Ellery Queen. The Best of Suspense

Ursula Curtiss The Pool Sharks

They came knocking at the door just as she was getting ready to leave for the hospital: two dark-eyed, dark-haired children she hadn’t seen before in the month of living in the new house.

“Can we go swimming?” It was the boy, perhaps ten or eleven, holding his younger sister’s hand with a firmness that suggested a frequent guardianship. Their fringed and upturned glances were hopeful but wary, in ease of a rebuff, and Sarah smiled at them in spite of her own distraction.

“Well, not today, I’m afraid.” She was careful not to explain that there wouldn’t be anyone here for the next few hours, because the temperature was in the mid-nineties and with the confidence of childhood they wouldn’t worry in the least about swimming unattended; it would strike them as much more fun. “Where do you live?”

The two round dark heads nodded obliquely across the field, which meant around the corner. What with the bulldozer and the cement mixer and then the various pickups with the company’s name on the side, they had probably known to the minute when the swimming pool was completed and filled. (Tom had said, yesterday, “We’ll probably have to establish some kind of rules, with the only private pool in the neighborhood, but let’s face that when we come to it.”)

Sarah suggested eleven o’clock the next morning, waited for a cautious few minutes after they were out of sight, then forgot them as soon as she was in the car.

It was only the second time she would be visiting her husband in the hospital. The first had been before dawn, when after what seemed like hours in the waiting room she had been allowed to go up to the fifth floor. She knew by that time that Tom’s terrifying middle-of-the-night collapse had been caused by a bleeding ulcer, but she was still unprepared for his total pallor and the visible effort it cost him to open his eyes and smile faintly at her. It was clear that at this point her presence would do more harm than good, so she kissed him, drawing a black look from the nurse whose possession he now was, and said simply, “I’ll be back.”

In the corridor, following her out, the doctor was blunt. “It’s a good thing you got him in here when you did, Mrs. Birchall. He’s going to need another transfusion, and I want someone to have a look at his heart. Better wait until two or three o’clock this afternoon before you come in.”

Meticulously, Sarah had split the difference; it was 2:30 when she left the elevator on the fifth floor of the hospital, followed the room-indicator arrow to 523, and felt an actual slam in her chest at the white-stubbled, scooped-out face that turned wearily on its pillow as she entered. But — of course — this was a semi-private room and Tom’s bed was the far one; she hadn’t registered that fact in the small-hours panic.

She rounded the dividing curtain, and a lesser shock awaited her. Tom wasn’t sitting up as she had somehow expected but was lying flat and vulnerable, and although the dark suspended bottle was gone he was still very pale and his hand, when she took it and held it hard as she bent to kiss him, was cold.

She said, fast, “Tom, you look so much better. I’ve brought” — she produced the small suitcase — “your robe and slippers and pajamas and things.” Her eyes were beginning to fill, and she turned briefly away as though a nurse had started into the room. “And some stupid damn cherries and books. How do you feel?”

“Better. Really, better,” said Tom, speaking in the light and careful way in which a man with a murderous headache might talk. “This is an awful nuisance for you, driving all the way in.” He closed his eyes and opened them again. “Did you have a swim? Christen the pool?” This time his smile was less effortful. “Better hurry up.”

Sarah was three and a half months’ pregnant, although she had tried on her bathing suit the day before and no one would have guessed it. “Not yet, I’m waiting for you. As a matter of fact, though—”

She realized belatedly, with a kind of buried shock, that she could not present Tom with even the tiniest concern right now; she could not say that neighborhood children had already asked to swim in the pool which did not yet have its protective fence; could not inquire if they were insured against the kind of accident that might happen even if she were on the scene.

Depleted though he was, Tom was gazing at her and waiting for her to finish the sentence.

“—I imagine the water is fairly nippy, coming straight from the well,” said Sarah, “and I wouldn’t mind giving it a few days under the sun first. When does the doctor think you can come home?”

Tom hadn’t seen his own doctor yet, although three different ones had gone into a huddle over his electrocardiogram. He thought he would have some kind of word around seven o’clock, when the doctor apparently made his rounds. He said, “Don’t drive all the way back in tonight, Sarah,” and nodded at the telephone beside his bed. “I can call you.”

“So you can,” said Sarah, and they both understood that she would be back there that evening.

Louis and Marisol — the girl’s name was new and delightful to Sarah — arrived promptly at five minutes of eleven the next morning. Sarah was ready for them, bathing-suited in case she had to jump in, giving them, briskly, a few elementary safety precautions. They were not to run on the deck, or push each other into the pool. Although the water was nine feet at the deep end, they were to be careful diving and each to make sure that the other was visibly well out of the way.

She supposed as she spoke that she had the kind of unheard drone of their own mother, or teacher, but without Tom she felt a sharp concern in this particular situation.

They could swim; she made sure of that before she left the pool’s edge for a basket chair under the trees where she could watch them while pretending to read. Louis had a sturdy windmilling stroke, Marisol, who had all the breath of a mosquito in her tiny two-piece suit, was less splashy and quietly determined.

Sarah gazed at them in a detached way; she had something new to think about.

Tom had had a wildly uneven heartbeat on admittance to the emergency room, and although the electrocardiogram had shown no sign of damage, the doctors were not quite satisfied and were attaching a monitor. Even in the event of the favorable outcome they cautiously expected, it would be at least a week before he could be discharged from the hospital. In the meantime he mustn’t be worried in any way, but of course Mrs. Birchall would appreciate that.

... After an hour, with a little shrill dissension toward the end of it, Louis and Marisol climbed out of the pool, toweled themselves dry, bundled their belongings expertly onto their bicycles, and departed. Sarah only realized after she had said “Goodbye” that they hadn’t been going to say anything at all. Swim, wrap-up, finish — as though it were a municipal pool. Oh, well, they were only children and maybe — cover-all excuse — they were shy.

They weren’t shy. Sarah was making herself a glass of iced coffee late the next morning, as the most palatable way to drink the milk the doctor had ordered, when Louis and Marisol rounded the corner of the house. This time they were accompanied by two older boys, fourteen or fifteen, who stared appraisingly about them as they sauntered over the grass. One of them caught Sarah’s eye through the kitchen window, appraised her as well, and kept on going.

She felt a quick, surprisingly sharp flash of anger. She had intended a prelunch swim — Tom had said last night, “Promise me you will. It’s the least you can do for yourself with the heat and all your driving” — but that wasn’t it. It was a feeling of being used, and used with a certain amount of mockery which said, “You’re rich. You’d better fall over backwards about sharing your pool.”

They weren’t rich. They had only been able to buy this place because it was in need of so much basic repair, and more sensible people would have applied Tom’s inheritance from an uncle to a lifetime roof for the house, a new heating system, and a remodeling of the smaller bathroom. Tom and Sarah had thought it all over and decided on a temporary roof job, sweaters and a little shivering for the first winter, guests who wouldn’t mind the bath as it was — and a swimming pool.

She put down her glass of iced coffee, her heart beating quite hard and fast, and went outside. It was hot, she reminded herself, and after all what was there for these kids to do, miles outside the city in the tail-end of the summer when simply not being at school was no longer enough?

Louis and Marisol and one of the older boys were already in the water. Sarah registered the fact that the other boy was not wearing swimming trunks but a pair of jeans which did not look particularly clean. Sarah thought conscientiously: Maybe they can’t afford — and the boy removed a wrist watch which had cost far more than a bathing suit, threw her a casual grin, and jumped feet first into the pool.

Sarah walked down the deck to where Marisol, who was infinitesimally more responsive than Louis, was sitting on a step. Sarah said pleasantly, “Are these your brothers, Marisol?”

For some reason this was very funny. Laughter erupted from the pool, accompanied by sidelong dark glances, flashing teeth, flung-back wet hair. It crossed Sarah’s mind that, hair or not, they looked a little like dangerous fish. Stay friendly. In five or six days Tom would be home, and he would know how to handle this. She managed to keep the careful balance in her voice. “Then introduce me, will you, please? My husband’s coming home for a swim at noon and he’ll want to know who our visitors are.”

The two pointed faces stared up from the blue water as if they knew no English at all, or they did but considered their names to be none of Sarah’s business. “He’s Frank,” volunteered Marisol, pointing, “and he’s Jimmy.”

Something decided Sarah not to press the matter further. These new arrivals were also able to swim, so she went back into the house and stayed within earshot. It wasn’t difficult; Louis and Marisol were far more boisterous in the company of their older friends, and the pool rang with shouts and huge splashes and simulated screams. If they had been more likable boys Sarah would have gone out and said, “Would you try to be a little quieter, so I won’t think someone’s drowning?” As it was, she bore the assault on her nerves until one of her frequent glances out the bedroom window showed her what was now going on.

They were all milling around the deep end of the pool while the older boys — Sarah had a reluctance to use their names even in her own mind, as if that implied a tenuous friendship or at least acceptance — cannonballed into the water, scrambling up the ladder again with an assembly-line effect. With a vision of one of them landing on spindly little Marisol, she went rapidly outside and said firmly after two attempts to make herself heard, “Don’t do that, please. It could be quite dangerous.”

There was a peculiar pause, indicating that she might or might not be obeyed. Louis and Marisol clung to the edge and gazed expectantly up at their friends, one of whom had been poised for another knees-tucked leap. It was a matter of face. But that was saved by a shrug, a brief and indistinguishable mutter, an impish — smile? No, a grimace — and then the boy’s exaggerated daintiness as he sat down on the deck and lowered himself into the water. Laughter all around.

And all wrong, thought Sarah dismally, retreating to the house again because to sit in the basket chair and watch them openly would be to pose a challenge which they might very well meet. She had grown up with sisters: she didn’t know how to treat boys.

Boys, or premature men?

She kept her occasional vigil, folding laundry on the bed — would they never go home? — and presently saw the jeaned one scramble out of the pool, consult his watch, gaze curiously at the house, and jump back in again. She glanced at the bedside clock. It was 12:20, and she had said her husband was coming home at noon to swim, and they were going to wait until he did.

Instantly, furiously, she got into her suit and a terry robe, caught up her bathing cap, and went outside. She said with a steady smile, “Sorry, but it’s time for my swim.”

They all got out at once, and it was absurd to think that was mockery too, as though she had been an overseer appearing with a whip. The pool thermometer had been wrenched from its nylon tie around the ladder’s hand-rail and lay on the bottom near the drain. It wasn’t an earth-shaking matter, but the fact that they hadn’t even bothered to dive for it was enough to make Sarah say casually, “By the way, no swimming tomorrow. We’re superchlorinating the pool.”

We, evidence of strength. And a mistake, as the first of a long line of excuses. (“We’re expecting guests to swim all day. My husband has a terrible case of impetigo. We’re keeping a school of piranhas for friends.”)

They departed in silence, not pleased. Sarah put on her cap, took off her robe, gazed at the water with its shifting pattern of gold, remembered the slippery, glistening jeans. She did not swim.

Neither did she ask Tom’s advice when she went to the hospital that night. The monitor had shown nothing that couldn’t be handled by medication, but although his color was better Tom was in a state of deep depression. “Diet,” he said. “Pills. The baby will think I’m its grandfather.”

Sarah suspected that wasn’t quite all. The other bed was flat and starchily immaculate: had that frail exhausted-looking old man really been judged fit to go home? It was a case of cheering up rather than confiding any worries of her own, and when Tom finally roused himself to say, “Did you swim?” Sarah answered without hesitation, “Yes. It was marvelous.”

“How many lengths?”

It was a forty-foot pool. “Ten,” said Sarah, and Tom looked pleased and then said anxiously, “Don’t overdo it, now. What’s the temperature?”

“Seventy-two,” said Sarah, guessing, “and I won’t overdo it, I promise.”

The next day, after running the filter for four hours, she did swim, and the pool was all they had hoped for. She recovered the thermometer from the bottom and re-tied it, and it must have been injured because it read only 68 degrees and the water was warmer than that. Polished green leaves turned gently above her; she moved through an ice-blue taffeta rustle. With a dim notion of undoing her lie to Tom she swam 20 lengths and then did some pleasurable dawdling. It was a surprise to realize that she had better make the most of this, because tomorrow—

They came in force, Louis and Marisol, the two older boys, and two girls. Although the girls didn’t look over 15, one of them was cradling an infant of two or three months. Sarah’s stomach muscles tightened involuntarily, because they had also brought beer and this was something she would have to put a stop to right away— Oh, God, if only Tom were home!

She went outside, her smile feeling varnished on, her heart thudding. She was completely taken aback when the girl without the baby said courteously, “Mrs. Birchall, I’m Karen Sales, and I think you’re awfully kind to let us swim. Or are we interrupting? Say the word and we’ll take right off.”

The practised air did not register at once, and Sarah heard herself answering that she could swim later. Before she could mention the beer, the girl went on in a confidential tone, “Would you mind a little music, if we kept it down? Tina” — she nodded at her encumbered friend “has had sort of a rough time, and music soothes her.”

Sarah swallowed. “Oh, is that her own baby?”

“Well, hers and Jimmy’s,” said the girl.

Jimmy, whom Sarah had thought to be about fourteen and could be sixteen at the most — thin, dark, stringy-muscled. She glanced about her, and there was a delicately nightmare quality in the sunlight; the baby, the beer being zipped open by people who, technically, were scarcely more than children. And none of them invited. She thought that no matter what Tom’s condition was when she saw him this afternoon she would have to say, “What should I do?”

The instinctive answer wasn’t necessarily the best. Order them off — and have slashed tires and broken windows? How could she even implement such an order? The boys were as tall as she was and undoubtedly stronger; the girls, busily making themselves comfortable, had an adamant air. Even a casual day-by-day survey would have told them that she was alone here although she had been careful not to tell them so.

If she ordered them to go and they refused, or simply pretended not to hear, she would be infinitely worse off than now.

Wait it out, she told herself, this one last time. Feeling, in her own backyard, as if she had invaded their territory and was being driven off, Sarah went back into the house.

Presently there was the sound of a car in the driveway. More beer arrived, this time in bottles, borne by boys who appeared to be about eighteen. Hard-rock music began to swell, not from a transistor but, when Sarah went transfixedly to the back door, a stereo hooked up to the outside light socket, from which they had removed the bulb. The baby, presumably asleep, had been placed on a towel on the deck under the full burning force of the sun.

Sarah was fiercely glad, because it took this to strengthen her legs and give her no pause for further thought. She ran outside, hearing a beer bottle shatter on the way, catching no particular eye but calling out imperatively, “Marisol, Louis — all of you! I’m sorry, but we can’t have this. Leave, please, this minute.”

A tremble caught her, late; she tried to conceal it by lifting her head militantly. A voice, she didn’t know whose, shouted above the blaring music, “That’s right, her old man’s coming home for a swim.”

Laughter, and then: “Who’s she?”

“Chick that owns the house, man. I vote we get out.”

“Oh, right.” Something thoughtful about it. “Don’t want to bother the lady, it’s her pool.”

There was a scramble of tanned legs, and the afternoon had gone dangerously wrong: Louis and Marisol had pelted away without even taking their towels. Sarah couldn’t identify the arm that pushed her — she hadn’t even known that one of them was behind her. The water rushed up to meet her and then she was in the pool, clumsily, without a chance to dive, even her light clothing dragging at her. She kicked off her sandals at once, but shock and the naked fear she hadn’t admitted to herself interfered with her breathing, and when she surfaced she was coughing and gasping.

And they were gazing down at her as if she were going to perform some interesting aquatic feat. Not children any more, but precocious young adults who had turned casually vicious at the end of a long hot summer because she, a newcomer at that, had something they did not. And now the power was reversed. Frank, or Jimmy, lifted the record player from the edge of the pool and poised it over his head. He said, “Gonna get a shock, Mrs. Birchall.”

But that couldn’t kill her — or could it? Sarah screamed, “Don’t! I’m—” and found that even in this extremity she could not tell these savages that she was going to have a baby; it might act as a spur. From awe or a touch of fright, the girls had assumed expressions of — excitement?

Sarah swam toward the ladder, didn’t dare grip the metal rails, swam away again. The record player seemed to blot out the sky. Then Karen who had spoken so politely had positioned herself at the pool steps. Spite hissed on the air like an invisible wind.

Sarah, who had swum twenty lengths without effort the day before, was already out of breath in this pinioned position and nobody would come; nobody. They could play games with her as long as it entertained them, except that it wasn’t a game any longer. Their control had left them the instant she hit the water.

In her terror her ears had begun to fill with a roaring — but it wasn’t a distortion of her senses. Boy and record player were sent sprawling to the ground by the iron hand of huge, mustached Mr. Sandoval, who serviced the pool and carried fifty-pound bags of salt on one shoulder as though they were feathers.

The single roar — produced when he had been drawn to the pool by the sight of those intent and motionless backs — had been enough. Except for Sarah, Mr. Sandoval, and the abandoned record player, the back yard was empty.

Mr. Sandoval helped her out of the pool, keeping his look firmly at eye level because of her dripping, clinging dress. When he had asked her if she was all right, and she had nodded mutely because her mouth was trembling and she would cry if she tried to speak, he glanced down at the record player and said, “This yours? No?” — and gave it a demolishing kick.

He seemed to know intuitively that she had to be left alone for a few moments. He said cheerfully, “Better get on with my business here,” and hefted the bag of salt he had dropped and vanished into the pump room with it.

Sarah stood motionless under the tree, gradually stopped shaking, then turned slowly to gaze at the pool. It was not contaminated forever, she thought fiercely; that would have been the ultimate triumph. They had gone, and she knew that with a witness, and such a witness as huge Mr. Sandoval, they would not come back.

She also knew that she would never tell Tom.

Mr. Sandoval backed his enormous frame out of the pump house, measured her, and judged her, by now, safe to address. “Who were they?” he asked curiously.

The leaves turned gently overhead. Had they swallowed those animal echoes forever? “I don’t really know,” said Sarah. “Just — kids.”