Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  That was Bill’s story, and the details did not change it. Hugh had struck a tarpon on the slack tide. It was a good one, a hundred pounds or more, Bill thought. It had been a fighter, and it had jumped seven times, trying to throw the hook. The boat had been all over the Pass, and it was near the lighthouse when it happened.

  Hugh had been excited. He stood up when the fish stopped jumping, and began to pump it in.

  “He’s licked,” he said. “Get ready, Bill.”

  Bill warned him to get in his chair again. There was a lot of fight still in the fish. “Those big boys don’t know when they’re whipped,” he told him. However, Hugh only swore at him and kept on reeling. Then it happened. It looked as though something hit him in the head, for he put his hand there. Then he staggered, and the next minute he went overboard. He never came up.

  “Only way I can figure it,” Bill said, “is that the fish was towing him. He may be out in the Gulf by now.”

  “You think it was a spent bullet from a plane?” I asked.

  “What else? There was a pelican with a broken wing out there yesterday. I had to shoot it.”

  “I thought you weren’t allowed to carry guns now,” I said.

  “What’s a fellow to do if somebody he’s guiding gets a shark?” Bill asked defensively. “I didn’t shoot the captain, if that’s what you mean.”

  But of course, there it was. Bill didn’t carry a watch, and he had no real idea when it happened. But he had had a gun in his boat, and Hugh was dead.

  I got Mother home after that. She was looking shocked, for, if she hadn’t liked Hugh Gardiner, she was fond of Bill. But she knew Bill’s temper, too, and that Hugh was the cocksure type to rouse it. The one thing he wants in that part of the world is to bring in the year’s first big tarpon. If Hugh had mishandled his fish, and the two men had quarreled—

  But there was no body, and there was Bill’s story about the pelican to account for the fact that his rifle had been recently fired. Anyhow, none of us was really thinking about murder then.

  On my way home I stopped to see how Pat was. The house on the point at the Pass is Roy Raeburn’s, and next to it the Wilsons’. Beyond that is the Drakes’, who were not there this season, and then comes ours. The rest sprawl for a couple of miles along the beach, each fairly hidden in palms and tropical stuff, and with the village and the hotel behind them.

  I walked in without ringing and went up the stairs. Pat’s door was closed, but her mother’s was open and she called to me from her bed. She had broken her hip the summer before and was still practically bedridden.

  “Come in, Peggy,” she said. “What’s this about the Gardiner man? Lulie says he’s dead. I can’t get anything out of Pat. She’s shut in her room.”

  Lulie was their colored maid, and as all our servants are Negroes our domestic grapevine just misses being the African drum sort of thing.

  “I wonder how she heard about it,” I said. “I’m afraid it’s true, Mrs. Wilson. A spent bullet from a plane, probably.”

  I told her what I knew. In a way I felt sorry for her, cooped up as she was and all this drama going on around her. She was a little woman, and she looked pathetic lying there. She listened intently.

  “I’m not pretending I’m grieving,” she said. “I didn’t like the fellow.

  He treated Fanny like dirt, and I hear he’s flirting with some girl or other at the hotel. I told Pat so, but it didn’t do any good,” she added dryly.

  Lulie carried in her supper tray just then. She looked sulky, as well she might, with one maid in a house that needed four, although Pat helped her all she could. Mrs. Wilson was what locally was called close with her money. I left them and went across the hall. Pat didn’t answer my knock, so I opened the door and looked in. She was standing at the window, staring out at the water, and when she didn’t turn I closed the door and went away.

  Nevertheless, I didn’t like to leave her alone. Our colored servants all make a break for their homes after they finish dinner in the evening, and I was afraid Pat’s unnatural calm would break. I bribed Lulie to stay until eleven, when I would take over for the night, and I told her to say nothing about it.

  When I got home Tom was already back from his golf game. He was having a Scotch and soda listening to Mother, and I thought it was a pity to have his month’s vacation from Washington disturbed. But when I said so he merely observed that when men were dying all over the world we couldn’t expect not to have some troubles of our own. His detachment made me indignant.

  “Don’t tell me a spent bullet killed him,” I said. “They’re falling all over the island, and nobody’s been hurt.”

  “He was standing in the boat. It could have knocked him out, and the fish did the rest.”

  “Bill said he was hit in the side of the head. Would a bullet from the air do that?”

  “Possibly. How about some dinner?”

  We ate in the patio, although the mosquitoes were pretty bad, and we had just reached the dessert when the sheriff appeared, having come by a boat from the mainland. He was a tall, gangling man with a battered soft hat and an equally soft voice. Mother knew him, of course, and he accepted a glass of iced coffee, putting his hat carefully on the tiles as he did so.

  “Kind of a funny accident, Mrs. Hull,” he said. “Don’t know as I’ve ever heard of one like it before.”

  “I’m glad you realize it must have been an accident,” Mother said. “I’ve known Bill Smith for thirty years. He’s quite incapable of murder.”

  He sipped his coffee. “Don’t know its murder yet,” he said dryly. “Trouble about Bill is his rifle’s been fired lately.”

  “I understand he shot a wounded pelican.”

  “So he says. But until we find the body—Anybody else around here would want to shoot the captain? If he was shot, of course.”

  “Nobody,” Mother said firmly. “His former wife is visiting her brother, but she is out of the question. For one thing, she was playing bridge here when it happened.”

  “Far as I can make out, nobody knows when it did happen,” he drawled. “Anyhow, I guess divorce isn’t a cause for murder any more. Time was when—” He let that go. “I’ve been to the hotel,” he said. “Nothing in his room, except a lot of good-looking clothes. No letters, no anything.” He put down his glass and got up. “Ate a hearty breakfast this morning, read the papers, went swimming and back to the hotel for lunch. Hotel says he was playing around with a Patricia Wilson. What about her?”

  “She was engaged to him, or about to be,” Mother said shortly. “Also she was here this afternoon. Why on earth do you think this is a murder anyhow? The way those bullets were falling—”

  “They’re falling over most of the state,” he said, and picked up his hat. “Nobody’s been killed yet.”

  Tom went out to the street with him, but he had nothing to say when he came back, except to protest violently when I said I was staying with Pat that night. He may not always know when I am around, but he certainly raises the roof when I am not. In the end I simply walked out on him at eleven o’clock. Owing to the blackout I had practically to feel my way, and the temperature was still a good ninety degrees. Not a leaf or branch was moving, and I was drying the back of my neck with a handkerchief when someone grabbed me by the arm.

  I had just opened my mouth to yell when Fanny spoke in a whisper. “I was on my way to see you,” she said.

  “What’s the idea, scaring me to death?”

  “I thought you were the sheriff, so I hid in the shrubbery. He thinks its murder, doesn’t he? That somebody shot Hugh from the beach?”

  “How on earth did you get that?”

  “How does anyone learn anything here?” she said dully. “Mary Pearl told me. She says he’s looking for rifles, and I can’t find Roy’s.”

  “Doesn’t Roy know where it is?”

  “He’s asleep. He was out shelling all day, and he went to bed early. Peg, I’m frightened. He and Hugh had a terrific row the other
day. Hugh was behind in my alimony, and I’m about out of money. If anybody heard it—”

  The idea of Roy shooting anybody because he hadn’t paid his alimony made me smile. I reassured her as well as I could and went on to the Wilsons’. But I was rather startled to find the sheriff at their back door, talking to a frightened Lulie.

  “Now listen,” he said. “I don’t want any lies out of you. People have been trying to lie to me for years. They don’t get away with it.”

  “I’m not lying,” Lulie said shrilly. “There’s no gun in this house. I been here every winter for five years. I ain’t never seen no old gun.” He let her go then, and she scurried off like a small black beetle. He looked at me.

  “Never know where you are with these people,” he said. “Do you know if they have a rifle here? Or any sort of gun?”

  “I’m pretty sure they haven’t,” I told him. “They had one, years ago, when we had a rifle range. But after the golf course was extended Mrs. Wilson gave hers to Bill Smith. I suppose that’s the one he had in his boat.”

  Lulie had left the door open, and when he had gone I went in. Upstairs everything was quiet. Mrs. Wilson was asleep and Pat’s door was locked, so I turned out the lights and tried to find a breath of air on the porch. I couldn’t see the Pass from where I sat, but out in the Gulf a number of boats were moving slowly about, their lights looked strange, since no boats had been allowed out after sunset since the war began. They were searching for the body, of course, and in spite of the heat I felt chilly.

  I was still convinced, however, that Hugh’s death had been an act of God, if not of Providence. Upstairs at one time I heard Pat moving about, but when I listened she was merely getting her mother a glass of water. I could hear Mrs. Wilson’s querulous voice.

  “You ought to thank heaven he’s gone,” she said. “He was no good. He never was any good.”

  “I’d rather not discuss it, Mother.”

  There was more, but I didn’t listen. I was turning away when I had a surprise. Standing where I was I could see across to the Raeburn house, and someone was moving about in it and carrying a light. Not a flashlight—we couldn’t buy any batteries for them, of course—but what seemed to be a candle. It was going from room to room on the lower floor, and at first I thought it was Fanny, still looking for Roy’s rifle.

  I walked across, determined to send her to bed, but when I reached the window I saw it was not Fanny. It was Roy, Roy in his pajamas and bedroom slippers, moving furtively from the living-room to the library, and peering about through his spectacles. As I watched he set the candle on a table and began feeling behind some books on the shelves. He fumbled for a minute or two. Then to my horror he took out a row of books and set them on the floor. And the next thing he did was to haul out his missing rifle.

  I was stunned; steady mild old Roy, with his spectacles and his stoop, and his shells. It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make any more sense when I saw the light next in the basement and was certain he was down there cleaning the gun.

  I went home at daylight, confused and in what is called a state. Tom was still asleep, and I didn’t tell him. For there had been something fumbling about Roy as he found the rifle. As though he wasn’t sure where it was. In that case, had Fanny killed Hugh? She loathed him, of course, and she might have done it before the bridge game. But in that event why tell me she couldn’t find the gun? Why not have thrown it into the sea? Or have cleaned it herself? Or—and this kept me awake a long time—was she merely being clever and involving Roy? Fanny was nobody’s fool. Only—her own brother!

  I overslept that morning and was late for the Red Cross. But I was not surprised when Fanny came into the workroom where we were about to make new kitbags for the Army. I was still puzzling how to put the stuff together when I saw her getting off her bicycle at the curb outside. She came directly to me, and she was looking cheerful and perfectly calm.

  “I’m sorry I made an idiot of myself last night, Peggy,” she said. “I suppose I was excited.”

  “Does that mean you’ve found the gun?”

  “Of course. It was in the hall closet. In Roy’s golf bag. I didn’t see it, that’s all. It hasn’t been fired for ages.”

  I let it go at that. After all, we still had no body and so no murder, and I had always felt sorry for Fanny.

  They had not found the body by the third day, and the sheriff left that morning. Then at noon Peter Randolph arrived. He was not Peter Randolph to me at that time. He was merely a nice-looking young man, getting off the train across from the Red Cross room along with a lot of other visitors, and armed with an old suitcase and a brand-new rod trunk. But he looked rather lost. He was still there when the train pulled out. Then to my astonishment I saw my own Tom loping across the platform and shaking hands with him; Tom, who should have been on the golf course and who never met a train for anybody.

  He says I have a suspicious nature. Perhaps I have, but the whole thing looked phony to me. I put down my work and went across the street, and I saw that my beloved husband was longing to strangle me. He pulled himself together, however.

  “Well, Pete,” he said, “here’s the whole family to meet you. Peg, this is Peter Randolph, an old friend of mine. My wife, Pete.”

  I looked at them. I didn’t believe they were old friends. I knew all Tom’s friends, and there wasn’t a Pete among them. I didn’t believe they had ever seen each other before. I even had an idea that a wilted red carnation in Pete’s buttonhole was for identification purposes. And I certainly wasn’t going to let them pull anything over on me.

  “How nice!” I said. “Any old friend of Tom’s is mine, of course. We can’t let you go to the hotel, can we, Tom? You’d probably have to sleep in a bathtub. Mother has loads of room. Where’s the car, Tom? He’ll want to clean up.”

  Tom looked furious and Pete slightly bewildered. But I won in the end. There wasn’t much else they could do about it. I drove them both home in triumph, although Tom didn’t speak to me until we reached the house. Then he caught me alone.

  “I suppose you think you’ve pulled a fast one,” he said sourly. “Why the hell bring him here?”

  “Any old friend of yours, darling,” I told him primly, “is welcome at my mother’s house. And you’re the one who’s pulling a fast one, aren’t you?”

  Mother was faintly surprised but rather pleased when she discovered Pete at lunch and learned he was staying with her. And he must have been delighted with Mother. She told him about everybody, including Bill Smith and Hugh Gardiners death. And when the meal was over and Ebenezer, the colored butler, had disappeared, she said something else which made him sit up rather sharply. She had been quiet for a minute or two, as though she was listening.

  “I wonder what’s wrong with the servants,” she said. “They’re too quiet.”

  “Maybe it’s the heat,” Tom said idly. Tom is, of course, an import. He doesn’t know the Negroes as we do. But Mother shook her head.

  “Usually the kitchen sounds like a Holy Roller meeting,” she said. “Now, as Peggy would say, they’ve clammed up. That always means something.”

  As I say, Pete was watching her.

  “What do you think it means?” he asked.

  “It’s a form of self-protection,” Mother said. “They know something, and they don’t intend to be mixed up in it. Of course, it may be only a knifing among themselves.”

  Pete lit a cigarette.

  “How long has it been going on?” he inquired, conversationally.

  “Just the last day or two,” Mother said. “It isn’t the heat. They like it. And it isn’t only here. It’s all over the island. Even my laundress acts as if she’d lost her tongue.”

  I saw he was interested, but he asked no more questions. He went fishing that afternoon, in an old pair of slacks and a sweater, and I was not surprised when I learned Bill Smith was taking him. I tried my best to get something out of Tom about him while he was gone. I even played a round of golf in the heat
to do it. But, while Tom is the king of my particular world, the good old oyster has nothing on him when it comes to keeping his mouth shut, if that is what an oyster does.

  “It’s funny you never spoke about Peter Randolph before,” I said. “When and how did you know him?”

  “Oh, hither and yon,” he said vaguely. “Look, don’t try to drive over the bayou and talk at the same time. We’re almost out of balls.”

  “Well, I ought to know something about him. After all, he’s our guest.”

  “Only because you acted like an idiot,” he said. Which made me so furious that I drove straight into the water. There was no use asking any more about Pete after that. We were hardly on speaking terms until dinner.

  Pete was gone all afternoon. He came home with a violent sunburn and said he had caught a ladyfish, which Bill had thrown away, and hooked onto a mackerel shark, which towed them all over the Pass. He showed his blisters with pride, but I didn’t believe for a moment that he had only been fishing.

  And then, of course, he met Pat Wilson. Perhaps I haven’t said enough about Pat, how gay she has always been, and how lovely to look at, and—in a way—how lonely she was that season, with so few other young people around and a querulous mother to care for. But Pete saw it in a minute. He had come down, looking very nice in flannels and a tweed jacket, and Tom was mixing cocktails when she ran in, pale and scared to death.

  “It’s Mother,” she gasped. “She’s had a heart attack. Telephone a doctor, somebody.”

  Of course, they had no telephone. It had been taken out, to send to Russia probably. But Mother had kept hers by threatening to sue the company for breaking and entering or something of the sort if they tried to get it. She went to it at once.

  Tom grabbed a cocktail and offered it to Pat, but she shook her head. “I’m all right,” she said. “I have to go back. It’s Lulie’s day out. Mother’s alone.”