Death by Association

by Frances Lockridge

  As she walked the length of the courts, a shuffleboard alley was on her left. Beyond it, there was what she at first took to be a concrete wall, high and blank. But then she saw a door in it, set some three feet up the side of the wall, and then she looked again at the wall, and saw that it was the side of a low, sloping-roofed building. It was a building so odd, at first glance so without meaning, that she postponed breakfast to investigate further. She crossed the shufflehoard court, and walked along the wall, which had no windows and only the single door, to the end.

  It ended at a sidewalk outside the hotel. She was barred from the sidewalk by a metal fence, which had a padlocked mesh gate. But she could look along the wall which paralleled the sidewalk, and see that it, meeting the wall beside the shuffleboard court at a sharp angle, was, like the first wall, unpierced by windows. It lacked even a door. On this side, the building was protected from the street by a continuous fence, which was topped by double strands of barbed wire. It was all, Mary thought, very like a prison; it contrasted oddly with the expansive openness of all other areas within the hotel’s enclosure.

  She retraced her steps, recrossed the shuffleboard court and, standing with her back to the tennis courts, looked at the building more carefully. The wall was about twelve feet high; the roof sloped to broad gutters, and from the gutters heavy metal pipes led down to the ground and into it. The building, she saw, was triangular. The roof was of some silvery metal. The whole of it was without apparent purpose, was an anomaly. Mary shook her head over it, and gave it up, and walked on along the tennis court toward breakfast.

  In grading for the courts, a retaining wall two or three feet high had proved necessary at their northern end, toward which she walked. Along the wall, but a few feet from it, the thick, high hedge had been planted. Why she glanced, in passing, into the narrow passage between hedge and wall Mary Wister did not know then, and could not afterward explain. It was not, she had to say a good many times over, because she expected to see anything—to see first merely something white, to know, in an instant, that it was the white dinner jacket of a man lying there, to all appearance quite peacefully, on his back.

  She stopped, and her hand went involuntarily to her lips, although she had not thought to make any sound. She stood so for a moment, motionless in the sun. Then she crouched to see better, and realized at once that she could not, in that position, see much better than before.

  The man was lying a dozen feet from the corner of the retaining wall, a dozen feet in the dark passage between wall and hedge. She went along the hedge until she was opposite the body, and crouched again, and this time forced the stiff hedge branches enough apart so that she could see through them. She was only a little way, then, from the white face of Bronson Wells. The black eyes were open; they stared up at the green bending above; they might have glimpsed a little of the sky’s blue. But she did not need to touch Bronson Wells to know that the eyes saw nothing—nothing green or blue, saw not even blackness; could not see the dark stain on his white dinner jacket; would not see anything again.

  Mary stood then, and then she ran. She ran across the slippery surface of the dance floor, her low-heeled shoes clattering. She ran across the lawn beyond, and the dozen or so people breakfasting at the tables in shade and sunlight turned toward her. She seemed to run toward the whiteness of faces, for all the faces seemed, somehow, as white as that of the dead man she fled. She saw Heimrich, first sitting alone at a table, then slowly rising from it. She ran to him, and for a moment could hardly speak. She looked into the wide-open blue eyes of the solid man from New York and for an instant words did not come. Then they came, hurried out, gasped out.

  “Back there,” she said. “Wells. He’s—he’s lying there. He’s—”

  “Show me,” Heimrich said, and came around the table. He reached for her arm, awkwardly, with his right hand; let the arm fall slowly, stiffly, and reached toward her with his left hand. These motions seemed to her slow and unreal. He touched her arm.

  “Now Miss Wister,” he said. “You’re all right. Come and show me.”

  Strangely, she was all right, then. Reality came back. She saw Grogan walking toward them across the lawn; heard him say, his voice quick, worried, “What is it?” when he was still some little distance away. But his voice was not raised; his tone suggested disaster was a secret among them. The others at the patio tables looked at them curiously, with uneasiness. Grogan smiled around, his smile weakly, not convincingly, denying unpleasantness. He looked at Mary Wister and the smile was weaker still; he shook his head, deprecatingly. There was a suggestion that she could have seen nothing actually to disturb her; that nothing disturbing could occur at The Coral Isles.

  But by then Heimrich’s touch on her arm directed Mary and she walked back with him to the thick hedge at the end of the tennis courts. After a moment, Grogan came with them.

  Heimrich crouched where Mary told him, as she had crouched. Awkwardly, using his left hand, patiently, he parted the heavy bushes so that he could see the white, upturned face of Bronson Wells. He did not touch the body, but he looked at it for a much longer time than Mary had. After a time, Captain Heimrich stood up. He said, mildly, that Grogan had better call the police.

  Grogan, peering down through the hedge, had not seen much, but he had seen enough.

  “It’s Mr. Wells,” he told them. His tone said “the Mr. Wells.” He said, “A doctor.”

  “If you like, naturally,” Heimrich said. “But the police too, Mr. Grogan. He’s been dead for some time, I think. But a doctor by all means.”

  “God!” Grogan said. “It’s—” He ran out of words, appeared to run out of belief. He tried again. “His heart?” Grogan said, trying to get hope into his voice.

  “A bullet,” Heimrich told him. “Or a knife. In the back. They’ll know more when they get him out. But I think a bullet or a knife. You’d better get the police, Mr. Grogan. We can’t do anything until the police get here, you know.”

  Grogan still hesitated. He shook his head unbelievingly; he looked around at the early sun on the lawns, at the partially shadowed green of the tennis courts. This couldn’t, his florid, pleasant, worried face said, have happened here. Not at—not to—The Coral Isles. Finally he went off, avoiding the patio and the men and women at the tables. He shook his head as he walked.

  “Unpleasant for the hotel,” Captain Heimrich said. “But then, unpleasant for Mr. Wells too, naturally. How did you happen to find him, Miss Wister?”

  Mary told what she could, pointed to where she had sat sketching, showed how she had walked along the courts and, turning to walk behind them, seen the something white.

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Of course. How did you happen to look behind the hedge, Miss Wister?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just happened to.”

  “He wasn’t killed there,” Heimrich said. “Awkward place. And what would he have been doing there, in the first place?”

  He did not precisely ask Mary Wister this; he asked himself. He closed his eyes for a moment and opened them again.

  “He’ll be hard to photograph,” Heimrich said. “Very inconvenient all around, this is going to be. However—” He looked at her. “You’d better get something to eat,” he said. “Before they get here.”

  “No,” she said. “I couldn’t.”

  “Now Miss Wister,” Heimrich said. “Now Miss Wister. Coffee, anyway. It’s all unpleasant, naturally. But you didn’t know him, did you?” He waited a second. “I assume you didn’t,” he said. “Before yesterday, I mean?”

  “I’d heard of him,” Mary said. “That’s all.”

  “Then get yourself some coffee,” Heimrich said. “Some food. You’ll just about have time, probably.” She started to shake her head again. “Now Miss Wister,” Heimrich said, and took her arm. “Now Miss Wister.” He led her back to the table at which he had been sitting, beckoned a waitress.

  “How do you like your eggs, Miss Wister?” he asked Mary. Sh
e shook her head. “Orange juice,” Heimrich told the waitress. “Coffee. A boiled egg, I think.” He felt his own coffee pot. “Two coffees, please,” he said. He sat so that he could look toward the place where Bronson Wells’s body was hidden behind the vigorous green of the hedge. He looked at the tennis courts, and then up toward the slanting sun.

  “I’d think,” he said, “that the light would be bad for perhaps a couple of hours yet, wouldn’t you, Miss Wister? Or an hour, anyway.”

  “The light?” she repeated.

  “For tennis,” Heimrich said. “And even then, naturally, it might be some time before anybody happened to look down.

  “Oh,” Mary said. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “So the boys may get here a couple of hours ahead of plan,” Heimrich said.

  “Will that make a difference?” Mary asked. He looked at her. Then he closed his eyes.

  “Now Miss Wister,” he said. “How would I know? Sometimes it does, naturally. Sometimes a schedule matters. Sometimes it doesn’t. If the time—”

  He broke off. Grogan was coming back from the hotel, and Dr. Barclay MacDonald was with him.

  “A very hopeful man, Mr. Grogan,” Heimrich said. The waitress brought orange juice and coffee; toast in a napkin; the egg Mary was certain she would never eat.

  Heimrich said, “Now eat some breakfast, Miss Wister,” and got up and went off across the lawn to intercept Grogan and Barclay MacDonald. He joined them and the three went to the hedge; Heimrich crouched and pointed, then relinquished the place to MacDonald, who groped with the hedge. Mary watched them, and the others at the tables watched them. Mary found that, while she watched, she sipped orange juice; poured herself a cup of coffee. Abstractedly, she reached for the order pad to sign a check. Heimrich had not torn his own sheet from the pad and for a moment Mary stared at it, hardly knowing she saw it. Then she lifted the sheet and, on the next, signed her name and wrote her room number.

  MacDonald stood up after only a minute and spoke for another minute or so with Heimrich and the hotel manager. Then MacDonald left the other two, still talking, and walked across the dance floor, across the lawn, to Mary’s table. The few still at the other tables watched him. MacDonald pulled out a chair, sat in it—carefully—and poured coffee from Heimrich’s pot into a fresh cup.

  “Well,” MacDonald said, “he’s dead, all right. I never saw anyone deader. Poor Grogan kept hoping.”

  “It’s dreadful,” Mary said. She felt, unexpectedly, annoyance with Barclay MacDonald, although what he thought and said, what his attitude was, were not concerns of hers. She felt disappointment in him.

  “Now Miss Wister,” MacDonald said. “Drink your coffee. Of course it’s dreadful. Violent death is. No death is pleasant. But drink your coffee.” He looked at her plate. “And,” he said, “eat your egg. You’re alive, Mary.” He seemed surprised that he had used her name so casually. “People call me Mac, generally,” he said. “I suppose the alternative would be ‘Bark.’” He considered. “Or ‘Clay,’” he added. “Eat your egg.”

  She looked at him. He nodded.

  “I know,” he said. “All the same, eat your breakfast. Remember, you’d only met the man.”

  “Does that make it better?” she asked, and then said, “I suppose it does, really.”

  “Naturally,” MacDonald said. Again he listened to himself, as he apparently had a habit of doing. “Heimrich is infectious,” he said. He watched while she cracked her egg, scooped it into the egg cup. “Good girl,” he told her. He watched her eat, and himself drank coffee.

  Hunger had come back, Mary found. She finished the egg, finished toast, filled her coffee cup again.

  “Very good girl,” MacDonald told her, and opened his cigarette case for her, held a light for her. “Heimrich says the police will want to talk to you. As a formality.”

  She nodded. It was obvious.

  “By the way,” he said, “you didn’t know Wells, did you? Away from here, I mean. Before yesterday?”

  “No,” she said. After a moment she said, “No, Mac.”

  “Good,” he said. “From all I’ve heard, you’re fortunate. My brother—” he stopped suddenly. Then he shrugged. “My brother knew him or, at any rate, he appears to have known my brother,” he said. He looked at her. “I’d rather like to tell you,” he said. “My brother was Ralph MacDonald.” He looked at her and waited. She shook her head. “He jumped out of a window a year or so ago,” Barclay MacDonald said. “In Chicago. He’d—he’d been having some trouble.” He looked at her and waited again, and this time it came back to her.

  “Oh,” she said. “I do remember.”

  “Yes,” he said. “A good many people will now, I’m afraid.” He paused and drew deeply on his cigarette. “My brother was a very honest man,” he said. “He was also a very loyal one.” He nodded slowly. “In all respects,” he said.

  Then they heard sirens. At first the sirens were some distance away. The sound swelled, then faded a little, then swelled again. It was very loud and close, as the cars turned into the hotel drive. Then the sirens stopped and left a silence which was, for a moment, more forbidding even than the wail had been. Those still at the tables, Mary and Barclay MacDonald among them, turned their heads, first following the sound, then looking watchfully at the stairs leading down from the porch. Midway between the hotel and the beach, a man and a woman in bright robes stopped and turned and stood, immobilized, in the sun.

  The first man down the stairs was short and broad, and wore a loosely fitting white suit—he looked, Mary found herself thinking, as if he were walking under a tent. The several men who followed him were in uniform. Grogan went across the lawn to them, leaving Heimrich standing by the hedge. “What goes on here, John?” the man in the tent said, in an unexpectedly high pitched and carrying voice. Mary could see John Grogan shaking his head, could see him talking but could not hear what he said. “Now that’s something,” the short broad man said. “That sure is.” He and Grogan went back to the hedge and now, for the first time, some of those at the tables got up and began to move toward the group at the hedge. One or two moved with purpose; the others were elaborately indirect, suggesting that they had happened to remember business in that direction.

  Grogan detached himself and went toward his guests, the smile returning to his pleasant face. There had, he began to explain, been a little accident. Everything was being taken care of. A little accident. Unfortunate, but being taken care of.

  “Just run along,” the short broad man said from behind Grogan, in his carrying voice. “Nothing to see.” He then crouched, with evident difficulty, and peered into the hedge. He got up, red faced from the exertion, and talked momentarily to the uniformed men, one of whom went off across the lawn toward the hotel. Everybody watched them. Then a third man detached himself from the uniformed group and, after Grogan pointed, came to Barclay MacDonald. He said, “You the doctor?” and, when MacDonald nodded, said, “You figure he’s dead?”

  “Very,” MacDonald said.

  “O. K., doc,” the policeman said, and went back to the group. He nodded to the fat man and said something. “Makes it official, sort of,” the fat man said, in his incongruously high voice. He left the others, then, and walked across the dance floor to the table at which Mary and MacDonald sat. Grogan came with him. Grogan brought with him an atmosphere of anxiety.

  “This is Mr. Little, Miss Wister,” Grogan said, with the air of a man who hopes, without believing, that things will work out well. “Justice of the Peace Little,” he added.

  “And coroner,” Mr. Little said, in his high and carrying voice. “And coroner, young lady. He’s dead, seems like.” He gestured behind him, toward the uniformed policeman, toward what remained of Bronson Wells. “Foul play,” he added. “You found him, they tell me.”

  “Yes,” Mary said. “I saw—him.”

  “What they tell me,” Justice of the Peace Little said. “Lying the way he is now, was he?”

  “Ye
s,” Mary said. “Unless you’ve moved—unless—”

  “Have to let the sheriff see him first,” Little said. “Chief deputy, that is. Don’t suppose Charlie’s up yet.” The last was to Grogan; it was a jest. Grogan smiled, rather as if it hurt him to smile. “Great man to sleep, Charlie,” the justice of the peace said, amplifying for the benefit of Mary, of Dr. MacDonald. “You said he was dead, doc?” This did not, evidently, refer to Charlie, the great man to sleep.

  “Yes,” MacDonald said. “He’s quite dead.”

  “Foul play,” Little said. “Looks like he was stabbed.”

  “Yes,” MacDonald said. “It does, coroner.”

  “Have to have an inquest, all right,” Little said. “Soon as—”

  A siren interrupted him.

  “That’ll be Ronny,” Little said. “Got here quick, didn’t he? Nothing sleepy about Ronny. Bright as a button, Ronny is.” He paused. “As a button,” he repeated.

  The siren stopped. Mr. Little stood, looking at the steps from the porch, waited. After a few moments, a young man in a dark suit came down the steps—a darkly burned young man, his hair incongruously blond above mahogany. After him there came an even younger man, markedly untanned, carrying a camera case. “Picked up the boy from the Sentinel,” Little said. “Bright as a button, Ronny is.” He advanced to meet the tanned man. He brought him to the table; the man with the camera veered away, toward the group by the hedge.

  “This lady found it, seems like,” Little said. “Miss Wister, they tell me. This is the Chief Deputy, folks. Miss Wister. This one”—he indicated MacDonald—“is a doctor, Ronny. Confirms death, the doctor does.”

  The chief deputy looked at MacDonald, who nodded.

  “My name’s Jefferson,” Ronny said. “Ronald Jefferson. Chief Deputy Sheriff of Monroe County, as the justice here’s probably told you. We investigate homicides. I’ll have to ask you a few questions, Miss Wister.”

  She nodded.