by Gore Vidal
It was interesting to note how the different guests reacted to the situation.
Mary Western Lung was deliberately cheery, full of “Book-Chat,” discussing at some length a visit she’d once paid Francine Karpin Lock, another noted penwoman, in the latter’s New Orleans’ house. “The spirit of graciousness. And her table! Ah, what viands she offers the humblest guest!” This was followed by a close new-critical analysis of her works as compared to those of another great authoress, Taylor Caldwell. I gathered they were neck and neck, artistically speaking, that is.
Mrs. Veering spoke of the Hamptons, of local gossip, of who was leaving her husband for what other man: the sort of thing which, next to children and servant troubles, most occupies the conversation of Easthamptoners.
Fletcher Claypoole said not a word; he was pale and intense and I could see his sister was anxious. She watched him intently all through dinner and though she and I and Brexton carried on a triangular conversation about painting, her attention was uneasily focused on her brother.
Out of deference to the situation, Mrs. Veering decided against bridge though why I’ll never know. I should’ve thought any diversion would have been better than this glum company. I began to study the clock over the mantel. I decided that at exactly ten o’clock I’d excuse myself; go upstairs; change, sneak back down and walk the half mile to the Club and Liz and a night of sexual bliss as Marie C. Stopes would say.
My sexual bliss was postponed, however, by the rude arrival of the police.
The butler, quite shaken, ushered a sloppy small man, a detective Greaves, and two plain-clothes men into the drawing room.
Consternation would be a mild word to describe the effect they made.
“Mrs. Veering?” Greaves looked at Miss Lung.
“I am Rose Clayton Veering,” said herself, rising shakily from an armchair and crossing the room with marvelous control: I’d counted her drinks that evening: she was not only loaded but primed.
“I’m detective Greaves, ma’am. Bureau of Criminal Investigation.”
Miss Lung squeaked disconcertingly; it sounded like a mouse and startled us all. I glanced at Brexton and saw him shut his eyes with resignation.
“Pray, follow me in here, Mr. Graves.”
“Greaves.” He followed her into the alcove; his two men withdrew to the hall. The guests, myself included, sat in a stunned circle. No one said anything. Claypoole poured himself a drink. Miss Lung looked as though she were strangling. Allie watched her brother as usual and Brexton remained motionless in his chair, his face without expression, his eyes shut.
From the alcove there was a murmur of talk. I could hear Mrs. Veering’s voice, indignant and emphatic, while the detective’s voice was stern … what they said, though, we could not hear. We found out soon enough.
Mrs. Veering, her face flaming with anger, appeared in the door of the alcove accompanied by the policeman who looked a bit sheepish.
“Mr. Graves has something to say to us … something so ridiculous that …”
“Greaves, ma’am.” He interrupted her pleasantly. “Please sit down,” he said, indicating a chair. She did as he directed, controlling herself with some effort.
The detective looked at us thoughtfully. He was a sandy-haired little man with red-rimmed eyes and a pale putty face: he looked as though he never slept. But he seemed to have the situation, such as it was, well in hand.
“I hate to come barging in on you like this,” he said softly, apologetically. “I’ve got a list of names and I wish, as I read them off, you’d answer to your name so I’ll know which is which.” He ran through our names and we answered, Miss Lung startling us again with her shrill mouse-in-terrible-agony squeak.
“Thanks a lot,” he said when he’d finished roll call. He was careful not to stare at any one of us too hard or too long. He kept his eyes for the most part on the doorway to the hall.
“Now I won’t keep you in the dark any longer. There is a chance that Mrs. Brexton was murdered this morning.”
Not a sound greeted this news. We stared back at him, too stunned to comment.
He was disappointed not to have made a different effect. I could see he’d expected some kind of a rise, a significant outburst; instead he got deep silence. This gang was smarter than he’d thought, than I’d thought. I glanced rapidly at the faces but could see nothing more than intense interest in any of them.
When this had been allowed to sink in, he went on softly, “We’re not sure of course. It’s a queer kind of case. This afternoon an autopsy was performed and it was discovered that the deceased died by drowning; there was no question of a heart attack or of any other physical failure. Her internal organs were sound and undiseased. She was apparently in good physical condition.…”
“Then how could she’ve drowned like that since she was a first-rate swimmer?” Claypoole’s voice was tense with strain; it came surprisingly clear across the room.
Greaves looked at him with mild interest. “That’s why we’re here, Mr.… Claypoole. There was apparently no reason for her to drown so quickly so near shore with three people attempting rescue.…”
“Unless she wanted to.” Miss Lung’s voice was complacent; she was beginning to recover her usual composure and confidence.
“That is a possibility … I hope a probability. It is the alternative we’d like to accept. Otherwise, I’m afraid we’re stuck with a murder by party or parties unknown.”
There it was. Mrs. Veering rallied first. “Mr. Greaves, this is all supposition on your part, and very dangerous too. Regardless of what you might think, there is no evidence that my niece wanted to drown herself nor is there the faintest possibility anybody murdered her. She was in a peculiar mental state as the result of a nervous breakdown.… I told you all that a few minutes ago … in her condition she was quite apt to lose her head, to drown in that terrible undertow.” I was surprised at Mrs. Veering’s sharpness. She was completely sobered now and all her usual vagueness and nonsense had been replaced by a steely clarity, and anger.
“An intelligent analysis.” Greaves nodded approvingly, as though a favorite pupil had come through. “That was our opinion too when the death was reported this morning. Almost every day there’s something like this in these parts, a sudden drowning. Unfortunately, the autopsy revealed something odd. It seems that before going in swimming, immediately after breakfast, Mrs. Brexton took four sleeping pills … or was given four sleeping pills.”
This time the silence was complete. No one said anything. Mrs. Veering opened her mouth to speak; then shut it again, like a mackerel on dry land.
“With Mrs. Veering’s permission, I’d like to have the house searched for the bottle which contained the pills.”
Our hostess nodded, too dazed for words. Greaves poked his head into the hall and said, “O.K., boys.” The boys started their search of the house.
“Meanwhile,” continued the detective, “I’d appreciate it if everyone remained in this room while I interview you all, individually.” He accepted our silence as agreement. To my surprise, he motioned to me. “You’ll be first, Mr. Sargeant,” he said. I followed him into the alcove. Behind us a sudden buzz of talk, like a hive at swarming time, broke upon the drawing room: indignation, alarm, fear.
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 s
hould 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.”
CHAPTER THREE
I
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.