And now he was camouflaged behind a juvenile bird book, seeing the ugly wound in Cassie’s white throat, while the normal life of a summer resort ebbed and flowed about him. It was ten o’clock. Joey and Pee Wee had gone to a distant brook, at his suggestion, with high hopes, bent pins, and a can of earthworms. Roberta, in yellow linen and too much lipstick, slammed the screen door behind her and gave him a look of unconvincing surprise.
“I thought you’d gone,” she said pointedly. “Aren’t you working with Mr. Wilcox today?”
“Later,” he said amiably. “And what are you doing?”
“Cards with Mr. Sutton and Nick. Can you suggest anything else?”
“Yes. A little conversation with me. You can be an angel of the tenements later on if you still feel like it.”
She colored, but she didn’t walk off. “I don’t know anything,” she said. “Mike keeps pumping me too, but I don’t know anything. I’d tell you if I did.” She made a clumsy, childish attempt to change the subject. “Did you have any breakfast?”
“I did. I went over to the main dining room.” He closed his book quietly. “Roberta, you suspect somebody, don’t you? And it’s making you unhappy. Well, let me tell you something; the chances are that you’re a million miles away from the truth, but I think you ought to let me in on it just the same. Tell me what’s on your mind and you’ll sleep better.”
To make it easier for her to answer, he turned away and watched a group of riders canter briskly through the gates.
“I don’t suspect anyone,” she said slowly. “I don’t know anyone who’d do a thing like that. Nobody here would. I think you ought to work in Bear River.”
“I’m doing that too, but I’ve got to know more about Cassie herself. You can see that, can’t you? She must have made friends with some one here; there must be at least one person she knew fairly well and liked. Sutton? Sheffield? Rayner?”
Roberta frowned. “She talked to Mr. Sutton sometimes. That’s all. And once she went buggy riding with Miss Rayner. Everybody has to do that at least once, I guess.” A grim little smile twisted her mouth. “It’s terrible, crawling along like a snail. But Cassie got even. She took Miss Rayner out for a long drive in Mike’s car. Miss Rayner looked like the wrath of God when she got back. I think she’s afraid of cars. I bet she wrecked one once. But Cassie was a whizz at driving. Tore up and down the back roads like mad. I guess Rayner was scared to death.” She hesitated.
“Nothing else?” Mark asked.
“No, that’s all I know.”
“Thanks.” He changed the subject suddenly. “Isn’t it early in the day for cards?”
“Mr. Sutton isn’t well. When he gets like this the only thing to do is play cards. It quiets him.”
“Joey said he was ill. What’s wrong?”
“I guess it’s age. He imagines things. He doesn’t like to be left alone. But George has to get some rest, and that’s why Nick and I stay with him.”
“He ought to have a nurse, somebody to stay with him while George sleeps. You and Nick ought to be having fun.”
“We don’t mind. And you can’t have fun when everybody stares at you and whispers when you go by. . . . Is that all?” She turned and waved too gaily in the direction of the big veranda, and nodded and smiled. He followed her look and saw no answering wave. A sad little act, he thought, because she wants to get away and doesn’t know how to do it politely.
“Run along, Roberta,” he said, “and stop eating your heart out.”
She gave him a confused stare. “You don’t really mind? They’re waiting for me.”
He watched her scurry across the grass and disappear into the hotel. Then he took out his notebook and marked a clean page with a series of private hieroglyphics. Translated, they said: Search Peck cottage? Can do. Search Kirby’s and Sheffield’s rooms? Doubtful. Shine up to Miss Rayner? Sure. Buy George a drink if possible. Get Nick Sutton alone. Get home addresses of all concerned and check. Tell Beacham nothing.
He rolled the pencil between his fingers and added another note. Is Roberta grieving for Cassidy or for the murderer?
The door slammed behind him, and he pocketed the book. Beacham, fresh and clear eyed, came out and sat on the railing. He carried golf clubs. It was too evident that no nightmares had straddled his chest.
“Want to come along?” he asked Mark. “Just for a couple of hours? Do you good.”
“No thanks. I may not look like it, but I’m working.”
Beacham raised an eyebrow. “Do you think your man is going to walk across the lawn and give himself up?”
“Something like that. They often do. They get worried when you leave them alone. Then they try to pump you. In the process of pumping they give themselves away.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of handcuffs. They glittered in the sun like surgical instruments. “Pretty, huh?” He held them high and swung them back and forth. “I got these from Wilcox. He seems to think I’ll need them before he does. Well, you never know.”
Beacham stared. He bent forward and touched the shining metal as if it were hot. “I’ve never seen any before,” he said slowly. “Do they—snap?”
Mark demonstrated. The strong clean click carried like a shot in the still air. Beacham drew back and laughed. “Ouch!” he said. He looked thoughtfully over Mark’s head into the dim room he had lately left. “When I said I hadn’t seen any I didn’t mean exactly that. I meant I’d never been so close before. Sometimes, in the Grand Central Station, I’d run into a couple of fellows fastened to a detective. Waiting for the train to Ossining. They always looked defiant. Do they ever put up a fight?”
“You’ll see. Maybe I’ll let you help when the time comes. After all, you have a personal interest. But don’t waste any pity on the man who’s going to wear them. The guy who snaps them on often feels worse. Wilcox won’t use them if he can help it. He says he’d rather shoot a man down than tie his hands. I feel a little the same way myself. So—.” He took out a handkerchief and carefully wrapped the cuffs before he dropped them back in his pocket. “There’s Peck.”
Archie Peck and Franny came up the steps, dragging golf equipment and arguing about the heat.
“Isn’t this weather absolutely insane?” Franny wrinkled her smooth white forehead. “We’ll all have sunstroke.” She swung a wide, ribboned hat. “All except me. But Arch insists. He thinks Mike ought to take his mind off things. Don’t you, Arch?”
Archie mopped his face. “He needs to take his fat off. Come on, horsethief.” He lunged playfully at his business partner. “Two hours of honest work in the open air won’t kill you.”
Franny dimpled at Mark and shrugged eyebrows and shoulders. Her eyes told him that they were only rough boys and she didn’t like that kind. “Did you find any nice birds, Mr. East? I think you’re cute, wanting to look at birds when everybody else is scared to death.”
“Jail birds,” roared Archie.
“But I do think so,” Franny insisted. “It shows he has poise, I think. It’s much better to relax in the daytime when it’s hot and do your real work at night, isn’t it, Mr. East?”
“Much,” Mark said.
“What do you do at night?” Franny went on. “Do you drive around in dark lanes looking for things? Or do you just walk around here, like a watchman? I saw you the other night. You were standing still, sort of listening. I felt so safe. . . . I wish you’d let me help you. Archie always sleeps, but I don’t.”
Archie gave Mark a friendly leer and clapped a ringed hand to his forehead. “Come on, baby,” he said to his wife. “You’ll sleep tonight.”
Beacham left the railing and joined them. “Will you be here when we get back?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Mark answered.
“I see. Well, use my car if you need it. We’re taking Peck’s. And ask them to send your lunch over here if you’d rather not go to the dining room. We’re eating at an inn over on the other side.” He moved off with reluctance. Mark wondered
why. He’d been eager enough to go before.
He watched them leave. A few minutes later one of the yard boys brought two horses around to the parking lot and went into the hotel. He knew the big black was Cora’s; the fat roan was one the children led around and overfed. Cora and Kirby? He couldn’t see Kirby on any horse, even the roan, but maybe love would give him a leg up.
He took the handcuffs from his pocket, examined them carefully for Beacham’s prints, saw there were none, and snapped one bracelet over his own wrist. Then, with the other swinging loose, he sauntered over to the lot. A page boy came around the corner of the main building with an armful of camp chairs, and opened his mouth to greet the paying guest. No sound emerged. As Mark moved on he heard the chairs crash to the ground.
He was opposite the veranda steps when Cora and Kirby came out. In riding clothes she was human and presentable, but Kirby looked as if he had been lifted bodily from a shop window and wished someone would put him back at once. Cora saw the dangling handcuff first.
“Yoicks!” she screamed. “Did you lose him?”
He waved his manacled arm in a wide arc, and the sun struck it like a snake and sent out waves of light. A dead hush fell on the crowded veranda; the creaking rockers stilled, cards destined to slap the table remained in mid-air. Two pages, summoned by the chair dropper, crept around the corner of the building and stood with bulging eyes.
Mark dropped his arm. “Rehearsal,” he whispered to Cora. “That’s all, but don’t give me away.”
She put her leathery cheek close to his. “I know what you’re doing, you devil,” she hissed. “You’re scaring somebody into a trap. It’s just what I’d do myself.”
“Don’t tell me I could be your brother,” he begged.
“That’s not the way my mind works,” she brayed. “Come on and help me get Hank on his rocking horse. Its name is Happy Days, and I’m not lying.”
Kirby, who had been frozen to a pillar, now came forward dragging his beautiful boots.
“It’s very warm for August,” he said tremulously. “It’s too warm, really. I’m not sure that it’s healthy.”
His lady answered promptly. “If you ride with me every day for the rest of the summer, you won’t need a girdle next winter. Don’t deny it. I know.”
Mark followed them over to the lot. He, in turn, was followed by the scrape of chairs. He could almost hear heads turning. Cora slapped the big black with affection and flung herself into the saddle.
“Give Hank a boost, will you?” she said. “I’d do it myself, but the last time I tossed him clear over.”
He did as he was asked, pitying the cringing Kirby from the bottom of his heart. Cora nodded her thanks. “I dare you to wear that thing in to lunch,” she said out of the corner of her mouth.
He watched them through the gates, the black mare prancing, the fat roan rolling an amazed eye over his shoulder. Then he walked the gantlet past the veranda. He went directly to the Peck cottage, as if he had business there. The door was unlocked, but he locked it behind him. If anyone came back before he was ready, he was returning the bird book and looking for another instructive volume.
The cottage was a duplicate of the Beachams’. Each Peck had a separate bedroom, he was pleased to note. A proper arrangement for sleeper and non-sleeper. It also had the air of a suite on a luxury liner. Half-eaten boxes of candy, with their covers off, littered the tables; fading roses dropped their petals on the floor. There was even a basket of fruit. It all looked like two days out.
He removed the handcuffs and started to work. He had no qualms of conscience when he turned over the contents of Franny Peck’s bureau and closet. Her things were designed for both eye and hand. He fished among the rainbow colors with something like distaste. Franny shunned linen and cotton and her monograms were large and unreadable. He wished Pansy could see them; he was afraid Pansy would be envious even while she blushed.
Franny’s letters were easy to locate. They were tied in big bundles, with blue baby ribbon, and they were from people who signed themselves Boy and Fitzy and Sheik. After reading two or three he decided he was either too young or too old. Franny’s life, if her room was any indication, was an open book, to be read in bed and afterwards hidden under the mattress. He closed her door behind him with relief, but he kept her in his mind.
Archie’s room was surprisingly neat. It was heavy with the scent of a Russian toilet water, and the top of his bureau was covered with an orderly litter of hair tonics, shaving lotions, and elaborate brushes of all kinds. The drawers themselves were stocked with English socks, ties, and shirts. His handkerchiefs were French, his silk underwear Italian. It was easy to picture Archie on a grand tour.
There were stacks of comics and Real Life Art Studies on the table, flanked by a file of geological magazines. There was one telegram, two weeks old, weighed down by an overflowing ash tray. It was from Beacham, and it said, simply, that Venezuela was willing. There were no letters, business or personal, and Mark thought he knew why. Archie, with his fat baby face and international wardrobe, had probably came galloping up from the wrong side of the tracks, and he would have learned early how to keep his business securely thatched under his sparse red hair. As for his personal life, maybe nobody loved him. He compared Archie’s English flannels with his own seersucker pants and wished the same for himself.
It was nearly twelve when he closed the Pecks’ door and wandered out into the sun. He was both disturbed and satisfied, and he had no reason to be either. He knew instinctively that he and Perley were right. The answer was somewhere within sight and hearing, somewhere inside the clipped hedges and neat white fences. He wondered what would happen if he stood where he was, full in the blazing sunlight, and shouted—“Come out, I’ve got you covered!” What faces would appear at what windows? Whose chair would whine on the veranda boards as it hastily backed away from a card table? What door would slam, which feet would pound the stairs? He grinned and shrugged. None. Nobody’s. The voice that hailed Mary Cassidy in the lantern-lighted dusk was not the kind to tremble at high noon; and the hands that dragged her body across the clover grass would be firm and steady on—on what? A golf club? A fishing rod? A bridle rein? The wheel of a car? A warning chill crept along his scalp. He was right. He knew it.
He took out the handcuffs and the notebook. Time for a little clerical work before lunch and, thanks to Cora’s suggestion, a little harmless theatricalism. He climbed the veranda steps, swinging the cuffs like a censer, and walked firmly inside to the desk. The clerk gave him a look of combined respect and agony.
“Please,” he begged. “Please, Mr. East. Our guests!”
He had expected that. He put the cuffs on the desk and opened the notebook. “I want the home addresses of these people,” he said genially. “Confidential, of course, although I don’t see why it should be. You have them on the public register, haven’t you?”
“Oh yes, sir! Yes indeed! We comply with all the regulations!” The clerk swung the register around. “If you don’t mind,” he said weakly, “if you don’t mind, I’d rather you hunted them out yourself. I don’t want to—I don’t feel exactly right about—I don’t want to have anything to do with it!”
Mark carried the book over to a table as if it were an encyclopedia, and sat down. He turned the pages in a scholarly manner. A general influx began. The veranda door opened and shut with remarkable regularity and conspicuous lack of noise; he heard the stealthy tread of feet walking softly in a prudent circle and at a safe distance. He was a cannibal island, surrounded by uncertain missionaries.
He flipped the pages and copied what he found into his notebook. Cora Sheffield, The Cloisters, Lexington, Kentucky. He snorted in spite of himself. The Cloisters. Wouldn’t she. And underscored at that. On the same page, which was dated July first, he found the precise signature of Henry R. Kirby. The Yale Club, New York City. Wouldn’t he, too. He wondered if she’d picked him up on the train or if it was a case of long-standing pursuit. He decide
d on the train. Hank was certainly not the man to put himself in the way of a horse.
On another page he learned that Miss Rayner had registered from New York City. East Twelfth Street, May first. An early bird.
On June first Mr. and Mrs. Archie Peck and Archie Peck, Jr. had also registered from New York. He recognized the address; it was a big and opulent apartment building consisting of duplex and triplex apartments. At the corner of Fifth and one of the lower Sixties. On the same date the Beachams and Miss Cassidy had arrived. The Beachams lived in a private house around the corner from the Pecks. He copied all of this into his notebook.
It took him some time to locate the Suttons, but they eventually appeared on the page allotted to April fifteenth. They were the only arrivals on that day, and the preceding pages showed few names. The Suttons had practically had the place to themselves. The sprawling signatures were in one hand, a young one, obviously Nick’s. He raised his pencil to copy the address and instantly paid it the tribute of a sharp and quickly strangled whistle. The Suttons’ address was the same as the Pecks’. Macklin Sutton, Nicholas Sutton, George Parmelee.
He thought he had all he needed for the moment, but to be doubly sure he checked the names of the few other guests who had gone to the church supper. He ruled out the children; there were nine of them, all very young. The adults were the Carberrys, the Huntingtons, and the Slaters, and they were two-weekers. He knew them by sight, and Perley had talked to them. They came from Boston and Albany and had apparently saved all year for a vacation at the Mountain House. Their contact with the Beachams was confined to respectful greetings from the men and eager little bows from the women, followed by wordless and admiring estimates of Roberta’s clothes. They didn’t fit in anywhere, and he filed them away in the back of his mind, convinced that they would stay there until the station wagon drove them down to the homeward train.
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