Burnt Offering Read online

  “We’ll go upstairs,” Heimrich told Sergeant Forniss, New York State Police. Heimrich led the way.

  The corner room was reasonably large. It was square; it had two wide windows, and twin beds, and a bathroom opened off it. One of the windows faced the street. (Marian Alden had insisted there was no reason for her uncle to move to the inn; John Alden had said it was ridiculous. He had said that that was where the taxpayers’ money went, was it? and Heimrich had said, “Now John. It may be several days. And, it’s more official, naturally.” Alden had looked at him for some seconds, then had shrugged.)

  Heimrich closed the door of the room. He said, “So it’s Phipps, Charlie? Teeth, I suppose?”

  “Yep,” Forniss said. “The dentist hasn’t any doubt. Taken care of them for years. Quite a lot of work. Also, they turned up his keys. One of them fits the jeep. It’s Phipps, all right. Unless—” He paused. “I suppose there could be funny business,” he said.

  “Now Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Let’s not be too damn suspicious. I think we’ve got funny business without that.”

  “You think the doc…?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I think the doc’ll find things. He’s a very good man, Kramer, How about the jeep, Charlie?”

  There was a slight modification of Sergeant Forniss’s face—an alteration which Heimrich recognized as a smile.

  “Quite a kid you put on that, captain,” Forniss said. “Wasn’t going to let anybody touch it. Said you told him not to.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I did.”

  “Made me show my I. D. card,” Forniss said. “Went over it very careful-like. A careful kid.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Seems a nice boy. What did you find?”

  “The kid’s prints,” Forniss said. “Where you expect—door handle, side of the door where he put a hand, the way people do. Steering wheel. Brake handle’s no good for prints. Ignition switch. Nothing to show he didn’t do just what he said—got in the car, moved it out of the way, got out.”

  “Go ahead, Charlie.”

  “A good many prints, some of them pretty old, of one man. Those would be Phipps’s, probably. We’ll have to check at the house from what they say about the cadaver.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “We’ll have to check at the house, Charlie. But they’ll be Phipps’s.”

  “Also,” Forniss said, “several other prints—pretty certainly a woman’s. Small fingers—slim. On the right-hand door, a couple on the dash panel.” He paused. “Very clear. And—made recently, I’d say. Oh yes—one on the right door handle, too.”

  Heimrich closed his eyes. He said that was very interesting. Without opening his eyes, he said, “You’ve got something else too, haven’t you, Charlie?”

  “The rear doors,” Forniss said. “No prints at all on them. All polished nice and clean.”

  “Well,” Heimrich said. “That’s interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” Forniss said, “it could be nobody’s put anything in the back since the jeep was washed. It may be Mr. Phipps went over the car recently with a chamois or something.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “The kid, Asa, says Mr. Phipps was careful about his car—about locking it, anyway. He may have liked to keep it nice and clean. And maybe he didn’t have occasion to use the rear doors. You don’t unless you’re putting something pretty heavy in, naturally. Using the jeep as a truck.”

  “He didn’t lock the car last night,” Forniss said. “Just turned the switch off.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “That’s true, isn’t it? Of course, it could have slipped his mind in the excitement. The excitement of the fire, that is. It was quite a fire, Charlie.”

  Forniss said he had heard it was.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “And the body seems to have been pretty well in the hottest of it. We were lucky to get as much left as we did—the teeth and all. You know how cadavers burn, Charlie. It’s hard to believe sometimes how little fire it takes.”

  Forniss nodded.

  “There was quite a good deal left of Mr. Phipps, under the circumstances,” Heimrich said.

  “More than you’d expect?” Forniss asked.

  Heimrich opened his eyes.

  “We’ll have to see what the doc finds, won’t we?” he said. “Nothing much to do until then. We don’t know we’ve got—”

  The telephone between the twin beds rang shrilly. Heimrich answered it. He said, “Yes, this is Heimrich.” He listened. He said, “That’s very interesting. Why do you think so?” He listened again. He said, “Wherever you say,” and, after a moment, “We’ll come there, then. In a couple of minutes.”

  He replaced the telephone. Forniss waited.

  “A Mrs. Faye,” Heimrich said. “Susan Faye. She says Phipps couldn’t have been burned in the fire. Says he was alive after the fire was out.”

  “Oh,” Forniss said. “The fingerprints?”

  “Now Charlie,” Heimrich said. “She’s across the street, at the library. She’d like to talk to us.”

  They went down the wide stairs and out of the cool inn. Outside the afternoon heat leaped at them, as if delighted by new victims. The black composition of the roadway was soft under their feet.

  The library was on the ground floor of the white frame house; it occupied a corner of the ground floor and air stirred in the large main room, which was lined with books. Susan Faye sat at a desk at one end of the room, and wore a sleeveless cotton dress. She still looked tired, but perhaps not so tired as she had the night before. She looked up as they entered. There was a subtle irregularity about her face, Heimrich thought. Probably that was what made it enjoyable to look at her. But she lived under strain.

  A boy of about seven sat, very nicely, in a small chair in a corner of the room. He had wide-set gray eyes, and there was no worry in his small face—only intentness. He held a book and looked up from it as Heimrich and Forniss entered. It appeared they did not interest him; he returned to his book.

  “I’m keeping store for Myra,” Susan Faye said. Her voice was soft, but at the same time very clear. The strain had not yet reached her voice. “She’s having lunch at the inn. The Garden Club. She’s the secretary, you know.”

  Heimrich had not known. He thought it was appropriate; that Myra Burns had been born to be the secretary of a garden club.

  “Michael,” Susan Faye said, and the boy looked up from his book, keeping the place carefully. He waited, with gravity. “Wouldn’t you like to go up to Hopkins’ and get a cone?” she asked.

  “It is very hot,” Michael Faye, Jr., told his mother. “I’ve got a book.” He turned his grave eyes on Heimrich. “It is a very interesting book,” he said.

  “The cone will be cold,” Susan said. “It’s a very good day for a cone. Or a Coke?”

  “An ice cream soda,” Michael suggested. “Chocolate?”

  “Or a soda,” Susan agreed, and at that the boy got up and went to his mother, and was given money. He said, “Goodbye,” still very gravely, to Heimrich and Forniss. He went out into the sun.

  “He’s a very serious boy,” his mother said. “A nice boy, but very serious. It was midnight I saw Orville Phipps. After midnight. That was long after the fire was out. So there must be something wrong.”

  “The body’s been identified,” Heimrich told her. “The dentist is quite certain.”

  “It doesn’t—” Susan Faye began, but then said, “All right, captain. But I’d better tell you what happened,” and to that Heimrich said, “Yes, Mrs. Faye. Naturally.”

  She had seen Orville Phipps, she said, and spoke slowly and with care, wasting few words—she had seen Phipps after she had left the Westlakes’. That had been around midnight, perhaps even a little later. She and Timothy Westlake had finally got her car started. She had gone fast, then—“because once you get it going, you keep it going hard”—but only for a little over a mile, not halfway from the Westlakes’ to her home. “I live in a kind of barn over on High Road,”
she said. “Marian told you, probably.”

  Heimrich nodded to that.

  The car had stopped, and stopped with finality. She had been going down a gentle hill at the time, and had had impetus enough to roll the car to the shoulder. Then she had started to walk. “It was all right,” she said. “It was a nice night. I’ve had to do it before.” She considered. “It’s the damndest car,” she said, abstractedly. “Anyway—”

  She had gone about half a mile, walking on the left, facing traffic. But there had been no traffic until lights showed behind her. The car had slowed and then, some feet beyond her, had stopped. A man had leaned a little out of the driver’s window and said, “Give you a lift?” The man had been Orville Phipps.

  “I was surprised when I saw who it was,” Susan said. “Surprised he had stopped, I mean. Orville doesn’t—didn’t—like us much. Didn’t like my husband, that is. Probably Marian told you that, too?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Everybody was talking about Mr. Phipps, you know.”

  “Yes,” the gray-eyed woman said. “So—I was surprised. I didn’t expect any favors of Orville. Did she tell you about the certificate of occupancy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you see why I didn’t. But, I guess, this wasn’t much of a favor—not too much. Late at night, lone woman—it brought out his latent chivalry, I suppose.” She paused again. “God knows it’s latent,” she said, and then, “I’m sorry, captain. Particularly if he’s dead, as you think he is.”

  “Oh yes,” Heimrich said, “I think Mr. Phipps is dead, Mrs. Faye.”

  “And his body burned?”

  “Oh yes.”

  She seemed to accept that, if her slight shrug meant acceptance. He had, nevertheless, been alive after the fire had died down—at least, she supposed it had died down. “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I’d think so. Go on, Mrs. Faye.”

  She had accepted his offer of a lift She had walked across the road and got into the station wagon, and he had driven her the two miles or so to her driveway—the disputed driveway. She had said that it was too bad about the fire house, and he had agreed. He had said he couldn’t figure out how it started.

  “By the way,” she said, “how did it? Do you know yet, captain?”

  “There are men working on that,” Heimrich said. “We don’t know yet.”

  That had been about the extent of the conversation on their brief drive. Phipps had let her out; she had thanked him; he had said he was glad he happened along. Then he had driven on. She had gone into the barn which was not quite—at least not quite officially—a house, and found young Michael sleeping, and had gone to sleep herself. That was all.

  “The direction Mr. Phipps was going,” Heimrich said. “Would it have taken him home?”

  It might have done. It did not, at any rate, take him away from home. It depended, Susan Faye said, on where he had been, didn’t it? Heimrich agreed it did.

  “It’s this way,” Susan said, and took a pencil and sketched on a sheet of paper. “This is High Road, and here’s where I live, and on here”—she indicated—“is a fork. That way, would take anyone by Oak Road to Sugar Creek Lane and then to Van Brunt Avenue. He lives up here—” it was near the top of the sheet of paper—“on a hill. Up here—” this was off the sheet of paper entirely—“is Cornelia Van Brunt’s place. Back this way”—she was on the paper again, and traversed it—“is The Corners. Here’s the fire house.” She put a cross down in memory of the fire house. She looked at her map. “Actually,” she said, “High Road isn’t a direct way to anywhere.” She looked down at the paper for some seconds. “Not to anywhere in particular,” she said. She looked up again, and waited.

  “We found some fingerprints on the station wagon,” Heimrich said. “A woman’s, we thought. From this, they’d probably be yours.”

  “On the door handle?” she said. “Yes, I took hold of the handle, of course. I may have touched the side of the car when I went around it. You want to take my prints, captain?”

  If she did not mind. They might as well get it settled. A stamp pad would do nicely—a stamp pad and a sheet of paper.

  She had slim hands, Heimrich noticed as Forniss rolled her fingers on the inked pad, then on a sheet of soft-coated paper. They were nice hands. She had done a good deal of work with them, of one kind and another. The nails were short for a woman’s. The pink polish was chipped off the ring finger of her left hand and the index finger of her right. She wore a wedding ring, and no other rings.

  Sergeant Forniss looked at the prints. He said, “Yep. Looks like it.”

  “So you see,” Susan Faye said. “How could it be Orville? The fire had been out a long time by then.”

  The dentist, Heimrich told her, seemed quite sure. The autopsy might tell them more. At a guess, the body had been that of a man about Phipps’s size.

  “They say,” Susan said, “that the body was—very badly burned. Not recognizable. Can they even tell the size?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Pretty closely, Mrs. Faye. A pathologist can find out a good many things. More than anybody’d think. More than most people know.”

  “Well,” she said, “that was what I had to tell you—”

  The library door opened, and young Michael came in. He remained grave. He went back to his chair and took up his book.

  “Was the soda good?” Heimrich asked him. He looked up, keeping a finger at a printed line.

  “It was very good,” he said. “Thank you.”

  They thanked Mrs. Faye, then, and went out into the heat She watched them as they left, her widely spaced eyes grave, like those of her son.

  “Funny business somewhere,” Sergeant Forniss said, when they were in the street.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I’m afraid so, Charlie. Funny business somewhere. Good afternoon, Mr. Jackson.”

  Samuel Jackson stopped on the sidewalk, facing them. He said, “Oh, hello captain.” He was as tall as Sergeant Forniss, but he was a lean man. “The body’s Phipps’s?” Jackson said.

  “Apparently,” Heimrich told him.

  “You’re still here,” Jackson said. “You’re suspicious, I gather?”

  “Now Mr. Jackson,” Heimrich said. “A policeman’s habit, isn’t it?”

  Jackson supposed so. He also supposed he would be seeing them. He went up the walk which led to the white house. His office was there. But Sam Jackson took his long body, which could not be called gangling—which had an odd grace—into the door which led to the library.

  “I wonder,” Heimrich said, “how Kramer’s getting on, don’t you, Charlie? We might drive over and ask, I think.”

  They got Heimrich’s car from the Stone Inn’s parking lot. They drove for some miles through the July heat. They parked outside the Cold Harbor Hospital. They found the morgue and waited in an anteroom. They waited half an hour, and Dr. Kramer came out. He was enveloped in white, and, apparently, in gloom. He said that “you people” are always in a hurry. He said that, this time, they had given him damn little to work on. He asked what kind of miracles they expected.

  “Just the usual,” Heimrich said.

  “Laymen,” Dr. Kramer said, in a tone of despair. “Well, the body’s male. Mature. No superficial signs of serious organic disrepair.”

  Dr. Kramer stopped and lighted a cigarette. Heimrich smiled faintly, and waited.

  “I suppose you want more?” Kramer said, and to that, it was clear, no answer was expected. He got none, except an expression of patience on Heimrich’s face.

  “From the thigh bones, and the relevant tables,” Dr. Kramer said, “he wasn’t a tall man. Five feet six or seven, probably. He was thinnish—weighed a hundred and forty, maybe. I’d guess he was in his early sixties, which is pretty much guessing. He’d broken his right leg a good many years ago. You’ve had the teeth checked? There was a good deal of work on them.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “According to the dentist, he was a man named Phipps.”

  Kramer sho
wed no interest in that. A pathologist’s patients have no names.

  “I can’t put a time to when it happened,” Kramer said. “You realize that? Fairly recently. But probably you know about that.”

  “Last night some time,” Heimrich said. “No, I didn’t expect anything very close. You know what I want.”

  He was told, again, that he hurried people. He was told that what Heimrich wanted to find out took time. Heimrich, a little pointedly, did not hurry him now. Heimrich closed his eyes. “You know,” Kramer said, “when you do that, I wonder what kind of deficiency you have. Did you ever try vitamins?”

  “Now doctor,” Heimrich said. But he opened his eyes.

  “So far as I’ve got,” Kramer said, “he didn’t inhale smoke. No carbon granules in the bronchial passages, or I haven’t found any. We’ll test the blood for monoxide, and then we’ll know. But—so far—he didn’t breathe after he was in the fire.”

  “You figure he was dead, then?” Forniss said.

  Kramer looked at him. He shook his head sadly.

  “I don’t suppose he quit breathing for the fun of it,” Dr. Kramer said. “Mostly, if you’re alive, you breathe. Hadn’t you noticed that, Charles?”

  “All right,” Forniss said. “He was dead when he went in the fire. What killed him?”

  “Well,” Dr. Kramer said, “there are fat globules in the lungs. Show up under the microscope. You know how they got there?” Heimrich nodded; he was told anyway. “Direct physical violence anywhere knocks loose fat globules,” Kramer said. “They get into the blood stream. Get in the lungs, to blood vessels too small for them, and get strained out. So—means the man was wounded, was alive when wounded. Since he didn’t breathe in the fire, he was dead when the body went in the fire. Q. E. D.”

  Heimrich had one question. “How?”

  Kramer hesitated at that. He said the condition of the cadaver made it very hard to tell.

  “Now doctor,” Heimrich said.

  “All right,” Kramer said. “I think he was shot. Through, or very near, the heart. The bullet went on through. May have lodged in the skin and been burned out, of course. Was he killed where you found him?”