He didn’t ask her. He told her.
“Naturally,” Heimrich said, “we try to find out all we can about the people we’re interested in. A good many people help us.”
“Really, Captain Heimrich,” Faye said. “Paul and I had lunch together. That sort of thing. What do you think you found out?”
“That,” Heimrich said. “That you had lunch—that sort of thing, as you say—with Mr. Barlow a couple of times a week. In New York. If there was more—” He let it hang.
“My God,” George said. “You do snoop around, don’t you? You can’t make anything out of that.”
“No,” Heimrich said. “You say that’s all it was, Mrs. Townsend? Just lunches and—that sort of thing? Was that all Mr. Barlow thought it was? Or—wanted it to be?”
“Really, Captain!” Faye said. She seemed to have stuck on that. It seemed to me barely adequate as repartee, but that was up to Faye. Heimrich waited for anything she might want to add, and didn’t get anything.
“It would have been a serious matter to your agency to lose the Blends account, Mr. Townsend?” Heimrich said. “We gather it would have been.”
“You’re damn right,” Townsend said. “That I certainly don’t deny, Captain. No agency wants to lose an account like that.”
“No,” Heimrich said. “Naturally not.”
“We’d have made out all right,” Townsend said. “Pulled in our horns a little, sure. But we’d have made out.”
“Pulling in horns is painful,” Heimrich said. “How far in, Mr. Townsend?” Heimrich motioned around the room, which did look like a great deal of money—and which fitted Faye so well. “This far in?”
“Possibly,” Townsend said. “Temporarily. But we weren’t going to lose the account. P. J. was the only one who wasn’t satisfied with Dwight’s—with the way we were handling the copy.” George looked surprised at what he had just said. Then he went on quickly, as if hoping that what he had said would be lost behind what he said next. “Everybody else was satisfied. When it came down to it, P. J. couldn’t have swung it, even if he wanted to.”
It was too quick, I thought; too assured. George sounded like a man talking fast, defiantly, to reassure himself. Or like a man who was nervous and keyed up as, actually, we all were. Heimrich waited. What George said so quickly seemed to bounce off Heimrich, I suppose because it wasn’t new to him. George stopped and Heimrich nodded.
“Anyway, he can’t now,” Heimrich said. “Can he, Mr. Townsend?”
Jovial George laughed. It was a pretty good laugh under the circumstances. Heimrich didn’t laugh.
“My God, Captain,” George said. “You don’t think I’d kill a man to keep an advertising account? Hell—in my business, they come and go. Here today and gone tomorrow. I wasn’t going bankrupt, whatever happened.”
“Now Mr. Townsend,” Heimrich said. “I didn’t say you were, naturally. It was Mr. Craig’s handling of the account Mr. Barlow wasn’t satisfied with?”
“I didn’t—” George began.
“Now Mr. Townsend,” Heimrich said. “You started to, of course. Thought better of it.” He paused. “I assume,” he added. “Mr. Craig handled the copy?”
“Handles,” George said. He looked almost jovial for a moment. “It isn’t the account that’s dead,” he told Heimrich. “He’s account executive. He’s responsible for the whole thing.”
“Under your direction, naturally,” Heimrich said.
“Sure,” George said. “If you want to call it that. Lately, I’ve been working on something else. It’s taken most of my time.” He paused. He smiled. “And that is my business,” he said.
“You agree, Mr. Craig?” Heimrich asked, without going into what was anybody’s business. “You handled the account?”
“That’s right,” Craig said. His voice again was unemphasized, flat.
“So any objection Mr. Barlow might have had would have been to your work? In the last analysis?”
“You heard my boss,” Craig said. He looked at Heimrich, not at anybody else.
“Mr. Townsend,” Heimrich said. “If Mr. Barlow had removed the account, Mr. Craig’s position with you would have been affected?”
“We-el,” George said. He looked at Craig and managed a cordial smile. It was wasted; Craig didn’t turn to receive it. “I’d hope not, of course. It would be pretty tough to lose Dwight. I don’t know how we’d—”
“But you might have had to, as you say, pull in your horns?”
George Townsend was very reluctant. He kept looking at Dwight Craig, and smiling in his direction, and wasting his efforts.
“I might have had to,” George said.
Then Craig did look at George. He looked at him without expression, his wandering eyebrow cocked very high indeed.
“Thanks, pal,” Craig said. “Thanks a hell of a lot.”
10
Until Dwight Craig ironically expressed his gratitude for having been thrown to the wolves and Townsend answered it by saying, “Now listen, Craig—” and stopping with the sentence unfinished, Heimrich had controlled all of it. He had prodded here, and questioned, and opened up possibilities. We had jumped when poked, and answered, and tried, of course, to close, as concerned ourselves, the possibilities he left open. We had—we all had—grown tighter, felt increasingly uneasy and anxious. But we had walked precariously along the tight-wires we were instructed to walk upon. Although we were together, and hence had shared (and so intensified) uneasiness, we had all walked carefully on our own wires. We had not jostled one another.
After Craig turned to George Townsend, it was different, and it remained different to the end. Each of us was on his own after that, and each of us knew it. But, paradoxically, we were closer together than before, while we shared less than before. Heimrich did not, any longer, direct or (I realized afterward) let his direction appear. He seemed only to record, much of the time with his eyes closed. He seemed to let us take over. He gave us all the rope we needed, saving for himself only the end with the noose looped in it. That he held for one of us to stick a neck in.
“I’m listening,” Craig said, when George stopped. “I’ve been listening. You’ve made yourself very clear, Townsend. Can’t you think of anything else?”
His voice wasn’t expressionless any longer. He bit off his words, hard.
“All right,” George said, “you know damn well that if the account was out, you were out. You knew that we weren’t getting anywhere with P. J.—and that he damn well could get the others to pull out. What the hell did they care? If you want it, there it is.”
“Go ahead,” Craig said. “Make it good, George.”
“All right,” George said. “All right—I’ll make it good. It was you P. J. was after. I don’t know why. Maybe because of Paulie. I could have kept the account—if I’d got somebody else to handle it. I don’t say anybody else would have done it better—maybe not so well. But—”
“You’d have played along with P. J.,” Craig said. “Sure you would have, George. Why not?”
“If I’d had to,” George said. “You’re damned right.”
Dwight Craig looked at George slowly, carefully; he inspected George for flaws and, from the look on his face, found plenty. Then he turned to Heimrich, who had his eyes open at that moment and was regarding both of them.
“Spells it out for you, doesn’t he?” Craig said. “Makes it all nice and simple. George doesn’t have to do anything but throw me out. Then he’s set. Doesn’t have to go to all the trouble of killing Barlow. But if I want to keep my job, win the girl and fortune, I’ve got to go to the trouble. Dwight Craig, the man most likely to murder a client. I hope you’re not missing this, Captain.”
“Now Mr. Craig,” Heimrich said.
“If you believe him,” Craig said, and jerked his head toward George Townsend. “If I was the one P. J. was after.”
“Well,” Heimrich said, “weren’t you?”
Craig narrowed his eyes for a moment; hesitated for a
moment.
“I’ll tell you,” he said. “I can’t spell it out. Maybe I was. Barlow was dissatisfied with the way we were handling the account. I was handling it. That’s all true. The things he objected to I was responsible for. But all the same, I’m damned if I think he was after me. That I don’t buy.”
“Go on, Mr. Craig,” Heimrich said. “Why don’t you?”
Craig shrugged, then. He spread his hands a little. His eyebrow jerked.
“I said I couldn’t spell it out,” he said. “It was all damned—intangible. As nearly as I can put it, I thought P. J. was making up reasons for pulling out. He didn’t like this, thought that ought to be done another way. A good many of his points could be argued. But they weren’t what the argument was about.” He paused; he turned on George Townsend. “Further-more, I think you knew it damn well,” he told George. “You and P. J. were talking about something I didn’t know about. We were all talking about one thing—or a series of little things—on the surface. You and P. J. were talking about something else.”
Townsend smiled. His smile was regretful; his smile said, “Good try, old man. But not very good.” He looked at Heimrich, and shrugged, just perceptibly. “Too bad about poor old Dwight,” the shrug said. “You and I see that,” the shrug said.
“I’m sorry, Dwight,” George Townsend’s lips said. “I’m afraid I don’t get it, don’t know what you’re talking about. Sincerely, I don’t. P. J. just wasn’t satisfied with the work you were doing. There weren’t any wheels within wheels.”
Dwight Craig listened. He turned to Heimrich.
“You take your choice,” he told Heimrich. Heimrich closed his eyes. Everybody looked at him. He opened his eyes and then, for the first time, he opened his brief case. He took a cigarette holder out of it—a long holder, with a filter in it; the kind of holder Francis Eldredge had used. It looked frail and rather foolish in Heimrich’s hard, square hands. Heimrich began to tap with it on the edge of an ash tray on the table. He tapped with a certain rhythm.
“Recognize it, Mr. Otis?” Heimrich asked.
I recognized it. It was the sound I had heard on the open party line the evening before. It hadn’t been made by Doris’ clicking teeth, after all. It had been made by someone absently tapping with a cigarette holder on a metal ash tray—or, of course, tapping with something like a holder on something like an ash tray. I remembered the telephone table at Eldredge’s house, and the empty cigarette holder propped on the ash tray.
“Yes,” I said. “I recognize it, Captain.”
“Naturally,” Heimrich said. “Naturally, Mr. Otis. We talked to the telephone company about it. To their technical men. There’s nothing they know of in their equipment which makes that sort of sound. The one you heard.” He paused. He closed his eyes. “And the one you recognized, Mr. Townsend,” he said. Then he stopped and waited.
“I recognized?” George said.
“Now Mr. Townsend,” Heimrich said. “On the terrace at Eldredge’s yesterday evening. Mr. Otis mentioned the sound and you said, ‘I know the sort of sound he means’ and duplicated it and said you’d supposed—‘I’ve always supposed,’ you said—it was something mechanical.”
George said, “Oh.”
Heimrich opened his eyes, looked at George, and waited.
“All right,” George said. “I did get through to Francis. To ask him what he knew, what you’d been asking him. As I said. We started to talk, and someone came on the telephone, and we stopped. I don’t know why. I guess we both—well, didn’t want outsiders listening in. We weren’t saying anything much. Just got started. I heard this clicking. Then whoever had cut in hung up and I said, ‘Go ahead, Francis’ and—well, nothing happened.”
“Now Mr. Townsend,” Heimrich said.
“Not a damn thing,” George told him. “Eldredge didn’t answer. I tried a couple of times and hung up. That’s all there was to it.” Suddenly he told us, in a voice of discovery, that he would be damned. “Somebody came in,” George said. “That was it. Francis hung up.” Then George looked quickly at Craig, and as quickly away again. It was as if he didn’t want anyone to see that quick, suspicious glance. Craig didn’t; he was looking at Heimrich.
“Now Mr. Townsend,” Heimrich said, “why didn’t you tell us this at first?”
George hesitated.
“Well,” he said.
“Because he thought I was listening in,” Faye Townsend said. “On the kitchen extension. Because he didn’t want to bring me in, in any way.”
“Listen, Faye,” George said, and stopped. “What difference does it make one way or the other, Captain?” he asked.
Heimrich said, “Now Mr. Townsend. This way you knew Mr. Eldredge was home, naturally. A busy signal on a party line doesn’t prove anything. You knew Eldredge was home because, for a few words, anyway, you talked to him.”
“I don’t—” George said.
“Now Mr. Townsend,” Heimrich said. “If you’re going to kill a man, you have to find out where he is, don’t you? You didn’t want to admit you did. Perfectly natural.”
“Listen—” Townsend said.
“Now Mr. Townsend,” Heimrich said. “I’m not saying you did kill Mr. Eldredge. Even if you didn’t, even if any suspicion I might have based on your knowledge was wrong, there was no point in bringing the suspicion up. Was there?”
“All right,” Townsend said, “suppose I figured that way?”
“And,” Heimrich said, “thinking it was your wife who cut in, and so might have had the same knowledge, figured to keep suspicion from her, too.”
“All right,” Townsend said. “What harm did it do? You’ve cleared it up, now. If you’d do as well about—”
“Now Mr. Townsend,” Heimrich said. “Now Mr. Townsend.”
“These damn side issues,” George Townsend said.
“No,” Heimrich said. “A certain pattern, naturally. There aren’t any side issues, you know. Just parts of the pattern.” He opened the brief case again, and took out a paper. I recognized it. He held it out to George. “Tell me about this,” he said.
“Where did you—” George began, and Heimrich interrupted him, told him it didn’t matter. “‘You can have one but not both,’” he quoted. “Tell me about that.”
“My God,” George said, and then he laughed. “No side issues, huh? One but not both—radio or television next fall, for Blends. We were trying to get them to sponsor both. This was P. J.’s way of saying ‘no dice.’ This was a couple of months ago before—before P. J. began to get really difficult about Craig’s work.”
Craig looked at George briefly, without expression. He looked away. Heimrich took the letter back, and put it in the brief case.
“Captain Heimrich,” Ann Dean said, “at the time Mr. Eldredge was shot, Mr. Craig was with me. We were at the Birch Hill Inn.”
Heimrich looked at her; he nodded. He said he had been wondering when they would come to that.
“You agree, Mr. Craig?” he asked.
“We were,” Craig said. “But—”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “There’s that difficulty, isn’t there? The time Miss Dean spent with Mr. Prescott?”
“It was about five minutes,” Ann said. “Not longer.” She looked at Craig. “I would be quite willing to swear to that,” she said. “There wasn’t enough time.” She looked straight at Heimrich. “I doubt whether Mr. Prescott would swear anything different,” she told him. “He isn’t—” She stopped.
“Perhaps not, Miss Dean,” Heimrich said. “Perhaps not—now. I assume you talked to him this morning? Helped him—how shall I put it?—to be less certain than he was with Sergeant Forniss last night?”
“I’ll swear it was no longer than five minutes,” Ann said.
“I’ll swear to that wherever it’s necessary. Mr. Craig didn’t kill anybody.”
Dwight Craig looked at her, then. And suddenly, briefly, like the sun breaking for a second through clouds, the grin broke through on to his face. Th
en it vanished.
“You’re quite a girl, Vix,” he told her. “I won’t let you, but you’re quite a girl. And you’re right—I didn’t kill anybody. The wolves won’t get me, Vix.”
“I—” Ann began, and then stopped. Then she started again. “Captain Heimrich,” she said, “why don’t you ask Mrs. Townsend if she knew about—about this danger to her husband’s business? About the chance they might have to ‘pull in their horns’? And if she did, why she was planning to spend a thousand dollars, fifteen hundred, maybe, re-doing her bedroom and dressing room? Why don’t you—?”
“Now Miss Dean,” Heimrich said. “Is that true, Mrs. Townsend?”
“Really,” Faye said. “I think it’s clear what Miss Dean is trying to make you—what she’s trying to do. So very obvious, Captain.”
“Now Mrs. Townsend,” Heimrich said. “Did you know about the chance your husband would lose this account?”
“I—” Faye began. “This is ridiculous, Captain. A thousand dollars!” She made it sound like fifteen cents. She made it sound as if Captain Heimrich were incapable of appreciating the behavior of those on a financial level which permitted a thousand dollars to approximate fifteen cents. She made it sound as if “pulling in horns” would mean, to the Townsends, giving up a spare yacht. I suddenly realized I doubted this like hell. They had a big Buick and a middle-aged station wagon, like a lot of people—not, to be sure, including the Pooh and me, but we didn’t expect to have everything. I thought there was something a little unconvincing about Faye’s dismissal of a thousand dollars, or maybe fifteen hundred. “We haven’t redone my room for—why for two years,” Faye said. She made two years sound like a century. I gathered her bed and dressing rooms were, presently, in a condition of squalor too demeaning for precise description.
And then, quite suddenly, I decided that what I had thought of as a superficial characteristic of Faye Townsend wasn’t superficial at all. The polish, the need of polished things, went all the way through; it was all there was of Faye. If she couldn’t spend a few thousand dollars re-doing rooms which hadn’t (really) been redecorated for two (two whole!) years Faye was out of business. And then I thought, Faye would be a tough person to put out of business—tougher than George, by a long shot; tougher than anybody I could think of. I thought I wouldn’t want to be in George’s place if it came to pulling in horns, instead of growing them long enough to hook a yacht.
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