The Distant Clue

by Frances Lockridge

  “Come across this manuscript he was working on?” Heimrich asked, and Forniss pointed. On a table against one of the walls of the little room there were two piles of yellow paper, weighted down, and a pile of white typescript. Heimrich crossed the room and looked down at the uppermost yellow sheet.

  Homer Lenox had written with a ballpoint pen, in small, neat and legible characters. He had had a firm hand. There was, in it, no evidence of the shakiness of age. “Since the long ago days of the Dutch patroons …” Heimrich read idly, and his eyes skipped down the closely written page. “This is a modest attempt to bring into perspective …” Heimrich did not find that his attention was compelled.

  The way a man writes, the style he has, may tell a good deal about the man he is. Or so Captain M. L. Heimrich, who followed a very different trade, assumed. It was probably not too important what kind of man Homer Lenox had been, since there seemed to be little doubt as to the way he had died. But if one is a detective, one is a curious man, may wish he knew more than it is really necessary to know. It occurred to Heimrich that Homer Lenox had been a man content with the familiar phrase. Which meant nothing in particular.

  Heimrich turned the second pile of yellow paper over and peeled the last page off and read it. It was page 312. If Lenox had been at it a year, his weekly average had been a good bit under twenty pages. Probably he took weeks off and Miss Enid Vance had not mentioned the fact, assuming it an obvious one.

  The first yellow sheet which Enid had brought back that day was numbered 313. Which fitted, and the context fitted. Heimrich put the last pages in their order. He put the typed sheets Enid had returned on the bottom of the pile of typed sheets. So that was in order, ready for the literary executors of the estate of the late Homer Lenox. Long hours of research, of slow and careful pushing of a ballpoint pen across yellow paper, with fingers inevitably aching, came to this. And, Heimrich suspected, came to nothing.

  With one body out of the way, Trooper Fergus began picking up the books which had showered down on it and putting them back on tables. They were old books, worn books. Young Trooper Fergus had orderly habits, of which Captain Heimrich approved. Probably the books came from, or had been obtained through, the Van Brunt library. In the course of time they would need to be returned, somewhat overdue.

  The men in white came back with the stretcher and took away the body of Loudon Wingate, Ph.D., lately librarian of Van Brunt, one-time professor of history at Dyckman University. Fergus, who seemed to be a housekeeper at heart, began to pick up old newspapers which had showered on Professor Wingate when he fell down to die. Heimrich watched him for a moment and wished it were always so easy to put things back where they belonged, to bring order out of litter. He went to Lenox’s desk, in a corner, under the single window in the little room.

  The struggle had not reached the desk, on it nothing was disturbed. There was a book with a marker in it. Recent American Trials, the book was called. Heimrich opened the book at the marker. “Chapter Ten: People of the State of New York versus Cornelia Van Brunt.” Heimrich closed the book and opened the upper right-hand drawer of the desk. It was almost filled with yellow paper—blank yellow paper. He tried the left-hand drawer, and here yellow sheets were clipped together, and covered with writing. The work of the past week? The manuscript Enid Vance had expected to pick up?

  He riffled through the papers. Not that—notes for that? No, notes for the section she had returned. Heimrich closed the drawer. On the desk top, with the book, three ballpoint pens on end in a yellow cup. A box of paper clips. A metal-edged foot ruler. (Handy straight-edge against which to tear paper.) A roll of cellophane tape. (Handy for pasting sheets of paper together again.)

  “If you come up with the section he wrote this week you might hold on to it,” Heimrich told the industrious trooper, who said, “Yes, sir, I sure will.”

  Heimrich heard Forniss coming heavily downstairs and went out to meet him. Forniss had been looking the house over, with nothing specially in mind. He shook his head when he saw Heimrich, and lifted heavy shoulders. He carried a pair of binoculars. They looked new, Heimrich thought.

  “Only thing,” Forniss said, “pretty powerful for bird watching, I’d think. Not that I watch birds much. Could be the old boy watched eagles.”

  The binoculars were heavy in Heimrich’s hand. They looked powerful, and looked expensive. A man could see a long way with glasses like that.

  “Finally got hold of the son,” Trooper Crowley said, coming in from the hall. “On his way over. Been in town, he says.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  “Sounded upset. Said, ‘My God. No!’ Sort of things a man would say, I guess.”

  Heimrich told Ray Crowley to give Fergus a hand in the room where the men had died. Crowley said, “We looking for anything special?” and Heimrich shook his head. He said, “Just anything out of the way, naturally.”

  Wait the arrival of Scott Lenox; see if he knew anything that would help. Whether his stepfather and Professor Wingate were good friends, or prickly enemies; whether they had quarreled about anything he knew of. And, of course, find out where Scott Lenox had spent the day, and whether he could prove it. Tidy up as they went along, however tidy things seemed already. Since, insofar as they knew at the moment, Scott Lenox, adopted son or not, would get whatever Homer Lenox had left behind. All the rights of a natural son, Scott Lenox would have, if his adoption had actually been legal. There are always little odds and ends to tidy up.

  It would take Scott Lenox twenty minutes to half an hour, depending on how much he hurried. Meanwhile, the machinery which had started automatically would be grinding at it—grinding in New York City to comb the past of Professor Loudon Wingate; the city past of Homer Lenox, as a lawyer practicing in the city. A thousand to one the machinery was wasting its effort. The thing was as it looked to be; it was a case which had, within minutes, perhaps within seconds, at once opened and closed. He might as well, Heimrich thought, go sit on the porch.

  Instead, the binoculars dangling from a shoulder strap, Heimrich climbed three flights of stairs, the last steeper than the others, with narrower treads—servants had probably lived on the third floor once; servants are not to be pampered—and opened a door which let him out to a catwalk on the roof. From this Heimrich climbed a short flight of steps and reached the railed platform atop the house.

  He was higher above everything than he had expected to be. The house was tall, and it stood on a tall hill. Even without glasses, one could see for miles—see far across the wide river, and down the river; looking inland, see most of the road which led toward Van Brunt Center. Heimrich raised the binoculars and adjusted them. The world leaped at him. West Point, on the other side of the river and downstream, leaped at him. Looking inland, he could see the traffic light at The Corners turn red and stop an A & P trailer truck, bound north. If Homer Lenox had watched birds with these glasses it must have been to count their feathers.

  Heimrich looked up the river, at a tug with barges bound upstream. A heavy woman was taking a washing off a line on the stern of one of the barges. She was taking down lace curtains. Lace curtains for the deckhouse of a grimy barge. Heimrich felt a sudden sadness. People deserved better than they got; by and large they deserved better than they got. Lace curtains for the windows of a deckhouse on a—

  He turned away from the tug and its barges. He turned the glasses inshore, to the north, and there was contrast for you. There, so close it seemed he had only to reach out to touch it, was the Mitchie mansion, behind its high, forbidding wall. There was one of Homer Lenox’s families; there was really one of the families. There was, also, one of the families which had managed to hold on to what it had—a mansion which was built as if to repel invaders; a hundred acres or so of rolling land above a magnificent river, and with the money to keep it up.

  To keep it up, and add to it. At some distance from the stone house, but with its own view of the river, was the modern house—the very modern, very much o
f glass, house—which “old” John had built for “young” John, John Mitchie III.

  John III was home early from the city. He had been home long enough to change to swimming trunks. Heimrich watched him dive cleanly into the swimming pool which was between the big house and the modern house. He watched James, who was about Michael’s age—who went to school with Michael, who was a friend of Michael’s—go into the pool. James did not dive as well as his father did. James held his nose and jumped into the pool and hit water on his bottom. He swam off as if he had been born in water. The water must be chilly, so early in the season. Unless they had it heated. Probably they had it heated.

  Grace Mitchie came out on the terrace of the modern house and called something to her husband. Heimrich could not hear what she called, and for an instant this seemed strange, because she seemed so close. John III pulled himself up on the edge of the pool and seemed to be calling something back to her.

  Heimrich lowered the glasses. The Mitchies were a long way off. They were half a mile at least, beyond earshot. And there was no point in spying on them.

  Heimrich heard a car coming up the drive below him. He went to the nearest rail and looked down, and did not need Homer Lenox’s binoculars.

  A Jeep station wagon—a very elderly Jeep station—was coming up the drive. It squeaked a good deal.

  Heimrich went down four flights of stairs—one outside and three inside the house—to consult with Scott Lenox about the violent death of his stepfather, apparently at the hands of a retired professor of history.

  Scott Lenox was a tall, thin man in, Heimrich guessed, his early thirties. He had blond hair, but it was cut to so short a stubble that at first glance he seemed to have no hair at all. He had greenish eyes in a thin face and a very wide, flexible mouth. He wore glasses, but when he stopped the Jeep with a final squeak—he ought to do something about those brakes, Heimrich thought, waiting for him on the porch—he took the glasses off and put them in the breast pocket of a tweed jacket which hung loosely on him.

  He walked, taking long strides, to the porch steps and up them and said, “You’d be Captain Heimrich?” His voice was, for some reason unexpectedly, very deep. Heimrich said, “Yes,” and the greenish-eyed young man looked at him for a moment with apparent interest and said, “Scott Lenox.” Heimrich again said, “Yes.”

  “The old boy’s dead?” Lenox said, and Heimrich said, “Yes,” for the third time.

  “It’s a damn shame,” Lenox said. “He was a nice old boy.”

  For an instant the greenish eyes seemed to go out of focus. Then they focused again.

  “You think I ought to say something else, don’t you?” he said. “Be more … broken up. All right, I’m sorry he’s dead. I’m sorry as hell. But he wasn’t really my father. You know that, don’t you?”

  Heimrich said “Yes” once more.

  “He adopted me,” Lenox said. “After he married mother. I’ve been ‘Lenox’ since I was eight. I was born a Brane.” He spelled it. “Nobody wants to be called Brane,” he said.

  He’s nervous, Heimrich thought. Keyed up. Perhaps, Heimrich thought, he always is. Perhaps he is only now. With, naturally, sufficient cause.

  “They’re saying in the village that he and Loudon Wingate killed each other,” Scott Lenox said. “Was that the way it was?”

  “It looks like being,” Heimrich said. “His body’s been taken to the hospital mortuary, Mr. Lenox. You’ll want to go there, probably.”

  “Will I?” Lenox said, and again his eyes seemed, momentarily, to dull. “Yes, I suppose I will. I liked the old boy.” He looked around him. “I lived here when I was a kid,” he said. “Mostly I was away at school, but I lived here in summers for a while. Mother died two years after they were married.” He paused and looked around again. “He didn’t know much about boys,” Scott Lenox said. “He tried, but he really didn’t know much about boys.”

  He looked at Heimrich.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. ‘Things keep coming back. He and Loudon Wingate were friends. Why would they kill each other?”

  “I don’t know. Good friends?”

  “I’d have thought so,” Scott Lenox said. “In the last year or so, especially.” He paused again. “Actually,” he said, “I knew old Loudon better than I did Dad.” He paused again. “You fall back into things,” he said. “Into habits. When I was a kid I called him Dad. Not father. It was—a compromise, I suppose.”

  He looked directly at Heimrich and then his wide mouth twitched in a smile. He said, “I’m sorry, Captain. Maybe it’s hit me harder than I thought. You want to ask me questions and I keep—making noises.”

  “A few questions,” Heimrich said. “We may as well sit down somewhere.” He motioned toward the chairs on the porch. They went and sat in the two wicker chairs.

  “Same place they were when I was a kid,” Lenox said. “What do you want to ask me? If they killed each other that closes it out, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Naturally that closes it out. We like to get things as clear as we can. You’re surprised they quarreled? You’ve no idea over what?”

  “I’m surprised,” Lenox said. “Old Loudon used to come here for dinner now and then. There’s a woman who comes in five days a week and gets—” He broke off. “Make it past tense,” he said. “There used to be. Monday through Friday. Loudon used to come for dinner once a week or so. They played chess, Loudon told me once. He said Dad was quite good. I gathered he was better. Loudon, I mean.”

  “You knew about this book your stepfather was writing?”

  “Yes. Poor old boy. A vanity press job. But what the hell. He could afford it, I suppose.”

  “Suppose?”

  “Actually,” Scott Lenox said, “I don’t know, Captain. He seemed to be well enough fixed. He did all right as a lawyer most of his life. And there was always … this.”

  He had quick, long fingered hands. As he said “this,” his right hand flicked in a gesture which seemed to include the house, and all around it. “For what it’s worth,” he said. “I suppose he had an income of sorts.” Again he looked directly at Heimrich. “I really don’t know much about it,” he said. “Never gave it much thought.” He paused again. “Any thought,” he said, and his voice, with that, seemed even deeper than before.

  “I’ve no idea what they would have to quarrel about,” Scott Lenox said. “Loudon seemed easygoing enough.”

  “Your stepfather?”

  Again Lenox shrugged his shoulders.

  “I haven’t seen much of him the last few years,” he said. “You’ve gathered that, haven’t you? No antipathy between us. Just—not much of anything. We were—call it different breeds of cats.” His greenish eyes changed again, and Heimrich thought, He spends a good deal of time running things through his mind.

  “An odd saying, when you come to think about it,” Lenox said. “About cats, I mean. Cats peculiarly don’t give a damn about the breed of other cats. Dad was testy, sometimes. He could—well, get hipped on things. Take this family thing. The Lenoxes came from England early in the seventeenth century. Did you realize that, Captain? Would have been here in the valley before the Mitchies or the Van Brunts, except that they settled on Staten Island first. Well, that’s the sort of thing he was hipped on.”

  “You said, ‘testy’?”

  “Sometimes. But—I’m thinking about when I was a boy, I suppose. Boys can be a nuisance, whether you know much about them or not. They can get in your hair. He loved my mother, I think. And I was just—a brat. Something which had come with her, sort of as part of her luggage. And was still around when she wasn’t any more. But that was twenty years ago.”

  Again there was that lack of focus in the widely set, greenish eyes.

  “Kids are funny things,” Scott Lenox said. “I suppose I wanted to love him. Wanted to love somebody. I suppose I got in his hair about it.” The focus returned. “When you’re in my trade,” Scott Lenox said, “you try to fit words around th
ings. It’s an occupational disease. I write for a living. And not, as you’ve gathered—” this time he gestured toward the Jeep, with his thin right hand—“much of one. I wouldn’t have expected Wingate to lose his temper. Nor Dad to. Not enough. You’ve no idea who started it?”

  “It was your stepfather’s revolver,” Heimrich said. “He was shot twice and lived—oh, probably for several minutes. Dr. Wingate was shot once and didn’t, probably, live for seconds afterward.”

  “I don’t … “Scott said, and then said, “Oh.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “It looks as if Wingate fired first. Wounded your stepfather. Thought he’d finished him. Perhaps had some idea of putting the gun so that it would look as if your stepfather had killed himself. Put it too near the hand of a man who wasn’t as far gone as he looked to be—wasn’t far enough gone. Not so far gone he couldn’t use the gun.”

  “Which would make Wingate the one who started it?”

  “Who fired the first shots. Yes.”

  Again, for an instant, Scott Lenox went away from behind his greenish eyes. He came back.

  “It’s pretty hard to believe,” he said. “It’s damn near impossible to believe. What on earth would two old men find to quarrel about?”

  “I don’t know,” Heimrich said. “I hoped you might. You were in town today, Mr. Lenox? In New York?”

  Scott Lenox looked at him, very sharply. Heimrich merely closed his eyes and waited.

  “Did I say that?” Lenox asked him.

  Heimrich did not open his eyes. He said, “No, Mr. Lenox. Were you?”

  “Yes. I drove in in Little Squeaky. Found a place to park on the West Side. Walked over to the public library, getting there just after it opened. I was researching for an article I’m doing. Doing on spec. I went across to an Automat around twelvethirty and went back to the library and stayed until about four. And drove back here and got here in time to answer the telephone and be told about Dad. You think I wanted whatever he’s got? And killed him for it?”