Death Likes It Hot (8 page)

He asked me the routine questions and I gave him the routine answers.

Then he got down to the case in hand. At this point, I was still undecided as to what I wanted to do. My mind was working quickly. I’ve done a few pieces for the
N.Y. Globe
since I left them and I knew that I could get a nice sum for any story I might do on the death of Mildred Brexton; at the same time, there was the problem of Mrs. Veering and my business loyalty to her. This was decidedly the kind of publicity which would be bad for her. I was split down the middle trying to figure what angle to work. While answering his questions, I made an important decision: I decided to say nothing of the quarrel I’d overheard between Brexton and Claypoole. This, I decided, would be my ace-in-the-hole if I should decide to get a beat on the other newspaper people. All in all, I made a mistake.

“Now, Mr. Sargeant, you have, I gather, no real connection with any of these people, is that right?”

I nodded. “Never saw any of them until last night.”

“Your impression then should be useful, as an unprejudiced outsider … assuming you’re telling us the truth.” The detective smiled sadly at me.

“I understand all about perjury,” I said stuffily.

“I’m very glad,” said the officer of the law gently. “What, then, was your impression of Mrs. Brexton when you first saw her?”

“A fairly good-looking, disagreeable woman, very edgy.”

“Was anything said about her nervous breakdown?”

I nodded. “
Yes
, it was mentioned, to explain her conduct which was unsocial, to say the least.”

“Who mentioned it to you?” He was no clod; I began to have a certain respect for him. I could follow his thought; it made me think along lines that hadn’t occurred to me before.

“Mrs. Veering, for one, and Miss Claypoole for another
and, I think, Miss Lung said something about it too.”

“Before or after the … death.”

“Before, I think. I’m not sure. Anyway I did get the impression pretty quick that she was in a bad way mentally and had to be catered to. It all came out in the open the night before she died, when there was some kind of scene between her and her husband.” I told him about the screams, about Mrs. Veering’s coming to us with soothing words. He took all this down without comment. I couldn’t tell whether it was news to him or not. I assumed it was since he hadn’t interviewed any of the others yet. I figured I’d better tell him this since he would hear about it soon enough from them. I was already beginning to think of him as a competitor. In the past I’d managed, largely by accident, to solve a couple of peculiar crimes. This one looked promising; it was certainly bewildering enough.

“No one actually
saw
Mrs. Brexton screaming?”

“We all heard her. I suppose her husband must’ve been with her and I think maybe Mrs. Veering was there too, though I don’t know. She seemed to be coming from their bedroom, from downstairs, when she told us not to worry.”

“I see. Now tell me about this morning.”

I told him exactly what had happened: how Brexton got to Mildred first and then nearly drowned himself; how Claypoole pulled her to shore; how I rescued Brexton.

He took all this down without comment. I could see he was wondering the same thing I’d begun to wonder: had Brexton had a chance to pull his wife under just before we got there? I couldn’t be absolutely sure because the surf had been in my eyes most of the way out and I hadn’t been able to see properly. I doubted it … if only because, when I reached them, Brexton was still several feet from his wife who was already half-dead. That Claypoole might have drowned her on the long pull back to shore was an equal possibility but I didn’t mention it to Greaves who didn’t ask me either. He was only interested in getting the eyewitness part straight.

I asked a question then: “Just what effect would four
sleeping pills have … four of the kind she took? Are they fatal?”

He looked at me thoughtfully as though wondering whether to bother answering or not. Finally, he said: “They weren’t enough to kill her. Make her weak, though, groggy … they slowed down the beating of the heart.”

“Well, that explains the funny way she swam. I thought the others were just sounding off when they said she was such a fine athlete. She almost fell on her face in her first dive into the surf and her strokes were all off … even I could tell that and Im no coach.”

“There’s no doubt she died as a result of weakness. She wasn’t strong enough to get out of the undertow. The question of course is why, if she’d taken the pills herself, would she’ve gone in the water instead of to bed where she belonged?”

“To kill herself?” This was the puzzle, I knew.

“A possibility.”

“But then somebody might’ve slipped her those pills, knowing she would probably go swimming.”

“Another possibility.” Greaves was enigmatic.

“But how could anybody count on that happening? She wasn’t feeling well … maybe she would’ve just stayed on the shore in the sun. From what I saw of her that would’ve been
my
guess. I was even surprised, now that I look back, that she went in the ocean at all.”

“The person who gave her the pills might have known her better than you. He might’ve known she would go in the water no matter what her condition.” Greaves made notes while he talked.

“And the person who knew her best was, of course, her husband.”

Greaves looked at me steadily. “I didn’t say that.”

“Who else? Even so, if I were Brexton and I wanted to kill my wife, I wouldn’t do it like that, with everybody else around.”

“Fortunately, you’re not Brexton.” The coldness in his voice gave me all the clue I needed. The police thought Brexton
had killed his wife. I don’t know why but even then I didn’t think he was responsible. I suppose because my mind dislikes the obvious even though the obvious, as any detective will tell you, nine times out of ten provides the answer.

I threw one last doubt in his path. “Why, if somebody was going to give her the pills, didn’t they give her a fatal dose?”

“We must find that out.” Greaves was reasonable, polite, bored with me.

Wanting to attract his attention for future need, I said, coolly, “I’ll be writing about all this for the
New York Globe.
”

This had the effect I intended. He winced visibly. “I thought you were in public relations, Mr. Sargeant.”

“I used to be on the
Globe.
In the last few years I’ve done some features for them. I guess you remember that business a couple of years back when Senator Rhodes was murdered.…”

Greaves looked at me with some interest. “You’re
that
fellow? I remember the case.”

“I was, if I say so myself, of some use to the police.”

“That wasn’t the way I heard it.”

This was irritating. “Well, no matter how you heard it, I intend to do a series on this case for the
Globe
, assuming there really was a murder done, which I doubt.”

“Very interesting.” Greaves looked at me calmly. At that moment one of the policemen came in and whispered something in his ear. Greaves nodded and the other handed him a handkerchief containing two small cylindrical objects. The policeman withdrew.

“Sleeping pill containers?” I guessed that one right.

He nodded, carefully opening the handkerchief. “As a professional journalist and amateur sleuth, Mr. Sargeant, you should be interested to know that they were found in two places: one bottle in Mrs. Brexton’s jewel box; the other in Fletcher Claypoole’s bathroom. Both contain the same barbiturate found in Mrs. Brexton’s system. Our problem is to determine, if possible, from which bottle the pills she took (or was given) came.”

“Just like spin-the-bottle, isn’t it?”

“That will be all, Mr. Sargeant.”

I had one more shot to fire. I let him have it: “The bruise on Mrs. Brexton’s neck was made
before
she went swimming. I noticed it last night at dinner.”

“You’re very observant, Mr. Sargeant. Thank you.”

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 up!” 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 (college-type) and chose not to hear her.

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