“He’s getting edgy as hell about being cooped up here,” Jameson said. “So’m I, come to that. I had a conference this morning and had to phone and call it off. How long are you going to keep us hanging around, huh? And by the way, how’s Jim Tennant doing, or don’t you know?”
“No longer than I have to,” Heimrich said. “Dr. Tennant is still unconscious. We can talk here, if you like. Only we’d be more comfortable sitting down, wouldn’t we? Not that it will take very long.”
“All right,” Jameson said. “We can go up to my room, I guess. At least I’ve got the windows open and this damned heat off.”
They went up the wide staircase from the entrance foyer and along a corridor and into a corner room on the second floor. The windows were open, all right.
There was a wide double bed along one wall, spread up. There were several chairs and a big chest of drawers. Jameson’s suitcase stood near the door to the corridor.
“All packed and ready to go,” Jameson said. “All right. Sit down, the two of you, and shoot.”
He sat down himself, taking a chair in the cross breeze between two windows. It was evident that Ronald Jameson did not mind sitting in a draft.
“Miss Jameson told you we were asking about your stepmother’s accident,” Heimrich said. “And I know it was a long time ago and probably hasn’t any connection with Mr. Jameson’s. death. However—”
“What do you mean, probably?”
“Just that,” Heimrich told him. “Miss Jameson came back here in the Jeep after she found Mrs. Jameson dead with her head bashed in against the stone fence. Found you already here. That’s right?”
“Yes.”
“Miss Jameson was very shaken up, of course. Almost hysterical, as she remembers it. Fainted, she thinks. Way you remember it?”
“She came racketing up in the Jeep,” Jameson said. “Skidded all over the drive when she stopped it. I’d just got here. Just gone into the house. I ran out when I heard the racket and she—well, she came damn near falling out of the Jeep. She was screaming. Over and over she kept saying ‘Janet’s. Janet’s.’ That’s all I could get out of her at first—just something about Jan. As if something had happened to Jan. I took her inside and for quite a while I couldn’t get anything else out of her. Finally she said, ‘Dead. Jan’s dead. That awful horse.’ Something like that.”
“And she fainted?”
“Seemed about to. I got one of the maids to take care of her. Nobody who’s here now. The servants Aunt Ursula had then—well, they quit afterward. After Jan got killed that way. Thought there was a curse on the place or something, I guess. This maid—I don’t remember her name—finally got Aunt Ursula up to bed. Anyway, she was upstairs when I—when I got back.”
“Back, Mr. Jameson?”
“From what Aunt Ursula said, about the ‘awful’ horse and all, I figured Jan had had an accident. I called the police and, I think, for an ambulance. Then I got in the Jeep—she’d left the motor running—and drove around to the meadow. To where they must have been riding. Aunt Ursula was dressed for riding. Did I tell you that?”
“No, you hadn’t. You drove around the long way. Instead of rowing across, which might have been quicker.”
“Sure. My aunt did say that Jan was dead. But, hell, you can’t always tell. She might just have been hurt. With the Jeep I could—well, I could have brought her back here. I’d told—I think I’d told—the ambulance to come here. Also, I’m pretty sure I’d called the doctor. It was all pretty mixed up, Inspector. And, as you said, it was quite a long time ago.”
“Yes, Mr. Jameson. You drove around to the meadow. As far as the fence, I suppose?”
“I must have—yes. Past the stable. Saw Aunt Ursula’s mare loose. Grazing. And the other horse the same, only farther along. Saddled and grazing. Then—well, then I saw Jan lying with her head against this damned stone fence. And saw that Aunt Ursula was right. Had to be right. It was—well, it was a damned bad thing to see. Maybe people like you get used to seeing anything.”
“No,” Heimrich said, “it doesn’t get to be like that. Her head was—I gather it was crushed against the wall.”
“Damn it,” Jameson said, “do you have to make me see it again?” His low, heavy voice shook a little. Then, almost as if to himself, he said, “She was so damned pretty. So damned—” He stopped, and shook his head. “She wasn’t even as old as I was, you know. Stepmother or not. She—” Again he stopped. Then he said, “There’s a portrait of her downstairs. Maybe you saw it?”
“Yes. She was a beautiful woman.”
“Makes her look taller than she was really—but pretty, anyway. Damned pretty. Until—strange thing is, her face wasn’t damaged much. Just her head. All smashed in and—damn it to hell. Damn it to hell.” His heavy voice shook again on the words.
“A bad thing to see,” Heimrich said. “A bad thing to remember. I’m sorry, Mr. Jameson. You were fond of her, probably?”
For some seconds, Ronald Jameson merely looked down at the floor. He seemed to be staring at the yellow rug on the floor. He said, again as if to himself, “You could call it that.” Then, abruptly, he looked up at Heimrich. When he spoke his voice was heavy. It was also grating. “You mean something by that?” he said.
Heimrich shook his head. He said, “Just that I assume you were fond of her, Mr. Jameson. From the way you speak of her. That’s all I meant.”
“It was an awful thing to see. It would have been an awful thing to look at if—hell, if she’d been somebody I’d never seen before. Can’t you get that through your head?”
“Yes. I can get that through my head, Mr. Jameson.”
“I liked Jan, sure. If you want to say I was fond of her, all right. Also, she was my father’s wife.”
“Of course,” Heimrich said. “I didn’t mean what you seem to think I meant, Mr. Jameson. Your father’s wife, of course. A great deal younger than your father, as it happened. Younger even than you, you say. Were you here often then, Mr. Jameson? When your stepmother was still alive?”
“Not often. Oh, now and then.”
“More often than in the last couple of years?”
“Maybe. Not to see Jan, if that’s what you’re getting at. Is that what you’re getting at?”
“Not at anything,” Heimrich said. “Just trying to get things clear in my mind.”
He was getting rather tired of hearing himself say that.
“And thanks for helping me,” he added. “I’m sorry to have to put you through this. Bring back things you—anybody—would rather forget.”
“I can’t see what good it’s done you,” Jameson said. “Just—just raking things up, aren’t you? To—to what? To prove you’re a hell of a good detective?”
There was definite rancor in his voice now.
“Probably it’s not done me any good,” Heimrich said. “I’m supposed to find out what I can is all. Sorry if I’ve upset you. Just a couple of other things. Was Miss Selby still here that afternoon, do you know?”
“Father was in town,” Jameson said. “Why’d she be here?”
“Your aunt thinks she was. Making a clean copy of Work she and your father had done during the week. Typing out notes, possibly. You didn’t see her?”
“No. And that beat-up Volks of hers wasn’t around. If she’d been here she’d gone by the time I got here. Which was just before Aunt Ursula came charging up in the Jeep and pretty much fell out of it. I told you that.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “You did tell me that. When you found Mrs. Jameson dead was the ground torn up on the near side of the fence? Where this stallion of hers had balked the jump? Dug his hooves in, I’d think. Made—oh, furrows in the turf?”
“Look, all I saw was Jan with her head smashed in. You think I was in a shape to look at anything else?”
“I wouldn’t have been,” Heimrich said. Which of course was not true; it is a professional need to try to see everything. “Do you happen to know whether photographs were ta
ken? Before—I suppose the ambulance went down there? And, probably, there was a good deal of tramping around while they were getting Mrs. Jameson into the ambulance.”
“Getting her body in,” Jameson said. “No, I don’t remember anybody’s taking photographs, if that’s what you mean. It was—well, it was a pretty obvious accident. You trying to say it wasn’t?”
“I’m not trying to say anything,” Heimrich told the heavy, now glowering, man. “Just trying to find out about things.” He stood up and Forniss stood up. “Sorry if I’ve given you a bad time,” Heimrich said. “Lieutenant Forniss and I’ll be getting along now.”
Jameson got up slowly from his chair.
“All right,” he said. “I suppose you’ve got to do what you think’s your job.”
There was no cordiality in his voice.
Heimrich and Forniss went down the wide staircase. There was nobody in the entrance foyer, or in the long living room. Forniss said, “Rankin?”
“I don’t think so, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Not now, anyway. I think the girl, don’t you? And Frankel.”
He got into the Buick. Forniss did not. He said, “O.K.—Frankel.” Heimrich started the engine. Forniss said, “I suppose we’re thinking the same thing, M. L.?”
“Probably,” Heimrich said. “Wondering about the same thing, anyway.”
“Half an hour,” Forniss said. “Maybe forty-five minutes. A long time to gallop across half a field and get thrown into a stone wall.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “We’re thinking pretty much the same thing. Meet you at the Inn, Charlie.”
In Cold Harbor Heimrich turned the Buick into Vine Street and drove up it.
12
Frans Frankel was not in the apartment above the garage. Forniss had to wait for a minute or two for Mrs. Frankel to come to the door and tell him that. First she said, “You again.”
“He’s working,” she said. “He’s got work to do. So’ve I.”
“We all have work to do,” Forniss said. “Where’ll I find your husband, Mrs. Frankel?”
“In the garden, where else?” she said. She started to close the door. Forniss said, “Where’s the garden, Mrs. Frankel?”
“Other side of the house, where else?” Mrs. Frankel said, and closed the door firmly.
Forniss walked back to the house and around it. A hundred yards or so north of the house, a little lower down the hill, bordered by a low, taut, chicken-wire fence, was a leveled area of roughly two hundred by four hundred feet. It was bisected by a path of pine bark.
Frans Frankel was a big man in worn slacks with dirt on the knees of them. He was digging something out of the ground—something set in rows. Forniss stepped over the fence. Frankel turned to look at him and then thrust a spading fork into the soil. He’ll say, “You again,” Forniss thought. Frankel said, “Morning, Lieutenant. We got a frost last night. Got to clean up for winter.”
He forked a bulb out of the soil. He lifted the still-green blades to which it was attached and shook it and earth fell away from the bulb. He tossed vigorously and the bulb and the blades flew over the fence to join others lying in a heap on grass in the sun.
“Glads won’t winter over up here,” Frankel said. “You wanted to see me, Lieutenant? Already told you all I know.”
He thrust the spading fork again into the soil and wiggled it and bent to grasp the blades of another glad bulb.
“About something else,” Forniss said. “Think maybe you can help us.”
Frankel said “Uh” and shook earth from another glad bulb and tossed it over the fence.
“Couple of years ago,” Forniss said, “Mrs. Jameson got killed in an accident. More than two years ago. Her horse threw her into a stone wall.”
Frankel said, “Yeah.” His tone was flat. He thrust the fork into the soil again, but this time he turned from it and faced Forniss. He said, “Crazy damn horse. She was a nice little lady.”
“From what we hear,” Forniss said, “Miss Jameson asked you to row across the lake and saddle the horses. So that she and Mrs. Jameson could go around in the Jeep. That’s the way it was?”
“Yeah. That’s what she told me, so that’s what I did. Rowed over and rowed back. I was planting glads. Like these I’m digging up. They was right pretty in July.”
“You went over and saddled the horses,” Forniss said. “When you came back, did you see Miss Jameson and her sister-in-law?”
“No. Went around the back way. Shorter.”
“You didn’t see them drive off in the Jeep?”
“Can’t say I did. Couldn’t, the way I came back here. To get the bulbs in.”
“You didn’t stop by to tell them the horses were ready?”
“No. Been no point to it, would there? She knows when I’ve got a job to do I do it. Wanted to get the glads in before I knocked off.”
He prized another bulb clump out of the soil. This time two bulbs came with the blades.
“About what time was this?” Forniss asked him.
“Maybe four. Maybe a little after.”
“Did you hear the Jeep when it started up? I suppose Miss Jameson would have been driving it?”
“No. House in between. And I was down on my knees putting bulbs in. Sure she’d have been driving it.”
“About how long did it take you to row across, saddle the horses and row back and tie up the boat?”
“Maybe twenty minutes. Maybe half an hour. You think I keep looking at my watch?”
“So you were back at, say, about four-thirty?”
“About then, I’d guess.”
“They might have driven off in the Jeep while you were over on the other side of the lake?”
“Sure. They hadn’t got around when I tied the horses up, though.”
“Or,” Forniss said, “they might not have gone until after you came back?”
“Sure.”
“This was on a Friday? The twenty-ninth of May? Since Memorial Day fell on a Saturday that year, the holiday was the following Monday?”
“If you say so,” Frankel said, and thrust the spading fork into the soil beside another glad plant and prized another bulb out of the earth.
“Way we get it,” Forniss said, “Miss Selby was here that day—that Friday. Working in Mr. Jameson’s office, although Mr. Jameson himself was in New York. Way you remember it, Mr. Frankel?”
Frankel shook earth from the newly excavated glad bulb and threw it over the fence to join the others.
“Don’t remember it one way or the other,” Frankel said, and pushed the fork back into the earth. “Usually here on Fridays, I guess. See her. Volks out in front of the house.” He left the fork sticking upright in the earth and turned to Forniss.
“What goes on in the house ain’t much concern to us,” he said. “To me and Gretchen. Now and then she goes oyer and helps out in the house. Special like. I take care of the grounds and do outside work. Call it caretaker if you want to. Or ‘yardman,’ way she does.”
“She?”
“Miss Jameson, who else? Thing is, they’ve got people working in the house. What she calls the staff. Nothing to do with Gretchen and me ’cept when she asks her to help out.”
Forniss said he saw. He thought that he wasn’t getting much of any place and that Frankel was rather going out of his way to make it clear that he and his wife weren’t servants at The Tor.
“All the inside people quit after Mrs. Jameson got herself killed,” Frankel said. “Not that Miss Jameson wasn’t running things before that. Has been as long as we’ve been here.”
“How long’s that been, Mr. Frankel?”
“Five years. More like six, I guess.”
“Then you and Mrs. Frankel weren’t here when the first Mrs. Jameson was alive?”
“No. I was running the greenhouse then. Place my father used to own, if you want to know.”
Forniss didn’t especially want to know.
“By the way,” Forniss said, “was Mrs. Frankel in the
apartment that afternoon, do you happen to remember? You can see the turnaround from the apartment windows, reason I’m asking,”
“This was a Friday from what you say. Fridays the wife does her marketing. For the weekend.”
“You and your wife have your own car, I suppose? I mean, she can drive herself in to do the marketing.”
“Sure do. What’d you think?”
Frankel turned back to his spading fork and dug up another glad bulb and shook it and tossed it over the fence. Forniss. said, “Thanks, Mr. Frankel,” and thought it was thanks for nothing and stepped back over the fence. He walked back up to the house and across the turnaround, past the terrace and the path which led from it to the top of the steep brick staircase. He climbed the stairs to the apartment above the garage and rang the doorbell and waited for a minute or two. Mrs. Frankel came to the door, carrying a mop. She said, as he expected, “You again. Couldn’t you find him?”
“Yes, I found Mr. Frankel,” Forniss said. “You remember the day Mrs. Jameson was killed, Mrs. Frankel? Thrown from her horse?”
“Of course I do. Bad thing. She was such a pretty little lady.”
“We’re trying to check up on times,” Forniss said. “When Mrs. Jameson and her sister-in-law drove over to the meadow to ride their horses. You can see the space in front of the house from your windows here. Just wondered if you happened to see the Jeep start off and can help us about what time it was.”
“I was in Cold Harbor marketing,” Mrs. Frankel said. “So how could I see when they started over to this meadow? All over when I got back. Poor little thing.”
“Mrs. Jameson,” Forniss said. “Yes. You’ve twice said she was little. So did your husband.”
“Couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. Skin and bones I’d call it. For all she was always doing things. Like riding horses and playing tennis and all. And swimming in that lake of theirs, for all she shouldn’t have ought to.”
“Shouldn’t have ought to?”
“Drains into a water supply,” Mrs. Frankel said. “Some law about it. Think you’d know that, being a policeman.”
Forniss said, “Thank you, Mrs. Frankel. Sorry to have interrupted your work.”
21-Not I, Said the Sparrow Page 15