the place. Lives over near Vista. Does odd jobs for several people. Cuts grass, spades gardens. What’s he got to say?”

  Heimrich told Scott Bromwell, briefly, what Higgins had to say. Higgins looked at both men anxiously; ended by looking only at Bromwell.

  “Pretty feeble story,” Scott Bromwell said. “What would the car be doing there? He got it from the garage, of course. Probably while the people were having lunch. The garage is quite a way from the house, you know, and the drive—you noticed that, of course?”

  Heimrich had. The drive circled from the garage to the house, avoiding one of the wings, curved in to a turnaround in front of the porch. But it was not necessary to drive into the turnaround; one might go straight down the drive, always remaining some distance—two hundred feet or more, perhaps—from the entrance to High Ridge. In the fog, with a car as quiet as the Cadillac, a thief with nerve—

  Heimrich looked at Higgins, saw that he was looking hard, with eyes very wide open, at Scott Bromwell. Even so, even with this new display of alertness, Bill Higgins did not look like a man with nerve. However, as Assistant District Attorney Frazee had pointed out, you couldn’t go by looks.

  There might, of course, have been two men in it. One to drive the car from the garage, Higgins to pick it up later. The car might even have been left for Higgins to pick up at some such place as Higgins described, some gap in a dry stone wall. But none of this explained the jewelry.

  Nor could Scott Bromwell explain it, he assured Heimrich. Since it had been in the car, the jewelry evidently was, had been, Marta’s. It should have been in a wall safe in her room; it was not. How it got in the car—Scott spread his hands.

  “And,” he said, “what the hell does it matter now, captain? Marta’s dead. You talk about the car, about the jewelry!”

  “One starts some place, naturally,” Heimrich told him, without excitement. “Higgins is a place to start, as Mr. Frazee found. It’s quite probable Higgins killed her.” He paused. “If she was killed,” he added.

  “Why don’t you find out?” Bromwell asked. The eyelid flickered violently, which a little interested Heimrich.

  Heimrich said they expected to. It would have been easier if the body had been left where it was found.

  “Good God!” Bromwell said.

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nbsp; “Naturally,” Heimrich said, and thanked Scott Bromwell and indicated no further immediate need of him. When Bromwell went out, Forniss came in.

  “The M.E.’s here,” he said. “And the boys are back.”

  The boys—who were the technicians—had been at the brook. There were two of them, and one was tall and completely bald.

  “Looks like it,” the bald one said. “Nothing to stumble over. Nothing much to hit her head on except soft dirt—mud, actually—and a few small stones. A good deal of scrambling around, as if she might have struggled. Trouble is, first this girl hauls her out, and then this guy Hume is all over the place. Still—” He shrugged.

  “She got killed,” Heimrich said.

  “Looks as if,” the bald man said. “Haven’t looked it over yet. Had to wait for the M.E.”

  “It” had been Marta Bromwell, who had come out of Omaha and had loved things which glittered, which shone.

  They did not have long to wait for the man from the county medical examiner’s office. It was nine-fifteen when he came down to tell them Marta had died between four and two hours earlier, and had died of drowning. There were no marks on the body, except for a minor abrasion on one hand. There was dirt on both hands. The physician agreed that the heavy coat could have protected the body from bruising if she had been, for example, pushed and then held down; that it would not have been, by grasping the sides of the hood attached to the coat, difficult to hold Marta’s head under water—long enough.

  And after they had examined the dirtied, dead hands, the technical men were inclined to think, although admitting it would be difficult of proof, that, as someone pressed her down into cold flowing death, Marta had tried to push herself back to the air—tried, with her hands under her, to raise herself and whoever it was, whatever it was, that weighed on her. The dirt might be explained, of course, by the fact that, in falling, she had caught herself on both hands. But if she had caught herself, why had she not saved herself, since she had not struck her head and so lost consciousness?