Accent on Murder Read online

  He was told that he would be off on a destroyer, and she as alone as Caroline, and that she was poor at thumb-twiddling. But that did not need restating; that was part of the plan.

  “I suppose,” she said, “that Brady is off again.”

  “Seems to be,” Alan said. “At least, he’s not at 90 Church. Dropped by after you scurried back to the office, to see if maybe he had time for a bite of lunch and—no Brady. General expression of blank surprise, to start with; general suggestion that there never had been a lieutenant commander of that name. Until I told them to come off it and showed my I.D. Then the oh-that-Commander-Wilkins treatment, as if they came by the gross, and that he was on assignment. Then made like clams.”

  “What does he do?”

  Alan Kelley raised sandy eyebrows.

  “My dear child,” Alan said. “Learn your place. I’m a low-down deck officer, with whom the Navy shares none of its secrets. Nothing above sonar, at any rate. Brady is—” He stopped. “Moves in higher circles,” he said.

  “You do know.”

  “No,” he said. “They sent him to M.I.T. So, I suppose, he’s concerned with superior hardware. Not for the likes of us.”

  “At least,” she said, “I’ll know where you are. Within reason. Poor Carry.”

  The diesel hooted, in its lachrymose fashion, at the town of Brewster. But a third of those in the coach already were on their feet, reaching for attaché cases, for Schrafft packages picked up in obedience to instructions. As the train nears Brewster, a white church steeple appears among trees. It is then time to get up and reach for cases, for packages; time to stand in the aisle, faced toward exit, and wait.

  “We’ll go by and I’ll change,” Dorcas said. “Then we’ll go by and you’ll change. Then, we’ll decide what.”

  The commuting Ford, Alan thought, seemed much happier now it was going home. Hoped to get out of the sun, probably. He stopped it in tree shade on the driveway of the house on Hayride Lane. The convertible was in the garage ahead.

  “Come in and make yourself a drink,” Dorcas said. “I won’t be a minute. Talk to Carry.”

  But Caroline was not on the terrace, nor in the living room or the kitchen.

  “Carry?” Dorcas called, her voice lifted.

  She was not answered. She tried again, calling more loudly.

  “Funny,” she said. “She’s usually here when I get home. With a drink ready, usually. I wonder—The car is here?”

  “Yes,” Alan said. “Gone for a walk?”

  “I shouldn’t—” Dorcas said, and did not finish. “I don’t suppose—” He waited.

  “She might have gone down to ‘the place,’” Dorcas said. “The place we sun-bathe. Except—it’s shady there by this time and—” She stood for a moment, irresolute. She said, then, “Wait,” and ran up the stairs. He heard her call once from above, and heard her feet as she moved above him from room to room. Then she came down again. She shook her head.

  “Carry?” she called again, louder than before.

  “Of course,” she said then, “she might have gone to the place and—fallen asleep. She didn’t get in until all hours and—”

  “That’s probably it,” Alan said.

  “I’ll go see,” Dorcas said. “But—you’ll wait?”

  He nodded.

  She went across the terrace to a path which led downslope. After she had gone a hundred yards or so, the path turned behind bushes and he could no longer see her. He waited—

  Waited until she screamed. The scream was high, with terror in it and anguish. He ran, then; ran down the unfamiliar path.

  She stood, her back to him, within a circle of slender trees. She clung to a young tree with either hand. He thought, as he ran toward her, that in any instant she might fall. She looked down at the ground.

  He put his hands on her shoulders, and she was shaking. He circled her with his arms and looked beyond her, looked at what was on the ground.

  She turned then. Her face was utterly without color, her lips were moving—a slash of moving red in the whiteness of her face.

  Dorcas put her face against his chest, and shook in his arms. He looked down and his arms tightened around the girl.

  Caroline Wilkins had been lying face down on a beach mattress when she was killed. Shotgun, Alan Kelley thought, and had, momentarily, to fight against the working of his throat.

  She had been lying face down. The charge from the gun had taken her in the loins.

  The charge had not had much space to spread. Buckshot fired from close in tears at a body, and does hideous things to it.

  V

  DEAD FOR SOME HOURS when examined—dead possibly as long as eight hours. But the body had lain for some time in the sun’s heat, which made a difference. Say—some time in the early afternoon. Death as near instantaneous as made no difference. But Heimrich had seen that.

  Captain M. L. Heimrich, Bureau of Criminal Investigation, New York State Police, nodded. He had seen that. With the doctor beside him, Heimrich walked back toward the house—walked some yards behind men who carried a covered stretcher. “Made damn sure,” the doctor said. “Used both barrels. One would have been plenty.”

  Plenty, Heimrich agreed. Fired from just within the circle of young trees which rimmed a cup of sun. From about ten feet away, then. Into the body of a girl stretched peacefully in the sun. Asleep, quite possibly, or dozing. “Into” was something of a euphemism, considering what the buckshot had done. Rain had not fallen in more than a week, and the sun had beaten down. So, no footprints. Nothing, at any rate, to help. Somebody had gone away from the place through bushes, and a thorn had torn at clothing and they had threads of an indeterminate color—grayish would have to do—and apparently of wool. Item for the lab. But, nothing to prove the threads had been torn from fabric that day, or any particular day. Probably since the last rain but—

  Sergeant Forniss waited at the white house, the old Adams house. He waited on the terrace. When Heimrich came up with the doctor, Forniss lifted eyebrows. “Thanks, doctor,” Heimrich said, and watched while the doctor crossed the turnaround to his car. “What you saw,” Heimrich said to Forniss. “Some hours. Number not specified, naturally.”

  “Nope,” Forniss said. “When was it ever? A Professor Somebody’s showed up. To—do whatever he could, he said. Let him in. O.K.?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Professor Brinkley, probably. Short, round-faced man with white hair?”

  Forniss nodded.

  “The girl’s taking it pretty hard,” he said. “Nasty thing to come on. For anybody.”

  Heimrich nodded. He crossed the terrace and opened the screen of the french doors and went into the living room. It was cooler there, and still light enough. Walter Brinkley was there, and his round pink face was drawn, anxious. A young man—a sandy-haired man—was there. Of course—the young man toward whom a girl with deep red hair had moved so eagerly seventy-two—a little more than seventy-two—hours ago. And the girl. He had never, Heimrich thought, seen anyone so—quenched.

  She sat on a sofa, and the sandy-haired young man sat beside her, and held one of her hands. But she did not seem conscious of this, or of anything. She looked ahead and down, but with eyes—Heimrich thought—which saw nothing. With quenched eyes. The two men looked at Heimrich; the girl at nothing. Then the younger man said, “You’re Heimrich, they say. My name’s Kelley. Alan Kelley.” Then he waited. Then he said, “It couldn’t have been an accident. Or, could it?”

  “Both barrels were fired,” Heimrich said. “From very close. It’s hard to see how, Mr. Kelley.”

  Then Dorcas spoke. Her voice was dull, without expression. She said, “It was my fault. I—I should have done something.” She covered her face with her hands. She said, “I didn’t even warn her.” They could hardly hear her words.

  Heimrich looked at her.

  “Not taken anybody’s word,” she said. “Not even—Mr. Brinkley’s. I can’t—” But then she stopped, as if it were no
t worth while to go on. Alan Kelley put an arm around her. She did not seem to feel the arm around her.

  “Dorcas,” Alan said. “Listen to me.”

  She did turn to him, then. She said, “I’m listening. But, it’s true. What can you say when it’s true?”

  “That you did what seemed the right thing to do,” he told her. “If it wasn’t, it wasn’t. But—that’s all anybody can do, Dorcas.”

  “Not enough,” she said. “Oh—I know all that. And I’m alive and Carry’s—dead.” Then she put her hands over her eyes, and her body began to shake. “I didn’t tell her,” she said.

  “She thinks it was Ashley Adams,” Brinkley said. “And—perhaps it was. I was the one told her not to worry. Persuaded her it wasn’t important.” He turned from Heimrich, who stood and looked down at them. Brinkley turned to the girl. He said, “Shall I tell the captain?”

  “No,” she said. “It was—what I did. Didn’t do. All you could say was what you thought.” She took her hands down from her face and now looked at Heimrich, and now saw him.

  “Yesterday,” she said. “I was down—down there. Where she—” Her voice stopped; she drew in a breath which shook her slender body. “Was killed,” Dorcas said. “A man—a man Mr. Brinkley thinks must have been this Ash Adams. He—”

  She told him. When she had finished she said, “So, you see?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And, you may be right, Miss Cameron. I don’t deny that. Only—”

  For a moment he closed his eyes. She might well be right; it was even quite likely she was. And, if she was, that she might never forget—never really forget—what she might have done and had not done. A crazed man; a man frantically against “sin,” intent on destroying “sin.” And—a girl who sinned by lying naked in the sun. One day he might have gone away, but the next returned, this time with the weapon of destruction. And found, again, a girl lying naked in the sum—sinning in her nakedness.

  “I still,” Brinkley said, “can’t believe it was Old Ash. He’s—harmless. I’d have sworn he was harmless. In effect, I did. If there was a fault, it was mine. I’ve told her that. Tried to get her to understand that.”

  There might be enough faulting to go around, Heimrich thought, and merely nodded his head.

  “When did it happen?” Alan Kelley asked and, when Heimrich said that they could not be sure, but sometime around midday, Alan said, “Oh,” in a flat tone. And the girl seemed to shiver and covered her face again with her hands. “We were both in New York,” Kelley said, although nothing in Heimrich’s attitude asked him about that.

  “Her husband?” Heimrich said, and Alan Kelley shook his head slowly. He said that he had tried to get hold of Wilkins; said he had had no luck.

  “Oh,” he said, “they’ll check. Call me back. But, I’m not sure that anybody—anybody locally—really knows. He worked—I guess he worked—on instructions from Washington. And, as far as I could tell, they think I’m an—unauthorized person.”

  Heimrich waited. Alan told him about Lieutenant Commander Brady Wilkins—what he knew about Wilkins’s work, which was, in effect, nothing. Something, he supposed, to do with “devices.” Very secret devices. Involving, he supposed, high secret collaboration with suppliers. But, what it came to, he didn’t know anything about it. He doubted whether, in fact, much was known at 90 Church, even by the higher brass at 90 Church. Including, quite possibly, where, precisely, Commander Wilkins was at the moment. Or, had been since, Monday morning, he had parted from his wife, and from Alan Kelley, at Grand Central Station.

  “I’ll keep on trying,” Alan said.

  “Her parents?” Heimrich said.

  Alan Kelley looked, momentarily, toward Dorcas. She did not look at him.

  “We’ve got a call in for her father,” Kelley said. “Her mother’s dead—died several years ago, I think. The admiral—Caroline’s father’s a retired admiral—seems to be off somewhere in that cruiser of his. They’re trying to get in touch. But, that’s in California.”

  The girl, Heimrich thought, did not seem to hear any of this; seemed far under, far away. Heimrich did not like it, for the girl, for anybody. Not, he supposed, that Dorcas Cameron knew any more than she had told. Oh yes, one thing.

  “This man, Miss Cameron,” he said, and had to wait while his words seeped down to the girl’s mind. “The man Mr. Brinkley thinks was Ashley Adams.” He waited again. She lifted her head and looked at him. “How was he dressed?”

  “I don’t—” she said, but stopped. “Overalls?” she said, uncertainly. “Blue, I think. And—a sweater over a white shirt. With a collar button in the shirt and no collar.”

  “The color of the sweater?”

  “No real color,” she said and then, “Gray, I think. A coat sweater.”

  Gray sweater, in spite of the warmth of the day. But blood moves sluggishly in old men. Gray sweater; gray thread raveled out by a thorn.

  Ashley Adams was, obviously, the one to start with. Quite likely it would end with him, which would make it simple, if meaningless; which would make it bad for the girl. It was worst for her now, so soon after what she had seen. The shock would lessen, wear off. But—was even what she had seen quite enough to quench her as she seemed quenched? Even that and a sense of guilt? For action not taken, warning not given?

  Apparently, Heimrich decided; and said that he would start with Adams, and that he hoped Commander Wilkins was found, and told. He said he would be back, and walked toward the terrace door. Walter Brinkley came after him. On the terrace, Heimrich stopped until Brinkley came up to him, but Brinkley took his arm and led him farther away, out onto the gravel of the turnaround.

  “You think it was Ash Adams?” Brinkley said, then, and Heimrich said it seemed quite likely.

  “I can’t believe it,” Brinkley said. “I suppose you’re right, but—I still can’t believe it. He’s never hurt anyone. Never threatened to. Just, when he was having one of his spells, denounced people. He railed at me, once—on Main Street, in the Center. Came up and began to denounce me, in a rather strange, harsh voice—as if what he said were on a record—”

  Walter Brinkley stopped himself. I’m wandering on again, he thought. Going into detail that doesn’t mean anything.

  “What I’m getting at,” he said, “there was no threat. No suggestion of any threat. He’d got the idea I was a—a ‘scoffer.’ I don’t know how, since I’m not.” He paused; paused, Heimrich thought, for one of those inner examinations of words used, thoughts held, which were characteristic of Brinkley. “Or, don’t think I am,” Brinkley said, after the examination.

  “No,” Heimrich said, “I don’t imagine you are. But—you could have been wrong about the old man.”

  “I hope not,” Brinkley said. “I most earnestly hope not. For the girl’s sake, chiefly.” He moved his head toward the house to identify the girl. “I’ve made mistakes before; reached bad judgments before. They depress me but—there you are. With the girl—”

  He paused, his round face very serious, very worried.

  “She and young Kelley got a marriage license today,” he said. “He told me that, just before you came. She’d gone out of the room for a moment. Got it during her lunch hour, I gather. At—perhaps at—about the time Caroline was being killed. She—I’m afraid she blames herself for having been—happy. Coming home happy, with her boy and—finding what she found. I didn’t see Caroline. Shirked that. But—it was pretty bad?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “It was bad.”

  “A sensitive child,” Brinkley said. “Coming on something like that, at a time like that. Even without this feeling of guilt.” He looked at Heimrich. “Like shooting down a bird in flight,” he said. “In flight, in song.”

  Heimrich nodded his head.

  “I do hope,” Brinkley said, “that it wasn’t Ash Adams. For her sake. I do hope that, captain.”

  The house was square, white, with a front porch. A strip sign on top of the mailbox said, “A. Adams. Elect. C
ontr.” It was one of a row of small, neat houses, each on a quarter acre of land, each facing the road which ran east from North Wellwood Center toward Connecticut. Sergeant Forniss stopped the car on the shoulder of the road in front of the house and he and Heimrich got out and started up the straight driveway which ran to a one-car garage beside the house. A man came out on the porch and waited for them.

  He was a man, Heimrich thought, in his early fifties—a solid man, not tall, who wore slacks and a dark polo shirt, stretched tight over a swelling chest. When they were near enough, Heimrich said, “Mr. Adams?”

  The man said, “Yep.”

  “State Police,” Heimrich said. “Your father around?”

  “Somewhere,” Young Ash Adams said. “Maybe out back. Maybe out having a walk.” He stared at Heimrich. “So,” he said, “the professor changed his mind. Or was it the girl herself?”

  “The girl?” Heimrich said.

  “This Miss Cameron,” Adams said. Unexpectedly, he spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. “All right,” he said. “Can’t blame her, I suppose. How’s she to know? Poor, harmless old guy wouldn’t hurt a fly. But how’s she to know?”

  “It’s more—” Heimrich began, but Young Ash Adams went on talking, and Heimrich let him talk.

  “Just words, like always,” he said. “I told the professor we’d keep an eye on him. Better eye on him. But—well, hell, I guess it’s no good. Put him back in—in the loony bin. Only—he sure as hell likes to walk around. The poor old—” He stopped, shrugged. “O.K.,” he said. “Back he goes.”

  “The professor told you about the—incident?”

  “Uh-huh. Told the wife and she told me and I called him back. Thought he, and Miss Cameron, weren’t going to—well, make a point of it. But—could be, they’re right this way. Only—the poor old guy. All he does is sound off. Oh, I see the girl’s point. I suppose he—called down vengeance?”

  “Pretty much, I gather,” Heimrich said. “But—I’m not here about that, Mr. Adams. About—something a lot worse, I’m afraid.” He watched apprehension grow on Ash Adams’s face. “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Murder. Mrs. Wilkins, Miss Cameron’s cousin. And—at the same place, Mr. Adams. Sun-bathing at the same place. Early this afternoon.”