Not I, Said the Sparrow

by RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “The people, Charlie?”

  “Present or accounted for,” Forniss said. “Rankin wanted to know if it was all, right if he took a walk, and I said sure, if he didn’t plan to walk too far. He’s quite a boy for taking walks, isn’t he?”

  “Seems to be,” Heimrich said. “You figure you’re cleaned up there, Charlie?”

  “Unless there’s something else you want.”

  “There’s a good bit else I want,” Heimrich said. “But it may not be there. Suppose—” He paused to look at his watch. It was past noon. “Suppose you meet me at the Inn. We’ll have a sandwich. Leave a couple of troopers there, just to be sure Mr. Rankin makes it back from his walk. O.K.?”

  Forniss said, “Yeah, M. L. Take me what? About half an hour?”

  “About that,” Heimrich said, and hung up and went back to the Buick. He looked at his watch again. Twelve-fifteen. It was cold in the car; it would be warm in the club’s taproom. A drink would be warming. It would be forty-five minutes before the bar opened at the Old Stone Inn. Heimrich turned on the ignition. He turned on the car heater. The air which came out of the vents was cold air. It was just beginning to be warm air when he parked the Buick at the Old Stone Inn. There were only a few other cars in the parking lot.

  He locked up the Buick and walked across the parking lot. The wind was really picking up, and it was a cold wind. And yesterday it was almost still summer, Heimrich thought, and went into the taproom, which was warm but empty. The barman who had taken Harold’s place was not behind the bar. But a fire was leaping in the fireplace.

  Heimrich went to a corner table and sat down at it and lighted a cigarette. Maybe the girl really wanted to marry Jameson, he thought. If it keeps on like this, there’ll be frost tonight. Perhaps enough to kill all Susan’s marigolds and zinnias. Cold snaps don’t last long this time of year. Maybe if we covered them tonight. I wonder if the girl knew about Jameson’s early fishing habits? I wonder if her mother knew? I should have asked John about her. They bought their house through her.

  He had finished his cigarette before the new barman appeared behind the bar. He said, “Good morning, sir.” He began to polish glasses. He said, “Another fifteen minutes yet, sir.” Heimrich’s watch made it twenty, but it was nothing to argue about. What was this new man’s name—Tom, Dick or Harry? Something like that. He said, “O.K.” to Tom, Dick or Harry. He thought the expression “O.K.” had become a substitute for damn near anything. He lighted another cigarette and had almost finished it when Charles Forniss, looking even bigger than usual, came into the taproom. He joined Heimrich at the table. He said it was getting damn cold outside and that Rankin had come back from his walk.

  “Went down to the lake and looked at the boat and came back,” Forniss said.

  Tom, Dick or Harry came from behind the bar and across the . taproom. He said, “Something for you, gentlemen?”

  It still lacked five minutes of one by Heimrich’s watch, but it was nothing to argue about. They both ordered bourbon on the rocks. Yesterday was a gin-and-tonic day, Heimrich thought.

  He told Forniss what Jackson had told him about Arthur Jameson’s will.

  Forniss said, “Well.” He said, “Think of that, now.”

  6

  It is a short run from Van Brunt to Cold Harbor. They reached it a little after two and cruised its main street slowly. There was a store front marked, “FLORENCE SELBY, REAL ESTATE.” The wording was repeated on the windows of the floor above. The door to the ground floor was a sheet of heavy plate glass. The door was locked. They looked through it into a room with several desks and two sofas.

  “Looks fairly up-and-coming,” Forniss said. “Not run-down any.”

  Heimrich agreed that Florence Selby, Real Estate, was either prosperous or making a good show of prosperity. They drove on to the Cold Harbor police station.

  “No,” the sergeant behind the desk told them, “they’re not open Sundays usually. Except in summer. You go out Vine Street maybe a mile, and the Selby place is on the right. Got a sign like the one on the office. Want to give Mrs. Selby a ring, see if she’s home?”

  Heimrich did not want to give Mrs. Selby a ring. They drove a little less than a mile on Vine Street, after they had found Vine Street. The sign at the foot of a driveway was half lost in a big lilac bush, which still kept all its leaves. The sign was not exactly like the one on the office windows. The sign read: “FLORENCE SELBY, REALTOR.”

  Heimrich turned the Buick into the driveway and drove up it.

  The drive up to the Selby house was by no means as long as that to The Tor. It climbed somewhat; it was reasonably straight except that, halfway up, it had detoured around a big maple. The Selby house was a long, low one-story, stretching across a rise. There was a turnaround in front of the long white house, and from it the driveway ran on around the house. A two-level house, Heimrich thought, with probably a garage under the rear of it. He stopped the car, and they got out and walked to the front door of the long house. Heimrich found a doorbell button and pressed it, and chimes sounded softly from inside the house.

  Nothing else happened. They waited for some seconds and Heimrich pressed the button again, and the chimes sounded again. And again nobody came to the door.

  “At church maybe,” Forniss said. “Or some place, anyhow.”

  “Or,” Heimrich said, “gone over to the Jameson place to offer sympathy and, as people say, anything they can do to help.”

  They stepped away from the door and started back toward the Buick. Trees were sighing and creaking in the wind. At the top of the big maple tree leaves were beginning to turn. They were also beginning to blow off.

  “We’ll wait around a—” Heimrich said, and did not finish. From somewhere there was a girl’s voice. “Oh, no,” the girl said, her voice clear above the grating of the blown trees.

  They turned away from the car and walked the drive which circled the house. It went down steeply. When they were around the house they looked down—looked beyond a terrace to a spread of lawn.

  On the lawn a slender young woman in a yellow and black pants suit and a heavier and older woman in a sweater and a tweed skirt were shooting arrows at a target. There was one arrow in the rim of the target and several others lying on the grass near it.

  The older woman notched an arrow and pulled back on the bowstring and let the arrow fly. The wind caught the arrow and blew it wide of the target.

  “I guess you were right, dear,” the older woman said. There’s too much wind. We’ll have—”

  But then the two archers heard the crunch of feet on the gravel drive, and both turned.

  The older woman put her bow down on the grass and walked toward Heimrich and Forniss. She was smiling. She said, “Mr. Wellingmacker! You made it after all. I’d about given you—”

  “No, Mother,” Dorothy Selby said. “They’re not your prospects.” She came across the grass. “You’re a police inspector, aren’t you?” she said, looking up at Heimrich. “You were at Arthur’s party last night?”

  There was lightness in her voice and a smile in it. Her long blond hair was tossed by the wind. There was gaiety in her face and in her movements. She said, “You must think we’re both crazy. Shooting arrows in a wind like this. They blow every which way, of course.”

  She stopped suddenly and her face changed.

  “You are the policeman, aren’t you?” she said.

  “Heimrich. This is Lieutenant Forniss. I take it you haven’t—”

  “Wait a minute,” the older woman said. “Heimrich? Didn’t I sell a house to some relatives of yours a few years back? Down in Van Brunt? Wait a minute. Alden, that was it. John Alden. I remember because—”

  “Wait, Mother,” Dorothy Selby said. “Haven’t what, Inspector Heimrich?”

  It was, of course, quite possible, Heimrich thought. News of Arthur Jameson’s death by violence had been on the radio. But not everybody listens to the radio on Sunday mornings, when rad
io broadcasts are apt to devote themselves to sermons and religious music. And certainly the practice of archery under the circumstances implied innocent ignorance of the circumstances. Unless the duty sergeant back in town had decided to make a telephone call on his own? Decided to alert Mrs. Florence Selby and her daughter to the impending arrival of two members of the New York State Police?

  “Nobody’s telephoned you today?”

  Florence Selby stood with her feet apart, as if she defied not only the wind, but police asking questions. “I took my phone off the hook first thing this morning. So Dorothy could sleep. And so I wouldn’t be bothered with househunters who think a real-estate agent is at their beck and call any hour of the day or night.”

  “Then I’m afraid I’m the one to give you bad news, Miss Selby,” Heimrich said. “Very bad news, I’m sorry to say. Mr. Jameson—”

  All the light went out of Dorothy Selby’s young face.

  “Arthur,” she said. “Something’s happened to Arthur. That’s what you’re going to say, isn’t it?”

  Her voice, which had been high and gay, was low and trembled a little. She reached out and took her mother’s hand, which had reached toward her.

  Heimrich has had to break bad news many times. It is a policeman’s lot. The response of people who hear such news is varied. Sometimes they scream and break into tears. Sometimes, with voice rising in hysteria, they fight against acceptance of the news. Now and then they faint.

  And sometimes all life fades out of their faces, as light had faded out of Dorothy Selby’s.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Jameson is dead, Miss Selby,” Heimrich said.

  She said, “Oh. Oh!” She turned to her mother, and Mrs. Selby put her arms around the pretty young woman in the gay yellow and black pants suit. “But he was all right last night,” Dorothy Selby said, her voice muffled against her mother’s heavy sweater. “Last night he was all right. He—”

  And then her slim body began to shake against her mother’s, and she said, “No. No. No,” and went on saying the same word over and over in her muffled voice.

  Mrs. Selby’s voice did not shake. It was only a little loud. “Well, Inspector?” Florence Selby said, and her arm tightened about her daughter. “You may as well get on with it, Inspector.”

  “Mr. Jameson was killed this morning,” Heimrich said. “Somebody shot an arrow into his neck.”

  The girl freed herself from her mother’s arm. She turned suddenly and looked away toward the target with a single arrow stuck in the rim of it, with other arrows lying on the ground around it.

  “He’d been out fishing on the lake,” Heimrich said. “Apparently he was just rowing in when somebody shot him from the bank.” He paused. Dorothy Selby kept on looking at the target. Then she put her hands up over her face.

  It might as well be said, Heimrich decided.

  “Archery isn’t a very common sport around here, is it, Mrs. Selby?” he said. “Not for years, anyway. Most people play golf, or tennis.”

  “There’re still some of us around,” Mrs. Selby said. “You’re sure somebody shot Mr. Jameson with an arrow?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “With a steel arrow. Tipped with feathers.”

  “A steel arrow,” Mrs. Selby said. “People are all the time trying to improve things. I wouldn’t be caught dead with that kind of arrow. Oh! Not the best way of putting it, was that?”

  “Perhaps not,” Heimrich said. “Since Mr. Jameson was. Did either of you have occasion to—”

  “We’ll go inside,” Mrs. Selby told him. “Get out of the wind if you’re going to ask us questions.”

  She began to strip a leather glove off her right hand. On her left wrist there was a leather cuff. She saw Heimrich and Forniss watching her.

  “The damn things scratch,” she said. “Dig in.”

  The two policemen looked at Dorothy Selby, who was wearing a wrist guard but not a glove.

  “The young think they know everything better,” Mrs. Selby said. “Think they’re tougher. Wait a minute.”

  She walked off across the grass and picked up her bow, and her daughter’s bow, from it. She went to the target and pulled the arrow out of it. She picked up the arrows which had missed the target. She brought the bows and arrows back and held them out toward Heimrich. “Look at them,” Florence Selby commanded.

  Heimrich looked at them.

  “All wood, aren’t they?” Florence Selby said.

  Heimrich agreed that the arrows, and the bows too, were wooden arrows and wooden bows.

  “Come on,” Mrs. Selby said, and walked off. She marched off, Heimrich thought. She marched with no evidence of any doubt that she would be followed.

  Her daughter followed her, and Heimrich and Forniss followed her. She led them toward a terrace which stretched for most of the width of the house. She led them, on the way there, past a twocar garage with two cars in it. One of the cars was a black Volks. The other was also black. It was, however, a Mercedes, and, Heimrich thought, a new one. The Mercedes is popular in that part of the country among those who can afford them.

  There were director’s chairs and summer chaises on the terrace and little tables by them. The wind had blown over two of the director’s chairs. Well, Heimrich thought, yesterday it was summer, or almost summer. Mrs. Selby pulled open a wide sliding glass door and went through the doorway. They followed her, and Dorothy Selby, into a long room with doors at either end. Both doors stood open. At one end the door opened on a bedroom; at the other to a tiny kitchen. It was not especially warm in the long room, although it was warmer and quieter than it had been outside.

  Mrs. Selby put the two bows and the half-dozen or so arrows down on a sofa. “We’ll go upstairs,” Mrs. Selby said. She reached back and put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. Half supporting the slighter woman, she went across the room toward a staircase. Forniss stopped and looked at the bows and arrows lying on the sofa. He looked at Heimrich. Heimrich shook his head and they followed the two women to the staircase and up it.

  They went from the stairs into a large living room, comfortably furnished with deep chairs and two sofas and several tables and a large television console. There was a fieldstone fireplace at one end of the room, with a fire laid in it and not lighted. It was pleasantly warm and quiet in the big room, and sunlight came in through windows at the south end and lay on a rug which, to Heimrich’s nonexpert eyes, appeared to be an Oriental.

  Mrs. Selby walked firmly down the room to the fireplace, and Dorothy sank down into a deep chair. Mrs. Selby took a packet of matches from the pocket of her tweed skirt and struck one and lighted the fire. Heimrich had half expected her to use a kitchen match and strike it with her thumbnail.

  Paper caught in the fireplace, and kindling caught and fire leaped up against logs—logs well laid for a fire, Heimrich thought. The fireplace was efficient; the flue drew well. Mrs. Selby was an efficient woman, except when it came to shooting arrows into a target on a windy day. Of course, it had been less windy early in the morning, and the lake below The Tor was in a sheltered place.

  Mrs. Selby came back from the fireplace, and did not look behind her to see if her fire was burning well. Fires Florence Selby lighted always burned well. Mrs. Selby spoke from the middle of the room. She said, “You may as well sit down. Do you want drinks?”

  Forniss shook his head and Heimrich said, “Not right now, Mrs. Selby. Just a few—”

  “Well,” Florence Selby said, “I do if you don’t. And Dorothy needs one.”

  Dorothy Selby did not say anything. She sat deep in the chair, and it seemed to Merton Heimrich that she sat limply and that life had not come back into her face. Heimrich sat down in one of the less deep chairs. Forniss went down the room to the fireplace and looked into the waxing fire and then turned from it and stood leaning against the fieldstones which surrounded it. He also stood near a glass door through which Heimrich could see his Buick, its tall radio antenna waving a little in the wind.

  M
rs. Selby came back from a bar at the end of the room most distant from the fireplace. She had a squat glass in either hand, one a little fuller than the other. She held the fuller glass out to her daughter, who did not at first reach for it. Mrs. Selby said, “Your drink, Dorothy,” and Dorothy reached out and took the almost full old-fashioned glass.

  Mrs. Selby, Heimrich thought, took her bourbon on the rocks. Dorothy got water with hers.

  Florence Selby sat down, firmly, on a sofa near her daughter’s chair. She took a long swallow from her glass.

  “All right,” she said, “did either of us have occasion to what, Inspector? Since you want to put it in that rather stilted way. Go up to The Tor this morning and shoot an arrow into Arthur Jameson? You said in his neck, didn’t you?”

  “In his neck,” Heimrich said. “If you want it that way, Mrs. Selby, did you? Either of you?”

  “You’re naive,” Florence Selby said. “Do you expect we’ll say yes, of course we did?”

  “No,” Heimrich said. “It’s not often that easy, Mrs. Selby. Did either of you know that Mr. Jameson was in the habit of going fishing in early mornings? Particularly early Sunday mornings?”

  “I did,” Dorothy said. She had not touched her drink. She still held it in her hand. But her voice had grown somewhat stronger.

  “I’ve worked with—for—Arthur two, three years,” Dorothy said. “Taking dictation on his book. He told me about his going fishing. About how there was only one right way to cook lake bass. He told me—well, we talked sometimes. He told me a good many things, I suppose.”

  “That he wanted you to marry him, among other things,” Heimrich said. He added, “Naturally.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you said yes,” Heimrich said.

  “You were at the party,” Dorothy said. Her voice now was definitely stronger. There was even a kind of bite in it. Compared to her mother’s voice, Dorothy’s held more of a nibble than a bite, but the bite was there. “You heard what he said.”