“Now, child,” Heimrich said. “Nobody has. What waked you up?”
“First I thought she was talking in her sleep,” Lucy said, her voice distant and shaking a little. “But then—”
Slowly, carefully, she told him about the night before. He listened without interrupting her. She said, “That’s all, sir. I didn’t do anything to her.”
“No,” Heimrich said. “You didn’t do anything to her, Miss Fowler. When was it, about, you went into her room and found her—found her dead, you thought?”
“About seven, I guess. She usually waked up about seven. I would go down and bring her tray up. She was dead, sir. When I went in she was dead. I tried to wake her up and touched her and—and she wasn’t warm any more. Not the way people are warm.”
“And you were frightened,” Heimrich said. “And got out of the house and—walked all day in the rain? Trying to find Miss Mercer’s house?”
“I don’t know anybody around here,” the girl said. Her voice had steadied as she told of the night before. “Miss Mercer seemed like a nice lady. I thought maybe she’d help me. I thought they’d try to blame something on me.”
“Who would, Miss Fowler? Mr. Wainright? Mr. Gant?”
“I don’t know,” the dark girl said.
“You thought there was somebody in the room with her? Thought you heard another voice. A man’s voice or a woman’s voice?”
“It was low,” Lucy said. “Just a whisper almost. I don’t know. I thought probably it was Mr. Wainright, going to see if she was all right. But I was mostly asleep.”
“It could have been Mrs. Gant?”
“I guess so. It could have been anybody. It could have been Mrs. Prender, I guess. Her voice is sort of low. Maybe I just dreamed there was somebody with her.”
“Last night,” Heimrich said, “after you helped her into bed, you helped her take sleeping medicine. Left a glass of water on her table and another capsule if she needed another. When you went in this morning, was the second capsule gone?”
“I don’t remember,” Lucy said. “Really I don’t remember, sir.”
“Try to, Miss Fowler.”
“I don’t remember seeing it.”
“The glass? Was it there?”
“I don’t—” the small voice stopped. “Yes,” she said after a pause. “I think it was, sir. And it was empty. I think it was empty.”
“‘You had it in your hand,’” Heimrich said. “‘I saw you. You had it in your hand.’ That’s what she said when you thought she was talking in her sleep?”
“I think that’s what she said. I wasn’t very much awake, but I think that’s what she said.”
“This other person you think was in the room with her—by the way, was the door between the dressing room where you were and the other room closed?”
“Not quite, Inspector. A little open so I could hear her if she called.”
“Did the others in the house—Mr. Wainright, Mr. and Mrs. Gant, the Prenders—did they know you were going to sleep in the dressing room last night?”
“I don’t guess they did, sir. Mr. Wainright said after I saw she was all right, and to be sure she took her sleeping pill, I was to go to bed myself. ‘She’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘You run on downstairs and get some sleep of your own.’ But, I didn’t ...”
“This other person, whom you can’t identify. You just heard a whisper? The murmur of a voice?”
“Yes.”
“Couldn’t make out any words? Think, Miss Fowler. Because somebody is afraid you did, you see. Tried to kill you—you and Miss Mercer—because he’s afraid you did. Before you could get to me and tell me what you heard.”
Lucy did not answer. She sat huddled in the robe and looked into the fire.
“Try to remember,” Heimrich said. “Try to bring it back. Her voice wakened you—partly wakened you. You remember her words. Then you heard another voice. You assumed it was Mr. Wainright’s, naturally. That he had gone into his wife’s room to see if she was all right. But it might have been Mr. Gant. For the same reason. Or Mrs. Gant, who’s Mrs. Wainright’s cousin. Probably not Mrs. Prender. She and her husband were in bed asleep. Anyway, she says they were. Try—”
“I don’t,” Lucy said toward the fire leaping in the fireplace. “I just don’t, sir. Only—” She paused and shook her head. “Only,” she said, “it’s as if I almost remember. As if there were something I almost heard. I forget what—”
She stopped speaking. But then she looked at Heimrich instead of at the fire.
“That’s it,” she said. “I think that’s it. ‘You forgot again.’ Something like that. That’s why I thought it was Mr. Wainright. Because he was all the time having to remind her of things. Lately she’s—lately she’d been that way. Forgetting things.”
“Like taking pills? There were other things she was supposed to take? Other pills and she kept forgetting to take them?”
“Four or five others,” Lucy said. “I’d help her remember sometimes. Sometimes Mr. Wainright would. We both tried—tried to take care of her. She hadn’t been very sure about things since her daughter was killed that way. That awful way.”
“‘You forgot again.’ You think that was what the other person in the room said?”
“Something like that. I think it was something like that. That’s all I remember. Truly that’s all I remember.”
“All right,” Heimrich said. “Mr. Gant tells me you were Mrs. Wainright’s maid when she was living in New York after her first husband died and before she married Mr. Wainright. In an apartment.”
“Yes. She was all right then. She was fine and nice to me.”
“Was her daughter living in the apartment when you were there?”
“Mostly Miss Virginia was away at school. Sometimes she was there for a week or two at a time.”
“After her mother married Mr. Wainright. Did Miss Gant still come to the apartment?”
“Just once, I think. We didn’t live there very long after they were married. Mr. Wainright bought this house up near Brewster. So his wife and Miss Virginia could have horses. They’d always had horses back home.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “In the apartment. In the Brewster house. Did Mr. Wainright and Miss Virginia get along all right?”
“He was very nice to her. He would do nice things for her. Buy her things sometimes. So she’d like him better, I thought.”
“Better? She didn’t like him very well?”
“I never heard her say so. Only—well, she had been very close to her real father. To the Squire, that is. He—he was a wonderful gentleman, sir. She used to talk about him a lot.”
“Lucy,” Heimrich said, “did you feel she resented Mr. Wainright? As if she thought he was trying to take the place of her real father?”
“Maybe,” Lucy Fowler said. She was looking into the fire again, as if she saw the past there. “A watch she had her father had given her. It stopped and Mr. Wainright bought her another like it. Only she broke the one Mr. Wainright gave her. It fell off of something and she—I guess she stepped on it. Anyway, it was all broken.”
“This happened up at the Brewster house?”
“Yes, sir. A few days before the accident.”
Heimrich looked at the fire for some moments. He closed his eyes then, but did not turn his head. He opened his eyes and looked at Susan.
“Susan,” he said, “do you suppose you can fix these young ladies up with something dry to wear? Something they can wear out?”
“Yes,” Susan said. “They won’t fit very well, but yes. Only—have you two had anything to eat this evening?”
The question was for Lyle, who said, “Oh! How awful of me. I meant to fix something but—but I just forgot.”
“Lucy?”
“No, ma’am, I guess I haven’t had anything to eat for a long time.”
“I’ll get you both something,” Susan said. She looked at her husband. “You don’t,” she said, “take them anywhere until they�
��ve had something hot to eat.”
“No, ma’am,” Heimrich said. “Only, not too long, dear? I don’t want us to have to wake people up.”
Susan was not too long and the two girls ate soup and warmed meat loaf in front of the fire. Lucy Fowler ate carefully, but as if it had indeed been a long time since she had eaten at all.
Merton Heimrich, who was somewhat wet himself when he came to think about it, went to change to dry slacks and shoes. He also buckled on his shoulder holster and put the .32 in it.
He dialed WE6-1212. At nine P.M. the temperature had been fifty-two and the humidity ninety-five per cent. “Cloudy with moderate to heavy rain tonight, continuing into tomorrow. Winds northeasterly, thirty to thirty-five miles an hour. Risk of flooding in low-lying areas. Tides may run two to three feet above normal. Partial clearing and colder tomorrow night.”
It was, Heimrich thought, the first time the Weather Bureau had used the word “colder” since early April. He went back into the living room.
Lyle and Lucy Fowler went into the bedroom and Susan went with them to find them clothing—dry things and warm things. Heimrich sat in front of the fire and waited. Mite came out from under the sofa and jumped to Merton Heimrich’s lap, and Heimrich stroked the sleek black cat, who purred appreciation. When, after several minutes, Heimrich lifted him down and said, “Thanks for reminding me, Mite,” Mite said “Ya-ah!” and went back under the sofa.
Heimrich looked up a number in the Manhattan telephone directory and dialed that number. The telephone was answered after three rings—answered by a female voice with a purr in it. The purr was gratifying.
“The Wainright apartment?” Heimrich said.
“Yes.” She could get a purr even into “Yes.”
“Is Mr. Wainright in?” Heimrich asked her.
“No,” she said. “Oh, no. They won’t be back until next month. I’m a sublet. They’re up in the country. I can give you their number there. If you’ll wait—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Heimrich said. “I’m a friend of his. From out in Indiana. But I’m only in town for a couple of hours. Sorry to have bothered you, miss.”
He was told that that was perfectly all right. The voice still had a purr in it.
So, Heimrich thought, back in his chair in front of the fire —so, it held together well enough. As a mindful of wisps, with nothing to tie them together; a structure of theory with no foundation under it.
The girls came out again, wearing Susan’s clothes. The skirts came down to the midcalf of each of the slender girls. Susan is a ten, too. But she is a longer ten.
Heimrich stood up when the two came in, with Susan after them.
“I don’t suppose,” Heimrich said, “that either of you noticed the license number of the car that blocked you?”
“Heavens,” Lyle said, “we were being shot at, Inspector.”
“The lights of Miss Mercer’s car were shining on the other car,” Lucy said. “I saw the number. I’m pretty good at remembering numbers, sir. There was a little mud on the license plate. But it was R C and then—” She gave the numbers. The numbers were familiar to Merton Heimrich, to his pleasure but not to his surprise.
“Not R C, Miss Fowler,” Heimrich said. “P C. For Putnam County.”
He told Susan that he hoped they wouldn’t be long.
He had to move the Volks out of the way before he could get the Buick out of the garage. He got wet again.
15
No lights showed in the front windows of the Wainright house. Heimrich swung the Buick so it faced a three-car garage. He switched the lights off. He said, “Sit tight a minute,” to the girls, who had shared the front seat with him.
The garage doors were closed. He went around the garage, through a breezeway which connected it with the house, and got wet again. The side door wasn’t locked and Heimrich went into the garage. He took a pencil flashlight out of his pocket, and it gave him a little light.
There were three cars in the garage—a black and white Buick; a dark Continental; a Jaguar with Virginia plates. The Buick was dry. The Continental had dripped on the garage floor. Also, the windshield wipers had left crescents and there was still water on the glass the wipers had not touched. The Continental’s plate had the P C number he was looking for. A block for a foundation. The Jag had been out in the rain too. But not so recently. The Jag’s hood was cool to Heimrich’s touch. The hood of the Continental was warm.
He went back to his own Buick and opened a door and leaned into it. “Five minutes, Miss Mercer,” he said, repeating instructions he had given as they drove up through the rain. “After I’m let in. If, naturally, I am let in.”
“Yes,” Lyle Mercer said. “Five minutes.”
Heimrich went up onto the dark porch of the Wainright house and found a button and pushed it. Chimes sounded inside the house. He waited. After a few seconds he pressed the button again and again chimes sounded. It was thirty seconds more before the light went on inside the house. Then a light went on on the porch, and Elizabeth Gant looked at him through the door glass. He reached into his windbreaker pocket to get a badge to show her, but that was not necessary. She opened the door and said, “It’s Inspector Heimrich, isn’t it? You want to see—?”
“Mr. Wainright,” Heimrich said. “Your husband too, Mrs. Gant.”
“They’re both down in the game room,” she said. “Come on, I’ll show you. Is it—has something happened?”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. And followed the slight, pretty woman through a hallway and down a flight of stairs into a big room —a room big enough for both a pool table and a ping-pong table. Bruce Gant was sitting in a leather chair with a drink; Paul Wainright was plugging darts into a target board. He stood twenty feet or so from the board. As Heimrich followed Beth Gant into the room, Wainright threw a dart which panged into the bull’s-eye. Its spike went in deep.
Heimrich was sorry to bother them so late in the evening. But a point had come up.
“A point?” Wainright said. “Anything we can do. A drink?”
“No,” Heimrich said. “Thanks, but no.”
“A point about—?” Wainright said. He still stood, holding darts in his left hand and one, ready to throw, in his right. “Wait. Not about the poor kid? The poor Lucy kid?”
“I’m afraid so,” Heimrich said.
Wainright put the darts he held on a table. He walked a few paces toward Heimrich. He said, “You’ve found her? We’ve been looking for her all day. The three of us.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “We’ve found her, Mr. Wainright.”
“You sound,” Wainright said, “like it’s bad news. I hope it isn’t. She was a nice—”
“Yes,” Heimrich said, “I’m afraid it’s bad news, Mr. Wainright. I—”
The clock in his head said five minutes.
“I’m afraid—” he said and hesitated. Four minutes would have been better, he thought.
“She’s dead?” Wainright said.
The chimes sounded.
“One of my men’s to meet me here,” Heimrich said. “Probably him. I’ll get it.”
He went back upstairs, and let Lyle Mercer and Lucy Fowler into the big house. He went ahead of them down the stairs. Wainright had gone back to stand in front of the dart board. He snapped a dart into the target. Another bull’s-eye. Bruce Gant stood up as the girls came down the stairs and Wainright turned and Beth Gant said, “Oh! You made it sound—”
“No, Mr. Wainright,” Heimrich said. “Miss Fowler isn’t dead. You thought she might be?”
“What you said,” Wainright said. “Bad news, you said.” His face had tightened when the girls came down the stairs, Heimrich thought. A policeman watches people’s faces.
“Now, Mr. Wainright,” Heimrich said. “It is, isn’t it? For you, I mean? She’s alive. And she has a good memory for numbers. For numbers and other things.”
Wainright shook his head. He said, “That supposed to mean something? What do you mean, it’s b
ad news for me the girl’s alive?”
“Alive,” Heimrich said. “With a good memory for the numbers on a license plate. And for voices she heard in the night. Last night, Mr. Wainright. Your wife’s voice. And—it was your voice too, wasn’t it? You didn’t know Lucy was sleeping in the dressing room, did you? You thought she’d gone down to her own room, as you’d told her to do. That was the way it was, wasn’t it?”
Wainright shook his head again. He said, “I don’t get what you’re driving at. If you’re driving at anything.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “I think you do. What did your wife mean when she said—tell him what she said, Miss Fowler.”
“She said, ‘You had it in your hand,’” Lucy said. “She said, ‘I saw you, you had it in your hand.’ I heard her, sir. That’s what she said. Loud like. It woke me up.”
“You had a dream,” Wainright said. “You heard things in your dream.”
“Now, Mr. Wainright, how do you know that? Mrs. Wainright might have been talking in her sleep. At first, Miss Fowler thought she was. Until she heard the other voice—heard your voice, didn’t she? Telling your wife she’d forgotten to take her sleeping pills. And—seeing she took enough, of them. That was the way it was, wasn’t it? And giving her something to drink with more pills dissolved in it. So as to be entirely sure.”
“She was taking barbiturate,” Wainright said. “Barbiturates don’t dissolve in water.”
“Not readily,” Heimrich said. “Interesting you know that, isn’t it? Looked it up, probably. But they dissolve very readily in alcohol. Hundred-proof bourbon is half alcohol, Mr. Wainright. It wasn’t hard to get her to drink bourbon, was it?”
“This black kid is lying,” Wainright said. “She didn’t hear my voice. Not saying anything. I wasn’t in my wife’s room. In my own. With the door between them closed. You can’t believe a damn thing they say, Inspector. You ought to know that. She’s a liar like all the nig—”
“Just hold it, Paul,” Bruce Gant said. “Just hold it.” There was more of the South in his voice than Heimrich had heard in it before. But the accent seemed to lend slowness to his voice. “Lucy here’s one of the Fowler folks. Never knew one of them to be a liar, Paul. Known Fowlers all my life and they’re good darkies. Maybe the girl got things mixed up a little. But she’s not the kind to tell lies.” He half smiled at Paul Wainright. “You people up North,” he said, “don’t know about darkies. Not about our kind, anyhow.”
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