Accent on Murder

by Frances Lockridge

  “Brady” Dorcas said, anxiety in her voice. At that Brady Wilkins smiled a little—almost smiled.

  “I’m all right, baby,” he said. “Just—” But he stopped at that, as if he had forgotten what he had planned to say. He looked at the gun, resting across the arms of a terrace chair. Then he looked at Heimrich and, Heimrich thought, came back from wherever he had been.

  “So,” he said. “You found it.”

  “Did we?” Heimrich said. “It’s your gun? The one you kept in the hall closet?”

  Wilkins took two long strides across the terrace and looked down at the gun. He did not move to touch it.

  “Could be,” he said. “Probably is. They turn them out in thousands. But—same make, same model.”

  “Commander,” Heimrich said, “I’d like to take your fingerprints.”

  “Oh,” Wilkins said. “That way, is it? On the gun, I suppose? If it’s my gun, I handled it. Not recently. Last time I cleaned it.”

  “When,” Heimrich said, “you’d have wiped it off, wouldn’t you?” He stood up. “I’d like your prints,” he said again.

  He got them. He looked at them. He compared them with the photographed prints. He put them with the other exhibits back in his pocket.

  “Well?” Wilkins said.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Commander, how did you know Beale was staying at the Maples Inn?”

  “Who says—” Wilkins began and stopped.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “When you went there and asked for him. Tried to get him on the house telephone.”

  Wilkins had very cold eyes; now very level eyes. But, Heimrich thought, it was a strain for the man to keep them so. Under that coldness, that hard restraint, was Wilkins a seething man? Did he force a thin crust over violence?

  “And,” Wilkins said, “lie in wait for him. And—kill him? Why don’t you ask it all at once?”

  “All right,” Heimrich said, “it’s asked, commander.”

  “No,” Wilkins said. There was no emphasis on the word, no violence in the tone. “I didn’t kill him. Or—I suppose you want this too—my wife.”

  “Or,” Heimrich said, “try to kill Professor Brinkley?”

  “The professor?” Wilkins said. “Somebody tried to kill him?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said.

  “It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Wilkins said. “So—it’s the same answer.”

  “All right,” Heimrich said. “Now—as to how you knew where to find Beale—”

  “I didn’t find him,” Wilkins said.

  “Look for him, then,” Heimrich said. “You may as well sit down, commander. This may take time.”

  “With the light on my face, I suppose?” Wilkins said. “I don’t have to answer anything.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “That’s quite true, naturally. Only if you want to, commander.”

  Wilkins looked at him for a long moment, and Heimrich could read nothing in the cold eyes—not even what decision to expect. But then, abruptly, Wilkins sat down, and said, “Shoot.”

  “I have,” Heimrich said. “Beale?”

  “He—” Wilkins stopped and took a deep breath; the breath one takes in preparation for an ordeal. “He telephoned—” He paused again. “My wife,” he said. “Saturday. Just before I got here. Before we went to the professor’s party. She—she didn’t tell me until the next morning.”

  He stopped once more. Heimrich waited.

  “Beale said,” Wilkins told Heimrich, and spoke carefully, slowly, “that he was in the neighborhood. On business. That he would like to stop by and—and say hello. She said no at first; that she didn’t want to see him. But then—”

  Then, as Lieutenant Commander Wilkins told it, speaking slowly and carefully, Conrad Beale had said that there was a little more to it than to say hello. Nothing that concerned Caroline Wilkins, really concerned her. Just—something he wanted to see her about. Again, nothing personal. Something that would help him in something he was working on. Something that wouldn’t take five minutes. He would come any time that was convenient—any time within the next few days. He had told her that he was staying at the Maples Inn.

  “Apparently,” Wilkins said, “he told her something of a sob story. How much he needed help. I gather he didn’t?”

  “I don’t know,” Heimrich said. “She agreed to see him?”

  Carry had—finally. She was always one to “help lame dogs over stiles.” But she was doubtful about it—”upset.”

  “I told her she was making too much of it,” Wilkins said. “Women see their former husbands all the time. And—I suppose I thought it would be a good thing, really, for her to see him again.” He stopped; his face was bitter as, on the last words, his tone had been. “Brady Wilkins,” he said. “The great psychologist.”

  Heimrich waited again.

  “I told her,” Wilkins said, his voice again steady, expressionless, “that sometimes things in the past—things that bother us, stick in our minds, even seem important—become—shadows when something happens to bring them up again. Seeing Beale again—I thought maybe—would serve—well, to put him out of her mind.” He shook his head; for a moment he looked at the flags of the terrace, but not as if he saw them, or saw anything.

  “Commander,” Heimrich said, “she told him a time that would be convenient?”

  “What?” Wilkins said, and seemed to be far away, and then to come back from far away. “Yes—Tuesday.” Again he took a deep breath. “The day she was killed,” he said. “The day she was killed.” When he repeated the words it was as if he were, by repetition, making them real in his mind.

  “Did he?” Heimrich said, and Wilkins looked at him and appeared to be puzzled, although that was hard to tell. But Wilkins spoke as a puzzled man might; he said he didn’t get what Heimrich was talking about. That seemed a little unlikely, but Heimrich made it clear.

  “Did Beale come here on the day your wife was killed?” he asked, making it very clear indeed. “As you say was planned.”

  “How would I know?” Wilkins said. “I wasn’t here. You know that.”

  Heimrich momentarily closed his eyes. He shook his head. He said that, no, he didn’t know that.

  “I have no idea where you were,” Heimrich said. “It was difficult enough to get in touch with you the next day. You say you were on Long Island, but exactly where on Long Island seems to be a—a what? Defense secret? Long Island is a big island, commander. Montauk is one thing. Long Island City—a man could drive from here to Long Island City in—not much more than an hour. Or, here from Long Island City, naturally. It isn’t as if you’d been in a rocket to the moon.” Heimrich wondered momentarily why he had said that. Then he remembered Lieutenant Nelson. Mildly, he wondered where Nelson had got himself to.

  “No,” Wilkins said. “I wasn’t here.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re getting at something,” he said. “Some—accusation? You—”

  “Now commander,” Heimrich said. “Since you won’t, or can’t, prove where you were Tuesday. About noon, Tuesday, say. You say you weren’t here. So—you couldn’t have come on your wife and Beale together, could you? How do you want me to put it, commander? Not as—innocently together as she’d said they would be? Maybe you didn’t really believe her when she told you that. Came back to check and—”

  “Heimrich,” Admiral Bennett said. “We’ve had enough of this.” His tone said, “That’s an order, Heimrich.”

  It had, Heimrich supposed, been inevitable. An admiral does not willingly leave his command cabin. Heimrich looked at Bennett and was looked at. Commandingly, Heimrich supposed. Insubordination was to be put down. Perhaps even mutiny.

  “No,” Heimrich said, and was entirely mild of voice. “Not nearly enough, admiral. A woman has been killed. Your daughter—but for me it comes down to the killing. Murder. It will be the State of New York against—somebody. You’re—sitting in on this, admiral, because I let you.”

  (And because a group so often helped; be
cause, on a group, one can often play, letting a statement made by one lead to response from another; let action produce reaction.)

  Admiral Bennett started to say something.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “It has nothing to do with you. If Commander Wilkins likes I can take him to White Plains. An assistant district attorney can talk to him. Ask him questions. The questions will be the same. It will merely be more inconvenient for everybody.” He paused. “Well?” he said.

  “You expect me to sit here,” the admiral demanded—“sit here and listen to you accuse my daughter of—imply lies about her?”

  Heimrich closed his eyes.

  “Admiral,” he said, “I don’t really give a damn what you do. You can sit here. You can go somewhere and—play horseshoes. Or, Wilkins here and I can go to White Plains.” He opened his eyes. “What it comes to,” he said, “is, you’re wasting my time. Everybody’s time.”

  It looked very much like being an impasse, gray eyes and blue eyes locked, minds irretrievably in collision.

  “Sir,” Commander Brady Wilkins said, and Admiral Bennett looked at him, rather as if he were surprised to find him there.

  “Well?” Bennett said.

  “The captain didn’t know her,” Wilkins said. “He has to find things out. It’s—got to be gone through, sir.”

  “No business—” the admiral began, but did not finish. He looked at Heimrich, who waited. “Carry on,” Admiral Bennett said.

  “Perhaps I can finish for you,” Wilkins said. He spoke to Heimrich. His voice, Heimrich thought, was not as dead as it had been. His mind had wakened. Which might make it harder, might make it easier.

  “Found them together,” Wilkins said. “In a—what they call a compromising situation. Killed my wife with a shotgun. That’s your theory, isn’t it?”

  “A possibility,” Heimrich said. “The one I’m asking about.”

  “And—let Beale go?” Wilkins said. “Killed her and let him go?”

  “Now commander,” Heimrich said. “He may have had time to get away. Seen you coming and run for it. Perhaps they didn’t even know you’d seen them. Perhaps your wife thought you hadn’t. Pretended to be asleep.”

  Wilkins looked at him very steadily, for some moments.

  “Captain,” Wilkins said. “I don’t think you believe a damn word of this.”

  “No?” Heimrich said. “You seem to be an intelligent man, commander. What’s wrong with it? You kill your wife. Go looking for Beale. Find him and kill him, too.”

  “And then—take a shot at Professor Brinkley? I gather he was shot at, with that gun. Why?”

  “From Brinkley’s window, this house is in plain sight,” Heimrich said. “Brinkley could have seen you arrive. Not thought anything of that, naturally. Perhaps not even have been sure it was you. Quite a distance for identification, and he hasn’t seen you too often, has he? At the party, of course. Not often before that?”

  “Once or twice,” Wilkins said, but not as if he were thinking about that. His eyes narrowed. “Dropped a gun with my prints all over it?” he said. “Left it to be found?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Not all over it. Only one place—on the barrel, where you might have held it as you were carrying it. Wiped the gun off—with a handkerchief, perhaps. But then—slipped up. In a hurry. Jittery. Picked the gun up and carried it a few feet and dropped it again. Things like that happen quite often, commander. We find things like that a great help.”

  And again, Wilkins looked steadily at Heimrich, his eyes narrowed—and, Heimrich thought, his mind racing. Looking for an out? (Heimrich himself could think of several; wondered if Wilkins could.) Or—deciding which other way to go, and how far to go?

  Dorcas Cameron was looking at Brady Wilkins, her eyes wide, her lips slightly parted. Alan Kelley lighted a cigarette, and the snap of his lighter was like an explosion on the sunny terrace.

  “Well,” Heimrich said, “why did you try to find Beale? If not to kill him?”

  Wilkins did not answer immediately.

  “Because,” Heimrich said, and spoke very softly, “because you thought he had killed your wife?”

  Would he go that way? That safer way?

  “Captain,” Wilkins said. “You make things so damn simple, don’t you?”

  “Now commander,” Heimrich said. “Not unless they are. Well? Was that it?”

  Slowly, Wilkins nodded his head, but it was not immediately clear whether he was saying it was that way or, unconsciously, pregesturing a decision reached in his own mind.

  “I thought he might have,” Wilkins said. “I—suppose that was it, really. I—”

  He told it slowly, carefully. The care because he wanted to get it right? Or, because he did not want to tell too much?

  The evening before—he checked, momentarily, on that, as if he thought it must be longer ago. The evening before, he had gone to the undertaking place and looked at a dead girl, lying horribly, in grisly simulation of life. He had sat for some time in the room where her body was. Then he had got up and gone out and back to the car—the car the Navy had provided. He had driven around for some time, and could not remember where, had not known where. He drove with the seat beside him empty—that was all he had really known.

  And then, he had remembered Conrad Beale. Perhaps they wouldn’t believe him, but he had not thought of Beale until that moment; not, actually, since Carry had told him of Beale’s call.

  “I asked you about him,” Heimrich said.

  Wilkins looked at him blankly. He said, “Did you?” I don’t remember.”

  “When you first got here,” Heimrich said. “You said you had never seen him. You didn’t say anything about this telephone call.”

  “I don’t know,” Wilkins said. “If you say so. I—all right, I wasn’t thinking much then. Or—remembering much. You come back to—to a place that was always bright. And—she’s dead. You go numb. Anyway, I guess I did. I suppose you don’t believe that.”

  “Go ahead, commander,” Heimrich said.

  Whatever Heimrich thought, that was the first time he had really thought of Beale in—call it in context. He remembered, then, that Beale had been going to stop by and see Carry sometime. Then it had come to him clearly—sometime on Tuesday. The day she was killed. Then—

  “I suppose,” Brady Wilkins said, “I thought he might have seen something. Or—yes, that he might have killed her himself. I don’t know now whether I really thought that or not. I couldn’t think of any reason why he should but—well, maybe there was a reason I didn’t know about.”

  He stopped then, momentarily. He looked at Admiral Bennett. But Bennett was not looking at him, was not looking at anything.

  “It was—well, as if I’d come to,” Wilkins said. “And I thought, You’d better go see this Beale. Find out what he knows.” He stopped, he nodded his head, a little as if he had finished.

  “It didn’t occur to you,” Heimrich said, “to come to us? To tell us that Beale might have been there?”

  “No,” Wilkins said. “I didn’t think of that. Well—”

  Heimrich already knew the rest of it. Wilkins had gone to the Maples Inn, asked for Beale, had him called in his room, got no answer. Then—

  Once more he paused.

  “That’s all,” he said. “I came back here. Not right away.”

  “No,” Heimrich said, “I don’t think so, commander. Not right away, certainly.”

  “Captain,” Dorcas said. “Can’t you see he’s—told you everything?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Go on, commander. After you went out of the lobby of the inn—where you were seen, and knew you had been—then what?”

  “I—” Wilkins said, and then fell silent.

  “Went to his room,” Heimrich told him. “Searched his room. And—what, commander? What did you find in his room?”

  “Nothing,” Wilkins said. “I—” He stopped. Unexpectedly, he shrugged his shoulders. “O.K.,” he said. “I went to his room. I su
ppose somebody saw me?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Heimrich said, and by then that was true enough. “Why did you go? What did you expect to find in Beale’s room?”

  Abstractedly, Brady Wilkins rubbed a hand over his stiff black hair.

  “You won’t believe it, I suppose,” he said. “But, I’m damned if I know. I—things still weren’t very clear, I guess. I thought maybe—”

  He had thought, he said, that perhaps Beale was in his room and had some reason of his own for not answering the telephone. He knew the room number, knew—from the fact that it was an even number—that it would be in the annex. He went out of the main building and along the walk to the annex. He had not, he said, made any particular effort not to be seen. He hadn’t thought, however, that he had been seen. Apparently—

  He looked at Heimrich in enquiry, and got no answer except, “Go on, commander.”

  He had found Beale’s room and knocked on the door and then, he thought, called Beale’s name. He was not really sure of this, he told them. He was sure that he had got no answer, either to the knocking or the calling.

  “Then I thought,” Wilkins said. “Damn it—I hardly know what I thought. That maybe there was something in the room—in his papers, I don’t know what—that would help explain things. Show, anyway, what he wanted to see—” He stopped and swallowed. “See Carry about,” he said, and the very lack of inflection in his voice was an inflection in it. “So, I went in.”

  “Not quite that,” Heimrich said. “A little more than that, commander. Broke in. Forced your way in. I suppose you—just happened to be carrying tools?”

  “Tools?” Wilkins repeated, as if the word were a new word. “Oh no, I used my knife. This—” He brought a big jackknife out of his pocket—a heavy knife, with heavy blades; a knife which was also a little nest of tools. “I tinker a good deal,” Wilkins said. “The lock wasn’t much of a lock.”