The Distant Clue

by Frances Lockridge

  He took the clippings back and locked them up with the journals, with the typescript of The Families of Putnam County, New York. There was nothing more to do tonight, with the night half gone.

  Unless—It was an outside chance, but there was no harm in taking it. He dictated a telegram which one Saul Stringer would find on his desk in Washington in the morning. Stringer, although his work was rather special, having chiefly to do with counterespionage, would know which buttons to push to get things rolling quickly.

  His voice on the telephone had wakened Susan, and she turned on the light as he entered. She looked at him carefully for some seconds.

  “Wipe the canary feathers from your chops,” Susan Heimrich told her husband, “and come to bed.”

  Heimrich made a rumbling noise which somewhat resembled the purring of a cat and did as he was told.

  The binoculars were as powerful as he remembered. From the observation platform on the roof at Far Top, Heimrich could see Van Brunt Center in considerable detail. Of course, it was a very clear morning—a hazeless morning. There had been many clear days recently; the haze of summer was many weeks distant. Heimrich watched Enid Vance come out of the building she worked and lived in and walk to her Volkswagen, which evidently had been parked on the street overnight. The Volkswagen u-turned, unaware that a policeman was watching it from a distance, and headed south.

  Heimrich swung the glasses a little and the little stone house Scott Lenox lived in leaped toward him. There was no sign of life in the little house; the front door was closed, the terrace unoccupied. It was, after all, only a little after nine. A writer’s hours are his own.

  There was nobody in sight at either the Mitchie mansion or the smaller house of Johnny Three. The children, except for the littlest girl, would be at school. Johnny Three would be in a train, bound for his office in Manhattan. For want of anything better, Heimrich counted the interwoven plastic straps on the back of a pool chair. Five horizontal and four vertical it came to. A robin arrived and perched on the back of the chair and looked around and flew away again.

  For a certain period in the afternoon at this time of year binoculars trained north on the Mitchie swimming pool might reflect light, the lenses acting as mirrors. People around the pool might have thought some bright-eyed bird was winking at them.

  Heimrich put the glasses in their case and carried them downstairs and left them on a table. He locked Far Top behind him and drove out of Putnam County into Westchester to Mount Kisco and the plant and editorial offices of The Two-Counties Chronicle, which had years before absorbed the Putnam Recorder, along with several other community newspapers.

  The man in charge of the “library” of The Chronicle said that a man named Homer Lenox had come in frequently over a period of several months and read back numbers of, chiefly, the Putnam Recorder and made notes from them. “Writing a book about the old days, or something,” the man in charge of the library said. Where there were duplicate copies of some of the back issues, Lenox had been allowed to take them away with him, on the understanding that he would bring them back.

  “He won’t,” Heimrich said, and explained why he wouldn’t. “Well,” the man in charge of the library said, “it won’t put the sheet out of business, I guess.”

  Lenox had asked for, and received, for office use only, envelopes containing clippings about several families. The Van Brunts, the Vances. Yes, his own family, the Lenoxes. Yes, the Mitchies. He had spent several hours going over the clips in the Van Brunt envelopes, of which there were several. “Because of what happened to the old lady. Know about that?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “I know about that. When was he in last?”

  He had last been in, at a guess, about two weeks previously. He had gone to the room where the bound back issues were. The man in charge of the library had no idea what particular back issues had then concerned Homer Lenox. “Knew as much about the files as I do by that time,” he said. “I left him to it.”

  A young woman with a pencil stuck into her hair came into the library and said, “Mac, what’ve we got about raccoons?”

  Mac went to find out what the morgue had about raccoons, and Heimrich went to his car, and drove back toward Van Brunt. Scott Lenox ought to be up and about by this time.

  The Van Brunt substation was on his way, and he stopped there. Sergeant Forniss was holding it down; Forniss was on the telephone. Forniss said, “Guess that does it. Come on in” and put the telephone back. He said, “No soap. They’ve asked everybody around. Nobody saw Lenox. Which doesn’t prove a damn thing, does it? Because he could have been lucky. Our friend Stringer telephoned. Says to tell you Yes, Army, 1918 and that they happen to have a man flying up and he’ll bring them. Prints?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Have one of the boys pick them up in town, will you, Charlie? And the lab boys see if they match anything?”

  Forniss said, “Yep.” Then he waited.

  Heimrich told him of the notation he had come across in the records of Dr. Cornelius Van Brunt. Charles Forniss thought for a moment, looking at the wall opposite. Then he said he’d be damned.

  “There are holes in it,” Forniss said.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Several. We’ll see what we can do about plugging them up, Charlie. We’d better start by sending the boys on the rounds again. With new questions.”

  He looked up a number in the Westchester directory and dialed it; heard it ringing and heard, “Doctuh Brinkley’s rezdence.”

  Harry Washington, colored, born in South Jersey, had not given up the game that amused him. Old family retainer from the deepest South, Harry was. When he chose to be.

  “Dr. Brinkley in, Harry?” Heimrich said. “This is Captain Heimrich.”

  “Yes,” Harry Washington said. “He’s in, Captain.” He paused for a moment. “Suh,” he added.

  Dr. Walter Brinkley, professor emeritus of English, Dyckman University, author of “A Note on American Regional Accents,” (in two volumes) came on the telephone. He said it was too bad about the old boy, and that it was the last thing he would have expected. After that he said he supposed it was poor old Wingate Heimrich was calling about.

  “Partly,” Heimrich said. “How’ve you been?”

  “I’m afraid,” Brinkley said, “I’ve been slightly bored, my friend. Those brief high moments a few years ago. Dreadful but—well, I’m afraid exciting. It is a long time between murders. Not for you, of course. Loudon Wingate seems to me a most unlikely subject. Very run-of-the-mill. Amiable. Noticeably uninspired. Not the type to have got himself into anything, I should have thought.”

  “There seems to have been something about a girl at some time in the past.”

  “That,” Brinkley said, “I could never bring myself to believe, M. L. Nor could higher authorities, as it turned out. The general theory, differently phrased of course, was that he wouldn’t have had the gumption. He may have changed after retirement.” Brinkley sighed briefly. “One does,” he said. “How did you think I might help you, M. L.?”

  There was a degree of wistfulness in his tone. Once, not too long ago, he had helped rather strikingly.

  “I don’t know,” Heimrich said. “He didn’t have a—call it a fetish? About feet, say?”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Dr. Brinkley said. “No. I’m sure his mind was on higher things.” He paused, as if listening to what he had just said. “Ambiguity,” Brinkley said. “Unquestionable ambiguity. You’re laughing.”

  Heimrich was, mildly.

  “I am quite sure,” Walter Brinkley said, “that he had no fetishes of any kind. Might have been more interesting if he had had. It appears I can’t help, my friend. I assume you hoped for fetishism of some sort?”

  “Not especially,” Heimrich said. “A point to be clarified in passing. Professor, can a person change his accent? I mean, submerge completely the one he was born with?”

  “You mean,” Brinkley said, “if, say, Russian was his native tongue? Could he learn to
speak English without an accent? He might, if he put his mind to it. And had a very good ear, and considerable determination. A trained phonetician probably would be able to detect a—call it a residue. Poor old Wingate was quite definitely Middle West. Ohio, as I recall it.”

  He had not been, Heimrich explained, thinking of someone whose native tongue was other than English. Or, for that matter, of Professor Loudon Wingate.

  “A person grows up,” Heimrich said, “speaking English in a certain way—with a certain regional accent. Can he change that? So that the average person, not an expert like you, would be unlikely to detect the—what you called the residue?”

  “Not an expert,” Brinkley said, and sounded rather shocked. “Not like Norton at Chicago, say. A—say I’m a hobbyist, if you like. Yes, again with determination. And a good ear, of course. A friend of mine grew up in Atlanta, and there’s hardly a trace left. Of course he went to Harvard. Very little trace of that, either. You were thinking of American regionals?”

  “Any kind.”

  “An American going to England,” Brinkley said, “would find it more difficult. Not primarily because of pronunciation. There is a great variety of pronunciation in England. Any intelligent American could pick up the few words which have well-defined differences in pronunciation. The difference is more one of intonation. Rhythm. And syllabication, of course. Take, for example …”

  Heimrich, having started a hobbyist on his hobby, took several examples—took them patiently, and not without interest. In the middle of one, Professor Walter Brinkley said, suddenly and in exasperation, “How I run on. Yes, a man with an ear, one having good reason to go to the trouble, can be a chameleon as far as accent goes. Many good actors are, you know. A man like Norton—but that is quite another matter.”

  “It would work both ways? Across the Atlantic, I mean?”

  “Much less likely to, I’d think. They’re stiff about things like that. But only for that reason. Because the inclination would be less likely. There must be Englishmen with good ears.” He paused. “Among those who do not write novels which include American characters, of course.” He paused again. “I,” Walter Brinkley said, “am getting to be a very garrulous old man.” He sighed deeply. “If it were not for that,” he said, “I’d hope you and Susan might come over and have a drink with me some time soon. Or, preferably, dinner.”

  They would like to very much, Heimrich told him. And Heimrich told the pleasant, lively man whose accurate ear had once solved a murder for him that he had, again, been very helpful.*

  Walter Brinkley said that he couldn’t, for the life of him, see how.

  * As recounted in Accent on Murder.

  XVI

  Scott Lenox was at his typewriter. Heimrich could hear it clattering while he was still in his car. The door was open as it had been before, and Heimrich reached in, as he had before, and knocked on it. The clattering did not cease. Heimrich said, “Mr. Lenox,” and, when nothing came of that, said it more loudly. Lenox typed several more lines, yanked paper angrily from typewriter and said, “Goddamn it to hell.” He turned around and looked at Heimrich with great anger.

  “Not again!” he said. “For God’s sake, not again!”

  “A couple of points—”

  “Damn it to hell! First you. Then the sergeant. Then you. Damn it all, man, I’m working! Can’t you see I’m working?”

  “Now, Mr. Lenox,” Heimrich said. “Yes. I’m sorry to interrupt you. But, then, I’m working too, you know.”

  “It’s hardly the same—” Lenox began, and stopped and suddenly his wide smile darted across his face. “We’re hopeless egoists, most of us,” he said. “Have to be or—” He paused again and shrugged his shoulders. “Somebody come forward to say he saw me shoot my stepfather and the professor? Smother old Mears?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Nothing like that. About your interviews with old Mears. When you were trying to get a picture of the past from him. You told us you got nothing you could use—did use. But that doesn’t mean you got nothing, does it?”

  “I got a lot,” Lenox said. “A rambling lot—about how many horses were in the stables when Johnny Three’s grandfather was lord of the manor. And that old Mears’s father was the coachman. And that they gave a big party once a year, at Christmas. And—oh, the kinds of meals they served, and what they drank. A lot of it pretty—oh, dressed up in his memory, I suppose. Some of it I could have used to get the feel of the period. But, as I told you, I gave up the idea of the book.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “About the Mitchie Mears’s father drove for—plain John Mitchie, with no number. The one who would be in his nineties now. Would have been around thirty when—”

  “I know the one you mean,” Lenox said. “What about him, for God’s sake?”

  “What kind of man he was. What he looked like. How he acted.”

  Lenox looked at him blankly and shook his head. Then he said he didn’t get it. Then he said he thought it was Heimrich who didn’t get it. That sort of thing wasn’t what he wanted. He had never planned to—“copy the old man.” That wasn’t the way it was done.

  “I know,” Heimrich said. “You told me. But he did tell you about the old man. Who wasn’t an old man when Jasper Mears worked for him, of course. When Jasper first worked for him. About ten years older than Jasper himself.”

  “Oh,” Lenox said, “a lot. He rode to the hounds. It was real then, not a drag hunt. The foxes were real. None of this phony stuff, Mears kept saying. They’d go to the Old Stone Inn afterwards and drink a lot Jasper Mears and his father would go in and help with the horses. In the winters—which were much tougher than they are nowadays of course—they went around in sleighs. Mitchie was a good rider. There was a lot of wood to be chopped for the fireplaces and sometimes Mitchie joined in the chopping. Most of it just the way one would make it up, and perhaps Mears was making some of it up. A kind of—oh, Currier and Ives. What on earth are you getting at?”

  “About Mitchie,” Heimrich said. “Was there anything odd about him? That Mears remembered?”

  “I’ve just told you. The complete country gentleman. Aristocrat who didn’t find it beneath him to chop a little wood. Truth copying fiction of the genteel period. And—”

  “Physically,” Heimrich said. He had wanted it spontaneous. He was not going to get it so. “Was there anything strange about his feet?”

  And Lenox looked at him for seconds and shook his head hopelessly and then said, “Oh. That. He had only four toes on his right foot. The little one was missing. The Mitchies had been short the little toe on the right foot for generations. Kind of a hallmark. Guaranteeing a Mitchie was a right and proper—” He stopped suddenly.

  Heimrich waited.

  “Nothing,” Scott Lenox said.

  “When you picked up your bottle of sherry at the tavern Saturday,” Heimrich said. “Were there other cars parked in the lot? Aside from Mears’s truck?”

  “Several.”

  “Was one of them a foreign car?”

  “Yes,” Lenox said. “One of them was a foreign car, Captain. And inside I didn’t see anybody I knew, even by sight. The car was a Mercedes, I think.”

  They had enough to go on with. Not all they’d need in the end, but enough to go on with. Forniss and Heimrich agreed with that. They had fingerprints which did not match any that they found. They had binoculars, and what Heimrich himself had seen with them, and without them. They had a photograph of a young man poised on the edge of a swimming pool, and a question asked of a boy of twelve and answered by him in the negative. Heimrich talked to the district attorney in Carmel and was told that there were still a hell of a lot of holes in it, but to go ahead.

  They went ahead at a little after four that afternoon. The heat—the un-Maylike heat—still held and so, Heimrich thought, they might get a break. Not that it would matter one way or another.

  With the car stopped on the plateau at the top of the smoothly raked driveway they looked down toward
the pool and saw that they had got the break which didn’t matter—merely made things a little simpler.

  They walked across the grass, and down to the pool and to the white-haired man floating on his back in the middle of it. He did not appear to see them until Heimrich spoke to him, and then he swam to the side of the pool and came out of it—a compact and muscular man, who looked several years younger than presumably he was.

  “You again,” he said. “What now?”

  They both looked at his feet before they looked at his face, before Heimrich spoke.

  “Now, I’m afraid,” Captain Heimrich said, “we’ll have to ask you to come along with us. After you change, of course.”

  He looked at them blankly for a second, but then his eyes narrowed.

  “Come along with you?” he repeated. “Why come along with you?”

  ‘Tartly,” Heimrich said, “because you’ve one too many toes.”

  The white-haired man looked down at his own feet and then at Heimrich and his eyes were flatly blank.

  “Apparently,” Heimrich said, “you never saw your friend barefoot. So you couldn’t know, could you? I’ll have to ask you to get some clothes on, Mr. Hutton. And come along with us.”

  The white-haired man looked down at his own feet again, and this time as if he had never seen them before.

  “It was the little toe on the right foot,” Heimrich told him. “That’s the one John Mitchie was born without, Mr. Hutton. An hereditary deformity. Didn’t they tell you how they knew?”

  A surprised man may forget to be careful. Malcolm Hutton forgot so far as to shake his head slowly, answering mutely the question he had been asked.

  Flames jumped in the fireplace in the Heimrich living room. The month of May was proving what it could really do when it put its mind to it. Forty-eight hours ago it had been summer; now, on Wednesday evening, it was March again. A northwest wind hurried clouds across the sky; the temperature, in the eighties Monday, was in the low fifties.