by Gore Vidal
“And Claypoole?”
“He was behind me all the way until we finally got out to them: then he spurted on ahead and grabbed Mrs. Brexton. I had my hands full with her husband.”
“How did Claypoole handle her on the way in?”
“I wasn’t watching. About the same way I managed Brexton … standard Junior Life Saver stuff.”
Greaves lit a pipe thoughtfully. “He’ll try it again.”
“Who will try what?”
“The murderer will take another crack at you.”
I chuckled, though I didn’t feel any too merry. “I don’t think that’s why I was cracked over the head. After all, if somebody was interested in killing me, he wouldn’t rely on one blow to do it. On top of that how’d he know I was going to come creeping into the kitchen at five A.M.and what was he doing there?”
“These are all questions we mean to consider,” said Greaves with the slow ponderousness of a public servant out of his depth.
“Well, while you’re considering them I’m going to get something to eat, and some sun. I ache all over.”
“I’d be very careful if I were you, Mr. Sargeant.”
“I’ll do my best. You might keep your boys on the alert, too.”
“I intend to. There’s a murderer in this house, Mr. Sargeant, and it’s my opinion he’s after you.”
“You make me feel like a clay pigeon.”
“I think bait is a better word, don’t you?” He was a cold bastard.
III
I got some breakfast on the porch where I held court, surrounded by the ladies of the party to whom I was something of a hero. Claypoole it seemed was in Easthampton and Brexton was in his room painting … though where he’d get enough light I didn’t know, glancing at the window near the chair where I sat with the ladies, aware that everything we said could be heard by anyone in that room.
It was Mary Western Lung who most appreciated my situation. She was in her yellow slacks; her harlequin glasses, adorned with rhinestones, glittered in the sun which streamed across the porch. “We all came running when the cook started carrying on. You never saw such a commotion … you looked so dead, there on the floor. I called for a doctor,” she added, to show that hers was the clearest head.
“Did you get a glimpse of who did it?” Allie Claypoole was gratifyingly tense.
“No, nothing at all. When I opened the door to the kitchen somebody slugged me.”
Mrs. Veering stirred her orange juice with her forefinger: I wondered what pale firewater it contained, probably gin, the breakfast drink. “The police requested us all to keep quiet about this,” she said. “I can’t think why. My theory is that we had a prowler … there’s one loose in Southampton, you know. I think he stumbled in here; when he heard you he was frightened and.…”
“And tiptoed quietly home, past a sleeping policeman on the front porch?” I shook my head. “I don’t think a run-of-the-mill burglar would go anywhere near a house with a policeman standing guard, even a sleeping one.”
The others agreed. Mrs. Veering preferred her theory, though. The alternative made everybody nervous.
It was Miss Lung who said what we were thinking: “Somebody in this house wanted to … rub out Mr. Sargeant.” She paused, eyes wide, obviously pleased with “rub out.”
“The murderer,” I said agreeably, “obviously thinks I know something.” As I talked I was aware of that open window two yards away, of Brexton listening. “I don’t of course. The whole thing’s.…”
“A nightmare!” Allie was suddenly vehement. “It couldn’t be more awful, more pointless!”
“I think,” said Mrs. Veering sternly, “that everybody tends to jump to conclusions. There’s no proof Mildred was murdered. I decline to think she was. Certainly no one here would do such a thing and as for Mr. Sargeant … well, there are other explanations.” What they were though she didn’t see fit to tell us. She turned accusingly to Mary Western Lung: “And I thought you particularly agreed with me that murder was out of the question.”
Miss Lung gestured vaguely with her pincushion of a hand. “What happened to Mr. Sargeant changed my mind. As you know, I felt all along that poor Mildred had every intention of meeting her Maker when she stepped into that water yesterday. But now I’m not so sure.”
They argued for some time about what had happened. There were no facts to go on other than my unexpected conjunction with a bit of metal. None of them had, until then, wanted to face the fact that Mildred was murdered. Their reasons were unknown to me … and their reasons, if ever I could understand them, would provide a key to the tangle. It was precisely at that moment, while drinking coffee and listening to the chatter of three women, that I made up my mind to go after the killer. The fact that he, or she, had gone after me first of course had something to do with my decision: I had no intention of dying in Easthampton that summer.
Mrs. Veering wanted to see me privately after breakfast but I excused myself first to make some telephone calls. I cornered several newspapers and took them up to my room which was now empty. I’m ashamed to confess I looked under the bed and in the closet before locking the door.
Then I read the papers quickly. No mention of murder yet. But the stories hinted at mysteries. The Daily News announced that the deceased had had a nervous breakdown and indicated tactfully that suicide was a possibility. That seemed to be the general line in the press. There were some old pictures of Brexton about the time of their marriage, looking very Newport and not very Bohemian. Mrs. Veering was good for a picture in the Journal and the Globe. This was fine: she was still my client.
I telephoned Miss Flynn, wondering if anybody else was listening on the wire. House-party telephones are notorious: I suspect a great many divorces have occurred as a result of week ends at big houses with a lot of phones, all tuned in on each other.
Miss Flynn was cold. “I assume the late socialite wife of the well-known Modern Painter died a Natural Death?” The skepticism in her voice was heavy enough to cauterize the receiver.
“As far as we know,” I said glibly. “Now I may have to stay out here for a week. The police have asked.…”
“I understand.” She was a rock. She cut short any further explanations. “I will carry on at the office as best I can,” she said. “I assume you will be in touch with the Globe.”
“Well, come to think of it, I might give them a ring to find out if they’d like me to do.…”
“The Human Interest Angle, I know. I trust you will be cautious in your investigations.”
I assured her that I would be. I told her then what I wanted done for our various clients during my absence.
Then I got the managing editor of the New York Globe at his home in Westport.
“Good to hear from you, boy. Not mixed up in another murder, are you?”
“Matter of fact I am.”
I could hear a quick intake of breath on the other end of the wires: the managing editor was rapidly figuring how cheaply he could buy me. We had done business before. “What’s the deal?” he asked, his voice carefully bored.
“Mildred Brexton.”
“Easthampton? Are you out there now?”
“In Mrs. Veering’s house. I suppose you’ve been following.…”
“Thought it was an accident.”
“Police think not. Now.…” We haggled like gentlemen and I got my price. I also asked him to get me all the material he could on Mrs. Veering, the Claypooles, the Brextons and Mary Western Lung … they were all more or less public figures, either professionally or socially. He said he would and I told him I’d have a story for him in a couple of days, long before the other services had even got an interview out of the principals. I hung up … a second later I lifted the receiver and heard a click on the wire. Somebody had been listening.
The back of my head was beginning to feel more human though it was still oddly shaped. I went back downstairs. On my way through the hall, Mrs. Veering beckoned to me from the door to the s
unroom. I joined her in there. We were alone; the others were out on the beach. The police were nowhere in sight.
“Where’s Greaves?” I asked.
“Gone … for the time being. We have a twenty-four hour guard, though,” she added dramatically. For once the inevitable tumbler of the waters of Lethe was not at hand. I wondered if she was sober; I wondered if there was any way of telling.
“I suppose he’s investigating.”
“Mr. Sargeant … Peter, I believe we are all in terrible danger.”
I took this calmly enough … I could even go along with it. “Doesn’t seem to be anything we can do about it,” I said noncommittally.
“There must be!” She clasped and unclasped her hands nervously.
“I thought you felt it was all an accident, that I was slugged by a prowler and.…”
“I didn’t want to upset the others. I didn’t want them to know that I knew.” She looked at me darkly.
“Knew what?”
“That there is danger.”
I decided she was off her rocker, or else did know something the rest of us didn’t. “Have you told the police?”
“I can’t tell them anything It’s only a … presentiment.”
“Do you or don’t you think Mrs. Brexton was murdered?”
She would not answer; instead she just sighed and looked out the window at the velvety green golf course, brilliant as a pool table in the light of noon. She changed the subject with that rapidity which I was finally getting used to; alcoholics find any train of thought too long sustained tiring: “I want you to mention my Labor Day party in your first dispatch to the Globe.” She smiled at me.
“You were listening on the phone?”
“Say that a little bird told me.” She was coy.
“You don’t mind my writing about the murder?”
“Of course I mind but since everyone else will be writing about it in those awful tabloids it’ll be to my advantage to have you here in the house, a gentleman.” Her realism always surprised me.
“I was afraid you might be upset.”
“Not at all, but I’d like to see what you write from time to time. I may be able to help you.”
“That’d be awfully nice of you.”
“Not at all.”
“Was your niece murdered?” I asked suddenly, trying to catch her off guard.
“You’ll get no help from me there.” And that was the end of that interview: I left her for the beach and the sun.
I found only Allie Claypoole on the beach.
She was lying on her back in a two-piece red bathing suit which was exciting to contemplate: I found her most attractive and if it hadn’t been for my fling with Liz the night before and the peculiar discovery that despite a lifetime devoted to philandering, I was unexpectedly held to the idea of Liz and didn’t want anybody else, not even the slender Allie who looked up at me with a smile and said, “Recovered?”
I sat down beside her on the sand. The sun was soothing. The sea sparkled. Just twenty-four hours ago it had happened. “I feel much better. Where’s everybody?”
“Miss Lung has gone inside to write this week’s ‘Book-Chat’ while my brother’s in town. Brexton’s in his room still. What on earth is going on?”
I gestured helplessly. “I haven’t any idea. I never saw any of these people before Friday. You ought to know.”
“I can’t make any sense out of it.” She rubbed oil on her brown arms.
“Mrs. Veering feels we are all in terrible danger.”
Allie smiled wanly. “I’m afraid Rose always feels she’s in great danger, especially when she’s been drinking.”
“She seemed quite sober this morning.”
“You never can tell. I wouldn’t take anything she says too seriously. It’s all part of her own private madness.”
“On the other hand that knock on the head I got this morning was not just one of her hallucinations.”
“No, that’s more serious. Even so I can’t really believe anybody killed Mildred … not one of us, that is. This is the sort of thing which is supposed to happen to other people.”
“What do you think happened?” I looked at her innocently: I had to pump these people, one by one. The best approach was bewildered stupidity.
“I believe what Paul says.”
This was news; I hadn’t known that Brexton had expressed himself yet on the murder, except perhaps to the police. “What does he say?”
“That Mildred was in the habit of taking sleeping pills at all hours of the day, to calm her nerves. That the ones she took the morning she died were a standard dose for her and that she went in swimming not realizing how tough the undertow was.”
“Well, it sounds sensible.”
“Except that my brother had a bottle of the same type pills.…”
“You don’t mean they suspect him?”
She shook her head, her face grim. “No, I don’t think they do. He had no motive and even if he did there’s no proof the pills came from him. Their idea seems to be that somebody might have had access to his bathroom who didn’t have access to Mildred’s pills which were kept locked in her jewel box: she was the only one who knew the combination. Brexton swears he never knew it and couldn’t have got the thing open if he wanted to.”
“So either she got the pills herself or somebody went into your brother’s bathroom and got some to put in her coffee or whatever it was she took them in?”
“That’s the general line. If you hadn’t been attacked last night, I’d have thought Mildred took the pills herself. Now I’m not sure.”
“It looks like my adventure may have started the whole thing rolling.”
She nodded. “I thought that awful little man Graves, or whatever his name is, was just trying to scare us, to get himself attention. I still don’t think he has the vaguest idea whether or not a murder was committed.”
“He’s fairly sure now. Are you?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“What was between your brother and Mildred?” I asked this all in one breath, to take her by surprise; it did.
Her eyelids fluttered with alarm; she frowned, taken aback. “What … what makes you think anything.…”
“Mrs. Veering,” I lied. “She told me that, years ago.…”
“That bloody fool!” She literally snarled; but then she was in control again. She even managed to laugh convincingly to cover up her sudden lapse. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “It just seems so unnecessary, raking up family skeletons. The fact are simple enough: Mildred was engaged to marry my brother. Then she met Brexton and married him instead. That’s all. My brother was devoted to her and not too friendly with Brexton, though they got on … that’s all there is to it.”
“Why didn’t she marry your brother?”
She was evasive. “I suppose Brexton was more glamorous to her.…”
“Did you like the idea of his marrying her?”
“I can’t think that that has anything to do with it, Mr. Sargeant.” She looked at me coldly.
“I suppose it doesn’t. I’m sorry. It’s just that if I’m to be used as a punching bag by a murderer, I’d like to know a little something about what’s going on.”
“I’m sorry.” She was quick to respond. “I didn’t mean to be unpleasant. It’s just that it’s a sore subject with all of us. In fact, I didn’t even want to come down here for the week end but Fletcher insisted. He was very fond of Mildred, always.”
I was slowly getting an idea of the relationships involved, as much from what she didn’t say as what she did.
The butler called me from the terrace. Liz was on the telephone. I answered it in the hall.
“Darling, are you all right?” Her voice was anxious.
“Don’t tell me you heard.…”
“Everything! My aunt told me this morning how, when you came home last night, you were stabbed. I’ve been trying to get you for two hours but the line’s been busy. Are you all
right? Where.…”
I told her what had happened, marveling at the speed with which news spread in that community. I supposed the servants had passed it on since I knew no one in the house, none of the guests, would have breathed a word of it.
She was relieved that I hadn’t been stabbed. She was also alarmed. “I don’t think you should stay another night in that awful place, Peter. No, I mean it, really. It’s perfectly apparent that a criminal maniac is on the loose and.…”
“And when do I see you?”
“Oh. Well, what about late tonight? around midnight. I’m tied up with the family till then but afterward I’m invited to Evan Evans’ house … the abstract sculptor. I could meet you there. It’s open house.” I took down the address and then, after promising her I wouldn’t get in the way of any more metal objects, she rang off.
I wandered back to the beach. From upstairs I could hear the clatter of Mary Western Lung’s feverish typewriter. The door to Brexton’s room was shut. Mrs. Veering was writing letters in the sunroom.
Everything was peaceful. Allie Claypoole was talking to a stranger when I rejoined her on the beach. “Oh, Mr. Sargeant, I want you to meet Dick Randan … he’s my nephew.”
The nephew was a tall gangling youth of twenty odd summers: he wore heavy spectacles and a seersucker suit which looked strangely out of place on that glaring beach. I made the expected comment about what a young aunt Allie was, and she agreed.
“Dick just drove down from Cambridge today.…”
“Heard what had happened and came down to make sure everything was all right.” His voice was as unprepossessing as the rest of him. He sat like a solemn owl on the sand, his arms clasping bony knees. “Just now got here … quite a row,” he shook his head gloomily. “Bad form, this,” he added with considerable understatement.
“Dick’s taking his Master’s degree in history,” said Allie as though that explained everything. “You better run in the house, dear, and tell Rose you’re here.”