Let Dead Enough Alone Read online

  She and Kemper had remained in the dining room for only a few minutes after the young trooper had closed the door on them. Then Kemper had said he could use more coffee, and to this she had nodded agreement. They had gone to the breakfast room and Kemper—who clearly knew the house better than she did, which was after all not at all—had gone into the kitchen and come back to say that Mrs. Speed was seeing to it.

  The coffee had come, and they had drunk it, and smoked, and talked little. Kemper had said, from a window, that it seemed to be slackening off. He said, again, that he wished they could all get out from under foot. Then he had sat, looking fixedly at his coffee cup, with his expression of gravity in place. Lynn had gone, in turn, to look out the window, and had stayed there for a considerable time—until, in fact, Struthers Boyd had come in and had said, “God! This is awful,” but whether about what had happened or his own headache, which he subsequently mentioned from time to time, was not clear.

  They heard sounds from the front of the house—sounds of several men moving around—and then they heard a heavy motor running, and racing, as if a car were having trouble in the snow. At these sounds, they looked toward them, and then, when the sounds led to nothing, away again. “Hope they haven’t forgotten they’ve got us here,” Kemper said, some time later. After that, he went again to the kitchen, carrying the empty coffee pot. He returned with the pot filled.

  It was a little after noon that they heard the door from the entrance hall into the dining room open and close again. The young trooper came through the dining room. Inside the door of the breakfast room, he said that he was sorry they had been kept waiting. He said that, if Mr. Kemper didn’t mind, Captain Heimrich would like to talk to him for a few minutes.

  “Don’t know what I can tell him,” Kemper said. “But, sure, if he thinks I can.”

  Kemper went with the young trooper.

  “Sort of making a fuss about it, aren’t they?” Boyd said. He put both hands to his head, and held it tenderly. “Don’t mean that the way it sounds,” he said. “Sorry as hell about poor old John. All I mean is—he slipped and fell in the lake. Or, maybe, went and jumped in. Either way—he’s dead, isn’t he? Fussing about it won’t bring him back to life.”

  Lynn said she supposed the police had to find out as much as they could. “If it’s suicide,” she said, “I suppose they have to know. Wouldn’t it make a difference about—oh, insurance?”

  “Doubt it,” Boyd said. “Probably had what he’s got a long time. Anyway, he wasn’t a man who needed insurance, you know. That’s for people like me. Not people with as much of his own as John’s got. Or did have. Be Margaret’s now, I suppose.”

  “I don’t know, then,” Lynn said. “I suppose they have to find out, if they can. I suppose there’s a law about it.”

  Boyd seemed to have lost interest. He tipped the coffee pot over his cup, and swore when only a few drops poured. He got up, apparently with an effort, and went to the kitchen. He came back to say, “She’s making it,” and to sit again, head in hands again. After a time, Mrs. Speed came in once more with coffee. This time she sighed deeply, but did not sniffle.

  It was about half an hour after he had taken Kemper away that Trooper Ray Crowley returned. This time he took Boyd away. Boyd groaned.

  Captain Heimrich watched the large, drooping, Mr. Boyd leave the living room. Captain Heimrich closed his eyes. He said, absently, that they did not seem to be getting much of any place. It was possible, Sergeant Forniss said, that there was no place to get. At that, Heimrich opened his eyes, and said, “Now Charlie.”

  “He drowned himself,” Forniss said. “Or he had an accident. Maybe he went down to the lake to drown himself, and had an accident and fell in before he jumped in. Nothing else shows.”

  “If he went to the lake to drown himself,” Heimrich said, “why did he change his shoes? He wouldn’t have been afraid of catching cold, would he, Charlie? And if he went for some other reason, what was the reason?”

  Heimrich closed his eyes again, expecting no answer, and getting none that helped. (“Yep,” Forniss said, “I see what you mean.”) They had now spent some time on it, and they were much where they were when they arrived, which was much where Ray Crowley had got before he telephoned. (A smart boy, Crowley was proving himself to be. Something would have to be done about him.)

  There had been, in Halley’s room, a bottle half filled with capsules. Halley’s failure to use them, if he wanted to kill himself, was unexplained. But Margaret Halley was sure that her husband had killed himself. She brushed aside the objection to method, but there Heimrich was not sure he followed her. “The lake was at the center of it.” Why? How? “It called him,” she had said, which was no explanation. “It was deep in his subconscious,” she had said, which did not help greatly. And, after she had gone, Brian Perry had said that he did not know, precisely, what she meant, except that in some way the lake might have been a symbol in John Halley’s mind. It was all entirely unsatisfactory.

  There was, in the boathouse, an electric generator, installed years before when the electric lines had not reached to the far side of Lake Carabec. Since then, the generator had been kept ready to supply electricity during the power failures which were frequent in the area. The generator did not, as some did, cut in automatically when the power failed. Somebody had to go and start it. And somebody—oh yes, Boyd—remembered that Halley had mentioned the generator during the evening. For what good that did them.

  It might have done considerable good. If the power had failed, Halley might have gone down to start the generator, and might have slipped and struck his head and gone into the bitter water of the lake. On hearing of the generator, Heimrich had checked at once. The power had not failed. The New York State Gas and Electric Company was quite sure of this. It was also, from the tone of its voice, a little surprised. (Heimrich learned, later, that several bitter jokesters, brooding on the past and enlivened at parties, had called to report, in accents of vast astonishment, that their power was on. The Company had not been much amused.)

  With obstacles to two theories, it was evident that a third remained. It was that, Heimrich supposed, which made him stick at it—perhaps made him exaggerate the objections to either suicide or accident. (After all, Halley just might have gone for a walk, bad night or not; for what is called a “breath of fresh air.” He might even, if he had been drinking, been dizzied by the fresh air.) It did not matter, in the long run, how John Halley had come to die, unless he had been murdered. There was nothing to suggest he had been.

  “We may as well get on with it,” Heimrich said, opening his eyes. “Who else have we got?”

  “The other women,” Forniss said. “The little blonde. Seems pretty upset, Crowley tells me. Didn’t you, Crowley?”

  “More than the others,” Crowley said. “But—maybe she just shows it more.”

  “The tall girl,” Forniss said. “Miss—” He consulted notes. “Lynn Ross. She’s the one out in the breakfast room. Her room’s at the back of the house. Not likely she saw anything.”

  “Not likely she was awake,” Heimrich said. “However, ask her to come in, will you, Ray?”

  Ray went.

  “Have you got much idea what sort of man Halley was, Charlie?” Heimrich asked.

  “Nope,” Forniss said.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Neither have I.” He closed his eyes. “It’s odd, in a way,” he said.

  There were three men in the living room, near the fireplace in which there was no fire. The young trooper in uniform; two solid men, one a little taller than the other. The taller one, Lynn thought, looked like a policeman, although she could not decide why he did. The other, a squarely built man, with a square face, and unexpectedly bright blue eyes, looked—well, like anybody. They stood up when she went into the room.

  “My name’s Heimrich, Miss Ross,” the man who did not look, particularly, like a policeman, said. “Captain Heimrich. This is Sergeant Forniss. You’ve met Trooper Crow
ley. We’re trying to find out what happened.”

  “I don’t know,” Lynn said. “Except—somehow—Mr. Halley was drowned. What do you want me to tell you?”

  The man named Heimrich smiled faintly, and the smile changed his solid face.

  “Now Miss Ross,” he said. “I don’t know, really. Anything you can. You see, Mrs. Halley is afraid her husband killed himself. But it may have been an accident. We’re trying to find out, for one thing, whether during the evening Mr. Halley did anything, or said anything, to indicate he was depressed.”

  She did not answer immediately. After she had thought, she shook her head.

  “He was quiet toward the end of the party,” she said. “But, I thought he was tired.” She hesitated. “Actually,” she said, “I don’t know I really thought that—thought about it at all. It’s just—when I remember back—” She was not being at all clear, Lynn Ross thought. She wanted to be as clear as she could.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “It’s often like that, naturally. Did you know Mr. Halley well, Miss Ross?”

  “No,” she said. “He was—well, I suppose, just Margaret’s husband. I’d only met him a few times. He was older, of course. Older than she. A good deal older than I am.” She hesitated. “Mrs. Halley was my physician,” she said. She did not know why she said it. It had nothing to do with anything. But Heimrich seemed, somehow, to be waiting for her to say it—to say whatever came into her mind. Why, she thought, in a way it’s as it was with Margaret.

  “I had a—a nervous breakdown,” Lynn said. “People call it that. Mrs. Halley—I should say Dr. Halley—got me through it. Did she tell you that?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “She has, actually, told me very little. I haven’t pressed her. She’s—under great strain.”

  That was it, Lynn realized. Margaret showed—strain. Not grief so much. Rather a kind of tightness.

  “She blames herself,” Lynn said. “She said that to Miss Latham. As much as—” She stopped.

  “Yes?” Heimrich said.

  “Something about blaming herself as much as Miss Latham could want her to,” Lynn said. “I don’t know what she meant. Perhaps it was just a way of speaking.”

  “Perhaps,” Heimrich said. “So you can’t think of anything about Mr. Halley except that he seemed tired toward the end of the party? Tired, but not, that you noticed, particularly depressed?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Margaret would know. Or, Dr. Perry. He’s a psychiatrist too.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “When you went up last night, Miss Ross. After the party?”

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Halley was still here? In the living room?”

  “Sitting by the fire.”

  “And the others?”

  “Mr. Kemper was still here. And Margaret, of course. I think Mr. Boyd had already gone up. He’d—he’d been drinking more than the rest of us. He dozed off, woke up, said he might as well sleep in bed. He wasn’t drunk at all. Just—sleepy. Sleepy and happy.”

  “And Mr. Halley?”

  “You mean, had he been drinking a good deal? No, I shouldn’t think so. We’d all had champagne, of course. It’s a time when one always does. He had one long drink afterward, I think.”

  “Mr. Halley. Mrs. Halley. Kemper. When you went up. Anyone else?”

  “Dr. Perry, I think. Miss Latham went up a few minutes before I did. It was a little after one. Perhaps one-thirty.”

  Heimrich nodded.

  “During the night,” he said. “You didn’t hear anything. A door closing, say? Or voices? Nothing wakened you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Oh—except once. I got cold.”

  Heimrich smiled at that.

  “No sounds?” he said. “You’re sure it was just because you got cold? Sometimes it’s hard to tell, Miss Ross.”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I’d done something wrong about the blanket. It went off.”

  “Went off?” Heimrich said, and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them they seemed even more brightly blue. “You mean, it slipped off the bed?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s an electric blanket. It went off—I suppose I did something wrong to it, in my sleep. Tried to turn it down or something, and turned it all the way off.”

  “Do you remember doing that?”

  For some reason, Lynn thought, he’s not as—as easygoing as he was a minute ago.

  “No,” she said. “But it must have been that.” Wait, she thought to herself. I’ve got it wrong somehow. Oh—of course! “When I waked up, because I was cold, I turned the little knob. You know? Turned it all the way off and then turned it on again. But—I had to turn it off first. I remember that.”

  “And then, it came on again?”

  “Not right away,” she said. “Not—oh, for five minutes, perhaps. I was just about to get up and get a coat or something. And then it came on again.”

  “Before you waked up,” Heimrich said. “Had you been asleep long? Did you look at your watch?”

  She shook her head, said she had not looked at her watch.

  “It’s hard to tell how long one’s been asleep,” she said. “But—I shouldn’t think very long.” She was puzzled, now. “You seem to think this is important,” she said. “How could it be?”

  He did not answer at once. Then he said, only, that it was hard to tell what might prove to be important.

  “A circuit breaker?” Forniss said. “Off, then on again?”

  “You get a flicker,” Heimrich said. “This would have had to be more than that. If Miss Ross is right. Ray, find out whether they’ve got an electric clock. See what time it is. It ought to be—” He looked at his watch—“one-fifteen, or thereabouts. You see the point, don’t you, Ray?”

  Ray Crowley flushed. (He was beginning to think he would never get over that habit, so inappropriate in a policeman.) He said, “Yes sir.” Heimrich looked at him, smiled faintly, and said, “Sorry, Ray.”

  Ray left.

  “Let’s go out and look around, Charlie,” Heimrich said, and led the way out. From the porch, they could see most of what they needed to see.

  Poles marched up the road from the south, and marched away to the north. The two high-voltage lines were strung on the crossbars. A big transformer was on the pole nearest the Halley house. From it, a triple line swung up to the house, supported half way along on a private pole. And from it, also, two other sets of triple wires extended, to right and left, along the poles.

  “Three on the transformer,” Forniss said.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “All for one and one for all. We may have to go calling.”

  “Probably nobody’ll be at home,” Forniss said. “Maybe Crowley—”

  They went back into the house. Crowley met them in the hall. He shook his head. He said, “Not unless one of them brought one along. Or Lucy Speed’s lying. She doesn’t, that I’ve ever heard.”

  “We’ll ask,” Heimrich said. “I shouldn’t think anybody’d bring one. You checked the range, naturally? The refrigerator?”

  “Yes,” Crowley said. “Range is gas. Not automatic. No defrosting clock on the refrigerator.”

  “The primitive life,” Heimrich said. “Most of the houses along the road are closed up for the winter, probably. You’d know about that, Ray? Particularly, the houses on the same transformer box.”

  Ray Crowley did know. It was part of his job to know. The Barncastles, who lived up the road—“up” was to the north—closed their house in November, each year, and had this year. The Fosters, down the road, spent winters in the city. But they had a caretaker in the house.

  “Drop down and see him, Ray,” Heimrich said. “Find out what time it is. If he has the right kind of clock.”

  Ray went.

  “You want this Miss Latham?” Forniss asked. Heimrich, with his eyes shut, shook his head. He said they might as well wait for Ray.

  “If there’s a clock,” Heimrich sa
id. “And the clock’s right, we’ll see them all together, Charlie. Perhaps one of them will be surprised.”

  Heimrich sat for a moment with his eyes closed. Then he got up and went down the long room toward a door at the rear—a door which led to the back hall and kitchen area. Forniss looked after him, and waited. Heimrich was gone only briefly.

  “Checking up on young Crowley?” Forniss asked.

  “On Crowley? Oh—no, Charlie. Wanted to ask Mrs. Speed something. Seems Mrs. Halley was right. Mrs. Speed cleaned up the room this morning. Found the glass on the table, where Mrs. Halley put it. Hadn’t been touched, Mrs. Speed says. Emptied the rum punch out and washed the glass.”

  Forniss waited.

  “That’s all,” Heimrich said. “Mrs. Halley said her husband didn’t drink the punch. I supposed she meant while she was there. Now it seems he didn’t drink it at all.”

  Forniss nodded, slowly.

  “Bears out her theory, naturally,” Heimrich said. “For what it’s worth. Wouldn’t expect a man to drink a glass of warm rum punch if he’d decided to kill himself. Wouldn’t seem to be in character, would it? And, apparently he didn’t.”

  “This Mrs. Speed,” Forniss said. “She told Mrs. Halley the punch wasn’t drunk?”

  “Now Charlie,” Heimrich said. “No, she says she didn’t. Why should she? A little thing like that, with this dreadful thing happening? Very broken up, Mrs. Speed is. Takes it hard.”

  Heimrich sat down and closed his eyes. They waited, Heimrich quite relaxed, Forniss showing some tendency to prowl the room, to look out its windows. Crowley was back in some fifteen minutes. This time, he nodded as he came into the room.