“Yes.”
“But,” Brinkley said, “it—it would be so needless, M. L.”
“Now, Walter,” Heimrich said, and sat down on a terrace chair. “It always is, naturally.”
“Fleming,” Brinkley said, “was dying of leukemia. A matter, I suspect—I’ve heard—of months. If somebody did not want him alive it was only necessary to wait.”
There was something wrong there, Merton Heimrich thought. In the terminal stages of leukemia a man does not go north for spring skiing, does not look as Stuart Fleming must have looked before somebody used an automatic.
“It is shocking,” Brinkley said. “Really shocking, M. L. Angus was a gentle man, waiting gently to die. That somebody—”
“I think,” Heimrich said, “we’re not talking about the same man, Walter. The same Fleming. The man killed was Stuart Fleming. Angus’s brother. A considerably younger brother, I gather.”
Walter Brinkley shook his head and said “Oh” and then, after a pause, “I had almost forgotten young Fleming. As a man gets on —” He did not finish that. He said, “You came to tell me about it, M. L. Why?”
“You know people around here,” Heimrich said. “Probably they’re not concerned, but—”
He told the white-haired man what they knew of Stuart Fleming’s murder.
“Depressing,” Brinkley said, when he had been told. “Gangsters. Or is it mobsters? Terms do so change with the years. A— a dull breed, don’t you think? And none, I’m sure, living in North Wellwood.” He looked at Heimrich and his blue eyes were intent. “You think it isn’t the way it looks, don’t you?”
“Now, Walter,” Heimrich said. “May not be. Probably it is —probably Fleming stumbled on something, was told something and somebody put the finger on him. But —” He raised his shoulders.
“You’re not satisfied,” Brinkley said. “A hard man to satisfy, aren’t you? You’ve come to a gossipy old man for … gossip.”
“To a friend,” Heimrich said. “Who has helped before. To get the feel of things.”
“Gossip,” Brinkley said. “I’m afraid I haven’t any which will help. If it were Angus now. Angus was in classes of mine years ago. A good student. A better tennis player, but a good student. You know he’s very well off, Merton?”
“Take it,” Heimrich said, “that I know very little. That we’ve only begun.”
“Inherited,” Brinkley said. “Not long ago, actually. Three or four years it’s been since old Lance died.” He paused. “It is odd,” he said, “how one uses words. How one unconsciously dissociates one’s own self from certain inclusions. Lance Fleming was three or four years older than I when he died. About the age I am today. Oh—I say I’m old but —” He stopped abruptly. “There is no need to prove it by maundering on,” he said, firmly. “Lance bought a great deal of land when land was cheap. A good many stocks when the stocks were cheap. This was common knowledge.” He paused again. “You live in a place as long as I’ve lived here,” he said, “and common knowledge seeps into you. But that’s why you came, isn’t it?”
“Now, Walter,” Heimrich said. “I came to be informed.”
“The money, Fleming said, went to Angus—almost all of it to him, nothing outright to the younger son. To Stuart. A friend of mine who drew up the will told me. Stuart went to the South-eastern University law school—very excellent institution, I understand. Got into some sort of scrape there which—er—annoyed his father. Why do you close your eyes when people are talking to you, Merton?”
“Habit,” Merton Heimrich said. “Sometimes voices tell more than faces. Sometimes voices and faces don’t tell the same things. But at the moment—habit. Probably bad. Any idea what kind of scrape?”
“I gathered with a woman,” Brinkley said. “There the veil of professional reticence was drawn. Lance was a—an unbending sort of man. People were a little surprised when he accepted Enid. Enid’s Angus’s wife. But it’s Stuart you’re interested in, not all this.”
“Now, professor,” Heimrich said. “As always—how can I tell what I’m interested in until I hear it? Was Enid what Lance Fleming might consider a—scrape?”
“Much younger than Angus,” Brinkley said. “Can’t be more than twenty-five. Angus is—let’s see. Freshman in—Angus must be in his late thirties. Scientist. Used to be connected with a firm which manufactures X-ray equipment. Made marked improvements in certain devices, I understand.”
Heimrich said, “Oh.”
“Yes,” Brinkley said. “Didn’t take proper precautions, I suppose. Got—er—too familiar with the devices. And … leukemia. About Enid—nice young thing, from all I’ve heard. Iowa from her speech. Northern Iowa, I’d say. Very pretty. Was a chorus girl for a time. Why some people thought Lance might make a fuss. He didn’t. This has nothing to do with mobsters.”
“No,” Heimrich said. “About Stuart?”
About Stuart, Walter Brinkley knew very little. He too had gone to Dyckman. Afterward to law school. Had opened an office in North Wellwood a few months ago.
“The impression was,” Brinkley said, “that he came here, started his own office in what’s barely a village, to be near his brother—to stand by his brother. There is this, apparently. He rents the house—rented it. Which might indicate he didn’t plan to stay on permanently. As I said, what’s common knowledge in a place like this seeps in. And, common knowledge isn’t necessarily reliable, is it?”
“No,” Heimrich said. “On the other hand, better than no knowledge at all, naturally. Stuart Fleming had lived around here about how long?”
Since, Professor Walter Brinkley thought, early in the previous autumn. A little more than six months, make it. He had, certainly, been there around Thanksgiving; Brinkley had been at a small party Angus Fleming had given about then, and met Angus’s younger brother. “Angus was better then. He’s gone downhill rapidly in the last few months.”
Brinkley did not think he had met Stuart Fleming after that, and he had seen very little of Angus. He did not suppose that anyone had seen very much of Angus Fleming, except his wife and his brother. As to the people the younger Fleming saw, Brinkley knew little. He supposed people of Fleming’s own age-people who lived in the area; people who came up from New York for weekends.
“Young men and women who go around in open cars,” Walter Brinkley said, and there was, Heimrich thought, a faint wistfulness in his voice. “In little sports cars. The girls with their hair —” He stopped and shook his head. He said, “How is Susan, Merton? When are you bringing her over to see me again?”
“Fine,” Heimrich said. “Soon, if you ask us.” He stood up.
“I haven’t helped,” Brinkley said. “I suppose you can’t stay for a drink and for—yes, Harry?”
Harry Washington opened the door and came out onto the terrace. He was a very different Harry Washington—he was a tall, grave man, immaculate in white jacket and white shirt and black trousers.
“There is a telephone call for you, captain,” Harry said. “One of your men. On the living room extension.”
Heimrich went to the telephone. The one of his men was Raymond Crowley, and Crowley was somewhat excited. Heimrich listened. He said, “Keep him there. I’ll be along.” He put the receiver back and went to the terrace.
“Know a man named Steele, Walter?” he said.
“Who he is. Golf pro at the club. A rather—” Brinkley paused and considered for a moment. “Rather harsh man,” he said. “Why?”
“He’s showed up at Stuart Fleming’s place,” Heimrich said. “To ‘tell the bastard where to get off.’ He seems to be quite drunk.”
“Early in the day to be,” Professor Brinkley said. “And … late to tell Fleming anything.” He paused briefly. He said, “I’m a gossipy old man,” and paused again. “Steele,” he said. “Robert Steele, I think it is. He has a very pretty wife, Merton.”
III
The Angus Fleming house was square and white, and there was a white fence around it. On on
e of the fence posts were the figures 1720. For a moment, Nathan Shapiro assumed the figures to represent a street address and thought it a little odd, since there was, properly, no street. Then he realized that the figures told when the house was built. Almost two hundred and fifty years ago people had been coming to this remote place, this country place, and building houses in it. Nathan Shapiro sighed.
He went with Sergeant Charles Forniss along a flagstone walk and onto a porch. There was a knocker on the door and Forniss let it fall twice, clang twice. The door was opened almost immediately. The woman who opened it was slim and blonde and very pretty. She wore a black dress and said, “Oh, sergeant. I don’t know whether—”
Her voice was soft and sad.
“This is Lieutenant Shapiro from the city, Mrs. Fleming,” Forniss said, and his own heavy voice was low. “He had come up to see your brother-in-law.”
“Poor Stuart,” the pretty blonde woman said. “Poor, poor Stuart. But come in. I’ll see if Angus is up to—you do want to see Angus?”
“For a minute or two,” Shapiro said. “I realize how he must be feeling.”
“They were close,” Mrs. Fleming said. “Very close. Come in. If there is any way he can help—we can help ….”
She led them into a low-ceilinged room. Little windows were open in the room, and white curtains moved in the breeze which came through the windows.
“I’ll see,” she said, and started to walk across the room. She walked well, Shapiro thought. After a few steps she stopped and turned.
“I don’t know whether you know,” she said. “My husband is —is sick. Very sick, I’m afraid. Do you really need to see him, lieutenant?”
He would like to for a moment, Shapiro told her. But if Mr. Fleming was not up to it—
A man appeared in the doorway through which they had come into the room. He was tall and thin and his face was white. As he stood in the doorway he put a hand out to the doorjamb and steadied himself, but even so steadied he seemed to sway a little. He looked very old, Nathan Shapiro thought. It was hard to believe that this ancient, shaken man was the brother of the strong young man who had lain bloodily dead in the little shining house.
“Darling,” Enid Fleming said. “You shouldn’t-”
“It’s all right,” Angus Fleming said, and his voice was strong and young. What vitality he has left is in his voice, Shapiro thought; and then thought, this man is dying.
“These gentlemen want to see me?” the dying man said in his vitally living voice. He let go of the doorjamb and very slowly, very uncertainly, walked into the room. He found a chair and put a hand carefully on either arm of it and lowered himself slowly, carefully.
“They’re from the police, darling,” Enid said. “This is Sergeant Forniss—it is Forniss?” Forniss nodded his head. “He’s the one who called to tell us. And this is Lieutenant Shapiro from— from the New York City police, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Nathan Shapiro said.
“He came up to see poor Stuart,” Enid said. “I don’t know ….” She turned to Shapiro and looked up at him and waited.
“Your brother wrote the New York County district attorney, Mr. Fleming,” Shapiro said. “He had something he wanted to tell and I was sent up to listen. About, apparently ….”
He told the dying man, who sat very still in the chair and still held onto the arms of the chair, what it had apparently been about, how it might relate to what had been done to Stuart Fleming. Before he had finished, Angus Fleming began to nod his head, and then Shapiro stopped.
“He told me something about it,” Angus said, and again the vitality in his voice was an anomaly, a thing hard to believe. “A boy who played football the last two years at Dyckman. Who had been approached with a bribe offer, and was sure others on the squad had. He had come to Stuart as an attorney to ask him what to do. My brother was going to go with him to the district attorney, but then this accident laid him up.” He stopped for a moment and looked over Nathan Shapiro’s head. “My brother was strong,” he said. “Good on skis.”
When he said that the vitality went out of his voice; his voice shook a little as, even in the chair, holding to the chair arms, his body seemed to shake.
“He did not tell me the name of this football player,” Angus said then, and looked again at Shapiro, and the strength was back in his voice. “Told me only what I’ve just told you.”
“Told us both,” Enid said. “You remember, dear? Told us both.”
“Yes,” Angus said. “Both of us. Only as much as I’ve told you. You think he was killed to keep him from talking?”
“It may be,” Shapiro said. “Did you tell anybody else what your brother had told you?”
“No,” Angus said, but then Enid Fleming half closed her eyes and Shapiro looked at her and waited.
“I may have,” she said. “I’m not sure. One of the girls at the club, perhaps. You think …?”
“We’re groping around,” Shapiro said, and spoke sadly, like a man who gropes. “If Mr. Fleming was killed because of this, somebody—somebody in what people keep on calling the syndicate-found out that he knew too much. And, I suppose, that he had evidence which might prove what he knew. He must have told somebody with the wrong connections. Or the boy who went to him may have. Do you know, Mr. Fleming, whether he talked about this to anyone other than you two?”
“No,” Fleming said. “For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t have expected him to. For what it’s worth, I don’t think any of the girls at the club has the kind of connections you’re talking about.”
“No,” Shapiro said, “I don’t suppose they would have. Sergeant?”
“Only,” Forniss said, “I suppose neither of you heard the shots? I know it’s upwards of a mile but sounds carry at night. Your brother’s house is west of here, and what breeze there was last night was from the west. You were both here, I suppose?”
“Where else would we be?” Angus Fleming said. “No, I didn’t. But I take sleeping pills. Enid?”
“No,” Enid Fleming said. “I heard nothing.”
Which was that, Nathan Shapiro thought, as they walked down the flagstone path to the car. Which was nothing. A woman at a club who was, to Enid Fleming, merely a possibility, and merely “one of the girls.” Nameless. There doesn’t, Nathan Shapiro thought, seem even enough to go on for me to bungle.
“He’s a sick man,” Forniss said. “This blood disease—blood cancer—what’s the name of it?”
“Leukemia,” Shapiro said. “Something people die of. Mostly, of course, young people. How old is Fleming, at a guess?”
“Late thirties, I think.”
“He looks a hundred,” Shapiro said and shook his head sadly.
He was a tall man and, from the looks of him, a powerful one. He had close-cut black hair and widely spaced black eyes; his cheekbones were prominent, and from them his face went down in flat planes to a stubby jaw. He was wearing a blue polo shirt and light gray slacks and sandals. He got up from the terrace chair he had been sitting on when Heimrich walked toward him and as he stood he swayed for a moment and then caught himself. For this hour in the morning, or for any hour, Robert Steele was noticeably drunk. To Heimrich he said, “What the hell gives?” His speech was a little thick.
Heimrich looked at Trooper Raymond Crowley, who was also a big man and who was a sober one.
“Came tooting up in that,” Crowley said, and pointed to an elderly, rather beaten up Ford. “Wanted to know where the bastard was because he was going to kick his teeth in. Didn’t say why and hasn’t said why yet. Clammed up when we told him why there was no point in kicking Fleming’s teeth in, if there ever had been. Makes out he didn’t know Fleming was dead.”
“Damn right I didn’t,” the black-haired man said. “And who the hell are you?”
Heimrich told him who he was. Robert Steele swayed slightly.
“Now, Mr. Steele,” Heimrich said. “Sit down. You’re under the weather.”
Steele told He
imrich what could be done about that. But he sat down.
“All right, Mr. Steele,” Heimrich said. “Why’d you want to beat Fleming’s teeth in?”
“Kick ’em in,” Steele said. “It’s none of your goddamn business. Somebody else got to the bastard first.”
“Oh, it’s my business,” Heimrich said, and sat down facing the drunken, still obviously angry man. Or—too obviously drunken, too obviously angry? “This your first trip here this morning, Mr. Steele?”
Steele didn’t know what the hell Heimrich was talking about.
“Some time between two and four this morning it was,” Heimrich said. “Somebody stood outside Fleming’s bedroom window and used an automatic. Effectively. You own an automatic, Mr. Steele?”
Steele said what could be done about that. He had, it occurred to Heimrich, a somewhat limited vocabulary. But Steele looked at Heimrich very intently from his sharp black eyes, and the eyes didn’t look particularly as if the man were drunk.
“An automatic,” Heimrich said. “You know what an automatic pistol is, don’t you? Own one?”
“Hell, no,” Steele said. “I got hands.”
He held them out to prove it. They were big, powerful hands.
“If you killed him earlier,” Heimrich said, “and if people around here know you had a grudge against him, it might seem like a good idea to you to come around making loud angry noises. And saying you didn’t know he was dead.”
Steele again demonstrated the limitations of his vocabulary. But he made an addition. “You’re nuts,” he told Heimrich. His voice was noticeably less fuzzy than it had been at first.
“You’re the golf pro at the club near here,” Heimrich said. “That right? To start with?”
“Willow Pond Golf and Tennis,” Steele said. “Anybody can tell you that. There last season, going back this. When they get through extending the damn thing, if they ever do. Now it’s par seventy, for Chris’ sake.”
“All right,” Heimrich said. “What did you have against Stuart Fleming?”
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