Burnt Offering Read online

  “I don’t know,” Heimrich said. “You’ve just told me he was killed anywhere.”

  “Take it he was,” Kramer said. “Almost certainly by a bullet. Rather small caliber, I’d guess. But that I wouldn’t swear to. Wouldn’t swear to any of it—yet. But I’ll probably be able to when you need me. Anything else, captain?”

  “Picture of the leg fracture?” Heimrich said, and was told to stop by the x-ray room; was told that it ought to be ready. There was nothing further. “Get back to the patient, then,” Dr. Kramer said, and did. Heimrich and Forniss stopped by the x-ray room. They got an excellent picture of a fractured fibula. They took it to one of the four doctors in Van Brunt—a white-haired, gentle-mannered man, who agreed that he had treated Orville Phipps off and on for twenty years, who doubted that any other local man had been called in—and who had no record of a broken fibula in Phipps’s right leg.

  This was unexpected. It was disconcerting. But the physician was entirely sure.

  “Of course,” he said, “it could have happened before I first saw him. It looks like an old break. He’d only been a patient of mine for—” he checked back in his records—“twenty-one years last February.”

  It seemed long enough; it apparently was not.

  “Have you any idea who he went to before that, doctor?” Heimrich asked.

  “Nobody here,” the doctor said. “Because he didn’t live here.”

  And that, again, was unexpected. Heimrich had counted Phipps among the indigenous. He said as much.

  “Oh,” the doctor said. “Born hereabouts; I understand left—was gone for years—came back—and took hold fast. He’d made a good start at that before he came back, I imagine. In the city. Took over the bank. Some people think he took over the town.”

  It was one of those small things which are sometimes most vexatious, most delaying. It was like a broken shoelace to a man dressing hurriedly. There was no doubt the body was that of Phipps. The dentist had been certain. But pieces cannot be left missing. If they are, someone will in the end point their absence out, and make much of it.

  “Wait a minute,” the doctor said. “I may have his old cards—the oldest of these is a summary of the previous record. I’ll rummage around.” He rummaged for some time. He came back with two yellowed cards. “A man named Ferguson was his doctor in town,” he said. “Had an office in East Eighty-fourth.” He gave the address. “No telling where he is now, of course. Or whether he’s alive.”

  There was not. Heimrich closed his eyes; he opened them and looked at Sergeant Forniss.

  “Yep,” Forniss said. “It may take time.”

  “We won’t wait,” Heimrich told him. “The dentist was right.”

  “Be a nuisance if he wasn’t,” Forniss noted, but without argument. “I’ll hurry it as much as I can.”

  Forniss drove toward the city in the car which had brought him from Hawthorne. Heimrich began to begin at the beginning.

  It was slow, as such things are. It did not all go smoothly, as such things seldom do. The man who could help was, finally, Edgar Noble—a man with an office in the city; a man who, that evening—of all evenings—elected to miss the five-nineteen. Since he had taken flight at dawn or thereabouts, Mr. Noble had to have much explained. But, finally, he remembered that Phipps’s station wagon, with Phipps in it, had left the embers of the fire house at a little before eleven. Noble had driven behind it for a few miles, and then had turned off. The last he had seen of the jeep’s tail-lights they had been receding north on Van Brunt Avenue.

  “Toward Mr. Phipps’s home, that would be?”

  “That’s right,” Noble said. “Somebody kill Orville, captain?” He said it, Heimrich thought, with something like relish.

  “Probably,” Heimrich told him.

  “Not surprised,” Noble said. “Not surprised at all. But, don’t quote me.”

  That had been at seven-thirty. Heimrich went back then to the Old Stone Inn. There was no call from Forniss. Heimrich went to the taproom. It was pleasantly cool in the taproom, which it noticeably was not elsewhere. Heimrich found a table not far from the air-conditioner. He ordered bourbon on the rocks, and looked across the room at Samuel Jackson, eating alone at a table by a window. More precisely, Jackson had eaten; he was finishing coffee. He nodded to Heimrich, who obediently nodded back.

  Heimrich’s drink was in front of him when Jackson, with a final sip from his cup, a final drag from his cigarette, lengthily unfolded himself from chair and table and crossed the room. He looked down at Heimrich, a faint smile on his long face. He noted that it was a hot evening. He said that, apparently, the captain had run into complications.

  “You mean Mrs. Faye’s story?” Heimrich said.

  Jackson sat down opposite Heimrich.

  “Mrs. Faye’s encounter with Phipps,” he said. “Yes.” The alteration in phrase was mildly put. It was definite. He lighted a fresh cigarette. “I can add to that,” he said. “When Phipps gave Sue a lift, he was coming from my place. He’d—stopped by to see me.”

  Heimrich sipped his drink. He said that that was interesting. He invited Sam Jackson to go on.

  Jackson had, he said, left the Westlakes’ at about ten minutes after eleven, and had driven home. It had taken him about ten minutes to get home. Susan Faye and the Stidworthys had been at the West-lakes’ when he left. He had offered, before he left, to help Mrs. Faye get her car started; Timothy Westlake had said, “She’s not ready yet. I’ll get it going,” and Susan had joined in insisting that Jackson “run along.”

  Jackson was, Heimrich thought, at considerable pains to clear up a rather minor point. Heimrich did not say so.

  Jackson had, he said, been home about five or ten minutes when Orville Phipps arrived, in the jeep station wagon. Phipps had stayed about half an hour. It had been close to midnight when he left. He would, in the normal course, have driven along High Road; would have been where he picked Susan Faye up at midnight or a little after.

  “Since you say you’re suspicious of Phipps’s death,” Jackson said, “I thought I’d better tell you about it. In view of what Sue told you, of course.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Of course, Mr. Jackson.” He finished his drink. The bartender brought him a menu. “After you’d heard what she told me.”

  He was asked if he meant something by that.

  “Now Mr. Jackson,” Heimrich said. “That is the chronology, isn’t it? What would I mean by it?”

  Jackson smiled and shook his head.

  “Come off it, captain,” he said. “Why didn’t I tell you this earlier—as soon as I heard Phipps’s body had been found? It’s very simple. I’d heard about Phipps five minutes before I met you after lunch. I didn’t know the circumstances in any detail until Sue told me about them. This afternoon you haven’t been around.”

  “I hadn’t implied anything, Mr. Jackson,” Heimrich said. “Could I have a steak, Harold? Rare?”

  “Best you ever ate,” Harold said, with an optimism which had the result of lowering Heimrich’s hopes.

  “The reason I hadn’t heard,” Jackson said, “was that I left early, didn’t drive by The Corners, and spent the morning in court. In White Plains.”

  “All right,” Heimrich said. “Yes, Harold?”

  “It’ll take about twenty minutes,” the bartender said.

  “That’ll be too long,” Heimrich told him. “All right. Bring me another bourbon.”

  “The best,” Harold said, and went for it.

  “You’ll want to know what Phipps wanted,” Sam Jackson said.

  “I want to know everything,” Heimrich agreed. “Naturally, Mr. Jackson.”

  “I could plead privilege,” Jackson said. Heimrich closed his eyes. He nodded his head. “I don’t,” Jackson said. “He wanted to advise me. That was the word he used—‘advise.’ He had heard that there was a movement to ‘undermine’ him. He used that word too. He had heard I was part of it—with the Westlakes, with the Aldens. He’d heard�
�he didn’t know whether it was true—that Paul Stidworthy was mixed up in it. He said it wasn’t the sort of thing he liked to see me mixed up in.”

  Jackson stopped. Heimrich waited.

  “I’m the town’s legal adviser,” Jackson said. “Doesn’t amount to much, but there it is. He may have had a point, I suppose. I’m also the attorney for the bank. The First National. Phipps’s bank.”

  “And for Mr. Phipps himself?”

  Jackson shook his head.

  “He made a point of your town connection? Of the bank connection?”

  “No,” Jackson said. “Oh no. Why should he? We both knew the situation.” He put out his cigarette and stood up. “It was all amicable,” he said. He smiled again. “At least,” he added, “as amicability went with Orville.”

  Heimrich waited.

  “There were just the two of you, I gather,” Heimrich said. “Or did somebody else see him at your place?”

  “Just the two of us,” Jackson said. His smile remained. “No corroboration,” he said. He went, then. Heimrich sipped his second drink and waited for his steak.

  V

  It was not quite as hot as it had been. Now and then the night air which came through the driver’s window was almost cool. Heimrich did not hurry the car as he drove north on Van Brunt Avenue, which the State of New York called Route 11-F. There was as yet no hurry. One step was still to be taken at a time.

  One had been taken. The almost shapeless blackness Asa Purvis had happened on that morning, had turned away from retching, had been Orville Phipps. Dr. Ferguson, run to earth—which happened to be an entirely comfortable club—by Sergeant Forniss, had proved an ancient man, which was to be expected. He was also an alert one, and a physician still in practice. He had gone with Forniss to his office; he had consulted old records. He had said, “Here it is,” and showed Forniss an x-ray photograph which, to a policeman, meant little. “See it yourself,” Dr. Ferguson had told him. “Thought so when I first saw it. Got a memory for an old codger, Phipps’s fibula, all right.”

  He had added that Phipps had been a bright young man—a very bright young man. “So somebody caught up with him,” Dr. Ferguson had said. “Looks as if,” Forniss had agreed, and thanked him, and found a telephone. Heimrich had taken the call in a booth off the taproom. He had told Forniss to come back, to wait at the inn until Heimrich came back himself. “Have a look at Phipps’s house,” Heimrich had said, of his own plans.

  Now, unhurriedly, along a road not too much traveled, a key in his pocket, Heimrich drove toward the residence of the late supervisor of the Town of Van Brunt, County of Putnam. He drove past the Town House, midway between the community of Van Brunt and the crossroads. He drove past The Corners, with the black remnants of the fire house on his right, Purvis’s garage on his left. A single bulb shone through the dusty office window of the garage. Another illuminated a sign which read, “Day and Night Towing Service.” Someone was sitting on the bench under the window. A cigarette glow brightened and ebbed as Heimrich drove past. The cigarette would, presumably, be Asa Purvis, standing by.

  Heimrich drove several miles farther on Route 11-F. Following directions, he turned left onto a narrower road, at the next fork right. He climbed sharply, then, on a twisting road. To the left, the car’s lights stabbed away from the road, at corners, and shone on trees. After an especially sharp right turn, Heimrich slowed. The lights, returning reluctantly to duty, showed a mailbox, with the name “Orville Phipps”; showed a sign reading, “Private Road.” Heimrich turned up a steep roadway, which wound and climbed. Trees were dark on either side. The private road ended in a graveled turnaround in front of a large, white house, in which there were no lights.

  Heimrich stopped the car and heard a fox bark. He wondered, not for the first time, how that wild and anguished cry had come to be called a “bark.” He threw the beam of his flashlight toward the sound and two eyes, close to the ground, glittered in it. The fox was crouched, watching him. Heimrich flickered the beam of light and the fox cried again and went. Heimrich climbed broad wooden stairs to the porch which—it appeared—went around at least three sides of the old house. It was, by its outline against the summer sky, a house of many, and for the most part inexplicable, excrescences. The boards of the porch floor creaked under Heimrich’s weight. All that was needed, Heimrich thought as he put the key in the front door lock, was an owl to hoot at him. There was a gnarled and ancient apple tree near the porch for an owl to perch in.

  Heimrich stepped in. His flashlight showed him a wide hall, with a strip carpet down its center. There were doors on either side; two on each side. All were closed. The idea that anyone had lived alone amid these reaching spaces stuck in the mind. Heimrich looked for, and found, a light switch, and overhead lights went on. They did not, distant in the ceiling, less bright than they might have been, add noticeably to the cheer. They did reveal a staircase at the end of the hall and, under it, another door. That door would open, probably, to basement stairs.

  Heimrich picked the nearest door on his right and moved toward it, the floor boards creaking, as those on the porch had creaked. Presumably the door would creak too. He tried it, and it opened inward without noise. Light from the hall shone in a path across a wide carpeted room; a room furnished—and most comfortably furnished—as a living room. There was a fireplace in the opposite wall, and the path of light found it. On either side of the light path the shadows were heavy.

  Heimrich stepped into the room and felt inside the door for a light switch. But then there was movement in the dark shadows at his left—movement without sound; movement perceptible only as a shifting of the darkness. Heimrich changed the flash to his left hand, reached toward the revolver in his shoulder holster—and threw up his left arm to protect himself from a darting something which leaped from the shadows. He was quick, but not quite quick enough.

  The thrown object struck his uplifted hand, and the flashlight in it. It seemed, in that instant, to shatter the hand. The flashlight went out and fell to the floor, with a thud on the carpet. At almost the same instant there was a second thud, and then, still in the darkness, the larger movement of someone retreating into shadow.

  Heimrich shook one numbed and battered hand, and had his revolver out with the other. He started toward the movement, his eyes accustoming themselves to the semi-darkness. But whoever fled down the long room had been longer in the dark, his eyes were better in it. Heimrich held his gun ready, had no thought of using it. But he said, loudly, “Stop or get shot!”

  Whoever had waited for him in the room did not stop. Heimrich could make him out, now—a tall figure, almost certainly the figure of a man. He wore a hat; his clothing apparently was dark. He showed Heimrich only his back and now he was running. He needed only a few running steps. Then he disappeared through an open door. Behind him the door slammed to, the sound reverberating in the house. Heimrich reached the door to hear the lock click.

  Heimrich started to kick the door open and stopped himself. Beyond there would be another room, with an open window—or with an open door. Outside there would be trees and darkness, and all the world to run in and Heimrich had, now, no light. He had been, Heimrich decided, a fool to come alone. But he had not come with the idea of chasing anyone; it was early days for that. He put his revolver back in its holster, and returned the way he had come, until he was at the door by which he had entered the room. He absently shook his bruised hand; moved the fingers of the hand. They moved, which was something. He found the light switch and flicked it.

  Lights went on in a ceiling fixture. The room was large, held comfortable chairs, and tables and lamps. Phipps had provided abundantly for his ease. In the lighted room, Heimrich was an excellent target, but he did not reach for his gun. He had been an excellent target earlier, and nobody had shot at him. Someone had thrown something, and been lucky. Heimrich looked to the carpet.

  Someone had thrown a pair of fire tongs. They lay on the carpet. They had opened as they were thr
own, which had made it more probable they would hit something. Well, they had. Heimrich examined his hand, and decided nothing was broken. An abrasion was bleeding slightly. He bent and picked up the flashlight. The tongs had hit the glass and broken it, and broken the bulb. He put the flash in his pocket.

  What the intruder had been about was evident at once. At the end of the room toward the front of the house there was a desk, and the man had been at the desk. Papers—obviously dragged from drawers, examined, tossed down again—littered the top of the desk. In the wall above the desk there was a safe, which had been concealed, conventionally behind a picture. The picture was on the floor. The safe, which was small, was open. It was empty. It had not been forced.

  Well, people did note down safe combinations and leave the notations to be found—in desks, often enough. Heimrich would have thought better of Orville Phipps; it appeared he would have been wrong. Heimrich went to the desk. He did not look at the papers—that would come later, and probably lead nowhere. He pulled wide, one after another, the four partly opened, almost empty, drawers.

  On the back panel of one of the drawers—the bottom right drawer—he found what he had expected. Mr. Phipps had noted the combination of his wall safe there, using indelible pencil. It was foolish of him, but now it would not matter to him.

  It was all very obvious. Someone intent on burglary had considered that heaven had provided opportunity—a man dead, his house empty, whatever was in it to be had for the taking. There would have been no trouble getting in—the big house was isolated, old doors or old windows are easily forced.

  The burglar, busy at his ransacking, had not expected to hear a car coming up the driveway, or hear feet on the creaking boards of the porch. Hearing these he had, probably, sworn under his breath, sought darkness and awaited developments. When it proved necessary, he had acted quickly. He had got away. If there had been articles of value in the safe—banknotes, for example—he had taken them with him. He was now, no doubt, working his way through woods, perhaps along old cart-roads, across fields, to wherever he had left his car, presuming he had a car.