Foggy, Foggy Death

by Frances Lockridge

  It began to be meaningless in her mind, finally. It was saying over and over the same thing, in the end in almost the same words. When she began to use the same words in regard to each of the things Heimrich questioned her about, he went on to another. Finally he said, “All right, Miss Mason.”

  “Now, Mr. Nickel,” Heimrich said, “let’s hear about you.”

  Stephen Nickel was ready; his narrative was terse, sounded a little, to Karen, as if he had prepared it while he waited to be questioned. He had been reading; got hungry, “Actually,” he said, “my doctor wants me to eat something every so often. Or drink milk.” He had gone down to the kitchen to find milk. He had found it. He was starting back and, apparently, had taken a wrong turning. He found himself in an unfamiliar corridor and was about to turn back, when he heard sounds from behind a door—sounds that made him feel something was wrong. He opened the door and— “The rest is pretty much the way she says,” Nickel said.

  “You had a flashlight,” Heimrich said. It was comment, it was also question.

  “Brought it in from the car,” Nickel said. “Handy in a strange house.”

  “And used it instead of the lights when you were finding the ice-box?”

  “Used both, as a matter of fact. When I left, I turned off the lights and used the flash.”

  “You didn’t see anybody?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Not Mr. Bromwell? Before you and Miss Mason met him, naturally?”

  Nickel merely shook his head.

  “Higgins was dead when you got down?”

  He was. Nickel was emphatic. It was hard to see how he could have lived even for seconds, let alone several minutes, after he hit the cement floor. “Head smashed in,” Nickel said. Apparently, however, he had lived for at least several minutes. According to Miss Mason.

  “You looked around, I gather,” Heimrich said. “While you were down there.”

  Nickel said he hadn’t, particularly. Why?

  Heimrich had gathered that from Miss Mason’s story. He looked at Karen. She shook her head.

  “He wasn’t there long,” she said. “I—I didn’t look, after—after the first time. I supposed he merely—made sure I was right. That Higgins was dead.”

  “It would have been natural to look around, I’d have thought,” Heimrich said. “However— Now, Miss Mason, between the time you heard this sound—this person—in the cellar passage and Mr. Nickel opened the door. How long would you say?”

  But that was impossible to tell. It might have been several minutes. Two or three—even five. It might have been no more than a minute. It had seemed—had seemed like a long time.

  “Long enough—” Heimrich began, but then Forniss came into the room with Scott Bromwell. Heimrich looked up at Forniss.

  “Like she says,” Forniss said. “They made it deep, for some reason. He apparently pitched down on his head.”

  “As if he’d been pushed?” Heimrich said. “Not merely stumbled?”

  “Yep,” Forniss said.

  “Well,” Heimrich said, “we’d better round them up, Charlie. We’ll listen some more.” He turned to Karen. “Go get something on your feet,” he said. “Put on something warmer if you want to. Come back.”

  She went. She retrieved her slippers and put them on; she changed from the robe to a warmer house coat. She went back downstairs. Heimrich and Forniss were alone in the library. Heimrich nodded at her and indicated that she was to sit in a chair near the windows. He said, “All right, Charlie.”

  “Three minutes, little more, the first time,” Forniss said. “From about halfway along this passage, back through the basement, up the stairs, to the storeroom door. A little less the second. With a flashlight, about the same time as the second run—two minutes, something over. To the pantry counter, two minutes and nothing over. Nickel would have had time. Bromwell would have had plenty, counting in getting the scotch, pouring it, starting on the soda.”

  “Or anybody else, naturally,” Heimrich said. “Since we can’t really time anybody else.”

  “Yep,” Forniss said.

  “You see, Miss Mason,” Heimricb said, “if you heard somebody in the passage down there, it could have been whoever pushed Higgins coming to see—well, how it worked out. He’d want to do that, naturally. Couldn’t be sure Higgins was dead; even that he was badly hurt. Could have planned to finish the job off, but you scared him away. If you heard somebody.”

  “I did,” Karen said. “I know I did.”

  “Well,” Heimrich said, “I hope so, Miss Mason. Because—we know you went down to look at him, don’t we? And can be pretty certain the murderer would have.”

  That was what Stephen Nickel had meant, of course! That was what they would have to think!

  “It was the way I said,” she told Heimrich. “There—there was somebody else.”

  “A shadow,” Heimrich said. “All right, Miss Mason. Sit there.”

  She sat there, not unnoticed, not invisible, yet now somehow different from the others as, one by one, the others denied they had seen Bill Higgins after he was locked in his room, explained where they had been and what they had done.

  Rudolph Haas came first, in a heavy silk dressing gown. He had had time to run a comb through his thick black hair. He had gone to his room after Heimrich had questioned him; had gone to sleep within a short time; had awakened only when Forniss came to summon him. He had seen nobody. Heimrich left him standing during the brief interrogation, said, “All right, Mr. Haas. Thanks. Wait in the other room, will you?” and let him go. When Haas went, Heimrich turned to Karen.

  “Well, Miss Mason,” he said. “The person you say was with Higgins. Could it have been Mr. Haas? Tall enough and everything?”

  “It could have been anybody,” she said, and felt that she had been saying that forever. “Anybody tall.”

  Scott was next. He smiled at Karen. He had gone to his room after Heimrich was through with him earlier, but he had not slept. He had seen no one. Certainly not Higgins. He had gone down, finally, for a drink, thinking it might make him sleep. He had been getting it when Nickel appeared with Miss Mason. “All right, Mr. Bromwell. Wait around a bit, will you?”

  Could it have been Mr. Bromwell? Was he tall enough?

  It could have been anybody. Anybody tall. Scott was tall.

  Then it was Pauline James, who had gone back to her room after being questioned, had looked in on the children and found them sleeping, had gone to bed and to sleep; who had seen no one. Could it have been Miss James? Was she tall enough?

  This time, slowly, uncertainly, Karen shook her head. She didn’t think so; the person had been taller. But—but it was all so shadowy, captain; all so vague—so—so scaleless. Can’t you see I don’t know? Can’t ever know. But only part of this she said.

  Mrs. Bromwell had not remained in her room. She had been unable to sleep and had gone into the children’s room; she had sat there for a few minutes—perhaps for a quarter of an hour—with the sleeping children. She often did. Yes, she might have left the door of her room open when she went out, although she did not think so. But if dear Karen had found it open, then she must have left it open. No, she had not seen Higgins.

  Yes, it could have been Mrs. Bromwell. It could have been—

  “Well,” Heimrich said, “we’ll try it another way.”

  Forniss went with Karen to the place at the foot of the back stairs where she had stood. He had her stand on the stairs, the hall screened from her view, until they were ready. Then he beckoned her down. There were two figures by the door which opened on the steep storeroom flight. One was a little smaller than the other. But it was not as before. “The shorter one’s too tall,” she told Forniss. “I don’t know.”

  They tried her four times more. Each time but the last it could have been anyone. They might have used the same two people in each trial except the last. Back in the library, she told Heimrich that.

  “We didn’t, naturally,” Heimrich said. “Use
d them all—with a trooper for Higgins. Miss James last. It wasn’t she, then?”

  But even that was not certain, because the second person was wrong.

  “Too tall,” Karen said. “That threw it off. But it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  Heimrich agreed the trooper was too tall; he was the shortest available. He pointed out that there were variations in height among the three men—Scott, Nickel and Haas—and several inches variation between any of them and Mrs. Bromwell. Miss James was two inches shorter than Mrs. Bromwell.

  “But if you can’t, you can’t,” he said. “Or—if you won’t, Miss Mason. If you’re trying to protect someone. Or yourself. We wanted you to have the chance, naturally.”

  Heimrich said she could go, then. He said the others had gone. He watched her go, and turned to Forniss.

  “She didn’t give anything away,” Forniss said. “As a matter of fact, I couldn’t tell them apart either, for what good that is. Except the James girl. Was Mrs. Bromwell the third trial?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “She should have got that. But—it wouldn’t prove anything, would it Charlie?”

  Forniss agreed it wouldn’t prove anything.

  “Let’s have another shot at Bromwell,” Heimrich said.

  VIII

  Karen lay in bed, a pillow wadded to support her shoulders, the lamp on, and smoked a cigarette without tasting it. The lighter had made, as lighters sometimes will, a final effort, achieving a tiny flame which began to recede almost as it began, but was enough for the cigarette. Karen watched the smoke. Now and then, under blankets, under a comforter, she shivered. If she let herself fall asleep, she would see again the circle of light from Nickel’s torch, a harsh halo around the crushed head on the cement floor—would see again the darkness of blood around the head. If she slept, she would hear again the little man’s fading voice as he said he would be all right in a minute; that he had hurt himself. There was room in her mind only for that. She could not, now, even try to work things out. Knowledge that Heimrich did not believe her, or only half believed her—even that was only a kind of numbness.

  She had lain so for perhaps half an hour, had felt, rather than heard, the house grow quiet, when there was a sound at her door. It was hardly a knock; it was as if someone had tapped the door with fingertips. But it sounded loud. She had locked the door.

  She waited, and the sound was repeated. Then she said, “Who is it?” and, although she did not speak loudly, she heard fear in her own voice.

  The answer was almost a whisper. “Scott,” the whisper said. “I want to see you.”

  “Not—” she began, but then she got out of bed and went to the door, and spoke close to it.

  “What is it, Scott?” she said.

  “Let me in a minute,” he said, and then she knew it was Scott, and her fear lessened. She unlocked the door. Scott Bromwell came in quickly.

  He seemed about to speak, but instead looked at her, and in an instant she realized why and said, “Oh!”

  “All right,” he said. “I should have given you a—”

  By that time, Karen, the thin nightdress clinging to her, was back by her bed, reaching for the house coat she had tossed on it. She had the robe around her in a second more.

  “I—I’m sorry, Scott,” she said. “I forgot.”

  He smiled for an instant; then the smiled passed. (But it seemed to her that a smile, or something like a smile, lingered a little longer in his eyes. But that was, had to be, something she imagined.)

  Scott held out a package of cigarettes and she took one, although the one she had put down when he knocked still burned in the ash tray by the bed. He lighted her cigarette, and lighted his own.

  “You’re all right?” Scott asked.

  There was no possible answer to that. She shrugged slightly.

  “I know,” he said. “It was a foolish thing to ask. None of us is Karen—”

  He stopped and looked at her. There was no smile now in his eyes.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Karen,” he repeated. “What happened tonight? Did you—did you tell them everything? Or was there something—”

  Not even Scott, she thought. Not anybody.

  “I told them everything,” she said.

  He continued to look at her.

  “Why don’t you believe me?” she asked. “It was the way I said.”

  He shook his head, as if rejecting the question, or the importance of the question.

  “The person who was with Higgins,” he said. “You’re sure you don’t know—don’t guess, even—who it was?”

  She shook her head.

  “I have to know,” he said. “I’ve—got to be sure you’re not keeping anything back. For—for any reason.”

  “Scott,” she said, “I don’t know who it was. It could have been—almost anyone. Mr. Haas. Nickel. Your mother.”

  “Or,” Scott said, “me. It wasn’t.”

  “I didn’t think it was,” she said. “I—I didn’t mean it was. Only—”

  “Only,” he said, “you can’t say it wasn’t. Can’t say it was, or wasn’t, anybody. You’re sticking to that?”

  “It’s true,” she said.

  “And Higgins didn’t name anyone?”

  “It was the way I said,” she told him. “The way I told the captain. He talked about—oh about some ‘party.’ He said he had fallen, but then there was something about this ‘party’s’ pushing him, or trying to push him. But I think now he may have meant just pushing him around.”

  Scott continued to look at her. It was as if he were trying to see into her mind, behind her words. There was nothing to do but to look back at him. Then she said, “I can’t help what you believe, can I?”

  “It could have been Haas or Nickel,” Scott said.

  “I told you.”

  “Nickel knew Marta,” Scott Bromwell said. “Did you know that?”

  “He said so,” Karen told him. “This afternoon. He’s told them.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Scott said. “Haas was—obvious. Nickel’s some kind of a gambler?”

  She nodded.

  “But Nickel,” Scott said, and his voice was puzzled. “I can’t figure out where he fits.” He stopped. The muscle in his eyelid jumped suddenly. “Unless—” he said. She waited, but he did not continue with that. It became evident he did not plan to.

  “You see, Karen,” Scott Bromwell said, after this long pause, “Heimrich doesn’t entirely believe you.”

  “I don’t think he believes me at all,” she said. “He thinks I killed Higgins and went down to—to make sure he was dead. So he must think I killed Marta, too, and—”

  “No,” Scott said. “He doesn’t think that. He may think— anyway, he says he thinks—you’re shielding me. He thinks I killed both of them. He—I think he’s about ready to arrest me. He as good as said so. Just now. He’s got it all worked out. All reconstructed.”

  “But how—” she began. He did not seem to hear her.

  “Starts with the car, Heimrich does,” he said. “Works from there so that—that it scares you. As if he’d been there and seen it. The car and what he calls the Brone case. Which he thinks I knew about. You want to know what he thinks, Karen? Not that it was you, except that you’re trying to protect me. You want to know?”

  She nodded. She sat down on the edge of the bed. He looked down at her. As he talked, he moved restlessly and the muscle jumped in his eyelid.

  Heimrich, Scott said, had put it on the table—or seemed to. He had presented it as an hypothesis—the hypothesis of what was to have happened. It began with Scott’s lying about the telephone message from the kennels, to get Marta to drive to Stamford. It continued with Scott’s taking his wife’s jewelry, putting it in his car, and—picking a time when he would be unobserved—driving the car up the road and concealing it in a gap in a stone fence. Walking back from that; doing all this while he was ostensibly taking a walk. Those, Heimrich told Scott, were th
e preliminary steps. “Your preliminary steps, Mr. Bromwell,” he had said. Those things had happened. And, Higgins probably had seen Scott hide the car and walk away from it.

  The rest, Heimrich thought—told Scott he thought—had been planned, but had not happened. Marta was to drive in with Karen, leave Karen at the station in Stamford, go to the Fairvale Kennels. Scott was to have waited until she had driven off and then, probably pleading restlessness, gone again for a walk. He would have made a point of starting off in a direction opposite to that in which he had hidden the car. He would have circled back, got the car, driven to a point near an intersection outside Stamford which he knew his wife would pass, hidden the car again, and gone to the intersection to wait.

  Karen interrupted then.

  “But that’s absurd,” she said. “How would you—would anybody—have known?”

  Scott shook his head. He said it wasn’t absurd. They—all of them—followed a certain route to and from Stamford, short-cutting. There was an intersection to which, nine times out of ten, Marta would have come while driving back. Heimrich was right about that, “God knows how he knew,” Scott said. At the intersection there was a stop sign which would have been against Marta, and she would have stopped for it.

  “Then,” Scott said, “I was to grab the door of her car open and get in. Then I was to kill Marta, drive off in her car with her body and abandon both of them near where I’d hidden my car. Then I was to leave the empty jewel case in her car with her body, so that the police would think she had been robbed, drive the Cadillac back to where I had hidden it the first time and walk back here along the path, finishing my ‘walk.’ Later, he says, I would have brought the Cadillac back after everyone was asleep. The idea was to be robbery and murder. She was to have had the jewelry along because she planned to run off with Haas and was taking it with them. They were supposed to think it was ‘another Brone case.’” He paused. “The funny thing is,” he said, “I never heard of the Brone case. Apparently a man named Brone tried to kill his wife and—muffed it.”