The Distant Clue Read online

  “Lots and lots of ice, please,” Susan said, and Merton Heimrich added another cube of ice to one of the glasses.

  “The widow of a second cousin of Cornelia Van Brunt donated the miscellaneous Van Brunt papers and the doctor’s journals to the library,” Heimrich said, carrying glasses to tables. “About a month ago. She’s clearing things out. Going to spend the summer abroad and then move to Florida. She had no idea they—the papers and the ledgers—were around until she started cleaning out—cleaning out the junk, she told young Purvis. Just happened to think the library might want the stuff.”

  “You think there’s something in them? Something that will help?”

  He didn’t know. It was a thousand to one against; at the moment everything seemed a thousand to one against. As to what the miscellaneous papers might have contained, they would never know. “Probably old grocery lists.” On the other hand, Wingate had had Dr. Van Brunt’s ledgers with him, in the trunk of his car, at Far Top.

  “He took them up to show something in them to poor Homer? Or had showed them to Homer, and put them back? They were what somebody was trying to find?”

  “A thousand to one chance,” Heimrich said, and heard discouragement in his own voice. “He may merely have forgotten to take the ledgers out after he picked them up. They may have been in the trunk for a month. Like the time we got a case of gin and forgot to take it out for a week. Remember?”

  “Nearer two weeks,” Susan said, and lighted a cigarette and then lifted her glass. She looked away toward the Hudson. “We had—” She paused. “Other things on our minds, as I remember it.” She sipped again. “Ourselves, as I recall it,” she told the distant river. Then she turned and looked at Heimrich, and was faintly smiling, and there was a softness in her gray eyes, almost as if she were about to cry. But there was nothing to cry about.

  “You haven’t found anything in the ledgers?” Susan Heimrich said firmly.

  “Haven’t got to them yet. I’m up to my ears in this,” he patted Homer Lenox’s manuscript with no special tenderness. “Oh, that you were norm fe when born.” He had to spell it for her.

  “I’m so glad,” Susan said. “It’s so nice to know, isn’t it.”

  “Very,” Heimrich said. “It’s very nice to know.”

  “I think I’ll go in and read a while,” Michael Faye said, so offhandedly as to be barely intelligible. “Come on, Colonel.”

  “We’re obvious,” Susan said, when he had gone. “He’s tactful. Too obvious, dear? I mean—sometimes it’s hard to remember he’s a child. Sometimes—boys get jealous, don’t they, Merton?”

  “Boys get all sorts of things,” Heimrich said. “Bump into, are bumped into by, all sorts of things. We’re ourselves, Susan. There’s nothing we can do about it. His mind …”

  It was his turn to look at the river, to sip from his glass, before going on.

  “I don’t think,” Merton Heimrich said, “our Michael has the kind of mind that bruises easily. Or—” Again he paused. “That he’s a selfish boy,” he said. “A grudging boy.”

  They sat silently for several minutes and then Susan said, “No. He isn’t.”

  She turned on the chaise to face Merton and said, “You haven’t found anything in Homer’s manuscript?”

  “Nothing worth the burning. That something known as ‘elements loyal to the King,’ with ‘King’ capitalized, burned down the original Mitchie house, which is familiarly known as ‘mansion,’ in 1778. Oh, and that the Uptons came to the township in 1760, circa.”

  “Oh?” Susan said. “From?”

  “England. Your great-great whatever was a commander in the Royal Navy. When he retired, he settled here. It appears his wife had money.”

  “All, all gone,” Susan said. “Like the Mitchie mansion. Why did you ask about old John being a painter, dear? You think Homer may have criticized his work adversely? Or the professor made snide comments?”

  Heimrich laughed, and mentioned the snatching at of straws. He said there was no particular reason he had asked about John Mitchie’s painting. He had merely happened to see him at it. And, for no special reason, he had been surprised. It had seemed out of character.

  “Which is absurd, naturally,” Heimrich said. “I know nothing about the man. Not what’s in character or what’s out of it. One makes assumptions, based on nothing—is surprised to find the assumptions baseless.”

  Susan said she gathered that Mitchie’s interest in painting had once surprised the community—the community within community of which the Mitchies were a part. It had been out of character, had seemed so to the rest. Not out, obviously, of Mitchie’s own character. Out of the family character. The Mitchies had been landowners; had been shipowners.

  “It was, father said once, as if a pair of robins—very substantial robins, proud and well-filled-out robins—had hatched a wren,” Susan said. “The surprise was mutual. Father was amused. A great many things amused my father. He was not really a proper Upton. Many things about the families amused father, in a detached way.”

  Reminded of duty, Merton Heimrich returned to The Families, not expecting to be amused in any way, growing convinced with each turned-over page that he wasted time. He did not, now, plod through the typescript; he could not, now, force himself to read carefully, line by line. He skimmed, looking for the recurrence of familiar names—the names of families which might, conceivably, be concerned with the business he had (but actually by no means had) in hand. He saw such names as a scanner for a clipping service seeks only the names of subscribers.

  The Mearses and the Lenoxes, the Van Brunts and the Van Druytens, the Mitchies, the Vances, after a time the Cunninghams and the Anstruthers. The Shivelys were newcomers; hardly, Heimrich thought, worthy of “the.” These people did not, any of them, seem to have lived particularly interesting lives. Or, which was more probable, Homer Lenox had been peculiarly adept at wringing interest from their lives before he hung them out to dry on his arid pages. There couldn’t, Merton Heimrich thought, be any use in this.

  Yet, somebody had sought to destroy all of the papers—the records, the jottings, everything—Homer Lenox had possessed. Therefore, among them there had been something relevant. The somebody had missed two things: The typescript of The Families, and the Journals of Dr. Cornelius Van Brunt. Duty was therefore clear, if depressing.

  Heimrich had reached the Civil War period, which had concerned Lenox very slightly, presumably because it was not fought in Putnam County, New York. Heimrich had read that Private Obediah Mears—the Mears family had already lost rank—had been killed at Gettysburg. He had been “the last of the direct line.” Heimrich was not entirely clear what was meant by that. He turned the page over and looked at the river.

  Or, he thought, it is entirely possible that I am being hoaxed; that somebody has said, “That’s the way to go,” while pointing into a jungle he knows to hide nothing of significance. There is nothing which will help me here, in the typescript or the journals, and there was nothing in what was taken from the library or burned in the driveway at Far Top. Misdirection was the only purpose, and I am following misdirections. And somewhere somebody, somebody who has killed, is pretty sure I am, and is pretty amused about it.

  But even if this is true, I’ve got to go on with it, Heimrich thought. A policeman, also, must ride off in all directions. I might, of course, turn this over to somebody else; might let Charlie Forniss chop his way through this thicket, or even Ray Crowley. Ray’s a bright—

  The point is, Heimrich thought, that I haven’t, at the moment, anything to do which makes more sense. Two men have been killed and I—

  He sighed and returned to The Families, looking for familiar names. “Vance.” “The Vance family, for generations one of the most prosperous in the region, met severe financial reverses in the latter years of the last century.” Homer Lenox’s chronology was not always too easy to follow; apparently, in this case, he was writing as a twentieth century man, and looking back to the ninetee
nth. “Jonathan Vance, who headed a firm of underwriters, was the financial victim of a series of marine catastrophes. The culminating disaster was the total loss, off Hatteras, of the ship ‘North Star,’ owned by John Mitchie II and Virgil Lenox, a son of the Julian Lenox previously mentioned in connection with the Brazilian coup.” (I must have skipped over that one, Heimrich thought.) “Extensive litigation resulted, the underwriters contending the ship was lost because of faulty seamanship, but this contention was not sustained by the courts, and Mr. Vance and his associates were forced to ‘pay up.’” One of the more exasperating facets of Lenox’s style was his occasional uneasy approach to the colloquial. “The Vances—”

  Heimrich turned the page, and looked at the back of it. The back was a mirror image of the front. Enid Vance had put a sheet of carbon paper in wrong way to, and achieved a copy on the back of the ribbon sheet. Because copying the account of her own family’s reverses had distracted her? Probably. Not noticed it when she had sorted out? That seemed hardly probable. Probably she had made two carbons and, coming on a blank sheet which should have been a copy, had merely substituted the second carbon for the first.

  Which was of no apparent importance. What might be was that there was at least one copy of Lenox’s manuscript in her office, since there had been no carbon of the section she had gone the day before to deliver to Homer Lenox. Did Person Unknown know that the police had a copy of the manuscript? Or did he think he had destroyed it? If he thought it destroyed—he would have worked at Far Top with as little light as he could manage with, and probably have worked as fast as he could—would the possible existence of a carbon occur to him? And would he do something about it, if he hadn’t already?

  “Got to make a call,” Heimrich said, and went to the house. Susan sighed. It had been peaceful; not interesting, but peaceful. The telephone destroys peace.

  Heimrich looked up the telephone number of Vance, Enid, and dialed it, and got no answer. He looked up the number of Lenox, Scott, and dialed that, and again got no answer. He dialed the number of the Van Brunt substation of the New York State Police, and was answered at once, and said what he wanted done: A careful eye kept on the office and apartment of Enid Vance in the Van Brunt Annex; collection, when she returned to let them in, of any carbon copies of Homer Lenox’s manuscript; prior to that, a survey to make sure that her place had not been broken into; a stakeout to see that it was not, if it had not been.

  Hoax or no hoax, Heimrich thought, leaving the house. But then he thought: There would have been no need for a hoax. Why elaborate if you have clear sailing? Leave well enough alone, if it is well enough. There was something which had to be destroyed. That is almost certain. There is no special reason to think it is either the manuscript or the doctor’s journals. I’m on a treadmill, Captain Merton Heimrich thought. There is no assurance it is even the right treadmill.

  A light and ancient truck was laboring its way up the steep drive. The truck had a considerable list to port. It stopped and Adam Mears got out of it, which corrected the list. Must have very weak springs, the little old truck which had evidently been driven into a good many things. Mears was not a heavy man.

  He was not a sober man, either. The course he set for Heimrich, who stopped to wait for him, was determined but erratic. He stopped in front of Heimrich and swayed slightly and said, “ ’Evening, Cap’un. Hot, ain’t it?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said.

  “Keeps on, grass’ll burn. ’S only May.”

  “Unseasonable,” Heimrich said. “We haven’t anything needs doing right now, Adam.”

  “Loaded up,” Adam Mears said. “I’m sorry, Cap’un. Loaded up.”

  Heimrich assumed Adam meant he had, as an odd-job gardener, all the odd jobs he could handle. Another meaning was possible, but presumably not intended.

  “Well,” Heimrich said, “that’s that, Adam.”

  “Wha’s that?” Adam said.

  “I’ve got no work. You’ve got no time anyway.”

  “Oh,” Adam said. “That. That’s the size of it.”

  And he turned, as if after an accomplished mission, and started back to the truck. But after two steps he turned back, and stood, again swaying gently.

  “Not what I came about,” he said. “Old man wants to see you. After supper.”

  “What old man.”

  “Because now he’s taking that nap of his. Every afternoon—”

  “What old man?”

  “What old man d’ya think? My old man. Old man Mears.”

  He was reasonably patient about it. You run into people who are slow on the uptake.

  “Oh,” Heimrich said. “Your father wants to see me. What about, Adam?”

  “Tell you something. Whaja think?”

  “About what, Adam?”

  “Something the old man told him.”

  “What old man, Adam?”

  “Old man Lenox. Whaja think?”

  “You’ve no idea what it is?”

  “Listen, Cap’un. You know the old man. Think he’d tell me?”

  Heimrich did not know Jasper Mears, the “old man”—he assumed—still the point of reference. He said, “I suppose not, Adam. After supper?”

  “What I said,” Adam Mears said, still being patient. “He said, ‘Tell him it’s something he’ll want to know. Tell him not to send no under—under—’”

  “Underlings?”

  “What I said. Sorry I can’t oblige, Cap’un, but you know how it is.”

  Heimrich assumed Adam referred, again, to his inability, because of other obligations, to do the odd jobs he had not been offered. He said, “Sure, Adam.”

  Adam Mears went, in not very good order, to his truck. He turned it, partly on the grass, and went down the drive. There was a rasping noise as he went between—evidently not quite between—the boulders, but the truck continued unabashed.

  IX

  She was not a reference book, Susan said gently, nor yet the oldest inhabitant. They were on the terrace, and the light slanted on them. Colonel, fed, sprawled on the flagstones, although there was the softness of grass all around him. Michael was in the house, either doing his homework, as he had announced a plan to do, or reading Beat to Quarters. The latter was the more probable. Veal birds simmered in a covered pan. Frozen Lima beans from last summer’s garden melted slowly in their container.

  “Certainly not the oldest inhabitant,” Merton Heimrich said, and looked with appreciation at his wife, and remembered, as he so often did, how thin and drawn her young face had been when he saw her first; remembered, too, that on that evening he had not thought her even pretty. With the slanting light on her face now—

  “To keep us on the subject,” Susan said, “Jasper Mears was an old man when I was a little girl. Seemed a very old man. I suppose he was somewhere in his fifties. He must be in his eighties now. He raked leaves for us in the fall. He raked leaves for a lot of people, he and his son. They were extra help for people like the Van Brunts, the Van Druytens. I was a little girl, Merton. His son was—oh, I suppose in his late twenties. I thought he wasn’t a very nice man. He isn’t now, is he?”

  “Not very,” Heimrich said. “You say he worked for the Van Brunts, the Van Druytens? You said ‘like’ them. For others, too?”

  “I think so,” she said. “You know how it is in the country. Certain times—in the spring to clean up gardens, get them started; in the autumn to rake up leaves, mulch around rosebushes—there’s a lot of work. On a place like the Mitchies’ a lot too much for the gardener to keep up with. Or the gardeners—I don’t really know how a place that big is run, do you?”

  “No,” Merton Heimrich said.

  “So ‘Mears and Son’—they had that printed on their truck. A beat-up truck. As if they were—oh, a company. I was reading Dickens then and I always thought, ‘Dombey and Son.’ They would go around as extra hands. They had a sickle bar. It smoked dreadfully, smelled dreadfully. Have you any idea what the old man wants to tell you?”
>
  “None,” Heimrich said. “Something Homer Lenox told him, if Adam’s got it straight. Adam wasn’t in shape to get anything very straight. I suppose they worked for Homer? Even for Homer’s father, probably.”

  “My dear,” Susan said, “I was a girl growing up. I had ever so many things to think about. So many things to plan about. I suppose Mears and Son worked at Far Top.” She paused. “The old man may be senile now,” she said. “He is really a very old man now, Merton.”

  “Do you know whether they—the old man and his not very nice son—worked for Enid’s family?”

  “A book of reference,” Susan said. “A book without an index, dear.”

  “You grew up here,” Heimrich said. “Were part of—of all this that Lenox took seriously, that amused your father. You must have been an observant girl.”

  “Was I?” Susan said. “A child has so much to observe inside itself. I don’t know whether they worked for the Vance family. I shouldn’t think so. There was very little Vance land left in her father’s time. Even less than we had left. Hardly more than a big lot, really. Her father was an insurance salesman, I think. They didn’t have any money to speak of.”

  She swung around on the chaise quickly, seemed to Heimrich to flow into a new position. She faced him and looked at him carefully.

  “You think it goes back into the past, don’t you?” Susan said. “Why?”

  Heimrich tapped the manuscript which still lay on a table beside him, but which he had not been leafing for some time.

  “You haven’t found it.”

  It was a statement, not a question. But Heimrich said, No, he hadn’t found it or anything that looked like it.

  “Why did you ask about the Vance family?”

  “Because an earlier Vance—Lenox isn’t too specific; a Vance who lived perhaps a hundred years ago—was the chief underwriter of a ship that a Lenox and a Mitchie owned jointly; a ship which went down off Hatteras. It was apparently the last of a series of losses Vance had. It apparently broke him.”