Accent on Murder

by Frances Lockridge

  “I came to tell you something,” Mrs. Lambert said. “And almost forgot what I came for. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

  Heimrich smiled and waited.

  “But probably you already know about it,” she said. “Probably the commander told you himself?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “At least—told me what, Mrs. Lambert?”

  “About coming here to see Mr. Beale,” she said. “Not finding him, of course, because Mr. Beale—the poor man—wasn’t here. I don’t suppose it means anything but—I didn’t know the commander even knew Mr. Beale. The poor man.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “I didn’t either. Let’s—”

  He took Mrs. Lambert’s comfortable arm gently and led her back into the parlor. He said, “Now Mrs. Lambert. Tell me about it.”

  “I only just heard myself,” she said. “When William came on this morning. William’s the bartender, you know.”

  Heimrich nodded.

  “About eight o’clock last evening,” Mrs. Lambert said. “While you and the sergeant were having dinner in the dining room. He didn’t really ask William, but William got just a glimpse and he’s quite sure. He—”

  A tall straight man, black-haired—the man William, who could see from behind the bar, diagonally through a door, was sure had been Commander Brady Wilkins—had come into the small lobby of the Maples Inn at about eight o’clock the evening before. He had asked a passing waiter if a Mr. Beale was staying there—a Mr. Conrad Beale.

  The waiter, who was going from dining room, across lobby, toward taproom with an order, and who was in a hurry, had said he didn’t know, he was sure. “An extra waiter,” Mrs. Lambert said. “All these newspaper people, you know.” The waiter had suggested that Commander Wilkins—if it was Commander Wilkins—use the house phone, and showed him where it was. And some man had used it. Molly remembered that.

  “My youngest daughter, you know,” Mrs. Lambert said. “On the switchboard sometimes.”

  A man had used the house telephone at about that hour. From the switchboard, Molly Lambert could not see him. He had asked if a Mr. Conrad Beale was staying at the hotel and Molly had checked and said yes, in room twelve in the annex, and should she ring him? Told to ring him, she had, and had got no answer. She was sorry. Mr. Beale did not seem to be in his room. Perhaps the dining room? The caller might look in there.

  But it did not appear that the caller had looked in there. Nobody had seen him, or remembered seeing him.

  “You were facing the door, as I recall it,” Mrs. Lambert said. “You didn’t see him, did you?”

  Captain Heimrich had not seen the commander. He imagined that, if Commander Wilkins had looked in the dining room—stood in the doorway, looked around the room for Conrad Beale—he would have seen him.

  “So,” Mrs. Lambert said, “he must have just gone out and, I suppose, gone home. The poor, poor man. Such a dreadful thing to come home to.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “A very dreadful thing. Mrs. Lambert—somebody could go from outside into the annex without being seen?”

  Heimrich knew the answer as he finished the question. Somebody—anybody—easily could have. The two buildings were detached; there was no lobby in the annex.

  “Unless a maid happened to be there,” Mrs. Lambert said. “Or one of the guests, of course. Captain Heimrich—you don’t think?”

  “Mr. Beale’s room was broken into,” Heimrich said. “I don’t know when. Some time before you gave the passkey to Sergeant Forniss. And—”

  “Broken into,” Mrs. Lambert said. “Broken? And nobody told me! The help one gets nowadays! The—yes, what is it, Daisy?”

  Daisy was an angular woman in white, with an expression of the utmost trepidation. She trembled in the doorway.

  “Miz Lambert,” she said. “The door-of-room-twelve-is-all-broke. I left it to last because Mr. Beale—And somebody broke in. And—”

  “All right, Daisy,” Mrs. Lambert said. “You can’t help it. There’s a checkout in fifteen.”

  “Oh, Miz Lambert, thank you,” Daisy said, and trembled out of the doorway.

  “Odd numbers in the main building,” Mrs. Lambert said. “Even in the annex.” She said this mechanically. She said, “Captain! You don’t think the commander— But—he’s a Navy officer.”

  “Now Mrs. Lambert,” Heimrich said. “I don’t know, naturally.”

  “The poor, poor man,” she said. “Do you think—such a terrible shock, I mean—sometimes people such dreadful things happen to don’t—don’t really know.”

  “That’s very true,” Heimrich said, although he did not think that, in this instance, it would be likely to prove true. “And, of course, we don’t know it was Commander Wilkins.”

  They didn’t, of course. Driving from the inn to the Wilkins house Heimrich merely thought it very probable—very probable and very interesting. And he thought, also, that the most obvious things are always the most likely things—and that, perhaps, it was as well that Charlie Forniss was not a man given to saying “I told you so.”

  A man comes home unexpectedly—finds his wife with another man—a gun is handy and murder flares. But—one escapes. The man, in this case? Escapes, but is hunted down. Is lain in wait for—killed. The old thing, the obvious thing.

  But—character must fit crime. Commander Wilkins was a man disciplined, a man matured. Such men do not grab guns up and kill with them, in jealous frenzy. The weaklings do such things, not the strong. Then—

  But I, Heimrich thought, driving along Hayride Lane, past Professor Brinkley’s house, have met Wilkins only once, and then briefly. I don’t really know what kind of man he is; all I know is what he appears to be—a man controlled, holding himself tight. I am going only by the outside of the man.

  XIV

  SUN WAS BRIGHT on the terrace of the old Adams house. Heimrich parked the police car on the turnaround and got out of it, carrying the shotgun. There was no point in guarding it from his fingers now; he had, duly photographed, duly attested, all the gun could tell him. He walked across the lawn toward the terrace and, still sitting—but sitting as if his arrival had frozen them in place—Dorcas Cameron and Alan Kelley watched him. Dorcas had a coffee cup halfway to her lips. For seconds she held it there. Then she put it down on a table and the tiny clink of the cup on metal was sharp in stillness.

  They looked at Heimrich and they looked at the gun. Then Alan Kelley got up and took a step or two to the edge of the terrace. Both waited, without speaking, while Heimrich walked toward them, and up onto the terrace.

  “So,” Kelley said then, “you found it.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “At any rate—a gun. The right gun, Miss Cameron? The one from the hall closet?”

  “I don’t—” she said, and looked at the gun, apparently with care. “It could be,” she said. “I don’t know anything about guns.” She looked at Heimrich. “Is it?” she said.

  “Apparently,” Heimrich told her, “it’s the gun somebody used to shoot at the professor. Last night—early this morning.”

  But they would know about that. Everybody for a long way around would know about that.

  “Captain,” Dorcas said, “can’t you stop—this? These dreadful things?”

  “The professor will be all right,” Heimrich said. But they would know that, too. They did know. Dorcas nodded.

  She could not positively identify the gun. Perhaps Brady could. He had bought the gun. He knew about guns.

  “Whoever it was shot at Brinkley,” Kelley said. “He left the gun? Why?”

  “Now lieutenant,” Heimrich said. “Yes, he left it. I don’t know why. Do you mind having your fingerprints taken?”

  “Oh,” Kelley said. “On the gun, I suppose?”

  “It’s a routine matter,” Heimrich said, letting that be most of an answer. “For elimination.”

  “Of prints you’ve found?”

  “Or might find,” Heimrich said. “Well, lieutenant? Miss Cameron?”

  �
��It doesn’t matter,” the girl said. She did not look as quenched as she had looked the day before. Ash Adams, Heimrich thought, was fading out of her mind. He was also, Heimrich thought, fading out of the case. Adams had—again if his son was to be believed—been in his room, asleep, locked in, at twelve-thirty-five the night before. Now Dorcas Cameron’s young face looked merely drawn, but with the beginning of lines in it—the tracings where time, finally, would leave lines. She looked as if she had slept little, for a long time.

  Heimrich had brought an ink pad; he had brought slips of paper. He rolled the girl’s fingers first, then Kelley’s. He looked at the results, which were adequate. One of the boys might have done them better, but these were good enough. He took the photograph of the prints on the gun from his pocket and looked at it, and at both the new sets, and put slips and photograph back in his pocket. They looked at him. His eyes told them nothing.

  “The admiral?” Heimrich said. “Commander Wilkins?”

  The admiral answered his part of that. He answered it by coming up the path—the path from “the place.” He came tall and erect, in slacks and a long-sleeved polo shirt. He nodded to Heimrich. He said, “Morning, Heimrich.” He looked at the gun, which Heimrich had put across the arms of a chair. “Nice piece,” Admiral Bennett said. “That the one, Heimrich?”

  Heimrich went through it again. He went through the part about prints again. It would have seemed impossible for the rigid admiral—was he always like that, Heimrich wondered? Or only now?—to stiffen further. He did. He also said, “Nonsense, man,” in a tone of rebuke.

  Heimrich should, he realized, shrivel. He did not. He said, “Yours. Everybody’s, admiral.”

  “Oh,” Bennett said and, as on the afternoon before, gray eyes met blue eyes, testing. “That way?” Bennett said.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Naturally, admiral.”

  Briefly the admiral seemed to consider. But then, abruptly, he said, “Very well. Get on with it.”

  Heimrich got on with it. He compared the admiral’s prints with those from the gun, and put both exhibits back in his pocket. When it became apparent Heimrich was not going to comment, Admiral Bennett said, “Well?”

  To which Heimrich, at his blandest, said, “Now admiral.” He was again looked at, but this time Heimrich briefly closed his eyes. At that, Admiral Bennett looked at his inky fingers.

  “All right, Kelley,” Admiral Bennett said, from the quarterdeck. “Get something.”

  “Sir,” Kelley said and went into the house. He returned with a damp cloth and a dry one, and Heimrich waited patiently. When they had finished, he said, “Commander Wilkins around?”

  “He just got to sleep, I think,” Dorcas said. “After he came back last night—late—he went out around eleven to—just drive around, I think—be alone—after he came back I could hear him in—in their room—walking back and forth. It seemed like hours.”

  “Back late,” Heimrich said. “About when, Miss Cameron?”

  He could see realization come into her face; deepen in her face the lines traced there.

  “No,” she said. “You don’t think—” But she stopped with that.

  “The rest of you,” Heimrich said. “You, admiral? Lieutenant?”

  “I went to bed about eleven,” Admiral Bennett said, his voice without inflection. “Slept, if you’re interested. Always been able to sleep when the chance came.”

  After Wilkins had driven off, the admiral had gone up to the guest room, Dorcas and Alan Kelley had sat on the terrace for, they both thought, about an hour. Sat talking. Then Kelley had made up a sofa bed in the living room and Dorcas had gone up to her room.

  “None of you,” Heimrich said, “heard shots? From the professor’s house?”

  “No,” Admiral Bennett said, and Dorcas said, “No, captain.” Kelley hesitated. He shrugged square shoulders. “Something waked me up,” he said. “Partly waked me up. I don’t know what time, or what it was. I went back to sleep. Only, the dream I had—the waking-up dream, if you know what I mean—was that a plane was shooting at us and all we had to answer with was a couple of obsolete five-inchers. Pretty hopeless, but we started to shoot and then I woke up. And felt relieved it was a dream and went back to sleep.”

  “When Commander Wilkins came in, lieutenant,” Heimrich said. “That didn’t wake you up?”

  He saw Kelley hesitate, and gave him time. He could guess the thoughts of the sandy-haired man. They knew—they all knew by now—approximately the time Brinkley had been shot at. It would be interesting to see whether, now, Kelley remembered that his friend, and senior officer, had come at—at, say, twelve-thirty.

  “No,” Alan Kelley said. “He didn’t wake me up.”

  So—once again, Commander Wilkins was on the loose, at a time when being on the loose might have significance. It might be, of course, that Wilkins was merely an unlucky man—in that, as in other things.

  “I’m afraid,” Heimrich said, “that I’ll have to see Commander Wilkins. You want to ask him to come down, lieutenant?”

  Kelley looked at Admiral Bennett. “Get him,” Admiral Bennett said, and Kelley said, “Sir,” and went.

  They sat in the sun and waited. They heard Kelley climb the wooden stairs inside; heard him knock on a wooden door, and waited to hear him speak, be answered. But he did not speak. They heard him knock on another door, and heard, after a moment, the sound of a door closing. And then they heard Alan Kelley coming down the stairs again, and coming faster. He appeared in the doorway to the terrace and shook his head.

  “Not there,” he said, and said it needlessly.

  Brady Wilkins had been in his room. He had slept in it. He was not there now, and not anywhere on the second floor. Once more, Lieutenant Commander Brady Wilkins was proving difficult to put a finger on—like a cricket.

  Heimrich did what he could to fix the time of Commander Wilkins’s departure. Dorcas had come downstairs a little before eight. Wilkins’s door had been closed then, and she had assumed he was sleeping. She had walked carefully, so as not to waken him. Admiral Bennett had come down a few minutes later and thought the door had been closed, but had not especially noticed. Alan Kelley had been sleeping on a downstairs sofa when Dorcas came down. He had not, until then, heard anything to waken him. But, it appeared—it was said—that Wilkins had come in without waking Alan. It was obvious, then, that he could go out as quietly. It became, indeed, obvious that he had—unless Alan Kelley was lying.

  So—although he had apparently been awake a good part of the night, Brady Wilkins had got up early and gone out quietly and—gone where?

  “Captain,” Dorcas said, “he’s had—it’s been a terrible thing for him. For all of us, but most of all for him, of course. He’s—he’s just gone walking somewhere or—or something. To be by himself.”

  That was quite possible, even quite likely. It resulted, nonetheless, in another absence when presence was desirable. Of course, during this period, nothing had happened. There was no special reason—

  The telephone rang in the house. “Kelley,” Admiral Bennett said, a little absently, and Alan said, “Sir,” and went. He came back. He said, “For you, captain,” and Heimrich went in and they heard him say, “Heimrich” and then, for some time, nothing more. Then they heard him say, as if he were very tired, “Damn,” and then, “Yes. And—for Commander Wilkins too.” He came back to the terrace. He stood and looked down at them.

  “Professor Brinkley has disappeared,” Heimrich said, and closed his eyes momentarily. He opened them. “Came to, apparently,” he said. “Got out of the house without the trooper or the nurse seeing him—until it was too late. Drove off in a station wagon.” He paused. “God knows where,” he added.

  Dorcas Cameron stood up. She said, “Oh. The poor—the lamb!” And then, after a moment, “But—he’s hurt! What will happen to him?”

  There was no answer to that, of course. The police were looking. They would find Walter Brinkley; it was to be hoped they woul
d find him. It was to be hoped that, while careening around the countryside in a car—if that was what he was doing, and he had, apparently, started at a careening pace—nothing would happen to him. It was to be hoped that he had fully come to, was fully himself. But—that seemed very unlikely. Fully himself, Walter Brinkley was not, Heimrich thought, a man to sneak—it must have come to that—out of his own house; leave his own house as if he were escaping from it.

  Unless—several possibilities were apparent; none was particularly encouraging. In some fashion, Professor Brinkley might have been summoned. The trooper was sure nobody had telephoned; nobody got into the house to summon the professor by word of mouth, or to compel him. But the trooper had been sure Brinkley was safe in bed, and that coffee could be enjoyed at leisure. So had the nurse, but she was not Heimrich’s responsibility.

  If not summoned—what? Had Brinkley, coming out of hours of unconsciousness, not only remembered what had happened but who had made it happen? And gone off—not quite himself, but thinking himself so—to capture his assailant, bring him in? Had one idea, and one only, in a still-fuddled mind?

  He had been gone about half an hour when Forniss telephoned Heimrich, from Brinkley’s house. The trooper had tried to get both of them; had begun trying, apparently, just after they had left the inn. Failing to reach either, he had reported to headquarters. There seemed to be nothing else he could have done—except, of course, to have been alert in the first place. It was too late to worry about that.

  Brinkley on the loose—somewhere. And, once more, Wilkins on the loose somewhere. Heimrich didn’t, he found, like any part of it.

  “Heimrich,” Admiral Bennett said, “Commander Wilkins had nothing to do with this. With any of this. You can take my word for that.”

  Heimrich only looked at him; wondered at apparently total faith, at the naïveté of that faith.

  “Now admiral,” Heimrich said. “I would like—”

  And he stopped with that. Commander Wilkins—tall, black-haired, wearing a tennis shirt and walking shorts—came toward them; came up the path from “the place,” and from the woods beyond it, the ravine beyond it. He walked stiffly and, when he was close enough, Heimrich could see the lined grimness of his face. Nobody said anything as Wilkins walked toward them, left the path and crossed the lawn toward the terrace. Nor did he, until he was almost at the terrace, seem to see any of them. But then he stopped and said, in a voice which rasped a little, “Oh. Hello. You’re here.”