When Heimrich knocked on the screen of the open front door at the Landcraft house, Harvey Landcraft came through the house from the terrace and let him in. He looked at Heimrich. He said, “I hear you found Smith.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said.
“Dead?”
“Oh yes,” Heimrich said. “He’s dead, Mr. Landcraft. Your brother around? Mr. Ballard?”
They were down at the barns, Harvey said. He led Heimrich and Crowley through the house to the terrace beyond. Bonita was there; she and her husband had evidently been sitting side by side when Heimrich knocked. She said, “Oh, it’s you again, captain.” She appeared now to be entirely sober. She was not, evidently, pleased to see Heimrich. People often were not, Heimrich reflected, and Harvey Landcraft said, “I’ll call down—no, here they come now.”
Ballard and Wade Landcraft had come through the door of the nearest barn, were walking up the slope toward the house, talking as they walked. They were much of a height, Heimrich noticed—of a considerable height. Ballard was bare-headed; Wade wore a battered felt hat, its brim an irregular undulation.
“Why,” Bonita said abstractedly, “does he wear that thing?” It appeared that she was talking to herself.
The two men saw Heimrich and walked faster, across the grass, the late sun slanting behind them.
“Thought you’d show up,” Wade said, when they were a few feet away. “So—Smith’s found?”
“Dead,” Harvey answered for Heimrich.
“The poor little guy,” Ballard said. “You’d think—”
They waited, but Ballard did not say what one would think. He shook his head, instead.
“Not in the quarry,” Wade said. “You wasted time on that.” He said, then, that they might all as well sit down. They did; the Landcrafts and Ballard waited.
“In his pump house,” Heimrich said. “You know the place?”
“Sure,” Ballard said, and Wade nodded. Harvey shook his head, and Bonita looked out over the green fields, toward the green hills, and said nothing.
“The motor was running,” Heimrich said. “I suppose it ran most of the time?”
“He could cut it off,” Ballard said. “Turn it on when he wanted power. Cut it off when they went to bed, probably. Started it up in the morning. Ice box uses gas, I know. After he got it set up, he said he didn’t care if they ever got the electric from the company. Said this cost a lot less and—” He stopped. “Poor little guy,” he said.
“He killed himself?” Wade asked.
“He had a rubber hose to take care of the exhaust,” Heimrich said. “Went out through a hole in the blocks. It had been pulled inside. The place was pretty much airtight—near enough, anyway.”
There was a pause. Then Harvey said that he supposed it was an easy way to do it—as easy as any.
“Oh yes,” Heimrich said. “I suppose he just went to sleep.”
“Could you tell when it happened?” Wade asked, and Heimrich said that, at a guess, Smith had died some time the night before. He waited, looking around at the three men, at Bonita Landcraft.
“Well,” Wade said, “that seems to be that.”
“Does it?” Heimrich said.
Their expressions changed, then—all but Bonita’s. Bonita continued to look at the hills.
“That Smith killed Mrs. Landcraft, you mean,” Heimrich said. “Decided we’d catch him and killed himself. That’s what you meant, Mr. Landcraft.”
Wade nodded his head.
“Look, mister,” Ballard said, “what else would it be? You say Smitty killed himself, so sure we think—”
“No,” Heimrich said. “I didn’t say Smith killed himself, Mr. Ballard. I said he’s dead. Dead of carbon monoxide poisoning, which is a frequent method of suicide. Because, as you said, Mr. Landcraft, it’s an easy way. It was meant to look like suicide, naturally. But—Smith was murdered. Somebody knocked him unconscious. Put him in with the generator and pulled out the exhaust tube and closed the door and—waited.”
He paused as if for comment; there was none.
“Closed the door,” Heimrich said, “and—made his mistake. Very foolish mistake. Perhaps it was an accident, something he—or she, of course—did without thinking. You see—the door was locked when I was there this afternoon. Locked from the outside. I had to force the lock.” He closed his eyes. “Padlock,” he said. “Through a staple. Couldn’t have been done from inside, naturally.” He opened his eyes then, and looked from face to face. He saw only surprise; then, on the faces of Wade and Alec Ballard, what he took to be incredulity.
“Look,” Ballard said, “nobody would be that much of a damn fool, mister.”
“Apparently,” Heimrich said, “somebody was, Mr. Ballard. Of course, as you say, it gave the whole thing away. If somebody’d wanted to advertise it as murder, he couldn’t have done more.”
“Wait a minute,” Wade said. “Suppose somebody—Mrs. Smith, maybe, saw the latch open and locked it? Not knowing Smith was inside.”
“And,” Heimrich said, “without looking? When he was missing?”
“Sometimes,” Bonita said, without taking her gaze from the hills, “sometimes people do things without thinking.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “Somebody did, Mrs. Landcraft. But I don’t think it was Mrs. Smith. I think that, if she went there at all, she saw the door locked and decided—very logically—that her husband couldn’t be there. We’ll ask her, but I’d imagine that happened.”
Harvey Landcraft spoke slowly. He said that Heimrich was guessing, had to be guessing. He said that, so far as he could see Bonny’s guess might be as good as Heimrich’s. If the murderer—assuming there was a murderer—had locked the door to the pump house, he must have done it without thinking, as a kind of reflex. But, if you assumed he might do that, you could also assume that Mrs. Smith might, as easily, have done the same.
Heimrich listened, he nodded his head, he said he saw the point, naturally.
“But,” he said, “if Mrs. Smith did, why didn’t she unlock it again and look in?”
“Didn’t think of it,” Ballard said. “Or—maybe Smith had the only key on him. Did you think of that, mister?”
“Now Mr. Ballard,” Heimrich said. “Yes, I did. I thought of several things. If he had the key, the boys will find it. But I’d think there’d be another key, wouldn’t you? That Mrs. Smith could put her hands on, anyway?”
“A very absent-minded murderer,” Bonita Landcraft said. “Can’t you do better, captain?”
“Now Mrs. Landcraft,” Heimrich said. “I can think of alternatives. The murderer locked the door so that Mrs. Smith wouldn’t look there for her husband. Meant to go back later and open it again. Or, he locked it so that Smith wouldn’t come to and get out. Perhaps there was some reason the murderer couldn’t wait around. Had to be somewhere else, perhaps. Again, meant to go back and didn’t—or thought there was no hurry, that we wouldn’t look there. It doesn’t matter too much, does it? One way or another way. The same mistake.”
“You had to break the lock to get in?” Ballard asked.
“The staple,” Heimrich said. “I pried out the staple.”
There was a somewhat long pause.
“I suppose,” Harvey said, “you think Smith knew something about—about what you say is mother’s murder. Had to be got rid of?”
“Possibly,” Heimrich said. “And—possibly it was even simpler. We’re looking for a murderer. We are given one—dead. And, as one of you said, that seems to be that. We stop bothering people. Pack up and go home.”
“Just like that?” Bonita said. “Without even—hatred? Even dislike?” She looked at Heimrich now. “Because it was useful for him to be dead?”
“Possibly,” Heimrich said. “Yes, I think it may have been that, Mrs. Landcraft. A matter of—evaluation. A murderer may have a scale of values it is difficult to understand.” He closed his eyes. “We caught a man once who’d killed a woman,” he said. “Didn’t deny it, Didn’t seem to be sorry about it. Completely calm—until we suggested he’d stolen the revolver he killed her with. Very upset by that; kept saying he wasn’t a thief.” He opened his eyes. “Turned out he wasn’t, as a matter of fact,” he said. “We had to admit that. He seemed to feel that that cleared everything up.”
“It’s not the same,” she said.
“Near enough,” Heimrich told her. “Values upside down. A man up in Canada killed a lot of people in a plane, with a time bomb. Didn’t like his wife who was on the plane. Here it could come closer home. Kill Smith, save your own life. You might think it was merely self-defense.”
“I?” she said. “Not I, captain.” She returned to her study of the distant hills. “If I hated enough—I don’t know. But it would be personal. I’d think it would be with—anyone.”
“The ‘you’ was impersonal,” Heimrich said. “Like Smith’s murder.”
“Listen,” Harvey Landcraft said. “This is all very well. Very illuminating, perhaps. But—you don’t know anything, do you? It’s all speculation.”
“Your mother was murdered,” Heimrich said. “Smith was murdered, as a result. We know those things. Somebody thought it to his advantage to kill twice.”
“One of us, you mean,” Wade said. “Harvey or me. For the—advantage.”
He hadn’t, Heimrich pointed out, said that.
“Yet,” Harvey said.
“If you like,” Heimrich said.
“For a man who spent hours dragging an empty swimming hole,” Harvey said, “you’re confident, captain. You could be wrong again.”
“Oh,” Heimrich said, “naturally. The pool seemed most likely. Because—” He hesitated. “Because I think Smith was to have been thrown into the pool,” he said. “From the lip of the cliff, probably. So that any head injuries would be covered up. But—Miss Merritt happened along and Saw Smith and the man who was planning to murder him. Even if she didn’t recognize the men—she still says she doesn’t—the murderer couldn’t know that. She’d seen enough so that the quarry plan had to be abandoned. But—not enough so that the whole plan had to be. When she—if she identifies the taller of the two men, he can say he was merely taking Smith home; doesn’t know what happened after Smith got home. If we believed in Smith’s suicide, that would be that.”
“You started,” Wade said, “to say ‘when’ Evelyn identifies the men. She didn’t recognize them. You know that.”
“Now Mr. Landcraft,” Heimrich said. “I’ve been told that.”
“She’s not a liar. If she were, why should she lie? You don’t argue she’s involved herself?”
“Not if she saw two men, as she says,” Heimrich said. “Not directly. But—” He stopped. He shrugged. “Of course, she may not have seen anyone.”
“You think she did?” Bonita said. “Because—I do. Wade’s right, of course. Evvie’s not a liar. Most people are, more or less. She’s not.”
“If she’d recognized the men, she’d have said so,” Wade said. He took off the battered felt hat and tossed it to a chair. It was, Heimrich thought, as if he found some physical action essential. “You know damn well she would. Why wouldn’t she?”
“Now Mr. Landcraft,” Heimrich said, “you know her better than I do. And I can think of reasons. However—” He stood up. “We’ll be getting along, Crowley,” he said. He started through the house toward the front door.
“You’ll be back, I’m sure,” Harvey Landcraft said.
“Yes,” Heimrich agreed. “We’ll be back, I expect.”
In the car, Heimrich said, “Carmel, Ray,” and then did not speak again until they had left Old Road behind and were on Route 6. Then he said, in the tone of one who notes an abstraction, that it is always annoying to have to let a lie pass, knowing it a lie.
“Which one’s lying?” Ray asked him, and Heimrich said he could not prove anything—yet. But he had not, he said, been thinking precisely of that.
“Somebody,” Heimrich said, “and I’d think one of the men at least, knows I’m lying, Ray. Took it pretty well too, considering. But it must have annoyed him a good deal.”
Ray Crowley took his eyes from the road long enough to look at Heimrich, and then went back to his job.
“We can’t prove Smith was killed, Ray,” Heimrich said, and told him why.
“You could—” Ray began, but Heimrich shook his head.
“Not in court, Ray,” he said. “We have to draw the line somewhere.” He paused. “I suppose,” he said, with regret. “But I don’t like murderers.” He sighed. Then he brightened. “But,” he said, “with any luck it won’t go that far. Not in that way, anyhow. Let’s see what the boys have got in Carmel, shall we?”
“He’s bluffing,” Harvey told the others. “Trying to throw a scare into—somebody. Because, there’s no way he can know one of the men Evvie saw was Smith. And if it wasn’t Smith, it doesn’t matter who the other man was. There’s nothing he can prove.”
“Dear Harvey,” Bonita said. “He dragged the pool.”
“On a chance,” Harvey said. “Or—” He paused. “Under the circumstances, he has to do something. If only for the looks of the thing.”
“I don’t know,” Bonita said, and looked away from the hills, looked around at the three tall men. “It doesn’t seem right, somehow. Not for him. If he—if he fiddles while Rome burns, it’s to get somebody to dance. To the tune he picks.”
“Hell,” Harvey said. “He’s just a big, slow-footed cop. Furthermore, he tells everything he knows. He’s—he’s transparent, Bonny. You give him too much. His bluff’s transparent.”
“He dragged the quarry,” she said. “It took time, and men. Probably it cost money. He knows one of the men was Smith.”
“How?” Wade said, “Evvie didn’t.”
“She says she didn’t,” Bonny said. “Anyway, she told you she didn’t.”
She was told that she, herself, had agreed Evvie didn’t lie, and she said, “Oh, that.” She said, “All for one and one for all.” She said, “Perhaps she’s told the captain. He’s persuaded her not to admit anything to anybody else—even you, Wade.”
“Or perhaps,” Alec Ballard said, “she did spot Smitty and not whoever was with him. Or—maybe she did spot this other guy and’s protecting him.”
He did not look at Wade Landcraft; although Wade looked at him, and looked intently.
“Whatever way it is,” Bonita said, and turned back to the hills, “he’s sure the smaller man was Smith. His dragging the quarry proves that. And so the other man killed Smith. So what he’s got to do, is to get the other man identified.” She paused. “I hope,” she said, “that it’s nobody any of us knows.”
It boiled down, Ray Crowley said, to one of two men. Or, stretching a point, they could call it three. For both jobs. He braked the car for a stop sign.
“Now Ray,” Heimrich said. “For Smith, probably. Although at the moment we can’t prove it. For both jobs? It could be another way. It didn’t need a man to kill Mrs. Landcraft. Smith—probably. If he was got drunk and lugged around a good deal. But anybody with any strength at all could have hit Mrs. Landcraft with something, either just outside the bull’s pen or, for that matter, inside it. If she was outside, it wasn’t far to drag her.”
Crowley started the car. He turned right on the main street of Carmel. He said, “The man with Smith?”
“Smith may have seen Mrs. Landcraft killed,” Heimrich said. “Somebody else may have decided to help out.”
“Two in it?” Crowley said, and stopped the car near the county court house.
He was told that it happened; that it often happened. Conspiracy to murder, the conspirators most often two; conspiracy to save the murderer.
“For example,” he said, “if Bonita killed her mother-in-law, her husband probably would help her. If Miss Merritt did, I’d think Wade would help, wouldn’t you, Ray? To the point of disposing of Smith, even. If there wasn’t another way.”
“I can’t,” Ray said, “see how you can figure Evvie—Miss Merritt, in.”
“Can’t?” Heimrich said. “Or don’t want to? You’re not in high school now, Ray.”
Ray Crowley flushed.
“Nothing you can help, naturally,” Heimrich said. “Let’s see what the boys have got for us.”
The “boys”—in the person of a county detective, who was in his sixties—had odds and ends. Smith had died drunk, as Heimrich had supposed. Harvey Landcraft’s present television show would go off the air in twelve weeks, unless a new sponsor picked it up. So far as anyone knew, it was his only source of income. He and his wife had probably lived up to the income. Friends of Wade Landcraft were of the belief that he might do a good deal to get out of cattle breeding—“fed to the teeth with it,” one said. They were also sceptical of, even indignant at, any implied suggestion that, to get out of it, he might have killed his mother. He wasn’t “that kind of a guy.”
“They never are, of course,” Heimrich said, and the county detective agreed they never were, to their friends.
Deep Meadow ran about two hundred head of cattle. There was no way to do more than guess the value of the herd. Before the big bull killed, the herd—excepting its herd bull—might conceivably have sold for half a million dollars; Deep Meadow Prince might himself have brought almost any sum. One international grand champion was reported to have been sold for two hundred thousand. “Some breeders doubt that, though,” the county detective said. If Deep Meadow Prince died before he was ten, Lloyd’s paid eighty thousand.
Alec Ballard had been a cattle man since he was a boy; had come east from a big breeding farm in Iowa, where he had been herdsman; had been five years at Deep Meadow. He had a small breeding farm of his own, adjacent to the Landcraft farm. He had acquired a few heifers from the Deep Meadow Herd; one or two from Florence Haskins’ Rocking River Herd. He had, presumably, got them cheap; they were therefore not, presumably, likely to win many prizes. “His bull’s an Angus,” the county detective said. “Apparently that’s about all.” Nobody had heard any rumors that Mrs. Landcraft had been dissatisfied with Ballard—nobody but Miss Haskins. “Quite a girl, Florrie,” the county detective said. “Doesn’t like Ballard.”
The Haskins herd was somewhat larger than that at Deep Meadow. It was generally considered a good herd, but with no outstanding animals. Miss Haskins had, before Prince went international grand champion, offered to buy a half interest in him. Margaret Landcraft had not been interested. Ballard had advised his employer against selling.
“Make Miss Haskins mad?” Heimrich asked, and was told there was nothing to show it. The two women were a good deal together. The incident probably had not made her fonder of Ballard.
“She’s well thought of by other breeders?” Heimrich asked. “No suggestion, say, that her records aren’t reliable?”
“No,” the detective said. “Nothing against her. You think there would be?”
“Now Henry,” Heimrich said, “you know how it is.”
Bonita Landcraft—then Bonita Carroll—had been a show girl when Harvey met her. She had got into television, first as a dancer, then had sung an occasional song, now and then read a line or two. She had worked in a show Landcraft was directing. They had got married. “Tried it out first, apparently,” the detective said. “Lots do, nowadays.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “She wasn’t popular with her mother-in-law. That might be one reason.”
“Might,” the county detective admitted. “Not modern, the old lady wasn’t.” He paused. “Not myself,” he added. “However, everybody says she’s a nice kid. Pretty bright, too.”
Heimrich said he had noticed that. There was no suggestion that she drank more than was good for her? There was not.
Arnold Thayer was one of the country’s outstanding breeders of Aberdeen Angus. He owned a big farm in Missouri, not far from Jefferson City; some of the best Blacks pastured there, and went from there to win prizes on the circuit. He had shown the reserve grand champion at the International show where Deep Meadow Prince had earned his grand championship. He had, at the same show, won the grand championship in the female class with a heifer named, among other things, Bessie. “By and large, from what we hear, he’s about the biggest in the business,” the county detective said.
Thayer was one of those who had pioneered with Angus; one of those who had done most to popularize the breed, so that on the ranges throughout the country more and more cattle were black, and hornless. He was one of the best known judges in the middle west; he was prominent in the breeders’ association.
“No suggestion his judgments have ever been influenced?” Heimrich asked. He got an emphatic shake of the head. “Or that he was ever suspected of sharp practices?”
“None,” the county detective said.
“A paragon,” Heimrich said.
“He’s very well thought of, apparently,” the county detective said. “Makes a lot of money out of cattle, too. Good breeder; shrewd business man, from what we hear.”
“But,” Heimrich said, “Mrs. Landcraft’s bull got the grand championship. He’d be an addition even to a farm like you say Thayer’s is.”
“Apparently,” the detective said. “That’s about what we’ve got, captain.”
He was told he had got a lot. Heimrich stood up.
“There’s one other little thing,” the county detective said. “This place Smith died in. The one you found locked and broke open.”
“Oh yes,” Heimrich said. “That.”
“Smith’s prints on the padlock,” the county detective said. “One of yours overlaying. No others.” He regarded Heimrich, looking up from his desk. “We talked to Mrs. Smith. Very upset she is. Not very coherent. She does say they almost never locked up the place. No particular reason to.”
“Didn’t they?” Heimrich said. “I wondered about that.”
“So the man who took Smith there probably wouldn’t have found it locked,” the detective said. “But, he must have locked it after he put Smith in there. He didn’t wipe it off, because Smith’s prints are there. But, he had to handle the lock to fasten it. You did when you broke it open, apparently. Things like that puzzle a jury, captain.”
“Now Henry,” Heimrich said. “He must have worn gloves, naturally.”
“Yes,” the detective said. “He must have, I guess. But—locking it at all was a damn fool thing to do, wasn’t it? Leaving it locked for you to find, since that proved it wasn’t suicide. You’d figure he was excited, didn’t rightly know what he was doing. But here he is, putting on gloves so as not to leave prints. You can see how a jury might be puzzled, can’t you?”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “I can see that, Henry. But—Smith was murdered. Got drunk and murdered. I haven’t told anybody he was drunk, by the way.”
“Oh,” Henry said, “sure.”
“And,” Heimrich said, “we’ll try to make it as simple as we can for the jury. When we get a jury, naturally. Try not to puzzle them.”
“If you ask me,” the county detective said, “it’s puzzling already. Damn puzzling.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “Well. We’ll be seeing you, Henry.”
He went out of the office, with Ray Crowley after him. In the car, Heimrich said, after looking at his watch, that he thought it might be a good time to have a drink. He said that he gathered there was an inn around somewhere, and to this Ray Crowley agreed, and drove him there. It was an inn which provided accommodations for overnight guests; which had a cocktail lounge; which had leaded panes on windows facing the road. They found the lounge, which was almost empty; they found, in a corner, a table for four. Heimrich ordered bourbon on ice, and looked at the young trooper. “Coke, I guess,” Ray said. “I don’t drink much, captain.” He was told that that was very wise of him.
Heimrich seemed to be in no hurry with his first drink and he was not talkative. He sat, indeed, with his eyes closed. After several minutes, Crowley said that it was a little unfortunate about the fingerprints, and after a long pause, Heimrich agreed it was. “By the way,” he said, “we won’t mention the point, naturally. Might puzzle people, as Henry says. Or that Smith doesn’t seem to have been knocked out.” Heimrich thereupon relapsed into what, Ray Crowley thought, a little resembled a coma.
It was, nevertheless, Captain Heimrich who first became conscious that Arnold Thayer had come into the room—was walking across it to the small bar, with its two stools. (It was only after Heimrich had begun to push the table back a little, part way stand, that Crowley recognized Thayer in the dimly lit room. It was several seconds later that he realized two things—that Thayer had said he was staying at the inn in Carmel; that it was Thayer for whom Heimrich had been waiting.) Thayer paused in his progress toward the bar and looked at Heimrich and Crowley, squinting a little.
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “We do get around, Mr. Thayer. Join us, won’t you?”
Thayer hesitated.
“As good a place as any,” Heimrich said. “May as well be comfortable while we talk.”
Thayer did not appear to think that “comfortable” was the word best chosen. He nevertheless came to the table and pulled out a chair. He looked at Heimrich’s glass, and Heimrich said, “Bourbon. Not bad.”
“Bourbon,” Thayer said, to the waiter. “Bourbon and ginger ale.”
Heimrich avoided shuddering. Mr. Thayer got what he had asked for.