Death Likes It Hot (19 page)

Allie only shook her head, confusedly. “I don’t know what to think. It’s all so horrible.”

The nurse said, “Time for you to go, sir.”

I asked my last question. “Are you in love with Brexton?”

She flushed at this. “No, I’m not.”

“Is he with you?”

“I … you’d better ask him, Mr. Sargeant.”

I found Liz on the terrace of the Club guzzling contentedly in the company of several distinguished members of the international set, including Alma the Marchioness of Edderdale, a raddled, bewildered creature with dark blue hair who had inherited a Chicago meat fortune with which she’d bought a string of husbands among whom the most glamorous had been the late Marquess. She wandered sadly
about the world, from center to center, set to set, in a manner reminiscent of a homing pigeon brought up in a trailer.

She looked at me with vague eyes when we were introduced: I’ve known her for years. “Charmed,” she sighed, her face milk-pale beneath the wide hat she wore to protect herself from the sun. On her arms elbow-length gloves, circled at the wrist by emeralds, hid the signs of age. Her face had been lifted so many times that she now resembles an early Sung Chinese idol.

Liz quickly pulled me away. She was delighted with the news. “It’s all just as I said, isn’t it?” Only the fact she looked wonderful in red kept me from shoving her face in.

“Just as you said, dear.”

“Well, aren’t you glad? You’re out of that awful house and the thing’s finished.”

“I’m holding up as well as possible.”

“Oh, you’re just being professional! Forget about it. People make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. I read your pieces in the
Globe
faithfully … of course it was perfectly clear you thought Brexton didn’t do it but I’m sure the
Globe
won’t be mad at a little thing like that. I mean, look at Truman that time.”

“Truman who? at what time?”

“Truman the President the time when he got elected and they said he couldn’t. Nobody minded everybody being wrong.”

I maintained her innocence. Heads had fallen that dark year. One head might fall this year. Of course I could live without the
Globe
, but even so an old alliance would be forever gone if I didn’t dish up something sensational.

At that moment my nemesis, Elmer Bush, wearing canary yellow slacks, a maroon sports jacket, alligator shoes and a smile such as only the millions who watch him on television ever get from his usually flint-like face, moved
resolutely toward me, hand outstretched, booming, “Long time no see, Brother Sargeant!”

I forced down a wave of nausea and introduced him to the table; everyone seemed more pleased than not to have this celebrated apparition among them.

“Quite a little to-do you been having in these parts,” said the columnist, slapping me on the back in the hopes I had a sunburn. I didn’t. I punched his arm fraternally, a quick judo-type rabbit punch calculated to paralyze the nerves for some seconds. But either he was made of foam rubber or I’ve lost the old magic. He didn’t bat an eye.

“
Globe
felt I ought to come down for a look-see.”

“A what?” I still kept my old buddy smile as a possible cover-up for another friendly jab in his arm (I’d figured I’d missed by an inch the nerve center) but he moved out of range.

“A look-around … always the kidder, Pete. Ha! Ha! Been reading those pieces you wrote. Some mighty good on-the-spot coverage, if I say so myself.”

“Thanks.” I waited for the blow to fall: it did.

“Of course you backed the wrong horse. Got them sort of peeved at the city desk. You know how sensitive they are. Course I never figure anything you say in the papers makes a damned bit of difference since everybody’s forgot it by the next edition but you can’t tell an editor that.” This was the columnist’s credo, I knew. I had often wondered how Elmer had avoided a lynching party: his column is in many ways the dirtiest around town … which puts it well into the province of the Department of Sanitation, Sewer Division.

“He hasn’t been indicted yet.”

“Friday.” Elmer smacked his lips. “Had a little chat with Greaves … old friend of mine. Used to know him when I covered Suffolk County in the old days.” This was probably a lie. Elmer, like all newsmen, tends to claim intimacy with
everyone from Presidents to police officials. “He’s got a good little old case. That key! man, that’s first-class police work.”

I groaned to myself. Liz, I saw, was enchanted by the famous columnist. She listened to him with her pretty mouth faintly ajar. I said wearily: “You’re right, Elmer. It takes real cunning to search a man’s room and find a key. They don’t make policemen nowadays like they used to in Greaves’ day.”

Elmer sensed irony … something he doesn’t come in contact with much in his line of snooping in the wake of elopements and divorces and vice-raids. “Don’t sell Greaves short,” he said slowly, his face solemn, his manner ponderous. “There aren’t too many like him around … clear-headed thinkers. That’s what I like about him. You could’ve picked up a lot from him. I did. I’m not ashamed to admit it … I’ll learn from any man.” There was a pause as we all considered this.

Then I asked gravely, innocently, “You also find out why Brexton used the key to get into Miss Claypoole’s room?”

Bush looked at me as though I’d gone off my head. “You been in publicity too long,” he said at last, contemptuously. “He stole the key from Mrs. Veering … it was kept in her desk, by the way, right in the top drawer where anybody could’ve swiped it … and he unlocked Miss Claypoole’s door when he heard the nurse go off duty. Then he tiptoed in, took a hypodermic, filled it with strychnine, tried to give her a shot, failed … ran back to his room and locked the door, hiding the key in his pillowcase.”

“Oh, isn’t that fascinating!” Treacherous Liz was carried away with excitement.

“The strychnine,” I said quietly, “was kept in Mrs. Veering’s room, not in Miss Claypoole’s. How could he’ve got it?”

“Any time … any time at all.” Elmer was expansive.

“Perhaps. That leaves only one other mystery. I’m sure you and Greaves have it worked out though:
why
did Brexton want to kill Allie?”

“Keep her from testifying.”

“Yet she has already testified that she was with Brexton
at the time her brother was killed, isn’t that right? Well, it doesn’t make sense, his trying to destroy his only alibi.”

Elmer only smiled. “I’m not at liberty to divulge the prosecution’s case … yet.”

I was appalled at the implications. Neither Elmer nor Greaves was a complete fool. Did this mean that the state was going to try to prove that Allie and Brexton
together
had killed her brother? That Brexton might’ve then wanted her dead to clear himself? … No, it didn’t add up; the police weren’t that stupid. They knew something I didn’t, or they were bluffing.

Alma Edderdale invited us all to her cabana. Liz and I followed her, leaving Elmer to circulate importantly among the important members of the Club.

Lady Edderdale’s cabana was a choice one on the end of the row, with a bright awning, a porch and a portable bar. A half dozen of us arranged ourselves in deck chairs. The afternoon was splendid with that silver light you only get in the autumn by the sea.

Lady Edderdale talked to me for some minutes. At last she began to place me. She seemed almost interested when I told her I was staying with Mrs. Veering.

“Poor dear Rose,” she murmured. “What a frightful thing to have happen! Brexton was my favorite modern old master too. Why should anyone want to have murdered him?”

I tried to explain that it was not Brexton but his wife who’d been murdered but Alma only nodded like a nearsighted horse confronted with oats in the middle-distance.

“His wife, Peggy, was always a trial, wasn’t she? But, poor darling, what will she do without him now? She was Rose’s daughter, you know.”

I gave up. Lady Edderdale’s confusion was legendary. She ambled on in her rather British, dying-fall voice. “Yes, it must be a strain for all of them. I’m sure the person who killed him must be
terribly
sorry now. I should be, shouldn’t you? Such a fine painter, I mean. How
is
Rose, by the way? I haven’t seen her yet.”

I said she was as well as could be expected.

“Yes, I’m sure she’s very brave about it all. It happened to me, you know. Right out of a clear sky too. They came one day and said: Lady Edderdale, we’ll want a new accounting. Of course I didn’t know what they were talking about so I told them I
never
did accounts but my lawyer did. They went to him and, before you know it, I had to pay over a hundred thousand dollars.”

I had the sensation of being caught in a nightmare. Either Lady Edderdale had gone completely off her rocker or I had or we both had. I looked desperately at Liz but she was sunning herself wantonly beside a thick white Swede.

“Hundred thousand dollars?” I repeated the one thing which I’d managed to salvage from her conversation.

“More or less. I don’t know the exact sum but it was simply
awful
trying to get that much in such short time. They are relentless. I hope they give Rose a little more time than they gave me.”

Time?

“Yes, to pay them.”

“Them?”

“Those awful Income Tax people.”

Then it was all clear. “How long ago did Rose find out she’d have to pay all that money?”

“Well, not too long ago. I’m awfully bad about time. We lunched at the Colony I remember with Chico Pazzetti … you know Chico? His wife’s left him by the way.”

“She told you this at the Colony? Recently?”

“A month ago, yes. I remember she was in town for several days; she’d come down to talk to them, to the Bureau of Internal Revenue people, about the thing.”

“Just what kind of … thing was it?”

Alma sighed and waved her emerald-laden arms helplessly in the air. “I don’t know, really. I know she was awfully upset and she wanted to talk to me because I’d gone through the same thing. I was no help, I fear. I think she said a hundred thousand … or was that what
I
had to pay? No, we
both
had to pay that much and on short notice. I remember saying we were in the same boat except of course Rose, poor darling, really hasn’t much money any more.”

I told Liz I’d call her later that day, if I got a chance. Then, excusing myself, I went back to the North Dunes.

The house looked peaceful and strangely empty, as though no one lived there any longer. A prophecy? It was nearly empty too, I found, when I went inside. Everyone was out for the day except Miss Lung who sat at Mrs. Veering’s desk with the proofs of the penultimate “Book-Chat” in her hand.

“You see me at my labors,” said the pen woman, removing her glasses with a smile equally compounded of lechery and silliness. Yet she was not really a fool; I was beginning to see that.

“I went to see Allie,” I said, sitting down in the chair next to the desk, where I had had so many interviews with Greaves.

“Oh? I didn’t know anybody was allowed to see her?”

“They let me in. She’s much better.”

“I’m glad. I’m devoted to Allie. By the way, I’m doing Pearl Buck this week. I think her Indian phase so fascinating … especially after all the China she’s done. I mean, there’s just so much China to do and then one wants a change.” She read me the entire column of “Book-Chat.” I applauded weakly.

“Hard at work?” Mrs. Veering, looking businesslike and steady appeared in the alcove; she removed a sensible hat. “What a day! The first chance I’ve had to get any work done.”

Miss Lung got to her feet. “I was just having the
nicest
chat with Mr. Sargeant. I was testing my column on him: you know how I am about ‘reader response.’ If only more writers would attempt, as I do, to gauge exactly the average response and then strive to that goal, as I do. I believe in
making a direct contact with the average mind on
every
level.”

I excused myself, average mind and all.

I took a short walk on the beach in front of the house. The light was dimming; the silver day was becoming gold. I realized that no one had yet found the spot where Claypoole had been killed. It would probably be impossible to tell now: he had been dragged on the beach, probably close to the water so that the surf would hide the murderer’s footprints. I had a hunch the murder had taken place close to the house, probably just out of sight, behind the dunes. Yet why wouldn’t the murderer leave the body where it was? Why drag it to the terrace … a risky business, considering the house was full of police?

Something kept eluding me; it was like a word temporarily forgotten which the tongue almost remembers but the mind refuses to surrender up.

It was no use. Two gulls circled the sea. In the north the blue sky was smudged with gray: a storm approaching? the first blast of winter? I shivered and went into the house. I had one more errand to perform that day.

Brexton was seated gloomily on a bunk in the rather picturesque jail of Easthampton. He wore civilian clothes (I’d half-expected to see him in a striped suit) and he was sketching with a bit of charcoal on a pad of paper.

“Therapy,” he said with a smile as I came in. “You don’t look much like my lawyer.”

“It was the only way I could get in. I told the police I was a junior partner of Oliver and Dale. You look pretty comfortable.”

“I’m glad you think so. Sit down.”

I sat down on a kitchen chair by the barred window. The branch of a green-foliaged tree waved against the window: I felt like a prisoner myself.

“I don’t think you did it,” I said.

“That makes two of us. What can I do you for?”

“Three. I talked to Allie this morning. I don’t see how they could possibly arrest you in the light of her testimony.”

“But they have.” He put the pad down on the bed beside him and wiped charcoal smudges off his fingers with an edge of the blanket.

“I’m doing a piece about this for the
Globe.
I guess you’ve been following them.”

He nodded, without any comment.

“Well, I’m trying to solve the case on my own and I think you know who murdered Claypoole. I think you might even have watched the murderer roll the body under the swing. Your window looked directly onto the terrace, onto the swing.”