Show Red For Danger

While he had been there, it had been possible, with some effort, to keep it pushed to the back of the mind; to wall it off there; to, in a fashion, draw a screen over the picture. It had been possible, to some degree, to think of murder in the abstract, as a problem to be solved. (Assuming always that there was a problem.) After he drove off, that had no longer been possible.

Then the picture came back—the ugly picture of violent death. One read of such things and, inevitably, imagined the way they had looked. But this was as one imagined, with horror in the mind rather than in the senses, the deaths far away, of famine, of thousands unknown, to a degree unreal. Even photographs were not the same —photographs of emaciated faces and bloated bodies if death came from famine; of the torn victims of accidental death or of death by murder. For one thing, such pictures are edited for flinching minds. “The body of one of the victims may be seen in the left foreground,” but what is seen is a sheet over something—the shape of something. Which, Susan Faye thought, is the way it should always be, and blood should be only a word. Not something seeped deeply into a chair. A “head wound” should be a term of description, not—not the hideous thing it is.

With him there, she had been able—almost able—to think of the violent deaths of Peggy Belford and Brian Collins as death in the abstract; as if, she thought, they had bled sawdust. (It was odd that the girl had bled so little. Or wasn’t it odd? She didn’t know.) She supposed this was because, with him there, she could to some degree share the attitude which it was essential he adopt. Bodies have been broken. Hence, the law has been broken. One finds out how, by whom.

She knew him too well to think that detachment went deep in Merton Heimrich. Once or twice, when he had talked about cases he was working on—cases of which she knew no more than he told her—she had realized, and each time with momentary surprise, how deeply he felt about them. Possibly, she thought—had thought those times and thought again now—it was because of a fundamental rejection of violence, almost a loathing of it, that he had decided to follow the trade he followed. She would ask him sometime.

With the trade, certainly, had come an ability to insulate himself —to pretend, on the surface of the mind, that bodies bleed sawdust; that murder is not a hideous picture which can fill the mind, but a puzzle to be solved. And, when he was with her, she could somehow share that insulation, try with him to work out the problem.

And now he had gone and left her with the picture in her mind. She could look at anything—look at the frypan to be scraped, put to soak—and see a slender girl in a bathing suit, one knee gracefully lifted, dead eyes staring at a ceiling; see a man she had talked to only hours before slumped with a great black hole in his head and blood all around him. She scraped blood from the frypan, not what remained of lamb curry. She—

Damn the man, Susan Faye thought, quite irrationally. (Because I was the one who led us to it, not he.) To go off to see people, talk to people, work on his puzzle, and leave me here to remember—to vividly remember blood. To feel lie beginning of nausea because wherever I look—

The thing was, of course, to put it out of her mind. People were always saying that—“Just put it out of your mind. Don’t let yourself think about it.” So—think about what, then? About a large doleful dog who had followed her into the kitchen and watched, hopelessly, while she threw food away? “You know you won’t eat anything with curry in it,” Susan Faye told Colonel. “Why do you pretend?”

Colonel sighed. There was little about Colonel, at best, to uplift the spirits. When he saw food disappear anywhere except into dog, Colonel was not at his best.

Very well, if it could not be put out of the mind, think of it as a puzzle. That was, certainly, the only sensible thing to do. The other was—indulging the emotions. Chilling one’s own blood, which did no good to anyone. Think of it as a puzzle. If it was a puzzle. Decide, clearly, why—unclearly—her mind had rejected what was obviously true: that Brian Collins, in what must have been a moment of uncontrollable desperation, had killed a girl he must have loved enough to hate. Why had she rejected what was obvious?

She had told him—the great oaf, the dear slow oaf, the bump on a log—that it was because what Collins seemed to have done did not jibe with what she knew about Brian Collins, with the kind of man she was sure he was. And the great oaf had listened, been kind enough, gentle enough, to pretend for them both that what she said made sense. (I do wish, Susan thought, in parenthesis, that he wouldn’t be quite so damn gentle.) He had even pretended to believe, for both of them, that what he called the “outline” of a person, detected quickly, had some validity.

I know better, Susan said, wandering out onto the terrace—followed gloomily by Colonel—and of course he knows better. Collins was a man; he was even, probably, sometimes a violent man. Abrupt —she herself had said that about him, before any of this had happened. And certainly one cannot tell from a few meetings, from a few words of no consequence. One’s own experience should tell one that. People, even people one had known well for years, sometimes did the most unlikely, the most inexplicable, things. She knew that as well as anybody. Honor students at high school, highly regarded by one and all, now and then killed their parents, in fits of exasperation. And mousy little doctors killed their wives and buried them deep, and the neighbors assured one another that they just couldn’t believe it.

So—there was nothing to the contention that Brian Collins simply had not been the type. Erase that, rub it from the mind. And—what was left?

Susan lighted a cigarette and looked up at the sky—it was beginning to haze over—and waited to see what was left.

What was left was, quite simply, the abiding conviction that what appeared to have happened at Brian Collins’s house was not what had actually happened. Aside, obviously, from the fact that two people had been shot to death.

You, Susan Faye said to Susan Faye, are a silly female, a ridiculous female. Which is an insult to your intelligence. You, Susan Faye told herself sternly, are having intuition. It doesn’t become you.

Thus admonished, she gave her mind a moment finally to erase this ridiculous conviction. And, resolutely, her mind declined the opportunity. Also, her mind said, a little smugly, It isn’t an intuition. So, face it, Susan Faye.

If not an intuition, then something was wrong with the picture. (Not the “picture”; don’t open the mind to a picture. Not again.) With, then, the setup. Consider the setup, if you’re so sure something is wrong with it. Consider it objectively. Get yourself a drink and sit here calmly and consider objectively. She went into the house—doing something with the body, and especially with the hands, is always a good idea—and mixed herself a very mild gin-and-tonic and brought it back out to the chaise built for two. Now—

Brian Collins was a man of violent emotions, violent jealousy. Assume that, since you do not know he wasn’t. He wanted a very pretty young woman, most enticingly under-clothed—and hadn’t she known it, the little vixen—to return to him and she had—what? Laughed? That might easily have done it. So he shot her. And—she sprawled. Most hideously. (And don’t make a picture of it, for the love of God!)

And—it had been easier to kill than to see the hideous results of killing, to see beauty made grotesque. The one might be thought of as punishment, the other was—sacrilege, an offense against the idea of beauty, the conception of beauty.

So—go first and put the portrait on an easel, restore, in semblance, beauty destroyed. Look long at it, try to remember it; replace with it what sprawled on a tile floor; fill the mind with it. (A mind, of course, no longer rational, no longer sane.) Go back, then, and try—the mind surging, not longer really a mind—to repair, to make amends. Move the slender, unresponsive body. (And remember in what manner, once, it had responded? Susan shivered, drank from her glass.) Give it the decency of comeliness; administer the last rites to beauty.

Was it all too—fantastic? Too macabre, too Gothic? Was that what was wrong with it?

She considered, lying back, looking up at the slowly hazing sky. (Tomorrow probably would be muggy; an enervating day.) Collins had been a painter; a man who sought to create beauty. A man, who, more intensely than most, saw beauty and, conversely, ugliness; more intensely than most, responded to both. Colors were clearer to him than to most. (As, Susan thought, they are to me; it is neither virtue nor fault, but a way of being.) Colors and forms in —in everything. It was conceivable that, in such a man, the knowledge that he had destroyed beauty might override almost anything else. Might, indeed, become, in a reeling mind, a shield against the less bearable knowledge that he had destroyed life. Repair the one; absolve one’s self from the other. Perhaps.

Not, then, that the conception was too fantastic. Assume that— assume that it was not the fantasy which snagged the mind. Then, something in the physical aspect, something quite matter of fact? The weapon in the wrong place? Some mechanical impossibility? No, Susan thought. Merton—how could I ever have thought of calling him Ricky? Like a band leader?—would have seen anything like that. I am no match for him in things like that. So?

So, you’re not up to it, Susan Faye. Face it, you’ve gone intuitional. Probably it is even simpler—probably, because Brian Collins was a painter and a pretty good one and you have a thing about painting, you don’t want it to be the way it looks. Probably it is as simple, and as silly, as that.

“All right,” Susan said to the great dog. “You want me to settle down, so you can settle down. Come on, then.”

She got up quickly. Colonel groaned and ambled to his feet. They went into the house. Colonel went to the room in which the small god should be, sniffed, faced Susan and wept.

He followed her into her bedroom. He watched her undress. When she was stretched on the bed he sighed deeply and thudded to the floor beside the bed. Almost at once he began to snore.

Susan slept fitfully and dreamed much. She dreamed in color, which was not unusual for her, since to a considerable degree she lived in color. Most of her dreams were red. Once she wakened herself by speaking and, which is uncommon, heard her own words. She had said, quite distinctly, “Bad color.”

“Go to sleep,” Susan Faye said, and had another try at it herself. And now, for some reason, she slept more deeply and dreams did not waken her. It was as if she had taken a sedative which had quietened her mind.

Sergeant Forniss was already at breakfast when Heimrich got down to the Inn’s dining room at a little after eight. He was alone in the big room; eight o’clock Sunday morning is not a favorite time for breakfast. Forniss was eating bacon and scrambled eggs. Heimrich pulled out a chair and sat down opposite him.

“Dermal nitrate’s positive,” Forniss said, in a tone he might have used to report that his eggs were overcooked. Heimrich said, “Oh,” and spread a napkin. “On both hands,” Forniss said, and Heimrich said, “Oh” on a different note. He added that that was one of the things the matter with the damn thing.

The dermal nitrate test, the coating of hands, with paraffin, the application to the hardened paraffin of Lunge’s reagent, should have told them whether Brian Collins had in fact fired the pistol which had killed two people. That was what it was for; that was why it was part of the routine. Nitrate particles from powder explosion show up blue when brought into contact with Lunge’s reagent. So, unfortunately, do nitrate particles from other sources.

“Had a garden, I suppose,” Heimrich said and to the waitress, “Orange juice and soft-boiled eggs please, Gretchen.”

Forniss said, “Yep.” He said that it was a vegetable garden and that Collins had apparently been cultivating it the morning before and, from the looks, hoeing in fertilizer. Which contains nitrates; which grinds into hands. The dermal nitrate test does not discriminate among nitrates.

“Too bad,” Heimrich said, and “Thank you,” to Gretchen for orange juice and coffee.

“Juries like nitrate tests,” Forniss said, somewhat gloomily. “Science. Nothing like science. However much the D.A. was to talk about fertilizer.”

It was not precisely a change of subject; it was a variant on the only subject in either mind.

And it was odd; it was that oddity which Forniss had, the night before, come to mention. It was that oddity which had led them to say goodnight to a handsome actor and a large producer with a voice of almost unexampled depth and heavy power, and to postpone the questioning of a young actor unfortunately called “Georgie-Porgie” by those who knew him well, and a director known as Tony Zersk—and, it was to be presumed, others. First things first. Clear things up, if you can, as they arise. Clear up a man named Roland Fielding.

“I hope they’re right,” Gretchen said, of eggs. Heimrich cracked an egg into its cup. “Exactly,” he said and Gretchen departed, pleased. A man about his boiled eggs, the captain was.

“A diamonds-are-a-girl’s-best-friend girl,” Heimrich said. “What Dale called her. All the same—carbons. Not that it wasn’t sensible of her.”

Peggy Belford had had a large room at the Old Stone Inn, a room befitting a featured player, and also a girl with a wardrobe. “You’d think,” a trooper told Forniss, when he made his find and reported, “she was going on a trip around the world or something.” The wardrobe was not, however, the subject of the report; it was merely a minor reason for astonishment.

The subject of the report was a portable typewriter, prettily pink. The subject of the report was a cardboard filing case, containing—among other things still being checked on—carbon copies of a number of letters written on the pretty pink typewriter. Finally, the subject of the report was one of the letter copies. Forniss had read it and had said, mildly, “Well, well,” and gone to tell Heimrich.

Now Heimrich said, “Let’s see it again, Charlie,” and Charlie passed it across the table. “Fingerprinted,” he said. “Hers.” Heimrich read it. It was nicely typed, nicely spaced, very business-like. It was dated a week earlier. It read:

“Dear Rollie: I’m too, too sorry to hear about these financial reverses of yours and how difficult it’s become to keep up the payments. And, Rollie dear, I couldn’t care less. Really I couldn’t.

“Because, Rollie dear, two thousand dollars a month is what it says and my copy of the court order is all locked away in a little safe deposit box, and I haven’t got married or anything like that, because money is such a nice thing to have. And I know, Rollie, that you’d hate for me not to have what they call security.

“So I really don’t see what I can do about these financial reverses, do you, Rollie? Really? So I’ll just keep on expecting to get the nice checks every month, and while we’re on the subject, the last one was almost two weeks late and I was almost worried, Rollie.

“But I wasn’t really worried, Rollie. Because I know how sweet you are about things like that and also my lawyer says you haven’t got a leg to stand on and that if we had to go to court he doesn’t see how I could avoid bringing up all those playful little habits of yours which I’d simply hate to mention, Rollie, and didn’t at the hearing because you were so sweet about the money.

“As ever,

“Peg-of-your-heart

“Mr. Roland Fielding,

Croton-on-Hudson,

New York”

Heimrich folded the carbon and passed it back to Forniss, who put it in his pocket and said, “Peg of his checkbook’s more like it.”

“I heard the other day,” Forniss said, “that down in Key West, where they’ve got lots of termites, they put tents over whole houses and run gas in and—poof, no more termites. No more anything.”

“What will they think of next?” Heimrich said, and finished his coffee. He said, “We wouldn’t want to keep Mr. Fielding from church or anything, Charlie. Even if he was up late last night. You’ve had it copied?” Forniss nodded. “I’ll use the copy, then,” Heimrich said.

Fielding, assuming the accuracy of a butler’s report, assuming the man who had answered the telephone was a butler, had been in New York the night before, at the theater, and had not been expected home until late. They had decided not to wait up for him.

Forniss drove the car south, through Peekskill, along the Post Road. They did not hurry. It was unlikely that Mr. Fielding would be going anywhere. Fielding had a fine stone house near Croton-on-Hudson; a large house, reached by a winding drive. “He could use a few yards of gravel on this,” Forniss said, as they drove up toward the house. “That big maple could have stood pruning last spring.”

A man in a black coat answered the door. Mr. Fielding was just having breakfast. He didn’t know whether—

“I think he’ll want to see us,” Heimrich said, and said, also, who they were. “When he’s finished his breakfast,” Heimrich said, and the man in the black coat said, doubtfully, “Well, I’ll see,” and let them in and gestured toward a large room—a comfortably furnished living room. There was a chessboard on a table, with a game partly played. They waited briefly in the large room. A big man came in through a doorway at the end of it—a big, loose man.

He was tall; he was partly bald; he had gray stubble on his cheeks and chin; he bulged somewhat above and below the belt of his slacks. He wore a pair of rimless bifocals and carried the news section of the Daily News. The headline of the Daily News could be read across the room. It said, “Peggy Belford Slain!” Under that it said, “Former Husband Kills Famed Actress and Self!”

The big, loose man said, “You get up early, gendemen,” in a husky voice. He said, “Might give a man time to shave.” He came on into the room. “Have to admit I was expecting you,” he said. “Which of you’s Heimrich?”

“On the other hand,” Roland Fielding said, “says in the paper this man”—he turned over the front page of the News and looked at the third page—“Collins it is, killed her. So I was married to her a while back. So what?”

“Anyway,” Fielding said, “sit down. I was out on the town last night. Getting too old for it, maybe.”

He sat heavily. Heimrich sat. Forniss continued to stand and, for so large a man, became curiously inconspicuous. Which is part of his job.

“Specifically,” he said, and handed the loose man the copy of the carbon copy. Fielding looked at it, read it. He looked at Heimrich with doubt. “Copy of a carbon copy,” Heimrich said. “You got the letter?”

“Captain,” Fielding said, “twenty-four thousand dollars a year is a lot of money. Also, she made a lot of money when she was working, and she worked a lot.”

“A man wants to save money,” Fielding said. “Wants a little less gold digging. He says a lot of things.” He held out the copy to Heimrich, who took it. “If you mean, could I go on paying her off—sure. Did I want to? I sure as hell didn’t. So—” He shrugged his heavy shoulders, which was evidently a task. “I had a try. Result—that.” He indicated the copy of the letter.

“I don’t know what the hell she was talking about,” Fielding said. “Only, she’d tell any lies she figured there was money in.” He got up heavily and walked heavily to a table and took a fat cigar out of a box. He lighted the cigar and went back and sat down. “I don’t know what lies,” he said.

“Unless she married,” Fielding said. “Or, of course, I could get the alimony order modified.”

“What she said,” Fielding told him. “I wouldn’t put it past her. Or anything else, come to that.”

“Captain,” Fielding said, “Peggy had a thoroughly nasty little mind. How do I know? Whatever she thought would make the nastiest stink. Do me the most damage. Louse things up the most for me.”

“Captain,” Fielding said, “I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. Have to get along with all kinds of people. Some of them are pretty persnickety. See what I mean? No reason they should realize she was lying. I mean, if she lied in court. And—some of them wouldn’t care a lot whether she was lying or not. Figure that just charging things did the damage.”

“Sure,” Fielding said. “I’ve got a deal on now—” He stopped. “Never mind about that.”

“Mr. Fielding,” Heimrich said, “when you agreed to this very considerable alimony, I gather—”

“She was a headache,” Fielding said. “A hell of a headache. O.K., I was a damn fool not to realize she would be before I got—hooked into it. But—well, you’ve seen her, captain. Any man—”

“What I was going to say,” Heimrich told him, “was that when you agreed to this two thousand a month it wasn’t as much of—well, call it a drain, as it’s become recently?”

“Any time,” Fielding said, “it’s a lot of money. You’re still on this ‘financial reverses’ thing? Forget it Also, it was Collins killed her. Not me.” He looked at Heimrich intently. “Didn’t he kill her?”

“Apparently,” Heimrich said. “We’ve got to check all angles, Mr. Fielding. Part of the job. For example—I suppose you were in New York yesterday afternoon? At your office?”

“Sure,” Fielding said. “I—” And he stopped. “No,” he said, “I drove up to see a man in Cold Harbor. Name of Goodman. Jacob Goodman. A man I’ve a deal going with. Didn’t go anywhere near this Collins place, wherever it is.”

“Look,” Fielding said, “you going to let the newspapers have that letter?”

“For the moment,” Heimrich said, “naturally, Mr. Fielding. Anything you want to ask, sergeant?”

Forniss said, “Nope. Guess not, captain,” and they left, and left the loose man with an expression of relief on his unshaven face. Or so, at any rate, Heimrich thought. Facial expressions are not always so easily classified.

“This drive could sure as hell do with a few yards of gravel,” Forniss said, as they drove down it. Heimrich agreed.

“Twenty-four thousand is a hell of a lot more than most people make in a year,” Charles Forniss said, and turned onto the blacktop.

“Now Charlie,” Heimrich said. “Surely your mind is as inventive as mine.”

VI