Murder Can't Wait

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  He might as well get what she had to say on the record, whether what she said was true or false.

  “Mrs. Steele,” Nathan Shapiro said, “did you ever go there for a weekend? With Mr. Fleming, perhaps?”

  She looked at him for several seconds. “I told you,” she said, “that there wasn’t anything between Mr. Fleming and me. Oh—that there might have been. That something might have been—beginning.” Her voice was uncertain for an instant, steadied.

  “No,” she said, “I never stayed with Mr. Fleming at this motel. Or at any motel. Or—any place.”

  “All right,” Nathan Shapiro said. “You’ve no idea why he—why somebody—put this question mark across the card?”

  “No,” she said, “I haven’t any idea about any of it, lieutenant.”

  Probably, Shapiro thought, it was something not worth having ideas about. Another of his deficiencies as a detective was that he so often had ideas about trivial things; was so often diverted from the real to the mirage. But the large, scrawled question mark bothered him.

  She knew the way to Hangerford. If his car was faced east on the road below—was it faced east? “I think so,” Shapiro said. (You couldn’t tell much about these country roads.) If it was faced east, drive the way it faced for about three-quarters of a mile. The road intersected there with a main north and south highway, Route 7A. Turn left there. Drive fifteen miles or so and there was Hangerford.

  Shapiro went down the stairs from the little office—the little, waiting, once hopeful office. All brightened up, it had been, for something which was never going to happen. Shapiro sighed, considering the futility of human plans. He walked half a block—

  except that there weren’t really blocks—to the main street and found a telephone.

  Captain Heimrich was at the Willow Pond Golf and Tennis Club, his car radio switched off. Sergeant Forniss, so far as Hawthorne knew, was also there. If it was important, Hawthorne could telephone the club.

  “No,” Shapiro said. “It’s not important. When you pick him up again, tell him I’ve gone to a place called Hangerford. Tell him it’s probably a wasted trip.”

  As it probably is, Shapiro thought, walking back to his car. As it almost certainly is—a waste of time and of gasoline purchased by the city of New York for better uses. On the other hand, from the picture, this looked like a considerable motel—what they called a resort motel. He and Rose had spent a couple of weeks one summer in a similar motel, except that it was in the Catskills. That motel had had an office safe, for the convenience of guests with valuables. (The Shapiros hadn’t had any.)

  A motel safe might, to a man with something to tuck away—to tuck away at a distance, where it wouldn’t easily be stumbled on—seem like a good idea. It would do no harm to ask.

  A rounded, pink-faced man with white hair, who had been kneeling on a rubber pad doing something to some spiky-looking plants, stood up and said, “Hard on old legs.” He stretched kinks out. He said, “Yes, I’m Walter Brinkley” to Sergeant Charles Forniss, and that M. L. had talked about Sergeant Forniss. He said, “Caught him yet?”

  Forniss said, “Nope,” and added, “Not yet” and, invited, sat down on an aluminum and nylon chair which did not look as if it would bear his weight. It bore his weight.

  Brinkley made regretful clucking sounds. He’d told M. L. what little he knew about Stuart Fleming. Friends Fleming might have had? Friends he might have confided in? He was afraid he knew nothing about the younger Fleming’s friends. Fleming had been a newcomer—no, not that. The Flemings had been in North Wellwood for many years; Stuart Fleming had grown up there. A returned native, but one long away, and away during the time a man takes form, makes friends to fit the form he has taken.

  “Also,” Walter Brinkley said, “there are almost fifty years between us. I told M. L. that. It’s not that I wouldn’t very much like to help, sergeant.”

  He said the last somewhat wistfully. Once he had helped, and it had all been essentially unpleasant, even shocking. And he had enjoyed it considerably.

  “I see fewer and fewer people,” Brinkley said. “As one grows older, less active…. There was a time I knew a good many things about my neighbors. One does, in a place as small as this, a place once close-knit. It has changed and so, of course, have I.”

  Having said this, Walter Brinkley got up briskly from the chair he had been sitting in, bounced to the end of the terrace and said loudly, “Get out of here, you!” He came quickly back, showing no signs Forniss could see of ancient legs, and said, “Woodchuck. Damned nuisances, woodchucks. As I was saying, what with the infirmities of age—”

  A station wagon came up the driveway. A tall Negro with hair graying at the temples was behind the wheel. Professor Walter Brinkley raised his voice again and said, “Harry,” and the man got out of the station wagon and said, “Yassuh, professuh, suh.”

  Now and then, Brinkley thought, he really overdoes it. But if it amuses him—

  “Got a minute, Harry?” Professor Brinkley said, and Harry Washington said, “Soon’s I puts things away, suh,” and got two considerable cartons, which might have been empty paper cups from his handling of them but which were by no means empty, out of the station wagon. He carried them around the house.

  “You’ve made no progress you can talk about?” Walter Brinkley said, and again there was wistfulness in his voice—the wistfulness of one left out.

  There were a few things, Forniss told him, and chose among them carefully. There was, possibly, a relationship between the wife of the golf pro at the club and Stuart Fleming. A relationship to which there was evidence the golf pro had objected.

  “The gangsters?” Brinkley said, and Forniss realized that this was a man to whom the captain thought it safe to talk. He told Brinkley they were still working on that; then that there was some indication that Robert Steele, who once had had another name, had then associated with gangsters. To this Walter Brinkley shook his head and said, “My, my.”

  “An odd intrusion in such a quiet place as this,” Brinkley said. “Come out, Harry, and sit down.”

  Harry Washington had appeared at the screen of the French doors which opened on the terrace. He had put on a white jacket. He came out and stood for a moment and looked at Sergeant Charles Forniss. Brinkley said, “This is Sergeant Forniss of the state police, Harry. Harry Washington, sergeant. Harry takes care of me.”

  Forniss stood up and shook hands with Harry Washington and they both sat down. Washington took a pack of cigarettes out of a pocket of his slacks—the pockets of a starched white jacket cannot be allowed to bulge—and held it out, a cigarette protruding, to Professor Brinkley, who took it. He held it out to Forniss, another cigarette ready, and Forniss said, “Thanks,” and took it. They lighted cigarettes, and Harry Washington sat relaxed, and waiting.

  “The sergeant,” Walter Brinkley said, “is trying to find out what he can about the people around here. In connection, of course, with what happened to Mr. Fleming. I’ve been telling him how little I get around nowadays.”

  “You want backstairs gossip,” Washington said, with no trace whatever of an accent. “Specifically, sergeant?”

  “Anything you know or’ve heard,” Forniss said. “Particularly about Mr. Fleming, or course. The way he lived. The people he knew.” He paused for a moment. “Mrs. Arn,” he said, “doesn’t put out much.”

  “You’re a policeman,” Washington said. “Also, you’re white. Both things induce reticence among some of us. Under other circumstances she is rather—loquacious. Been telling around how she found the body. Gets more dramatic with each telling, I imagine.”

  “Such things usually do,” Forniss said, and Harry Washington said Yes, they usually did.

  “She thinks Mr. Fleming was a very nice person,” Harry Washington said. “That all this talk about his chasing anything he saw in skirts is a lot of talk. That she doesn’t believe for a minute there was anything between him and that pretty Mrs. Steele. Anyway, not really an
ything. As for others, she points out that a man’s a man and everybody knows what men are.”

  “Specifically?” Forniss said, and Harry Washington drew deeply on his cigarette and shrugged his shoulders. It was odd, Forniss thought, how sitting down with two other men changed this man.

  “There’s a convertible sofa in the living room of the Fleming house,” Washington said. “Stuart Fleming’s house. Mrs. Arn went there three days a week, unless there was a special arrangement for weekend evenings. There seldom was. On a number of weekends during the fall and winter, before Mr. Fleming had this accident, the convertible was made into a double bed. Used as a double bed. Mrs. Arn checks on Mondays, of course. Changes the linen if the bed’s been used. She says a woman. Because of perfume.”

  “The same woman each time?”

  Harry Washington smiled at that, and shrugged his shoulders again.

  “From the scent?” he said. “Perfume’s perfume to Florence Arn, sergeant. As to most of us.”

  “Why not Mrs. Steele?”

  “She just knows it wasn’t,” Harry Washington said. “No evidence. As his secretary, Mrs. Steele’s been at the house almost daily since he was hurt. Mrs. Arn has seen them together. She says—” He paused for an instant and when he spoke again there was a suggestion of accent, of mimicry. “Anybody wid half an eye can tell about things like that.” He shrugged again. He said, “You asked for gossip. It’s quite possible Florence Arn overestimates her own perceptions.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I think she’s a perceptive woman. And that men and women frequently say, do, little things which reveal their relationship. And sometimes do not, of course.”

  “There’s this,” Professor Walter Brinkley said. “Mr. Steele’s own perceptions would be—heightened. Although not disinterested. I assume he sometimes saw his wife and Fleming together. Mrs. Arn has no idea who this woman may have been, Harry? Or whether there was one woman, or several women?”

  Harry Washington’s dark eyes narrowed and he looked at his cigarette, which was almost finished. He dragged at it and put it out. His hesitancy was obvious.

  “After all,” Forniss said, “a man was killed. A helpless, or almost helpless, man. Given no chance.”

  “The point is relevancy,” Harry Washington said. “Oh—I don’t like this sort of thing, sergeant. We—for the most part, we keep these things among ourselves.” He looked at his employer. “The marketing took a little longer than usual today,” he said. “I kept my ears open.”

  He lighted another cigarette.

  “All right,” Harry Washington said. “Mrs. Arn wouldn’t put it past that Mrs. Fleming. Even with that poor sick husband of hers. And she being, anyway, a lot nearer Stuart Fleming’s age than her husband’s. And poor Mr. Fleming being so weaklike. And anybody’s only got to look at Mrs. Fleming to know she needs a man.”

  It was evident he indirectly quoted.

  “She has some reason to think this?” Forniss asked, and leaned forward a little to listen. You picked up odd things when you cast a net. Most of them you had to throw back, but all of them you had to look at.

  “If you mean evidence,” Harry Washington said, “I doubt it very much. The reason—Florence Arn and Amelia Jackson are close friends. Since Mr. Fleming began to fail badly late last summer, Mrs. Jackson has been the housekeeper at the Angus Fleming house. Before that they had a daily. Most of the people around here now don’t have people living in. Mrs. Jackson is the—” He paused and looked toward the sky. “Call it the complaining type,” Washington said. “She quit several days ago. On the grounds that it was more than anybody could stand, and with Mrs. Fleming so snippity. This is hearsay.” He paused again. “Mrs. Jackson is resentful,” he said and then looked suddenly at Sergeant Forniss. “With cause,” he said.

  “Yes,” Forniss said, and hesitated, and Walter Brinkley thought for a moment he was about to add, “Mr. Washington.” Which would have been quite the wrong thing to add; which would most precisely have raised the point none of them wanted raised. Forniss did not say anything after he had said, “Yes.”

  M. L. picked him to work with, Brinkley thought. I should have known better. Why is it one so often doubts the tact of others, being so unwisely sure of one’s own? He decided the question was rhetorical, as well as irrelevant, and listened.

  Amelia Jackson, Washington told them, had quit her job because too much was expected. She had told Florence Arn that what poor Mr. Fleming needed was a male nurse, and apparently had said something of the kind to poor Mr. Fleming’s wife. She said that to hear Mrs. Fleming talk she couldn’t be sweeter to the poor man but that when other people weren’t around—well!

  “Mrs. Arn quotes Amelia as saying, ‘Me, I don’t count,’” Washington said. ‘“Me, I’m like nobody to Mrs. High-and-Mighty.’ The source is prejudiced, sergeant. Mrs. Jackson is not easy to get along with, even among us. She is—militant. But—”

  For what it was worth, and Harry Washington did not vouch for its worth, Mrs. Fleming regarded her ailing husband chiefly as an impediment. When Amelia Jackson had her “off’ days, and was not around to keep an eye on the sick man, Mrs. Fleming insisted he “pull himself together” and go with her where she wanted to go. Insisted it would be good for him. “‘And all she thought about was what was good for her. What she wanted.’”

  “I’ve no idea how true this is,” Washington said. “I imagine there’s a great deal of exaggeration. Some malice. But apparently Florence Arn takes it as gospel. Probably it colors her view of Mrs. Fleming. Confirms, or even creates, her belief that Mrs. Fleming is the sort of person one wouldn’t put anything past. Hence, that she probably was involved with her brother-in-law. There may be no more to it than that.”

  And that, Forniss thought, wasn’t much. He asked a few questions. Yes, at least the autumn before, Mrs. Fleming had frequently dropped in at Stuart Fleming’s house. Before Angus Fleming weakened too much, he and his wife had come together. Yes, when Enid Fleming came alone, it was often in the afternoons. Yes, she had often still been there when Florence Arn finished for the day, and went for the day. No, as he had said before, Mrs. Arn had not told of anything she had witnessed which would confirm her suspicions.

  About Angus Fleming: Was he as weak each day as he was today? “I went around to see him,” Forniss explained. “He—he looked like death walking.”

  Again Harry Washington had only hearsay—hearsay passed from one woman to another, and to him. Fleming had his ups and downs. One day, although he looked no better, he would seem much better, would seem almost vigorous. Sometimes, after he had napped during an afternoon, he would talk and laugh, and even move, like a man almost well, while continuing to look like a man dying. And some days he would sit for hours staring at nothing; now and then he would spend the day in bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  “But some days he could get around? Drive a car, for example?”

  So Mrs. Jackson had told Mrs. Arn. And Harry Washington could, here, partially confirm—confirm for one day, at least. A day of the previous week. He had been shopping at the local supermarket. Angus Fleming had driven up alone, and parked, and gone into the liquor store. He had driven well enough; he had walked weakly, but well enough. The clerk of the liquor store had carried a case of something out and put it in the trunk of the car, and Angus Fleming had driven away.

  It was, Forniss thought, a long way—a long way probably down a back alley—from what he had come to get, which was a list of associates to whom Stuart Fleming might have confided. On that, on that main point, Harry Washington could not help at all. Stuart Fleming had only recently moved to North Wellwood from, Washington understood, New York. He had moved up in the fall, when the club—which was a social focal point—was closing for the season. His closest friends probably were left behind in New York.

  But Harry Washington was only guessing. He waited for more questions and there were no more Forniss could think of. Harry Washington stood up.


  “Can I get you gen’men anything?” Harry Washington said.

  “Yes,” Professor Brinkley said. “You get us gen’men a couple of mint juleps, you hear, now?”

  Walter Brinkley’s Southern accent was a good deal more accurate than Harry Washington’s. But Professor Brinkley was, after all, a phonetician.

  Harry Washington smiled slightly, encouragingly, toward a man of whom he was fond. And who, as he entirely knew, would never dream of drinking a mint julep. Not that Harry couldn’t make an excellent julep.

  VIII

  Captain M. L. Heimrich went into his office in the barracks and took one look at his IN basket and sighed. He took a breath of the office air and sighed again and took his suit jacket off. The weather had turned freakish, as was its habit in the spring. Outside, now in late afternoon, the temperature must be close to eighty. What it was in this office, with afternoon sunshine pouring through its single window, hardly bore thinking about.

  It occurred to Heimrich that the heat might still be on and he touched a radiator. The heat was not on. Two days before it had been, and had needed to be. The building hoarded the heat of two days ago. It would be another day before, grudgingly, it aired itself out. By which time it would, probably, need to be heated up again.

  Heimrich emptied the IN basket and made a pile of papers on his desk, and took them in order. Some needed merely the initials, “M. L.H.” and could go into the OUT basket. Some required more. “Memo: Put. Co. DA called re Larkin. Please call back.”

  Heimrich called the district attorney of Putnam County and reported, in re Larkin, that there was still nothing to prove it was not involuntary manslaughter, and the odds were even that the discharge of a shotgun into a visiting business associate was, as Larkin insisted, entirely accidental. It was not, Heimrich pointed out, what he thought or what the district attorney thought. It was what a jury might well think. If the county detectives wanted to go on with it, the state police would continue to cooperate. Naturally.