The Distant Clue

by Frances Lockridge

  “It seems like a long time ago,” Susan said. “Very far away from Enid, if you have Enid on that mind of yours. That very inquisitive mind of yours. I expect the veal birds are done.”

  Heimrich sat for some minutes after Susan had gone to attend to veal birds. He finished his drink, but did not make another. Nor did he read further in The Families. What Merton Heimrich did was lapse, until he was called to dinner.

  Colonel, although knowing perfectly well that he was not fed with the rest of the family, went along, on the chance that this might be the evening when the world, stacked though it was against dogs, might turn upside down….

  Days are long in mid-May. It was still light when Heimrich drove to Route 11-F, and south on it, through the Center, down to The Flats. He stopped at the state police substation just north of The Flats. Enid Vance had not returned to her apartment. There was no sign that anybody had broken into her apartment. Nobody had tried to since the stakeout had been set up. All the occupants of the Van Brunt Annex had closed their offices for the day, and gone home. Nobody but Enid lived in the building. A trooper was sitting on the steps between the second floor and the third. A telephone call made ten minutes ago to Scott Lenox’s house, on the chance Enid might be there with him, had been unanswered….

  Jasper Mears did not live on Van Brunt Avenue where it passed between the small houses of The Flats. (A country slum it had been when Heimrich first saw it; for the most part the houses were neat small houses now.) He drove through The Flats to the Three Oaks Tavern. When he went in a boy and a girl, presumably too young to be there, went rather hurriedly out of there. Adam Mears, with both elbows on the bar, at the bar’s end, did not look up. Leo Armstrong, proprietor of the Three Oaks and presently its bartender, said, “I asked them, Captain. They gave me their word—”

  “Don’t do it again, Leo,” Heimrich said, for the record, to, he supposed, little effect. “Where does Jasper Mears live? Somewhere around here, isn’t it?”

  He was directed. He followed directions—drove back to The Flats, turned into a narrow road which led toward the Hudson, counted little houses until he came to the third. It was a very little house; it was hardly more than a shack. The efforts of the Van Brunt Improvement Association had not extended to this back road.

  There were no lights in the little house but, as he walked toward it from his parked car—walked on bare, beaten earth—Heimrich heard loud conversation inside the little house. A radio or a TV set, if Mears ran to a TV set. There was an antenna on the roof; apparently he ran to a TV set.

  Heimrich knocked and was not answered. Sharper ears than a man in his eighties may be expected to have would have been needed to hear knocking over the shouting, the revolver shots, the trampling of hoofs, which came from the set. Heimrich knocked again, more heavily, and there was no answer. He pushed at the door and it opened.

  The only light in the room came from the TV screen. The light flickered on a bed, placed so that, lying in it, a man could watch the screen. Heimrich called Mears’s name, and there was no answer. He groped for, and found, a light switch, and the light—an overhead light; a bulb dangling from the ceiling—went on.

  At first, Heimrich thought the bed was empty. But then he saw that it was not.

  Old man Mears lay in the bed, on his back. The reason Heimrich had not seen him at once was that the pillow which covered his face was deceptive, might have been only a pillow waiting to rest a head.

  Old man Mears was quite dead. There was no reasonable doubt that he had been smothered. It is easy enough to kill an aged man by pressing a pillow down over his face, and holding it there, hard.

  Heimrich used a pencil point to push in the knob which turned off the television set. It was a big set; it had, he thought, cost several hundred dollars. He looked around the small room, which was dominated by the bed with a dead man in it—a dead man so wraithlike that his body hardly lifted the sheet and blanket which covered it. It was hot in the little room, but the very old, the very frail, feel the cold, need blankets over them. The bed was solid; a modern, wooden bed. And by it, on a table, there was a bronze lamp with an ornate shade. Heimrich turned the control knob on the lamp. There was no need to worry about fingerprints on its ridged surface. The lamp held a three-way bulb.

  There was an unpainted chest of drawers in a corner of the room, by a curtainless window. There was a straight wooden chair, unpainted too. There was a kerosene heater. The room, Heimrich thought, disagreed with itself, argued with itself. A bare bulb dangling on a ceiling cord; a lamp which must have cost a bit, however unworthily. A bed which had box springs and—Heimrich touched it to make sure—a foam rubber mattress. Not a cheap bed. There was no telephone in the room.

  Heimrich lifted the pillow and looked at the old, thin face, a white beard scraggly on it. There was the cyanosis which Heimrich had expected. He put the pillow back over the dead face. There was a door beside the bed, and Heimrich pushed it open with a foot. He went into another room, the other room. It was about the size of the first. It was the kitchen. There was a rough wooden table along one wall, and a wooden chair, the twin of the one in the other room, by it. Against the other wall, side by side, stood a shining electric refrigerator and an electric range. Both were new, both modern; neither had been inexpensive. Against the far wall there was a rusty sink, with one faucet over it. There was a door beside the sink and Heimrich went to it and looked out through an unwashed pane of glass. There was still light enough for him to see the weedy back yard and the outhouse, the “privy.”

  Heimrich went back through the house and out into the freshness of the evening. He went to his car and used the radio and sat in the car and waited.

  He could only guess, but he thought the old man had been dead for not more than an hour or two. If he had ignored Adam Mears’s “after supper,” if he had driven here at once—Well, he hadn’t. He did not suppose that, under the same circumstances, he would act differently another time. So there was no use kicking it around in his mind.

  The first patrol car had only a mile or so to come, and came with siren on, since now there was traffic on 11-F. When the marked car stopped behind him, Heimrich told the trooper, who was Ray Crowley, what he would find inside, and that the lab boys were on their way; that everybody was on the way. He left Crowley to watch the house, to wait for everybody, and turned his car and drove back to the Three Oaks Tavern to tell Adam Mears that his father had been murdered. If Adam Mears didn’t know.

  There were more cars standing in front of the tavern now, and more people in the barroom. But Mears had not changed; there was nothing to indicate that Mears had moved. There was a half-empty glass of beer on the bar in front of the leaning Mears, but there was also a shot glass. Whisky with a beer chaser, Heimrich thought, and that Mears looked as if he might fall over if touched. Heimrich went over and touched him, and he didn’t fall over. He did not do anything at all.

  Heimrich said, “Come along, Adam,” and his voice was pleasant. Adam Mears said, “G’way,” or so Heimrich, expecting it, deduced. “Come along, now,” Heimrich said, in the same tone, and Mears said, “Who you?”

  “You know who I am,” Heimrich said. “Come along. I want to talk to you.”

  “ ’S old man,” Mears said. “Not me.”

  “You,” Heimrich said, and took Mears by the shoulders firmly, without harshness, and turned him toward the rather distant door.

  “Finish drink,” Mears said, and finished the beer.

  “ ’S old man, not me,” Mears said. “You got it wrong.”

  He staggered somewhat, but he did not resist, as Heimrich, still holding his shoulders, took him to the door and through it. Everybody in the barroom watched, but nobody said anything except Armstrong, who said, “He’s the police.”

  When Heimrich got Adam Mears into the car, and got in beside him, he thought for a moment and drove south, toward Hawthorne Barracks. The fresh air he’d get during the longer drive might help to sober Mears. (It might, o
f course, have precisely the opposite result.) The formality of the barracks would, almost certainly, sober him further. Hot black coffee would be available at the barracks. So, if required, would a cold shower.

  The combination worked, within reason. In Heimrich’s office, with a trooper-stenographer present, Mears was sober enough to say, “Poor old geezer,” when told his father was dead. Then he said, “He was a mighty old man.”

  “It wasn’t that, Adam,” Heimrich said. “He was killed. Somebody smothered him with a pillow.”

  Adam said, “Jeez!” But he did not say it with any real emphasis. He said, “Who’d kill an old man like him?” But he did not ask the question with any urgency. He merely said the words. Of course, he was still half drunk. It was likely that he was always half drunk, or thereabouts. He was not noticeably intelligent, drunk or half drunk. But still.

  “You’ve no idea, Adam?”

  “How’d I know? Listen, Cap’un, if what you’re getting at—” He stopped with that. He tried, Heimrich thought, to look fierce. He didn’t make it. “Got no right—” Adam said, and stopped again.

  “When did you see him last?”

  “ ’S afternoon. You know that, Cap’un. Said he wanted to tell you something and I drove up to tell you he wanted to tell you something.”

  “Why didn’t you just telephone me?”

  “Going up that way anyhow. Get my money from old man Mitchie. Get it on Saturday. Same time every Saturday, on account of with old man Mitchie everything’s always the same time.”

  “You just happened to stop by to see your father first?”

  “Took him a pint. Old geezer likes his pint.”

  “And he asked you to ask me to come and see him? Because he had something to tell me?”

  “Tha’s what I said. How’s about a drink?”

  Heimrich filled Adam’s cup from a pot of coffee on the desk. Adam looked at it and then, with resentment, at Heimrich, who said, “Drink it.” Adam looked into Heimrich’s blue eyes for a moment and said, “Sure, Cap’un,” and drank coffee.

  Heimrich wanted to know, as precisely as Adam Mears could remember, what his father had said to him. Precision of mind was not a characteristic of Adam Mears. “He wanted to see me? Specifically?” Heimrich asked and then, to be himself more specific, “He said something like, ‘I want to see Captain Heimrich’?” He got “Sure” and then, after a pause, “I guess so.”

  “He said it was about something Mr. Lenox had told him? Can you remember the words, Adam?”

  It had been “something like that.” It took patience. It took a good while. When he had done what he could, Heimrich was still not certain whether patience and the expenditure of time had been rewarded.

  It was possible—Adam couldn’t be sure—that the old man had asked for whoever was in charge of the Lenox case, not for a police captain named Heimrich. Maybe it had been about something “old man Lenox” had asked Jasper Mears, not something he had told Jasper Mears. Maybe he, Adam, was the one who had fixed the time—the time after supper. “’Count of he slept every afternoon.” His “old man” hadn’t said he wanted to see anybody right away. Adam was sure of that. But Adam was not really sure of anything. Yes, he had stopped for a drink before he went to see his father. Went to pick up the pint, and had a drink himself, being there. (Which apparently meant the Three Oaks. Which apparently meant that Armstrong was selling package goods again, an activity which could cost him his license. Which was nothing Heimrich, at the moment, cared about.)

  The chances were high that Adam had been fuzzy of mind when he saw his father. The chances were that no amount of questioning would rub that fuzz away. It was also likely that Jasper Mears had not bothered to give his son any idea of what he wanted to talk to the police about, but had merely used Adam as a messenger. The old man had had something to tell, or something to ask, and Homer Lenox had been concerned in it. The old man had been killed before he could tell or ask. Presumably because he had been going to.

  Had Adam told anybody else his father wanted to see the police? Adam said, “Sure not” and then, “I guess not, Cap’un.” Had he stopped by the Mitchie place for his money before he took his message to Heimrich? “Afterward” but then, inevitably, “I guess.” What had he done when, message delivered, he had returned to The Flats? Gone home and had “his old woman” fix him something to eat. Then? Gone to Leo’s place for a quick one. Not gone to his father’s place? What would he want to go there for?

  “Can’t ja lemme sleep?” Adam asked then, and put his head down on his arms on Heimrich’s desk. He might as well, Heimrich thought. But he said, “Pretty soon now, Adam” and then, “What did your father live on, Adam?” He got “Huh?” for a blurry answer. He reached across the desk and pushed Adam Mears up in his chair and said, “Snap out of it,” in a voice he had not used before. Adam blinked at him.

  “Did you give him money to live on?”

  “Give who money?”

  “Your father. Your old man.”

  “Saved up, the old man did. Had it put away.” And then, as always, “I guess.”

  “How long has he had that TV set?”

  “Coupla months, maybe.”

  “The stove? The refrigerator?”

  “Got ’em about the same time. Wanna drink.”

  Adam put his head down on his arms again, and went to sleep. “Pour him someplace and let him sleep it off,” Heimrich told the trooper-stenographer.

  That sponge was squeezed as dry as, for the moment, it was going to be. He had not got much out of the sponge. Probably, most simply, because there wasn’t much in it. Jasper Mears, understandably enough, had not confided in his son. Adam might have told anybody he met that his old man had something to tell the police.

  Jasper Mears had lived on what he had “put away.” His son had not supported him. (Heimrich had no trouble in believing that.) Two months or so before, Jasper Mears had had several hundred, probably close to a thousand, to spend for a television set, a refrigerator, an electric range. And an ornate lamp and a new bedstead and box spring and mattress? All of them out of place in a rickety shack with a single cold-water faucet over a rusted sink. It was surprising the kitchen floor had stood up under the weight of the range and the refrigerator.

  Come into money a couple of months ago. Tapped something and money gushed out. Or tapped someone?

  The telephone rang.

  X

  Heimrich said, “All right, Charlie. Take charge of the money. I’ll pick the other stuff up.” He put the receiver back.

  Jasper Mears had been dead three hours or more when the coroner’s physician examined his body. Which meant—Heimrich checked back—which meant that he had died around five-thirty that afternoon, about half an hour after Adam had delivered his message. I would have had time, Heimrich thought. I didn’t take it seriously enough. Somebody took it seriously enough.

  There was every superficial indication that the old man had been smothered, died of suffocation. An autopsy would be done, would without doubt confirm. The old man wouldn’t have had the strength to struggle much. A determined child could have used the pillow. There were a great many fingerprints everywhere. Most of them were the old man’s. Some of them, including a few obviously recent, were those of his son. (Adam had twice been picked up on a drunken driving charge, and printed.) There were unidentified prints.

  In a coffee can on a kitchen shelf there was a roll of ten- and twenty-dollar bills, totaling a little over a thousand dollars, with a rubber band around them. One of the drawers in the chest in the front room was full of newspaper clippings, chiefly from the Putnam Recorder. Most of the clippings were yellow, dated back for years. They would have to; the Putnam Recorder had long since been absorbed, become part of a regional chain of weeklies.

  The clippings constituted the “other stuff” Heimrich had undertaken to pick up. He was not gaining, Heimrich thought. He was getting progressively further behind with his reading.

  He telephoned th
e Mitchie house—the big Mitchie house—and got Robert and, “Mr. Mitchie is at dinner, sir.” The statement was heavy with finality. When Mr. Mitchie was at dinner, Mr. Mitchie stayed at dinner. Robert himself might do. Did he happen to know at what time that afternoon Adam Mears had arrived to collect his week’s wages.

  “Certainly,” Robert said. “At four o’clock, sir. That is the time arranged.”

  “Mr. Mitchie paid him?”

  “Mr. Mitchie was in the studio, sir. He had prepared an envelope containing what was due Mears. I gave it to Mears.”

  “Did Mears say anything about going from there to see me?”

  “The man had been drinking, I’m afraid, sir. He mumbled something, but it was not intelligible.”

  Adam had gone to the Mitchie house first, then, Heimrich thought, the receiver back in its cradle. Then to the Heimrich house. He might have told anybody his father had asked him to see a policeman. He might have told nobody, been intelligible to nobody. The murder of the frail old man in his anomalous house might have been already planned. If somebody had been paying the old man for silence about something, that somebody might have feared that murder would be the straw to break the silence.

  And the thousand or so dollars which Jasper Mears had died owning, to say nothing of the television set and the refrigerator and the range, presumably now belonged to Adam Mears. Adam Mears, who had not wanted his father disturbed while napping, might have stopped by and done the disturbing himself, assuming that Heimrich would think precisely what Heimrich had been thinking. A little too crafty for Adam, probably. But not certainly. If Adam had stopped by and killed his “old man,” Heimrich would have expected him to take the money then and there. But perhaps he could not find it.

  Nothing was certain about any of it. The telephone rang again. Scott Lenox had just parked the aged Jeep, which all the town knew, at the Old Stone Inn. He and Enid Vance had got out of it and gone into the taproom, presumably to have dinner. “I’ll stop by and have a word with them,” Heimrich said, and left his office before the telephone rang again.