Death by Association

by Frances Lockridge

  “If,” Oslen repeated. He shook his head again, pitying credulity. “You say yourself she’s still an addict,” he said. “You think her brother doesn’t know it? Doesn’t know it’s—hopeless? What are you people waiting for?”

  “Now Mr. Oslen,” Heimrich said. “Evidence, I suppose. However—”

  “Look,” Oslen said, and leaned forward, “García knows you talked to the girl. Knows she spilled the story. Knows nobody’s going to believe everything was sweetness and light, as she says. He sees he’s got to stick to his story—that he didn’t see Wells at all. He can handle her, from now on. But, he’s got to stop you from passing on what she said. So—” He shook his head again. “I don’t get it,” he said. “I don’t get what you’re waiting for. Going down every blind alleys—” He spread his hands. “You say yourself García would use a knife,” he pointed out.

  Heimrich nodded.

  “It could be the way you think, naturally,” he said. “They picked García up this afternoon. They didn’t hold him yesterday.”

  “And?” Mary asked.

  “He’s not talking,” Heimrich said. “Denies killing Wells. Denies trying to kill me. That’s all. He’s got a lawyer.”

  “And,” Oslen said, and got up suddenly, “you’ve got a murderer.” He looked down at the others. His gaze was challenging. “You don’t want me any more,” he told them. He looked specifically at Mary Wister. “You,” he said, “had better learn not to believe anything a commie tells you. Not a goddamn thing.”

  And then, red of face, his movements emphatic, William Oslen departed the Penguin Bar.

  “Well,” Mary Wister said.

  Heimrich’s eyes were open; he looked after Oslen. Then, faintly, he smiled.

  “A forthright man, Mr. Oslen,” he said. “Violent in his views—which is very proper, naturally. He’s quite right about party members, as a matter of fact. It isn’t wise to believe them. The end justifies any thing, naturally.”

  “And,” Barclay MacDonald said, “the means become the end, don’t they?”

  “Why yes, doctor,” Heimrich said. “I think they do. I think they almost always do.”

  “You hadn’t finished about Mr. Wells,” Mary told him, after a moment. He nodded to that; he shut his eyes. He had, he said, almost finished.

  Early in 1949, when American nerves had tightened under what seemed a constant threat, when real (and purported) communists were being discovered everywhere, Bronson Wells had left Key West. He had got in touch first with a senator who, perhaps sincerely, believed that the protection of the United States from communization was a task which devolved uniquely upon him. Wells had, it appeared, been helpful. Within a few months, he had outgrown the senator, or, at any rate, the senator’s payroll, and had embarked on his own career as a defender of the American way of life; He apparently, Heimrich said, had found it lucrative.

  “Look,” Mary said. “You don’t mean it was only that, do you? Most of us hate communism; are afraid of it. Wasn’t Mr. Wells? Wasn’t he honest, I mean?”

  “Now Miss Wister,” Heimrich said. “I said at the start we never know all about a man. We’d have to guess, wouldn’t we? But—for what it’s worth—I’d say he was honest. I’d say he believed all he said and remembered most of what he said he remembered. His methods—well, he’d been a party member. Perhaps one thing he remembered was the theory that the end justifies the means. About your brother, doctor, I’d say he was wrong and that that sort of wrongness is—dangerous. But probably he was honest—or mostly honest.”

  He looked at Barclay MacDonald.

  “The methods could ruin the country,” MacDonald said, slowly. “They—killed my brother.”

  “The individual,” Heimrich said, “doesn’t mean much to a great many people. That’s one way, one important way, the communists differ from us. And—Wells had been a communist. He’d changed his beliefs, no doubt. But perhaps a habit of thought wasn’t changed.” He closed his eyes. “I don’t extenuate,” he added. “And I don’t deny, naturally, that Mr. Wells profited from his crusade. But—”

  Heimrich seemed to have finished.

  “I wonder,” Mary said, “why Mr. Oslen didn’t wait to hear the rest about Mr. Wells?”

  “Now Miss Wister,” Heimrich said, his eyes still closed. “Because he knew it, naturally. Wouldn’t you think so?” He opened his eyes. “Just as he knows Miss Jones is a member of the Communist Party,” he added, “although he says all the rest of her story is invented.”

  “Where is she?” Mary asked. “What’s—has something happened to her?”

  “Now Miss Wister,” Heimrich said. “I shouldn’t think so. I hope not, naturally.”

  Heimrich closed his eyes again.

  VIII

  Captain Heimrich thoughtOslen was lying. Of that, Mary Wister was certain; that beat in her mind as, with the tall, thin doctor beside her, she walked from the Penguin Bar through the deserted dining room toward the main lounge of the The Coral Isles. But if Oslen was lying, Mary thought, then Rachel Jones had been telling the truth. And then—

  “It’s my fault,” she said to MacDonald, as if she were continuing a conversation between them. “It’s my fault, Mac. I broke—”

  “Nonsense,” MacDonald told her, looking down, shaking his head and smiling. “Heimrich didn’t do anything until today. That was all she asked. Anyway—” It was his turn not to complete a sentence. She waited.

  “I’m not sure she was in any danger,” he said. “Or is—or has been. Whatever truth there was in what she told you.”

  “It was true,” Mary said. “I’m sure it was. So is the captain.”

  To that MacDonald nodded, after a hesitant moment.

  “But,” he said, “I don’t think Heimrich is worried about her. I don’t quite know why he isn’t.” MacDonald paused. His eyes narrowed a little. “Unless—” he began.

  But he was interrupted by a red-jacketed bellboy, who was repeating, in accents of cooing affection, Mary Wister’s name. “Miss Wister,” he was saying, in the tone of a lover. “Miss Wister, please.”

  “Here,” Mary said, and took a telegram which he offered on a tray. She started to open her purse and the bellboy said “Thank you” for MacDonald’s coin. She opened the telegram. She said, “That crazy Bernie” and handed it to MacDonald.

  “Too much red in your palette,” Mac read. “Am sending one lawyer postpaid.” It was signed, “Bernie.” Mac smiled politely.

  “Isaac Bernstein,” she said. “A very swell guy. He’s an agency man, handling the account I’m working on. He sent me down, really.”

  “Oh,” MacDonald said.

  “Advertising agency,” Mary explained, answering the blankness of his tone. “There’s this group of hotels—” She told him in some detail about “this thing” she was working on, for Bernstein’s agency. Mac said “oh” again, this time in accents of enlightenment. He said she must remember he was a country doctor, unused to the ways of commerce.

  “Bernie handles all sorts of advertising,” Mary said, talking more than she needed, more than she intended; running back to safe things, and ordinary things. “Radio programs. Space in magazines. Gets out things like this brochure and coordinates them with space. He has three floors of offices on Madison Avenue and—”

  She stopped, because two youngish men and a youngish woman, dressed in Northern clothes, brisk in woolens in spite of summer warmth, converged.

  “Miss Wister,” the shorter of the two men said, “heard them paging you. Was going to have you paged myself.” He looked with disfavor upon the other man and the woman. “The little foxes caught up,” he said. “I’m from the U.P. The United—”

  “I know,” Mary said. “I don’t know anything about anything.”

  “You wouldn’t be Doctor Barclay MacDonald, would you?” the woman said. “I’m Ruth Osgood. New York Times. I’ve heard of you.”

  “Good,” MacDonald said. “Excellent, Miss Osgood. I have heard of the New York
Times.”

  “You’re MacDonald, all right,” Miss Osgood said. “The cation man. And your brother—”

  “Yes,” Mac said. “I’m MacDonald. I’m afraid I haven’t anything to tell you.”

  “For my money,” Ruth Osgood said, “your brother got a bad deal. The Times thinks so, too.”

  Barclay MacDonald said he was very glad. His tone was, however, non-committal.

  “Nevertheless,” Miss Osgood said, “it’s a coincidence. We can’t getaway from that, can we?”

  “It is,” MacDonald said, “entirely. But I presume we can’t.”

  “Look,” the taller of the two men said, “this is an unsatisfactory place to talk.” It was. They stood in front of the desk; between it and the case of Key West shirts, presided over by a delicate young man, wearing one of the shirts. “I’m Franklin, Associated Press.” He paused momentarily. “May as well get it over with,” he said. “Ben Franklin. Now that we’ve had our laugh, isn’t there some better place?”

  “I don’t—” Mary began, but MacDonald took her arm, gently.

  “As Mr. Franklin says, we may as well get it over with,” he said. He looked around. He nodded toward a corner of the lounge. They went to it, sat in it.

  “We’ve talked to—” the United Press man began, and then looked up. “Oh, hello captain. Hope we’re not tampering with witnesses.”

  “Now Mr. Burns,” Heimrich said. “Now Mr. Burns. Go right ahead, of course. Hello, Ruth, Ben.” He turned toward Mary. “They’ll want to know how you found the body, naturally,” he told her. “What it looked like and that sort of thing. I’ve told them about the disappearance of Miss Jones, after she had told you she was afraid. That she wouldn’t tell you who she was afraid of.”

  “Now Merton,” Ruth Osgood said. “Now Merton. Don’t fill the lady’s head with ideas, will you not?”

  Captain Heimrich closed his eyes, as if in pain.

  “They call him Merton of the Mounties,” Ruth Osgood told Mary and MacDonald. “He doesn’t care for it.”

  Captain Heimrich opened his eyes.

  “You’re quite a girl, Ruth,” he said, mildly. “Quite a girl. Go ahead.”

  “You’re staying, I gather,” the United Press man said.

  “Now Mr. Burns,” Heimrich said. “I’m staying, naturally. But go right ahead. And start with Miss Wister. She’s been playing tennis, wants to change.”

  Mary herself had forgotten that. It was nevertheless true.

  MacDonald slapped the pockets of his jacket suddenly.

  “No cigarettes,” he said. “I thought—” He stood up, although cigarettes were offered. “Have to get some anyway,” he said. “I’ll be back, of course.”

  They let him go. They turned to Mary. While she was answering the questions they asked, keeping in mind Heimrich’s veiled caution, she happened to look toward the desk—looked in that direction when she sought a word. Dr. Barclay MacDonald was standing at the desk. He was not buying cigarettes. He was writing a telegram on a yellow form—apparently a long telegram.

  It was after five when Mary finally reached her room. She had left Barclay MacDonald in the lounge, still undergoing interview—a detached, apparently confident man; now and then, she thought, an oblique one. He had said nothing about the telegram. He had returned with cigarettes. The reporters, keyed, she thought, by Ruth Osgood, treated him with that courtesy many reporters reserve for people of some importance. Well, Mary thought, I never believed this country doctor business.

  She showered and changed, not letting herself think of Rachel Jones, or trying not to. What Mac said was true. Her breaking of the promise was only technical, and without demonstrable result. If she had waited until that day, as she had promised to wait, it would have made no difference, since Heimrich had—or said he had—done nothing until that day. (And then, so far as the girl herself was concerned, apparently not much.)

  It was not until Mary had dressed again—in green linen, with some feeling of repetition—that she saw the envelope, addressed “Miss Wister,” in a sprawling hand, propped against the telephone on its table by the bed. She opened the envelope. She read, in the same unformed hand:

  “Miss Wister Miss Jones says not to wory tell you shes alright. Dont try to fine her.”

  At first, Mary’s feeling was one of great relief. But that lasted only a moment. She realized, then, that this scrawled, semiliterate communication carried no real reassurance. It was not from Rachel Jones; it was about her. It might merely be— All the things it might be swirled in Mary Wister’s mind. She stood holding the letter when someone knocked at the door. She turned toward the door too quickly, and spoke in a voice too high.

  “Yes?” she said. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Florence Sibley, dear,” a voice said. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

  The United Press had gone. The Associated Press had gone. They were to use Heimrich’s name at the jail; there was no doubt that they could talk to Mario García, assuming him to be still in the jail. “I don’t know how good his lawyer is, naturally,” Heimrich said at that point, and the United Press said, “Oh, it’s that way?” Heimrich closed his eyes. “I suppose I’d better see this Rita,” Ruth Osgood said. “ ‘Abelard,’ for God’s sake!” She looked hopefully at Heimrich, at Dr. Barclay MacDonald. “I hate the woman’s angle,” she said. “You still say your being here is pure coincidence, doctor?”

  “Yes,” MacDonald said.

  “It’s a pity, in a way,” Ruth Osgood said. “I hope you don’t mind my saying so, doctor?”

  “Not at all,” MacDonald said. “I appreciate your point.”

  “If it’s García, where are we?” Ruth Osgood said. “You do see my point? Front page today; maybe tomorrow, since they flew me down. Then the split page. Then, God knows where. If it’s really García.”

  She was almost wistful.

  “I’m sorry I can’t help you,” MacDonald said, with great politeness. “I can see García would rather flatten it out. Nevertheless, I’m afraid I didn’t kill Mr. Wells.”

  “All right,” Ruth Osgood said. “One thing you learn in this business. You can’t have everything.”

  “At any rate,” MacDonald said, “you can’t have me.”

  The tall thin doctor and the square, solid man with an arm in a sling stood politely. Miss Osgood sighed once more; she shook her head in regret; she left them.

  “You’re a disappointment to the lady, doctor,” Heimrich said, when they sat again.

  “I hope not to you,” MacDonald said, and got, “Now doctor, now doctor.”

  “Since,” MacDonald said, “you feel the same way about García. Although not, I suppose, for the same reasons.”

  “Now doctor,” Heimrich said. “Have I said that?”

  “In effect,” MacDonald told him. “At any rate, I think you have.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “It’s very simple, naturally. I’ve said that the deputy sheriff probably is right. The thing nearest to hand, the obvious thing, is usually the thing you want. Usually, the person you want. But the deputy is taking care of that—as I would, in his place. Ten to one, he’s right. However—”

  “Not ten to one,” MacDonald said. “Three to one. Or, if you like, four to one. Aren’t those the odds?”

  “Now doctor,” Heimrich said. “What makes you think that?”

  “Oslen,” MacDonald said. “Judge Sibley—or his wife. Paul Shepard.” He counted on his fingers, letting one finger stand for two Sibleys. “Me. Four to one. I turn it upside down, of course.”

  “You do,” Heimrich admitted. “You sent a telegram, doctor. Would you like to tell me about it?”

  “Why should—” MacDonald began, and stopped. “On the other hand,” he said, “why not? I sent a telegram to a man named Bernstein. He runs an advertising agency in New York. He sent Miss Wister here. I asked—”

  He stopped because Heimrich, eyes open, was nodding, seemed pleased.

  “Isaac Bernstein,�
� Heimrich said. “The agency’s on Madison Avenue.” He gave the number. “It was astute of you to think of that, doctor. Did Miss Wister suggest it?”

  “No,” MacDonald said. “You saw the telegram, apparently. Why ask me?”

  “Now doctor,” Heimrich said. “I didn’t, as it happens.” He closed his eyes. “I’ve thought there’s a similarity between your job and mine, doctor,” he said. “Research, mine into human actions, yours into—what should I say? Physiological reactions? Finding out what we can, trying to discover the meaning of what we find out.” He opened his eyes. “I hope you don’t mine the comparison,” he said.

  MacDonald shook his head. He waited.

  “If you phrased your question to Mr. Bernstein as you probably did, I think the answer will be ‘No,’ ” Heimrich said. “He’ll say, at any rate, not that he’s heard.”

  “Look,” MacDonald said, “I gather you’re ahead of me? That you’ve already got the answer?” Heimrich nodded. “Was the question that obvious?” MacDonald asked.

  “No,” Heimrich said. “But you see, we try to ask all the possible questions. We waste a lot of time. Your question was a very good one, doctor. You thought of asking it—when?”

  “This afternoon,” MacDonald said.

  Heimrich nodded. He closed his eyes. He said, “Naturally.”

  “So?” MacDonald asked.

  “Now doctor,” Heimrich said. “It’s early days. It’s interesting, naturally. You must remember, though, that there may be a perfectly simple explanation.”

  “You’ll ask?”

  “Now doctor,” Heimrich said. “I always ask, naturally. How else do you find things out? You ask all the questions you can think of, of all the people who—might have answers. You try—”

  “To make the character fit the crime,” MacDonald finished. “You told us.”

  “I talk a great deal,” Heimrich said. “Foolish of me, I’ve been told. Of course, there are other things which have to fit, too. Practical things—where people were, for example.”

  “My being out of the hotel when you were attacked,” MacDonald said.