Show Red for Danger Page 8

  And—it had been easier to kill than to see the hideous results of killing, to see beauty made grotesque. The one might be thought of as punishment, the other was—sacrilege, an offense against the idea of beauty, the conception of beauty.

  So—go first and put the portrait on an easel, restore, in semblance, beauty destroyed. Look long at it, try to remember it; replace with it what sprawled on a tile floor; fill the mind with it. (A mind, of course, no longer rational, no longer sane.) Go back, then, and try—the mind surging, not longer really a mind—to repair, to make amends. Move the slender, unresponsive body. (And remember in what manner, once, it had responded? Susan shivered, drank from her glass.) Give it the decency of comeliness; administer the last rites to beauty.

  Was it all too—fantastic? Too macabre, too Gothic? Was that what was wrong with it?

  She considered, lying back, looking up at the slowly hazing sky. (Tomorrow probably would be muggy; an enervating day.) Collins had been a painter; a man who sought to create beauty. A man, who, more intensely than most, saw beauty and, conversely, ugliness; more intensely than most, responded to both. Colors were clearer to him than to most. (As, Susan thought, they are to me; it is neither virtue nor fault, but a way of being.) Colors and forms in —in everything. It was conceivable that, in such a man, the knowledge that he had destroyed beauty might override almost anything else. Might, indeed, become, in a reeling mind, a shield against the less bearable knowledge that he had destroyed life. Repair the one; absolve one’s self from the other. Perhaps.

  Not, then, that the conception was too fantastic. Assume that— assume that it was not the fantasy which snagged the mind. Then, something in the physical aspect, something quite matter of fact? The weapon in the wrong place? Some mechanical impossibility? No, Susan thought. Merton—how could I ever have thought of calling him Ricky? Like a band leader?—would have seen anything like that. I am no match for him in things like that. So?

  So, you’re not up to it, Susan Faye. Face it, you’ve gone intuitional. Probably it is even simpler—probably, because Brian Collins was a painter and a pretty good one and you have a thing about painting, you don’t want it to be the way it looks. Probably it is as simple, and as silly, as that.

  On the terrace beside her Colonel made a sad dog sound.

  “All right,” Susan said to the great dog. “You want me to settle down, so you can settle down. Come on, then.”

  She got up quickly. Colonel groaned and ambled to his feet. They went into the house. Colonel went to the room in which the small god should be, sniffed, faced Susan and wept.

  “A goof of a dog,” Susan said. “Come on, then.”

  He followed her into her bedroom. He watched her undress. When she was stretched on the bed he sighed deeply and thudded to the floor beside the bed. Almost at once he began to snore.

  Susan slept fitfully and dreamed much. She dreamed in color, which was not unusual for her, since to a considerable degree she lived in color. Most of her dreams were red. Once she wakened herself by speaking and, which is uncommon, heard her own words. She had said, quite distinctly, “Bad color.”

  Colonel snorted.

  “Go to sleep,” Susan Faye said, and had another try at it herself. And now, for some reason, she slept more deeply and dreams did not waken her. It was as if she had taken a sedative which had quietened her mind.

  Sergeant Forniss was already at breakfast when Heimrich got down to the Inn’s dining room at a little after eight. He was alone in the big room; eight o’clock Sunday morning is not a favorite time for breakfast. Forniss was eating bacon and scrambled eggs. Heimrich pulled out a chair and sat down opposite him.

  “Dermal nitrate’s positive,” Forniss said, in a tone he might have used to report that his eggs were overcooked. Heimrich said, “Oh,” and spread a napkin. “On both hands,” Forniss said, and Heimrich said, “Oh” on a different note. He added that that was one of the things the matter with the damn thing.

  The dermal nitrate test, the coating of hands, with paraffin, the application to the hardened paraffin of Lunge’s reagent, should have told them whether Brian Collins had in fact fired the pistol which had killed two people. That was what it was for; that was why it was part of the routine. Nitrate particles from powder explosion show up blue when brought into contact with Lunge’s reagent. So, unfortunately, do nitrate particles from other sources.

  “Had a garden, I suppose,” Heimrich said and to the waitress, “Orange juice and soft-boiled eggs please, Gretchen.”

  Forniss said, “Yep.” He said that it was a vegetable garden and that Collins had apparently been cultivating it the morning before and, from the looks, hoeing in fertilizer. Which contains nitrates; which grinds into hands. The dermal nitrate test does not discriminate among nitrates.

  “Too bad,” Heimrich said, and “Thank you,” to Gretchen for orange juice and coffee.

  “Juries like nitrate tests,” Forniss said, somewhat gloomily. “Science. Nothing like science. However much the D.A. was to talk about fertilizer.”

  “I know,” Heimrich said. “Odd she was so business-like, isn’t it?”

  It was not precisely a change of subject; it was a variant on the only subject in either mind.

  And it was odd; it was that oddity which Forniss had, the night before, come to mention. It was that oddity which had led them to say goodnight to a handsome actor and a large producer with a voice of almost unexampled depth and heavy power, and to postpone the questioning of a young actor unfortunately called “Georgie-Porgie” by those who knew him well, and a director known as Tony Zersk—and, it was to be presumed, others. First things first. Clear things up, if you can, as they arise. Clear up a man named Roland Fielding.

  “Take it one way,” Forniss said, “she was a business woman.”

  “I hope they’re right,” Gretchen said, of eggs. Heimrich cracked an egg into its cup. “Exactly,” he said and Gretchen departed, pleased. A man about his boiled eggs, the captain was.

  “A diamonds-are-a-girl’s-best-friend girl,” Heimrich said. “What Dale called her. All the same—carbons. Not that it wasn’t sensible of her.”

  “Helpful, too,” Forniss said. “Maybe.”

  Peggy Belford had had a large room at the Old Stone Inn, a room befitting a featured player, and also a girl with a wardrobe. “You’d think,” a trooper told Forniss, when he made his find and reported, “she was going on a trip around the world or something.” The wardrobe was not, however, the subject of the report; it was merely a minor reason for astonishment.

  The subject of the report was a portable typewriter, prettily pink. The subject of the report was a cardboard filing case, containing—among other things still being checked on—carbon copies of a number of letters written on the pretty pink typewriter. Finally, the subject of the report was one of the letter copies. Forniss had read it and had said, mildly, “Well, well,” and gone to tell Heimrich.

  Now Heimrich said, “Let’s see it again, Charlie,” and Charlie passed it across the table. “Fingerprinted,” he said. “Hers.” Heimrich read it. It was nicely typed, nicely spaced, very business-like. It was dated a week earlier. It read:

  “Dear Rollie: I’m too, too sorry to hear about these financial reverses of yours and how difficult it’s become to keep up the payments. And, Rollie dear, I couldn’t care less. Really I couldn’t.

  “Because, Rollie dear, two thousand dollars a month is what it says and my copy of the court order is all locked away in a little safe deposit box, and I haven’t got married or anything like that, because money is such a nice thing to have. And I know, Rollie, that you’d hate for me not to have what they call security.

  “So I really don’t see what I can do about these financial reverses, do you, Rollie? Really? So I’ll just keep on expecting to get the nice checks every month, and while we’re on the subject, the last one was almost two weeks late and I was almost worried, Rollie.

  “But I wasn’t really worried, Rollie. Becau
se I know how sweet you are about things like that and also my lawyer says you haven’t got a leg to stand on and that if we had to go to court he doesn’t see how I could avoid bringing up all those playful little habits of yours which I’d simply hate to mention, Rollie, and didn’t at the hearing because you were so sweet about the money.

  “As ever,

  “Peg-of-your-heart

  “Mr. Roland Fielding,

  Croton-on-Hudson,

  New York”

  Heimrich folded the carbon and passed it back to Forniss, who put it in his pocket and said, “Peg of his checkbook’s more like it.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “The termite type.”

  “I heard the other day,” Forniss said, “that down in Key West, where they’ve got lots of termites, they put tents over whole houses and run gas in and—poof, no more termites. No more anything.”

  “What will they think of next?” Heimrich said, and finished his coffee. He said, “We wouldn’t want to keep Mr. Fielding from church or anything, Charlie. Even if he was up late last night. You’ve had it copied?” Forniss nodded. “I’ll use the copy, then,” Heimrich said.

  Fielding, assuming the accuracy of a butler’s report, assuming the man who had answered the telephone was a butler, had been in New York the night before, at the theater, and had not been expected home until late. They had decided not to wait up for him.

  Forniss drove the car south, through Peekskill, along the Post Road. They did not hurry. It was unlikely that Mr. Fielding would be going anywhere. Fielding had a fine stone house near Croton-on-Hudson; a large house, reached by a winding drive. “He could use a few yards of gravel on this,” Forniss said, as they drove up toward the house. “That big maple could have stood pruning last spring.”

  A man in a black coat answered the door. Mr. Fielding was just having breakfast. He didn’t know whether—

  “I think he’ll want to see us,” Heimrich said, and said, also, who they were. “When he’s finished his breakfast,” Heimrich said, and the man in the black coat said, doubtfully, “Well, I’ll see,” and let them in and gestured toward a large room—a comfortably furnished living room. There was a chessboard on a table, with a game partly played. They waited briefly in the large room. A big man came in through a doorway at the end of it—a big, loose man.

  He was tall; he was partly bald; he had gray stubble on his cheeks and chin; he bulged somewhat above and below the belt of his slacks. He wore a pair of rimless bifocals and carried the news section of the Daily News. The headline of the Daily News could be read across the room. It said, “Peggy Belford Slain!” Under that it said, “Former Husband Kills Famed Actress and Self!”

  The big, loose man said, “You get up early, gendemen,” in a husky voice. He said, “Might give a man time to shave.” He came on into the room. “Have to admit I was expecting you,” he said. “Which of you’s Heimrich?”

  Heimrich told him.

  “On the other hand,” Roland Fielding said, “says in the paper this man”—he turned over the front page of the News and looked at the third page—“Collins it is, killed her. So I was married to her a while back. So what?”

  But the words were more truculent than the tone.

  “Anyway,” Fielding said, “sit down. I was out on the town last night. Getting too old for it, maybe.”

  He sat heavily. Heimrich sat. Forniss continued to stand and, for so large a man, became curiously inconspicuous. Which is part of his job.

  “Now?” Fielding said.

  Heimrich did the bit about routine.

  “Specifically,” he said, and handed the loose man the copy of the carbon copy. Fielding looked at it, read it. He looked at Heimrich with doubt. “Copy of a carbon copy,” Heimrich said. “You got the letter?”

  “Yes,” Fielding said. “The gold-digging little bitch.”

  “You wanted to reduce her alimony?”

  “Captain,” Fielding said, “twenty-four thousand dollars a year is a lot of money. Also, she made a lot of money when she was working, and she worked a lot.”

  “She says financial reverses,” Heimrich said.

  “A man wants to save money,” Fielding said. “Wants a little less gold digging. He says a lot of things.” He held out the copy to Heimrich, who took it. “If you mean, could I go on paying her off—sure. Did I want to? I sure as hell didn’t. So—” He shrugged his heavy shoulders, which was evidently a task. “I had a try. Result—that.” He indicated the copy of the letter.

  “These—playful little habits she writes about?”

  “I don’t know what the hell she was talking about,” Fielding said. “Only, she’d tell any lies she figured there was money in.” He got up heavily and walked heavily to a table and took a fat cigar out of a box. He lighted the cigar and went back and sat down. “I don’t know what lies,” he said.

  “From this,” Heimrich said, “I gather she had you—sewed up.”

  “Unless she married,” Fielding said. “Or, of course, I could get the alimony order modified.”

  “In which case she would have told these—lies? In court, at the hearing?”

  “What she said,” Fielding told him. “I wouldn’t put it past her. Or anything else, come to that.”

  “You’ve no idea what lies?”

  “Captain,” Fielding said, “Peggy had a thoroughly nasty little mind. How do I know? Whatever she thought would make the nastiest stink. Do me the most damage. Louse things up the most for me.”

  Heimrich waited.

  “Captain,” Fielding said, “I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. Have to get along with all kinds of people. Some of them are pretty persnickety. See what I mean? No reason they should realize she was lying. I mean, if she lied in court. And—some of them wouldn’t care a lot whether she was lying or not. Figure that just charging things did the damage.”

  “And—shy off?”

  “Sure,” Fielding said. “I’ve got a deal on now—” He stopped. “Never mind about that.”

  “Mr. Fielding,” Heimrich said, “when you agreed to this very considerable alimony, I gather—”

  “She was a headache,” Fielding said. “A hell of a headache. O.K., I was a damn fool not to realize she would be before I got—hooked into it. But—well, you’ve seen her, captain. Any man—”

  He did not finish. He did not particularly need to.

  “What I was going to say,” Heimrich told him, “was that when you agreed to this two thousand a month it wasn’t as much of—well, call it a drain, as it’s become recently?”

  “Any time,” Fielding said, “it’s a lot of money. You’re still on this ‘financial reverses’ thing? Forget it Also, it was Collins killed her. Not me.” He looked at Heimrich intently. “Didn’t he kill her?”

  “Apparently,” Heimrich said. “We’ve got to check all angles, Mr. Fielding. Part of the job. For example—I suppose you were in New York yesterday afternoon? At your office?”

  “Sure,” Fielding said. “I—” And he stopped. “No,” he said, “I drove up to see a man in Cold Harbor. Name of Goodman. Jacob Goodman. A man I’ve a deal going with. Didn’t go anywhere near this Collins place, wherever it is.”

  “Now Mr. Fielding,” Heimrich said. “I didn’t suggest you had.”

  “Look,” Fielding said, “you going to let the newspapers have that letter?”

  “No.”

  “But you’re going to hang on to it yourself?”

  “For the moment,” Heimrich said, “naturally, Mr. Fielding. Anything you want to ask, sergeant?”

  Which was a signal.

  Forniss said, “Nope. Guess not, captain,” and they left, and left the loose man with an expression of relief on his unshaven face. Or so, at any rate, Heimrich thought. Facial expressions are not always so easily classified.

  “This drive could sure as hell do with a few yards of gravel,” Forniss said, as they drove down it. Heimrich agreed.

  “The trim on the house could do with paint,
” Forniss said.

  “I noticed, Charlie.”

  “Twenty-four thousand is a hell of a lot more than most people make in a year,” Charles Forniss said, and turned onto the blacktop.

  “Yes.”

  “What playful little habits?”

  “Now Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Surely your mind is as inventive as mine.”

  VII

  The time clock which lives in the mind remembered that the day was Sunday, that there was no fabric shop to open on Van Brunt Avenue at ten o’clock. (Fabrics, Susan Faye has discovered, are not bought early, like groceries.) It was almost nine before the time clock in Susan’s mind buzzed its notice and Susan wakened, and stretched and discovered that this was going to be really a hot one. A sticky hot one, a damp and misty hot one. The kind of day to be spent in the shade, or in a shaded pool.

  Pool was the controlling word, of course. With that thought, with the picture of Brian Collins’s pool, so artfully indoors yet so adaptable to the out-of-doors, the nagging returned to her mind—the sense that something was wrong with something. It was the thing which had for so long kept her half awake, her mind reeling through colored dreams until—

  Damn it, Susan thought and swung long legs and slim body off the bed. Until what?

  Because, there had been something. Something that, in dream, seemed to provide an explanation, an answer to nagging question. Something in her mind had said, at some period, “That’s it,” and the nagging had stopped, as a headache stops with enough aspirin. And now all she could think of was that this had, somehow, been connected with Colonel. Which, palpably, was absurd.

  With no small boy to feed, there was not much sense in breakfast. Colonel appeared in the doorway of the bedroom and woofed, explaining that there was a great deal of sense in his. She fed the great dog, who finished in half a dozen gigantic gulps and turned his face up to her and looked wistful, a dog starved. Susan, in shorts and shirt, made herself coffee and toast and thought of eggs and rejected them, and went out onto the terrace with toast and coffee, and with her mind nagging furiously.