It was probably the way it looked, Heimrich thought. Probably it was as simple as it looked—as simple and as old-fashioned. He smiled inwardly at his choice of the term. It would be a good thing all around if there were no more gunmen for hire, and no racket men to hire them, and no gamblers to care whether a point was kicked after touchdown. But these old-fashioned conditions still existed, and this was likely nothing more complex than the erasure of a man who knew too much.
Find the loose ends, Heimrich thought. Tie them into knots. Say, “Come along, Stahlman. Maybe it will help you if you tell us who hired you,” knowing that it wouldn’t help Stahlman at all, and knowing Stahlman would know it wouldn’t. One of the loose ends might be here, Heimrich thought, and turned his car into a driveway, and steered it past a sign which read: WILLOW POND GOLF AND TENNIS CLUB. MEMBERS ONLY. He nosed the car into a gap between other cars. Twenty or thirty cars in the lot; busy for a weekday afternoon. On the other hand, a Friday afternoon. For a good many in the North Wellwoods of the country, Fridays aren’t weekdays any more. Sergeant Charles Forniss got out of a car several down the line and walked to Heimrich’s car and got in beside him. Forniss said, “No soap, M. L.”
The “no soap” had several aspects. A county judge had signed an order permitting the state police to open, and look into (but not remove from) a safe deposit box rented by Stuart Fleming in a Brewster bank. It had been rented the previous October. The records showed that Fleming had not visited the vault since he rented the box and put into it whatever he had put into it. This fact indicated that looking into it now would be a waste of time, but it had been looked into anyway. It had contained a hundred shares of a mutual fund; an insurance policy for five thousand dollars with Angus Fleming named as beneficiary; an automobile insurance policy, including adequate liability coverage; two photostats of a birth certificate which proved that Stuart Fleming had been born in 1938 in the county of Westchester, state of New York, and a certificate assuring all who might be concerned that Stuart Fleming was licensed to practice law in New York State.
“No will?” Heimrich said, and Forniss said, “Nope. Who makes a will when he’s in his twenties? Unless he’s loaded. Fleming doesn’t look like having been.”
Which was that, in Brewster. Here at the club, pickings had been as lean. There was a grounds superintendent, and he lived in a two-room cottage on a lane which marked the northern boundary of the club, and from it he could see the clubhouse and the windows of the two rooms on the top floor in which Steele was quartered during the season. He thought he had seen lights on behind one of the windows about ten o’clock the night before. Only maybe it was the night before that. Sure, Steele had a key to the clubhouse. He lived in the clubhouse, didn’t he? No, he couldn’t, from his place, see the door Steele had a key for; and, sure, Steele could have come and gone any time he chose, and come and gone unnoticed.
“Nobody else stays at the place overnight this time of year,” Forniss said. “Not actually open yet. Bar is, from noon Friday until after lunch Sunday. Somebody comes in to make sandwiches. First of May a chef moves in and a full-time bartender moves in. They live on the third floor, like Steele. Same time, Miss Alicia Stett—she’s the club manager—moves in. She’s got a couple of rooms on the second floor.”
“Steele’s rooms?”
“He’s around,” Forniss said. “Told him we were going to look through his rooms, unless he wanted to make something of it, in which case we’d get a search warrant. There weren’t any women around, so you can guess what he said. But when I said that that wasn’t what we had in mind, he said to do what we damn well liked, so I did.”
Two rooms, both small; a bath outside but near by; one probably shared by the chef and bartender when in residence. Furnished adequately enough, with things which probably had seen better days on lower floors. A couple of pairs of slacks and a tweed jacket; several pairs of walking shorts; a blue business suit which had been around a while; two dress shirts and a pile of conservative sports shirts; the other things one would expect.
These in one of the two rooms. In the other, no signs of recent occupancy. Nowhere any sign of female occupancy, recent or otherwise.
“No incriminating documents?” Heimrich said. “No thirty-eight automatic?”
“Can’t have everything, can we?” Forniss said. “Come to that, anything. Nope. Anything from New York? Or Florida?”
Heimrich told his sergeant what there was from Florida and Forniss said, “My, my.” He added that that end, at any rate, hooked up.
“Leaving this end flapping,” Heimrich said.
“Stuart Fleming told his brother and his brother’s wife more than they’re saying,” Forniss said. “She, or he, told somebody else, who told our Stahlman-Steele, who told Pagoni, who said to Stahlman-Steele, ‘Since you’re on the spot, you may as well do the cooling.’ Neat, that way.”
“Now, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “This business about Steele’s wife and Stuart Fleming?”
“Window dressing. We’re the stupid cops you read about. We say, ‘A man doesn’t come around making loud threats to beat up a man he’s already killed.’”
“Why go to the trouble, Charlie? Why not just sit tight?”
“He knows Fleming made this squeal to the D.A. Knows somebody’ll be nosing around. Like our Mr. Shapiro. A very depressed character, our Mr. Shapiro.”
Heimrich said, “Very.”
“And that sooner or later he’ll be pegged as Stahlman and that even dumb cops will prick up their ears. So, louse up the picture before there is a picture. Having, probably, filled his wife in. On how Fleming was making passes. And so forth and so forth.”
“Foresighted,” Heimrich said. “On the other hand, Charlie, he seems to have blundered around a good deal when he was on the cops. Blundered into trouble.”
“He’s lived and learned,” Forniss said.
“Perhaps,” Heimrich said. “We need more bits and pieces. This Enid Fleming. Think we can jog her memory?”
Forniss shrugged heavy shoulders. He said that if you jogged a memory, there was no telling what would fall out of it. Or what the jogged siftings would be worth. He said, “Our friend Shapiro. Gone back to town?”
“Gone to have a little chat with Steele’s wife,” Heimrich said. “Stuart Fleming may have talked to other people, Charlie. Want to ask around? While I drive over and try jogging his sister-in-law’s memory?”
“Yep,” Forniss said. “Only, you don’t need to drive over. She’s here. She and her husband. Came about half an hour before you did. He looks like the wrath of God, M. L. Like a man who ought to be home in bed.”
“She?”
“Full of beans, at a guess. Trying not to show it. Dressed to play golf. Put her bag in one of those gimmicks.”
He pointed toward the gimmicks—four caddy carts, conveniently at the edge of the parking lot.
“Trundled it off that way.” He pointed toward a gap in the hedges which separated the lot from the brown-shingled clubhouse. “More or less trundled the poor guy too.”
He opened the car door and got out. Heimrich said, “Remember Professor Brinkley?” and Forniss said, “Yep.”
“He might give you some leads. Lived around here a long time. People interest him.”
Forniss said, “Yep,” again, and walked toward his own car. If you’ve known a man for many years, even his movements tell you things about his mood. Charlie Forniss didn’t, Heimrich thought, walk like a man who thought he was really going anywhere. Charlie thought they already had their man. The chances were that Charlie was right.
Heimrich went through the gap in the hedge, and came out on a shaded lawn, with the grass a little in need of cutting, as grass is likely to be in mid-April. Beyond the lawn was an extensive flagstone terrace, dotted with tables. There were four women at one of the tables, drinking long drinks. They were middle-aged and sturdy and looked rather as if they had been kiln-dried. They wore cleated shoes. Two much younger women sat at another table, and they were dressed for tennis and one of them had a carrying voice. “Probably in August,” she said, with bitterness. “Probably in August they’ll be ready. And then we’ll have all the time till Labor Day. Yah.”
Courts not ready yet, Heimrich thought. He felt sympathy. The courts weren’t ready in Van Brunt, either. At most country clubs, tennis players lead second-rate lives.
A tall man sat alone at a table, with a drink in front of him. He was looking away at nothing. He wore a dark sports jacket, which hung on him loosely, and gray slacks. He was very pale.
Heimrich walked over to the table and the man did not look at him. The man looked away, across the terrace. Looking that way, he looked at the golf house and to one side of it, at the first tee. On the first tee, a young woman took practice swings and drove, and a young man watched her.
Heimrich said, “Mr. Fleming?” and slowly, with no interest, the thin man turned his head and looked up at Heimrich. After looking at him for some seconds, the thin man said, “Yes.” All the strength the man had left seemed to be in his voice. Heimrich told Angus Fleming who he was. After another pause, Fleming said, “So?”
“About your brother,” Heimrich said. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
“Everybody’s so damned sorry,” Angus Fleming said. He spoke with no special bitterness; he stated an obvious fact. “We told the others what little we had to tell.”
“That he had spoken to you about this information he’d come on,” Heimrich said. “That Mrs. Fleming thought she might have told somebody here at the club a little about it. Which would have been quite natural, of course. That you were fairly sure you had said nothing to anybody.”
“They got it right,” Fleming said. “This sergeant and this other officer—they got it right. So what more is there?”
“Now, Mr. Fleming,” Heimrich said. “For one thing, the chance your wife may have remembered the name of the friend she may have told about this information your brother had.”
Heimrich pulled out a chair and sat down.
“She may have,” Fleming said. “She hadn’t earlier. If you want to chase her around the course, you can ask her.”
He lifted a thin, pale hand and pointed. The hand shook a little. He pointed toward the young man and young woman who, now, were walking away from the tee. They both walked well, walked lithely.
“We haven’t talked about it,” Fleming said. “After your men were at the house, I rested. I rest a good deal nowadays. You said your name is Heimrich?”
“Yes.”
“Seems to me there was somebody—thinnish, attractive young woman. Last summer? Wait a minute—about the curtains?”
“Yes,” Heimrich said. “My wife. Susan Faye Fabrics.”
But after Heimrich had said “Yes,” he thought the man opposite him had quit listening. There had been, in a mind darkly absorbed, a ripple of interest. The ripple had flattened. The mind had gone back to its dark absorption.
“About your brother,” Heimrich said, and waited until, again, the man slowly turned his head. “Do you know anything about his relationship with Mrs. Steele? The pro’s wife?”
“She worked for him,” Fleming said. “He opened an office here. God knows why. She worked for him. You mean something else, captain?”
“Now, Mr. Fleming. Whether there was anything else.”
“She’s a pretty thing. Stu liked pretty things. Most men do. You do yourself. Married one.”
Not as a pretty thing, Heimrich thought—the thought a flicker across his mind. I didn’t even, at first, think she was—
“You’ll have to ask her,” Fleming said.
“She’s being asked. Steele seems to think there was something.”
“So Steele killed him?”
“Perhaps. You knew nothing about an—attachment?”
“Nothing. I was Stu’s brother, not his confessor. He’s—he was a young, healthy man. She’s a pretty young woman and didn’t, when she was living here at the club with Steele, look particularly contented. I’m not the one to ask, captain. To ask—anything.”
He was looking fully at Heimrich now, out of sunken dark eyes.
“I’m a man who’s brought out to sit in the fresh air,” he said. “Because the housekeeper quit a few days ago and there’s nobody to—” He stopped. Then, very bitterly, he said, “To baby-sit me.
There did not seem to be anything to say to that, and the dying man kept looking at him. Then, quite suddenly, the man’s expression changed, and he shook his head slowly and said, “I’m sorry, captain.”
There wasn’t anything to say to that, either. Angus Fleming looked away again, toward the first tee again. There were two men there now. One of them was teeing up while the other watched him. The young man and the young woman were no longer in sight. Enid Fleming and a young man who wasn’t dying; wasn’t brought along to a place where there were people to keep an eye on him, because sometimes victims of leukemia die suddenly.
“Have you any idea why somebody would want to kill your brother, Mr. Fleming? Aside from—”
Fleming turned, interrupted. It was amazing how strong his voice was. He said, “How many reasons do you want, captain?” and then, without waiting for an answer, held one frail, shaking hand above the table. He brought the thumb of the hand down on the table, using it as the marker in a count.
“He knew something about an attempted fix and gamblers had him killed,” Fleming said. He brought the index finger down beside the thumb. “He was playing around with Steele’s wife and Steele killed him. He—what else? What more do you need? He was only killed once.”
And when he said that his strong voice was, momentarily, uncertain—shook as his hands shook and his body shook with weakness. Before Heimrich said anything, Fleming said, “I was fond of my brother. He was much younger. When we were both younger I was—I suppose you’d call it protective. Do we have to go on with this?”
“It has to be gone on with,” Heimrich said. “You know that. If you’re too tired…”
“I won’t be rested,” Fleming said. “Not ever, captain. Didn’t anybody tell you that?” He waited a moment. “I see somebody did,” he said. “Well—you’ve got two motives. You want more?”
“I want,” Heimrich said, “to find out everything I can. That’s my job. Did your brother have money?”
“Ten thousand a year,” Fleming said. “What he may have earned as a lawyer, which wasn’t much. The ten thousand is from a trust fund and the trust reverts to me. I didn’t kill my brother for his money, captain.”
“The trust fund?”
Anybody could tell him, Fleming said, and as he went on the vigor died out of his voice again. The trust fund had been set up under their father’s will. The principal would have gone to Stuart Fleming when he reached thirty. “If,” Angus Fleming said, “he’d been a good boy.” He said that with some bitterness and paused and looked again toward the golf course. The two men were walking away from the tee; a foursome was clustering around it.
“You asked about Stu and women,” Angus said. “By implication, anyway. I said he liked pretty girls. He—well, he made what he himself would have called a ‘thing’ of it. Not very wisely—several times not wisely at all. My father was—call it a very moral man. Especially for others; especially for his family. He used old-fashioned words. One of them was ‘libertine.’ He decided that that was what Stu was.” He paused. He said that he supposed the word was as good as any other; he said that Stu had been, to use another word, a chaser.
“While Stu was at law school,” Angus Fleming said, “he got himself in a considerable jam. It involved the wife of a professor and—well, it was messy. The husband wasn’t a man to hush things up. My father was—took a very moral attitude. He’d had to bail Stu out once or twice before. He—”
Again the man stopped and looked toward the golf course. When he spoke again, he did not look at Heimrich.
“Stu was a good-looking man,” he said. “A kind of strength seemed to emanate from him. Women were—call it responsive. Call it co-operative. I doubt if many of his chases were very long chases. I know there was nothing—nothing vicious in Stu. No desire to harm. But Father—”
Lance Fleming, the father, had changed his will. Before that his estate had been divided equally between his two sons, who were his only living relatives. In the new will, Stuart’s half was put into a trust fund from which Stuart was to receive only ten thousand a year until he was thirty. The trust was revocable by the decision of any two of the three executors, at their discretion in-
Angus Fleming turned back to Heimrich.
“—in the event,” he said, “of further misbehavior. A word to use, wasn’t it? About a grown man. The executors are—were—fully at liberty to decide what constituted misbehavior. One of them was—still is—a man who looks at things much as Father did. Another is the lawyer who drew up the will. He handles the legal affairs of old Higby. Which are considerable. Higby—the one who thinks like my father, talks like him—is a dominating man. I’m the third executor. I would have been outvoted.”
Since his father died, Stuart had been, so far as Angus knew, a “good boy.” “Or a careful boy.” The previous summer, while Stuart was still living in New York, he had come up several times for Saturday night dances at the club, and each time brought a different girl. Stuart and his girl of that week had been house guests of his brother and sister-in-law. “All,” Angus said, “very properly according to Hoyle.”
“If your brother had been playing around with Mrs. Steele?”
“If they got caught at it,” Angus said. “Misbehavior as stipulated. Oh, I’d have squared it in the end. The trust reversion to me is absolute. I could make a will. Have made a will, as a matter of fact. It makes things up to Stu. Was to have done that. Now I’ll have to…”
His voice had grown progressively less vigorous. Now it trailed off.
“Doesn’t get you anywhere, does it?” Angus Fleming said, in a faint voice. “To shut him up. Because of somebody’s jealousy. But not for money.” He did not look at Heimrich. He lifted the glass he had not touched while Heimrich had sat with him and watched it shake in his shaking hand. “Tired,” Angus Fleming said, apparently to the shaking hand.
Heimrich stood up. He said he was sorry to have had to bother Angus Fleming.
“Waste of time, wasn’t it?” Fleming said dimly, to the glass.
There was one other thing, Heimrich told him. There was a club member named Isabel. A woman with reddish hair.
“Bryce,” Fleming said. “Isabel Bryce. Friend of Enid’s.”
“Close friend?”
Fleming put the glass down and looked at Heimrich and the strength which ebbed and flowed in his voice flowed into it.
“Could be,” he said. “As women have them. She’s probably taking a lesson now.” He paused. “She takes a good many lessons, I’ve heard,” he said. Then he put his glass down on the table, and his elbows on the table, and rested his head in his hands.
Probably Fleming was right, Heimrich thought, walking across the terrace in the direction of the parking lot. Probably a waste of time. Stuart Fleming had been a chaser. The habit had got him in trouble. Conceivably, it might have got him killed. But there was nothing new in that. He had had no money. There was not really anything new in that.
He was at the edge of the terrace and, for no special reason, looked toward the golf house. Robert Steele was going into it, carrying a putter. A woman in shorts and golf shirt—a solidly built woman, but smoothly built—was walking from the golf house toward the terrace. She had reddish hair, which was bright in the sun. She looked to be about thirty.
Heimrich walked back along the terrace to a point where he would intercept the woman with reddish hair. He waited there and when she was close enough he said, “Mrs. Bryce?”
She looked up at him.
“Yes,” she said. She continued to look at him. “You’re certainly a big one, aren’t you?” Isabel Bryce said.