Dead Run Page 9

  “Was it, Charlie?”

  “Yep. Just as she said.”

  “What was she wearing when she shot Lord? Was seen shooting him?”

  “Dark slacks and a yellow shirt, same as she had on when Connolly and Jones got there. Yellow blouse and dark slacks—dark blue, as it turned out. This is all what I got told, M. L. They’d taken her over to Carmel by the time Jenkins and I got there. Held her overnight, seeing it was a holiday. Charged her as a material witness. She had a lawyer by that time. Not Jackson. Somebody from Brewster. Judge set bail at fifty thousand. She’d put it up and was back home that afternoon. On the fifth, that is.”

  “Only material witness, Charlie? Why not suspicion of homicide, and without bail pending action by the grand jury?”

  Forniss didn’t know. Heimrich would have to ask District Attorney Peters about that

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Well have to ask Mr. Peters about that We’d better go along and see Mrs. Lord, Charlie. Go over the testimony she’s going to give at the trial. The way Mr. Peters told us to.”

  Forniss looked at Heimrich for a long moment before he said, “Did he, M. L.?”

  “Way I remember it,” Heimrich said.

  Forniss drove them on along the narrow road. They passed a driveway with a wooden sign at the foot of it. The sign read: “KEMPER.” A few hundred yards beyond that there was another driveway. This time the sign was of metal, and rather larger. It read: “THE LORDS.” Forniss turned into the drive.

  “By the way, Charlie,” Heimrich said, “happen to know whether Sam Jackson was at this picnic?”

  Forniss didn’t know. It might be the District Attorney’s boys had made a list but he rather doubted it

  Heimrich doubted it too. There’s little point in beating the bushes when the quarry is in plain sight. Stupidly in plain sight of a hundred or so picnickers, even if most of them were not looking.

  No tree limbs lay across the hard-surfaced drive to the Lord house. The driveway twisted itself around a big maple tree, which had lost only twigs and which dripped on them as they passed it. The house was large and white and of no particular style. It did have two tall white pillars in front of it. They supported a porch roof. Doors of a two or three-car garage near the house were closed. There was no sign of life in the house as Forniss parked the police car on the turnaround, headed out.

  “Over there the picnic was,” Forniss said, and pointed. What he pointed to was a lawn area of perhaps two acres—more than an acre certainly. It was a level stretch; the grass, now under slowly melting ice, had been close-mowed. A big oak tree, last summer’s browned leaves clinging tenaciously to it, was near the center of the roughly rectangular area. A large maple grew at one end of the close-mowed area—the end nearest the narrow, dead-ending Hawthorne Drive; hence at the westerly end of the picnic ground. Both trees would have provided shade to sit in on a hot July afternoon.

  Beyond the grassy rectangle was a line of bushes—barbed bushes, Heimrich supposed, making what their purveyors call a living fence. Beyond them, the land rose rather steeply and at the top of the rise was another big white house. There were evergreens in front of this house, partly sheltering it—giving it a hint of privacy.

  “Kemper property beyond the bushes,” Forniss said. “Way I got it, she stood about halfway up the slope to do her shooting. Lord seems to have been on a little platform facing this way while he made his Fourth of July speech. Oration, maybe you’d call it. Mostly little jokes about his guests, somebody told me. Not the grand old flag sort of speech. Sort of folksy, way I got it. With a lot of theater reminiscences thrown in. He’d been a Broadway producer, you know. Still produced now and then. Not so many hits, they say. But he made a pile while the going was good, I guess. Anyway, this setup looks like he’d made a pile some time.”

  “He did musicals mostly,” Heimrich said. “If I’m thinking of the right Lord. A few straight plays. One of them ran almost as long as Life with Father. Four, five years ago that would have been. Probably made everybody concerned quite a bit of money. Let’s see if Mrs. Lord’s at home, Charlie.”

  The doorbell of the big house was answered promptly. It was answered by an elderly man in a black jacket and, rather surprisingly, striped trousers. He thought Mrs. Lord probably was at home. He would ascertain. And who should he say—?

  Heimrich told him who he should say, and that he and Lieutenant Forniss were there at the request of District Attorney Peters. And that they would, he hoped, not need to keep Mrs. Lord long. The man said, “Thank you, Inspector. You can wait inside, if you like. Although Mrs. Lord may still be at breakfast.”

  It was almost eleven thirty by the watch on Heimrich’s wrist. But Mrs. Lord’s breakfast hours were no concern of his. They went into a big foyer. It was pleasantly warm in the large room, which had wide, closed doors on either side of it and a wide staircase mounting out of it. The butler, imported by the sound of his speech, opened the door on the right and went through it and closed it after him. It was very still in the foyer. The noise of the wind, which was whipping outside, did not penetrate. There was a rather ornate lamp on the table near the foot of the staircase. It was lighted. Power on here, apparently. Unless the house had its own generator, which it might well have.

  The man in the black jacket came back into the room. If the gentlemen would please come this way? He held the wide door open.

  Mrs. Amelia Lord was sitting in her living room—drawing room?—in. front of a fire. She was drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. She did not look as if she should be called “Amelia.” Merton Heimrich felt sympathy, from one misnamed to another.

  She was a slim woman in a black dress. She had red-gold hair, very recently styled by someone very good—someone, at a guess, in New York City. Her jawline was firm, untarnished. She might, he thought, be in her fifties. But she had almost pushed ten of those years away.

  Heimrich said he hoped they weren’t intruding and that Mr.

  Peters had asked them to have a word with her. To be sure everything was clear in her mind before—

  “Before that awful woman goes on trial,” Amelia Lord said. “I suppose that’s what you mean. About that day. Why does he think it isn’t all clear in my mind? Horribly clear. It will always be. Always. How could anybody think it wouldn’t be? Clear—and hideous?”

  “I’m sure it is,” Heimrich said. “And I’m sorry—well, to have to bring it up again. But, in his position, Mr. Peters has to be very sure about everybody’s testimony. It’s—well, just a matter of routine.

  She didn’t see what doubt there could be, what could possibly need clarification. “People saw her—saw that bitch—kill Burton,” she said. “Who was her lover. Who broke it off. Jonathan Peters saw it himself. Saw her fire the shot and then run up to her house. What more does anybody need?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Lord,” Heimrich said. “Thing is, a district attorney prosecuting a murder case has to be sure—as sure as he can be—that the defense doesn’t come up with something unexpected, some surprise. Did you, personally, see Mrs. Kemper fire the shot, Mrs. Lord?”

  “Plenty of people did,” she said. “All hell need, surely.” Her voice was soft, modulated. But each word was clear, sharply enunciated. Her voice had not risen, not become strident, even when she called Loren Kemper a bitch. She’s entirely in control, Heimrich thought. Of her mind, of her body, even of her voice. As a well-trained actor needs to be. Had she been an actress, Heimrich wondered? Had she schooled her body and her voice? Appeared, perhaps, in some of her husband’s plays? It wasn’t, of course, important.

  “You yourself, Mrs. Lord. Did you see Mrs. Kemper shoot your husband?”

  She didn’t see what difference it made, since so many had. But no, she hadn’t actually seen the shot fired. She had had to go into the house. “To see about some things.” Heimrich waited, a little noticeably.

  “It wasn’t anything really important,” Amelia Lord said. “But I

  was the hostess,
after all. Most people brought their own food, of course. Some brought enough for a dozen people. And the men Mr. Lord had up from the city—to tend bar and that sort of thing—did almost all there was to be done. Still, I had to keep an eye on things. You can see that, can’t you, Inspector?”

  She sounded, Heimrich thought, a little defensive. Because she had walked out on her husband’s speech—his last speech—to see about some things? Possibly.

  “We were running out of ice,” she said. “The men we’d hired brought some with them, of course. But it was a hot day, a terribly hot day, and almost everybody was having long drinks. We provided the drinks, of course. Alan had gone in to get some more ice, out of those bag machines, you know, but it was taking him longer than I’d thought it would. So I went to check. He might have come back without my seeing him, you see. And it really seemed—well, almost an emergency. A trivial thing like that, on that terrible, dreadful day.”

  Her beautifully controlled voice faltered just perceptibly. She said, “I’m sorry, Inspector. It—things keep coming back. Awful things.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Lord. And I’m sorry I have to bring them back. But one of the things Mr. Peters found he wasn’t entirely clear about was why you had gone into the house while your husband was still speaking. One of the things he wanted me to clear up. You have cleared it up, of course. Had Alan come back with the ice, Mrs. Lord? Not that it matters, naturally.”

  “No. He’d had to go way beyond Cold Harbor before he found a machine with ice in it. The one in the shopping center was empty. It was such a hot day, you know. He had to go clear through town to the Gulf station on the other side, and the traffic was bad. And even there, he got the last two bags. By the time he got back, well, people were beginning to leave, you know. Because Burton was—dead.” She looked into the lively fire for some seconds. Then she said “Dead” again. And her voice was dead.

  Once more, Heimrich said he was sorry, that he realized how hard this must be for her. She merely nodded her head to show that she had heard him. Then she lighted a fresh cigarette from the

  stub of the old. She ground out the butt of the finished cigarette, very slowly and very carefully.

  “There’s just one thing,” Heimrich said. “Probably Mr. Peters knows already and anyway it doesn’t matter. Who is Alan, Mrs. Lord? The man who let us in?”

  “No. The butler’s named Carson. Alan is my son, Inspector. Alan Lord. Legally Lord. Burton adopted him after we were married. I’d divorced his real father. George Nolan, his father was. Is, actually. He’s still writing that column of his. Attacking people still, I suppose. Of course, I never read it now. Or see him. It must be six or seven years since I’ve laid eyes on George.”

  Heimrich ran the name through his memory. At first, nothing came of this. George Nolan? Nothing. Then a glimmer of something. A syndicated newspaper columnist? The Times? No. The Times had only its own columnists. It didn’t syndicate them. The Daily News, then? It didn’t feel right. The Nolan stirring faintly in his memory was a liberal—what conservatives, for no apparent reason, referred to as a “so-called liberal.” Therefore not, most obviously not, The New York Daily News. Which left the Post and the big Long Island paper. Heimrich seldom saw the Post, never the paper published on Long Island. Somebody had mentioned Nolan to Heimrich, or in Heimrich’s hearing. Mentioned him favorably, it felt like. Sam Jackson? It was possible; it was even probable. Jackson had been one of the few liberals, so-called or otherwise, in Van Brunt. He had even been a Democrat, which was almost unheard of.

  The mind wanders, in search of wraiths. He brought it back.

  “By the way, Mrs. Lord, was a Mr. Jackson one of the guests at the picnic?” Heimrich asked, and stood up.

  She said, “Jackson?”

  “Samuel Jackson. A lawyer in Van Brunt.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t really know, Inspector. It was Burton who invited people—most of them, anyway. Most of them from New York. People we’d known in the theater. Some locals, of course. Neighbors we’d met since we’d moved here. Five years ago, that was. And had it done over, of course. It’s an old house, you know.

  Inside it was—well, drab. Little squinchy windows. Burton had three rooms put together to make this one.”

  His was not the only mind to go its own wayward course, Merton Heimrich thought. He looked around the big room—forty feet by twenty, at a guess. And with a picture window making up a good part of one wall. A window which overlooked the picnic ground, and gave a good view of the Kemper house on its not-toodistant hill. Not the kind of room native to old Hudson Valley houses. A somewhat stagey room? Mind wandering again? Apparently.

  Amelia Lord, facing the fire, had her back to the window.

  “Samuel Jackson,” she said, speaking to the fire. “Haven’t I heard—Oh! Isn’t a lawyer named Jackson defending the woman, the awful woman, who killed Burton?” She looked at Heimrich then.

  “Yes, Mrs. Lord. Sam Jackson was Mrs. Kemper’s lawyer.”

  “Why would he do that? Why would anyone? Everybody knows she’s guilty. Everybody. He must be—oh, some kind of shyster. Burton would never invite a man like that here.”

  “Sam Jackson wasn’t a shyster,” Heimrich told her. “He was a very highly respected lawyer. His family has been in these parts for generations. And we may never know why he took Mrs. Kemper’s case. We can’t ask him because, you see, he was killed last night. In an automobile accident. You don’t remember his having been at the picnic on the Fourth of July?”

  She shook her head.

  “No. What did he look like, Inspector? He could have been here, I suppose. There were so many people. I didn’t really know them all. People Burton knew from way back. Some of them I merely knew by name—by reputation. Actors, directors, set designers, some of them before my time. And, I suppose, people he’d just met recently and invited—oh, on the spur of the moment. He liked big parties, you know. And he loved this place of ours, and loved people to come and see it. And, of course, he did know so many people. And when he invited people, they were always glad to come. After all, he was Burton Lord.”

  “And a very celebrated man,” Heimrich said, adding what she had not quite said.

  “A wonderful man,” she told him. “A genius, really.”

  Heimrich had not quite expected that, but he nodded his head, indicating accord. He said that that would be all they needed to trouble her about, and that they were sorry they had had to trouble her at all; to make her think about the past.

  “Yes,” she said, and stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. She moved fluently. “I am trying to forget that awful day,” she said. “I even invited some friends here for dinner last night. The first time since last summer I’ve felt—well, up to seeing anybody. And then, that storm. I’d only asked twelve—just a very little dinner party, really. And four of them couldn’t get here because of the ice. And the electricity was out all around here, Carson tells me. I hadn’t realized it was that bad.”

  It seemed to Heimrich that, although she had not much wanted to see them, she now was loath to have them go. A woman lonely in a too big house, he thought. (A big house with, obviously, its own electric generator.) He said that it had been a bad night, but that the ice was thawing now. He said, “Your son isn’t around, Mrs. Lord?”

  “No, he’s off somewhere with friends. You didn’t want to see him, did you, Inspector? As I told you, he wasn’t even here when his father was killed.”

  “No, there’s nothing we need to see your son about. Nothing he could add, obviously. I—oh, I was just afraid we’d upset you. Might want somebody around. No, we’ve nothing to ask your son, Mrs. Lord. The District Attorney just wanted us to talk to you. To make sure he had everything straight. Had the whole picture. We have it now. And I’m sorry we had to bother you about it.”

  It was all right, she told him. And she did understand Mr. Peters had to make sure about everything, with the trial so close. The second of January it was to start, wasn�
��t it?

  That was the schedule, Heimrich told her. The death of Mr. Jackson might make a postponement necessary. The new defense lawyer, whoever she got, would almost certainly ask for one.

  “I don’t see how she’ll be able to get anyone,” Mrs. Lord said. “I

  really don’t. People saw her fire the rifle. I don’t see how she got

  this Jackson man, if he’s as reputable as you say he is.”

  But her voice remained modulated. And Carson would show them out.

  Carson did. He thanked them for the privilege.

  Chapter 8

  In the car, Forniss said, “Where now?” and Heimrich looked at his watch. It was a few minutes after noon. He said they might as well go back to the Old Stone Inn. Perhaps young Purvis had come across a station wagon. Or perhaps somebody else had, and would expect them to be at the inn.

  “About time somebody found something,” Forniss said. “Can’t see that we did from Mrs. Lord, can you?”

  Heimrich agreed that Amelia Lord hadn’t helped them much. It could be they were on the wrong track entirely. But it was the only track he could see they had. “Until,” he said, “we find this damn station wagon.”

  They went down the curving drive, around the big maple tree. They edged around the fallen branch on Hawthorne Drive. Most of the ice had gone from Hawthorne Drive. NY 11F was dry, except for a few spots in heavy shade. The sun was high and bright, but the northwest wind was cold. The night before Christmas would be a cold night, if not a white one.

  The traffic lights in Cold Harbor were going about their business, which seemed to be to stop the police car. Red stopped them at each of Cold Harbor’s three lights. It stopped them again in Van Brunt, at The Corners. It didn’t matter too much; Heimrich couldn’t see that they were going much of anywhere. Of course, things might open up. One could always hope they would.