We All Killed Grandma (4 page)

His eyes got suddenly serious. “Don’t look like that, Rod. My case isn’t like yours—mine was a physical accident, a concussion. Your memory will come back all right,
just like mine did for the events of the day before the accident. Don’t forget mine was a physical injury.”

I didn’t see what the difference would be, but I didn’t like him to look that worried, so I said, “I see, Mr. Henderson. I guess you’re right.”

“But the questions, Rod. What did you want to ask me? Sorry if I went off on a side track.”

“I want to ask you mostly about Monday night. The police—a Lieutenant Smith, to be exact—told me what you’d told them, but I’d like to hear it from you. I’d like to ask some questions farther back, too, but let’s start with Monday night.”

“All right, Rod. Here’s what happened Monday night. I went to bed about eleven o’clock—”

I interrupted. “Do you mind if I interrupt to ask questions? Is that about your usual bedtime?”

“Interrupt all you wish. No, it was a little earlier than usual. I have trouble sleeping most of the time—I’ve probably bored you stiff talking about my insomnia, but now that you don’t remember it, I can bore you all over again. And probably will. But let it go for now that I seldom go to bed before midnight. Tuesday, though, I had two court cases coming up and wanted to get to sleep early if I could, so I went to bed Monday night at about eleven. I was still awake, though, not even sleepy, half an hour later when I thought I heard a shot.”

“A shot? Or two shots?”

“I thought it was just one—and I wasn’t sure of that. My bedroom is on the other side of the house, and what I heard was faint. There might have been two shots for all I know. But it didn’t sound like backfire. I didn’t get up right away—I told myself it must have been just a car backfiring. Only thinking about it got me wider and wider awake—not that I’d been really near going to sleep yet—until finally I got up.”

“Did you look at the clock when you heard the shot? Or shots?”

“No, I didn’t. But I did look at it when I finally decided that I might as well get up. It was twenty to twelve then, and I think it was about ten minutes after I heard it. It wouldn’t have been more than a few minutes off that,
one way or the other. I know about how long ten minutes is, and I was wide awake. I went to a room on the other side of the house and looked out the window toward the window of the room I knew Grandma Tuttle worked in. I guess you know—or have been told—what her working habits, were? She spent from just after a late dinner until midnight or later doing her paper work in that room.”

I nodded. “Arch told me that. But it struck me funny that a woman as old as she was would work those hours. Do you know why?”

“Yes, we discussed it often, Mrs. Tuttle and I. Most old people, Rod, cannot sleep as many hours at a time as younger ones. For her, she told me, five was an absolute limit, so if she had retired at, say ten o’clock she would have awakened at the absurd hour of three in the morning and would have been unable to return to sleep. So she preferred to retire about one and sleep until six. During the afternoon she would take a nap of about three hours, right after lunch, then consider her time her own until after dinner. Then she would work on her books and papers, write letters—she wrote them all in longhand—until about midnight.”

I nodded. Henderson said, “But back to Monday night. It was twenty to twelve by the clock when I got up. I looked out of the window and Grandma’s light was on and I saw nothing wrong. She wasn’t at her desk. My eyes aren’t good for distant vision, but I could see that much. However, I remembered it was about that time she went to the kitchen to get herself a glass of hot milk, so I wasn’t worried. But I was becoming more convinced that the sound I’d heard had been a shot and I knew I wouldn’t go back to sleep right away. I almost went to the phone to call her and then decided I’d wait a few minutes to see if she came back from the kitchen.

“So I went down to my own kitchen and made myself a sandwich and ate it. Couldn’t see her window from there, those little trees are in the way. But I went back upstairs—and it would have been about midnight by then—and looked from the window again and she still wasn’t in her chair at the desk. But of course she might have been in another part of the room, getting papers from the safe,
perhaps, so I was still doubtful whether I should do anything. I remembered a pair of field glasses I have and got them out of the bureau drawer; I looked at the window through them and as soon as I got them focused I could see that the screen had been cut and was bent outward. I knew then, of course, that something was wrong, and I was just going to go to the phone to call the police when I heard footsteps on the sidewalk and looked that way and it was you, just turning in the walk toward the front door. You walked—well, you were a little intoxicated. Not really staggering, but not walking straight either. So I waited a minute before going to the phone. You went into the front door—that is, I saw you go up on the porch so I knew you were going in the front door, and I turned the field glasses back to the window. And a minute or so later you came into my range of vision walking toward the desk.”

“How did I look? Could you see my expression?”

“You looked dazed, stunned, I would say. You picked up the phone and—well that was all I saw because I decided I’d better get dressed and over there. I was in my pajamas, of course, up to then. I went back to the room I’d been sleeping in and started to dress. I was just getting my trousers on when I heard the first squad car coming up with its siren going and by the time I was dressed and out of my house and going up the walk of the Tuttle house, two more cars were pulling up. From the Homicide Department, it turned out.

“There was a policeman from the squad car at the door; he stopped me and made me wait there, and then when I’d explained—and some other detectives came up while I was explaining—who I was and what I’d seen, they took me inside and questioned me in one of the front rooms. But not back to Grandma Tuttle’s office, and I never did see you that night. After a while, when I’d told my story five or six different times, I wanted to see you but they’d taken you down to the station by then. I wanted to go down and see if I could help, but they dissuaded me. And they said that Dr. Eggleston was already on his way down, since you were still somewhat in a state of shock, and that he’d take care of you and probably the fewer other people you saw the better.”

I said, “You’d already done plenty, Mr. Henderson. I knew that your story was one of the things that cleared me, but I hadn’t known the exact details. Thanks a lot.”

He chuckled a little. “Thanks for what? Telling what I happened to see and hear? Don’t be silly, Rod. I only wish I could have done more for you. By the way, what were the other things that cleared you?”

“For one thing,” I told him, “the medical examiner’s report was that she died at half past eleven. That is, he examined her at twelve-thirty and said she’d been dead about an hour. That fitted the time you heard the shot or shots and helped to let me out. Of course I could have killed her then, gone away and come back to discover the crime, but luckily I was seen downtown, three miles away, a few minutes before half past eleven. And by, of all people, a policeman who knew me.”

“A break for you, Rod. Not that anyone would have had any serious suspicion of you, in any case. Who was it? I know quite a few policemen.”

I said, “By crazy coincidence, one of the homicide men who came out here on the call I made. Walter Smith, Lieutenant Walter Smith. He’s on the graveyard shift at the department, starts work cold on the stroke of midnight. And my call was made just after he reported in and went on duty. He’d been in a movie downtown, came out about eleven twenty-five, he says, so he’d have time for a sandwich and coffee before he reported in; he saw me and spoke to me on the sidewalk right in front of the movie; that’s how he’s sure of the time.” I grinned wryly. “And he says I was more than a little drunk. Says he advised me to go home and sleep it off, in a friendly way.”

“You couldn’t have had a better witness.”

“Guess not. What I can’t figure, though, is why I didn’t take his advice. I must have had something in mind in coming out here—I mean to Grandma’s—and I wish I knew what it was. I’d feel a lot easier in my mind if I did.”

“Did you know Arch was out of town, or could you have been coming to see him for any reason?”

“Arch says I might not have known. That is, he says we’d last seen one another several days before and that he thinks he mentioned that he was going to Chicago for a
few days, leaving here Sunday, but he isn’t too sure of it. So I could have come here to see either Arch or Grandma. I suppose I knew her work habits well enough to know she’d be up at that time.”

“I’m sure you did. Well—you’ll remember, eventually. And it’ll probably be something trivial. Meanwhile, Rod, if there’s anything I can do—anything at all— By the way, I suppose it will take a while to probate that will and if you need any money meanwhile, I’ll be more than glad to lend you some.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Don’t think I’ll need any. I’ve got a couple of hundred in the bank, and I should be back at work within a week or so.”

“You’re going back to the advertising agency?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Probably the best thing you can do. I mean, to fit yourself as nearly as possible into the pattern of your former life. Your memory should come back to you sooner, I’d guess, under familiar circumstances than under strange ones. And ask all the questions you can, of everybody, to help orient yourself.”

“Just what I’m doing,” I said. “Mind if I ask you a few about yourself?”

“Of course not, Rod. Let’s do it this way. Tell me how much you know about me from Arch, or other sources, and I’ll go on from there.”

“Well, you’re Vincent R. Henderson; I believe Arch said you are fifty-eight, six years younger than Grandma was. You’re a lawyer, you did some work for her, you were probably her best friend. In fact, I think he said just about her only close friend. Right so far?”

“On the head. Anything more?”

“I believe he said you’re a widower. Is that right?”

“Yes, my wife died six years ago. Well, let’s see; I’ve been a friend of your whole family for twenty years. Started out knowing your father, August Britten, when he moved next door to me at that time. He was a widower, then—your mother, his second wife, had died when you were a toddler, years before. Let’s see—you were about eight years old twenty years ago, Arch was—he’d have been about thirteen. Grandma Tuttle, your mother’s mother, was
living with him, taking care of you children. She’d have been—let’s see, forty-four. That would have been five or six years before your father died.”

“I haven’t got around to asking Arch; what did my father do?”

“Real estate. And after he died, Grandma Tuttle—in her fifties—got the idea of carrying on his business. Not too bad an idea; there wasn’t enough money for her to have raised you kids on. I think his estate was less than ten thousand dollars plus about a half equity in the house; she certainly couldn’t have sent you boys through college on that, let alone have had anything left for her old age. So she dived into real estate with both feet, and everybody was sorry for her and helped her at first—even if they were a little amused at it. Only they quit being amused within a year or so—because she turned out to have a touch of genius at it, and to be crazy about it.”

“How much would you estimate she made?”

“Oh, no great fortune. I’d say she averaged, over the fourteen years she was at it, twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars a year. But that was more than your father had ever made; I doubt if he ever did better than half of that. And she put you boys through college—and died leaving you a lot more money than your dad had left her.”

Arch had told me most of that. I said, “You’re getting away from yourself, Mr. Henderson. Did you do much work for her?”

“At first, all her legal work, helped her get started. Mostly out of friendship, because real estate work isn’t in my line. Insurance work is my real field; I represent most of the bigger insurance companies in town. So when, about ten years ago, my son got his law degree and hung out his shingle I talked Grandma into turning her work over to him. She did, for about five years, and then they had a tiff over some little thing, nothing important—and they never had liked one another very well, I’m afraid—so she quit him and wanted me to do her work for her again. We were pretty close friends by then, so I agreed, and I’ve done it ever since. Oh, not that there was an awful lot of it—just routine stuff—or that I made much money out of it. And I’d rather not have done it, because it wasn’t in my
line and was just a lot of nuisance to me. But I did it out of friendship because she didn’t want anybody else. Not even Andy.”

“Andy? Your son?”

“Yes. Andrew J. You know him—knew him. He’s a couple of years younger than you are, but you used to play together as kids, living next door to one another. But you drifted apart when you each went away to college—different colleges—and I guess you’ve just been casual acquaintances ever since.”

“He lives here with you? Or do you live alone here?”

“Not exactly either, Rod. Andy married six years ago and took a place of his own—he’s made a grandfather out of me since, incidentally. But I have two other children who more or less live with me, and a housekeeper—the one who let you in just now. Both of the other children are away right now on vacations. A younger son, Manfred, twenty, still in college—he’s studying law, too—right now visiting a college pal on Cape Cod. And Alice, twenty-two, visiting for a couple of weeks with friends in Florida. She should be back in a few days. Yes, you knew both of them.”

I said, “Hope I will again, Mr. Henderson.” I stood up. “Well, that’s probably about all I can absorb for one afternoon. Thanks a lot.”

“Not at all, Rod. Come back, anytime, often.”

I went back next door and Mrs. Trent said Arch hadn’t come yet and hadn’t called. But just as I was going down the steps of the front porch his Chevvie convertible drove up and parked in front of the house. He saw me coming and waited behind the wheel.