Death Likes It Hot

1

SHORTLY after one o’clock, I sneaked down the backstairs of the house, across the deserted kitchen and out the back door. The policeman on guard was faced the other way, sprawled in a wicker armchair at the corner of the house. I ducked down behind the dunes, cursing the clear black night in which the white moon rode like a searchlight, casting dense shadows across the dunes, scattering silver light on the cold sea.

I made it to the road, however, without being observed. We’d all been told to remain in the house until further notice and I’d excused myself as soon as possible and gone up to bed, praying the dance wouldn’t be over yet.

It wasn’t.

Easthampton is a funny place with any number of sets, each mutually exclusive. The center of the village’s summer life of course is the group of old-timers who belong to the Ladyrock Yacht Club, a rambling building with a long pier, situated a mile or so north of Mrs. Veering’s house, on the road to Ammagansett.

Members of the Club are well-to-do (but not wealthy) socially accepted (but not quite “prominent") of good middle-class American stock (proud of their ancient lineage which goes back usually to some eighteenth-century farmer). Their names are not known to the general public yet they feel that America is a pyramid at the apex of which will be. found themselves, a delusion nurtured by the fact that they are not accepted by the rich and the great while they refuse to associate with those poorer than themselves. Their favorite word, however, their highest praise is “nice.” You hear that word every few minutes in their company. So-and-so is nice while somebody else isn’t. They have divided the world neatly between the nice and the not-nice and they’re pretty happy with their side of the border.

Part of being nice means you belong to the club and deplore the presence in the community of such un-nice elements as Jews, artists, fairies and celebrities, four groups which, given half a chance, will, they feel, sweep all that’s nice right out to sea. Fortunately the other elements are not conscious of them; otherwise, there could be trouble in this divided village.

As it is, the painters and such like mind their own business in the south end of the town while their nicer neighbors live contentedly together in big houses and small cottages near the Ladyrock; they go to the John Drew Theater in the town; they give parties for one another where at least half the guests get drunk and the other half get offended; they swap wives and husbands while their children coast around at great speed in new cars from Hampton to Hampton wrapping themselves periodically around telephone poles. A typical resort community, and a nice one.

The clubhouse was lighted with Japanese lanterns. A good band was playing. College boys and girls were necking on the dark pier which extended out into the sea. After a fumble with a pile of cards at the door, I was let in to join the nice people who were, all in all, a fairly handsome crew, divided evenly between the well-groomed, well-fed, middle-aged and the golden young on their summer vacation. The middle generation, mine, were all off working to make enough money to get a summer place out here and, at forty, to join the Ladyrock Yacht Club.

Liz found me at the bar where I was ordering a Manhattan and hoping she’d come along to sign for it.

She was beautiful, in black and white with something or other shining in her hair: her eyes glittered and she was pleasantly high.

“Oh, it’s wonderful you got away! I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to.” She signed for my drink like a good girl. “Come on, let’s dance.”

“Not until I’ve had this.”

“Well, come on out on the pier then. I want to talk to you.” We made our way slowly across the dance floor. Young and old bucks pawed Liz who apparently was the belle of this ball. Several old school friends of mine, bald and plump (guests like myself; not yet members) greeted me and I knew at least a dozen of the girls, which Liz didn’t like.

“You’re such a flirt,” she said, once we were on the pier. The moon shone white upon our heads. The young lovers were farther out the pier. A number of alcoholics reeled cheerfully along the boardwalk which separated the pier from the club itself.

“I’ve just been around a long time.”

But she was more interested in the murder. And she knew it was murder. “It’s all over town!” she said excitedly. “Everybody says Brexton drowned her.”

“I wonder how that rumor started?” I hedged.

“Oh, you know and you won’t tell me.” She looked at me accusingly. “I promise I won’t breathe a word to anybody.” “On your honor as a Girl Guide?”

“Oh, Peter, tell me! You were there. You saw it happen, didn’t you?”

“I saw it happen all right.” I put my empty glass down on the railing and put one arm around her; she shook away.

“You have to tell,” she said.

“Don’t I appeal to you?”

“Men don’t appeal to women, as you well know,” she said loftily. “We are only interested in homemaking and, on top of that, our sexual instinct does not fully develop until the late twenties. I’m too young to have any responses.”

“But I'm too old. The male, as we all know, reaches his sexual peak at sixteen after which he declines steadily into a messy old age. I am long past my prime ... an erotic shell, capable of only a minor...”

“Oh, Peter, tell me or I’ll scream!” Her curiosity brought an end to our Kinsian dialogue. It has recently become the aim of our set to act entirely in accordance with the master’s findings and what the majority do and feel we do and feel, more or less. I was all ready to launch into the chapter on premarital petting which leads to climax but not penetration; unfortunately my companion, deeply interested in murder like any healthy girl, had begun to scream.

“For God’s sake, shut upl” I said nervously. Luckily only alcoholics were on the terrace ... a trio of minor executives in minor banks applauded softly her first scream; the couples on the pier were all engaged in premarital petting (collegetype) and chose not to hear her.

“You’ll tell me?” she took a deep breath, ready for a loud scream.

“There’s nothing to tell. Mrs. Brexton took four sleeping pills, went in swimming and drowned before we could get to her.”

"Why did she take four sleeping pills?”

“That is the question which hovers over all our heads like the sword of Themistocles.”

“Damocles,” said that classic scholar. “Somebody give her the pills?”

“Who knows.”

“She took them herself?”

“So I think, but the police have other ideas.”

“Like Paul Brexton giving them to her secretly?”

“Or someone else . . . though why the nonfatal four, I’ll never know. If he really wanted to do her in, I should think the usual dozen would have been in order.”

“It’s all a devious plot, Peter. Any fool can see it. She was going in swimming: what could be smarter than giving her something to make her groggy just as she got out in that awful undertow?”

“I can think of a lot of things which’d be smarter. Among them, ...” I slipped my arm around her again but she was extremely unresponsive.

“On the other hand, I don’t suppose there was any way of knowing for sure she would go in the water. Oh, isn’t it terribly exciting? and happening to Brexton too, of all people.”

“It will cause unpleasant talk,” I said, drawing her even closer to me: I smelled lilacs and the fresh warm odor of Liz.

“What on earth do you have in mind Peter?"

“It’s not in my mind. . .

“Filthy, brutish creatures ... all men are the same.”

“If you’d rather I'll get you a sixteen-year-old boy.”

“And what on earth would I do with one of those?" “Modesty impels me to draw a veil over. . .

“It’ll be in all the papers, won’t it?”

“What? the sixteen-year...”

“No, you idiot, Mrs. Brexton’s death."

“Well, of course...”

“Isn’t that just wonderful for you? that’s your job, isn’t it?” “I wasn't hired to handle Mrs. Brexton’s murder.” As I said this, I was suddenly startled by the implications. It was too wild . . . and yet mightn’t Mrs. Veering have suspected there’d be trouble and hired me in advance, just in case? She was the kind to look ahead: a combination Hetty Green and lush. The possibility that she might have been the one to ease her niece into a more beautiful world occurred to me then. Motive was obscure but then I didn’t know anybody’s motive . . . they were all strangers to me. Even so it was the kind of thing Mrs. Veering might do . . . she was both mad and methodical, an unusual combination. The thought was sobering.

Liz noticed my sudden thoughtfulness. “What're you thinking about? she asked. "Are you considering ways of seducing me?”

I snorted. “What is more ignoble than a woman? You have not the slightest sensual interest in the male, even in such a perfect specimen as myself, yet at all hours of the day and night you think about seduction...”

“And homemaking. A little two-room apartment in Peter Cooper Village. Birdseye products in the frigidaire . . .Clapp’s strained baby food on the shelf and a darling fat baby wetting itself periodically in a special fourteen ninety-five Baby-Leroy crib from Macy's.”

“My God, you are prepared for marriage!”

Liz smiled enigmatically. “We all are. Acutally, I’m doing a piece on the young married couple in New York City for one of the magazines, not Harper’s Bazaar. Something more middle-class. They want me to describe bliss on thirty-five dollars a week. You don’t know what a good wife I’ll make!”

“There's more to marriage than that.”

“Than thirty-five dollars? I suppose there is. I think I’d like someone very rich. But seriously, Peter, you don’t really believe Brexton killed his wife, do you? I mean it just isn’t the kind of thing that happens."

“I don’t know what to think.” This was my clearest statement so far, and the most accurate. I then swore her to secrecy and we went back inside.

Everyone was fairly tight. The very nicest people had gone home. Only one stag had been knocked down in the john (you may recall what happened to the late Huey Long in a Long Island men’s room some years ago); a husband and wife (another woman’s husband, another man’s wife) were locked tight together in a dim corner of the room. The college set, a particularly beautiful gang of sunburned animals, were singing songs and feeling each other happily while plotting their next move which, from what I overheard, was an all-out attack on Southampton. Already I could hear the crash of cars into solid objects, the tinkling of broken glass: youth!

And youth, in the congenial form of Liz Bessemer, was all mine that night. Her uncle and aunt had gone home. The various bucks who had been competing for her favors had either gone off with whatever available girls were on hand or had quietly passed out among the parked convertibles.

‘‘Let’s go to Montauk!” This brilliant idea came to Liz as we moved slowly around the dance floor, waltzing to a fox trot ... I have no sense of beat and, besides, only know how to waltz which I do fairly well to any music.

“Walking?”

“I’ll drive. I’ve got the car ... at least I think I have. Aunt went home in our house guest’s car ... I hope.”

Aunt had indeed gone home in the house guest’s car, leaving us a fine Buick with its top down.

She leaped into the driver’s seat and I relaxed beside her as we drove swiftly down the center of the long straight road which runs parallel to the dunes all the way to Montauk, Long Island’s sandy terminus.

The moon almost blinded us; it shone directly in our eyes. We stopped a long way before Montauk. At my direction, we turned off the road and drove down a sandy trail which ended in the Atlantic Ocean. Between two dunes, a mile from the nearest darkened house, we made love.

I’ve never seen such a night as that one. The sky was filled with all the stars available in that happy latitude while everywhere, in every part of the sky, meteors were falling.

When it was over, we lay side by side on the sand which was still faintly warm from the sun and we looked at the stars, the meteors and the moon. A salt breeze dried our naked bodies. She shivered and I put my arm under her and pulled her close . . . she was light in my arms.

“I ought to get back,” she said, her voice small, no longer teasing.

“Almost day." We thought about that for a while. She pulled herself up on her elbow and looked at me curiously in the moonlight. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“Nothing . . . except maybe how pleasant it is on the beach like this and how much I’ll hate having to get dressed again and go back to that house.”

She sighed and stretched. “It was nice, wasn’t it?”

I pulled her down on my chest and kissed her for answer; her small breasts tickled my skin. I was ready again even though at my age I’m officially past the peak but she sensed this and, instead, got to her feet and ran down to the water and dove in.

Remembering what had happened less than twenty-four hours before, I was scared to death. I leaped into the cold black water after her. Fortunately, she was a good swimmer and we kept well within the surf line. It was strange, swimming in that black ocean under a black sky . . . the moon and the beach white, and the tops of the waves, bright with phosphorus.

Then, shivering and laughing, we ran back to the car and dried ourselves with her aunt’ lap rug.

We both agreed that the other looked just fine with no clothes on and Liz admitted shyly to me that she got a minor thrill out of observing the male body in a state of nature if she liked the person who owned the body. I told her she was unnatural and might end up as a footnote in a textbook.

In a happy mood, we drove south and she let me off a few yards from the North Dunes just as daylight, gray and pink, smudged the east.

"Tomorrow?"

She nodded. “If I can manage it. I don’t know what’s on.” “I don’t either but I can sneak off.”

“I can too. I'll call you when I know.” We kissed long and blissfully; then she was gone in a screech of gears. She was one of the worst drivers I’ve ever known, but she was also a wonderful girl. I experienced an emotion which was something more than my usual athleticism; then I quickly put all romantic thoughts out of my head. She was a lovely girl; the night had been perfect; the moon bright; what should’ve happened did happen and that was that. I am not the serious kind in these matters, I said to myself sternly as I opened the back door quietly and stepped into the kitchen.

2

I came to bed.

My head felt as if someone had whetted an axe on it and at first I suffered from double vision. Everything was blurred. Then, with an effort, I brought Mrs. Veering into focus.

She was standing over me, an anxious look on her face. Light streamed in the window.

"What time is it?” I asked.

“Ten o’clock. You certainly had us scared out of our wits! What on earth happened to you?”

I put my hand to my head where an enormous lump had formed. No skin had been broken and there was no bandage, only an aching head. “I haven’t any idea. I got home about dawn and...”

Greaves appeared in the doorway. “Has he been conscious long, Mrs. Veering?”

“Just this minute. If you...”

“Could you leave us alone, please. I’d like to ask Mr. Sargeant a few questions.”

“Certainly." With a reassuring pat, Mrs. Veering trotted off. shutting the door behind her.

“Well?” the policeman looked at me, half smiling.

"Well what?” I felt awful. I noticed I was wearing only a shirt and shorts. I was suddenly very hot under the blanket. I threw it off and sat up dizzily, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.

“Were you tryin to do our job for us, Mr. Sargeant?”

“Go away.”

“I’m afraid you must answer my questions. You received a severe blow but according to the doctor there was no concussion and you’ll be able to get up whenever you like.”

“Would you do me the courtesy of going away and coming back when I feel better?” My head was pounding with pain as I moved shakily toward the bathroom. “I'm about to perform a natural function,” I said sharply.

“I can wait.”

I groaned and went into the bathroom where I put my head under the cold water tap; then I took two Empirin tablets, figuring if I wasn’t supposed to take any I’d have been warned. I was being treated too damn casually, I thought.

When I returned, Greaves was seated in the armchair by my bed, making marks in a small notebook.

“You still here?”

“What happened?” He looked at me expectantly.

“A woman dressed all in black and carrying what seemed to be calla lilies was crossing the kitchen when I entered. When I asked her if I might be of assistance, she brought the lilies down on my head, shrieking "Thus to all members of the MacTavish Clan!”

Greaves looked faintly alarmed, as though not sure how serious the blow might have been. “Calla lilies?” he asked.

“Or something.” I took my clothes off, hoping that would get rid of him, but he still regarded me with the same abstracted air while I got into a bathing suit.

“You didn’t see her face?”

“I am making fun of you,” I said, feeling light in the head, as though I’d drunk too much too fast. I sat down weakly on the edge of the bed. “Didn’t see anybody. Walked in the kitchen door and bang! that was the end until I just now opened my eyes.”

“You were struck from the right side by a metal object held by a person as tall or a little taller than yourself. . .

“Or standing on a chair. . .

“Or standing on something, yes. You were discovered at seven-thirty by the cook who screamed for four minutes. One of my men brought you up here and a doctor was called.”

“No clues?”

“We call them leads, Mr. Sargeant. The police department is not...”

“Then were there any leads? like a strand of blond hair soaked in blood or maybe the old dandruff of a middle-aged murderer scattered beside my still form?”

“Nothing but your still form was found.” He paused, indicating that for his money it wasn’t still enough.

“Well, there’s nothing more I can say.”

“You were out. You left the house after I expressly asked everyone to stay in. You were dressed in a. , .

“Tuxedo with a loose inner button. I went to the Ladyrock Yacht Club...”

“After which you and a Miss, Liz Bessemer drove north to Amagansett.”

This stopped me. “What happened then, in Amagansett?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. Miss Bessemer dropped you off here at five-twenty or thereabouts.”

“I suppose your man saw all this?” the one who was sound asleep when I came home.”

“He was sound asleep and he’s been replaced.” Greaves was calm, implacable. “Sargeant, what do you know?”

He whipped this last out like a spray of cold water in my face. He was leaning forward now, intense, grimly serious.

“About what?” The Empirin hadn't begun to work yet and my head ached fiercely.

“You know something you haven’t told us, something important . . . you know enough for the murderer to want to kill you.”

This had occurred to me some minutes before when I came to, aware I’d been clubbed. I was in the dark, though. I was fairly certain neither Brexton nor Claypoole knew I’d overheard their conversation. They were the likeliest pair.

Greaves was on a different tack, however. I found out soon enough what was on his mind. “What did you see out there in the water, when Mrs. Brexton was drowning? What did Brexton do exactly? what did Claypoole do? and the woman, did she speak? did she call for help?”

“You think I saw something out there that somebody . . . the murderer, didn’t want me to, is that it?”

“That’s it.”

I shook my head which was beginning, slowly, to clear. “I’ve gone over the whole thing a dozen times in my mind since it happened, but I can’t find anything unusual . . .anything you don’t already know.”

“How close was Brexton to his wife when you got to him?”

“About five feet, I'd say . . . not very close. He was gagging and getting blue in the face. I grabbed him while...”

“Claypoole grabbed Mrs. Brexton.”

“Yes. Then we came into shore.”

“Brexton never touched his wife, did he?”

I shook my head. “I don't think so. The spray was in my eyes. I was bucking surf all the way. When I got there, she was sinking, going down again and again, hardly struggling enough to get herself back up. She didn’t make a sound.”

“And Claypoole?”

“He was behind me all the way until we finally got out to them: then he spurted on ahead and grabbed Mrs. Brexton.

I had my hands full with her husband.

“How did Claypoole handle her on the way in?”

“I wasn’t watching. About the same way I managed Brexton . . . standard Junior Life Saver stuff.”

Greaves lit a pipe thoughtfully. “He’ll try it again.”

“Who will try what?”

“The murderer will take another crack at you.”

I chuckled, though I didn’t feel any too merry. “I don’t think that’s why I was cracked over the head. After all, if somebody was interested in killing me, he wouldn't rely on one blow to do it. On top of that how’d he know I was going to come creeping into the kitchen at five a.m.? and what was he doing there?”

“These are all questions we mean to consider,” said Greaves with the slow ponderousness of a public servant out of his depth.

“Well, while you’re considering them I'm going to get something to eat, and some sun. I ache all over.”

“I’d be very careful if I were you, Mr. Sargeant.”

“I'll do my best. You might keep your boys on the alert, too.”

“I intend to. There’s a murderer in this house, Mr. Sargeant, and it’s my opinion he’s after you.”

“You make me feel like a clay pigeon.”

“I think bait is a better word, don't you?” He was a cold bastard.

3

I got some breakfast on the porch where I held court, surrounded by the ladies of the party to whom I was something of a hero. Claypoole it seemed was in Easthampton and Brexton was in his room painting . . . though where he’d get enough light I didn’t know, glancing at the window near the chair where I sat with the ladies, aware that everything we said could be heard by anyone in that room.

It was Mary Western Lung who most appreciated my situation. She was in her yellow slacks; her harlequin glasses, adorned with rhinestones, glittered in the sun which streamed across the porch. “We all came running when the cook started carrying on. You never saw such a commotion . . . you looked so dead, there on the floor. I called for a doctor,” she added, to show that hers was the clearest head.

“Did you get a glimpse of who did it?” Allie Claypoole was gratifyingly tense.

“No, nothing at all. When I opened the door to the kitchen somebody slugged me.”

Mrs. Veering stirred her orange juice with her forefinger: I wondered what pale firewater it contained, probably gin, the breakfast drink. “The police requested us all to keep quiet about this,” she said. “I can’t think why. My theory is that we had a prowler . . . there’s one loose in Southampton, you know. I think he stumbled in here; when he heard you he was frightened and...”

“And tiptoed quietly home, past a sleeping policeman on the front porch?” I shook my head. “I don’t think a run-of-the-mill burglar would go anywhere near a house with a policeman standing guard, even a sleeping one.”

The others agreed. Mrs. Veering preferred her theory, though. The alternative made everybody nervous.

It was Miss Lung who said what we were thinking: “Somebody in this house wanted to . . . rub out Mr. Sargeant.” She paused, eyes wide, obviously pleased with “rub out.”

“The murderer,” I said agreebly, “obviously thinks I know something.” As I talked I was aware of that open window two yards away, of Brexton listening. “I don't of course. The whole thing’s...”

“A nightmare!” Allie was suddenly vehement. “It couldn’t be more awful, more pointless!”

“I think,” said Mrs. Veering sternly, “that everybody tends to jump to conclusions. There’s no proof Mildred was murdered. 1 decline to think she was. Certainly no one here would do such a thing and as for Mr. Sargeant . . . well, there are other explanations.” What they were though she didn’t see fit to tell us. She turned accusingly to Mary Western Lung: “And I thought you particularly agreed with me that murder was out of the question.”

Miss Lung gestured vaguely with her pincushion of a hand. “What happened to Mr. Sargeant changed my mind. As you know, I felt all along that poor Mildred had every intention of meeting her Maker when she stepped into that water yesterday. But now I’m not so sure.”

They argued for some time about what had happened. There were no facts to go on other than my unexpected conjunction with a bit of metal. None of them had, until then, wanted to face the fact that Mildred was murdered. Their reasons were unknown to me . . . and their reasons, if ever I could understand them, would provide a key to the tangle. It was precisely at that moment, while drinking coffee and listening to the chatter of three women, that 1 made up my mind to go after the killer. The fact that he, or she, had gone after me first of course had something to do with my decision: I had no intention of dying in Easthampton that summer.

Mrs. Veering wanted to see me privately after breakfast but I excused myself first to make some telephone calls. I cornered several newspapers and took them up to my room

which was now empty. I’m ashamed to confess I looked under the bed and in the closet before locking the door.

Then I read the papers quickly. No mention of murder yet. But the stories hinted at mysteries. The Daily News announced that the deceased had had a nervous breakdown and indicated tactfully that suicide was a possibility. That seemed to be the general line in the press. There were some old pictures of Brexton about the time of their marriage, looking very Newport and not very Bohemian. Mrs. Veering was good for a picture in the Journal and the Globe. This was fine: she was still my client.

I telephoned Miss Flynn, wondering if anybody else was listening on the wire. House-party telephones are notorious: I suspect a great many divorces have occurred as a result of week ends at big houses with a lot of phones, all tuned in on each other.

Miss Flynn was cold. “I assume the late socialite wife of the well-known Modem Painter died a Natural Death?” The skepticism in her voice was heavy enough to cauterize the receiver.

‘‘As far as we know,” I said glibly. “Now I may have to stay out here for a week. The police have asked...”

"I understand.” She was a rock. She cut short any further explanations. “I will carry on at the office as best I can,” she said. “I assume you will be in touch with the Globe.”

“Well, come to think of it, I might give them a ring to find out if they'd like me to do...”

"The Human Interest Angle, I know. I trust you will be cautious in your investigations.”

I assured her that I would be. I told her then what I wanted done for our various clients during my absence.

Then I got the managing editor of the New York Globe at his home in Westport.

"Good to hear from you, boy. Not mixed up in another murder, are you?”

"Matter of fact I am.”

I could hear a quick intake of breath on the other end of the wires: the managing editor was rapidly figuring how cheaply he could buy me. We had done business before. “What’s the deal?” he asked, his voice carefully bored.

“Mildred Brexton.”

“Easthampton? Are you out there now?”

“In Mrs. Veering’s house. I suppose you’ve been following...”

“Thought it was an accident.”

“Police think not. Now...” We haggled like gentlemen and I got my price. I also asked him to get me all the material he could on Mrs. Veering, the Claypooles, the Brextons and Mary Western Lung . . . they were all more or less public figures, either professionally or socially. He said he would and I told him I’d have a story for him in a couple of days, long before the other services had even got an interview out of 52

the principals. I hung up ... a second later I lifted the receiver and heard a click on the wire. Somebody had been listening.

The back of my head was beginning to feel more human though it was still oddly shaped. I went back downstairs. On my way through the hall, Mrs. Veering beckoned to me from the door to the sunroom. I joined her in there. We were alone; the others were out on the beach. The police were nowhere in sight.

“Where’s Greaves?” I asked.

“Gone . . . for the time being. We have a twenty-four hour guard, though,” she added dramatically. For once the inevitable tumbler of the waters of Lethe was not at hand. I wondered if she was sober; I wondered if there was any way of telling.

“I suppose he’s investigating.”

“Mr. Sargeant . . . Peter, I believe we are all in terrible danger.”

I took this calmly enough ... I could even go along with it. “Doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it,” I said noncommittally.

“There must be!” She clasped and unclasped her hands nervously.

“I thought you felt it was all an accident, that I was slugged by a prowler and...”

“I didn’t want to upset the others. I didn't want them to know that I knew." She looked at me darkly.

“Knew what?”

“That there is danger.”

I decided she was off her rocker, or else did know something the rest of us didn't. “Have you told the police?”

“I can’t tell them anything. It’s only a . . . presentiment.” “Do you or don’t you think Mrs. Brexton was murdered?” She would not answer; instead she just sighed and looked out the window at the velvety green golf course, brilliant as a pool table in the light of noon. She changed the subject with that rapidity which I was finally getting used to; alcoholics find any train of thought too long sustained tiring: “I want you to mention my Labor Day party in your first dispatch to the Globe " She smiled at me.

“You were listening on the phone?”

“Say that a little bird told me.” She was coy.

“You don’t mind my writing about the murder?”

“Of course I mind but since everyone else will be writing about it in those awful tabloids it’ll be to my advantage to have you here in the house, a gentleman.” Her realism always surprised me.

“I was afraid you might be upset.”

“Not at all, but I'd like to see what you write from time to time. I may be able to help you.”

“That’d be awfully nice of you.”

“Not at all.”

‘Was your niece murdered?” I asked suddenly, trying to catch her off guard.

“You’ll get no help from me there.” And that was the end of that interview: I left her for the beach and the sun.

1 found only Allie Claypoole on the beach.

She was lying on her back in a two-piece red bathing suit which was exciting to contemplate: I found her most attractive and if it hadn’t been for my fling with Liz the night before and the peculiar discovery that despite a lifetime devoted to philandering, I was unexpectedly held to the idea of Liz and didn’t want anybody else, not even the slender Allie who looked up at me with a smile and said, “Recovered?”

I sat down beside her on the sand. The sun was soothing. The sea sparkled. Just twenty-four hours ago it had happened. “I feel much better. Where’s everybody?”

“Miss Lung has gone inside to write this week’s ‘Book-Chat’ while my brother’s in town. Brexton’s in his room still. What on earth is going on?"

I gestured helplessly. “I haven’t any idea. I never saw any of these people before Friday. You ought to know.”

“I can’t make any sense out of it.” She rubbed oil on her brown arms.

“Mrs. Veering feels we are all in terrible danger.”

Allie smiled wanly. “I’m afraid Rose always feels she’s in great danger, especially when she’s been drinking.”

“She seemed quite sober this morning.”

“You never can tell. I wouldn’t take anything she says too seriously. It’s all part of her own private madness.”

“On the other hand that knock on the head I got this morning was not just one of her hallucinations.”

“No, that’s more serious. Even so I can’t really believe anybody killed Mildred . . . not one of us, that is. This is the sort of thing which is supposed to happen to other people."

“What do you think happened?” I looked at her innocently: I had to pump these people, one by one. The best approach was bewildered stupidity.

“I believe what Paul says.”

This was news; I hadn’t known that Brexton had expressed himself yet on the murder, except perhaps to the police. “What does he say?”

“That Mildred was in the habit of taking sleeping pills at all hours of the day, to calm her nerves. That the ones she took the morning she died were a standard dose for her and that she went in swimming not realizing how tough the undertow was.”

“Well, it sounds sensible.”

“Except that my brother had a bottle of the same type pills. . .

“You don’t mean they suspect him?”

She shook her head, her face grim. “No, I don’t think they do. He had no motive and even if he did there’s no proof the pills came from him. Their idea seems to be that somebody might have had access to his bathroom who didn’t have access to Mildred’s pills which were kept locked in her jewel box: she was the only one who knew the combination. Brexton swears he never knew it and couldn’t have got the thing open if he wanted to.”

“So either she got the pills herself or somebody went into your brother’s bathroom and got some to put in her coffee or whatever it was she took them in?”

“That’s the general line. If you hadn’t been attacked last night, I’d have thought Mildred took the pills herself. Now I’m not sure.”

“It looks like my adventure may have started the whole thing rolling.”

She nodded. “I thought that awful little man Graves, or whatever his name is, was just trying to scare us, to get himself attention. I still don’t think he has the vaguest idea whether or not a murder was committed.”

“He’s fairly sure now. Are you?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“What was between your brother and Mildred?” I asked this all in one breath, to take her by surprise; it did.

Her eyelids fluttered with alarm; she frowned, taken aback. “What . . . what makes you think anything. . .

“Mrs. Veering.” I lied. “She told me that, years ago. . .

“That bloody fool!” She literally snarled; but then she was in control again. She even managed to laugh convincingly to cover up her sudden lapse. “I'm sorry,” she said quickly. “It just seems so unnecessary, raking up family skeletons. The facts are simple enough; Mildred was engaged to marry my brother. Then she met Brexton and married him instead. That's all. My brother was devoted to her and not too friendly with Brexton, though they got on . . . that’s all there is to it.”

“Why didn’t she marry your brother?”

She was evasive. “I suppose Brexton was more glamorous to her...”

“Did you like the idea of his marrying her?”

“I can’t think that that has anything to do with it, Mr. Sargeant.” She looked at me coldly.

“I suppose it doesn’t. Tm sorry. It’s just that if I’m to be used as a punching hag by a murderer, I’d like to know a little something about what’s going on.”

“I’m sorry.” She was quick to respond. “I didn’t mean to be unpleasant. It’s just that it’s a sore subject with all of us. In fact, I didn’t even want to come down here for the week end but Fletcher insisted. He was very fond of Mildred, always.”

I was slowly getting an idea of the relationships involved, as much from what she didn't say as what she did.

The butler called me from the terrace. Liz was on the telephone. I answered it in the hall.

“Darling, are you all right?” Her voice was anxious.

“Don’t tell me you heard...”

“Everything! My aunt told me this morning how, when you came home last night, you were stabbed. I’ve been trying to get you for two hours but the line’s been busy. Are you all right? Where. . .

I told her what had happened, marveling at the speed with which news spread in that community. I supposed the servants had passed it on since I knew no one in the house, none of the guests, would have breathed a word of it.

She was relieved that I hadn’t been stabbed. She was also alarmed. "I don’t think you should stay another night in that awful place, Peter. No, I mean it, really. It’s perfectly apparent that a criminal maniac is on the loose and. . .

“And when do I see you?"

“Oh. Well, what about late tonight? around midnight. I’m tied up with the family till then but afterward I’m invited to Evan Evans’ house ... the abstract sculptor. I could meet you there. It’s open house.” I took down the address and then, after promising her I wouldn’t get in the way of any more metal objects, she rang off.

I wandered back to the beach. From upstairs I could hear the clatter of Mary Western Lung’s feverish typewriter. The door to Brexton’s room was shut. Mrs. Veering was writing letters in the sunroom.

Everything was peaceful. Allie Claypoole was talking to a stranger when I rejoined her on the beach. “Oh, Mr. Sargeant, I want you to meet Dick Randan . . . he’s my nephew.”

The nephew was a tall gangling youth of twenty odd summers: he wore heavy spectacles and a seersucker suit which looked strangely out of place on that glaring beach. I made the expected comment about what a young aunt Allie was, and she agreed.

“Dick just drove down from Cambridge today...”

“Heard what had happened and came down to make sure everything was all right.” His voice was as unprepossessing as the rest of him. He sat like a solemn owl on the sand, his arms clasping bony knees. “Just now got here . . . quite a row,” he shook his head gloomily. “Bad form, this,” he added with considerable understatement.

“Dick’s taking his Master’s degree in history,” said Allie as though that explained everything. "You better run in the house, dear, and tell Rose you’re here.”

“Oh, I’ll stay in the village,” said the young historian.

“Well, go in and say hello anyway. I’m sure she’ll ask you to dinner.”

Wiping sand off his trousers, the nephew disappeared into the house. Allie sighed, "I should’ve known Dick would show 56

up. He loves disaster. I suppose it’s why he majored in history . . . all those awful wars and things.”

“Maybe he’ll cheer us up.”

“It’ll take more than Dick I’m afraid."

“You’re not much older than he, are you?”

She smiled. “Now that’s what I call a nice thing to hear. Yes, I’m a good ten years older.” Which made her thirty one or two, I figured with one of those rapid mental computations which earned me the reputation of a mathematical failure in school.

Then we went in swimming, keeping close to shore.

4

Miss Lung and I were the first to arrive for cocktails and type dress which made her look even more repellent than usual. She thought she was cute as a button though.

“Well, looks like we’re the first down. The vanguard.” I gave her a drink and agreed. I sat down opposite her though she’d done everything but pull me down beside her on the couch. I realize that, contrary to popular legend, old maids’ traditional lechery is largely an invention of the male but I can safely say that, in Miss Lung’s case, masculine irreverence was justified.

She sipped her martini; then, after spilling half of it on the rug, put it down and said, “I hope you’re recovered from your encounter with that unknown party.”

I said I was.

“I could hardly keep my mind on ‘Book-Chat.’ I was doing a piece on how strange it is that all the best penwomen with the possible exception of Taylor Caldwell possess three names."

I let the novelty of this pass. I was saved from any further observations by the appearance of Claypoole. He was pale and preoccupied. He looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week.

He made conversation mechanically. “The whole town’s buzzin,” he said. “I was down at the theater seeing the pictures there . . . some good things, too, by the way, though of course Paul would say they’re trash.”

“What’s trash? What would I call trash?” Brexton appeared in the doorway; he was even smiling, some of his old geniality returning. I wondered why. At the moment his neck was half inside a noose.

Claypoole looked at him bleakly. “I was talking about the pictures down at the John Drew Theater.”

“Oh. they’re trash all right,” said Brexton cheerfully, mixing himself a drink. “You’re absolutely right, Fletcher.”

“I liked them. I said you’d say they were. . .

“What they are. Well, here’s to art!”

“Art? I love it!” Mrs. Veering and Dick Randan came in together; the former was her usual cheery self, high as a kite. She introduced the Claypoole connection to Miss Lung and Brexton neither of whom knew him. The penwoman shifted her affections abruptly from me to the young historian. “So you’re at Harvard?” she began to purr and the youth was placed beside her on the couch. That was the end of him for that evening.

Allie was the last to join us. She sat by me. “Well, here we all are,” she said irrelevantly.

The company was hectically gay that night. We were all infected by this general mood. Everyone drank too much. I was careful, though, to watch and listen, to observe. I knew that someone in that room had clubbed me with possible intent to kill. But who? and why?

I watched their faces. Brexton was unexpectedly cheerful. I wondered if he’d arranged himself an alibi that afternoon while locked in his room. On the other hand, Claypoole seemed to be suffering. He had taken the death of Mildred harder than anyone. Something about him bothered me. I didn't like him but I didn't know why. Perhaps it was the strang relationship with his sister . . . but that was no business of mine.

Miss Lung responded to whatever was the mood of any group. Her giggles now rose like pale echoes of Valkyrie shrieks over the dinner table while Mrs. Veering, in a mellow state, nodded drunkenly from time to time. Randan stared about him with wide eyes, obviously trying to spot the murderer, uninfected by the manic mood.

It was like the last night of the world.

Even I got a little drunk finally alhough I’d intended to keep a clear head, to study everyone. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what to study.

We had coffee in the drawing room. While I was sitting there, talking absently to the nephew about Harvard, I saw Greaves tiptoe quietly across the hall. I wondered what he was up to.

“Did the murderer really slug you?” asked Randan suddenly, interrupting me in the middle of a tearful story about the old days when Theodore Spencer was alive and Delmore Schwartz and other giants brooded over the university.

“Yes.” I was short with him; I was getting tired of describing what had happened to me.

“Then you must possess some sort of information which he wishes to destroy.”

“Me? or the information?” Randan had expressed himself about as clearly as most history majors do.

“Both, presumably.”

“Who knows?" I said. “Anyway he’s wasting his time because I don’t know a thing.”

“It’s really quite exciting.” His eyes glittered black behind the heavy spectacles. “It presents a psychological problem too. The relationships involved are. ...” I got away as soon as was decently possible.

I told Mrs. Veering that I was tired and wanted to go to bed early; she agreed, adding it was a wonder I didn’t feel worse, considering the blow I’d received.

In the hall I found Greaves. He was sitting in a small upright ehair beside the telephone table, a piece of paper m one hand and a thoughtful expression on his face.

“Ready to make an arrest?” I asked cheerfully.

“What? Oh . . . you plan to go out tonight again?”

“Yes, I was going to ask you if it was all right.”

“I can’t stop you,” said Greaves sadly. “Do us a favor, though, and don’t mention anything about what’s been happening here.”

“I can’t see that it makes much difference. Papers are full of it.”

“They're also full of something else. We have two men on duty tonight,” he added.

“I hope that’ll be enough.”

“If you remember to lock your door.”

“The murderer might have a key.”

"One of the men will be on the landing. His job is to watch your room.”

I chuckled. “You don’t really think anything will happen with two policemen in the house, do you?”

“Never can tell.”

“You don’t have any evidence, do you?”

“Not really.” The answer was surprisingly frank. “But we know what we’re doing.”

“As a bit of live bait and a correspondent for the Globe, what are you doing?”

“Wouldn’t tell you for the world, Mr. Sargeant.”

“When do you think you’ll make your arrest? There'll be a grand jury soon won’t there?”

“Friday, yes. We hope to be ready ... we cal! it Special Court, by the way.”

“Already drawn up your indictment?”

“Could be. Tell me, Mr. Sargeant, you don’t play with paper dolls, do you?”

This set me back on my heels. “Dolls?” I looked at him, at sea.

“Or keep a scrapbok?”

“My secretary keeps a scrapbook, a professional one . . . what’re you talking aobut?”

“Then this should amuse you, in the light of our earlier discussions.” He pushed the pieces of paper at me.

It was an ordinary piece of typewriter paper on which had been glued a number of letters taken from headlines: they were all different sizes; they spelled out ‘Brescton is Ciller.”

“When did you get this?”

“I found it right here, this morning.” Greaves indicated the telephone table. “It was under the book, turned face down. I don’t know how I happened to turn it over . . . looked like scratch paper.”

“Then it wasn’t sent to you?”

“Nor to anybody. Just put on the table where anyone might 59

find it. Very strange.”

“Fingerprints?"

He looked at me pityingly. “Nobody’s left a set of fingerprints since Dillinger. Too many movies. Everybody wears gloves now.”

“I wonder why the words are misspelled?”

“No ‘X’ and not many ‘K’s’ in headlines . . . these were all taken from headlines apparently. Haven't figured out which paper yet.”

“Who do you think left it there?”

“You.” He looked at me calmly.

I burst out laughing. “If I thought Brexton was the mur-dreer I’d tell you so.”

Greaves shrugged. “Don't tell me. It’s your neck, Mr. Sargeant.”

"Just why would I want to keep anything like that a secret?”

"I don’t know . . . yet.”

I was irritated. “I don’t know anything you don’t know.” “That may be but I’m convinced the murderer thinks you know something. He wants you out of the way. Now, before it’s too late, tell me what you saw out there in the water.”

"Nobody can say you aren’t stubborn.” I sighed. “I’ll tell you again that I didn’t see anything. I can also tell you that, since I didn't send you that note, somebody else must’ve . . . somebody who either does know what happened or else, for reasons of his or her own, wants to implicate Brexton anyway. If I were you, I’d go after the author of that note.” A trail which, I was fairly certain, would lead, for better or worse, to the vindictive Claypoole.

Greaves was deep in some theory of his own. I had no idea what it was. But he did seem concerned for my safety and I was touched. “I must warn you, Mr. Sargeant, that if you don’t tell me the whole truth, everything you know, I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

"My unexpected death?”

“Exactly.” I had the sensation of being written off. It was disagreeable.