Death and the Gentle Bull Read online

  “What it comes to,” he said, “is, I’d like to see the herd sold off.” He said that to all of them; to Evelyn he said, “That all right, Evvie?” He waited.

  “It’s fine, Wade,” she said, and smiled up at him. She felt a special lightness. “I think you’re right.” He nodded, just perceptibly, and now an unspoken sharing was between them, as it had been between Bonita and Harvey.

  “It’s as much up to you as to me,” Wade said, and now to his brother—and to Bonny. “Maybe you want to step in, Harv?”

  “God forbid,” Harvey said, and Bonita, smiling a little, shook her head. “So very far from Madison,” she said. “So many miles from Fifty-Second Street.”

  “Also,” Harvey said, “it’s not my line. Of course, I suppose if Alec stayed on—”

  Ballard was sitting on a straight chair. He looked at Harvey, then at Wade. It was impossible, Evelyn thought, to tell from his face what he thought. He merely waited.

  “The catch is this,” Wade said. “There wouldn’t be a great deal of money—not a great deal coming out. That’s right, Alec?”

  “Not if you want to keep it going,” Alec Ballard said. “Going as it should. Were—we were—still expanding. What came out had to go back, mostly. Your mother wanted it that way, Mr. Landcraft. It’s the only way if you want—well, the kind of herd she wanted. I don’t say she didn’t get in the black this last year, but—”

  “A few thousand,” Wade said. “Over and above everything—Alec’s salary, mine—the whole works. She’d have used it for more stock. That would have made sense but—she was interested. I’m not. You’re not, Harv. Evvie and I—well, we’d rather do something else. So—” He looked at his brother, at his brother’s wife. “We don’t have to decide today,” he said. “But it’ll make a difference to several people—Alec here, for example.”

  “We may as well decide today,” Harvey said. “I’m with you on selling. Sooner the better since—” He did not finish, although he was given time.

  It could not, unless they were very lucky, be very soon, Wade said, and Ballard nodded agreement. The chance of getting a single buyer, for farm and herd, was remote. They might sell the big bull by private treaty, for the rest—Wade then seemed to hand it to Ballard. They already had talked about it, Evelyn thought.

  “Hold a dispersion in the spring,” Ballard said. “No use trying sooner—have to get word around, advertise it. We’ll get a crowd and if they feel like buying—” He ended with a shrug. “May have to put Prince in, at that,” he said. He shook his head. “That’ll be something,” he said. “International grand champion to the highest bidder. Nothing like that, before.”

  “How much would we be likely to get?” Harvey asked.

  Ballard shook his head again. He said he couldn’t guess. Yesterday—

  “Yesterday we didn’t want to disperse,” he said. “And—yesterday Prince wasn’t a mean bull. About a third of the animals weren’t offspring of a mean bull. What that’ll do to—”

  “I still don’t think he’s a mean one,” Wade said.

  “Sure,” Ballard said. “Something hurt him, he kicked out without thinking, and spilled this stuff—hates the smell of the stuff, like all of ’em—gets to lurching around. Don’t prove he’s mean, or’s bred meanness into his get. But—who’s going to work it out that way? Specially when they can get bargains?”

  “He’s right, Harv,” Wade said. “We won’t get what we ought to. But—we’ll get a good deal.”

  “That’s right,” Ballard said. “And, if you don’t want to run the place, or hire somebody to run it—and it seems you don’t—what choice’ve you got? What—” He stopped, because a maid had appeared at the library door. She carried a large envelope. She said, to Wade, “I’m sorry, Mr. Landcraft, but a man left this and said you’d want to see it as soon as possible.” Wade held out a hand, she crossed the room and gave him the envelope, which was large, and heavy, to which was clipped a note.

  “I don’t know what we’ll do with these, under the circumstances,” the note said. “Maybe they’ll want to call the whole thing off, maybe they’ll rush it through. Anyway, we said you could see them first. We’d like to pick them up tomorrow.” The note was signed with initials, quite indecipherable. The envelope held glossy photographs of people and of black cattle, Life magazine’s record of the pre-sale party of Deep Meadow Farm. Abstractedly, Wade looked for a place to put the envelope, ended by handing it to Evelyn.

  “There ought,” Harvey said, “to be a way to get word around about what did happen—keep people from thinking we’ve got a mean bull to sell.”

  They would, Wade said, naturally try to do that. But—he spread his hands slightly. They couldn’t prove anything. People would believe what they wanted to—and what paid them best. Perhaps they would believe the bull had merely become excited, but why would they admit the belief, if a belief in his meanness kept prices down?

  Harvey Landcraft supposed he was right. They had a scratched bull, a battered can which had contained an antiseptic solution. “Maybe,” he said, “we ought to take pictures of the can and the scratch.” This was not, his tone said, to be taken seriously; it was not so taken. But then Ballard said, “Don’t know about the can, Mr. Landcraft. Smitty probably threw it away, unless—” He stopped.

  “You know,” he said, “I gave it to that policeman—the captain—to look at. I don’t remember as he gave it back.”

  It was an odd remark to cause a sudden stillness in the room. The stillness was penetrating, like a cold wind; it was heavy, like a weight.

  Wade said nothing in the stillness, but he reached for the photographs Evelyn still held. Then the silence was broken—by the rattle of the envelope being opened, then by the soft hissing of smooth photographs being slid one over another. And then that faint sound stopped. Wade looked at the photograph he held, looked at it carefully, held it to the light, looked at the back. Then, without speaking, he handed it to Evelyn.

  It was an excellent photograph of Deep Meadow Prince, taken in profile. As Evelyn held the picture up to look at it, the bull faced her right hand. She looked up from the picture at Wade Landcraft.

  “Turn it over,” he said.

  She turned it over. Lightly in pencil she read: “20 min before accident.”

  “Show the others,” Wade said, and she handed the picture to Harvey Landcraft, who was nearest. After a moment he handed it to his wife.

  “I don’t—” Bonita said, and stopped, and then said, very slowly, “There isn’t any, is there?”

  It was a very clear picture; it had been taken, not in the stall, where the bull stood deep in straw, but on the smooth floor. It was a very clear picture of all the bull, including his right hind leg—a leg glossy and unscratched, like the rest of him.

  VI

  Anyway, Heimrich was told in the Putnam County Court House in Carmel—anyway, he had come up with a new one. “Biggest blunt object I ever heard of,” the district attorney said. “A ton or so of bull, used as a murder weapon.” He shook his head. “I’d just as soon not take that one to court,” he said. “Particularly in dairy country.”

  He was looking ahead, Heimrich told him—he was looking a long way ahead. As to the novelty of the method—“if it was the method, naturally”—novelty was always relative. Murder, planned, long premeditated, had been committed with motor cars as weapons; he knew of a case in which a man—a smallish man, to be sure—had been fatally merged with hay in a baling machine. As for animals—wild dogs had been used in earlier days; lions were, historically, well regarded as executioners by the Romans. For all Heimrich knew, bulls might have been used often before.

  “Bulls with horns,” the district attorney said. “Maybe.” He added that Heimrich did not, so far as he could see, have much to go on. He added, to that, that it was, of course, up to Heimrich.

  “But this tin can,” he said. “The fact—if it is a fact—that the animal was scratched after Mrs. Landcraft was dead. And what
good’s the can? Your prints on it. Ballard’s prints on it. He handed it to you, so his prints have to be. You took it, so yours have to be. And there’s nothing else but smudges. Nothing to show Mrs. Landcraft didn’t handle it.

  “I know,” Heimrich said.

  “Suppose you’re an expert on wounds,” the district attorney said, and Heimrich said, “Oh, I am in a way, naturally. Crowley agrees, too.”

  “Suppose you are,” the attorney said. “Suppose you both are. You see this scratch as the animal walks by, Crowley guesses twelve hours, you guess less. By now—by tomorrow, anyway—the best vet in the world couldn’t put it within twenty-four hours. Not and make it stick. You realize that?”

  “Oh yes,” Heimrich said. “I realize that.”

  “You say somebody—I suppose you think Ballard—”

  “Not necessarily,” Heimrich said. “Anybody on the farm would have had the opportunity—the Landcrafts, the girls. The herdsman. Anyone who had been at the party and—hung around.”

  “Whoever it was,” the attorney said. “You think someone scratched the animal, after the woman’s death, to provide an explanation if somebody got—well, got nosy. Keeping a jump ahead, providing for contingencies.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I do think that.”

  “But,” the attorney said, “can’t prove it.”

  “No. Not now.”

  “Or anything else.”

  “Not yet.”

  “What you’re up against is the how,” the attorney said. “Suppose I want to make a bull kill somebody I want killed. But suppose the bull is gentle—used to people, like this Deep Meadow Prince. The kind of bull you lead around by halter; the kind of bull likes to have his nose rubbed. You say he does?”

  “Seemed to,” Heimrich said. “Likes his forehead scratched, too.”

  “All right,” the attorney said. “This—this milk-toast. How do I get him to kill this somebody I want killed? Somebody the bull knows, remember; somebody he’s used to; somebody who’s used to bulls.”

  “I don’t know,” Heimrich said. He added, “Yet.”

  “It’s up to you,” the attorney said. “I’d drop it, myself.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “I don’t think so, counsellor. The woman was murdered. The bull was used. We can’t drop it.”

  “All right,” the attorney said. “I don’t see where you even get started, but all right.”

  “Oh,” Heimrich said, “I start around the edges, naturally.”

  He went to the office of the medical examiner. There were two points, one simple. Yes, obviously, Mrs. Landcraft could have been knocked unconscious and put into the stall with the bull. The doctor had seen nothing to indicate this; nothing to render it impossible. “She was pretty much a mass of contusions when I saw her. The bull might have made any of them. So, I suppose, might a club. Nothing to prove it, though. She’d been banged against the wall and the wooden rails, so wood splinters wouldn’t help. Even if there were any. I didn’t see any, as I recall.”

  Heimrich nodded.

  “One other thing,” he said. “Earlier—when I was here first—you suggested she might have been treating the bull. Putting something on him. I asked what made you think of that, and you couldn’t put a finger on it. I wonder if you can now?”

  The physician shrugged. He said Heimrich had appeared to want an explanation. He’d offered one that seemed reasonable. That was the only “finger” he could put on it.

  “When you examined the body,” Heimrich said. “Was there an odor on the clothing? An odor of, say—”

  But the physician snapped his fingers. He said, “There you’ve got the subconscious.” He said, “Sure I did—odor of antiseptic. Didn’t think of it afterward, or didn’t know I thought of it. But—you’ve hit on it, captain. I remembered subconsciously and came up with this theory. Things like that do make you wonder if—”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Well, that clears that up. Somebody else noticed the odor, you see. Makes it all very neat, naturally.”

  “Listen,” the doctor said, “you think it wasn’t?”

  “Oh,” Heimrich said. “Neat enough, in its way. As murder goes.”

  The doctor’s eyebrows climbed, precariously.

  “Well, thanks, doctor,” Heimrich said. He went.

  He went to a telephone. He called the office of two attorneys, both in Brewster, either of whom might, the district attorney had thought, have drawn up a will for Mrs. Margaret Landcraft. The first had not. The second evidently had, although he was careful. How did he know Heimrich was Heimrich? What passed between attorney and client was—

  Heimrich sighed. He asked the attorney to stand by. He telephoned the district attorney. The district attorney telephoned the attorney in Brewster. Heimrich telephoned the attorney in Brewster.

  “Yes,” the Brewster man said, “I did, captain. Very simple will. Leaves everything to her sons, share and share alike.”

  “Thanks, counsellor,” Heimrich said.

  He went out of the court house then, and stood for some minutes on a sidewalk, looking across a pretty lake, which sparkled in the lowering sun. It was still very warm, as September often is. There was haze in the air; the still green trees—except for the ashes, already spitting their brown leaves to earth—were motionless. It was five minutes before Trooper Crowley picked the captain up.

  Crowley had been to the Brewster barracks. He was in civilian clothes—in gray slacks and a tweed jacket. He looked not at all like a policeman; he looked like a summer resident who had, inexplicably, tarried beyond Labor Day. The car he drove was a sedan, unidentified as a police car. When you nibbled around the edges, there was no point in advertising it to anyone who might see a police car parked—parked, for example, in the driveway of a country veterinarian’s house and office; parked beyond a sign which read: “James Nugent, D.V.S.”

  Dr. Nugent was in his office. He was a gray-haired man of medium size, with the face of a countryman. He wore a gray suit. He smoked a pipe. He said, “Hello, Ray. Sick cow?”

  “Not this time, doc,” Ray said. “This is Captain Heimrich.”

  Dr. Nugent stood part way up and extended a hand and sat down again. He said, “Captain, eh? Same outfit?”

  “Same outfit,” Heimrich said.

  “On business, then?”

  “Well,” Heimrich said, “you can call it that, doctor. You take care of the animals at Deep Meadow Farm?”

  Dr. Nugent removed his pipe. He looked thoughtfully at Heimrich.

  “So that’s the way the wind blows,” he said. “Yes, I do, captain. Very fine stock. Very great bull.”

  “And from all I hear,” Heimrich said, “usually a very gentle bull.”

  “Yes,” Nugent said. “They’re mostly very gentle, beef bulls. Not much meanness in them. Dairy bulls, that’s another matter. Them you can’t trust.”

  “And this one—Deep Meadow Prince—was healthy?

  ”Nugent raised eyebrows. He nodded his gray head briskly. He waited.

  “I’m trying to find out how this happened,” Heimrich said. “Why it happened. It occurred to me that—well, people get nervous and irritable when they’re not well. Sometimes they do. It occurred to me—perhaps cattle do too. Might make them spiteful.”

  Dr. Nugent nodded.

  “Might,” he said. “Does, sometimes.”

  “But this bull was healthy?”

  “I haven’t looked at him for a month or so,” Dr. Nugent said. “In fine shape then. Ballard thought he was getting too heavy, wanted to fine him down a bit. Some breeders like them heavy as they’ll get, others don’t. Ballard wanted me to check before he put him—well, on a reducing diet. I never saw a healthier animal.”

  “A month or so ago, you say?”

  Nugent nodded.

  “But,” he said, “if there’d been any trouble, I’d have seen him since. Ballard’s a good man; knows enough to call the doctor. And they didn’t call in another veterinarian. I’d have—
heard.”

  “The bull seems to have got scratched, somehow.”

  “Does he? Much of a scratch?”

  It wasn’t, Heimrich said. He described it.

  “Probably snagged on a barb,” Nugent said. “Ballard treated it?”

  “Somebody did.”

  “Nothing to worry about then,” Nugent said. “Happens often enough. What gets them is pneumonia. Or something the matter with their insides.” He nodded, as if to himself. “They die easy then, for such big animals,” he said. “Don’t seem to make much of a fight. A dog, now—he’ll fight hard. A cow, no. Sometimes you’d think they just said, ‘The hell with it.’” He stopped. “Not what you want,” he said. “I get to talking. Old age, probably.”

  Dr. Nugent was, Heimrich judged, in his middle fifties. He looked very healthy to Heimrich.

  “Being on this diet,” Heimrich said. “Might that make him edgy? It does people.” He paused. “I’ve heard,” he said.

  “Shouldn’t think so,” Dr. Nugent said. “You’ve seen him?”

  Heimrich nodded.

  “Strike you as upset? Edgy?”

  Deep Meadow Prince had struck Heimrich as exceedingly placid. Heimrich said so.

  “Then I don’t know,” Nugent said. “Dieting oughtn’t to have bothered him. After all, he hasn’t lost more than a couple of hundred pounds. Perhaps not even that.”

  Dr. Nugent shook his head. He relighted his pipe.

  “Why did he turn on Mrs. Landcraft, doctor?”

  “Probably because she hurt him,” Nugent said. “Put something on this scratch. Wasn’t careful.”

  It was the familiar story. Heimrich shook his head to it. He said he doubted it.

  “I’m afraid,” Nugent said, emitting smoke, “that it’s all I’ve got to offer, captain. You want more?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I do want more. A gentle animal. All at once he—hates. Kills. A person he knew. That is—I don’t suppose he had a grudge against Mrs. Landcraft?”