The fourth side of the “Jacques Brel” album reached the end of its track and turned itself off with a click. Mite removed the paw which he had clamped tight over his exposed left ear. Colonel sighed deeply and slightly moved his tail. The noise of the wind and the rain seemed to increase with the music stilled. The fire had passed the crackling stage. It had subsided into a warm glow.
“It will take them a while to get here from the Mercer house,” Susan said. “It’s such a bad night. I hate to think of them on these roads this kind of—”
A sharp crack interrupted her. It snapped through the sound of wind and beating rain. Almost at once there was a second crack.
Heimrich was on his feet by then. Mite was on a windowsill with the second crack, staring out into the night, head and ears pointing to the left. The rifle cracks had come from that way.
Heimrich was across the room in three long strides; he yanked the coat-closet door open and grabbed a suede windbreaker from a hanger. He grabbed a .32-caliber revolver from the shelf it lived on and jammed it into a windbreaker pocket. Susan was at the door an instant before him. As he had opened the door the floodlight over the garage blazed on the driveway.
He ran down the steep drive in the lashing rain, the revolver in his pocket banging against his hip. He was halfway to the road when the rifle cracked again—cracked twice again.
On the road he turned left and ran down the hill. The sounds of shots had come from that way. And nobody on a night like this was shooting at a target or at a Woodchuck.
He had run down the hill, in the center of the road, for perhaps twenty yards when a car’s lights glared up in front of him. Then a car’s motor roared, racing. The lights charged up the hill at him, and Heimrich, yanking the gun out of his pocket, leaped to his left.
The car missed him by inches, and he slipped and almost fell in a muddy, water-swept ditch which was all the storm had left of a narrow earth and gravel shoulder. He grabbed bushes to catch himself.
He turned when his feet were under him. The car had crested the hill. As he looked, its taillights vanished.
It had seemed a big car. Any car which charges at you through the rain seems like a big car.
Heimrich, jamming the revolver back into its pocket, ran on down the hill—ran toward the yellowish headlights of a stationary car which had been behind the one which had started up so savagely.
As he ran on, a slight figure came up out of the ditch in front of the stopped car. For a moment the figure—a girl from its movements—swayed in the car lights. Then the girl began to run away from him down the hill.
He yelled, then. He yelled, “Stop!” He took a chance on which of them was running. He yelled, “Miss Fowler. Lucy! I tell you stop!”
The girl, uncertain in what appeared to be a heavy coat, ran on, stumbled on, beside the stopped car. Again he called to her to stop and used the name which was the more likely. Lyle Mercer wouldn’t run away from him. She would run uphill toward him. If she could run.
Heimrich yanked the revolver from his pocket and fired a shot into the air.
The girl was out of the lights, now. She was a moving shadow behind the car. Heimrich called again, and he thought the dim shadow beyond the car moved more slowly. He fired once more, straight up. The shadow stopped moving.
Another figure came up out of the ditch and now he was close enough to see that it was another slight girl. This one was in a raincoat, belted around her. By the car, clutching its fender, the girl stood, her back to him.
She called out too, and the wind seemed to sweep her voice back to him. But now he was only a few feet away.
“Lucy!” Lyle Mercer called into the rain and darkness.
For a moment, the shadow beyond the car did not move. Then, very slowly, it moved toward them. It moved into the light and became a small girl in a heavy coat. Then Lucy Fowler put her hands up.
He had reached them, then. He said, “Is either of you hurt?” and Lyle said, “We’re all right, Inspector.”
“Then for God’s sake,” Heimrich said, “put your hands down, Lucy Fowler.”
She said something he couldn’t hear. He saw Lyle put an arm around the other girl. Lucy spoke again. Her voice was high and shaking.
“You’re a policeman,” Lucy said. “I didn’t do anything bad.”
He got them into the Volks, Lucy Fowler first into the cramped seat in the back. She did not resist; did not try to run. She did not say anything at all.
It had been some time since Heimrich had driven a gearshift car. It came back to him on the second try. (The first try stalled the engine.) The Volks pushed itself up the steep road and up the steeper drive and into the floodlight above the garage. Lyle ran to the open door, with Susan waiting in the doorway.
The dark girl sat huddled in the back of the Volks and did not move. “Come on, Lucy,” Heimrich said, and kept his voice low and gentle. She still did not move. He reached toward her and she shrank away. She said, “I didn’t do anything bad. Don’t hurt me.”
“You didn’t do anything bad,” Heimrich said. “Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
She came out of the car, then. She walked very slowly toward the house and Heimrich walked beside her, not trying to help her walk against the wind and rain; ready only to reach out if she stumbled. She did not stumble.
Susan had built up the fire. Lyle was standing in front of it, still with her raincoat belted about her. When Lucy Fowler went into the room, with Heimrich tall behind her, Mite leaped from the sofa and went under it and looked out from under it, light reflected in his eyes so that he seemed to glare at them.
“Get over by the fire,” Heimrich told Lucy. “Don’t fall over the dog.”
Colonel jointed his way to his feet and went across the room and tried to get under the sofa with his cat. He was too big to.
“Take that coat off, Miss Fowler,” Heimrich said. “Get over by the fire. And—”
He stopped and looked at Lyle Mercer.
“Your coat sleeve’s torn,” he said to her. “Did he hit you?”
She looked down at the left sleeve of her raincoat. It had been ripped open. “I didn’t feel anything,” Lyle said. “Except a sort of tugging. I’m all right.”
“By a few inches,” Heimrich said. “Did you tell anybody you were coming here, Miss Mercer?”
“No,” she said. “Not anybody.”
“A good guesser, somebody was,” Heimrich said. “Was afraid she’d come here. Because you have something to tell me, Miss Fowler?”
Lucy Fowler had come just inside the door. She did not go to stand in front of the fire.
“Merton,” Susan Heimrich said in a pointedly reasonable voice. “They’re both soaking wet. Before anything else, we’ll have to get them dry. Come on, Lyle.”
She went the length of the room toward the bedroom door. Lyle followed her. Lucy still stood where she had been standing near the door. The heavy wet coat seemed to pull her down. She stood a little stooped under its weight.
“Go with them, Miss Fowler,” Heimrich said. “Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
She went after the others, walking very slowly, dragged down by the wet coat and by fear. Heimrich sat in front of the fire and Colonel came back and put a heavy head on the most available knee. After a few minutes, Susan came out of the bedroom carrying a raincoat and a cloth coat and other garments. She carried them into the kitchen, toward the furnace room. She came back. “They’re getting dry,” she said. “One of them’s going to have to wear your bathrobe.” She sat down beside Merton in front of the fire. Then she got up and put two more logs on the fire, which welcomed them, licked around them.
Lucy came through the doorway first, lost in a bathrobe which seemed to drag at her as the wet coat had dragged. It dragged on the floor around her feet. Lyle followed, a hand on each of the dark girl’s enveloped shoulders. She wore a yellow robe of Susan’s which was also too long on her, but not by a good many inches as much too long. Heimrich pulled up chairs for them in front of the fire. Lyle stretched slim legs out toward it. Lucy Fowler huddled in the robe.
“Last night,” Lyle said, “Lucy was sleeping in Mrs. Wainright’s dressing room. Something waked her up. Tell him, Lucy. Tell Inspector Heimrich.”
“I didn’t do anything bad,” Lucy said, her voice small, as if the thick bathrobe smothered it. “Nobody ought to say I did anything bad.”
“Now, child,” Heimrich said. “Nobody has. What waked you up?”
“First I thought she was talking in her sleep,” Lucy said, her voice distant and shaking a little. “But then—”
Slowly, carefully, she told him about the night before. He listened without interrupting her. She said, “That’s all, sir. I didn’t do anything to her.”
“No,” Heimrich said. “You didn’t do anything to her, Miss Fowler. When was it, about, you went into her room and found her—found her dead, you thought?”
“About seven, I guess. She usually waked up about seven. I would go down and bring her tray up. She was dead, sir. When I went in she was dead. I tried to wake her up and touched her and—and she wasn’t warm any more. Not the way people are warm.”
“And you were frightened,” Heimrich said. “And got out of the house and—walked all day in the rain? Trying to find Miss Mercer’s house?”
“I don’t know anybody around here,” the girl said. Her voice had steadied as she told of the night before. “Miss Mercer seemed like a nice lady. I thought maybe she’d help me. I thought they’d try to blame something on me.”
“Who would, Miss Fowler? Mr. Wainright? Mr. Gant?”
“I don’t know,” the dark girl said.
“You thought there was somebody in the room with her? Thought you heard another voice. A man’s voice or a woman’s voice?”
“It was low,” Lucy said. “Just a whisper almost. I don’t know. I thought probably it was Mr. Wainright, going to see if she was all right. But I was mostly asleep.”
“It could have been Mrs. Gant?”
“I guess so. It could have been anybody. It could have been Mrs. Prender, I guess. Her voice is sort of low. Maybe I just dreamed there was somebody with her.”
“Last night,” Heimrich said, “after you helped her into bed, you helped her take sleeping medicine. Left a glass of water on her table and another capsule if she needed another. When you went in this morning, was the second capsule gone?”
“I don’t remember,” Lucy said. “Really I don’t remember, sir.”
“Try to, Miss Fowler.”
“I don’t remember seeing it.”
“The glass? Was it there?”
“I don’t—” the small voice stopped. “Yes,” she said after a pause. “I think it was, sir. And it was empty. I think it was empty.”
“‘You had it in your hand,’” Heimrich said. “‘I saw you. You had it in your hand.’ That’s what she said when you thought she was talking in her sleep?”
“I think that’s what she said. I wasn’t very much awake, but I think that’s what she said.”
“This other person you think was in the room with her—by the way, was the door between the dressing room where you were and the other room closed?”
“Not quite, Inspector. A little open so I could hear her if she called.”
“Did the others in the house—Mr. Wainright, Mr. and Mrs. Gant, the Prenders—did they know you were going to sleep in the dressing room last night?”
“I don’t guess they did, sir. Mr. Wainright said after I saw she was all right, and to be sure she took her sleeping pill, I was to go to bed myself. ‘She’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘You run on downstairs and get some sleep of your own.’ But, I didn’t ...”
“This other person, whom you can’t identify. You just heard a whisper? The murmur of a voice?”
“Yes.”
“Couldn’t make out any words? Think, Miss Fowler. Because somebody is afraid you did, you see. Tried to kill you—you and Miss Mercer—because he’s afraid you did. Before you could get to me and tell me what you heard.”
Lucy did not answer. She sat huddled in the robe and looked into the fire.
“Try to remember,” Heimrich said. “Try to bring it back. Her voice wakened you—partly wakened you. You remember her words. Then you heard another voice. You assumed it was Mr. Wainright’s, naturally. That he had gone into his wife’s room to see if she was all right. But it might have been Mr. Gant. For the same reason. Or Mrs. Gant, who’s Mrs. Wainright’s cousin. Probably not Mrs. Prender. She and her husband were in bed asleep. Anyway, she says they were. Try—”
“I don’t,” Lucy said toward the fire leaping in the fireplace. “I just don’t, sir. Only—” She paused and shook her head. “Only,” she said, “it’s as if I almost remember. As if there were something I almost heard. I forget what—”
She stopped speaking. But then she looked at Heimrich instead of at the fire.
“That’s it,” she said. “I think that’s it. ‘You forgot again.’ Something like that. That’s why I thought it was Mr. Wainright. Because he was all the time having to remind her of things. Lately she’s—lately she’d been that way. Forgetting things.”
“Like taking pills? There were other things she was supposed to take? Other pills and she kept forgetting to take them?”
“Four or five others,” Lucy said. “I’d help her remember sometimes. Sometimes Mr. Wainright would. We both tried—tried to take care of her. She hadn’t been very sure about things since her daughter was killed that way. That awful way.”
“‘You forgot again.’ You think that was what the other person in the room said?”
“Something like that. I think it was something like that. That’s all I remember. Truly that’s all I remember.”
“All right,” Heimrich said. “Mr. Gant tells me you were Mrs. Wainright’s maid when she was living in New York after her first husband died and before she married Mr. Wainright. In an apartment.”
“Yes. She was all right then. She was fine and nice to me.”
“Was her daughter living in the apartment when you were there?”
“Mostly Miss Virginia was away at school. Sometimes she was there for a week or two at a time.”
“After her mother married Mr. Wainright. Did Miss Gant still come to the apartment?”
“Just once, I think. We didn’t live there very long after they were married. Mr. Wainright bought this house up near Brewster. So his wife and Miss Virginia could have horses. They’d always had horses back home.”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “In the apartment. In the Brewster house. Did Mr. Wainright and Miss Virginia get along all right?”
“He was very nice to her. He would do nice things for her. Buy her things sometimes. So she’d like him better, I thought.”
“Better? She didn’t like him very well?”
“I never heard her say so. Only—well, she had been very close to her real father. To the Squire, that is. He—he was a wonderful gentleman, sir. She used to talk about him a lot.”
“Lucy,” Heimrich said, “did you feel she resented Mr. Wainright? As if she thought he was trying to take the place of her real father?”
“Maybe,” Lucy Fowler said. She was looking into the fire again, as if she saw the past there. “A watch she had her father had given her. It stopped and Mr. Wainright bought her another like it. Only she broke the one Mr. Wainright gave her. It fell off of something and she—I guess she stepped on it. Anyway, it was all broken.”
“This happened up at the Brewster house?”
“Yes, sir. A few days before the accident.”
Heimrich looked at the fire for some moments. He closed his eyes then, but did not turn his head. He opened his eyes and looked at Susan.
“Susan,” he said, “do you suppose you can fix these young ladies up with something dry to wear? Something they can wear out?”
“Yes,” Susan said. “They won’t fit very well, but yes. Only—have you two had anything to eat this evening?”
The question was for Lyle, who said, “Oh! How awful of me. I meant to fix something but—but I just forgot.”
“Lucy?”
“No, ma’am, I guess I haven’t had anything to eat for a long time.”
“I’ll get you both something,” Susan said. She looked at her husband. “You don’t,” she said, “take them anywhere until they’ve had something hot to eat.”
“No, ma’am,” Heimrich said. “Only, not too long, dear? I don’t want us to have to wake people up.”
Susan was not too long and the two girls ate soup and warmed meat loaf in front of the fire. Lucy Fowler ate carefully, but as if it had indeed been a long time since she had eaten at all.
Merton Heimrich, who was somewhat wet himself when he came to think about it, went to change to dry slacks and shoes. He also buckled on his shoulder holster and put the .32 in it.
He dialed WE6-1212. At nine P.M. the temperature had been fifty-two and the humidity ninety-five per cent. “Cloudy with moderate to heavy rain tonight, continuing into tomorrow. Winds northeasterly, thirty to thirty-five miles an hour. Risk of flooding in low-lying areas. Tides may run two to three feet above normal. Partial clearing and colder tomorrow night.”
It was, Heimrich thought, the first time the Weather Bureau had used the word “colder” since early April. He went back into the living room.
Lyle and Lucy Fowler went into the bedroom and Susan went with them to find them clothing—dry things and warm things. Heimrich sat in front of the fire and waited. Mite came out from under the sofa and jumped to Merton Heimrich’s lap, and Heimrich stroked the sleek black cat, who purred appreciation. When, after several minutes, Heimrich lifted him down and said, “Thanks for reminding me, Mite,” Mite said “Ya-ah!” and went back under the sofa.
Heimrich looked up a number in the Manhattan telephone directory and dialed that number. The telephone was answered after three rings—answered by a female voice with a purr in it. The purr was gratifying.
“The Wainright apartment?” Heimrich said.
“Yes.” She could get a purr even into “Yes.”
“Is Mr. Wainright in?” Heimrich asked her.
“No,” she said. “Oh, no. They won’t be back until next month. I’m a sublet. They’re up in the country. I can give you their number there. If you’ll wait—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Heimrich said. “I’m a friend of his. From out in Indiana. But I’m only in town for a couple of hours. Sorry to have bothered you, miss.”
He was told that that was perfectly all right. The voice still had a purr in it.
So, Heimrich thought, back in his chair in front of the fire —so, it held together well enough. As a mindful of wisps, with nothing to tie them together; a structure of theory with no foundation under it.
The girls came out again, wearing Susan’s clothes. The skirts came down to the midcalf of each of the slender girls. Susan is a ten, too. But she is a longer ten.
Heimrich stood up when the two came in, with Susan after them.
“I don’t suppose,” Heimrich said, “that either of you noticed the license number of the car that blocked you?”
“Heavens,” Lyle said, “we were being shot at, Inspector.”
“The lights of Miss Mercer’s car were shining on the other car,” Lucy said. “I saw the number. I’m pretty good at remembering numbers, sir. There was a little mud on the license plate. But it was R C and then—” She gave the numbers. The numbers were familiar to Merton Heimrich, to his pleasure but not to his surprise.
“Not R C, Miss Fowler,” Heimrich said. “P C. For Putnam County.”
He told Susan that he hoped they wouldn’t be long.
He had to move the Volks out of the way before he could get the Buick out of the garage. He got wet again.