Murder Out of Turn

by Frances Lockridge

  “We may as well get this out of the way first,” Heimrich said. “Are you married?”

  Van Horst looked at them in astonishment. Then he looked at the Norths and after a moment smiled, a little crookedly.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m married—in a way. Why?”

  “You and your wife are separated?” Heimrich asked.

  “Obviously.”

  “And where is she?”

  “Just a minute,” Van Horst said. “Where is this leading? What has my wife to do with this?”

  “Does she live around here?” Heimrich pressed.

  “She lives in California,” Van Horst said. “And what the hell—?”

  Heimrich turned an examining gaze on Van Horst, looked at Weigand for confirmation, and said, “So—

  “Well,” he said, “we heard—”

  Understanding advanced over Van Horst’s face, and suddenly he laughed.

  “Let me tell you what you heard,” he said. “You heard I had murdered my wife in dead of night and buried her body under the floor of the Corbin cabin. You heard it from Marvin. Isn’t that right?”

  “Well,” Heimrich said.

  “Well,” Van Horst mimicked. “Why don’t you dig it up?”

  Heimrich looked a little sheepish, but said all right, they would. Meanwhile, they would like the address of the former Mrs. Van Horst.

  “Just routine?” Van Horst said, cheerfully. His cheer did not encourage Heimrich, who showed it. But he stuck to it long enough to get the address, which, Van Horst warned him, was an old one.

  “Well,” Heimrich said, defensively, “we have to check up. A matter of routine, as you say.”

  Van Horst drew on his pipe and then grinned over it at Heimrich. Heimrich wavered, and nodded, and said, “All right, Mr. Van Horst.” His tone was an admission. There was a pause and Weigand broke it. There were, he said, a couple of other things—But then he was interrupted by a trooper knocking at the door. Heimrich went to the door and then out into the yard with the trooper. He was gone several minutes and came back.

  “You bought a new kerosene can in Brewster Friday, didn’t you?” he said to Van Horst.

  “Yes,” Van Horst said.

  “Why?”

  “The old one sprang a leak. And if you want to prove that, it’s on the rubbish heap behind my place. The new can is under the sink in my kitchen, full of kerosene I bought yesterday at Ireland’s. Anything else you’d like to know?”

  Heimrich said he guessed there wasn’t, but he’d like to have a trooper look at the heap. Van Horst shrugged and said, “Why not?” indifferently, and Heimrich, after staring at him a moment, called a trooper and sent him to look. Then he motioned Weigand aside and talked to him a few moments in lowered tones. The trooper was back from Van Horst’s when they finished, and nodded when Heimrich’s glance questioned him.

  “O.K., Lieutenant,” the trooper said. “Like he says.”

  Heimrich nodded, and said he supposed so.

  “We already knew you had bought kerosene yesterday,” he told Van Horst. “The men just found out. Two gallons, wasn’t it?”

  “A can full,” Van Horst said. “A two-gallon can full.”

  “You and the Fullers and Miss Corbin and the Norths, here,” he said. “Your Mr. Ireland’s got quite a memory. The Norths bought cream, too.”

  “Mr. Ireland’s little joke, that is,” Mr. North explained. “We’ve never seen what was funny about it, but it makes Mr. Ireland laugh.”

  “So,” Heimrich said. “And nobody bought gasoline in a can; only to go in their cars, which is just about what we figured.” He reflected, and asked Van Horst questions about his actions the day before. They were routine actions; none of which put Van Horst near the Corbin cabin. He seemed to have had less time than the others to leave the Fuller party, since he spent a good deal of time playing the guitar and singing. He knew nothing of why either girl should have been murdered, except—

  “Well,” he said, “Jean was the kind of girl who might get into trouble—play with the wrong wild animal or something. But I know of nothing definite. She just got around—and liked to keep men interested.” He paused. “Not me, however,” he said. “We’d had that out a long time ago.”

  That seemed, for the moment, to be all. Then Weigand thought of something.

  “What’s the kerosene can ration?” he said. “One to a house? I mean, if they go with the houses?”

  They did go as part of the furnishings of the cabins, Van Horst agreed, and went one to the cabin. So far as he knew, offhand, nobody had two, but he obviously couldn’t be sure. He had been in most of the kitchens and had never noticed more than one, which he supposed proved nothing in particular. Weigand thought a minute.

  “Are any of the cabins vacant?” he asked.

  “One,” Van Horst said. “Around the lake near the dam. Marvin’s cows break through over there and bother people sometimes, so it isn’t popular.”

  “There’d be a spare can in that cabin?” Weigand said.

  Van Horst said there would.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I was over there Friday getting out one of the beds to give to the Askews, who wanted an extra, and I looked around in the kitchen to see whether there was anything worth taking over and locking up for the winter. There was a spare can there then.”

  “So,” said Heimrich. “Well—”

  “Right,” Weigand said. “I think that does it, for now, anyway.”

  “Dismissed?” Van Horst wanted to know. Weigand nodded and smiled.

  “Right,” he said.

  Van Horst knocked out his pipe in the fireplace, told the Norths he’d be seeing them, and went out.

  “Blair?” Heimrich said. Weigand nodded.

  “But first,” he said, “I’d sort of like to know whether that can is still in the vacant cabin. How about sending a man around to see?”

  Heimrich looked doubtful, and sent a man. Then, as he was about to send the second courier for Blair, there was a shout from the lake. They waited a moment and a trooper came up the path at a trot.

  “I guess we’ve found it, Lieutenant!” he said. “Want to come along and see?”

  They went along to see—Heimrich, Weigand and, after an inquiring exchange of glances with each other, the Norths. At the end of the lake several troopers were gathered in a knot, looking at something. They broke apart as Heimrich and his supporting cast appeared, and held up the object they had been looking at. Heimrich looked at it and said he’d be damned.

  It was an ordinary grass sickle, but rather a good one, with a heavy steel blade and a long handle. It was much too good, as anyone could see, to be thrown casually in the lake, and after a glance nobody believed it had been thrown casually. Whatever may have been on it had been washed away by the water, along, Heimrich remarked, with any prints which might have been on the blade or the rough handle. But you didn’t, Heimrich said, always need proof to know.

  “So,” he said. “That’s it.” He felt the point of the blade with a finger, and nodded. “Just about sharp enough,” he said. “It would go in a neck easy. I guess we can figure it did go in a neck easy.”

  He turned it in his hands.

  “Long handle,” he said. “You could stand”—he held it out at arm’s-length toward a trooper, who started back and then looked sheepish—“you could stand a good ways off. You wouldn’t need to get blood on you. You could go back to a party and not show that anything had happened.”

  He turned the grass sickle in his hands, examining the handle. Then he looked at the end of the handle and said, “Huh!

  “What would ‘F’ stand for?” he asked.

  Weigand and the Norths looked at one another.

  “Well,” Mr. North said, “that’s obvious, of course. It could stand for Fuller. As a matter of fact, I think it is the Fullers’. And they kept it hooked over a projection in the fireplace chimney, outside the house. Where anybody could pick it up as he went past.”

/>   Heimrich nodded and said he supposed it would be that way.

  Going back to the Norths’ cabin, they stopped by the Fullers’. Both Jane and Ben identified the sickle readily, and said it had been kept hanging on the chimney outside the house.

  “Handy for anybody at the party,” Heimrich said.

  Ben, the red-headed, looked at him hard and flushed.

  “Sure,” he said. “Absolutely. We put it there to be handy!”

  “Come off it, Ben,” Mr. North said. Weigand said, sure, come off it.

  “After all,” he said, “people have grass sickles to cut grass. Not to cut anything else. You wouldn’t expect people to want to cut anything else with a sickle.”

  They carried the sickle back to the Norths’ after Fuller had been soothed, with the help of Jane, who urged him to act his age, if he could. There was not much use examining it, after hours in the water, but you couldn’t merely give it back. Heimrich turned it over to a trooper after everybody had looked at it, and discovered nothing, and the trooper put a tag on it and started an exhibit cache, against a trial when a trial came. Heimrich said, “Blair?” again and Weigand nodded and then caught himself. He suggested they might clear up some of the others, first, in case something else might crop up to give ammunition.

  Then there was a quick tap at the door and a hot-looking trooper brought them more ammunition. Or brought them something—it was hard at the moment to say what. He said he had been to the unoccupied cabin.

  “I oughta gone by boat,” he said. “It’s a helluva walk around that road.”

  Nobody offered sympathy. You could not count Heimrich’s “Too bad” as sympathy. The trooper took a look at his superior and abandoned collateral detail.

  “I went through the cabin carefully, Lieutenant,” he said. “I even looked under things. There’s no oilcan in that cabin.” He paused. “Empty or full,” he said, providing emphasis.

  Heimrich nodded and waved him back to the yard. He looked at Weigand, inquiringly.

  “Do you suppose Van Horst was lying about it?” he said. “Or—”

  Weigand said he didn’t think Van Horst was lying. He said he thought it was something else.

  “I think the can was there Friday,” he said. “I think it wasn’t there yesterday. And—well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it came back.”

  He paused a minute and shook his head thoughtfully.

  “I don’t like this fellow,” he said. “I don’t like him at all. I think he’s playing tricks, and I don’t like the tricks. And—I think he’s been listening in on us, don’t you?”

  Heimrich nodded.

  “And you figure he isn’t done yet?” he said. He said it heavily. Weigand nodded slowly.

  “I’m afraid he isn’t done,” he said. “I’m afraid he’s collecting more ammunition—too. I think maybe we’d better hurry.”

  10

  SUNDAY

  3:15 P.M. TO 10:05 P.M.

  But it is hard to hurry if you do not know where you are going, or even in what direction. You can hurry through questions, but not so fast that you miss the answers, and witnesses are seldom concise. The Lone Lakers who passed in review through the North living-room most of the rest of the afternoon were seldom concise, and the shadows lengthened and the setting sun began to paint the clouds, and still it seemed to the detectives, and to the Norths, that they were marking time. Pam North sat nearer Jerry as the shadows began to lengthen, and after a while her hand wandered into his, as if by accident. It had been an uneasy hand before, but it quieted in his.

  The Askews came and went, and left little except an impression of utter innocence, and almost complete ignorance, behind. Mr. Hanscomb entered, conversed—he was a loquacious one—and exited, and it was clear that he had not murdered anybody and did not know who had. It was not even entirely certain that he knew anybody had been murdered. Others came from the cabins across the lake, which made up what Mrs. North said was called “drunkards’ row.”

  “Only,” she explained, “that’s really from way back. Everybody who lives over there now virtually teetotals.”

  It took time; it took the afternoon. It was growing dusky in the cabin, although it was still light enough outside, when they sent for Thelma Smith, and while they were waiting for her to come Mr. North lighted the lamps and then, when Mrs. North suggested it, the fire. He started to pour kerosene on the logs, stopped and looked at the can oddly, and then poured the kerosene on the logs. The flames leaped up, harmlessly.

  Thelma Smith’s pale hair was drawn back from a long, discontented face, but her brown eyes had unexpected heat in them. She wore a white tennis dress with a green scarf at the throat which was a wrong green, and when she sat she disposed herself indifferently. She managed to convey in her tone an apparent surprise that they should find her important enough to question; there was an implication that she was commonly, and of course unjustly, overlooked.

  The day before was, from her account, much as they had heard it from others. She had been met at the station Saturday morning by Kennedy and Helen Wilson. “They kept me waiting on the platform,” she added. “You could always count on Wilson being late.” She had lunched with the others at the Wilson house and watched the tennis for a time. Then, because it was “dull,” she had wandered away, walking “down toward the lake.” She had come back, however, in time to see the end of the match and “all the silly fuss people made over it.” Afterward she had had dinner and gone to the party, and left it early.

  ‘There were more women than men,” she said, morosely. “There always are up here.”

  She had gone to bed a little while after getting back to the Wilson house and slept as well as the spare bed permitted. She was querulous about the spare bed. And all she knew about the murders was what she had heard that morning, when people got around to telling her about them.

  She had no idea why anyone should mean, or do, harm to Helen Wilson. She seemed abstractedly surprised that anybody had.

  “You would never expect anything to happen to her,” she said. “Anything—interesting. She always seemed a very ordinary person.” She paused. “You’ll think I shouldn’t say that, now,” she said, in a tone which indicated that she cared nothing for what they might think. Lieutenant Heimrich’s face indicated clearly enough what he thought.

  “Jean was different,” Thelma went on, without waiting to be asked. “I should think that killing her would be a satisfaction to anyone.”

  There was a new, acrid note in her voice; from listlessness she seemed, as she mentioned the name, translated to something very like excitement. Bitter excitement.

  “What do you mean by that?” Heimrich asked.

  She wanted to know what he thought she meant. He merely waited.

  “She was—vicious!” Thelma Smith told them. There was viciousness in her own voice as she spoke. “She was cruel and disloyal and didn’t care what happened to other people as long as she got what she wanted. As long as she was all right.”

  “Well,” said Heimrich. “So she was all right, was she?”

  “Oh, she,” Thelma Smith said. “She was always all right. I ought to know if anyone did. I took enough from her. She—”

  And then it came out, rushing. Her voice was high and excited and her face flushed uglily and she leaned forward in the chair near the fire. There was no stopping the spate of words, and nobody tried to stop them. The Norths sat in the shadow close together, and Heimrich looked at her amazed, and Weigand leaned forward in his chair and looked hard at her as he listened. It was as if something had suddenly given way.

  It was rather hard to follow. It dealt chiefly with the things that Jean Corbin had done, maliciously and cruelly, to Thelma Smith. Now and then, there were references to what she had done to others, but those were only references in passing—references to fill out a picture of a cold and merciless woman, grabbing from others, making others suffer out of pure malice. There were references running through it to John Blair. She had taken B
lair from Thelma, it developed. It was not the first time she had done it, one gathered, although the words skirted the direct.

  “Whenever she saw any man was interested in any other woman,” Thelma told them, “she sneaked in. She knew all the tricks to fool a man, to involve him and catch him. Not that she wanted them, except to take them. They found that out, soon enough. I could tell you—”

  She did tell them, as her narrative tumbled and circled. She brushed her pale hair back nervously, almost frantically, as she talked, and her brown eyes were hot and bitter.

  Blair, it appeared, was an example. He had first been introduced to Thelma by Helen Wilson. “I was plenty good for him then,” the girl said, angrily. Reticence had dropped from her as if she were talking to herself. “Oh yes, I was good enough—we got along fine.” Then Jean had come in. “She saw what was going on,” she said. “You could trust her for that. And you could trust her to know the tricks!”

  She had used the tricks, if one could believe the story. “Things I wouldn’t do. Things no decent woman would do,” she told them. “He was a fool, like most men. He didn’t see through her. Any woman would have seen through her. Maybe he does now!” In any case, it was clear that Jean had taken Blair, who appeared in the likeness of a disputed dummy, from Thelma. That, it developed, was the final straw—with that, Thelma ended the shared occupancy of the cabin. “She wanted me to stay, all right,” she said. “You can bet she did. I was bait. But I’d had enough of it.”

  It was evident, as the story circled back again, that this was only the most recent of Jean Corbin’s unbearable acts. Nor was she unbearable only in love. She was ruthless, too, in business.

  “You work for the Bell firm, too, don’t you?” Weigand cut in. She seemed not to hear him, although she stopped for an instant and stared at him blankly. He did not repeat the question, because it became clear in a moment that she did; that she and Jean had started with the firm together; that Jean had clawed her way to the top, or near the top.