Death Likes It Hot (12 page)

In the living room somebody was playing a guitar, concert style, while everybody else sat on the floor talking, not listening. I found Liz in the dining room, helping herself to some dangerous-looking red wine.

She threw her arms about me dramatically. “I was so terrified!” I murmured soothing words to her while a bearded fat man drifted by, playing with a yo-yo.

Then she looked at me carefully and I could see, under the play acting, that she was genuinely concerned. “You’re sure you feel all right?” she felt my head; her eyes growing round when she touched the bump which was now like a solid walnut.

“I feel just fine. Do you think you ought to drink that stuff?” I pointed to the wine which had come from an unlabeled gallon jug, like cider.

“I don’t drink it. I just hold it. Come on, let me introduce you to the host.”

The host was a burly man with an Indonesian mistress who stood two paces behind him all evening, dressed in
a sari, wedgies and a pink snood. She didn’t know any English which was probably just as well. Our host, a sculptor, insisted on showing me his latest work which was out in a shed at the back of the house. With a storm lantern we surveyed his masterpiece in reverent silence: it was a lump of gray rock the size of a man with little places smoothed off, here and there.

“You get the feeling of the stone?” The sculptor looked at me eagerly; I wondered if Liz had told him I was an art critic.

“Very much so. Quite a bit of stone too. Heavy.”

“Exactly. You got it the first time. Not many people do. Heavy … the right word though you can’t describe sculpture in words … but it’s the effect I was after: heavy, like stone … it
is
stone.”

“
Heavy
stone,” I said, rallying.

He was in an ecstasy at this. “You have it. He has it, Liz.
Heavy
stone … I may call it that.”

“I thought you were calling it the ‘Diachotomy of St. Anne’?”

“Always use a subtitle. By God, but that’s good: heavy stone.”

In a mood of complete agreement and mutual admiration, we rejoined the party.

Liz and I joined a group of young literary men, all very sensitive and tender with sibilants like cloth tearing; they sat and gossiped knowingly about dissident writers, actors, figures all of the new decline.

While they hissed sharply at one another, Liz and I discussed my problems or, rather, the problems at the North Dunes.

I told her what I really thought about the morning’s adventure. “I don’t think anybody was trying to kill me. I think somebody was up to something in the house and they didn’t want to be observed. They saw me coming and they were afraid I might interfere so I was knocked over the
head while they made their retreat. Anybody who wanted to kill me could’ve done so just as easy as not.”

“It’s awful! I never thought I’d know somebody mixed up in anything like this. How does it feel, living in a house with a murderer?”

“Uncomfortable … but kind of interesting.”

“You should hear the talk at the Club!”

“What’s the general theory?”

“That Brexton killed his wife. Everybody now claims to’ve been intimate friends of theirs and knew all along something horrible would happen.”

“They may have a surprise ahead of them.”

“You don’t think he did it, do you?”

“No, I don’t think so; he must’ve been tempted though.”

“Then what makes you think he
didn’t
do it?”

“A hunch … and my hunches are usually wrong.” I was getting tired of the whole subject. Every lead seemed to go nowhere and there weren’t many leads to begin with.

We tried to figure on possible places to go later on that evening but since I was tired and not feeling particularly hearty from my blow on the head and since we were both agreed that though sand was glamorous and all that for making love on in the moonlight it was still scratchy and uncomfortable: several sensitive areas of my body were, I noticed earlier that day, a little raw, as though caressed with sandpaper, it seemed best to put off until the next night our return engagement. But though we were both fairly blithe about the whole thing, I found her even more desirable than before we’d made love which is something that seldom happens to me: usually, after the first excitement of a new body, I find myself drifting away; this time it looked as if it might be different. I vowed, though, that there would be no serious moments if I could help it.

Along about one o’clock somebody began to denounce T.S. Eliot and a thick blond girl took off most of her clothes to the evident boredom of the young men who were recalling
happy days on Ischia while two intense contributors to the
Partisan Review
began to belt each other verbally for derelictions which no one else could follow: it was a perfect Village party moved out to the beach.

Liz and I lay side by side on the floor, talking softly about nothing at all, everything forgotten but the moment and each other.

I was interrupted by Dick Randan. “Didn’t expect to find you here,” he said, looking at us curiously.

“Oh … what?” I sat up and blinked at him stupidly. I’d been so carried away I’d lost all track of everything. He was about the last person I’d expected to see in that place. I told him as much.

He sat down on the floor beside us, a little like a crane settling on a nest. “I’m an old friend of Evans’,” he said, indicating our host who was showing a sheaf of his drawings to the bearded man who’d put away his yo-yo and gone to sleep sitting bolt upright in the only armchair in the room.

“How were things back at the house?” I asked.

“All right, I guess. I left right after you did and went to the Club; there wasn’t much on there so I came over here … took a chance Evan might still be up. I handled his Boston show, you know.”

Then I introduced him to Liz. They nodded gravely at each other. Across the room the half-naked blond was sitting cross-legged like a Yogi and making her heavy white breasts move alternately. This had its desired effect. Even the sensitive young men stopped their cobra-hissing long enough to watch with wonder.

“Nothing like this will ever happen at the Ladyrock Yacht Club,” I said austerely.

“I’m not so sure,” said Liz, thoughtfully. “I wonder how she does that.”

“Muscle control,” said Randan and, to my surprise, he showed certain unmistakable signs of lust; for some reason
I had automatically assigned him to the vast legions of Sodom … showing you never can tell.

“Somebody did something under the table once at the Club,” said Liz. “But it was one of the terrace tables and there wasn’t any light to speak of,” she added, making it all right.

The blond ecdysiast then rose and removed the rest of her apparel and stood before us in all her mother-earth splendor: she was, as they say with a leer in low fictions, a real blond.

The Indonesian mistress then decided that this was too much; she went out of the room, returning a moment later with a large pot of water which, with an apologetic oriental smile, she poured all over the exhibitionist who began to shriek.

“It’s time to go,” said Liz.

A brawl had just begun, when we slipped out a side door into the moonlight. Randan came with us, still exclaiming with awe over the blond’s remarkable control. “People study for years to learn that,” he said.

“It must be a great consolation on long winter evenings,” I said. Then I discovered that Liz had no car tonight and, though I much preferred getting a taxi or even walking home, Randan insisted on driving us in his car.

I gave Liz a long good-night kiss at the door to her house while the collegian looked the other way. Then with all sorts of plans half-projected, she went inside and Randan drove me back to the North Dunes.

He was more interesting than I’d thought, especially about the murder which intrigued him greatly. “I’ve made a study of such things,” he said gravely. “Once did a paper on the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury … fascinating case.”

“Seventeenth century, wasn’t it?” I can still recall a few things to confound undergraduates with.

“That’s right. I hadn’t planned to come down here though
Allie invited me. Then, when I heard about what happened, over the radio in Boston, I came on down. I used to know Mrs. Brexton slightly … when she was going around with my uncle.”

“That was quite a while ago.”

“Fifteen years, I guess. I remember it clearly though. Everybody took it for granted they’d be married. I never understood why they didn’t … next thing we knew she married Brexton.”

“Your uncle and aunt seem awfully devoted to each other.”

But he was too shrewd to rise to that bit of bait. “
Yes
, they are,” he said flatly.

The North Dunes was black against the white beach. It looked suddenly scary, sinister, with no lights on … I wondered why they hadn’t left a hall light for me.

We parked in the driveway. I couldn’t see anybody on the darkened porch. I remembered only too well what had happened the last time I stepped into that gloomy house, late at night. “You staying here?” I asked, turning to Randan.

“No, I’m in the village. I don’t want to get involved: lot of other people I want to see while I’m in Easthampton.” He got out of the car. “I’ll walk you to the house.”

I was ashamed of my own sudden fear. I hoped Randan hadn’t noticed it.

We skirted the front porch and approached the house from the ocean side.

He talked all the time about the murder which didn’t make me any too happy. For the first time since the trouble began, I was afraid, an icy, irrational fear. I wanted to ask him to go inside with me but I didn’t have the nerve, too ashamed to admit how shaky I was. Instead, I filibustered, answering his questions at great length, putting off as long as possible my necessary entrance.

We sat down on a metal swing which stood near the
steps to the porch, a little to one side of the several unfurled beach umbrellas, like black mushrooms in the night. Moonlight made the night luminous and clear.

We sat very still to keep the swing from creaking.

“I came down here,” said Randan softly, “for a definite reason. I know Allie thinks I’m just morbid but there’s more to it than that. I’m very fond of her and my uncle. I was worried when I heard all this had happened.”

“You mean that they might be … involved?”

He nodded. “I don’t mean directly. Just that an awful lot of stuff might come out in the papers that shouldn’t … gossip.”

“About your uncle and Mildred Brexton?”

“Mainly, yes. You see my hunch is that if they try to indict Brexton he’ll drag Fletcher and Allie into the case … just to make trouble.”

It was uncanny. These were practically the same words I had overheard between Brexton and Claypoole the day of the murder. Uncle and nephew had evidently exchanged notes … or else there was a family secret they all shared in common which made them nervous about what Brexton might do and say in court.

“What did you intend to do?” I asked, curious about his own role.

He shrugged. “Whatever I can. I’ve been awfully close to Fletcher and Allie. I guess they’re more like parents to me than uncle and aunt. In fact when my father died, Fletcher became my legal guardian. So you see it’s to my interest to help them out, to testify in case there’s … well, an accusation against them.”

“What sort of accusation? What is Brexton likely to pull?”

Randan chuckled. “That’d be telling. It’s not anything really … at least as far as this business goes. Just family stuff.”

I had an idea what it was: the relationship between brother and sister might be misconstrued by a desperate
man; yet what had that to do with the late Mildred Brexton? Randan was no help.

He shifted the subject to the day of the murder. He wanted to know how everybody behaved, and what I thought had actually happened in the water. He was keener than I’d suspected but it was soon apparent he didn’t know any more than the rest of us about Mildred’s strange death.

I offered him a cigarette. I took one myself. I lighted his. Then I dropped the matches. Swearing, I felt around for them in the sand at my feet.

I retrieved them at last. I lit my own cigarette. It was then that I noticed that my fingers were dark with some warm liquid.

“Jesus!” I dropped both matches and cigarette this time.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know … my fingers. It looks like blood. I must’ve cut myself.”

“I’ll say; you’re bleeding.” Randan offered me a handkerchief. “Take this. How’d you do it?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t feel a thing.” I wiped my fingers clean only to find that there was no cut. The blood was not mine.

We looked at each other. My flesh crawled. Then we got to our feet and pushed aside the metal swing.

At our feet was a man’s body, huddled in its own blood on the white sand. The head was turned away from us. The throat had been cut and the head was almost severed. I walked around to the other side and recognized the contorted features of Fletcher Claypoole in the bright moonlight.

THERE was no sleep in that house until dawn.

Greaves arrived. We met by candlelight in the drawing room. It seemed that shortly after midnight the lights had gone out which explained why there’d been no light in the house when Randan and I arrived. One of the plain-clothes men had been testing the fuse box in the kitchen for over an hour, without success.

Everyone was on hand but Allie Claypoole who had caved in from hysteria. A nurse had been summoned and Allie was knocked out by hypo … a relief to the rest of us for her shrieks, when she heard the news, jangled our already taut nerves.

No one had anything to say. No one spoke as we sat in the drawing room, waiting to be called to the alcove by detective Greaves. Randan and I were the only two dressed; the others were all in night clothes. Brexton sat in a faded dressing gown, one hand shielding his face from the rest of us. Mary Western Lung, looking truly frightened, sat huddled, pale and lumpy, in her pink, intricate robe. Mrs. Veering snuffled brandy with the grimness of someone intending to get drunk by the quickest route. Randan and I were the observers, both studying the others … and one another for I was curious to see how he would take the death of a favorite uncle and guardian: he was the coolest of the lot. After his first shock when I thought he was going to faint, he’d become suddenly businesslike: he was
the one who had the presence of mind not to touch the body nor the long sharp knife which lay beside it, gleaming in the moon. He had called the police while I just dithered around for a few minutes, getting used to the idea of Fletcher Claypoole with his head half off.