by James Brady
“There’s not that much time, or energy, for people to be completely evil and still do all the things Hannah did.”
We were no sooner back at my gatehouse when Knowles called. The dead man was Leo Brass. Only an environmental whack job like Brass would have gone out to check Georgica Gut atop a bulldozer during a hurricane and it killed him. Not the actual storm but someone who knew him well, knew how he thought, who realized The Gut was one of the places Leo would have checked out as the storm rose in its strangled fury and lashed at the pond and the fragile, protective dune.
Claire Cutting? If anyone knew the dead man, she did.
There was still no power so I cooked a couple of steaks on the Weber grill and Alix tossed a salad and we had a simple dinner on the patio, washing it down with a Châteauneuf du Pape. “I say, Beecher, this roughing it isn’t all that harsh, y’know.” Fortunately, there was running water and the toilets flushed.
We’d had so little sleep the night before we turned in early. Without electricity, why not, and as the candles turned down we made love. Undressed, this time. Why not, again, since we needn’t be prepared to evacuate tonight. I was marginally asleep when Alix shook me awake. “That nice copper friend of yours, Beecher, Inspector Knowles. We’ve got to call him. Get him to purloin Claire’s gardening gloves. He’ll find them simply reeking of privet and soot, I’ll wager.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been literally tossing and turning, meditating on it. Suddenly, it came to me, at least I think it did. Because in both murders, there were no fingerprints. Claire habitually wore gardening gloves, you could see it yourself, strong brown forearms and those pale hands. And she was the daughter of the dead woman, the lover of the dead man. Poirot and so many other adepts always tell you in a murder case, ‘Look to the family! Find the husband! Suspect the wife! Cherchez les amants … seek out the lovers!’ By far the majority of homicides are committed by someone who knew the victim well. Strangers very rarely are found guilty of having…”
Once she got on a hobby horse … So I said, “Alix, go to sleep. There are hundreds of pairs of pale hands in East Hampton. The Ladies’ Village Improvement Society practically requires them for membership.”
She was stubborn. “I’m not talking about little old ladies with pale hands. I’m talking about someone strong enough to drive a stake through a human chest who also happens to have white hands.”
“Well, what about Pam Phythian? She gardens, she has pale hands, and she, for chrissakes, climbed Mount Everest.”
“Mmmm,” Alix said, “there is that.”
Then, after a thoughtful pause, “D’you think it would be ethical for us to go back to Mr. Warrender’s house by dark of night and before the servants return and scout about for Hannah’s floppy disk? Mr. Evans would be so pleased if I could somehow produce it.”
“Go to sleep. Hot-wiring Richard Ryan’s boat is sufficient criminal behavior for one week.”
In the morning Tom Knowles was moving haltingly toward Alix’s point of view. “I’m asking Claire Cutting to come in. Not to charge her. Not yet. But it’s not clear just where she was when Leo was killed. And as far as the night Hannah died, Leo Brass was Claire’s alibi and she was his. She’s the one person we have who was close to both victims.”
“Miss Marple says that’s always the one,” I informed him, “or maybe it’s Hercule Poirot who says it.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Beecher?”
I left it at that. When I called Southampton they said Royal Warrender was conscious. Not well but alert and aware. Jesse Maine had gone in to see him and called with a firsthand report. “He looks like something washed up by the tide, Beech, but he’s alive. And that’s something. I talked to him for a while.”
“They said ‘no visitors’ when I called.”
“Yeah, well, you know, I sort of pushed my way in.”
“What’d he say?”
“Get the hell out of here.”
“Oh.”
So much for saving a Bourbon’s life. Jesse and I chatted a bit more. “I gotta get out of here now. Security’s coming. Tell Richard Ryan I said hi.”
Jesse and Alix ought to team up. Neither took the sanctity of law very seriously. Both would have been a cross to bear for Sandra Day O’Connor.
Despite this I took her to Boaters for a drink that night, it being the one East Hampton shrine Alix hadn’t yet visited. Besides, I wanted to hear what they were saying up there along Three Mile Harbor about the late Leo Brass. This was his turf. And if I dropped in alone, his Baymen buddies might resent it. With Alix, I’d look less like a snooper.
Or so went the theory; the reality was somewhat different.
“Gosh, Beecher,” Alix said afterwards, “I didn’t know you were that good a fighter. That was really impressive.”
“I lost, Alix. The guy knocked me out the door.”
“Oh, rubbish. You made him look inept with all those twists and spins and feints of yours, those devilishly clever jabs and things. You fought with enormous panache. He was fortunate to hit you at all.”
What happened was that one of the Baymen not only resented my being there a day after Leo’s body had been found, but did something about it. But not until I’d gotten what I went after; a link between Brass and someone else who had as yet only vaguely entered the picture. Pam Phythian!
Alix and I had taken a table in back and when the waitress brought the drinks I got her talking about Leo. About what a shock it was and I supposed lots of people had dropped by to lift a glass in memory, a sort of final toast. Yeah, she said, plenty of them had been in. Including Claire Cutting, red-eyed and sort of shocked. “As if she was on something, y’know.”
I said I could understand it. They’d been spending a lot of time together.
The waitress nodded, then, “But that’s the funny thing. I thought it was over between them. The way him and that Pam dame have been doing all that ecology crap together.”
“Pam? What Pam?”
“The rich one, one of the Fithians or the Phythians, they ought to make up their damned minds how to spell it. She plays tennis and climbed Mount Everest or something, from Further Lane. Rich, long-legged bitch. Racy, y’know. Pam Phythian.”
“No.”
“That’s what you think. Leo and a snotty dame like her? Listen, he’s been with plenty of that kind, Maidstone Club and all. And dames off yachts. Leo’s an equal opportunity letch.” She paused, as if in regret. “Or used to be…”
She shook her head sadly at the loss and I wondered if she and Leo … Just then the Bayman called Charlie Ray showed up and decided to throw me through the wall. He didn’t like it I was sitting there drinking beers when a man like Leo Brass lay dead.
Thank God for Guns and his “Nixons.” Without my repertory of dirty tricks, Charlie would have done it, and easily. As it was, I settled for being thrown through an open door, and for my cleverness, was now being enthusiastically lauded by Her Ladyship.
“I’ll wager if you practiced a bit and bulked up, you’d be throwing chaps through doors, too. I dated, if only briefly, a rugger player at Oxford and he could throw people about.”
“Charlie threw me through the door, Alix,” I said flatly, taking a stab at reality, “remember?”
“Beecher,” she said sensibly, “if not for your subtle moves he’d have thrown you through the wall.”
There was that, I had to admit.
“Come on, I’ll buy you dinner.”
I wanted to concentrate. What did Pam and Leo have in common? Well, environmental concerns, for one. What else? Sex? She was at least ten years older than he was but she was very attractive. And physical. Love between the upper and lower classes was hardly unknown. Funny though, without any evidence whatsoever, I’d put Pam Phythian down as possibly more interested in other women. One of the reasons she and Hannah didn’t get along. Pam might be a lesbian and Hannah was quite clearly the other thing. Maybe she was bisexual. Maybe she �
��
I embarrassed myself whenever I got off on these tangents, speculating about the sex lives of people I knew. Disgusting.
We got a table at The Grill on Newtown Lane. Paul, the manager, was full of apologies for the storm damage not yet having been entirely cleared up and for a limited menu. “The generator’s got only so much capacity.”
Dinner, despite all this, was splendid, especially now that the sidewalk café was back in action so we could observe people crawling out from their storm cellars to stroll along Newtown Lane, greeting each other and being cheerful. It was like a paseo without the duennas. I kept puzzling over Pam Phythian’s relationship with Leo Brass. No point asking Alix what she thought; she didn’t really know either of them. After dinner, back at the house, I called Tom Knowles, wanting his take on the Pam-Leo business. Instead, “Claire refused to come in voluntarily,” Tom said. “I’m asking for a subpoena.”
It was on the eleven o’clock news. Claire Cutting, whose mother had been murdered Labor Day weekend and whose “boyfriend” had been stabbed to death during the big hurricane, was being subpoenaed by East Hampton police. “No, she is not a suspect in either death,” the cops said. “But we’d like to ask her a few questions.…”
“Ha!” said Alix, emerging from the bath into my bedroom halfway through the TV news report. She looked wonderful naked, always did.
“What’s that?”
“That’s what they always say in England, the police, just before they slap on the manacles and lock you away in the cells. ‘A man is helping police with their inquiries.…’ You only hear that about the guilty ones, I can assure you.”
THIRTY-TWO
“The Fed, you’ve screwed that up, haven’t you…?”
Early that glorious next morning, heralding one of those usual stretches of superb weather after a big blow, the phone rang and things began to happen at a dizzying pace.
“Wake up, Beech. It’s me, Jesse. Turn on the radio. There’s hell to pay.”
What happened was that from his bed at Southampton Hospital Royal Warrender had just confessed to a double murder, that of Hannah Cutting and Leo Brass. A lawyer for the Warrender family almost immediately issued a soothing statement that Mr. Warrender, who only days before suffered a cardiac attack, “was not himself.” A very cautious police statement, mindful of Warrender family power and connections, and understandably wary of lawsuits, said Mr. Warrender had not been and as yet was not a suspect in either killing but that of course officers were now en route to the hospital and would be speaking with Mr. Warrender if his doctors approved. The hospital was denying everything. Claire Cutting had not yet been heard from.
“Why, that’s ridiculous,” Alix said with considerable asperity. “He was in no condition to have killed that fellow Brass. Hannah, perhaps. I can’t say. But Leo Brass? Not a bit of it. I doubt even you, Beecher, could have bumped off Leo.”
“He’s shielding Claire. He must have heard about the subpoena.”
“And she still doesn’t know she’s his daughter?”
“I don’t think so.”
I showered and got dressed only to find Alix ahead of me.
“Come on,” she said, “it’s up to us to find Claire and tell her about her father.” She didn’t bother explaining just why it was “up to us.”
Alix already had the Jaguar out, first time since the storm, with the top down, the motor idling. I wish I was as sure of our ethical position as apparently she was. Royal had taken us into his confidence. Who was I to play God and tell Claire he was her father? This is why they have shrinks, situations like this. When I confessed my doubts Alix was having none of it.
“Rubbish! Beecher. He’s a sick man. We can’t have the authorities bullying the poor chap on his deathbed.”
There was that, I admitted to myself.
Tom Knowles was at Claire’s before we were. “She’s not here. Bed hasn’t been slept in. The pressure’s on to issue an APB. Which will really have it hitting the fan if Claire’s not guilty of anything but…”
“What’s an ABP?” Alix said. “No ABPs from Inspector Maigret that I recall.”
“APB,” Tom said, “all points bulletin.”
“Must remember that. APB…” she said, tugging out her notebook and jotting it down.
I expected that at any minute she was going to blurt out what we knew, and Tom didn’t, about Royal and Claire being father and daughter. Maybe we ought to tell him. When Anderson gave me an assignment to write about the late Hannah Cutting and how she’d gotten to Further Lane, I don’t think either of us thought how complicated it would become, how nuanced. This wasn’t a case for a newspaperman but for a theologian.
Tom got back into his car. “If you run across Claire, tell her to call me. She’s just making things worse for herself if she runs.”
“Sure, Tom.”
Easy to say. Problem was, I wasn’t sure about anything.
“Where next?” I said, half to myself.
“Southampton Hospital,” Alix said briskly, “try to get Mr. Warrender to release us from our blood oaths and let us tell Claire just who she is.”
“You think he’ll…”
“Haven’t the foggiest, Beecher,” she admitted, “but if he agrees, I’m going to ask his blessing on my retrieving that bloody disk as well. Or Mr. Evans, Harry that is, is sure to sack me. Which’ll cast all sorts of unwarranted aspersions on the Tony Godwin Award.”
We covered the twelve miles to Southampton in good time, considering there were still trees down and road gangs working the power saws. She was a dandy driver. A double first. And a …
Wouldn’t be natural for Fruity Metcalfe not to have fallen for her and proposed marriage. I was starting to empathize with poor Fruity. And ponder along those lines myself.
We were too late. As we pulled up in the parking lot Claire Cutting was coming out. Handcuffed, and with a policeman in tow and a woman in civilian clothes that shouted “matron,” and who had Claire’s upper left arm in a firm grip.
“Well, hello, Claire,” Alix said, savoring the scene, “we were so hoping to find you.”
“None of that,” the matron said, “no communications with the prisoner. Unless you’re her lawyers.” Claire didn’t say anything, not right away. But she didn’t look angry at us. Or even very upset about being cuffed. Just thoughtful, as if she were mulling over an entirely unexpected situation.
“Hi, Beecher,” the policeman said. “How’d you make out in the hurricane?”
“Just fine, Marty. Lost some trees.”
The East End is like that, you either know almost everyone else or you know someone who knows them. The matron didn’t know which of us to scowl at first and compromised by looking furious at everyone.
“Hi, Your Ladyship,” Claire now said brightly. “Hello, Beech. Heard you got into a fight up at Boaters.”
“Got whipped, too. Sorry about Leo.”
She half-shrugged but the matron tugged at her.
“Sorry, Beech,” the policeman said, “but we got to bring her in. She claims Mr. Warrender’s out of his head and that she killed her mother and ol’ Leo.”
“No!”
“Yessir, we’re getting confessions regularly, every hour on the hour.”
“Did she get in to see him, Royal Warrender?”
“Yeah, that’s where we grabbed her. She had a pretty mean-looking fish knife and there was some shouting. Hostile stuff. Reasonable suspicions Claire was up to no good. That’s what the floor nurse said. That’s when they called nine-one-one. I figure Claire was out to avenge herself on Warrender for the killings he’d admitted to but by the time we got there, she and Royal were billing and cooing and she was swearing she was the one, and not him, that did the dirty on Hannah and Leo Brass, running them through with privet. And all the time Mr. Warrender was continuing to give himself up as East Hampton’s leading serial killer.”
“Officer, this is most unusual,” the matron said, and as she seemed to be
launching into a pretty stern lecture, Marty shrugged.
“She’s right, Beech. Got to take Claire in. Be seeing you.”
“Cheer up, Claire,” Alix called out sweetly as they went off, “you can always call Beecher and me as character witnesses.”
When they were gone, I was of a mind to say the hell with all of them and go home. Not Alix. “With all this confusion we’ll slip right into Mr. Warrender’s room. Order tea, fluff up his pillows, see to a fresh bedpan, engage him in a little chat, inquire after his health.”
She was absolutely intent on getting that floppy disk. Single-minded she was.
If you’ve never seen Southampton Hospital, we’re not talking Mass. General or the Mayo Clinic. Nice place, friendly folks, but small. Not high-tech. We strolled in and went up to the third floor. That’s where Jesse told us they were keeping Royal. Beyond the third floor there wasn’t much. Just a small utilities attic and the top of the elevator shaft. We peeked into rooms (none of the doors was closed) until we got to Royal.
Considering how close to death he was said to be, Royal was reasonably alert.
“Damned girl, has no understanding of the system. No one was going to convict me on the basis of a deathbed confession. Tried to tell her to shut up and let her daddy play the hand. Feisty, though, you have to like her for that. Wasn’t like that while Hannah was still alive. Claire’s grown up, I’d say.”
“But she had a knife.…”
Royal waved a large, if pale, and dismissive hand.
“Oh, she had intentions. Just goes to prove her innocence. If she’d bumped off Hannah and the unfortunate Leo Brass, she would have stayed home watching television and let me confess my wickedness. The minute she came through that door and started telling me how she was going to carve me up, out of respect to a mother she didn’t really even like, I knew she was okay.
“That’s when I told her who I was, who she was. And she put the knife back and came over and stroked my hair, patted my hand, and in the end, leaned down to kiss my aging cheek. An absolutely gorgeous moment, that.”