Foggy, Foggy Death Page 6

  Then there was a sound at the library door. Karen and the two men looked toward it; Mrs. Bromwell did not turn her head but Karen felt, rather than saw, the older woman stiffen in her chair. The door opened, but Scott did not appear. Instead Forniss came out, stood for a moment looking around, and then went to Rudolph Haas and used to him the words he had used to Scott forty-five minutes before. (It was as if Scott had been Haas’s friend and the doctor was saying now, through his nurse, that the examination was over and the verdict prepared.)

  The interval was not so long, only about twenty minutes, before Forniss came to the door again, and again Forniss came out. But neither Scott nor Rudolph Haas was with him, and he went with no hesitation to Hume and again employed the formula. Hume went with Forniss.

  Karen knew what was in the library; an ordinary table, chairs, books around the wall in shelves. The man named Heimrich presumably was there, and Forniss was there when he was not summoning a new—victim? Sacrifice? Why, Karen thought, it’s like the monster, the Minotaur! They go in; they never come out. He—

  “Don’t be upset, my dear,” Lucretia Bromwell said, in a voice so precisely like her everyday voice that it was almost preposterous. “It is very—trying, of course. So difficult for everyone. But you must not allow it to upset you, Karen.”

  “I’ll try not,” Karen said, and Mrs. Bromwell said, “You’re a good girl, my dear,” and resumed her contemplation of nothing. Even for waiting, Karen thought unexpectedly, Mrs. Bromwell has precisely the most appropriate manner.

  “And of course,” Mrs. Bromwell added, after it had appeared that the conversation was not only dead but buried, “he’s sending them out the other door. So shrewd of him, really.” She then folded silence about herself.

  Hume took longer than the band leader had, but not a great deal. And next, with even more politeness, almost with deference—yet it was a command, all the same—Forniss summoned Mrs. Bromwell. Maybe, Karen thought, they don’t want me at all, but that can’t be, because I found her. Thinking of it as a fact, it became a picture and, again, a physical ordeal. She moved closer to the fire, and she looked at the trooper.

  “Does the captain—” she began.

  “Yes, miss,” the trooper said. “He’d like to see you presently. If you don’t mind.” He seemed to listen to his own words, to check them one by one. “It’s just a formality, Miss Mason,” he added, finding a phrase he had omitted. Karen sat down and lighted a cigarette. She put out the cigarette and went to a window and looked out and could see nothing, only in the glass a blurred reflection of the room. She pulled a curtain across the window and went back to the fire. She lighted another cigarette. She was, she realized, now more tired than anything else; now waiting was a dull, interminable ache, as if she had gone too long to feel any further sharpness of anxiety. Dully, she thought that the interrogation of Mrs. Bromwell would take the longest of all, because of course Mrs. Bromwell was the most important.

  But actually it took only a few minutes. Forniss came out again and Karen moved a little toward him, in the direction of the door to the library. My turn now, she thought. Now it’s ready for me. But Forniss smiled faintly, impersonally; said, “Not much longer now, Miss Mason,” and went past her and out of the East Room. After a few minutes—Karen lighted another cigarette, threw it in the fire, lighted another—Sergeant Forniss returned with Pauline James, still in the sober gray dress which was not entirely a uniform and not quite anything else. Pauline James passed Karen without seeming to see her. She looked, Karen thought, very disturbed, almost frightened. Agitation was, Karen unexpectedly thought, very becoming to Miss James. Why, Karen thought, it was just that dress all the time!

  It was precisely eight minutes after Pauline went into the room that Forniss came out of it. This time he stood just inside the door and spoke across the room. “Now, Miss Mason, if you don’t mind,” he said. Karen walked toward the door. It seemed like a long distance. Forniss opened it for her and went in behind her and closed the door after them. Captain Heimrich stood up from a chair behind the table. He said, in very matter-of-fact tones, that he was sorry to have made her wait so long. Almost she said, “It doesn’t matter, doctor.”

  “Will you sit down, Miss Mason?” Heimrich said, and indicated a chair. She sat down.

  “You’re quite young, aren’t you?” he said then. He would write her age down on a little card; no, she had not had any operations; yes, when she was a child she had had—

  “The first thing, naturally, is about your finding Mrs. Bromwell’s body,” he said. “You were looking for the little boy? Lorry, you call him?”

  “We all were,” she said. “I went farther than I meant to. It was hard to tell in the fog. Then I was in the swamp. Then—” She told him the rest of it. He listened with his eyes closed. When she finished he opened them.

  “Did you ever hear there was anything wrong with Mrs. Bromwell’s heart?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. Then she said, “But that—”

  “Would account for it, naturally,” the solid man said. “However, there were never any indications before. Not that her husband knew, or her mother-in-law. They’d be most likely to know, wouldn’t they?”

  She hesitated, realized she was hesitating, spoke too quickly, said, “Of course.”

  “Not Mr. Haas?” Heimrich said.

  “No,” she said. But there was no point in pretending to be surprised.

  “Although they were great friends, naturally,” Heimrich said. “Haas and Mrs. Bromwell, I mean. Marta Bromwell.”

  “They seemed to be,” Karen said.

  Heimrich closed his eyes. After a time he opened them again.

  “I can’t,” he said, “insist on your answering anything you’d rather—half answer, Miss Mason. Or I can insist, and you still won’t, unless you want to. We think Mrs. Bromwell was killed.”

  He opened his eyes.

  “She was about your age, Miss Mason,” he said. “A little older, perhaps. Very good-looking. As you are.” He hesitated, seeing her expression. “I would have thought that obvious,” he said, as an aside. “However— I imagine she liked being alive. Had a good deal of fun. Not your kind of fun, probably. Perhaps you didn’t approve of her. But she was—you’re looking forward to being alive tomorrow, aren’t you?”

  “I—” Karen began. Then she said, “Of course, Captain Heimrich.”

  “Of course,” he repeated. “So was she. She was going into town and have lunch some place, see people. Maybe somebody would say something funny and she would laugh; maybe something very fine she hadn’t counted on would happen. Maybe—”

  “Please don’t,” Karen said. “Please.”

  “Somebody held her head under water,” Heimrich said. “Down there in the mud, you know. We’re going to find whoever did that. Whoever gets hurt, naturally.” He closed his eyes again. “Well?” he said.

  “Marta and Mr. Haas were very good friends,” Karen said. “At least, I thought they were.”

  “Mr. Bromwell knew they were?”

  “I—” she said. “I don’t know. How would I know?”

  He waited.

  “I suppose so,” she said. “But captain, Scott isn’t—you don’t know him.”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich agreed. “Are you fond of him, Miss Mason?” He opened his eyes and looked at her. Why, she thought, he is like a doctor.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “He has a good deal to explain,” Heimrich said. “More than he seems to realize. Or—” He did not finish that. “Had you ever met Mr. Hume before?” he asked. “The man who calls himself Hume?”

  “Calls himself?” she repeated.

  “Well,” Heimrich said, “actually his name is Nickel, Stephen Nickel. At any rate, I suppose it is. Whether it always was—” He ended with a raising of his shoulders which was just perceptible. “He’s quite well known in New York. He—gets around a lot.”

  “I never met him before,” Karen said. “But—Mart
a had. He—he didn’t come here by accident.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “I don’t think he did. But he still says he did, although he admits having known Marta Bromwell. Says it’s a very interesting coincidence, isn’t it?” Heimrich paused. “Mr. Nickel went back with you,” he said. “After you found the body. Tell me about that.”

  She told him.

  “Were you surprised he thought she had been killed?”

  Had she been?

  “I suppose so,” she said. “But—that she had been killed. Not that—that he thought so. He seemed to—to take it all in very quickly. As if—”

  “As if he had been in similar situations before?” Heimrich said. “As a matter of fact, he probably had. He used to be in my business once. A branch of my business.”

  “A detective?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Heimrich said. “To be quite honest, I don’t know too much about him. Nobody does. It’s never been essential to find out, apparently.” He paused. “He knows a good many people in New York,” Heimrich added. “And elsewhere, apparently.”

  “But—why did he come here?”

  Heimrich closed his eyes and leaned back.

  “He says, to borrow a lug wrench,” he told her. “Not expecting to be believed, probably. He says he didn’t see Marta Bromwell alive. He says, since he didn’t, his business is his business—in effect.”

  “But,” Karen said, “can’t you make him—don’t you see he—”

  Heimrich had opened his eyes. He shook his head. He said it wasn’t that easy. He said you couldn’t make people. If it were that easy, there would be no need for men like himself. There would be need only of a man, perhaps only of a very adept machine, which would put a simple question, “Did you kill her?” and record the answer. He talked, almost as if to himself, and again he had closed his eyes. He was, to Karen, no longer formidable; he was as puzzled as anyone, and with a greater, more immediate puzzle.

  “The interested are seldom frank, naturally,” he said, and opened his eyes again. “I’d rather hoped—but you’re fond of Mr. Bromwell.”

  “That hasn’t anything to do with it,” Karen said.

  He nodded slowly; he even almost smiled.

  “Perhaps you think that,” he said. “I don’t know—yet. Perhaps you are an observer, more or less detached. That would help. Perhaps you are interested. Perhaps you are what I call the catalytic agent. You know what I mean?”

  “I know what the word means, of course,” she said. “I don’t quite—”

  “Of course,” he said, “only my way of saying it. A way of describing what seems to me to happen quite frequently. There is an equilibrium, under stress. As equilibrium always is, naturally. You add a certain element and you get, or accelerate, action. But the element is not part of it; isn’t changed by it. Actually, the term refers to chemical actions, you know. But something like it happens with people.”

  “No,” she said, “I’m not. How could I be?”

  He closed his eyes again, and when he spoke it was not in answer.

  “Does the little boy—Laurence—often run away?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Never. Never before I mean. Elspeth does. His sister.”

  “The little girl with black hair,” Heimrich said. “A lively one, I gather. Like her mother.” He paused for a moment. “Like her mother was,” he said, reminding Karen.

  Karen said, “Yes.”

  “You’ve known Mr. Bromwell for some time,” Heimrich told her. “Did he once have light hair? Before it turned gray?”

  “No,” she said. “It was dark. A very dark brown. It—it changed mostly during the war.”

  “Mr. Bromwell is very nervous. Keyed up,” Heimrich said. “Was he like that before—the war?”

  She shook her head. He had not been like that. He had been slender and alive and quick. And he had been gay. You would have thought nothing would ever touch him.

  “No,” she said. “It’s since he came back. And more than ever the last—oh, six months. Year.”

  Heimrich opened his eyes.

  “This afternoon,” he said. “See if this is the way you remember it. You and Marta Bromwell were in the big room. The East Room? The elder Mrs. Bromwell came in. Between three and four, would you say? Nearer four? You went out to do some work Mrs. Bromwell had for you, leaving the two Mrs. Bromwells together.”

  “No,” Karen said. “Marta was leaving when I left.”

  “So,” Heimrich said. “After an hour or so you came back with the elder Mrs. Bromwell, and the children and the nurse. Miss James. Is that right? Mr. Bromwell and Mr. Haas were having drinks. And the younger Mrs. Bromwell. After a short time, Mr. Haas left. That was a little after five. Am I right so far?”

  “As I remember it,” she said. “About the times—I don’t know. I suppose about then.”

  “Then the children went out and Marta Bromwell was furious at the way Haas had been treated. Is that right?”

  Karen shook her head. “Not furious,” she said.

  “Annoyed?” Heimrich said. “What?”

  “A little,” Karen said. “I think really only a little. She had been annoyed earlier. She—she often was. And there was the fog. I think it made her nervous.”

  “Naturally,” Heimrich said. “Then Marta Bromwell went out to the kennels? Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Although she had agreed to drive you to the station? In Stamford?”

  “She promised to be back,” Karen said.

  “Then Mr. Nickel came, used the telephone, identified himself as Hume,” Heimrich said. “Would that have been about—oh, about five thirty?”

  “I don’t know,” Karen said. “Probably.”

  “And the elder Mrs. Bromwell went out? Out of the room, that is?”

  “She went to change,” Karen said.

  “She said so?”

  Karen hesitated; then remembered and shook her head.

  “But she did change,” she said. “She’d been wearing a black suit and later she had on a woolen dress.”

  “You talked to Scott Bromwell for a few minutes and then went up to pack a bag?”

  She shook her head.

  “Mr. Hume—that is, Mr. Nickel, left. Then we talked. Then I went up.”

  “Upstairs, you didn’t see Mrs. Bromwell? Or Marta Bromwell?”

  “No.”

  “When Nickel was there did you tell him who you were?”

  “No, captain.”

  “But he didn’t appear to think you were Mrs. Bromwell? Mr. Bromwell’s wife, naturally?”

  “Why,” she said, “no. But then—he knew Marta.”

  “Then,” Heimrich told her, “he showed he knew Marta. But I gather you didn’t realize that?”

  “No.”

  “But Mr. Bromwell might have realized?”

  “Captain Heimrich,” she said. “How can I answer that? He didn’t—” She stopped.

  “Didn’t mention it to you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Then Miss James came to say the child was missing, Mrs. Bromwell—Mrs. Lucretia Bromwell—came back, you all looked, in the house and out doors. Out doors you separated, naturally. You don’t know where the others went?”

  She could, Karen told him, hear them calling. She could not see them.

  “But,” he said, “you could get some idea from their voices, naturally. Where they were, I mean. You went first into the next field. East of the house, that would be. Then, you think, you turned right, not meaning to, went into another field and then into the swamp.”

  “Yes,” she said. She remembered. “It was all terribly confused,” she said, and spoke quickly.

  “You heard Mrs. Bromwell calling, for example?”

  She nodded.

  “She was nearer the house,” she said.

  “The nurse? Mr. Bromwell?”

  “It was confused,” she said. “The fog—played tricks. And I was just trying to find Lorry.”
>
  Heimrich’s eyes had been closed. He opened them and regarded her, as if waiting for her to go on. She merely shook her head. He closed his eyes again and, after a moment, asked how long the search had continued. It had seemed forever, she told him. It might have been half an hour.

  Nickel, Heimrich told her, said he had examined Marta’s body at around seven. Did that seem right? Karen could only shake her head.

  “Say an hour, and a half,” Heimrich said. “Or an hour and a quarter.” She looked at him. “For her to be killed in,” Heimrich said. “By whom, Miss Mason?” The last was quick, sudden. He waited, as if he really expected her to know. She could only shake her head.

  “Not the little man we’ve got upstairs,” Heimrich said. “At least I don’t think so. Not time enough.” It would be disconcerting to Assistant District Attorney Frazee to realize how unlikely the simple explanation had become, Heimrich thought, not without pleasure. But the little man upstairs was still interesting, still somehow in it. “The people here,” Heimrich told Karen Mason. “Here now. Mr. Bromwell. His mother. Haas. Nickel. Miss James, possibly.”

  “And me,” Karen Mason said.

  Heimrich had closed his eyes again. He said, “Naturally,” as if from a distance. She waited. “That’s all now,” he said. “Get some sleep. We’ll be back tomorrow.” He opened his eyes. “I’ll have men here tonight,” he added.

  Karen went to her room, as she had been told to do, not expecting to sleep and then when she was in bed fell at once into a swirling unconsciousness which was more nightmare than sleep. The fog now was even thicker than it had been in the real world and she was groping through it, and at the same time through a density of last year’s weeds and leafless undergrowth, and she was calling a name. But she was not calling “Lorry! Lorry!” as she had been when it was real, but another name. Yet even while she called this name she could not remember it and could not hear the word she was crying out over and over, although she strained to hear it. Then from a long way off, ahead of her and to her right—but no, the swamp was that way—she heard another voice calling, and it was calling her name, which was not the right name, because it was not she who was lost.