“If you want your dinner you’ll have to come and get it,” she said. “Makes no difference to me. It’s turkey, on account of its being Christmas.” She glared at Mrs. Kemper. She had glare left over for Inspector Heimrich.
“Turkey and all the fixings,” she said, as Heimrich had been sure she would. “Special on account of Christmas. You coming?”
The matron moved a step farther into the room. The step symbolized a resumption of the authority of which she had, momentarily and unfairly, been deprived. It would show a state police inspector.
Loren Kemper went with the matron.
Heimrich went out to his car. It hadn’t got any warmer. But the sky was relatively clear and the air tasted better. It didn’t taste of disinfectant. And the Buick, perhaps invigorated by the freshness of the air, had thrown off its lethargy. The engine took the first hint.
It didn’t take as long to drive back to Van Brunt as it had taken to get to Carmel. Still, it was after one thirty when Heimrich went into the taproom of the Old Stone Inn. Forniss was there, waiting. So were a good many other people. Joe Shepley was busy. Forniss, like most of the others in the room, had a glass in front of him. He was at a corner table for two. It was a little, but not much, secluded. There was a briefcase on the floor by Charles Forniss’s chair.
Shepley, behind the bar, held a martini mixer up and gestured with it. Heimrich nodded his head to Shepley and sat down. Forniss raised his eyebrows.
“Sam Jackson offered his services to Mrs. Kemper,” Heimrich said. He said “Thanks” to Shepley for a chilled glass and a miniature milk bottle of martini. He twisted lemon peel over his drink and dropped the spent peel in the ash tray. “She and Lord were having an affair. Mrs. Lord was onto it. Mrs. Kemper kept her rifle in a hall closet near the front door. She had it partly for protection, partly for target practice at the club. She didn’t kill Lord. She’s having turkey and what they call, what the matron calls, anyway, ‘all the fixings’ for dinner. Dinner at noon.”
“Pretty much what they’ll give us here,” Forniss said. “If we have lunch here. Maybe we can wangle a turkey sandwich. She admits she and Lord were sleeping together? What Peters will use as a motive, you know. Jealous rage of a rejected woman. She told the county boys the same thing about the rifle. Twenty-two target rifle it is. A good one, one of the county boys tells me. And she’s a good shot. Friend of mine at this club says she was tops. Among the women, anyway. Why do people join rifle clubs, M. L.? So they’ll be able to hit Indians?”
“Or rapists, I guess.”
“The knee’s better,” Forniss said. “Anyway—”
Anyway, James Worthington Jackson did live in Seattle. He had no record with the Seattle police. He owned a small electric appliance shop. So far as Seattle had found out by a quick check, it was not only small but getting smaller. Jackson was thought to be in his middle or late twenties. He was not married. He had an apartment above his shop. It, too, was small. He owned a threeyear-old station wagon. Yes, a Pontiac wagon.
Jackson was not in town. There was a sign on the shop door which read “CLOSED FOR THE HOLIDAYS.” He had said he’d probably be gone a couple of weeks. The police didn’t know. He had not said where he was going. He had gone in the Pontiac station wagon, apparently. At least, the wagon was not in the shed behind the shop, where normally it lived.
Forniss had had no trouble in getting into Samuel Jackson’s office, using a key requisitioned from the property clerk at the barracks. He had had no trouble in finding the key to Jackson’s private file cabinet, which was on the hook in the desk drawer, to which Alice Arnold had returned it. Miss Arnold had not been in the office. She was at home.
“Mourning, I guess,” Forniss said.
Heimrich agreed that Miss Arnold probably was mourning—mourning a man and, possibly, the extinction of a wistful hope.
Forniss had had no trouble finding Jackson’s checkbook registers for the last three years. The most recent showed a balance in the First National Bank of Van Brunt of—Forniss took a folded sheet from his jacket pocket and looked at it—of $5,126.83. “Only,” Forniss said, “it’s actually a hundred dollars less than that. He didn’t add too well.”
“A lot of us don’t,” Heimrich said, and Forniss said, “I balance to the penny, myself. And probably waste a lot of time. Anyway—”
Anyway, Jackson’s deposits in his checking account averaged about fifteen hundred a month, sometimes more and sometimes less. There was nothing to indicate the source, or sources, of these deposits. Probably, Forniss thought, checks from his brokers.
The stubs showed checks drawn to “J.W.J.” They were also in varying amounts, ranging from seven hundred fifty (and no cents) to two thousand. The most recent stub, which was for the two thousand, was dated the thirtieth of the preceding June. Forniss had not yet had time to go through the monthly envelopes of statements and canceled checks. “Got them all there,” he said, and pointed down at the briefcase on the floor.
He also had there the roll of 16mm motion picture film. He had found it, as Heimrich had told him he might, behind the “E” divider. “Probably meant to put it in the ‘F’ spot,” Forniss guessed. “Missed it by a letter.”
“Probably,” Heimrich said.
“So,” Forniss said, “I went on over to see Jackson’s man Friday. He—”
“Hold it a moment, Charlie. About Jackson’s nephew. The Seattle boys give you a description?”
The Seattle police had not. They had never had any contact with James Worthington Jackson. They had looked him up in the telephone directory, found him listed, and called him to tell him, as requested, that his uncle was dead. They had got no answer. They had sent a car around to the address listed and found the closed shop, with the sign on the door. Shops nearby were closed. “It’s Christmas there too, M. L.” They had found one resident in a nearby house. He didn’t know Jackson. He had never had need of electrical appliances. He didn’t know if he’d have gone to that shop if he had. Looked like a hole in the wall to him. He did pass it every morning on his way to work. He had a vague feeling he had seen the sign on the door for a couple of weeks. Maybe not quite that long; maybe longer. He’d wondered, mildly, if it was ever going to be reopened. He’d never seen it doing much business.
They had found a woman in another house who had, some months before, taken a toaster in to be repaired. She hadn’t noticed what Jackson looked like, but thought he was pretty young. Maybe in his twenties somewhere. She was in her late sixties, an age from which a good many people look pretty young. The toaster hadn’t worked much better after he repaired it.
“They went to quite a lot of trouble for us, didn’t they?” Heimrich said.
Forniss agreed the Seattle police had been diligent.
“The lab boys?”
A trooper had found a hole in the Heimrichs’ ash tree by the terrace. He had dug into it and found a slug. Probably, by its weight, a .22 slug. Otherwise, an anonymous bullet. “Mashed up when it hit the tree. Never get anything out of it, the lab boys say. Looks like somebody drove a nail into that tree of yours, M. L. Years ago, and the bark grew over it. Bullet hit the nail, and that banged up the bullet. So—nothing to compare.”
The lab boys had had better luck with the Pontiac station wagon. Partially better luck, at any rate. They had found a long scratch on the right rear fender, and red paint embedded in it. The paint was being analyzed.
“Probably from Miss Collins’s Volks, M. L. Where the wagon brushed it forcing it off the road. They’re running a comparison. Know by tomorrow, they think.”
On the other hand, there was nothing on the rear bumper of the wagon, or anywhere on its rear end, to show that it had recently backed into anything.
“Like a man, M. L.”
Heimlich had not really supposed there would be. Humans are not that solid. Sometimes bits of cloth, threads, adhere to a car which has struck a man. Not this time.
There had been a good many fingerprints and blurs of pr
ints on the wagon. “Most of them Father Armstrong’s, probably. They’ll pick his up when they get a chance. Seems he’s got services going on most of today.”
Anglo-Catholics do have a good many services on Christmas Day.
“By the way,” Forniss said, “they had to move that candlelight parade inside the church last night. Too windy out for candles.”
Heimrich had supposed it would be—too windy and too cold.
“Oh,” Forniss said, “and there weren’t any prints at all on the ignition key.”
“It’s winter,” Heimrich said. “People do wear gloves, Charlie.”
Charles Forniss supposed so, although ignition keys are awkward in gloved fingers.
“So,” Heimrich said, “you did get to see Bertram Friday?”
Forniss had seen Friday. Friday had still been cutting up the fallen tree. “Getting along pretty well with it,” Forniss said. “Piling up a lot of firewood. Starting to split up the trunk lengths. The man’s a good worker.”
“And picking a damn cold day for it,” Heimrich said. “Wonder who’s going to burn it, don’t you?”
“Probably this James Worthington,” Fomiss said. “Assuming he shows up. To learn what he’s fallen heir to.”
“Yes, Charlie. Seattle’s a long way from here, isn’t it. How long would it take to drive here from there, do you suppose?”
Forniss had no supposition to offer. It depended on how many miles a day somebody wanted to drive. He himself thought three hundred miles a day, or 350, was enough, especially with reasonable adherence to the fifty-five limit. But a lot of people thought nothing of five hundred, and some did even more. “Younger types,” Forniss said, with some wistfulness in his voice, A week, maybe. Maybe twice that long. This time of year, a man might run into a lot of snow.
“Also,” Forniss added, “we’ve got one wagon. We don’t really heed another.”
Heirnrich agreed. He also noted there was no special dearth of Pontiac station wagons and the fact that they had found a wagon which probably had forced a Volks off a road didn’t necessarily mean that they had the one which had been used to kill a man.
Formiss said, “We-ell.” Heimrich agreed. “But,” he said, “something a defense attorney would be likely to point out, Charlie. To get back to Friday.”
Bertram Friday had been reasonably cooperative and forthcoming. He thought Mr. Jackson had gone to the Lords’ picnic on the Fourth of July. Anyway, Friday had made a big lobster salad for Mr. Jackson to take as a contribution to the food supply. Friday had put it in an ice chest in the car. He didn’t know whether Jackson had taken along his movie camera. He thought probably he had. Last few months he had taken it almost everywhere. “A new toy for him,” Friday had said. “He needed something to interest him, Lieutenant He was—well, he was sort of a lonely man, since his wife died.”
Jackson had not talked to him about the picnic. If he had taken movies at it, he had never run them for Friday.
Huh? No, he didn’t own a rifle. Well, yes. Mr. Jackson did own one. It was probably around somewhere. He couldn’t remember ever seeing Mr. Jackson use it.
Could he himself use a rifle?
“He froze up a little on that,” Forniss said. “Wanted to know what I was getting at. Did I think he was the one who’d shot Mr. Lord? And why the hell would he? He’d never even seen the man. I told him we just checked up on things as we went along and that I wasn’t accusing him of anything. Calmed him down. Not that he seemed stirred up, particularly. Just surprised, sort of. And, yes, he knew how to use a rifle. Hadn’t for years, but he guessed he still could. Turns out, M. L., he did a hitch in the Corps. Made sergeant, he told me. And he dug up the rifle. In a storage closet it was. Winchester caliber thirty it is. Nice clean gun. Nothing to show it’s been used recently.”
“If it had been, there wouldn’t be,” Heimrich said, stating the obvious. “So the path, Charles?”
Of course Friday knew about the path along the ridge far above the Hudson—the path which ran north three or four miles from a beginning just beyond the end of NY 109, and ran beyond the Jackson property, and the Heimrich property and the land owned by Oliver Larkin; the land from which somebody had fired a shot at two young people standing on the Heimrich terrace to watch the sun go down. Sure he knew it. Yes, he’d walked it a few times. If the Lieutenant wanted to look at it, he could go through a gap in the stone wall behind the house. Although it would be one hell of a cold day to walk it.
“I told him it was one hell of a cold day to be sawing wood,” Forniss said, “and he agreed it sure was, but that he had to get it done because—he stopped with that, M. L.”
“Because Mr. Jackson likes wood fires, I suppose. And doesn’t like his front yard cluttered up with fallen trees. It’s hard to switch over sometimes. To adjust. It was cold on the path, Charlie?”
It had been damn cold on the path, where the wind had its full sweep. Walking north, Forniss had walked against the wind. “Must have been blowing forty knots.” He had walked fast to get it over with—as fast as the wind would let him walk. It had taken him eighteen minutes to reach the first gap in the dry stone fence of the Larkin property. Through the gap, it was not more than a hundred yards to the top of the knoll from which, presumably, somebody had fired a shot—a shot meant to silence Joan Collins. Again, presumably.
Two very cold troopers were pawing through tall grass looking for a cartridge case. Forniss had sent them there. When he appeared, he had been greeted with modified joy, on the assumption he had come to tell them to call it off.
“Knew there wasn’t more than one chance in a million,” Forniss said. “Hadn’t been mowed since July, at a guess. Told them to give it another hour and check in at the barracks.”
“Trampled down when they got there?”
“They couldn’t see that it was, M. L. But they couldn’t be sure it wasn’t. Wind like this could have blown it straight again, I suppose.”
He had left two cold men groping in tall grass for a tiny object which probably was not there and gone back along the path to the Jackson house and his car. This time he had jogged, with the wind behind him. Jogging, he needed only thirteen minutes. “He could have done it easily,” Forniss said. “Been back in time to be sawing wood when we showed up.”
Heimrich nodded his head. He looked at his empty glass. After all, it was Christmas. He held the glass up for Joe Shepley to see. Shepley saw it and nodded. Forniss held his glass up. Shepley nodded his head again. When he brought the drinks, he also brought a menu. Roast turkey, of course. Also roast goose, cranberry sauce. For the unorthodox, even roast beef. Mashed potatoes or baked Idahoes. Choice of vegetables. Tossed green salad, with choice of dressing. Mince pie, pumpkin pie, or fruitcake with brandy sauce. Yes, he supposed the kitchen could manage a couple of beef sandwiches, although the complete dinner was all they were supposed to be serving. He’d have the waitress ask.
“Suppose, after we eat,” Heimrich said, “you try to get Seattle on the phone, Charlie. You know anybody there?”
To Heimrich’s surprise, Forniss shook his head. So there was one place in the world Charlie Forniss didn’t know anybody. Well, nobody’s perfect. Heimrich was still a little surprised.
“Ask them to try and find out when he closed up his shop,” Heimrich said. “Somebody ought to know. And what he looks like. Somebody ought to have seen him. Tall or short? Does he still wear his hair long? Did he have his wagon tuned up recently, like for a long trip? Anything they can dig up about him. O.K.?”
“O.K., M. L. And you?”
“I’m going home,” Heimrich said. “After all, it’s Christmas. And after you talk to Seattle, go home yourself, huh? Oh, you might set it up for us to use a projector in the morning. We may as well have a look at Sam Jackson’s movie. Could be he took a picture of a murderer.”
Forniss said, “Yeah. Be convenient if he did, wouldn’t it?”
The kitchen had condescended to supply roast beef sandwiches. The beef
was overdone.
Chapter 12
They had finished dinner and were in front of the fire when the telephone rang. Merton Heimrich was having cognac with his coffee. The others had declined, Joan and Michael without comment; Susan with the reflection that they had, after all, had wine with dinner and that she was afraid the turkey had been a little dried out. “At best,” she said, “turkey is an overrated bird. Next Christmas, I’m going to try and find a goose.” She was told that, to everybody else, the turkey had seemed perfect.
“Everything was,” Joan Collins said. “If things hadn’t happened, I’d have been taken to a restaurant for dinner. Someplace where everybody knows Father. Probably a French restaurant in the East Fifties. One that everybody’s going to at the moment. Everybody like Father, that is. I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have had that second glass of wine. All right, perhaps I don’t feel the way I ought to about my father.”
“There’s no way anybody ought to feel about anybody,” Susan told her. “There’s just the way people do.”
It was then the telephone rang. Joan had lifted her coffee cup and it jumped in her hand. A little coffee sloshed into the saucer. Michael put a hand, gently, on her knee. She smiled at him. She said, “I’m all right, Michael. I’m just the sort that jumps when there’s a noise I’m not expecting.” Michael said, “Sure, baby,” but he did not, immediately, take the reassuring pressure from her knee.
Susan did not make a point of not seeing or hearing any of this.
Across the room, Heimrich said his name into the telephone. Then he said, “Yes, Charlie. Thought I told you to call it—All right, you remembered you did maybe know a guy who might be on the Seattle force. So?”
So the man Forniss remembered—a former Naval intelligence officer—was a detective captain on the Seattle police force. He had expedited matters.
James Worthington Jackson had showed up about four that afternoon, Seattle time. He had come by taxi, not by Pontiac station wagon. His arrival had happened to coincide with that of Detective Brian O’Halloran. O’Halloran had told Jackson of his uncle’s death. Jackson had seemed appropriately shocked and, initially, unbelieving. He had said, “Not the dear old guy. Hell, I thought he’d live forever.”
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