A Client Is Canceled

by Frances Lockridge

  It was a lecture, I thought; a lecture on basic principles. And Heimrich had his audience—a wary audience, listening to each word for a significant word, for a sign post which would show the direction in which Heimrich was going. As I thought this, I became quite suddenly certain that Heimrich did know where he was going—knew precisely where he was going and had known, probably, for some time. I couldn’t see how he knew, but I was sure he did.

  “You’ve all heard the story about a firing squad, naturally,” Heimrich said. “How in the squad, one rifle is loaded with a blank, so that afterward each member of the squad may think that perhaps he had no part in killing. I don’t know whether this actually is done, or was ever done. It would make sense, naturally. Most people don’t like the idea of killing.” He looked around at us. “Of course,” he said, “some don’t mind, particularly. I suppose because they lack imagination.”

  He paused as if, again, he expected one of us to say something. None of us did. He nodded.

  “Here,” he said, “the condition is reversed. Only one gun was loaded. The assumption is that we will never be able to find out which one. Or that, even if we have our own ideas, even our convictions, we won’t be able to do anything, because there always will remain a reasonable doubt. One of you thinks that he is safe as long as he doesn’t confess, which he has no intention of doing, of course.” Heimrich closed his eyes. “Only,” he said, “one of you will confess. That’s what we’re here for.”

  It was amazing—it was arrogant and assured in substance, and for that reason it was frightening. But there was nothing arrogant in the way the statement was phrased, or in the way it was spoken, and that was frightening, too. Heimrich spoke as if he knew; as if it were foreordained, that one of us, not meaning to, would confess the murders of Uncle Tarzan and Francis Eldredge—as if no personal act of will, no determination, could prevent a final, fatal blurting out of truth. Heimrich looked from one to another of us and at the same time we looked at one another, doubtfully, uneasily. And I had, for an incredible instant, a compulsion to say, “All right, I killed them!” and end, for myself and the Pooh, for everyone, the tight anxiety Heimrich had drawn around us. I wondered if the others, the innocent as well as the guilty, felt that same compulsion.

  “Now Mr. Otis,” Heimrich said. “Now Mr. Otis—you still say your automatic was stolen? By someone trying to throw the blame on you? Knowing that your wife inherits a substantial sum?”

  I was very careful—very, very careful. I chose each word with care.

  “I haven’t said that, Captain,” I told him. “I’ve said my gun disappeared. I don’t know how. I don’t know when. I don’t know that it was the gun you want. I do say it disappeared.”

  Heimrich opened his eyes and looked at me, and then he nodded.

  “Very factual, Mr. Otis,” he said. “Admirably factual. Nevertheless—you think, or want me to think at any rate, that the gun was stolen, to put the blame on you and Mrs. Otis. That you were framed.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “If the gun has any connection at all, that’s probably the connection.”

  “Do you ever write stories about murder, Mr. Otis?” Heimrich asked me.

  “I have,” I said. “Not often.”

  “But often enough to know that the claim to being framed is a familiar one,” he said. “A cliché. You realize that, naturally?”

  I said I supposed it did, to him, sound a little familiar. I repeated that the suggestion was his, not mine.

  Heimrich closed his eyes. He said, “It seldom happens, Mr. Otis. It is very difficult to frame anyone. Suppose someone had stolen your gun, relying on the inheritance motive. How could he be certain that, at the time of the murder, you weren’t provided with an incontestable alibi? Since he, in the nature of things, couldn’t check up himself, because at the moment he would have to be at a certain place? In this instance, at Mr. Townsend’s swimming pool with Mr. Barlow. You see the problem?”

  I saw it. I’d seen it before. Heimrich opened his eyes long enough to look at me, said, “I see you do,” and closed them again.

  “You and Mrs. Otis found her uncle’s body,” Heimrich pointed out, in a quiet, conversational tone. “Mr. Eldredge was there at about that time—a few minutes later, he implied. But—perhaps he saw you, naturally. And, you found Mr. Eldredge’s body, very shortly after he had been shot. You realize it is quite common, don’t you, for murderers to ‘find’ the bodies?”

  His voice put the word “find” in obvious quotation marks.

  “I’ve heard of that being done,” I said.

  “At the inn,” Heimrich said, “you and Mrs. Otis were separated for about half an hour. Perhaps longer. She disappeared—went out. People remembered that when we asked them.”

  “I don’t remember that,” I said. Then I wished I hadn’t, because I was lying and Heimrich was looking for lies. Perhaps a lie—the right lie—would seem to him a confession. But there wasn’t, so far as I could see, any other answer. “There were a good many people there,” I said. “We were milling around. I doubt whether anybody could swear to anything.”

  “Do you, Mr. Otis?” Heimrich said. “Now Mr. Otis.”

  “It was noisy,” the Pooh said. “Hot and noisy. I went out for a while and sat in the car. Perhaps Oh-Oh didn’t notice.” The Pooh smiled at me, very pleasantly. There was no admonishment in her smile. One would have thought she did think I hadn’t noticed her disappearance. “And,” the Pooh said, “if I’d started—or tried to start—It, people would have heard. You’ve heard It, Captain.”

  “Now Mrs. Otis,” Heimrich said. “I heard your car afterward, remember. When you were leaving the pool. It made a good deal of noise then. But—that can more or less be arranged, naturally. With an old car, a hand-operated choke.”

  The Pooh said what she always says, that It hadn’t any choke. She said that the choke was broken.

  “Captain Heimrich,” Ann Dean said, “I heard the car earlier. It was very noisy.”

  “It always was,” George Townsend said. “We can all tell you that, Captain.” He smiled around. “Anybody for miles around can tell you that,” he said. He smiled particularly at us, and nodded cordially, showing how glad he was to give a helping hand to those in need.

  Heimrich looked at the Pooh. He said, “Well, Mrs. Otis?”

  “I don’t—” the Pooh began and then said, “Oh. Yes, I see what you mean.” She turned to me. “He means the drive from the inn, Oh-Oh,” she said. “I could have coasted down it; started the motor at the bottom. Isn’t that what you mean, Captain Heimrich?”

  “You could have done that, naturally,” Heimrich said. “I think we all realize that. On thinking it over.” He looked at Jovial George. George hesitated. Then, reluctantly, he nodded—Saint George admitting there was life in the old dragon yet. He turned to us with the expression of a man who’s very apologetic about the toughness of a dragon he’d like to kill for friends.

  “And,” Heimrich said, “I gather none of the rest of you was at the inn when Mr. and Mrs. Otis were? Except—”

  “Miss Dean and I were there for a time,” Dwight Craig said. He didn’t look at Miss Dean. “I’ve told you that.”

  “But left almost at once,” Heimrich said. “So you had no way of knowing that Mrs. Otis was going to, as she says, sit in the car because it was hot and noisy in the tap-room? That’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Craig said.

  “And none of the rest of you knew, of course?” Heimrich said.

  Nobody answered.

  “You see, Mr. Otis?” Heimrich said. “Mrs. Otis? For all any of the others knew, you were together, with others, uninterruptedly. For all anyone knew, you might have stayed there for several hours longer. So no one here had the necessary information to frame you, did they?”

  “It looks that way,” I said. “Again—the frame-up is your idea.”

  “Now Mr. Otis,” Heimrich said. He paused. “But you both still say you had nothing to
do with Mr. Barlow’s murder? With Mr. Eldredge’s? Except finding their bodies?”

  “That’s right,” I said. The Pooh nodded. Heimrich closed his eyes. He spoke next without opening them.

  “Miss Barlow,” he said, “what did your father have against Mr. Craig? As your husband, I mean, naturally?”

  “I told you,” Pauline said. “I don’t know. He just said—” She stopped; she looked at Dwight Craig as if she expected him to speak. But he didn’t. He looked at her with an expression I couldn’t fathom, and then back at Heimrich. He looked at Heimrich, it seemed to me, with wariness. Perhaps I imagined that; I was looking at all of them, I suppose, seeking some expression, some intonation, that would reveal what they were trying to keep hidden. I felt wary myself, and uneasy. The Pooh and I had made our recitation, but we had no way of knowing what grade we had got, whether we had passed.

  “Go on, Miss Barlow,” Heimrich said. “What did your father—that is, your adopted father—say? About Mr. Craig?”

  She hesitated. Then she said, “It hasn’t anything to do with—with what happened.” Her voice was rather faint, yet audible enough.

  “Now Miss Barlow,” Heimrich said. “Perhaps it hasn’t. I can’t know until you tell me, can I?”

  “I did tell you,” she said. “I don’t know. It—it wasn’t only Dwight. He was that way about—about any man.” Suddenly, then, her voice went up. “He didn’t want me to live,” she said. “Not to live at all. That was it.”

  “Why do you say that?” Heimrich asked her.

  “It was always the same,” she said. “Nobody was—was right: I don’t mean—” she stopped, and looked at Dwight Craig. “I don’t know what I mean,” she said. “But I don’t think it was just because it was Dwight. Father just said he wasn’t right for me. But nobody would have been.”

  “Why?” Heimrich said.

  “I don’t know,” Pauline Barlow said. “I tell you I don’t know.”

  Heimrich let the sound of her voice die.

  “Mr. Craig,” he said, “you still say you didn’t ask Mr. Barlow what he had against you? Although you had told Miss Barlow you would ask him?”

  “I hadn’t,” Craig said. His voice was without expression. “Probably I—”

  “Dwight!” Pauline said. “What are you lying for? You never would have. You didn’t—” She put her hands over her face. “Never,” she said, her voice muffled. “Not after—”

  “Paulie,” Craig said. “You’re wrong.” He turned to Heimrich. “For God’s sake,” Craig said, “can’t you leave her alone?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “I can’t leave anybody alone, naturally. You realize that, Miss Barlow?”

  She took her hands down and looked at him.

  “Did you resent your father’s attitude?” Heimrich asked her. “Whatever caused it. Say you don’t know what caused it or—don’t want to know. You resented it?”

  “I—” she said, and now her voice shook a little. “Not the way you mean.”

  “Now Miss Barlow,” Heimrich said. “Whatever I mean. You resented your father’s attitude?”

  “It wasn’t right,” she said. “I’m—I want to be alive. It wasn’t right for him to—not to let me.” She stopped. Then she put her young, round chin up. “I resented it,” she said. “I—I resented him. Is that what you want me to say? I—I thought Dwight and I loved each other and that he was in the way. Is that what you want me to say?”

  “Damn it!” Dwight Craig said. “Leave her alone!”

  Heimrich merely kept his eyes closed; he merely waited. I had an idiotic feeling that he could see even with his eyes closed.

  “No, Dwight,” Pauline said. “It’s no good, is it? We found that out Saturday, didn’t we? I was a fool, I guess.” She managed something like a smile. “I’ll live through it,” she said. “You watch. I’ll live through it.”

  “What did you find out?” Heimrich asked her, without opening his eyes.

  “That it wasn’t the way we thought,” she said. “At least—not for both of us. Listen to me! Open your eyes and listen to me!” Heimrich opened his eyes. “It was too late by Saturday afternoon,” she said. “Years too late.”

  “Paulie,” Craig said.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Maybe you didn’t know. Not until then. Not until—” She looked at Ann Dean.

  “Captain Heimrich,” Ann Dean said and her voice, in its lack of expression, sounded, oddly, as Craig’s had at first. “Do you want me to stay here? Do I have to?”

  “Yes, Miss Dean,” Heimrich said. “We have to get it over.”

  “That is what Miss Barlow is saying,” Craig said. “That it is over. Didn’t you hear her?”

  “Now Mr. Craig,” Heimrich said. “Of course I heard her. Is that what you say, too?”

  “If she says so,” Craig said.

  “Over before Mr. Barlow was killed,” Heimrich said. “A few hours before. A—what shall I say, Mr. Craig? A convenient few hours before? So that your incentive—yours, at any rate—didn’t exist at the time Mr. Barlow was killed?”

  “There never was any incentive,” Craig said. “Not that kind, anyway.” His lop-sided face was flushed. “Damn it to hell,” he said. “What do you think I am? You think I killed Paulie’s father because he wouldn’t let us get married? Because with him dead, Paulie would have the money?”

  “Now Mr. Craig,” Heimrich said. “It could have been that way, naturally. You see that. That’s why you say it. If you and Miss Barlow changed your minds, it’s a different thing, of course. If you did.”

  “You heard her,” Craig said. “Why don’t you leave it alone, then? Leave both of us alone?”

  “Oh,” Heimrich said, “not both of you, necessarily. Not Miss Barlow, naturally. She might have been bitter, of course. Blamed her father.” He paused. “Her adopted father,” he said.

  “What’s the use?” Pauline said. “What the hell’s the use?”

  She sounded almost as if she meant it—only almost, because you don’t mean it at her age. You get to thinking you do, but you don’t.

  “Captain,” George Townsend said. “Do you have to do it this way? Whatever you’re trying to do?”

  “Identify a murderer, Mr. Townsend,” Heimrich told him. “I have to do it this way, yes.” He paused. He had opened his eyes when George spoke. Now he closed them again. “Nobody likes it much,” he said. His voice sounded as if he didn’t like it much.

  “Why?” Townsend said. “You say you’re after one of us. Why drag everybody through—everything?”

  “I told you, Mr. Townsend,” Heimrich said. “So that, when it’s necessary, everybody will hear.”

  “I don’t get it,” Townsend said.

  “Don’t you?” Heimrich asked him, still with his eyes closed. “All right, Mr. Townsend. Was Mr. Barlow here to tell you he was withdrawing the account? Or was going to recommend the firm find a new agency? Did you have him here for a—what shall I say? A last appeal? One that didn’t work?”

  “That’s my business” George said. He wasn’t at all jovial now.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Not any more, Mr. Townsend.” Heimrich opened his eyes suddenly, and they seemed extraordinarily blue. “You must all understand that. Because one of you killed two men, there isn’t any secrecy any more. There isn’t any private business any more. Not about anything.”

  “We can always—” Townsend started to say, and Heimrich interrupted him.

  “Refuse answers, Mr. Townsend?” Heimrich said. “Yes, you can do that. But, you see, the innocent haven’t any real incentive to refuse, have they. To refuse would be a kind of confession, wouldn’t it, Mr. Townsend? Was that why Mr. Barlow was here?”

  George Townsend hesitated. He swallowed a couple of times, and, as he considered, moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.

  “All right,” he said, “something like that. He was dissatisfied. Do you know the advertising business at all, Captain?”

  Heimrich sho
ok his head. He was patient.

  “That sort of thing is always going on,” Townsend told him. “Clients get dissatisfied, talk about going somewhere else. Nine times out of ten it doesn’t mean anything. They just want to keep you on your toes. Sometimes, to show how up and coming they are. We’d have talked Barlow out of it.”

  “Would you?” Heimrich said. “You and—you and Mr. Craig?”

  Townsend hesitated again; he hesitated long enough so that when he finally said, “That’s right, Captain,” what he said didn’t sound right. It didn’t, to me, sound as if it were even intended to sound right, and Craig, who had been looking at nothing, turned in his chair and looked at Jovial George. Then everybody waited.

  “Craig and I and my wife,” Townsend amended, after the seconds during which everybody waited. “P. J. had a lot of respect for Faye.” He managed a faint beam in his wife’s direction. “More than he had for me, maybe,” he said. “Sometimes I wondered which—” He stopped.

  “Dear George,” Faye Townsend said. “You’re being absurd, aren’t you. Aren’t you, George?”

  “All right,” George said. “I’m being absurd.”

  “Childish,” Faye told him. “Really, George! You make it sound as if—really, George!”

  “As if Mr. Barlow had an especial interest in you, Mrs. Townsend?” Heimrich asked. His voice was low; one would have thought he wasn’t much interested.

  “You see, George?” Faye said.

  George didn’t say anything.

  “No, Mrs. Townsend,” Heimrich said. “It’s not what your husband says. Or doesn’t say. You and Mr. Barlow saw a good deal of each other.”