Death Likes It Hot

1

THE death of Peaches Sandoe the midget at the hands, or rather the feet, of a maddened elephant in the sideshow of the circus at Madison Square Garden was at first thought to be an accident, the sort of tragedy you’re bound to run into from time to time if you run a circus with both elephants and midgets in it. A few days later, though, there was talk of foul play.

I read with a good deal of interest the Daily News' account. A threatening conversation had been overheard; someone (unrevealed) had gone to the police with a startling story (unrevealed) and an accusation against an unnamed party. It was very peculiar.

Miss Flynn, my conscience and secretary, elderly, firm, intolerant, ruthless but pleasingly gray, looked over my shoulder as was her wont. “You will not, I presume . . .”

“Get involved in this grisly affair? No. Or at least not until I’m asked which is unlikely since the circus has its own public relations setup. . .”

“It's possible that some member of the circus, however, knowing your propensity for Shady Personages and Crime might engage your services. . .”

“They’ll have to catch me first. Miss Flynn, I’m gone.” I stood up abruptly; she looked bewildered . . . wondering if perhaps I had gone over to the world of be-bops: Miss Flynn is a student of argot though her own conversation is very courtly, cool in fact.

“I’m gone for a week,” I explained.

She nodded, understanding at last. “You'll accept Mrs. Veering’s invitation to partake of the sun at her palatial estate on Long Island?”

“Just this moment decided. No reason to hang around here. August is a dead month. We haven’t any business you can't handle better than I.” She inclined her head in agreement. “So I’ll go out to Easthampton and see what it is she wants me to do.”

“Social Position has never been Mrs. Veering’s aim.” Miss Flynn is a resolute snob and follows with grim fascination Cholly Knickerbocker’s rich accounts of the rich.

“Well, she won't be the first dowager we put over on an unsuspecting public.”

Miss Flynn scowled. Next to my affinity for Shady Personages and Crime she dislikes nearly all the clients of my public relations firm: ambitious well-heeled characters trying to exploit products or themselves in the press. With the exception of a singing dog who lost her voice, my record has been pretty good in this crooked profession. Recently business had slowed down. In August New York dies and everybody tries to get out of the heat. Mrs. Veering’s mysterious summons had come at exactly the right time.

"Alma Edderdale, I know, is a friend of yours . . .and a dear one of mine . . . it was at the advice of a friend of hers that I got your name. I do wish you could come see me here Friday to spend the week end and talk over with me a little project close to my heart. Let me know soon. Trusting you won’t let me down, I am, sincerely yours, Rose Clayton Veering." That was the message on thick expensive note paper with the discreet legend at the top: “The North Dunes, Eastharnpton, Long Island, N.Y.” No hint of what she wanted. My first impulse had been to write and tell her that I’d have to have a clear idea before I came of what she wanted. But the heat of August relaxed my professionalism. A week end in Eastharnpton, in a big house...

I dictated an acceptance telegram to Miss Flynn who snorted from time to time but otherwise said nothing.

I then fired a number of instructions in my best businessexecutive voice, knowing that in my absence Miss Flynn wuold do exactly as she pleased anyway, then we gravely shook hands and I left the office: two small rooms with two desks and a filing cabinet in East 55th Street (good address, small office, high rent) and headed down Park Avenue through the sullen heat to my apartment on 49th Street (big rooms, bad address, low rent.)

2

The Long Island Cannon Ball Express pulled away from the station and there was every indication that it would be able to make Montauk before nightfall; if not . . . well, those who travel that railroad are living dangerously and they know it. Cinders blew in my face from an open window. The seat sharply cut off the circulation in my legs. The hot sun shone brazenly in my face ... it was like the days of my childhood fifteen years (well, maybe twenty years) before, when I used to visit relatives in Southampton. Everything had changed since then except the Long Island Railroad and the Atlantic Ocean.

The Journal American was full of the Peaches Sandoe murder case even though there were no facts out of which to make a story. This doesn’t bother newspapers, however, and there were some fine pictures of naked girls wearing sequins and plumes. Peaches Sandoe herself was, in life, a rather dowdy-looking, middle-aged midget with a 1920’s bob.

I was well into the N.Y. Globe’s account, written by my old friend and rival Elmer Bush, when a fragrant thigh struck mine and a soft female voice said, “Excuse . . . why if it isn’t Peter Sargeant!”

“Liz Bessemer!” We stared at one another in amazement though why either should have been particularly surprised I don’t know since we see each other at least once a month at one party or another and I have, on several occasions, tried to get a date out of her without success since I’m shy and she is usually engaged to some young blade around town. Though it was perfectly logical that we both find ourselves on a Friday heading for a week end on Long Island by Cannon Ball Express, we professed amazement at seeing each other.

Amazement turned to excitement, at least on my part, when I found she was visiting an aunt and uncle in Easthampton. “I just had to get out of the city and since Mummy is out in Las Vegas getting a divorce” (Liz though a big girl of twenty-five with blue eyes and dark brown hair and a figure shaped like a Maiden-Form Bra ad still refers to her progenitress as “Mummy” which is significant, I think), “and I wasn’t invited any place this week end, I just thought I'd go on out and stay with my aunt who’s been after me all summer to visit her. So you’re going to be there too?”

I nodded and we kicked the ball around a bit. She knew of Mrs. Veering, even knew her place which, it seemed, was about half a mile down the road from where she would be staying. I experienced lust, mild but persistent. Mentally, I caressed the generous arm of coincidence.

“I hope you're not a friend of Mrs. Veering’s ... I mean, she’s perfectly nice but, well, you know...”

“Kind of on the make?”

“That's putting it gently.” Liz made a face; I noticed she was wearing nothing under her simple worth-its-weight-in-gold cotton dress; absolutely nothing, at least from the waist up. I felt very good about this for some reason and decided Christian Dior was a regular fellow after all.

“Well, it’s only a job,” I said vaguely, as we rattled desperately through Jamaica. “She’s got some project or other she wants me to look into for her. So, what the hell . . . it's a living and I get out of town for the week end . . . maybe longer,” I added softly but Liz, according to legend at least, is the least romantic girl in New York and though she's gone around with some sharp boys in her time and no doubt given them a certain satisfaction, she has never been the type to hold hands in the moonlight or exchange radiant myopic glances across crowded rooms. She’s very matter-of-fact which I like, in spite of the “Mummy” business.

“That's right.” She looked at me coolly, at least as cooly as it’s pssible to look with the cinders flying about your head and the heat one hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the car. “You have your own firm, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Ever since I left the Globe."

“It must be awfully interesting,” she said in the vague tone of Bryn Mawr. “I’m at Harper's Bazaar now."

I said I didn’t know she worked.

“Oh yes . . . every now and then.”

“What do you do there?”

“Oh . . . well, you know; that sort of thing.”

I knew indeed. All New York is the richer for these vague elegant girls with some money, a set of Tecla pearls and a number of basic black dresses who while marking time between college and their first marriage work for the fashion magazines. They are charming and they love art like nobody’s business . , . zooming around the galleries on 57th Street to look at pictures and around Second Avenue to various “fun-apartments” where High Bohemia gives cocktail parties for Edith Sitwell and worries about Marlon Brando.

Liz was a member in good standing of this community but she was also careful not to get typed: she was not one of the fashionable ugly girls who end up making a career out of that kind of thing; she kept the lines of communication open with the young Wall Street set, the Newport gang, the Palm Beach crew and even the night-club bachelors who think that 57th Street is just something you pass on your way from the Plaza to the St. Regis.

We talked about mutual acquaintances. I haven’t the time to circulate much in her world but I know it well enough since it’s made up of old school friends of mine as well as those professional zombies that you’re bound to meet sooner or later if you live in New York and go out at all.

It wasn’t until we had stopped for water, or whatever it is the train stops for besides passengers at Speonk, that I asked her what she knew about Mrs. Veering.

“I don’t think I know anything about her except what everybody does. You see her around, that’s all. She comes from somewhere out West and she has a lot of money from a husband who’s dead, I guess. I suppose she’s out to make the grade as a dowager.”

This was as much as 1 knew about my hostess-to-be, so we talked of other things, agreeing to meet Saturday night at the Ladyrock Yacht Club where a big dance was being held. It was assumed I’d come as a guest of Mrs. Veering but just in case she didn’t go I said I’d sneak over somehow. Liz thought this was a fine idea.

Then we read our tabloids while the train passed millions of white ducks and potatoes, the principal crop of this green island. Shortly before we arrived at Easthampton, we both agreed that someone had undoubtedly pushed Peaches Sandoe in the way of that elephant. But who?

3

The North Dunes is a large gray-clapboard house sitting high on a dune to the north of the Ladyrock Yacht Club which, in turn, is north of the village.

I was met by a slovenly fellow in a chauffeur’s hat and overalls who spotted me right off and said Mrs. Veering had sent him to fetch me. I climbed in the station wagon which was parked with all the others beside the railroad waved to Liz who was getting into a similar station wagon and sat back as I was driven in silence through the handsome village with its huge elm trees and silver pond and the house where somebody did not write Home Sweet Home but was perhaps thinking about it when he did write the song.

On the ocean front, one vast gloomy house after another sat among the treeless dunes where clumps of sword grass waved, dark upon the white sand. The lush green-gold course of the Maidstone provided a neat, well-ordered touch to the road which runs north of the village toward Montauk Point, a road off which, to to left and right at this point, are the big houses and the cottages of the summer residents.

The North Dunes was one of the largest and gloomiest. A screened-in porch ran halfway around the house on the ocean side and, from the outside, the place loked like nothing so much as a palace of bleached driftwood.

Inside it was better.

A lean butler took my suitcase and showed me into the sunroom: a big chintzy place on the south side of the house with a fine view of the golf course and ocean: high trees screened the village from view.

Mrs. Veering greeted me, rising from the chair where she’d been seated beside the empty fireplac.

“I couldn’t be more delighted, Mr. Sargeant, to have you here on such short notice.” She shook my hand warmly: she was a big competent woman with a mass of blue hair and a pale skin from which two small blue eyes stared at the world expressionlessly. She was in her fifties with a bosom like a sandbag and a clear voice which was neither Western nor Colony-Restaurant-New-York but something in between. ‘Come sit over here and have a little drink. I’ll ring for . . . unless you’d rather mix your own . . . it’s over there. I’ll just have a dash of Dubonnet: I never have anything else; just a bit before dinner is nice, don’t you think?”

She gabbled away and I made all the expected answers as I mixed myself a Scotch and soda and poured her some Dubonnet over ice. Then I sat dawn in the fat chair opposite her and waited.

Mrs. Veering was in no hurry to get to the point.

“Alma Edderdale is coming next week, Monday, did you know that? I love her. She’s staying at the Sea Spray . . . she’s an old friend of yours, isn’t she. Yes? I’ll want to see her of course. I would’ve asked her here but she likes to be alone and besides I have a house full of friends this week end.” She finished the Dubonnet in one lightning gulp. “Friends and acquaintances,” she added vaguely, looking out the window at the golf course, golden in the afternoon sun.

“I wonder ...” I began, wanting to get to business right away.

“Will I have another? yes, I think I might. It does me good the doctor says: ‘just a touch of Dubonnet, Rose, before dinner, to warm the blood.’ ”

I poured a highball glass of the stuff which should, I thought, be enough to bring her blood to a boil. Two ladylike sips got her to the bottom of the glass and I could see what one of her problems undoubtedly was. Anyway, the drink seemed to do her good and her eyes glistened as she put the glass down and said, “I like a mixture, don’t you?"

“A mixture of what, Mrs. Veering?” I had a feeling we were operating on two different frequencies.

“People. What else?’ She smiled a dazzling smile, her dentures brilliant and expensive. “Now this week end I’ve tried to bring together interesting people . . . not just social . . . though they all are of course. Brexton is here.” She paused, letting his sink in.

I was reasonably impressed ... or maybe surprised is the better word. My interest in modern painting ranges somewhere betwen zero and minus ten; nevertheless, having batted around New York in pretentious circles, I’ve picked up a smattering and I can tell Mother well from Stuempfig with a canny eye. Brexton is one of the current heroes of 57th Street. He’s in all the museums. Every year Life magazine devotedly takes its readers on a tour of his studio, receiving for their pains a ton of mail saying they ought to know better than waste space on a guy whose pictures aren’t any better than the stuff little Sue painted last year in fourth grade. But Brexton has hit the big-time professionally and it was something of a surprise to hear that he was staying with Mrs. Veering. I found out why.

“His wife is my niece Mildred,” she said, licking the ice daintly for one last drop of Dubonnet. “What a fuss there was in the family when she married him ten years ago! I mean how could we know he was going to be famous?"

I allowed this was always a hazard.

“Anyway it’s terribly nice having them here. He isn’t at all tiresome, though I must say I love art and artists and I don’t really expect them to be like other people. I mean they are different, aren’t thy? Not gross clay like ourselves.”

Speak for yourself, hon, I said to myself while I nodded brightly. I wondered if the Brextons had anything to do with my being asked for the week end: a big stunt of some kind to put him over maybe? I held my fire.

Mrs. Veering helped herself to another tumbler of Dubonnet. I noticed with admiration that her hand was steady. She chattered the whole time. “Then the Claypoles are here. They’re great fun . . . Newport, you know.” She socked that one home; then she went back to her chair. “Brother and sister and utterly devoted which is so rare. They’ve never married, either of them, though of course both are in great demand.”

This sounded like one for Dr. Kinsey or maybe Dr. Freud but I listened while Mrs. Veering told me what a nice couple they made and how they traveled together and were patrons of the arts together. I had heard of them dimly but I had no idea how old they were or what arts they patronized. Mrs. Veering assumed I knew everyone she did so she didn’t bother to fill me in on them . . . not that it made too much difference. I was assuming my duties would have nothing to do with this collection of guests.

She was just about to tell me all about the last guest: Mary Western Lung, the penwoman, when the butler crossed the room silently, swiftly, without warning and whispered something in her ear. She nodded then she motioned for him to leave, without instructions.

Whatever he had said to her had the effect of turning off the babble, to my relief. She was suddenly all business, in spite of the faintly alcoholic flush which burned now behind her white make-up.

“I’ll come to the point, Mr. Sargeant. I need help. As to the main reason for my asking you here, I’ll give you the general details right now. I plan to give a Labor Day party which I want to be the sensation of the Hamptons. It can’t be cheap; it can’t be obvious. I don’t want anyone to know I’ve hired a press agent . . . assuming you will take the job. I’ll expect full coverage, though, in the press.”

"My fee ...” I began; even as a boy scout of eleven I’d discovered that it’s best to get that part of the business over first.

“Will be met.” She was just as businesslike. “Write me a letter tonight saying how much you want, putting yourself on record, and I’ll give you what you need.” I was filled with admiration for the next few remarks which had to do with hiring me and also with her purpose.

“The reason I’ve picked you is because it’s possible for me to have you here as a guest without people asking questions.” I was duly flattered and wished I’d worn my Brooks Brothers gabardine suit. “So don’t say anything about your profession; just pretend you’re a . . . writer.” She finished brightly enough.

“I’ll do my best.”

“Tomorrow I’ll go over the guest list with you. I think it’s in good shape but you might be able to advise me. Then we’ll discuss what publicity would be wisest. I shall want a very great deal.”

I stopped myself just in time from asking why. That’s one question in my somewhat crooked business you never ask. Being a publicist is a little like being a lawyer: you take on a case without worrying too much about anything except putting it over, I figured Mrs. Veering would let me in on her game sooner or later. If not, considering the fee I was going to ask, it didn’t make a bit of difference.

“Now you’ll probably want to go to your room. We dine at eight thirty.” She paused; then: “I must ask a favor of you.”

“What’s that, Mrs. Veering?"

“Don't be disturbed by anything you might see or hear while you’re in this house . . . and be discreet.” Her rather silly face had grown solemn and pale while she spoke; I was alarmed by the expression in her eyes. It was almost as if she were frightened of something. I wondered what. I wondered if she might not be a little off her rocker.

'‘Of course I won’t say anything but . . .”

She looked about her suddenly, as though afraid of eavesdroppers. Then she gestured, “Do run along now, please.” I could hear footsteps in the main hall, approaching us.

I was almost to the door of the drawing room when she said, in her usual voice, “Oh, Mr. Sargeant, may I call you Peter?” “Sure...”

“You must call me Rose.” It was like a command. Then I went out into the hall, almost bumping into a pale youngish woman who murmured something I didn’t catch. She slipped into the drawing room while I went upstairs; a maid directed me to my room.

I was uneasy to say the least. I wondered whether or not I should take my bag and head for one of the local inns, like the 1770 House. I didn’t need the job that much and I did need a vacation which, under the circumstances, might not be in the cards. Mrs. Veering was a peculiar woman, an alcoholic. She was also nervous, frightened . , . but of what?

Out of curiosity more than anything else I decided to stay. It was one hell of a mistake.

4

At eight o’clock I went downstairs after a long bath and a slow ceremony of dressing while studying the faintly clammy but well-furnished room (all houses on dunes anywhere beside an ocean have the same musty smell) and reading the titles of the books on the night table: Agatha Christie, Marquand, the Grand Duchess Marie ... I have a hunch those same books were beside every guest bed in the Hamptons . . . except perhaps in Southampton they might have Nancy Mitford and maybe something off-color. I decided I would devote myself to Mrs. Christie in lieu of Miss Liz Bessemer, whom I’d probably not be able to see until Saturday, if then.

I found the other guests all milling around in the big room which was now cheerful and full of light, the curtains drawn against the evening. Everyone was there except our hostess.

The woman 1 had bumped into earlier came to my rescue. She was slender, not much over thirty with a pleasant muted face and dressed in gray which made her seem somehow old-fashioned, not quite twentieth-century. “I’m Allie Clay-poole,” she said, smiling; we shook hands. “I think I ran into you. ...”

“In the hall, yes. I’m Peter Sargeant.”

“Come and be introduced. I don’t know what Rose is up to.” She steered me about the room.

On a love seat for two, but just large enough for the one of her, sat Mary Western Lung, the noted penwoman: a fat dimpled creature with a peaches-and-cream gone faintly

sour complexion and hair dyed a stunning silver blonde. The fact she was very fat made the scarlet slacks she was wearing seem even more remarkable than they were. I counted four folds in each leg from ankle to thigh which made it seem as though she had four knees per leg instead of the regulation one.

Next stop was the other side of the room where Mrs. Brexton, a small dark-haired woman with china-blue eyes, was examining a pile of art books. I got a brisk nod from her.

Brexton, who was supervising the tray of whisky, was more cordial. I recognized him from his pictures: a small, stooped man of forty with a sandy mustache, a freckled bald pate, heavy glasses and regular, ordinary features, a bit like his few representational paintings.

"What can I do for you?” he asked, rattling ice around in a martini shaker. Next to, “long time no see,” I hate, “what can I do for you,” but after his wife’s chilly reception I fell in with him like a long-lost brother.

“I’ll have a martini,” I said. “Can I help?”

“No, not a thing. I’ll have it in just a jiffy.” I noticed how long his hands were as he manipulated the shaker: beautiful powerful hands, unlike the rest of him which was nondescript. The fingernails were encrusted with paint . . . the mark of his trade.

Allie Claypoole then introduced me to her brother who’d been in an alcove at the other end of the room, hidden from us. He was a good deal like her, a year or two older perhaps: a handsome fellow, casual in tweed. “Glad to meet you, Sargeant. Just rummaging around among the books. Rose has got some fine ones; pity she’s illiterate.”

“Why don’t you steal them?” Allie smiled at her brother.

“Maybe I will.” They looked at one another in that quick secret way married people do, not at all like brother and sister: it was faintly disagreeable.

Then, armed with martinis, we joined the penwoman beside the fire. All of us sat down except Mrs. Brexton who stood aloof at the far end of the room. Even without indulging in hindsight, there was a sense of expectancy in the air that night, a gray still, like that hush before a summer storm.

I talked to Mary Western Lung who sat on my right in the love seat. 1 asked her how long she’d been in Easthampton while my eye traveled about the room, my ears alerted to other conversations. Superficially, everything was calm. The Claypooles were arguing with Brexton about painting. No one paid the slightest attention to Mrs. Brexton; her isolation officially unnoticed. Yet something was happening. I suppose I was aware of it only because of my cryptic conversation with Mrs. Veering; even so, without her warnings, I think I would have got the mood on my own.

Mary Western Lung was interminable; her voice was shrill and babyish but not loud; as a matter of fact, despite the 13

size of her person which could’ve easily supported a voice like a foghorn, it was very faint for all its shrillness and I found I had to bend very close to catch her words... which suited her just fine for she was flirting like a mad reckless girl.

“Except now, with Eisenhower, it’s all changed.” What was all changed, I wondered? Not having listened to the beginning of her remarks.

“Nothing stays the same," I said solemnly; hoping this would dovetail properly. It did.

“How clever of youl” She looked at me with faintly hyperthyroid eyes; her big baby’s face as happy and smooth as another part of a baby’s anatomy. “I’ve always said the same thing. This isn’t your first visit to these parts, is it?”

I told her I’d spent a lot of childhood summers here.

“Then you’re an old-timer!” This news gave her a great deal of inscrutable pleasure. She even managed to get her hand on my left knee for a quick warm squeeze which almost made me jump out of my skin; except under special circumstances, I hate being touched. Fortunately, she did not look at me when she administered her exploratory pinch, her attention addressed shyly to her own scarlet knees, or at least to a spot somewhere between two of the more likely creases.

I managed, after a few fairly hysterical remarks, to get to the console where the remains of the martinis were, promising I’d bring her back one. While I poured the watery remains from the shaker into my glass, Mrs. Brexton suddenly joined me. “Make me one too,” she said in a low voice.

“Oh? why sure. You like yours dry.”

“Any way.” She looked at her husband who was seated with his back to us, gesticulating as he made some point. There was no expression in her face but I could feel a certain coldness emanating from her, like that chill which comes from corpses after rigor has set in.

I made a slapdash martini for her and another for Mary Western Lung. Without even a “thank you” Mrs. Brexton joined the group by the fire, talking, I noticed, to Miss Claypoole only, ignoring the two men who were still arguing.

Since there was no place else to go, I had to rejoin Miss Lung who sipped her martini with daintily pursed lips on which sparkled a few long golden hairs.

“I never like anything but gin,” she said, putting the drink down almost untouched. “I can even remember when my older brothers used to make it in bathtubs 1” She roared with laughter at the thought of little-old-she being old enough to remember Prohibition.

][ then found out why she was a noted penwoman. “I do a column caUed ‘Book-Chat’ it’s syndicated all over the United States and Canada. Oh, you’ve read it? Yes? Well, isn't that sweet of you to say so. I put a great deal of myself in it. Of course I really don’t have to make a living but every bit counts these days and it’s a lucky thing for me it’s gone over so big, the column that is. I’ve done it nine years.”

I troweled some more praise her way, pretending I was a fan. Actually, I was fascinated, for some reason I couldn’t define, by Mrs. Brexton and, as we talked, glanced at her from time to time out of the corner of my eyes: she was talking intently to Allie Claypoole who listened to what she said, a serious, almost grim expression on her face; unfortunately their voices were too low for me to catch what they were saying. Whatever it was I did not like the downward twist to Mrs. Brexton’s thin mouth, the peevish scowl on her face.

“Rose tells me you’re a writer, Mr. Sargeant.”

Rose picked the wrong disguise, I thought to myself irritably, I could hardly hope to fool the authoress of “Book-Chat.” I stalled. I told part of the truth. “I used to be assistant drama critic on the New York Globe up until a few years ago when I quit ... to write a novel.”

“Oh? how exciting! Throwing everything to the wind like that! To live for your art! How I envy and admire you! Do let me be your first reader and critic.”

I mumbled something about not being finished yet but she was off, her great bosoms heaving and rippling. “I did the same, too, years ago when I was at Radcliffe. I just left school one day and told my family I was going to become a Lady of Letters. And I did. My family were Boston . . . stuffy people, but they came around when I wrote Little Biddy Bit . , . you probably remember it. I believe it was considered the best child’s book of the era . . . even today a brand-new generation of children thrills to it; their little letters to me are heart-warming.”

Heartburning seemed to me a more apt description. Then the career of Mary Western Lung was given me at incredible length. We had got her almost down to the present, when I asked what was keeping our hostess. This stopped her for a split second; then she said. “Rose is often late.” She looked uncomfortable. “But then you’re a friend of hers . . . you probably know all about it.”

I nodded, completely at sea. “Even so . . .”

“It’s getting worse. I wish there was something we could do but I’m afraid that, short of sending her to a sanitarium, nothing will do much good . . . and of course since she won’t even admit it there’s really no way for those of us who are her oldest and most treasured friends to approach her. You know what her temper is!” Miss Lung shuddered.

“I thought she seemed a little, well, disturbed this evening. She . . .”

Miss Lung’s hand descended with dramatic emphasis on my left thigh where it remained some seconds like a weight of lead. “I’m afraid for her!” Her high voice grew mysterious and feeble. “She’s heading for a breakdown. She now thinks someone is trying to kill her.”

It was out at last and I was relieved to find that Mrs. Veering was only a mild psychotic and not, as I’d first thought, really in danger of her life. I relaxed considerably, prematurely. “Yes, she told me something like that.”

“Poor Rose,” Miss Lung shook her head and withdrew her hand from its somewhat sensitive resting place. “It all started a few years ago when she was not included in the New York Social Register. I suppose you weathered that with her like all the rest of us . . . what a time it was! It was about then that her . . Miss Lung looked about to make sure no

one else could hear.“ Her drinking began. I remember telling Allie Claypoole (who’s also from Boston by the way) that if Rose didn’t get a grip on herself she’d . . .”

But grip or no grip, our hostess appeared in a magenta dinner dress, looking handsome and steady, no worse for the gallon of Dubonnet she’d drunk before dinner.

“Come along, children!" she said, waving us all toward the dining room. I admired her steadiness. She obviously had the capacity of a camel. “I’m sorry I’m late but I got held up. We have to go in now or the cook will make a scene.”

It was while I accompanied Mrs. Brexton in to dinner I noticed, when she turned to speak to her husband, that across her neck, ordinarily covered by a long bob, was an ugly purple welt extending from under the ear down the side of her neck and disappearing into the high-necked dress she was wearing. It was a bruise, too, not a birthmark nor a scar ... it was a new bruise.

When she turned from her husband to speak to me, hair covered the discoloration. There was an odd look in her eyes, as though she could detect in my face what it was I’d seen, what I thought for, as she made some remark about the dance to be held the next night at the Yacht Club, her hand strayed unconsciously to her neck.

5. Dinner went well enough. Mrs. Veering was in fine form, no trace of the earlier fear which had marred our first meeting. I studied her during dinner (I sat on her left; Brexton was on her right; Allie Claypoole was on my left). She was animated and probably quite drunk though she didn’t show it except, perhaps, in the feverish brightness of her eyes and in her conversation which made no sense at all though it sounded perfectly rational.

It was a queer crew, I decided. A hostess on the make socially in spite of her alcoholism and a big snub from the Social Register; a highbrow painter; his wife whose blood could probably etch glass, with a bruise on her neck which looked as if somebody had tried to choke her to death and then decided what the hell and left the job half done. The somebody was probably her husband whose hands looked strong enough to twist off a human head like a chicken’s.

And the mysterious Claypooles, brother and sister and so in love, or something. He sat next to Mrs. Brexton at dinner and they talked together intently, ignoring the rest of the company which seemed to irritate his sister. Brexton was oblivious of everyone, a good-humored, self-centered type who saw to it that the conversation never got too far away from him or from painting.

And of course my penwoman, a massive giggling friend to man ... at least so she seemed underneath all the “Book-Chat.” Since her score was probably quite low, all things considered, her predatory instincts doubtless expressed themselves only in pats and pinches at which she was pretty expert.

After dinner, a little high on white wine, we all went back to the drawing room where a card table had been set up.

“Of course we’re seven but that doesn’t mean four can’t play bridge while the others are doing something more constructive.” Mrs. Veering looked brightly around. At first everyone said they’d rather not play but she apparently knew what she was up to and, finally, the bridge enthusiasts (I’m not one; poker’s the only card game I ever learned) flocked to the table, leaving Mrs. Brexton, Allie Claypoole and myself in front of the fireplace.

It was obviously up to us to do something more constructive but I couldn’t think what. There’s nothing worse than being at a formal house on a week end with a group of people you don’t know and who don’t particularly appeal to you. There’s always the problem of what to talk about which, in this case, was complicated by the sour behavior of Mrs. Brexton and the vagueness of Alice Claypoole, neither of whom seemed happy with the arrangements either.

“I suppose you and Fletcher will be going back to Boston after this.” Mrs. Brexton snapped this out suddenly at Allie in a tone which, if it was meant to be pleasant, missed the mark wide. Fletcher, I gathered, was Claypoole’s first name.

“Oh, yes ... I think so. We’re getting a smaller place in Cambridge, you know.”

“I don’t know why you won’t live in New York. It’s much more interesting. Boston is dead all year ’round.” Mrs. Brexton was animated on the subject of Boston at least. This was the first conversation I’d heard out of her all evening.

"We like it.”

“I suppose you would.” The insult in this was so clear that I could hardly believe I’d got it right.

But Allie didn’t seem particularly to mind. “People are different, Mildred,” she said quietly. “I don’t think either of us could take New York for very long.”

“Speak for yourself. Fletcher likes the city and you know it. You're the one who keeps him in Boston.”

Allie flushed at this. “He’s always polite," she said.

“That’s not what I mean.” They faced each other suddenly implacable, enemies. What was going on?

A first-rate row was beginning. “What do you mean, Mildred?”

Mrs. Brexton laughed unpleasantly. “Don’t play the fool with me, Allie, I’m one person who . .

“Partner, I had no hearts!” squealed Miss Lung from the table, followed by a groan from Mr. Brexton.

“For God’s sake shut up, Mildred,” Allie said this under the squeal of Miss Lung but I heard her if the others didn’t.

“I’ve shut up too long.” Mrs. Brexton seemed to subside, though; her spasm of anger replaced by her usual unpleasant expression. I noticed her hands shook as she lighted a cigarette. Was she another alcoholic? One of course was par for any week end. Two looked like a frame-up.

Miss Claypoole turned to me as though nothing unpleasant had been said. “I’m sure you’ll have something good to say about Boston,” she said, smiling. “I seem to be a minority here.”

I told her I’d gone to Harvard and this forged a link between us so strong that, without another word, without even a good night to her hostess, Mrs. Brexton left the room.

“Did I say anything to upset her?” I asked innocently. I was curious to know what was going on.

Allie frowned slightly. “No, I don’t think so.” She glanced at the bridge tables; the others were engrossed, paying no attention to us. “Mildred isn’t well. She . . . well, she’s just had a nervous breakdown.”

So that was it. “What form did it take?”

She shrugged. “What form do they usually take? She went to bed for a month. Now she’s up and around. She’s really quite nice . . . don’t get a wrong impression of her. Unfortunately, she makes almost no sense and you can see she's as nervous as a cat. We don’t quarrel with her if we can help it. She doesn’t mean to be as . . . as awful as she sounds.”

“And she sounds pretty awful?”

“She’s an old friend of mine,” Allie said sharply.

“I’m sure she is,” I said, not at all taken aback ... if you’re among eight-balls you have to be one yourself to survive and I had two more days of this ahead of me and I didn’t intend to be buffaloed at the beginning. Besides, I liked Allie. In her subdued way she was very good-looking and she had the sort of figure I like: slender and well-proportioned, no serious sags and a lovely clear skin. I imagined her without any clothes on; then quickly dressed her again in my mind: that wouldn’t do at all, I decided. Besides, there was the luscious Liz Bessemer down the road waiting for me, or at least I hoped she was. One advantage of being an unmarried male in your early thirties is that most of your contemporaries are safely married and you have the field of single women to yourself, officially that is.

Allie, unaware that she’d been brutally undressed and 18

dressed again all in the space of a second, was talking about Mildred Brexton. “She’s always been high-strung. That whole family is . . . even Rose.” She nodded toward our hostess. “I suppose you know Rose is her aunt.”

I said I did.

“We met them, Fletcher and I, about fifteen years ago when Rose came East and decided to do Newport where we always go in the summers ... at least we used to. Mildred’s the same age as my brother and they were, are great friends. In fact, people always thought they’d get married hut then she met Brexton and of course they’ve been very happy.” I knew she was lying: if only because it seemed unlikely any man could get along with that disagreeable woman.

“I suppose you've known Rose a long time.” The question was abrupt.

“No, not very.” I didn’t know what to say, not knowing what Mrs. Veering had said.

She helped me out. “Oh, I thought Rose said you were an old friend but then she’s so vague. I’ve seen her ask people here under the impression she’s known them for years and it’s turned out they’re absolute strangers. That’s one of the reasons her parties are so successful; everyone’s treated like a long-lost cousin.”

The butler slithered into the room at that moment and came, to my surprise, to me; “Mr. Sargeant, sir, you are wanted on the telephone.” An honest-to-god English butler who said “telly-phone.”

It was Liz. “Oh, hi, Peter. I wondered what you were doing.”

“I've been wondering that myself.”

“Dull?”

“Deadly. How’s your place?”

“Not much better. Will you be at the dance tomorrow night?”

“I don’t know. One of the guests mentioned it so I figured we’ll go; if not . .

“Come anyway. Say you’re my guest. I’ll leave a note at the door for you.”

“I'll like that. It's a full moon, too.”

“A full what?”

“Moon.”

“Oh, I thought you said ‘room.’ Well, I’ll be looking for you.” We hung up. I felt very much better. I had visions of the two of us rolling amorously in the deserted dunes while the moon turned the sea and the sand to silver. Maybe this job wasn’t going to be as grim as I thought.

Around midnight, the bridge game broke up and everybody had a nightcap except our hostess who had what could only be called an Indian war bonnet: a huge brandy glass half filled with enough cognac to float me straight out to sea.

“I hope we’re not too dull for you,” she said, just before we all parted for bed.

“I couldn’t be having a better time,” I lied.

“Tomorrow we’ll do a little business and then of course we’re going to the Yacht Club dance where you can see some young people.”

“And what’s wrong with us?” asked Miss Lung roguishly.

I was not honor-bound to answer that and after a round of good nights, we all went upstairs. I followed Mary Western Lung and the sight of those superb buttocks encased in red slacks would, I knew, haunt my dreams forever.

To my dismay, I found her room was next to mine. "What a coincidence!” was her observation.

I smiled enigmatically, ducked into my room, locked the connecting door and then, just to be safe, moved a heavy bureau against the door. Only a maddened hippopotamus could break through that barricade; as far as I knew, Miss Lung was not yet maddened.

I slept uneasily until three-thirty when, right in the middle of a mild, fairly standard nightmare (falling off a cliff), I was awakened by three sharp screams, a woman’s screams.

I sat bolt upright at the second scream; the third one got me out of bed; stumbling over a chair, I opened the door and looked out into the dimly lit hall. Other heads were appearing from doorways. I spotted both Claypooles, Miss Lung and, suddenly, Mrs. Veering who appeared on the landing, in white, like Lady Macbeth.

“Do go back to sleep,” she said in her usual voice. “It’s nothing . . . nothing at all. A misunderstanding.”

There was a bewildered murmur. The heads withdrew. I caught a glimpse of Miss Lung's intricate nightdress: pink decorated with little bows befitting the authoress of Little Biddy Bit. Puzzled, uneasy, I dropped off to sleep. The last thing I remember thinking was how strange it was that Mrs. Veering had made no explanation of those screams.

At breakfast there was a good deal of talk about the screams . . . that is at first there was until it became quite clear that one of our company had been responsible for them; at which moment everybody shut up awkwardly and finished their beef and kidney pie, an English touch of Mrs. Veering’s which went over very big.

I guessed, I don't know why, that Mrs. Brexton had been responsible; yet at breakfast she seemed much as ever, a little paler than I remembered but then I was seeing her for the first time in daylight.

We had coffee on the screened-in porch which overlooked the ocean: startlingly blue this morning with a fair amount of surf. The sky was vivid with white gulls circling overhead. I amused myself by thinking it must really be a scorcher in the city.

After breakfast everybody got into their bathing suits except, fortunately, Mary Western Lung who said the sun “simply poached her skin.” She got herself up in poisonous yellow slacks with harlequin dark glasses and a bandana about her head.

Mrs. Veering was the only one who didn’t change. Like all people who have houses by the sea she wasn’t one for sun-bathing or swimming.

“Water’s too cold for me,” she said, beckoning me into the alcove off the drawing room.

She was all business. I thought longingly of the beach and the surf. I could hear the sound of the others splashing about.

“I hope you weren’t disturbed last night,” she said, sitting down at a handsome Queen Anne desk while I lounged in an armchair.

“It was unexpected,” I admitted. “What happened?”

“Poor Mildred.” She sighed. “I think she has persecutionmania. It’s been terrible this last year. 1 don’t understand any of it. There’s never been anything like it in our family, ever. Her mother, my sister, was the sanest woman that ever drew breath and her father was all right too. I suppose it’s the result of marrying an artist. They can be a trial. TheyTe different, you know, not like us.

She developed that theme a little; it was a favorite one with her. Then: “Ever since her breakdown last winter she’s been positive her husband wants to kill her. A more devoted husband, by the way, you’ll never find.”

The memory of that ugly bruise crossed my mind uneasily. “Why doesn’t she leave him?”

Mrs. Veering shrugged. “Where would she go? Besides, she’s irrational now and I think she knows it. She apologized last night when . . . when it happened.”

“What happened?”

“They had a row . . . just a married persons’ quarrel, nothing serious. Then she started to scream and I went downstairs . . . their bedroom’s on the first floor. She apologized immediately and so did he but of course by then she’d managed to wake up the whole house.”

“I should think her place was in a rest home or something.”

Mrs. Veering sighed. “It may come to that. I pray not. But now here’s the guest list for the party. I’ll want you to make a press list for me and . . .”

Our business took about an hour; she had the situation well in hand and, though I didn’t dare say so, she was quite capable of being her own press agent. She had a shrewd grip on all the problems of publicity. My job, I gathered, was to be her front. It was just as well. We decided then on my fee, which was large, and she typed out an agreement between us with the speed and finesse of an old-time stenographer. “I studied typing,” she said simply, noticing my awe. “It was one of the ways I used to help my late husband. I did everything for him.”

We each signed our copy of the agreement and I was dismissed to frolic on the beach; the last I saw of Mrs. Veering was her moving resolutely toward the console which held, in ever-readiness, ice and whisky and glasses.

One the beach, the others were gathered.

The sun was fiercely white and the day was perfect with just enough breeze off the water to keep you cool.

I looked at my fellow house guests with interest: it’s always interesting to see people you know only dressed without any clothes on, or not much that is.

Both Allie and Mrs. Brexton had good figures. Allie’s especially; she looked just about the way she had the night before when I had mentally examined her ... the only flaw perhaps was that she was a little short in the legs; otherwise, she was a good-looking woman, prettier in the sun wearing a two-piece bathing suit than in her usual dull clothes. She was stretched out on a blanket next to her brother who was a solid-looking busk with a chest which had only just begun to settle around the pelvis.

Mrs. Brexton was sitting on the edge of a bright Navajo blanket in the center of which, holding a ridiculous parasol, was Miss Lung, sweating under all her clothes while Brexton, burlier than I’d thought, did handstands clumsily to show he was just as young as he felt which apparently wasn’t very young.

Miss Lung hailed me. “You must sit here!” She pounded the blanket beside her.

“That’s O.K.” I said. “I don’t want to crowd you.” I sat down cross-legged on the sand between the blanket where she sat and the Claypooles. I was a good yard from her busy fingers.

“My, I’ve never seen such athletic menl” Behind her harlequin dark glasses, I could see I was being given the once-over.

At that moment Brexton fell flat on his face. Spluttering in the sand, he said, “Rock under my hand . . . sharp damn thing.” He pretended his hand hurt while Allie and I exchanged amused glances.

“None of us is as young as we used to be,” said her brother, chuckling, pulling himself up on his elbow. “You’re getting more like Picasso every day.”

“Damned fraud,” said the painter irritably, rubbing the sand out of his face. “Nine tenths of what he’s done I could do better . . . anybody could do better.”

“And the other tenth?”

“Well, that. . . He shrugged. I’d already found that Brexton, like most painters, hated all ether living painters, especially the grand old men. He differed from most in that he was candid, having perhaps more confidence.

He harrangued us a while in the brilliant light. I stretched out and shut my eyes, enjoying the warmth on my back. The others did the same, digesting breakfast.

Claypoole was the first to go in the water. Without warning, he leaped to his feet and dashed down to the ocean, diving flat and sharp into the first breaker. He was a powerful swimmer and it was a pleasure to watch him.

We all sat up. Then Mrs. Brexton walked slowly down to the water’s edge where she put on her bathing cap, standing, I could see, in such a way as to hide from us the long bruise on her neck.

She waded out. Brexton got to his feet and followed her. He stopped her for a moment and they talked; then he shrugged and she went on by him, diving awkwardly into the first wave. He stood watching her, his back to us, as she swam slowly out toward Claypoole.

Allie turned to me suddenly. “She’s going too far. There’s an awful undertow.”

“She seems like a fair swimmer. Anyway your brother’s there.”

“My!” exclaimed Miss Lung. “They swim like porpoises. How I envy them!”

Claypoole was now beyond the breakers, swimming easily with the undertow which, apparently, was pulling south for he was already some yards below where he'd gone into the water; he was heading diagonally for shore.

Mrs. Brexton was not yet beyond the breakers; I could see here white bathing cap bobbing against the blue.

Allie and I both got to our feet and joined Brexton at the water’s edge. The water was cold as it eddied about our ankles.

“I don’t think Mildred should go so far out,” said Allie.

Brexton nodded, his eyes still on his wife. “I told her not to. Naturally that was all she needed.”

“It’s quite an undertow,” I said, remembering something about trajectory, about estimated speed: Claypoole was now sliding into shore on the breakers at least thirty feet below us.

As far as the eye could see to north and south the white beach, edged by grassy dunes, extended. People, little black dots were clustered in front of each house. While, a mile or two down, there was a swarm of them in front of the club.

The sky was cloudless; the sun white fire.

Then, without warning, Brexton rushed into the water. Half-running, half-swimming, he moved toward his wife.

She had made no sound but she was waving weakly on the line where the surf began. The undertow had got her.

I dived in too. Allie shouted to her brother who was already on the beach. He joined us, half-running, half-swimming out to Mildred.

Salt water in my eyes, I cut through the surf, aware of Claypoole near me. I never got to Mildred though. Instead, I found myself trying to support Brexton some feet away from his wife. He was gasping for air. “Cramp!” He shouted and began to double up, so I grabbed him while Claypoole shot beyond me to Mildred. With some difficulty, I got Brexton back to shore. Claypoole floated Mildred in.

Exhausted, chilled from the water, I rolled Brexton onto the sand. He sat there for a moment trying to get his breath,

holding his side with a look of pain. I was shaking all over from cold, from tension.

Then we both went up on the terrace where the others had gathered in a circle about the white still body of Mildred Brexton.

She lay on her stomach and Claypoole squatted over her, giving artificial respiration. I noticed with horrified fascination the iridescent bubbles which had formed upon her blue lips. As he desperately worked her arms, her lungs, the bubbles one by one burst.

For what seemed like a hundred years there was no sound but that of Claypoole’s exhausted breathing as he worked in grim silence. It came like a shock to us when we heard his voice, the first voice to speak. He turned to his sister, not halting in his labor, and said, “Doctor . . . quick.”

The sun was at fierce noon when the doctor came, in time to pronounce Mildred Brexton dead by drowning.

Bewildered, as shaky as a defeated boxer on the ropes, Claypoole stood swaying over the dead woman, his eyes on Brexton. He said only two words, said them softly, full of hate. “You devil!” They faced each other over the dead woman’s body. There was nothing any of us could do.