Death by Association

by Frances Lockridge

  Heimrich nodded. They crossed the central hall, went to the cocktail lounge beyond. The tweeded ladies were just emerging. One of them said, “Dear Liz.” She shook her head. The other said, “I just don’t know what to say, my dear. It’s just too—”

  “I know,” Liz said. “There isn’t anything.”

  The tweeded ladies looked at Howard Kirkwood, and shook their heads, their faces dolorous. Kirkwood shook his. The ladies looked at Heimrich and included him, in a species of parenthesis. Heimrich shook his head. Liz led them into the lounge, and to a corner table. They were alone in the room except for the bar attendant, who clattered mildly behind a serving window.

  Kirkwood said he needed a drink. Liz Monroe shook her head, Heimrich shook his. “Fix me a brandy and soda, will you, Lou?” Kirkwood said toward the service window and a voice behind said, “Coming up, sir.” Kirkwood walked to the service window and brought the drink back. He drank a quarter of it. He put the drink down.

  “You know,” he said, “I just can’t believe this has happened. That Vee isn’t—” For a moment, he put his head in his hands, his eyes covered. He raised his head and said, “Sorry. I just heard, you know.” He paused. “We were going to be married,” he said.

  Howard Kirkwood shook his head slowly. Then he turned to Heimrich.

  “This isn’t what you want, of course,” he said. “It doesn’t help.” Heimrich looked at him and waited. “I was with Vee last night,” Kirkwood said. “Until—oh, about twelve. Perhaps a little after. I don’t know whether that helps?”

  “It may, naturally,” Heimrich said. He closed his eyes. “Tell me about it, Mr. Kirkwood,” he said.

  “She was all right when she left me,” Kirkwood said. “She drove off in the little car. She—waved.” He paused, his face working. “Waved goodbye,” he said.

  Heimrich waited.

  “When did it happen?” Kirkwood asked.

  “Between midnight and about three in the morning, we think,” Heimrich told him.

  “She was alive at midnight,” Kirkwood said. “She—drove off.” His voice was not steady.

  “Now Mr. Kirkwood,” Heimrich said. “I realize this is hard for you.”

  “I got out about six this evening,” Kirkwood said. “Driving over from Golden’s Bridge I decided to call Vee and see how she was fixed for dinner. I got home and my father told me what had happened. I—” He put his head in his hands again.

  Liz Monroe looked at him. It was hard, Heimrich decided, to read her face; it had been hard earlier. Heimrich waited, and Kirkwood, after a moment, lifted his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. He passed one hand over his forehead; he drank from his glass.

  “We went to a movie last night,” he said. “The Belford Playhouse. Vee called me up.”

  She had called, Kirkwood said, a little before nine. He had been at home, working, going over briefs. Virginia Monroe, who was “Vee” to Kirkwood, had said, “How about taking me to the movie?”

  “I jumped at it, of course,” Kirkwood said.

  He had suggested going around for her in his car, but she had said that that would be wasting time.

  “I live only a couple of blocks from the theater,” Kirkwood explained. “It’s at the far end of Main Street.”

  To pick Virginia up, he would have had to drive half a mile down Main Street and then back. The second showing began at nine and it was then about ten minutes of. So they arranged to meet, and did meet, at the theater, Virginia driving there in the MG, he walking.

  The picture had lasted until about eleven. After that they had driven around in the little sports car, idling on back roads.

  “Just talking,” Kirkwood said. “About nothing in particular. About—ourselves. The way people do.”

  Again his voice lost steadiness. But this time he did not stop.

  They had driven as far as Ridgefield, and then circled back, passing through North Salem. They had paid little attention to where they went; knowing the roads, it didn’t matter where they went. There was always a road back. Time did not matter, nor direction.

  Finally, it had been Vee who had remembered time, remembered that he had to catch a commuters’ train to the city in the morning. She had been driving and, for the last few miles, had let the MG out a little. It had been about midnight when she dropped him at his house.

  “My parents’ house, actually,” he said. “They let me fix up an apartment.”

  She had dropped him. He had stood for a few minutes by the car. She had driven off, north on Main Street, in the direction of her grandmother’s house. She had waved as she drove off.

  “She was on top of the world,” he said. “We—we both were.”

  Heimrich had his eyes closed. He nodded, without opening them. After a time, he said, “Now Mr. Kirkwood.” Kirkwood said, “Yes?”

  “After you left the theater, while you were driving around,” Heimrich said, “do you remember meeting anyone who might know you? People do in the country, sometimes.”

  “I know,” Kirkwood said. “No, I didn’t notice anybody. We passed a few cars, of course. But most of the time we had the road to ourselves.”

  “You didn’t stop anywhere? For a drink, perhaps?”

  “No. Nowhere.”

  “While you were standing by the car,” Heimrich said. “In front of your house—your parents’ house—did anyone pass? Anyone see you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Kirkwood said. “Someone may have seen us. I don’t know.”

  He waited a moment, but Heimrich said nothing.

  “She was alive when I saw her last,” Kirkwood said. “She waved goodbye. You want me to prove that, don’t you?” He leaned forward to look intently at Captain Heimrich.

  “Now Mr. Kirkwood,” Heimrich said. “We like to pin things down, naturally.”

  “I loved Vee,” Kirkwood said. “We were going to get married. You’re sitting there and suggesting—” He broke off. He looked at Liz Monroe, as if to share incredulity, even revulsion. Liz Monroe merely looked at him.

  “Now Mr. Kirkwood,” Heimrich said. “I’m suggesting nothing. You’re a lawyer, Miss Monroe tells me. You know we must consider everything. All the evidence.”

  “You want what I’ve told you in the form of a statement?” Kirkwood asked, and again leaned forward. “Under oath?”

  Heimrich closed his eyes. He shook his head.

  “I want cooperation,” he said. “That’s all, Mr. Kirkwood. You’ve given me that, apparently.” He opened his eyes. “I want the facts,” he said. “All kinds of facts, naturally. As a lawyer would, Mr. Kirkwood.”

  “Aren’t they obvious?” Kirkwood asked him and waited a moment, and was regarded by Heimrich through bright blue eyes.

  “After she left me, Vee didn’t go home,” Kirkwood said. “It was a beautiful night. Perhaps she was a little keyed up, as I was. By—by everything. She drove around; drove down the lane. I suppose she must have stopped the car, got out. Perhaps she walked into the fields. There was a moon, you know. And—somebody was hiding in the shadows. Waiting. Someone abnormal.” He waited again, but Heimrich waited. “Isn’t it obvious?” Kirkwood asked him. “Isn’t it—horrible enough for you?” His voice rose at the end.

  “Now Mr. Kirkwood,” Heimrich said, after a moment. “It may have been that way, naturally. Quite probably it was. But there are certain discrepancies.” He paused a moment. “As Miss Monroe probably has told you,” he added. “Shall I tell you again?”

  “Because of the nature of the wounds,” Kirkwood said. “Yes, Liz told me. And the clothes are missing. And Vee wasn’t—” he hesitated. “Molested,” he said.

  Heimrich closed his eyes, then, as if to shut out the grotesque irony of the euphemism. But he nodded.

  “You’re making something out of nothing,” Kirkwood told him. “Why? To give yourself a famous case, Captain? For the newspapers? Regardless of what you drag people into? Is that—”

  Heimrich opened his eyes abruptly. They were, for the
moment, very cold eyes. But his voice was mild.

  “Now Mr. Kirkwood,” he said. “Now Mr. Kirkwood. You’re upset, aren’t you? Naturally—I realize that. It would be easier for everybody to—stop with the obvious. I realize that. But I can’t do that, you know.” He closed his eyes. “No, I can’t do that,” he repeated.

  There was a momentary silence. Kirkwood broke it. He spoke with what seemed reluctance. But he said he was sorry. He agreed he was upset.

  He was told that his position was quite understandable. He was told this in a voice so uninflected, so evidently uninflected by intention, that he leaned forward again and stared at Heimrich. But Heimrich’s eyes remained closed. When he spoke, Heimrich’s voice remained mild.

  “You would like to avoid involvement,” Heimrich told Howard Kirkwood. “Avoid, as you say, being dragged into something. Well, I hope you may, Mr. Kirkwood. I hope—”

  “It isn’t that,” Kirkwood said, and his voice was again raised. “Don’t sit there and—”

  “Now Mr. Kirkwood,” Heimrich said. “Of course it’s that. If your fiancée was killed by an abnormal person it’s rather as if she had been killed in a plane crash, naturally. Tragic, of course. For her, for people who loved her. But merely something which has happened, which is finished. Something which doesn’t involve any of you; which didn’t, in a sense, involve her herself. Tragic, but final.”

  “You talk a good deal, don’t you?” Liz Monroe said. Her voice was tight.

  “I may,” Heimrich said. “It’s been suggested before.”

  He did not open his eyes. One might have thought he had finished the interview. But he did not move to end the interview.

  “Everyone loved Vee,” Kirkwood said, after the silence had stretched for almost a minute. “Nobody would have killed her except—”

  Heimrich opened his eyes, and Kirkwood stopped speaking.

  “In a good many years,” Heimrich said, “I have failed to meet anyone everybody loved.” He paused for a moment. “Particularly,” he said, “anyone who was murdered.”

  “She was one,” Kirkwood told him, and Heimrich shook his head.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. Then he looked, and looked very obviously, at Liz Monroe.

  “You think I didn’t?” the girl said. Her widely set eyes narrowed for a second, as if she thought this over. “I suppose I didn’t,” she said. “Perhaps she had too many things I—wanted.”

  Howard Kirkwood looked at her, his eyes widening.

  Liz Monroe’s face did not change.

  “No,” she said, “not you, Howdy. Not including you.”

  Howard Kirkwood reddened, then.

  “Liz!” he said. “I didn’t mean—”

  Then, faintly, momentarily, Liz Monroe smiled.

  “I know you didn’t,” she told Howard Kirkwood. She turned back to Heimrich, then, and found his eyes were closed.

  “I didn’t love her,” Liz said. “Perhaps I didn’t even like her very much. I suppose I’m a fool to admit it.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “Perhaps you are wise to admit it, Miss Monroe.”

  “Because I’d already given it away?”

  “Now Miss Monroe,” Heimrich said. “Because you feel guilty, naturally.” He was looking at her, now.

  “And I’m not?” she said.

  Heimrich waited a moment before replying. “There’s no guilt in not loving,” he said, then. “Why didn’t you like your sister, Miss Monroe?”

  “I told you,” she said. “Say I envied her. Is that simple enough?”

  Heimrich closed his eyes. He said he didn’t know, naturally. He said he was trying to find out.

  “Nothing tied her,” Liz Monroe said. “Do you know what I mean? She always did what she wanted to do. Perhaps people ought to.” She stopped. “Now I’m talking too much,” she said. “Is that what you’re after, Captain Heimrich?”

  “Now Miss Monroe,” Heimrich said. “I’m after facts. As I said.”

  “I don’t know what you mean about Vee,” Kirkwood said, and turned toward Liz Monroe. “Why shouldn’t she have done what she wanted to do? What are you hinting at?”

  “No reason,” Liz said. “Nothing. Just say I was jealous.”

  He looked at her intently.

  “That’s the simplest way,” she told him. He continued to look at her. “We can’t all see people the same way,” she said.

  Kirkwood seemed about to say something further to Liz. But instead he turned back to Heimrich.

  “After Vee was killed,” he said, “whoever killed her went off in the car, didn’t he? The MG? It’s gone, you know. Liz told me.”

  Heimrich looked at Liz Monroe.

  “I saw you go out to the garage,” she said. “I went to find out why. Miggy was gone.”

  Heimrich nodded. He said they had an alarm out for—he caught himself short of saying “Miggy.” He said, “The sports car.”

  “It was used to get away in,” Kirkwood said. “By the man who killed Vee.”

  Heimrich closed his eyes to that. He nodded, slowly. He said, “It looks like that, naturally.” But then he opened his eyes.

  “Of course,” he said, “it had to be disposed of somehow, didn’t it? It was heard leaving the garage. There was always a chance it might be. The assumption would be that Miss Monroe drove it. Obviously—well, obviously she didn’t drive it back, couldn’t drive it back. If it wasn’t used to get away in—if the killer didn’t want, physically, to get away—that impression would still be left, naturally. If possible. So, the car would be disposed of.”

  Kirkwood shook his head, expressing doubt. He said that it would, to him, seem difficult to “dispose” of a car. He said if he were the police, he would be looking for the MG on the road. “With a man in it,” he added.

  “Now Mr. Kirkwood,” Heimrich said. “We are, naturally. Of course, we’ll look in the reservoirs, too. This is reservoir country.”

  “I—” Kirkwood began, and stopped. He looked beyond Heimrich, his round face faintly puzzled. Then, tentatively, he nodded toward someone beyond and behind Heimrich.

  Heimrich, who had sat back to the door, turned. Timothy Gates was standing tall in the door. The muscle in his cheek was jumping. Until Heimrich turned, his face seemed blank and he was making no response to Kirkwood’s greeting, if Kirkwood was, indeed, greeting him. When Heimrich looked up at him, across the room, he nodded briefly.

  “See you’re busy,” Gates said. “Thought you might be looking for me. I’ve been trying to dodge reporters.”

  “Did you, Mr. Gates?” Heimrich said. “No, I wasn’t looking for you, particularly. But come in, Mr. Gates.”

  Gates hesitated. Then he walked into the room. He was not dressed as he had been; he wore gray slacks, a white shirt, a gray tweed jacket too tight across the shoulders. Heimrich stood up as Gates came to the table; he looked at Gates, then at Kirkwood. Kirkwood’s face was still puzzled; there was a puzzled line between his eyes.

  “This is Mr. Gates,” Heimrich said to Liz Monroe. “Mr. Gates found your sister. This is Miss Monroe, Mr. Gates. This is Mr. Kirkwood.”

  Liz Monroe seemed to grow a little paler. She seemed, without moving, to draw back in her seat. The quivering muscle under Gate’s left eye became more noticeable.

  “I’m sorry,” Gates said, and looked down at the girl with a wide forehead, wide-set eyes. “It’s a pretty bad thing.”

  She looked up at him. She said, “Yes, a bad thing.”

  Gates turned toward Heimrich, then. Gates waited. He waited as if he had waited often, had had much time for waiting. Heimrich half turned toward Kirkwood, and seemed to be waiting too. Kirkwood was studying Timothy Gates’s face. The tall youth was immobile, except for the continued twitching of the facial muscle.

  “I think I’ve met you somewhere,” Kirkwood said, then. “I don’t remember where, exactly.”

  Gates looked carefully at the older, the almost pudgy man. He shook his head.

  “I don
’t know, sir,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Seen you, anyway,” Kirkwood said. “I’m pretty sure.”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Gates said again. “I’ve never been around here before.” He turned to Heimrich. “As I told you, sir,” he said.

  “Not around here,” Kirkwood said. “Wasn’t it in town?”

  He did not ask the question of Gates. He asked it of himself. It appeared he did not find an answer. He looked at Heimrich, perhaps for a suggestion. Heimrich had one.

  “Perhaps Mr. Gates was in uniform,” Heimrich said. “He was until recently.”

  Kirkwood started to shake his head again. Then he leaned forward, looking up even more intently at the man who stood very erect, very formidable. Kirkwood said, “Wait a minute.” Everyone waited; everyone looked at him.

  “About three weeks ago,” Kirkwood said. “At some kind of a party.” He paused. Gates’s expression did not change.

  “It was some kind of party for service men,” Kirkwood said. “I remember, now. A man named Chapman gave it in his apartment. A dancing party. Isn’t that right?”

  Gates hesitated a moment.

  “I went to Mr. Chapman’s party,” he said. “I don’t remember seeing you, sir.”

  “I got there late,” Kirkwood said. “Almost midnight. I went to pick up Vee and—” He broke off. He stood up. “You were dancing with Vee when I went in,” he said.

  “Vee?” Gates said. “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Virginia Monroe,” Heimrich said. “You found her body, Mr. Gates. You didn’t say anything about having known her. Having danced with her.”

  Timothy Gates looked from one of them to another.

  “No,” he said, “I didn’t say anything about that, Captain.”

  Buy Stand Up and Die Now!

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.