First Come, First Kill

by Frances Lockridge

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Susan said, ‘that woodchucks worked at night. The ones who ate the beans as fast as they came up were day eaters.’

  ‘Woodchucks he said,’ Heimrich told her. ‘Then he got a lawyer. Hasn’t said anything since. Maybe his lawyer will look up woodchucks for him. Turn them into ’coons, perhaps. Except that the whole thing will turn out different, naturally. Accidental shot and panic, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  A young woman registered at the Savoy in London as Marian Perrin said she was Marian Perrin. She was told that murder was involved; was told that analysis of hair found on her brush showed her hair was dyed, from red to dark brown; was told that, in the States, there were dozens of people who knew Marian Perrin.

  All right, she was Lois Corning. But she knew nothing of murder. She—all right, she was going to be joined by Oliver. They were going away together. Not running away—his wife had left him. No, he was leaving his wife. But his wife—his wife was dead? Murdered? But she hadn’t known—hadn’t known anything. Her masquerade—Oliver had wanted it that way. Said it would be more convenient. She hadn’t the least—Of course she would come back. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Not anything really wrong. Not anything to do with mur—

  ‘You’ll try to prove?’ Susan said.

  ‘Now Susan,’ Heimrich said. ‘I—nothing. The district attorney—I’ve no idea. I doubt if she had anything to do with the actual killing. He may have done that after she was in London. Or while she was over the Atlantic. She traveled on her own passport. Changed her name, and hair, in London. Used Mrs Perrin’s passport to register at the Savoy. I don’t know what will happen to her.’

  ‘You said,’ Susan said, ‘that he may try to say it was an accident. Why not just that from the start? A fatal accident; a grief-stricken husband?’

  ‘They owned everything jointly,’ Heimrich said. ‘When one co-owner dies, accounts are blocked. For a long time, often enough. That’s why he waited around—waited around to bleed the joint bank accounts, sell the jointly owned stock. He wanted to be able to give Miss Corning a good time in Europe. A good time for a long time.’

  They drank slowly, in silence, for several minutes. Young Michael came to the door and said, ‘Is it all right if I have another Coke, mother? Sir?’

  The last, Susan thought, was peculiarly extraneous. The boy was getting worse.

  ‘You may, Michael,’ she said, with great politeness. Michael went back into the house, probably to read whatever he was reading.

  ‘Sir,’ Susan said, ‘is it all right if I have another drink, sir?’

  He made them drinks.

  ‘Actually,’ Susan said, ‘it was Old Tom he killed, wasn’t it? Not a man named Mitchell. Not anybody named anything. An old man who stuck his nose into—’ She stopped abruptly.

  ‘Yes,’ Heimrich said. ‘The wooden cover wasn’t airtight, of course. Probably Mitchell lifted up the cover. Probably Perrin saw him from the house. Probably Perrin had to get his rifle, and by the time he had the old man had started here. Perrin could have seen him coming here, if he looked out an upstairs window. Have had time to—well, to cut him off. Before he could tell a policeman what he had—stuck his nose into.’

  ‘And poor old Colonel?’

  ‘The same thing, in effect. Perhaps he merely wanted to scare Colonel away. Before—well, before he began to make too much fuss about what he had found. Or, got the wooden cover off. He’s a powerful brute. Murderers get—call it hypersensitive. Especially about secret graves. Inadequately covered ones. He thought he’d taken care of that. Very nearly had, too.’

  There was again a time of contented silence. The lowering sun sparkled on the distant Hudson. There was another sailboat. Or the same sailboat.

  ‘Poor Sergeant Forniss,’ Susan said. ‘And all the time it was in—in a neighbor’s back yard. Not in this place called Tonaganda. Not in the past. All the sergeant found out—all you and he found out about Mitchell and the Thompsons and this gangster—all that had nothing to do with the case.’ She paused. ‘Tra-la,’ she added, absently. She looked at her husband and saw that he had closed his eyes. She thought, Oh? She waited.

  ‘As it turned out,’ Heimrich said, and for a moment it was as if he had finished his answer. But then, slowly, he repeated the same words.

  ‘I think,’ he said then, ‘that Thompson and his wife did read the letter Mitchell wrote his daughter. I think Thompson came down to kill him. So his wife—it’s simplest to call her that—would inherit. It was done for him, for quite a different reason. I doubt if there was a second letter, telling about the second will. They thought she would get it all. He was willing to kill for that. Only—’

  ‘Only,’ Susan said, ‘it was done for him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Merton Heimrich said. ‘We’ll never prove it. But—first come, first kill. I think it was that.’

  ‘Really,’ Susan said. Heimrich opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘Yes, dear,’ Susan Heimrich said. ‘You knew what you’d find in the well?’

  He had, he told her, been pretty sure what he would find in the well.

  ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘you brought it to me first, with the mis-spelled name. Name of a friend; name she must have written on score cards. That slipped past—almost past. Until he brought the other up himself. Off gin. Although he had been “a gin man.” “Easy domestic rut.” If it meant anything—easier to make one kind of drink for the two of them. Lazy habit he’d fallen into. Hence—she was the one who didn’t drink gin, and he the one who went along. Only—the woman in London was drinking what the policewoman took to be gin and tonic.’

  He closed his eyes again. He looked most contented. It was not, Susan Heimrich decided, a time to say that, across a cocktail lounge something else might look very much like a gin and tonic. Vodka and tonic, say. There might never be a time to say it, since it would never matter. But one cannot help having an orderly mind.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Captain Heimrich Mysteries

  I

  Nathan Shapiro drove an unassuming police car north on the Saw Mill River Parkway and was certain that no good would come of it. It was warm for mid-April and he drove with the windows open—and with the windows open he could hear birds. The birds were noisy. Pigeons, with which Nathan Shapiro was reasonably familiar, since he lived in Brooklyn, were soft-spoken. Once you got into the country, birds made a racket.

  When he was well along on the parkway, the slopes on either side were filled with golden yellow bushes. Pretty enough, Shapiro supposed, if you liked that sort of thing—that profuse, unregulated sort of thing. In Prospect Park, nature knew its place. Here—Shapiro shrugged his shoulders and his long, thin face drooped sadly. Nothing good would come of this. It was probably a foolish journey, and he, certainly, was the last man who should be making it. He would fumble around with it—end by fumbling it entirely. They should have known that.

  Why they never quite seemed to recognize what to him was obvious puzzled Nathan Shapiro, and saddened him. He respected the police department of the city of New York. It, collectively, should know better than to send a fumbler on a job which might require quick perception; the ability, which he knew he lacked, to make decisive evaluation. And it sent a man who was only, as he couldn’t really deny, fairly good with a gun.

  This sort of thing it had been doing, now, for some years, always against Shapiro’s better judgment. Because now and then he had been lucky, the department had got entirely the wrong idea. This last thing it had done—this last thing didn’t really bear thinking about, if one wanted to keep respect for the department. Even Rose realized that, although she tried to pretend she did not—tried to pretend that the department had been a long time about it. Rose couldn’t be taken in herself. After fifteen years, she knew the kind of man she’d married; couldn’t help knowing. He sighed, in sympathy with his wife.

  If this Stuart Fleming really had anything at all, which was doubtful, he might have something big-something big and
unpleasant and likely to go on for a long time. Like the basketball thing had gone on; like the State Liquor Authority thing still was going on, that pleasant day in April. (It would, Shapiro thought, be good to be in the city on a day like this.) If Fleming was going to start something big, he should have had the opportunity to start it with someone a lot bigger than Nathan Shapiro. An assistant district attorney, at least. Perhaps with the chief assistant district attorney.

  When he had been told about the department’s mistake, he had looked even sadder than usual; had looked so sad that Captain William Weigand had said, “It isn’t really anything to cry about, Nate,” and had added that the reassignment, he hoped—was pretty sure—was only temporary. “Have you back here on homicide in no time, probably.”

  Well, Bill Weigand could persist in faith, believe that before too long the department would realize that Nathan Shapiro wasn’t the type to be assigned to the district attorney’s staff. From somewhat trying experience, Shapiro knew better. The department simply did not learn.

  A large gray squirrel came out of nowhere in front of the car. Shapiro simultaneously checked his mirror, stepped hard on the brakes, and sounded an explosive horn. The squirrel stopped and shook and decided to go back where it had come from. Shapiro swerved left and the squirrel reversed. Shapiro said, loudly, “You damfool animal,” and jogged right. By that time the squirrel was out of sight. Probably, Shapiro thought, under the car; probably squashed on the roadway. The poor, insane little—

  The mirror showed him the squirrel. The squirrel was sitting in the middle of the lane and seemed to be staring, in resentment, at the receding car. All right, there were squirrels in Prospect Park. But the squirrels in the park knew their status, which was that of mendicants. Here—here nature was in disarray. Shapiro sighed deeply and drove on somewhat more slowly. For all he knew of these environs, the next impediment might well be a deer.

  At the traffic circle he bore right and, after a short distance, turned right again up the long drive which led to Hawthorne Barracks, headquarters of Troop K, New York State Police. It was a place to start. Something might be known there of one Stuart Fleming, attorney. Of Stuart Fleming, by his own statement possessor of information about bribes offered, and in some instances perhaps paid, to football players of Dyckman University, point-shaving being the product bought. Which meant gamblers and another fix. Which meant tedium for those associated with the office of the District Attorney of New York County, since the offers—and perhaps the payments-had been made in a hotel in Manhattan.

  Stuart Fleming was also, again by his own statement, laid up with a broken leg, achieved during spring skiing. Which was why one Nathan Shapiro was going to some place called North Wellwood, supposing he could find it. It appeared that Fleming, for reasons inexplicable—but anything might be expected of a man who went in the spring to northern mountains, and slid down them on skis—chose to live in a place called North Wellwood.

  Shapiro parked his car and got out of it. He was a long, thin man, in a gray suit which fitted loosely. He went into the barracks building. He went up to a desk and the uniformed sergeant behind it, who said, “Good morning, sir. Something we can do?”

  “I’m detect—” Shapiro began, and realized it was no good. “Lieutenant Shapiro,” he said. “City police. Wondered whether someone here might have a little information about a man named Stuart Fleming? And a place called North Wellwood which seems to be the other side of the …”

  He stopped, because the sergeant did not seem to be listening very closely. The sergeant said, “You said Stuart Fleming, lieutenant?”

  “… county,” Shapiro said, finishing his sentence. “Yes, Stuart Fleming.”

  “Just a moment,” the sergeant said, and picked up the telephone. After a moment he said, “Captain? Jenkins on the desk. City police, a lieutenant, asking about Fleming.” He waited a moment. Then he said, “Right away, captain,” and put the telephone back in its cradle and said, “Captain’d like to see you, lieutenant. You go along that corridor and ….”

  Shapiro went along the corridor and farther, as directed; and came, again as promised, to a door lettered CAPT. M. L. HEIM-RICH, B.C.I. He had walked into something, Shapiro thought. The emphasis on the name Stuart, so pointedly singling it out from other Flemings. A captain, Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Shapiro knocked on the door and was told to come in and went in. A tall, solid man stood up on the far side of the desk. The man had extremely blue eyes, and a deeply tanned face. Probably spent a lot of time on horseback, Shapiro thought, briefly, and then remembered that the state police hadn’t spent much time on horseback, hereabouts anyway, for years.

  “Heimrich,” the solid man said. “You’re?”

  “Shapiro. Nathan Shapiro.” He did not speak his name with any special emphasis. He merely laid it on the desk. Heimrich would be German—someplace back would be German. No reason to think that because of that—

  Captain M. L. Heimrich came around the desk and held out his hand. He said, “Morning, lieutenant. It is lieutenant?”

  “Yes,” Shapiro said sadly. “Only a couple of weeks, as it happens.”

  He took the very firm brown hand held out to him. His own hand was thin—hard and quick, but thin. Sometimes men as big as this captain, B.C.I., liked to prove how strong their hands were. There were tricks to answer that, and Shapiro knew the tricks. But this big man’s hand was merely firm-a solid, unag-gressive hand.

  “Sit down, won’t you?” Heimrich said, and watched the long, thin man sit in a chair at the end of the desk. Very depressed about something, the New York City lieutenant of detectives appeared to be. Might be only about his digestion. Or, of course, because he had to live in the city. That necessity would depress anyone, naturally. Very intelligent brown eyes, the long man had, and somehow there was no real depression in the eyes.

  “You were asking at the desk about Stuart Fleming,” Heimrich said. “Mind telling me why, lieutenant?”

  “A squeal,” Shapiro said and was somewhat surprised to see the solid man behind the desk close his very blue eyes. Sleepy? But he hadn’t looked sleepy; had not moved around the desk like a sleepy man.

  “I listen better sometimes with my eyes closed,” Heimrich said, and Shapiro was conscious that he had, after saying that it was a squeal, hesitated as a man will who wonders whether he is being listened to. Sensitive to that sort of thing, this Captain Heimrich apparently was. Shapiro was mildly surprised.

  “Wrote a letter to the D.A.,” Shapiro said. “Said that a friend of his—younger, I gather; apparently a football player at Dyckman University—had been approached with a bribe offer. Said that he thought others on the squad had been approached. The point-shaving racket, if he’s right. And you know how things like that spread out, captain. If they’re trying it at Dyckman, they’re probably trying other colleges. Universities. The way they did a few years back with basketball.”

  “Bribes offered in Manhattan, naturally,” Merton Heimrich said, and opened his eyes.

  “So Fleming says. The hotel-room routine. Kick a goal or not kick a goal, I suppose. Or fumble or not fumble. Not anything I know much about. You’d know. Probably played it.”

  “Not for a long time,” Heimrich said. “Not in the big leagues. You’re working out of the D.A.’s office, lieutenant?”

  “Temporarily,” Shapiro said. “Been on homicide last few years.” He remembered something; something from a number of years back. There had been a case then which had taken him into the country; a case into which, according to a precinct detective named Miller, a state police captain named Heimrich had put an oar.* Homicide man himself, that Heimrich had been, Shapiro gathered. Something about evidence gathered without benefit of search warrant, as he remembered Miller telling—

  “The D.A. didn’t ask Fleming to come in? Wanted somebody to go up and see him in North Wellwood?”

  Shapiro didn’t remember having mentioned North Wellwood to Heimrich. To the desk sergeant, yes. But the d
esk sergeant hadn’t, on the telephone, said anything. “Hm-m-m,” Shapiro thought.

  “Seems this Fleming is a skier,” Shapiro said. “Goes and slides down mountains.” He said this with his own incredulity faintly reflected in his voice. “Seems he’s got a broken leg. Hard for him to get around.”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “It’s hard to get around with a broken leg. It’s harder, naturally, when you’re full of holes. Bullet holes. Your Stuart Fleming is, lieutenant. Died of it, nat—” He broke that off. He was learning. Not that Susan made too much of a point of it. Or of anything. But—

  “They got to him first,” Shapiro said.

  “Looks like it,” Merton Heimrich said. “Leads in this letter?”

  “Nothing really specific. He was circumspect.” Briefly he looked at the ceiling over Heimrich’s head. “Not, apparently, circumspect enough.”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “It looks as if he hadn’t been. I was about to take a run over there. You’ll want to come along, probably. Might be something around this house of his which would help with your end of it.”

  The thing, of course, was to call in and report what had happened. But they’d have that, or would soon have it. And if there was anything lying around which would help his end of it, the state boys would pick it up and send it along. They didn’t miss much, from what he’d heard. Not as much as he’d miss, probably. “Yes,” Shapiro said, “probably I’d better tail along, captain. Try not to get underfoot.”

  North Wellwood, New York, is a cluster—a widely spaced cluster—of houses, most of which are large and old; some of which are small and new and shining. It has a small shopping center, which is most discreet. (Even the First National achieves a degree of discretion.) North Wellwood is about as far east in Westchester County as it is possible to go without tumbling into Connecticut. It took more than half an hour for Heimrich to drive them there in an unmarked car, distinguishable from any other unmarked car only by its long radio antenna.