The Good Old Stuff

From Some Hidden Grave (aka The Lady Is a Corpse!)

Park Falkner took a deep breath, exhaled half of it, squeezed the trigger slowly. The rifle spat, a sound as vicious as an angry wasp. Far out across the dancing blue water of the Gulf the glint of the can jerked, disappeared.

“Enough,” he said. He stood the rifle in the corner of the private terrace that opened off his bedroom, the highest terrace of the vast gleaming-white fortress that dominated the two-mile sandspit called Grouper Island, and sometimes Falkner Island.

He stretched and yawned. He was a tall, spare, rock-hard man in his mid-thirties. A tropical disease had eliminated, forever, hair, eyebrows, lashes. His eyes were a startling pale shade against the sun-glossed mahogany of skin. There was a touch of cruelty in the beaked nose and set of the mouth, and humor as well. He wore a faded Singhalese sarong, knotted at the waist.

“I should think it is enough,” Taffy Angus said, in her hoarse gamin voice.

She stood on her hands, her heels against the wall of the house, her white hair hanging in fluid lines to the terrace tiles. She wore a bandanna as a halter, and the jeans, salt-faded to powder blue, were hacked off raggedly at knee length. The position brought a flush under her tan.

“Does that make you a junior leaguer?” Falkner asked.

“Don’t be nasty, darling,” she said. She dropped onto hands and toes, came gracefully up onto her feet. “I’m an old, old gal, as you well know, and a daily handstand has therapeutic values.”

Falkner looked at her admiringly. “Bless you! You’re my favorite neighbor. When I forget you’re forty-two I feel like a cradle snatcher.”

“In my prime, I came a little after the Gibson Girl, Park. But just to change the subject, how about those people who are coming?”

Park looked at his watch. “The cocktail hour approacheth. Go prettify thyself, wench.”

She bowed low. “Sire!” she breathed. Her lips thinned a little. “Park, just for the record — couldn’t we drop the Mussolini edict about living dangerously and grow fat and happy in the sunshine on your money? These people you ask here...”

They had walked to the hallway door. He opened it and gently shoved her through.

“Okay, okay.” She sighed. “I never opened my fool mouth.”

Falkner shut the door. His smile faded. Taffy knew as well as he did what had happened those times he had tried stagnation. He had grown restless, irritable. There was no point in trying to add to the fund, which was more than he could possibly spend in his lifetime. The company of the equally affluent brought a sickening boredom. And so life had to be spiced by the house parties. An amateur cop or a god of vengeance. Take your choice. Flip a coin. When there’s guilt in the air it can be scented, as an animal scents the odor of fear. He looked along the beach to the spot where one of his houseguests, Carl Branneck, had killed Laura Hale. For a moment there was revulsion in him, and he wanted to call his newest house party off. Then he remembered the report from the New York agency and his interest began to quicken.

He crossed the big room to the built-in record player. He pondered. Atonal stuff would probably help tension along better than anything traditional. He selected two hours of Milhaud, Schönberg, and Antheil, stacked them on the spindle, cut in the amplifiers of the sea-level terrace, where they would have cocktails, and the amplifiers in the east garden, and then adjusted the volume down for background.

The only thing in the big room not suitable to a practicing Sybarite was the hard, narrow cot on which he slept. There were deep couches, a massive gray stone fireplace, paintings of a certain freedom in deep niches, softly lighted.

He untied the sarong, dropped it, stepped out of it. The shower stall was big enough to hold a seven-handed poker game. The dressing room adjoined the bath. As he was toweling himself he heard the descending roar of the amphib. That would be Lew Cherezack flying in the ladies, right on schedule.

He selected a gray casual shirt, trousers of a deeper shade of gray. As he walked from the dressing room into the bedroom he heard Lew’s knock at the door.

Lew came in, his boxer pup’s face slyly wrinkled. He turned with an expansive gesture. “Look what I got!”

A blonde and a brunette. Both tall and grave, with knowing eyes, sweet, wise mouths. “The blonde,” Lew said, “is Georgie Wane. Blackie is called June Luce. Say hello to the boss, girls.”

“How do you do, Mr. Falkner,” they said gravely, almost in unison.”

“Nice to see you. You know what the job is?”

Georgie, the blonde, turned spokesman. “If the job includes anything over and above what Mr. Empiro stated, Mr. Falkner, the deal is off. I want that understood.”

Park grinned. “I left out a few details, but nothing either of you will balk at. Four young men are coming to visit me. They should be along any minute now. You are each being paid two hundred dollars a day. I want you to be as charming as possible to my guests, and I insist that they be kept in ignorance of the fact that I’m paying you. Now here’s the additional instruction. There are two of you and four young men. Both of you are lovely enough to have learned how to handle men. I want them played off against each other. I want their beautiful friendship split up in any way you can manage it. Each night, at twelve, you go off duty, as far as I am concerned. Lew will show you your rooms right now. The doors lock. You have the freedom of the place. We’re well equipped for amusement here. Tennis, badminton, swimming — in the Gulf and in the pool. There is only one restriction. I do not want either of you to leave the island until, in my opinion, the job is done.”

“Fair enough,” June Luce said. “But who are we supposed to be?”

Park grinned. “Call yourselves nieces of mine. That ought to spice their imaginations a little.”

When Lew took them out, Falkner went down two flights to the kitchens. Mrs. Mick Rogers, cook and wife of the battered ex-pug who was Park’s man of all work, smiled at him. Francie, the doughy little maid, was at one of the worktables finishing the construction of a tray of canapés.

“Set for the deluge, Mrs. Mick?” Falkner asked.

“What’s eight people, counting yourself? A nothing. Practice, yet.”

Just then Mick drove in across the private causeway from the mainland with the station wagon. Park walked out the side door of the smaller kitchen and across to the parking space. Mick slid neatly to a stop.

The first one got out, looked hesitantly at Falkner. “I–I’m Bill Hewett. Are you the host?”

Hewett was tall, frail, gangly. Physically he seemed barely out of his adolescence, but his pale-blue eyes were knowing and there was a downward sardonic twist about his wide mouth.

“Glad to see you, Hewett. Let me see. You’re the copywriter, aren’t you?”

“Right. With Lanteen, Soran and Howliss. I write deathless prose for TV commercials. And this is Prine Smith, our newspaperman.”

Prine was dark, stocky, muscular, with a square strong jaw and an aggressive handshake. He said, “We’re pretty much in the dark about all this, Falkner, and—”

Park smiled. “Let’s talk about it over cocktails.”

Hewett broke in. “And this is the actor in the group. Guy Darana.”

Guy was tall, with a superb body, classic profile, brown, tightly curled hair. But there was a vacant docility about his expression, an aimless childlike amiability in his eyes.

“Howya,” he said softly in the richest of baritones.

The fourth and last was a wiry redhead with pointed features, a jittery hyperthyroid manner. “You hear that?” he said. “The actor in the group, he calls Darana. What about me? What about Stacey Brian? I make with the voice on the radio. Character parts. I work at it. All that hunk has to do is revolve slowly to give them a look at both sides of the profile.”

“Radio is a dying medium,” Darana said languidly.

Falkner sensed that it was an old argument. He shook hands with Stacey Brian. Mick Rogers was taking the luggage from the tailgate.

“We’ll take our own stuff up. Don’t bother,” Hewett said.

“Mick, you show them their rooms,” Park said. “As soon as you all freshen up, find your way down to that front terrace. You can see it from here.”

Falkner went back up to his room, started the music, went back down to the front terrace. Mick had already changed to white jacket, and he was putting the small terrace bar in order.

“Jittery as hell,” Mick said. “All of them. And seven thousand questions. I didn’t know nothing.”

“Make the drinks heavy for the boys, Mick. And light for our two new women.”

“Festivities about to begin?” Taffy said, close behind him. Park turned. She wore a white blouse pulled down off her deeply tanned shoulders. The gay skirt swung as she walked. A hammered-silver Aztec bracelet looked impossibly heavy on her slim wrist. Her white hair was a purer form of silver, heavy, thick, molten, alive.

“Jezebel,” he whispered. “Lilith! Krithna of the purple seas.”

“Don’t mind me,” Mick said.

“This,” said Taffy, “is what you get for inviting little girls who could be my daughters. I have to keep up my morale.”

There was no more time for talk then because Stacey Brian came out onto the terrace. The sun was slipping toward the blue Gulf. The others came, were introduced. Mick was chanting, “Step up and name it and I can make it. They go down like honey and then kick you behind the ear.” Taffy sat on the wall and looked smug. She made Georgie and June look awkward and young, and she made the others look. She winked solemnly at Park Falkner.

Conversation was general, polite, aimless. Georgie Wane had inconspicuously drifted to the side of Guy Darana. He looked at her with mild, sleepy approval.

June Luce said in a silky soft voice, “Miss Angus, I must tell you. My mother took me to see you in Time for Play — oh, ages ago! I think I was six at the time. That was before you became such a successful model, wasn’t it?”

Park concealed his grin by taking a drink. June looked with rapt interest at Taffy. Taffy looked puzzled. She said, “My goodness! Now I know I’m ancient! I’ve just forgotten how to make kitty-talk. Why, if you’d said anything like that to me five years ago I’d have thought of some nasty-nice way to call attention to the way you’re letting yourself get—” She stopped. “Oh, I mustn’t be rude. I’m sorry.” She beamed at June.

June’s eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing, sister,” Mick said. “You’re a nice dish. You just ain’t bright. You challenged the champ. Now shut up, or she’ll make you so mad you’ll be sick to your stomach and she’ll just sit here grinning at you.”

Taffy pouted. “He never lets me have any fun.”

Prine Smith walked scowling over to Park, planted his feet, his stocky legs spread, his square hand holding the cocktail glass. “Look!” he said. “I don’t go for cat-and-mouse games. Maybe I’m not properly civilized. So you’re a big enough shot to get strings pulled to get us all off at the same time. So you play on curiosity in a smart enough way to get us all down here, expenses paid. You’re out after laughs, Falkner. Let’s blow away the smoke screen and talk sense for a minute.”

“Glad to,” Park said. “I guess I’m just a nosy type. I like mysteries. Nine months ago the four of you lived in a big apartment in the Village, two blocks from Sheridan Square. You’ve split up now, but that was the status quo. Hewett had a girl friend, lovely from all reports, named Lisa Mann. On a hot afternoon, June fourth to be exact, Lisa Mann, using a key that Hewett had given her, let herself into the apartment. A girl named Alicia French happened to see her. Alicia lived in the next apartment down the hall. All four of you were able to prove that you were out that afternoon. The first one to get back to the apartment was Guy Darana. He returned a little after eleven that night. No one has seen Lisa Mann since. Apparently she never returned to her own apartment. There was an investigation. Her parents are well-to-do. I asked you four down here because things like that intrigue me. I hope that during your stay here one of you will, directly or indirectly, admit to his guilt in the death of Miss Mann. Does that blow away the smoke, Smith?”

Prine Smith stared at him. “Are you crazy?”

Hewett said softly, “I know she’s dead. I know it. She would have come back.”

“Young girls disappear every day,” Stacey Brian said. “That she happened to come to our place was coincidental.”

June and Georgie listened with great intentness, their mouths open a bit.

“Are you serious, Falkner?” Prine Smith asked, still scowling. “Do you actually think that just by having us down here you can break open a case that the metropolitan police haven’t been able to unravel?”

Park shrugged. “It might work that way.”

“I don’t get it. If one of us should be guilty, which is silly even to think of, wouldn’t you have given him warning by now?”

“Of course.”

Prine Smith sighed. “Okay. Have your fun. It’s your money, and I guess you know what you want to do with it. Me, I’m going to relax and enjoy myself.”

“That’s what you’re all supposed to do,” Park said amiably.

Hewett had been drinking steadily and with purpose. He said, “Her eyes were tilted a little, and the black lashes were so long they were absurd. She came up to my shoulder, and when she laughed she laughed deep in her throat.”

“Knock it off,” the redheaded Stacey Brian said sharply. “Drop it, Bill.”

“Sure,” Bill Hewett said. “Sure.”

The dusk was upon them, and the music was a wry dirge. Taffy’s face was shadowed. A gull swung by, tilting in the wind, laughing with disdain. The soft waves were the tired breath of the water. Death whispered in the thin jacaranda leaves.

Hewett laughed with excessive harshness. “Sure,” he said again. “Forget her. We’re all nice clean young men, we four. Our best friends don’t have to tell us, because we’ve bought the right products. We have built-in value, four-way virtue. Remember the brand name. Go to your nearest crematory and ask for our product. That’s a joke, son. But forget little dead girls because little dead girls have nothing in common with these four upright, sterling, time-tested young men of market-proven value. You can’t write a commercial about a dead girl. The product will never sell.”

“Shut up, Bill,” Guy said.

June hugged her elbows, though the dusk was warm. Mick’s face, behind the bar, was carved of dark stone. Over on the mainland a diesel train bellowed, a distant creature of swamps and prehistory.

“You people can eat any time,” Mrs. Mick said.

Taffy lay on her face in the sun by the pool. Falkner sat cross-legged beside her, rubbing the oil into the long clean lines of her back.

“Mmmmm,” she said, with sleepy appreciation.

June came to the edge of the pool, her dark hair plastered wet to her head. She hung on and said, “Hello, people.”

“How goes the war of the sexes?” Falkner asked.

June pursed her lips. “Georgie has attracted the big handsome hunk, Guy Darana, and also Mr. Muscles, the newspaper guy. I am left with the agile little redhead, who can sling passes from any off-balance position. Hewett is not interested.”

“How is Georgie doing?”

“Reasonable. Guy and Prine Smith are now on the beach showing off.”

“Back to the battle, June,” Park directed. “Take Stacey Brian down there and see if you can confuse things.”

June swam away. Taffy yawned. “Legs,” she said.

Park moved down a bit, filled his palm with oil. Taffy sat up suddenly.

“No, dearie. I think I do this myself,” she said. She took the bottle from him. “An aged creature like me has to be well smeared with this glop or the wrinkles pop out like wasteland erosion.” As she worked she looked over at him. “Falkner, my man, this little house party makes me feel physically ill. Why don’t you break it up?”

“Just when everybody’s having so much fun?”

“Fun! They’ve all got the jumps.”

“Sure they have. Right from the beginning each of them, the three un-guilty ones, whoever they might be, have had a dirty little suspicion. They were trying to forget it. Now I’ve reawakened the whole thing. They’re drinking too much and laughing too loudly, and they’re all wound up like a three dollar watch. We just wait and see.”

Her brown eyes were suddenly very level, very grave. “But you usually add another ingredient, Park.”

“This time, too. Maybe tonight.”

“Do you really think one of them killed that girl?”

“I do.”

“But why?” Taffy wailed.

“Why do people kill people? Love, money, position, hate, envy, passion, jealousy. Lots of reasons.”

“Please be careful, Park. Don’t let anything happen to you.”

“Am I that valuable?”

“With you gone, what would I do for laughs?”

He leaned his hand tenderly against her bare shoulders and pushed her into the pool.

He had gone apart from the others, and now he sat on the sand with his hands locked around his knees and he thought of the small thin sound she had made as he struck her and how he had caught her as she fell and listened, hearing the pulse thud in his ears, the hard rasp of his own breathing. She had felt so heavy as he had carried her quickly to where he had planned. She was realty a small girl. There was no blood.

Again the dusk, and the music and the cocktails. And Mick behind the bar and Taffy in pale green and all of them suntanned by the long hot day, tingling from the showers, ravenous, bright-eyed.

“I don’t want to be a bore, Park,” Prine Smith said, “but what are you accomplishing?”

Falkner shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. Maybe we ought to talk. That is, if nobody objects.”

“Talk,” Bill Hewett said tonelessly.

“Objectivity,” Park said, “is often easier at a distance. The police concentrated on the apartment. That, I feel, was a mistake. The fact that the body has not appeared indicated to me that it was a crime carefully planned. Too carefully planned to assume that the murderer would select a city apartment as the scene of the crime and hope to get away with it, to walk out with the body. She was seen going into the apartment. She was not seen coming out. The apartment had a phone. All four of you were able to prove that you could not possibly have gotten back to the apartment before eleven. But you couldn’t prove, had you been asked to do so, that Lisa Mann had not come to you. She could have been summoned by phone to the place where she was murdered and where the body was disposed of so successfully.”

“Just how do you dispose of a body successfully?” Prine Smith asked.

“Fire, the sea, chemicals. But, best of all, legally. Death certificate and a funeral.”

Something deep inside him laughed. The forest floor had been thick with loam under the needles. He had scraped away the needles, and the edge of the new spade had bitten deeply, easily. The hole was not long enough for her, and so he put her in it curled on her side, her knees against her chest. Later, after he had patted the earth down, replaced the needles of the pines, he burned the new shovel handle and the old coveralls. He kicked the hot shovel blade over into the brush. No trace. None.

“Why would anyone kill her?” Hewett asked. “Why? She was my girl. There wasn’t any question of that. What good would she do anyone dead?”

“Sometimes a man kills,” Falkner said, “for the very simple reason that the act of killing gives him pleasure.”

“It would be nice to meet him,” Hewett said. “Nice.” He looked hard, first at Guy, then Prine Smith, then Stacey Brian.

“Off it!” Prine said harshly. “We were over that. You know we aren’t capable of anything like that.”

Hewett continued to stare and there was a trace of madness in his eyes. Slowly it faded. He walked over to the bar. Mick filled his glass.

“Hell,” said Stacey, “Lisa may be wandering around right now. Amnesia. You can’t tell about things like that.”

“Sure,” Hewett said. “Sure. It could be that.” He didn’t speak as though he believed it.

On the way to dinner Georgie Wane took Park aside. “The money,” she said, “is nice. I like it. You’ve got a nice place here. But how about this, uncle? One of these boys maybe clobbered a girl. It leads one to think. Maybe it’s a habit yet.”

“Not a habit. Not quite that. Call it a tendency.”

“I thought maybe you could tell by looking at hands. I’ve been looking. No dice, uncle. I would say Hewett didn’t. Beyond that I cannot go. Shouldn’t a murderer look like a murderer?”

“I knew one once who could have been your twin, Georgie.”

“I can see how she got in the killing mood,” Georgie said.

At three in the morning Falkner awoke at the sound of the first tap on his door. He came completely awake in a fraction of a second. He pulled his robe on as he went to the door. It was Taffy.

She looked small, young, wan in the lamplight. “You can’t sleep either, eh?” she said.

“What’s got you down, Taff?” he asked. “Come on in.”

They walked out onto the terrace. The wind was directly out of the west. It had sea fragrance.

She said, “You hear about something like this. I mean it’s a problem like filling in a nine-letter blank beginning with G meaning a South African herb. Then you meet the people and it’s something else again. Gee, they’re nice kids. I don’t want it to be one of them.”

He put his arm around her. “Old Taff, the world mother. She loves everybody. Maybe I’m wrong this time. The agency checked it out pretty carefully, though. Lisa Mann was one of those rare people who make no enemies. No one profited by her death. She was exceptionally striking. Emotions can get wound up pretty tightly.”

“If one of them did it,” she said softly, “I wonder if he is sleeping right now. I don’t see how he could be, knowing that all this is supposed to make him give himself away. I’ve been watching them so carefully. It’s not Hewett, of course. Darana seems like a big sleepy animal. But he did come alive when he did that part out of his last play for us. Stacey Brian is an awful nice little guy. Prine Smith is a little quarrelsome, but you sense a certain amount of integrity in him. I can’t see him murdering anybody. Park, you must be wrong. You must!”

“The tension is building, Taff. You can feel it.”

She moved out of his arm. “And you love it, don’t you? It’s bread and wine to you. Park, there’s a faint streak of evil in you.”

“Man is a predatory animal,” he said happily.

She sighed. “Too late to change you now. I should have adopted you when you were a baby.”

“Foster mother at the age of seven?”

“I matured early.”

He lay rigid in the darkness, remembering, remembering. It was Lisa’s fault. No one could get around that. He had told her he loved her. He had told her this affair with Hewett had to stop at once. But she laughed, even when he told her she would be very sorry if she continued to torture him this way. He cried, and she laughed again and again. Sin must be punished, whenever it is found. There is no wrong in that, and this great clown, Falkner, can do nothing because there will never be any clue. He knew from the way Hewett acted that Lisa had never told him about the scene.

When Falkner came down, Taffy, Georgie, Guy, and Stacey Brian were breakfasting on the patio, shielded from the brisk morning wind. He heard them laughing before he saw them. They made room for him. He had touched his bell a few minutes before coming down. Mrs. Mick brought him his breakfast tray.

Georgie said, “I was telling them about home in Scranton when I had a crush on a guy who drove a hearse. We didn’t have any place to be alone, so we used to go and neck in the room where they stored the coffins. Well this one time Joey heard the boss coming back unexpected, so what does he do but pop me in a box and shut the lid and then make like he’s taking an inventory. My God, I was petrified. It’s dusty. I sneeze. The boss says, ‘Whassat?’ He opens the lid and says, ‘Girl, you ain’t dead!’ Joey, the dope, says, ‘Her aunt died. She was looking for a box.’ Next time I see Joey, he’s driving a bread truck. Terrible kind of breakfast talk, isn’t it? But on this house party maybe it isn’t so far out of line after all.”

“You say you and this Joey had a place where you could be alone,” Guy Darana said. “That isn’t a question. I’m just thinking out loud.”

“Stop making like a detective,” Stacey Brian said.

“He’s working on our little problem,” Taffy said. “Can’t you see the look of the hunter?”

“What kind of a detective you want?” Stacey Brian said. “A Jimmy Stewart type? Like this? Wal, I guess all you... uh... nice people need a... uh... little detectin’ done around here. Or how about an Edward G. Robinson? Like so. Listen to me, sugar. You got to lay it right on the line, see? You’re not talking to no small-town copper, see? This is the big time, sugar. See?”

They laughed and applauded. The imitations had been uncannily accurate. Hewett came onto the patio, and the look of of him quenched the high spirits. His eyes appeared to have receded back into his head. His mouth was a thin, bitter line.

“Good morning, all,” he said. “Fun and games?”

“You look rocky, honey,” Georgie said.

He smiled coldly. “Bad dreams. Copywriter’s dreams. I could see Lisa with her eyes bulging and hands around her throat, but I couldn’t tell whose hands.”

“Ugh!” Georgie said.

“By the way, Bill,” Park said, “I’m assuming that you would like to find out whether or not one of your friends killed her. I’m assuming you’ll help by answering questions. Did you and Lisa have a place where you used to go to be alone?”

“It’s not any of your business,” Hewett snapped.

“Blunt and to the point.”

“We did have. A farmhouse so broken down you couldn’t go into it. Just the foundation where the barn had been. But you could drive in there and not be seen from the road. She used to pack lunches, and we’d picnic there.”

“Did you ever go separately?”

“Sure. We’d meet there. She had a car. You know that already. It was in the newspapers. They found the car five days later in a big parking lot on West Forty-first Street. Nobody could say who’d driven it in there. Maybe she did. I used to take a bus out to Alden Village and walk to the farm.”

“Did you tell the police that?” Park asked.

“Why should I? She never went there except when we went together, or when we were going to meet there.”

“Her body might be there, Hewett. She could have been decoyed there.”

“How do you mean?”

“A faked message from you. It wouldn’t be hard. Any of your apartment mates could get their hands on your handwriting.”

Bill Hewett looked down at his plate. Suddenly he looked no longer young, as though he had donned the mask he would wear in middle age. “I went back once. Alone. It was like visiting some damnable cemetery. The wind whined. She could be there, all right.”

“I’ll wire the New York police. Tell me the name of the farm or how to direct them to it.”

“About a mile and a half north of the village on the left of a curve. Route Eight. They call it the Harmon place.”

He sent the wire after breakfast. At eleven thirty they were all out by the pool. Park was nursing a purpling bruise high on his cheek where Mick Rogers had tagged him heavily during the usual morning workout. Mick hummed as he made drinks. He seemed well pleased with himself.

“Gotta remember to keep that left hand higher, boss,” he said, grinning.

Taffy swam effortless lengths of the pool, her brown arms lifting slowly from the pale-green water. Stacey Brian, in deference to his redheaded lack of skin pigmentation, was the only one in the shade. Stocky Prine Smith was whispering to June Luce. He was propped up on his elbows. She lay on her back with plastic linked cups on her eyes to protect them from the sun glare. From time to time she giggled in a throaty way. Stacey glared over at them. Georgie Wane was trying to teach big Guy Darana how to make a racing turn against the end of the pool.

From the amplifier came muted music, old jazz piano by Errol Garner and Mary Lou Williams and Art Tatum. The last record, one by Garner, had played twice. Park thought of sending Mick up to reverse the stack, but suddenly an idea came to him. He went up himself, walking slowly, planning it in detail. It was based on the sensitive mike he had hooked into the set. Once, when it had been left turned on quite inadvertently, during a party, one couple who had sneaked away from the crowd came back to find that every word, every sound, had blared out above the noise of the music. He had had the mike installed to simplify some of the problems of running the household.

He reversed the stack of records, waited for the music to start, clicked on the mike at the point of a loud remembered chord in the music, hoping that it wouldn’t be heard. He picked the table mike up gingerly and carried it away from the set. He set it on the bedside table, picked up the phone, and dialed the number of the hotel. Before anyone could answer, he pushed the receiver down with his ringers.

“Give me Mr. Norris’s room, please. Four-twelve, I think it is... Hello, Lieutenant Norris? This is Falkner. I guess your trip hasn’t been a waste after all... Yes, I think I know who our man is... Right. He’ll crack under the strain, and we’ll have something definite to go on... Yes, I’ll call you just as soon as—”

The door burst open and Mick came running in, panting from the run up the stairs. “Hey, the mike’s on! Every word is coming over the—”

Park reached out quickly and clicked the mike off.

He grinned. “Thanks, Mick.” He hung up the phone.

Mick’s eyes widened with comprehension. “So! A fake, is it?”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“No. I started running when I heard you dial.”

Park repeated the conversation. “What do you think?” he asked.

Mick scrubbed his heavy jaw with his knuckles. “It ought to make the guy pretty uneasy. I can’t figure which one it could be. Maybe it isn’t any one of the three.”

“I’m placing my bet that it is one of them.”

They went back down. The atmosphere had changed. Hewett was the color of watery milk under his two-day tan. He stood with his fists clenched, staring at his friends, one by one. June had sat up, moved a bit away from Prine Smith. Taffy stood near the diving tower, toweling herself. Georgie sat alone on the edge of the pool, her feet in the water. Guy Darana stood behind her, his eyes slitted against the sunlight, looking half asleep. Stacey Brian looked at Hewett and said, “Easy, boy. Easy.”

“I’m terribly sorry that happened,” Park said. “It shouldn’t have happened. Like a fool I forgot the mike was on. I’m afraid I’ve forewarned the man who killed Lisa Mann.”

Hewett walked over to Park. “Who is it?” he said. “Tell me who it is.”

“Not quite yet, Bill,” Park said soothingly.

“Tell me, damn you!”

“I don’t think I’m wrong, but there’s always that chance. I’m not ready to tell you. You’re in no emotional condition to handle yourself properly if I should tell you.”

Hewett threw his fist full at Falkner’s face with an almost girlish ineptitude. Park caught the fist in the palm of his hand and squeezed down on it. Hewett’s mouth changed with the impact of the sudden pain.

“Don’t try that again,” Park said.

Hewett yanked his hand free, turned without a word, and walked across to the house.

Everyone started to make bright, shallow conversation to cover the awkwardness. Taffy came over to Park and lowered her voice so that only he could hear her. “Dirty pool, friend,” she said. “Very dirty pool.”

“I don’t understand, Taff.”

“The music suddenly got louder and then faded back again. The mike stands near the set. You should have carried it over to the phone before turning it on.”

“You know, you’d be a very difficult type to be married to.”

“I don’t think I can quite class that as a proposal. You and your mythical lieutenants!”

He grinned with a flash of white teeth against the deep brown of his face. “That’s where I got you, Taff. There is a Lieutenant Norris, and he is registered at the hotel, and he is from New York. But he’s on an extradition case. If I can’t give him something to get his teeth into by tomorrow night, he has to start back with his man.”

He fell silent, and the talk around him was meaningless. It had to be a clever trap. There was nothing Falkner could know. Nothing. But the man was clever. It took cleverness to locate a body sixteen hundred miles away, a body that had been searched for by experts. They might not find it. Probably they would. He hadn’t risked going back to see if the dirt had settled. The laboratories would go to work on the body. He had carried the body a short distance. Could some microscopic bit of evidence have been left?

Dusk broke up the badminton doubles. The last set had been Guy Darana and June Luce against Georgie and Stacey Brian. Everyone had played in their swimsuits. Brian’s wiry quickness had made up for Darana’s advantage in height. Georgie was nursing a swollen underlip which, in some strange fashion, she had managed to club with her own racket.

All four were winded. Mick had wheeled the rolling bar out onto the edge of the court, plugging in the ice compartment at the outlet near the tennis court floodlights.

“Sometimes,” Stacey said, “it’s good to become bushed. When the infantry reluctantly let me go, I swore I’d never get physically tired again for the rest of my life. Here I am, running around in the sun and beating on a cork with feathers sticking out of it.”

“Infantry!” Darana said with heavy disgust. “Why didn’t you pick yourself a branch?”

“Don’t tell me what you were, Guy,” Georgie said. “Let me guess. A fly boy. A hot pilot. A tired hat and nine rows of ribbons.”

“Not a hot pilot,” Guy said. “I pushed tired old transports and tankers around Asia. I was too big to fit into a fighter with any comfort. But old Prine here had the real deal. Warm food, good bed. All the luxuries. Of course they sank a couple ships under him, but the Navy was it.”

“How about Bill?” June asked. “What was he?”

“G-Two. Hell, I wish he’d come down out of his room and stop sulking.”

Taffy giggled. “You know what our jolly host did for his country.”

“Whatever it was, I bet it was a job smarter than the one Stace picked,” Guy said.

Before she could reply, Hewett came walking out of the gray darkness. “Sorry I blew my top,” he murmured.

“Quite all right,” Park said.

“You see,” Hewett continued, “if I lose my head I won’t get my cracks at whoever killed Lisa. I’ve got to stay calm. I have it all figured out. As soon as you know for sure, you’ll tell that lieutenant. But maybe I can find out for sure before you do, Falkner. And if I do, he might not stand trial, whoever he is. I’m beginning to get an idea.”

Stacey Brian stood up and shivered. “That wind’s getting cooler. Or have I got a chill just because there’s a murderer in the house? Goodbye, you people. I’m off for a shower.”

The group slowly split up until only Prine Smith and Park Falkner were left. Mick wheeled the bar inside. Prine Smith’s face was in shadow.

He said, “I can almost see your point. A dilettante in crime. Give you a purpose in life, maybe.” His tone was speculative. “But human beings aren’t puppets, Falkner. They take over the strings. They make up their own lines. I’ve done some checking. You’ve had considerable violence here on your Grouper Island. Do you sleep well at night?”

“Like a baby.”

“I’ve been in the newspaper game longer than you’d think to look at me. I can smell violence in the air. Something is going to bust open here.”

“It’s possible.”

“What precautions are you taking?”

“I think that would be pretty valuable information to someone.”

“Don’t be a fool! You can’t possibly suspect me.”

Falkner was surprised at the trace of anger in his own voice. “Don’t try to judge me or my methods, Smith. Don’t set yourself up as an arbiter of my moral codes or lack of same. A girl died. There’s the justification.”

In the darkness he could sense Prine Smith’s grin as he stood up. “Glad to know you sometimes doubt yourself, Falkner. Maybe I like you better.”

He went off to the house. Falkner stayed a few minutes more.

Sometimes there is safety in inaction, he thought. And sometimes it is wise to move quickly. He locked the door, opened the toilet-article kit, took out the small bottle of white powder. It was cool against his palm. They said that later the lips smelled of almonds. He wondered.

Bill Hewett looked full into the eyes of his friend. The others were by the beach fire. Hewett knew that he had drunk too much. Falkner’s room wavered dizzily. He struggled for soberness. He said thickly, “You said you could tell me who killed Lisa.”

“I can.”

“What’s that you’ve got, a recorder? What have you been doing here? It seems to be a funny place to meet, the host’s room.”

“Yes, this is a recorder. I got here first. I made a tape on his machine.”

“You mean you say on the tape who killed her?” Hewett asked.

“That’s right. Here. Have a drink. Then we’ll listen to it. Together.”

“Can’t you just tell me?” Hewett asked plaintively. He tilted the glass high, drained it.

“Now I can tell you. I’ll turn the tape on. Like this.”

“Who is it? Who killed her?”

“You did, Hewett. You killed her. Can’t you remember?”

“What kind of a damn fool joke is this?”

His friend went quickly toward the door, opened it, glanced out into the hall. He turned. “Goodbye, Bill. Give my regards to Lisa. My very best regards. I think you might live another ten seconds — after that drink I gave you.”

The door shut softly. Hewett stared at the empty glass. It slipped from his hands to the rug, bounced, didn’t break. He put both hands to his throat and turned dizzily. The moon was bright on the small private terrace. He saw a brown arm, almost black in the moonlight, reach over the terrace wall, saw a man pull himself up quickly.

Hewett fell to his knees.

They were all near the fire, the ember glow reddening their faces. Mick was telling them how the lights went out in Round Five during his bout with John Henry Lewis.

Park came close to them. Mick looked over and stopped talking.

“What is it?” Taffy asked quickly.

“I’ve just told Norris to come over. The local police will be here, too. Our little house party is over, I’m afraid.”

Georgie Wane looked around the circle. “Where’s Bill?” she demanded.

“Bill is in my room. He’s very dead, and not at all pretty. Poison.”

He heard the hard intake of breath. Taffy said, “Oh, no!”

“Before he did it he left his confession. I think you might like to hear it. Mick, go on up and play the tape that’s on the recorder right now. Pipe it onto the front terrace. We’ll walk over there to listen.”

Mick went across the sand and into the darkness. They stood up slowly, full of the embarrassed gravity with which any group meets the death of one of their number. Taffy came next to Park in the darkness as they walked, her fingers chill on his wrist.

“No, Park. I can’t... believe it.”

They stood on the front terrace, close to the sea. The amplifier made a scratching sound. The voice that came was thin, taut with emotion. There was no need for the voice to identify itself.

“I can’t pretend any more. She said she was through with me. She told me she was fed up with neurotics. I had her meet me at the farm. Falkner trapped me about that. I took a shovel and coveralls. I came up behind her, struck her with the flat of the shovel blade. I carried her fifty feet into the woodlot and buried her there. I burned the shovel handle and the coveralls. I drove her car back and put it in the busiest lot I could find and tore up the check. I couldn’t face the thought of her going to someone else, someone else’s arms around her and lips on hers. I’m not sorry. Not sorry at all...”

There was a dry, rasping sound of needle on empty grooves and then silence as Mick lifted the arm.

“Crazy,” June Luce said softly. “Plain crazy. Gee, the poor guy.”

Sirens shrilled through the distant night, coming closer. Park said quickly, “Go on into the front living room, all of you. They’ll take the body out and then Norris will probably want to talk to you. I see no reason why it might not be simple routine.”

It was a full forty-five minutes after the cars had swung across the private causeway and parked that Lieutenant Norris came into the front living room. He was a tall, stooped, sick-looking man, with a face that showed the lean fragility of the bone structure underneath. He wore an incongruous dark suit and his eyes were remote, disinterested.

“Let’s get it over,” he said. “You’re Smith? No? Oh, Darana. And you’re Brian. Okay, I got you all straight now. I guess. I can question you all at once. Did Hewett seem depressed since you’ve been here?”

Several people said yes at the same moment.

Georgie said, “The guy was pretty antisocial. I thought it was because his gal had disappeared. I’ve been wrong before.”

“Now,” said Norris, “about this beach party tonight. Anybody see him leave?”

There was silence. Park said, “The sea was warm. About half the group were swimming from time to time. You couldn’t really keep track of any individual. I guess that at one time or another every one of us wandered off. I found Hewett, as I told you, when I went up to my room to change to dry clothes. It was getting just a little chilly.”

Prine Smith crossed his arms. “Let’s drop this patty-cake routine, shall we?”

Norris stared coldly at him. “What’s on your mind?”

“Hewett was drinking too much. That record sounds too sober to me. And I knew Hewett inside and out. I say nuts to this suicide angle. Lisa was his gal and she meant every look she gave him. I’m the only one outside of Bill and Lisa that knew the wedding date was set. I thought Falkner’s idea was a bust for a time, but I’ve felt the tension growing here. And now I think I know the angle.” He spun and took two steps toward Stacey Brian. “Come on, kid. Make imitations for the people. Show ’em how you can be Jimmy Stewart, or Edward G. Robinson — or Bill Hewett. Maybe you were Bill Hewett over the phone when you got Lisa to go out there to that farm. Bill never killed himself. He had more guts than anyone you know. For my money, Stacey, you got him up there to Falkner’s room, made the record yourself, and slipped him a drink with the stuff in it.”

Stacey Brian turned as white as a human being can turn. He came out of the chair like a coiled spring suddenly released. His fist spatted off Prine Smith’s mouth before Smith could lift his arms. Park leaped in and grabbed Brian from behind. He struggled and then gave it up.

“Will you be good?” Park asked.

Stacey Brian nodded. Park released him.

Stacey said in a level monotone, “Any guy who can think up that kind of an angle probably did it himself. He was on the make for Lisa ever since the first time Bill brought her around. We all knew that. We didn’t tell the cops because we didn’t think he was a guy to kill anybody. Sure I make imitations. But if any of you think I did a thing like that, you can all go to hell in a basket.”

Norris drawled, “You guys can slap each other around until you’re tired. It doesn’t make no nevermind to me. I got my case solved, and I like the solution. Hewett smeared his gal and covered it nice. I got the dope today they found the body just like he said in the tape.”

“But, damn it, man,” Prine said, “can’t you see that Brian could put that on the tape and make it sound just like Hewett?”

Stacey said, “Smith, I don’t want to ever see you or talk to you or hear your name again as long as I live. I’m going back to New York just as fast as I can get there, and I’m packing my stuff and moving out of that apartment we got two months ago.”

“Good!” Smith said.

“You sound like a couple of babies,” Guy Darana said.

“He’s a slick one, he is,” Prine said. “He even did his imitations here for us, because he knew that if he didn’t do them somebody would wonder why he’d given up his pet party trick.”

Norris sighed. “I’m tired. You people are trying to foul up my case. Sleep on it, will you? Nobody leaves the island. I’ll be back in the morning. They’ve taken the body to town.” He looked around with a sudden, surprising, wry amusement. “Have fun,” he said. He turned and left the room.

Guy whispered to Georgie and then said to the room at large, “We’re taking a walk. The air is fresh out there.”

“Be back in half an hour,” Park said. “We’ll all meet at the enclosed patio at the rear of the house. I think that by then we’ll be able to talk calmly and iron out this trouble.”

“Never!” Stacey Brian said calmly.

“But you’ll give it a try.”

“If it’ll amuse you. It’s your party.”

Park walked off the terrace out into the night and sat in the sand, his back against the concrete seawall. He heard a sound and looked up over his right shoulder. Taffy stood with her elbows on the wall, her head bent, her thick white hair falling toward him, a sheen in the pale moonlight behind her.

“He’s right, you know: Smith,” she said. There was utter sadness in her voice.

“Don’t fret, Taff.”

“The poor lost man. Poor Bill. This is a night for losing things. We’re lost too, you know.”

“How do you mean that?”

“I could go along with your plans before this happened, Park. I told myself you were doing good. But I really didn’t believe it. Now a boy is dead. And boys stay dead a long time. It’s been nice.”

He found her hand. “Trust me.”

“I want to. But I can’t. Not any more. Because this thing that happened is wrong. Norris is a fool. You’re being a fool too.”

“I don’t want to lose you, Taff.”

“But you did. When Bill died you lost me.”

“Old Taff. The world mother, the open warm heart for lost dogs and children.”

“Don’t make bright talk. Just kiss me and say goodbye like a little man.”

“You can’t go now.”

“I’ll stay until morning, but this is a good time for goodbye.”

When he came in with Taff they were all in the enclosed patio. The wall lights were on, the bulbs of that odd orange that repels insects.

“Post mortem,” June Luce said. “A post mortem by my generous uncle who pays me two hundred a day to grace his lovely home.” She laughed. There was liquor in her laugh.

“Please shut up, dear,” Georgie said.

“Well,” Park said, “it all seems to be over. And I, for one, am satisfied with Norris’s conclusion.”

“I’m happy for you,” Prine Smith said. “You’re easily satisfied.”

Guy Darana stood with his big arm around Georgie’s slim waist. He rubbed his chin against her sleek golden head.

Taffy wore the look of a lost child. Mick, by the corner bar, was glum.

“He didn’t die easy,” Park said. “It was quick, but from the look of his face there wasn’t anything easy about it.”

“Is this discussion necessary?” June asked. “Even at my wage scale there’s a limit.”

“I’m switching to bourbon, Mick,” Stacey said.

June glanced beyond Falkner to the stone arch that led out into the side garden. She made a sound. It was not a scream. It was harsh and long and came from the deepest part of her lungs.

Park moved to one side.

Guy Darana had his arm around Georgie Wane’s waist. With one heave of his shoulder he flung her to the side. She spun, tripped, and fell hard.

Bill Hewett, ghastly pale in the archway, his mouth twisting so that lips were pale worms entwining, said, “I left some unfinished business behind, I think.”

Prine Smith stood without a movement, with no expression at all on his face. Stacey Brian stood with the glass in his hand. His hand shut and the glass made a brittle sound. A clot of blood dropped and spattered on the stone.

Guy Darana stood with his hands flattened against the wall behind him.

“No,” he whispered. “No!”

His big pale hand flickered in the light, disappeared, reappeared with the glint of metal. Bill Hewett took a slow step toward Guy. The gun spoke, a slapping, stick-breaking sound, metallic in the enclosed patio. He fired point-blank at Bill Hewett. He fired six times. The hammer clicked three more times. The gun dropped onto the stone. Hewett took another slow step toward Darana, grinning now, grinning in a ghastly fashion.

Darana’s big, handsome face lost its human look. The features seemed to grow loose and fluid. Knee bones thudded against the stone. It was as though he were at prayer, worshiping some new and inhuman god. His lips moved and he made sounds, muted little growlings and gobblings that were zoo sounds.

Norris came in from the garden as though walking into a drugstore for a pack of cigarettes. “Okay,” he said, “print that. It ought to do it. On your feet, Darana.”

Guy looked up at him and said, the words pasted stickily together, “There’s nothing you can do to me because it is part of me to avenge and destroy. There is sin and weakness in the world. Weakness and sin. They have to be punished. I’m an instrument of death. The garden and the word. The time is now. All the rich orchard time of turning, and no man is known who can unbend the others.” He glared around at them, then slipped down onto his haunches and began idly patting the stone with the palm of his hand, cooing softly, crooning to himself.

“Ain’t it the way,” Norris said with disgust. “You go to all this trouble and what do you get? He flips just as you grab him. Well, maybe we piled it on a little strong. Help me, you guys. If he’s violent he’ll be tough to handle.”

But Guy Darana let himself be led out placidly. He looked vacantly at Georgie on the way out. She put the back of her hand to her lips, and her eyes were wide and terrified.

They gathered in Falkner’s room. It was two in the morning. The fireplace fire drove back the night chill.

Georgie’s burned knee and elbow had been bandaged. She had lost almost all her casual flippancy.

“What can you believe about people?” Prine Smith asked. “I had Darana pretty well evaluated in my own mind. A big handsome hunk with more of a spark of acting talent than he was willing to admit. I had him pegged to go a long way. Hollywood had nibbled once, but he didn’t like the offer. How do you figure it, Park?”

Falkner shrugged. “Women came running to him. He must have alternated between thinking he was a minor god and feeling a strong sense of guilt, probably the result of a strict childhood home life. Guilt can do odd things. He must have been on the edge when he made a play for Lisa. She turned him down. That was something new. He brooded over it. The one woman he wanted he couldn’t have, and Hewett’s happiness with her was like a blow in the face. He was an actor. He could do tricks with that voice of his. We’ll never know for sure, probably, but I think he phoned her pretending to be you, Bill. I guess you can fill out the rest of the details. He justified himself by saying to himself that he was punishing her for a sin.”

Park turned to Prine again.

“Our precautions were very simple. Lew and Mick took turns going through your rooms, deactivating anything that looked lethal. Lew was the one who found the gun while Guy was swimming. He reloaded with frangible blanks that look like the McCoy. Mick found the unlabeled bottle. He emptied it on a hunch, washed it, refilled it in the kitchen. While we swam at night, Lew was out beyond the breaker line in the Nancy watching with night glasses to see that nothing funny happened. I saw Darana talk to Bill and then leave in the direction of the house. In a little while Bill followed along. I followed him. When I saw him go into my room I went down onto the terrace below mine and climbed up. Guy left the room as I came over the wall. Poor Bill thought he’d really been poisoned. When I convinced him that he hadn’t, he was willing to play ball with us. I called Norris and explained it to him. We needed a little more on Darana than Bill’s naked word. Well... we got it.”

Hewett said, “It’s over now, I guess. I knew all along she must be dead. But because I didn’t know who or how, I couldn’t relax. Now I can start rebuilding.”

“Can you use any help?” June asked, smiling.

Hewett grinned. “I’ll consider it.”

The group broke up. Park promised transportation after breakfast. Taffy and Georgie Wane lingered behind. Georgie gave Taffy a quick look and then she smiled at Park, saying, “Here I am, wounded. Look, does a girl get a chance to stay here for a few days? Recuperation, we could call it, and it won’t cost you. Only what I can eat.”

Park looked expressionlessly at Taffy. “Why, I suppose that it would be—”

Taffy gave Georgie the warmest smile in her book. “Darling, Mr. Falkner intends to give you a little bonus to take care of that scraped knee and elbow. I really think it would be best for all concerned if you went with the others.”

Georgie shrugged. “Sorry, boss. I didn’t see any signs on him. ‘Night, all.”

Taffy shut the door firmly. She turned, her hands on her hips. “If you think for one minute I’d let you keep that — that female here after the others go...”

Park gave her a look of outraged innocence. “But you told me we were through!”

“Well, we aren’t. Any arguments?”

He didn’t give her an argument. He was too busy.