First Come, First Kill Page 7

  All very vague, very inconclusive. And, quite possibly, all without bearing. Whatever menace to somebody Supreme Court Justice T. Lyman Mitchell had been six years ago, it was unlikely that Old Tom had still been yesterday.

  Sergeant Forniss was somewhat, but only somewhat, encouraged to discover, as he neared the center of the city, that a black Volkswagen was almost certainly following him. That might mean he was on to something. On the other hand, it might merely mean that the organization in which Louis Silvo was prominent wanted to see what a strange cop was up to. A trespasser on enclosed premises, the organization might well consider Sergeant Charles Forniss.

  Forniss drove through the business district and out on the other side of town, toward a residential district known as Grandview. Mrs Wade Thompson, formerly Mrs T. Lyman Mitchell, lived in Grandview. Newspaper clippings had told Forniss of the new marital status; the telephone directory had provided an address.

  Young Michael had gone to Cub League practice, wearing a red cap. Colonel had offered to go along; Colonel had been rejected. He had moped for a time on the terrace; then he had disappeared. For such a very large dog, he was adept at disappearing.

  Susan Heimrich checked with Martha Collins at the shop. Mrs Wentworth, who had planned to bring a client around at eleven, would not bring the client around at eleven. The client had decided to play golf instead. If Mrs Wentworth could catch the client, she would try to make it around three. Otherwise, Martha Collins had nothing to report. If it continued to get warmer, should she turn the air conditioning on, and the hell with the water bill? She should turn it on whenever she chose.

  Susan did around the house those things which were to be done. She thought, a little morosely, that the husbands of other women did not work on Saturday. She thought that maybe she ought to take up golf. Or resume tennis. She thought, we ought to join in more, maybe; we ought to join Carabec, maybe. Or the Van Brunt C.C., which was after all nearer. On the other hand, she could dust the phlox which, as usual, was getting something. She dusted phlox, and felt lonely. Young Michael chased baseballs; Merton chased murderers; Colonel (presumably) sought a place for suicide. She dusted phlox with sulphur, which was probably the last thing phlox wanted.

  At a little after ten, she heard the bang of the mailbox closing. He was early today; he was usually early on Saturdays. He was early on Saturdays primarily because nothing important ever came on Saturdays. Susan finished dusting, put the duster back in the garage—and thought that a country garage is really a mess come June—and went down to get the unimportant things the rural carrier had put in the box. As she went down the drive, she avoided walking across the section of new gravel.

  The box contained advertising matter from the Cross Roads Market, which was having a special on canned goods; an announcement of a Saks-Fifth Avenue clearance of spring dresses; an appeal from the Visiting Nurse Association (to which Susan had contributed two weeks before); a communication from the Society of Interior Decorators and a postcard. The postcard had a picture of Trafalgar Square on it. Who in London—?

  ‘All I ever dreamed it would be,’ unknown writing on the back of Trafalgar Square told her. ‘Staying at the Savoy.’ It was signed ‘Marian’ and, for an instant, Susan could not think who ‘Marian’ might be. She thought, for that instant, that this was some hotel advertising man’s dream, and then the name clicked.

  How nice of Marian Perrin, Susan thought, walking back up the drive. Thinking of us when she is so far away. More, really, than when she is only next door. Of course, she is probably a postcard sender. So many people are; being in the vicinity of postcards brings something out in them, including the names and addresses of the merest acquaintances. But, all the same, how nice of Marian Perrin. Poor Oliver, Susan thought. We ought to have him over for cocktails or something. I should have been more cordial—or cordial at all—when he came yesterday to use the telephone, but really to have somebody to talk to. And I wrap our little world around us.

  Speaking of worlds, the S.I.D. spoke of a larger one—of a projected tour around the world, at special prices, with special attention to the fabrics and objets of the Orient. Would Mrs Susan Faye—? I must, Susan thought, report my change of name. It’s been a year, now. More than a year. I wish policemen had Saturdays off like other men.

  Colonel returned. He returned, for him, rapidly, and across the stone fence which separated her land from that of the Perrins. After he had come over the fence he stopped and turned around and looked back. Then he came toward her, but now and then looked back over his shoulder. There was, Susan thought, guilt in his attitude. He looked like a dog who had been digging in somebody’s flower bed, and had been spoken to.

  ‘You’ve been up to something,’ Susan told the big dog. ‘You’re probably a bad dog.’

  Colonel collapsed on the terrace, which was his way of lying down on the terrace. He looked up at Susan out of the tops of his sad eyes, and put his nose on the flags.

  ‘A very bad dog, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Susan told him.

  Colonel sighed. Inside the house the telephone rang.

  Mrs Upton was sure she didn’t know why Enid Mitchell had so suddenly changed her mind. Mrs Upton owned the Old Stone Inn. The evening before she had been at the reception desk.

  ‘She registered,’ Mrs Upton said. ‘As I told your man, captain.’

  ‘I know,’ Heimrich said. ‘We have to go over and over things, you know.’

  ‘She registered and Bobbie carried her bag up. Room Twelve-A, I put her in. It’s one of the nicest rooms. You know that, M. L.’

  For some time Heimrich had lived at the Old Stone Inn, finding its location convenient.

  ‘A corner room,’ Mrs Upton said. ‘One of the nicest we have. So it couldn’t have been that. Not reasonably, and she seemed like a nice girl. The poor old man was her father, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ Heimrich said. ‘Went up, stayed about ten minutes—’

  ‘Perhaps it was fifteen.’

  ‘Stayed about fifteen minutes. Came down, with her bags, and said she had changed her mind and would pay whatever was right.’

  ‘I didn’t charge her. What was there to charge her for? The poor thing. She knew about her father then?’

  ‘Yes,’ Heimrich said. ‘While she was in the room, she didn’t telephone anybody? Didn’t make any calls?’

  ‘No. I told the trooper that.’

  ‘And, so far as you know, nobody went up to her room?’

  ‘No. And the stairs are right in front of me. See?’

  She was again behind the reception desk, and it was quite early on Saturday morning. Heimrich did not need to turn to look at the stairs. He had been up and down them often enough.

  ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if I could go up and look at the room? Or is there somebody in it?’

  The room was unoccupied. Of course he could look at it. He ought to know that. But it couldn’t be anything about the room. The girl herself had said that the room was fine.

  The room was certainly a pleasant room. It was low-ceilinged, as were all rooms in the Old Stone Inn—as are rooms in most houses as old as the inn. There was a big double bed, rather high off the floor; there was an easy chair and a desk with glassed-in bookshelves above it, and there was a rocking chair. A very comfortable room, not self-consciously quaint, certainly not modern. (But the adjoining bathroom was entirely modern.) There seemed to be nothing in the room to make a young woman suddenly change her mind about staying in it.

  It was a corner room, as Mrs Upton had promised. On one side there was a window through which one could look down on a duck pond. There were ducks in the pond, which was pleasant. There were little tables set on the lawn around the pond, and at the little tables guests could, on Saturday and Sunday evenings, sit and be served drinks. From Monday through Friday guests could still sit at the little tables. If they wanted to drink at them, they could carry their drinks from the bar. There was, at this morning hour, nobody at any of the little tables.r />
  Had there been the evening before? Ushered into a hotel room, one checks the accommodations, has a look at the bath. Then one looks out windows. Had Enid Mitchell looked through this window, down on the tables around the duck pond, and seen something—somebody—to alarm her?

  For some seconds, Merton Heimrich watched the paddling ducks. The human animal is filled with strange antipathies, strange fears. Heimrich could not remember ever having heard of a duck-phobia.

  He crossed the room diagonally and looked through the other window. This one looked out on the inn’s parking lot. There were several cars in it, including Heimrich’s own. Had Enid Mitchell, through this window, seen something—somebody—to alarm her, make her decide, abruptly, to leave the place? Or, conceivably, had someone driven into the lot, looked up at the window, and beckoned her? Somebody who knew which room she would be in? Somebody who had asked?

  That did not seem probable. Mrs Upton would have told him. However—

  Heimrich went back downstairs. Nobody had asked which room had been assigned to Enid Mitchell. Did M. L. think she wouldn’t have mentioned it? Didn’t M. L. know her better than that?

  ‘Now Hortense,’ Heimrich said. ‘You know I’ve got to ask silly questions. After Miss Mitchell checked in, before she checked out, were there any new guests?’

  ‘I’d have mentioned it,’ Hortense Upton said, still a little stiff about it. Heimrich said, ‘Sure, Hortense,’ and smiled at her.

  ‘People came in to dinner,’ she said. ‘The hours some people eat nowadays. Some of the new people, especially. Sometimes it seems to me I’m running a night club.’

  ‘Locals?’

  ‘The Bentleys with another couple. Been to a cocktail party, I’d guess.’

  ‘Came in through the lounge?’

  From the parking lot, it is most easy to enter the Old Stone Inn by way of the barroom, which had only recently—and with no other change—become the ‘Stone Lounge, Cocktails.’ Locals use that ingress; strangers walk around the building to the main entrance. Sheep are thus divided from goats.

  Mrs Upton supposed the Bentleys had come through the bar. They usually did.

  ‘M. L.,’ she said, ‘I don’t say this is the Waldorf. But people come and go, and I don’t keep tabs. Nobody went upstairs. I’m pretty sure of that. Who else—there was a couple off the road came in about the time the Bentleys did. I think it was about then. Asked if they were too late for dinner and I said something about they had just made it. Because they could see the Bentleys going in.’

  Fodder for the sheep is fodder for the goats. A public house may not openly discriminate.

  Heimrich knew the Bentleys slightly. There was nothing about them, so far as he could see, to frighten Enid Mitchell, if she had seen them getting out of their car, walking toward the bar entrance. The couple from the road? There was no telling about that, and probably never would be. They had gone back to the road, probably to continue the most innocent of weekends.

  Heimrich went into the bar, which was not yet open for business, which did not open until noon. Harold, the barman, was sitting at a table, having a cup of coffee, reading the New York Times. He said, ‘Don’t open until—’ and looked up and said, ‘morning, captain. Didn’t see it was you.’

  Harold had been only moderately busy during the brief time Enid Mitchell had been in the hotel. On Friday evenings there wasn’t much business after dinner. He remembered the Bentleys and another couple had come through. Bentley had waved and Harold had flicked a salute, but the four had not stopped. ‘Been on a party, looked like,’ Harold said. They had, however, sent in from the dining room for one round.

  ‘Nobody else from the lot?’

  Harold considered. Then he nodded his head.

  ‘Guess it was about then,’ he said. ‘Man staying here. Name of—’ He looked into the distance; finally shook his head. ‘Had a drink and signed for it,’ he said. ‘Pearson, maybe. Perkins. Something like that. Had Room Eight. Wore glasses.’

  People do not look at people, Heimrich thought. They look at the glasses people wear, at the clothes they wear. Which makes valueless nine out of ten identifications, however positive. Which does not advance the work of policemen. Heimrich declined a cup of coffee, which Harold offered to get him. He went back to Hortense Upton.

  The man in Room 8, but no longer in Room 8, had been named Peters—William Peters. He had checked in Thursday morning, checked out late Friday evening. ‘Some time after Miss Mitchell left,’ she said. ‘Half an hour, anyway. You didn’t say you wanted to know—’

  ‘Now Hortense,’ Heimrich said. ‘Of course I didn’t.’

  There had been nothing special about William Peters. He had been just a middling sort of man, wearing glasses.

  ‘Looking for a house to rent for the rest of the summer,’ Hortense Upton said. ‘I told him it was pretty late for that, and he said if he found the kind of place he wanted, he might buy it and I said that probably would make a difference. I told him Mrs Ingle was as good as anybody.’

  Mrs Ingle was real estate and insurance. She was, Heimrich knew, as good as anybody.

  ‘Asked about the help situation,’ Mrs Upton said. ‘Outside help, he was thinking of mostly. Said he was, anyway. I told him it was hard to come by, and it is. You know that, M. L. People out of work, they say, and you try to get somebody to weed a garden—’

  Heimrich knew. Heimrich listened. Heimrich said that, now with kids about to get out of school, it might be easier. Mrs Upton said, ‘Hmm-m,’ in extreme doubt.

  She did not know whether Mr Peters had found anything. He hadn’t said he had, and hadn’t said he hadn’t. Mr Peters had had dark eyes, as nearly as one could tell behind the glasses. He had had dark hair, as near black as made no difference.

  Merton Heimrich walked north on Main Street for a block and a half. Mrs Ingle wore tweeds, although it was warm weather for tweeds. She did not know anything about any William Peters.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Grandview residential section of the city of Tonaganda was older than the Hillsdale section—the houses were older, and closer together. The Wade Thompson house was on a corner lot and it was a big house; a big house with a screened porch. Sergeant Forniss parked in front of it, and went up a cement walk, and up three steps to the porch level. The maid who answered the door wore a black uniform and said that Mrs Thompson wouldn’t be wanting any. Whatever it was, Mrs Thompson wouldn’t be wanting it. Today of all days. With misapprehension corrected the maid said, ‘Oh,’ and that she would see.

  On the basis that she looked to be in her late thirties or early forties, Sergeant Forniss guessed Ruth Thompson to be about fifty. She was slender in a black dress; she had dark hair with a single, dramatic, streak of white running back from the right temple. She was an extremely good-looking woman, Forniss thought, and that she held her chin higher than she needed to, which was more of a give-away than it needed to be. She had not, he was quite sure, been crying.

  She had a deep, almost husky voice. It was a terrible thing about poor Lyman; it was an unbelievable thing. Of course she would answer anything she could answer. But it had been so long. So many things had happened.

  ‘Another life Ruth Thompson said. ‘A life so long ago, sergeant.’

  Forniss, sitting in a big living room, from which Venetian blinds shut out the already hot morning sun, realized that. And he was sure that Mrs Thompson, who had been Mrs Mitchell, would in turn realize that there was a lot of routine to be gone through; a lot of past to be dug into.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Anything I can do. Can I have Sally get you something? Ice tea? If it weren’t so early—’

  She was very kind, Forniss told her; very considerate. He realized how difficult this must be for her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is, of course. But on the other hand—it was a long time ago that Lyman went away, sergeant. Went away—took what we had with him. I have another life now, you know.’

  That, too, Serg
eant Forniss realized. He was sorry to be the one through whom the past intruded on this new life of Mrs Thompson’s. He did not suppose it would intrude deeply but—

  ‘When somebody’s killed,’ he said, ‘we have to find out all we can about him. Do you know why Justice Mitchell disappeared, Mrs Thompson? We don’t know there’s any connection with what’s happened. But—’

  She was shaking her head. She said, ‘I never knew. It was—’ She paused for a moment. ‘I never knew,’ she repeated.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Forniss said, ‘a man in his position gets involved with—with a variety of people. There’s a rumor—only a rumor—that the justice was mixed up with racketeers. That—well, in short, that he disappeared because he was threatened.’

  She shook her head again. She said she knew about the rumors; that she had never believed the rumors.

  ‘He was an upright man,’ she said. ‘In—especially in things which touched on his profession. He would never—’

  But she did not finish. Forniss waited. After a while she said, ‘No, I’m sure it was nothing like that. He went quite—he went because he wanted to. I’m sure of that.’

  Forniss continued to wait.

  ‘What we had,’ she said, ‘what we had at the start—that had dwindled away. Sometimes it does, you know. For no special reason. Just—after a time there isn’t anything left. I—’ She paused again.