‘A funny thing,’ Perrin said, and returned to rotating the ice in his glass.
If this were a party, Susan thought, I’d call it dead on its feet.
‘So you’re really getting away,’ Susan said, as brightly as she could manage. ‘London! I envy you. Don’t you envy him, dear?’
And wake up, dear, she thought. Whether he’s a bore or not, wake up.
Heimrich opened his eyes. He said, ‘I do indeed.’ He closed them again.
‘London only for a few days,’ Perrin said. ‘Marian’s been there quite a while. Probably she’ll want to move on, y’know. Hire a car and poke around a bit. That’s our plan.’
‘Staying some time?’ Merton Heimrich said.
They hoped to. If they sold the house, quite some time. If they found they liked it.
‘Only,’ Perrin said, ‘looks like you’ve scared off our only prospect, captain. By the way, how’s it coming?’
‘They’ve come faster,’ Heimrich said, and drank. ‘Drink all right, Perrin?’
‘Fine.’
‘No judge of scotch myself,’ Merton Heimrich said. ‘Does something to my stomach.’
Of all things, Susan thought. Of all the impossible things. What’s come over the man? He’s got a cast-iron stomach. And who cares—I mean, I care, and he’d care if he hadn’t, but as a subject—This is dead on its feet, party or no party.
‘Sort of thing happens,’ Perrin said. ‘Take my wife. Not scotch in her case, but it’s the same sort of thing, isn’t it?’
They might as well be talking Hindustani, Susan thought. Might better be. Then, at least, she wouldn’t understand the words. The sailboat had disappeared. She hoped that it hadn’t sunk. What did she do now? Ask if anybody had read any good books lately?
‘Doesn’t make much sense to me, either,’ she heard—as from a distance—her husband say. ‘But that’s what he’s afraid of. Seepage.’
Good heavens, Susan thought, returning from the Hudson. Is he telling Ollie Perrin he’s got something called ‘seepage’?
‘You’ve been away, my dear,’ Heimrich said, his own eyes closed again. ‘They’ve got the fire truck down in the Van Brunt field. Pumping out an old well, apparently. I was telling Perrin it was probably the new health officer. Worried about seepage into the town water. Heard something like that. Perrin wondered what all the clanking was about.’
‘There must,’ Susan said, because she realized that Heimrich’s eyes were not quite closed, that he was looking at her, that he had given her something to carry on—‘there must be dozens of wells—dug wells—around. Is he going to pump them all out? We’ve got one.’
‘Covered tight,’ Merton Heimrich said. ‘Yes, I suppose he will, as he gets around to it. Waste of town money, I’d think. Wouldn’t you, Perrin? Have to hire private pumps for a lot of them. Couldn’t get the fire truck up to that one of yours, for example. Not without knocking down a lot of fences. Run into money, any way they do it.’
Perrin said it seemed ridiculous to him. For one thing, the town reservoir was higher than most of the wells.
‘Not that, so much,’ Heimrich said. ‘Contamination of the deep wells, that’s what he’s worried about, probably. Good many of the abandoned wells aren’t covered properly. Things—all sorts of things—fall into them. Except right in the Center, most of us get our water from deep wells.’
Oliver Perrin, Susan thought, had quit listening. She couldn’t blame him. He finished his drink. Heimrich said, ‘Ready for the next round?’
Perrin shook his head. He had, Susan thought, been bored into abstraction. Not that he hadn’t helped.
‘Better be getting along,’ he said. ‘Going into town after dinner. Or, pick dinner up on the way. Still got some packing to do. Odds and ends.’
He stood up. Heimrich stood, too. Susan also stood, and held out a slender brown hand and said, ‘Bon voyage, Ollie. Send us postcards.’
They watched him go across the lawn, over the fence.
‘What,’ Susan said, ‘is all this stuff about seepage? And, for that matter, what scotch does to your stomach.’ She turned suddenly to him, looked up at him. ‘Merton,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t do a thing.’
‘Not a thing,’ Merton Heimrich said. ‘Ready for another?’
She was. He filled their glasses.
‘Convenient when two people drink the same thing,’ he said. ‘Line of least resistance, as our friend Perrin said.’
She sat on the broad chaise, near one side of it. He joined her.
‘Is it really true?’ she said. ‘All this business about seepage?’
‘Now Susan,’ Heimrich said, ‘things do fall into uncovered wells.’
They stretched side by side, looking at the river.
‘I ought to do something about food,’ Susan said.
He put an arm behind her, pulled her closer.
‘In due time,’ Susan Heimrich said.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was a fine night. The Weather Bureau had predicted considerable cloudiness, and been talking through its hat. There had never been a brighter night, a moon more lavish. A white night, and a black night. Shadows never deeper. Exactly, of course, the wrong kind of night. But it probably wouldn’t matter. The job ought to be a very simple one.
‘You’ll be careful?’ Susan said. ‘Very careful?’
Moonlight slanted into the room through an open window. It reached across her bed, so that Susan lay in it—her face and shoulders white in it. She lay on her side and watched her husband dress—dress in dark slacks, dark polo shirt. His arms and face would be white in the moonlight. Anyone could see him for miles in the moonlight. Almost miles. As good as miles.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ Heimrich said. ‘Half an hour. Enough to make certain. And he’s gone, Susan. We heard him go.’
They had heard the lid of a car trunk slam; had heard the heavy chunk of a car door closing. It had been a still night, as they sat on the terrace after Michael had said, ‘Good night, sir. Mother,’ and gone to bed of his own volition. (Something surely wrong with the child.) The easterly wind had been soft, had carried sounds softly. They had heard the car’s motor start; for an instant seen a car’s lights on a distant tree. Of course he had gone.
‘You can get others,’ Susan said. ‘The old thing—safety in numbers.’
‘Noise too,’ Heimrich said.
‘If he’s—’ she began, and let it hang there. There is no point in telling a man what he already knows. No point, either, in telling him what she guessed—that he thought he had too little to go on; that if he was wrong, it would be let lie between the two of them; that a man does not like publicly to draw a blank twice in a single day. A red fire truck makes an error conspicuous.
Heimrich put a flashlight in a pocket of his slacks. He said, ‘Half an hour at the most.’ He went out of the room, moving almost noiselessly in dark sneakers. It was always amazing to Susan how silently he could move.
The flashlight was unneeded on the terrace, across the lawn. One could have read newspaper headlines by the moonlight. Even beyond the wall, among the trees, Heimrich did not need his light.
At the far edge of the trees, still in their shadow, he stopped. The Perrin house was dark. Most houses in the country are dark by midnight. He listened for some seconds. No sounds came from the house. Moonlight glinted from closed windows on this side of the house. It was too warm a night for windows to be closed in an occupied house. Apparently, Perrin had really gone. Heimrich moved to his left, staying close to the trees—a moving shadow against black shadow. When he came to it, he moved out into the black shade of a big maple. In it he stopped again, looked at the house again, listened again. A dead house; a soundless house.
Beyond the maple was Perrin’s pistol range, white in the moonlight. Heimrich crossed quickly and stooped a little behind the low bunker. He did not stop again, but went on. As he remembered it, it was not far from the range. If the moonlight hit it, the planking ought to be easy en
ough to see. He might not have to use the flashlight at all.
He went farther than he expected without seeing the planking of the well cover. He had only a general memory to go by. The abandoned well, the covered well, had had no significance when he had tried his luck, his marksmanship, on Perrin’s range. One or the other had been good, he remembered.
Heimrich stopped, black in the moonlight. Making a hell of a big target, he thought. He looked. Also, he sniffed the air. That was how it must have happened before, if it had happened before. The night was faintly fragrant, as country nights are fragrant. Pleasantly fragrant. He must, he thought, be wrong about this part of it. Perhaps he was wrong about all of it. In which case, he was glad he hadn’t called out the reserves—called for help in barking down another wrong well.
He sent the flashlight beam into shadows. It picked up nothing he wanted. It quested for, did not find, a circle of weathered boards, held in circle by crosspieces. Surely he had noted such a circle idly; thought, again idly, that it was a workmanlike job. Surely—
The flashlight beam passed something, moved back to it. Not a wooden cover of an abandoned well. A circle of bare earth, level with the grass around it. But earth is not bare in June. June detests bare earth.
Heimrich went to the bare circle, and crouched by it, and held the flashlight close to it. It had been smoothed with the back of a rake. The marks were clear. Something else was not so clear, but Heimrich was almost certain. Smoothed clear and seeded. Seeded recently; some of the tiny grass seeds still on the surface.
He put the flashlight down on the ground and began to use his hands, pawing at loose, damp soil almost as a dog might paw. It was easy to move. He had pawed down for a little more than six inches when he came to the stone—the large, flat stone, roughly circular in shape. He cleared it with his hands.
Should have brought a crowbar, Heimrich thought.
He squatted by the stone and felt around it—felt until he found a place where he could get a grip with both hands. Using his legs, he lifted. It was a heavy stone. Topping stone from a nearby wall, probably. Awkward position to lift from, but no use wrenching his back.
He relaxed a moment, breathed deeply, put all the strength of powerful legs and shoulders into it.
The stone moved, came up—a few inches up. A few inches were enough. Merton Heimrich knew what he had opened. He had opened a grave.
He let the stone cover of Oliver Perrin’s well fall back into place. He sat on his heels.
Next door all the time, Heimrich thought. Old Tom all the time. I chased red herrings—cute little red herrings—to the ends of—
There was a zinging in the air. The flashlight lying on the ground leaped from the ground and went out, and seemed to disintegrate. And the rifle cracked in the night.
Heimrich rolled into shadow. A crowbar, he thought. And a gun.
He saw the flash of the second shot before he heard the zing of the bullet. The bullet plugged into the ground near him—a lot too near him. Heimrich rolled on the grass.
Not firing from the house, the marksman wasn’t. Firing from the wooded area which separated his land from the Van Brunt land. What I need, Heimrich thought, is a good thick tree. A tree like that maple over there, beyond the bunker. Or—the bunker? But a man with a rifle can circle around a bunker, and a man hiding behind it can’t. A tree is better. The big maple. A nasty stretch of moonlit open between me and the tree. Maybe—
There was another flash and, almost instantly, it was as if something tugged at his right foot. He waited for pain, and there was no pain. He went on his belly along the ground for a dozen feet. He took a chance and reached back. No pain in the foot. He felt the shoe. Part of the sole ripped away. Close—a lot too close. The bastard can shoot, Heimrich thought. Funny he didn’t kill the dog. Maybe he didn’t want to kill the dog. Maybe just scare the dog away. Dog scratching at a wooden cover, while the cover still was wooden. Teach the dog that was unhealthy.
The rifle cracked again. The bullet plunked into the ground near, at a guess, the place Heimrich had been seconds before.
Heimrich lay still, face down, bare arms tight against his sides. He listened. He heard, as he expected to hear, the sound of movement. Shortening the range, the marksman was. Realized he couldn’t keep on shooting all night. An enraged gardener shooting at raccoons. All right for a round or two. After that, people would begin—
There isn’t going to be a good time, Heimrich thought. As good a time as any—
He was on his feet, running—running in an irregular zigzag, across the moonlight-flooded grass; running toward the big maple tree.
It was as if he had been hit, from behind, with a heavy fist—with a heavy hammer. The impact swung him around; he staggered, did not quite fall. Right shoulder. The second shot was almost instantaneous. It missed. The stagger had done that, he thought.
He plunged, this time deliberately, toward the ground, caught himself on his hands—and pain tore at his shoulder. But, clearly, not a bone. Like dog like master, Heimrich thought.
He was in the maple’s black shadow. He lay for an instant, and heard the hunter coming—coming cautiously. Can’t be sure I was damn fool enough to come without a gun, Heimrich thought. Probably knows he winged me.
Heimrich twisted, raised himself a little, looked over his shoulder. At first he did not see the hunter. Then there was movement—shadow against shadow. The man was still about a hundred yards from him. He was on the verge of a moonlit area, hesitating to step into it. Can’t imagine I was the damn fool I really was, Heimrich thought. The man stepped out into the light. He carried the rifle in his right hand. Moonlight caught the barrel of the rifle. The man moved very slowly forward. See me if I move, Heimrich thought. See me soon enough anyway. But a snap shot’s hard with a rifle.
He tensed, got his feet partly under him, moved, when he did move, with all the violence he could manage. He was twenty feet from the trunk of the tree. Twenty feet is many feet. He ran crouched. The man saw him; the man fired once. He missed. Heimrich was behind the trunk of the big maple, and the second shot tore bark from the tree.
Heimrich put his left hand to the hurt shoulder. The hand came away wet. Bleeding the way the dog bled, Heimrich thought. All he’ll have to do is wait. If he waits long enough, I’ll fall into sight. Will he take another distant shot to make sure? Or come up to make sure—come close enough to be jumped?
I’m the damn fool, Heimrich thought. He isn’t. Thought he’d run for it; came unarmed into his little trap. He won’t come within reach. So—?
He took a chance and looked quickly around the tree trunk. The man was still coming. Try to run farther, keeping the trunk between him and the rifle? Fifty feet to the wooded area; half of it in moonlight. A target in a shooting gallery, Heimrich thought. It looks as if I’ve had—
At the edge of the wooded area—the area of possible haven—something moved. Another dark shadow against shadow; another cautious shadow. But there weren’t two of them. The man was alone in it; had to be. The shadow moved again, and now it was no longer merely shadow.
‘No!’ Heimrich shouted. ‘He’ll—’
It did no good. The shadow was Susan—Susan in dark slacks, dark sweater; Susan running into moonlight, running swiftly toward the bullet which would leap at her in the moonlight.
Suddenly, she pitched forward. At almost the same instant the rifle cracked. She lay for an instant in the moonlight. Then, suddenly, she rolled—rolled into the shallow shadow of the bunker. Saw the rifle go up, Heimrich thought; had time to fall before he fired. But there won’t be time again. He began to swear in his mind, angrily, desperately.
He saw her arm rise, swing down, as she threw. Something dark was in the air between them; fell heavily near the edge of shadow, glinted in the moonlight. And Heimrich jumped, hurled himself at the glinting revolver. He leaped into light, out of shelter, and heard the rifle crack again. His hand closed on the familiar hardness of the revolver butt.
T
o twist as he had to twist made pain snarl in his shoulder. Prone, Merton Heimrich lifted himself on his left elbow enough to fire. It was long range for a revolver, and the rifle pointed, steady, certain. Heimrich fired again, and the tall man he shot at staggered. The rifle cracked and, in an instant of silence, Heimrich could hear the bullet tearing in the upper branches of the big maple. Heimrich fired once more, and the man fell.
‘Stay down,’ Heimrich said, harshly, over his shoulder. He did not stay down himself.
Revolver ready, he walked across the wide shadow of the maple, and beyond it into the moonlight, where Oliver Perrin lay. The rifle was some distance from Perrin. As Heimrich walked toward him, Perrin sat up. He clutched his right leg.
A siren sounded from a distance.
‘When I heard the shooting,’ Susan said, from close behind Heimrich, ‘I called the police. It seemed a reasonable thing to do. But then I thought you’d probably want your gun.’
He turned, looked down at her.
‘You could have got yourself—’ he said, but she interrupted him.
‘Merton!’ Susan Heimrich said, ‘you’re hurt!’
She spoke, Heimrich thought, with shocked incredulity.
From the ground, Oliver Perrin began to swear at both of them.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The body of Marian Perrin had been in the well, the coroner estimated, some two weeks. Cause of death, a bullet wound. Bullet missing. Condition of the body made any useful estimate of the bullet’s calibre impossible.
It couldn’t be his wife’s body, Oliver Perrin said. His wife was in London. He had put her on a plane himself. He had no idea whose body it could be; no idea who had put it there. He had thought Heimrich a burglar. That was why he had shot at him. He had not shot to hit. He had been out with a rifle after woodchucks.
‘But woodchucks—’ Susan said. It was Thursday evening; they were sitting on the terrace looking at the river. Heimrich’s right arm was in a sling. Technically, he was on sick leave. It was the first time that week he had been home to sit beside her on the terrace.
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