The Distant Clue

by Frances Lockridge

  Somebody had—desk drawers were open, books had been taken from shelves and dropped on the floor; a locked filing case had been forced; an old-fashioned safe in a corner of the room stood with its door open. What had Professor Wingate kept in a safe? Heimrich wondered. The nickels and dimes paid in as fines on books overdue?

  Here Person Unknown had, it was evident, been looking for some specific thing. Here he had taken time to look. If he had found it, that was that. They would still have to go over what he hadn’t taken, on the chance that something had been missed. Heimrich doubted the chance was very good. Person Unknown hadn’t hurried, here; had looked, methodically, for whatever needle there might be in the haystack.

  At Far Top, on the other hand, Person Unknown had burned down the haystack. Which meant …

  Heimrich could only guess what it meant, and realized he had insufficient knowledge for a guess. Perhaps Person Unknown had failed to find what he wanted here and had known that it—whatever it was; something written or printed on paper—must be at Far Top. Had been more hurried there—why?—and had merely burned everything in sight, convinced that whatever incriminating thing there was would go up in flame with the rest.

  “I can dust for prints, Captain,” Fergus said. “Took the course last winter. Got the equipment in the car.”

  “Get at it,” Heimrich said, and went out of the room to leave him to get at it. He doubted whether much would come of it. It was seldom nowadays that anything did; it had been a good many years since even amateurs left fingerprints for the information of policemen. There would, of course, be plenty of prints. The office did not look as if it were dusted often, or thoroughly. Wingate’s prints would be all over the place. Prints of half the Center might be in the place, including, naturally, those of Person Unknown. Which would not help them in the least.

  Heimrich found the card catalogue. It was not extensive; the Van Brunt Public Library did not really have many books. Heimrich flipped through cards until he came to “Van Brunt.” There were a good many cards behind the “Van Brunt” tab. “Van Brunt, Township of, History of.” “Van Brunt, Early town council proceedings. 4 vol.” “Van Brant, Mrs. Cornelia: Transcript of proceedings in the trial of. 2 vol.” “Van Brunt, Incorporation of. List of incorporators. Bound ms.” “Van Brunt, Misc. family papers. Circ. restrict.” As well it might be, Heimrich thought. That card looked new. So did a card on which was typed: “Van Brunt, Dr. Cornelius, Journals of (1865-1935). 2 vol.”

  Homer Lenox had started to write of the Van Brunt family when he was killed. It was still difficult to guess what he might have turned up which was not already known, not already a matter of record. And what Van Brunts were left to resent anything he found—left and at liberty to express resentment? Still—There was time to fill while Trooper Fergus finished his probably fruitless chores.

  Professor Wingate’s system of cataloguing was obscure. Probably, Heimrich thought, he had merely inherited it from his predecessor, Myra Burns. (Now retired and living in California.) Heimrich poked among stacks and finally found a shelf devoted to Van Brunt. Transcripts of trial proceedings. Not very good carbons, bound in manuscript covers; already yellowing. On page ten: Q. Your name and occupation, please. A. Heimrich, M. L., Captain, Bureau of Criminal Investigation, New York State Police. Q. Now, Captain, will you tell us in your own words …

  Captain M. L. Heimrich, B.C.I., did not read his own words. He put Volume 1, People of the State of New York versus Cornelia Van Brunt, back on its shelf. Been better if he hadn’t taken it out, and left prints on it. He looked further along the Van Brunt shelf, touching nothing. The books and documents promised in the catalogue file; one or two things not listed there. No sign of “misc. family papers.” Presumably in a place of restriction. No sign, either of the Journals of Dr. Cornelius Van Brunt (1865-1935). The dates presumably indicating the beginning and the end of Dr. Van Brunt, not of his journals.

  Heimrich checked his memory. Cornelia Van Brunt’s father, Cornelius would have been. She had been a Van Brunt before and after marriage, a distant cousin of the Henry Van Brunt she married. The phrasing was correct, Heimrich thought idly. Cornelia was the one who would have done the marrying, as in the end she had done the killing of one Orville Phipps, who had not conducted himself as a supervisor of the town of Van Brunt should.

  No “misc. family papers.” No journals. Perhaps Wingate had kept them in the safe. It was a little odd that he had them at all. Except that the library constituted what Van Brunt had of an historical society. Some collateral Van Brunt had, presumably, been clearing out old cupboards.

  A bypath, almost certainly; a digression. The Van Brunts could have nothing to do with this.

  “Lab boys didn’t find anything they hadn’t found before,” Forniss said, behind him, and Heimrich turned and said he hadn’t supposed they would, and started to add “naturally,” and remembered that Susan, amusedly, mimicked his overuse of a meaningless word. “There’s nothing in the charred stuff to help,” Forniss said. “Somebody stirred it. How about here?”

  “Cleaned out the professor’s office,” Heimrich said. “Fergus is going over it for prints. He’ll find hundreds.”

  “Looks as if our man found what he was looking for?”

  “Now, Charlie, how’re we to know? But, yes, I suppose it does. And nothing to indicate what.”

  “It wasn’t as simple as it looked,” Charles Forniss said, a little glumly, as a statement of the obvious.

  “No.”

  “Somebody killed one of them,” Forniss said. “Probably Lenox, since it was in his house. The other—probably Wingate—happened in and had to be killed too. The rest was rigged.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said.

  “There’s something our client has to lay hands on. He didn’t know which man had it.”

  “Yes.”

  Forniss moved his eyes along the Van Brunt shelf and said, “Why Van Brunt?” Heimrich said he didn’t know. Forniss said, “Anything missing?” and Heimrich told him what appeared to be missing. He supposed that what was missing would have to be looked for. Forniss said, “Yep,” and added that he didn’t get the connection.

  “No more do I,” Heimrich said. “We’ll put Jones and Crowley on it. When Crowley gets here.”

  That, Forniss said, might be quite a time. He had passed Crowley up the road. The Packard had got a flat; Crowley was changing the tire.

  “Yelled something at me as I went by,” Forniss said. “I couldn’t make it out. Wanted a hand, maybe.”

  They went by the office, where Fergus was dusting and photographing. Fergus was diligent, doing what they had taught him to do in school. He would have enough stuff to keep the lab boys busy for days. Which was what the lab boys were for.

  “I know a man at Dyckman,” Forniss said. “Assistant professor.”

  Heimrich was not surprised. In years of association he had come to doubt there was a place anywhere in which Forniss didn’t know a man.

  “He’s got Saturday morning classes,” Forniss said. “I could maybe get him on the phone. See if he can tell us anything about Wingate.”

  “Do that, Charlie,” Heimrich said, and Sergeant Forniss went to find a telephone and to do that. Heimrich went out to talk to Town Patrolman Asa Purvis.

  Asa, a third of the town’s police force, had the eight to four day trick. He had been going the rounds, preparatory to taking over at the crossing when traffic picked up. Because the library was in everybody’s mind, he had made a point of walking back to it and having a look-see. Which he wouldn’t ordinarily have done. He had found the door broken open and had gone in, and had found the office ransacked. He had reported.

  Patrolman Mears—Otto Mears—had had the four to midnight, most of which he had spent at the crossing, directing traffic. “Beginning to thicken up Friday evenings, with the weather the way it is.” On post there, he would be some distance from the library. Apparently he had noticed nothing out of the way going on there. At least, there was
nothing about anything in his report, which Asa had glanced at before going on duty.

  A cautious man, and their “client” had need for caution, might have broken into the library while Mears was directing traffic at the crossing. He might, with more safety, have waited until after midnight. The man on the midnight to eight shift normally spent it in the station, which was a corner of the Town House; spent it waiting for the telephone to ring; spent it hoping the telephone would not ring.

  A few people lived in flats over stores near the library. The Old Stone Inn was diagonally across the way, and was often open late on Friday nights.

  “Ask around, Asa,” Heimrich said, forgetting to suit formality to the boy’s dignity. “See if anybody heard or saw anything.” He remembered. “The time may be important, officer,” Heimrich said, and Asa stiffened and said, “Yes, sir. I realize that, Captain.” Asa went. He more or less walked at attention. A nice boy, Heimrich thought.

  A motor coughed up the street, and the high, black Packard came down it. The car sounded disgruntled. It turned into the drive which went to the rear of the library, and Ray Crowley seemed to be wrestling with it, and winning only by the narrowest of margins. Stubborn in its old age, the Packard had got.

  After a few minutes, Trooper Crowley came back on foot. He carried two ledgers which apparently were heavy. He joined Heimrich.

  “Found these in the trunk,” he said. “Had to change a tire. Thought I might as well bring them along, sir.”

  What Ray Crowley had brought along were the Journals of Dr. Cornelius Van Brunt (1865-1935) in two volumes, as described.

  VI

  Merton Heimrich drove home at a little after noon, and found, as he had supposed he would find, nobody there. Susan would be at the shop still. Saturdays were sometimes busy days at the shop. Michael would be engaged in baseball practice, accompanied by Colonel, who was probably galumphing into everybody’s way. Michael and Colonel would have been supplied with lunch.

  Heimrich put in a safe place the two volumes of Dr. Van Brunt’s journals—they turned out really to be ledgers and to be filled with notations of patients seen and ailments treated and fees charged. That was what he had driven home to do. He would have thought them safe anywhere, and valueless anywhere. But Professor Wingate had had some reason to put them into the trunk of his Packard and take them up to Far Top. Heimrich would, he realized, have to try to find out what it was. His brief glance through the entries had given him no inkling.

  He had come on one thing of mild interest, near the end of the second volume. Dr. Van Brunt had treated his last patient in the spring of 1935. From an entry near the end of the ledger Merton Heimrich had learned that Susan had weighed 6½ pounds when born. “Upton. 6½. Norm. Fe.” Susan might be interested to know that she had been “norm, fe” when born.

  Heimrich put the journals in a cabinet with a steel door and a strong lock, and on top of the manuscript of Homer Lenox’s history of the families. He was, Heimrich thought glumly, providing himself with abundant reading matter. Dr. Van Brunt had written in a fine hand with a fine pen. Heimrich wondered whether his aging eyes would take it, and made himself a sandwich and opened a can of beer. With them, he went to sit on the terrace. He rested his eyes by looking at the Hudson River.

  He would finish reading Lenox’s manuscript and go through the doctor’s journals, and probably he would end up blind and none the wiser. It would be a waste of time as, so far as he could see, the morning had been.

  Trooper Fergus had found no lack of prints in Professor Wingate’s office, and most of them, the lab boys somewhat reluctantly admitted, could be checked out. A good many were, at a glance, those of Wingate himself. Others might eventually be identified, if those who left them had prints on record. (Which in most cases they wouldn’t have. It was unfortunate that most members of the general public wouldn’t volunteer to have their prints taken. It seemed improbable that any known criminals would have been in Professor Wingate’s office. Professional burglars are seldom enticed by libraries.)

  A thorough search, from the basement up, of the Van Brunt Public Library had not turned up the “misc. family papers” of the Van Brunts. The search had extended to Professor Wingate’s living quarters above the library. Wingate had not washed the dishes after his last meal, which apparently had been breakfast. He had had a personal desk in his quarters, and Forniss was going through the papers in it. Nobody was going short of reading matter.

  Assistant Professor Artemus Goodbody at Dyckman had been sorry to hear from Forniss about poor old Wingate. He had been glad to be of any help he could. It was a lousy thing to happen to the old boy. (Goodbody was a professor of English, but sometimes tried to live it down.) He didn’t know that there was much he could tell anybody about the old boy.

  The old boy had reached retirement age a couple of years back. When he was retired he had been senior in the History Department, but had never been considered to head it. “Old boy didn’t publish much. Around here, they like it you should publish.”

  “I didn’t know him well,” Goodbody told Sergeant Forniss. “Different departments, for one thing. He was quite a bit older, for another. He wasn’t married, and I am. He was a nice, easygoing bloke, getting along in years. His classes were popular enough, but the kids didn’t stand in line exactly. Far as I ever heard, he didn’t quarrel with anybody. And you wouldn’t know it, Charles, but that’s a trick in faculty life.” Artemus Goodbody sighed. “One hell of a trick,” he said.

  As a retired professor, Wingate would have had enough to live on, if he lived with care. Goodbody had been mildly surprised to learn that Wingate had taken a job as a small-town librarian. When he was himself retired, he proposed to go to a warm place and sit. But he could see how a man might want to keep his hand in at something.

  “After all,” Goodbody said, “he had spent his life with books.” He paused. “And so have I,” he said. “And so have I, Charles.”

  Good-natured, easygoing, not inclined to quarrel—this apparently summed Loudon Wingate up. A small boy thought him that, and a fellow faculty member, and, for what it was worth, a tall, thin man with greenish eyes and a habit of introspection. Not one of life’s contestants, Wingate apparently hadn’t been. Not a man easily provoked to violence. All of which would have been important some hours before, and wasn’t really too important now.

  Search into the past of the other dead man was not as yet conclusive of anything. Homer Lenox had retired from the practice of law almost five years ago; he had been a partner in a firm which engaged primarily in corporation practice; his share of the proceeds had been 22½ per cent. Twenty-two and a half per cent apparently had amounted to a good deal. Heimrich, although he had no definite preconceptions, was a little surprised at the sum to which it had evidently amounted.

  Lenox had not died a particularly rich man, but he had not died a poor one. Not, certainly, by the unexalted standards of a captain, New York State Police. Lenox had by no means been scraping along, as Heimrich, for no very clear reason, had thought he might have been. The Lenox estate had, certainly, dwindled. Far Top had once stood near the center of some 150 acres, and now there were ten. The valley between two hills had once been Lenox land, and now it was Mitchie land. But the dwindling away had happened during the lifetimes of Homer Lenox’s grandfather and father. Homer himself had done all right; he could have bought land back if he had wanted land, which apparently he had not. And now, after due formalities, Scott Lenox could buy it back, which Heimrich was pretty certain he would not want to do.

  The bulk of what Homer Lenox had left, and apparently it would be several hundred thousand dollars, together with Far Top, went to his adopted son. There was a proviso that Scott Lenox should see to, and provide necessary funds for, the publication of The Families of Putnam County, New York. And there was a legacy of five thousand dollars to Enid Vance who “bore so patiently with an old man’s foibles.”

  Enid Vance, Heimrich thought, probably would be surprised.
She appeared not to have noticed the “foibles” mentioned. An easy man to work for, she had found him. Or—said she had.

  Scott Lenox had turned in slips for half a dozen books at the main reading room desk in the Forty-second Street library at 9:24 on Friday morning. All but one of the books, that one in use, had been delivered to him in the North Reading Room. They had been returned during the late afternoon. No exact time for the return of books is recorded. The subject which interested Scott Lenox seemed to be cats.

  Yes, if Lenox had wanted to leave the reading room for a time, he could have left in sight a written request that the books not be removed. The pages would have honored the request, at least for a reasonable time. If he had wanted to leave them overnight, he could have asked that they be put on a reserve shelf. That he had not done.

  Nine twenty-four. Say the books were actually delivered in the reading room at—oh, say nine forty-five. If he then had left at once, he might have got to Far Top in time. Even in the elderly Jeep known as Little Squeaky. It would, obviously, have been a good deal of trouble taken for an alibi which fell apart when touched. As Scott Lenox had himself pointed out it might.

  And it was Scott himself, also, who had pointed out that if his adoptive father left him money and a house to live in, he would no longer have to scratch out a living with a typewriter—no longer have to do articles (apparently about cats) on “spec.” Idly, Heimrich wondered whether Scott Lenox really liked cats. Heimrich did himself, but he had married a dog who didn’t. If you have to write about cats when you don’t like cats—

  Merton Heimrich pulled himself together with a jerk. Warm sunshine and a beer, coupled with a considerable loss of sleep the night before, relax a man. Most readily, of course, a man who was himself “getting along in years.” Aging eyes and—