by Gore Vidal
He was more interesting than I’d thought, especially about the murder which intrigued him greatly. “I’ve made a study of such things,” he said gravely. “Once did a paper on the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury … fascinating case.”
“Seventeenth century, wasn’t it?” I can still recall a few things to confound undergraduates with.
“That’s right. I hadn’t planned to come down here though Allie invited me. Then, when I heard about what happened, over the radio in Boston, I came on down. I used to know Mrs. Brexton slightly … when she was going around with my uncle.”
“That was quite a while ago.”
“Fifteen years, I guess. I remember it clearly though. Everybody took it for granted they’d be married. I never understood why they didn’t … next thing we knew she married Brexton.”
“Your uncle and aunt seem awfully devoted to each other.”
But he was too shrewd to rise to that bit of bait. “Yes, they are,” he said flatly.
The North Dunes was black against the white beach. It looked suddenly scary, sinister, with no lights on … I wondered why they hadn’t left a hall light for me.
We parked in the driveway. I couldn’t see anybody on the darkened porch. I remembered only too well what had happened the last time I stepped into that gloomy house, late at night. “You staying here?” I asked, turning to Randan.
“No, I’m in the village. I don’t want to get involved: lot of other people I want to see while I’m in Easthampton.” He got out of the car. “I’ll walk you to the house.”
I was ashamed of my own sudden fear. I hoped Randan hadn’t noticed it.
We skirted the front porch and approached the house from the ocean side.
He talked all the time about the murder which didn’t make me any too happy. For the first time since the trouble began, I was afraid, an icy, irrational fear. I wanted to ask him to go inside with me but I didn’t have the nerve, too ashamed to admit how shaky I was. Instead, I filibustered, answering his questions at great length, putting off as long as possible my necessary entrance.
We sat down on a metal swing which stood near the steps to the porch, a little to one side of the several unfurled beach umbrellas, like black mushrooms in the night. Moonlight made the night luminous and clear.
We sat very still to keep the swing from creaking.
“I came down here,” said Randan softly, “for a definite reason. I know Allie thinks I’m just morbid but there’s more to it than that. I’m very fond of her and my uncle. I was worried when I heard all this had happened.”
“You mean that they might be … involved?”
He nodded. “I don’t mean directly. Just that an awful lot of stuff might come out in the papers that shouldn’t … gossip.”
“About your uncle and Mildred Brexton?”
“Mainly, yes. You see my hunch is that if they try to indict Brexton he’ll drag Fletcher and Allie into the case … just to make trouble.”
It was uncanny. These were practically the same words I had overheard between Brexton and Claypoole the day of the murder. Uncle and nephew had evidently exchanged notes … or else there was a family secret they all shared in common which made them nervous about what Brexton might do and say in court.
“What did you intend to do?” I asked, curious about his own role.
He shrugged. “Whatever I can. I’ve been awfully close to Fletcher and Allie. I guess they’re more like parents to me than uncle and aunt. In fact when my father died, Fletcher became my legal guardian. So you see it’s to my interest to help them out, to testify in case there’s … well, an accusation against them.”
“What sort of accusation? What is Brexton likely to pull?”
Randan chuckled. “That’d be telling. It’s not anything really … at least as far as this business goes. Just family stuff.”
I had an idea what it was: the relationship between brother and sister might be misconstrued by a desperate man; yet what had that to do with the late Mildred Brexton? Randan was no help.
He shifted the subject to the day of the murder. He wanted to know how everybody behaved, and what I thought had actually happened in the water. He was keener than I’d suspected but it was soon apparent he didn’t know any more than the rest of us about Mildred’s strange death.
I offered him a cigarette. I took one myself. I lighted his. Then I dropped the matches. Swearing, I felt around for them in the sand at my feet.
I retrieved them at last. I lit my own cigarette. It was then that I noticed that my fingers were dark with some warm liquid.
“Jesus!” I dropped both matches and cigarette this time.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know … my fingers. It looks like blood. I must’ve cut myself.”
“I’ll say; you’re bleeding.” Randan offered me a handkerchief. “Take this. How’d you do it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t feel a thing.” I wiped my fingers clean only to find that there was no cut. The blood was not mine.
We looked at each other. My flesh crawled. Then we got to our feet and pushed aside the metal swing.
At our feet was a man’s body, huddled in its own blood on the white sand. The head was turned away from us. The throat had been cut and the head was almost severed. I walked around to the other side and recognized the contorted features of Fletcher Claypoole in the bright moonlight.
CHAPTER FIVE
I
THERE was no sleep in that house until dawn.
Greaves arrived. We met by candlelight in the drawing room. It seemed that shortly after midnight the lights had gone out which explained why there’d been no light in the house when Randan and I arrived. One of the plain-clothes men had been testing the fuse box in the kitchen for over an hour, without success.
Everyone was on hand but Allie Claypoole who had caved in from hysteria. A nurse had been summoned and Allie was knocked out by hypo … a relief to the rest of us for her shrieks, when she heard the news, jangled our already taut nerves.
No one had anything to say. No one spoke as we sat in the drawing room, waiting to be called to the alcove by detective Greaves. Randan and I were the only two dressed; the others were all in night clothes. Brexton sat in a faded dressing gown, one hand shielding his face from the rest of us. Mary Western Lung, looking truly frightened, sat huddled, pale and lumpy, in her pink, intricate robe. Mrs. Veering snuffled brandy with the grimness of someone intending to get drunk by the quickest route. Randan and I were the observers, both studying the others … and one another for I was curious to see how he would take the death of a favorite uncle and guardian: he was the coolest of the lot. After his first shock when I thought he was going to faint, he’d become suddenly businesslike: he was the one who had the presence of mind not to touch the body nor the long sharp knife which lay beside it, gleaming in the moon. He had called the police while I just dithered around for a few minutes, getting used to the idea of Fletcher Claypoole with his head half off.
The women were called first; then Randan; then me … Brexton was to be last, I saw. For the first time I began to think he might be the murderer.
It was dawn when I joined Greaves in the alcove. The others had gone to bed. Only Brexton was left in the drawing room. The lights were now on. Greaves looked as tired and gray as I felt.
I told him everything that had happened. How Randan and I had talked for almost twenty minutes before discovering the body beneath the swing.
“What time did you arrive at the house of …” he consulted his notes gloomily, “Evan Evans?”
“A few minutes before twelve.”
“There are witnesses to this of course.”
“Certainly.”
“What time did Mr. Randan arrive at this house?”
“About one fifteen, I’d say. I don’t know. It’s hard to keep track of time at a party. We left at one-thirty, though. I remember looking at my watch.” I was positive he was going to ask me why I looked at m
y watch but he didn’t, showing that he realized such things can happen without significance.
“Then you dropped off Miss Bessemer and came straight here?”
“That’s right.”
“At what time did you find the body?”
“One forty-six. Both Randan and I checked on that.”
Greaves strangled a yawn. “Didn’t touch anything, either of you?”
“Nothing … or maybe I did when I got blood on my fingers, before I knew what was under the swing.”
“What were you doing out there? Why did you happen to sit down on that swing?”
“Well, we’d just come home from the party and there weren’t any lights on in the house and Randan wanted to talk to me about the murder of Mrs. Brexton so we walked around the house and sat down here. I suppose if a light’d been on we’d have gone inside.” I didn’t want to confess I’d been scared to death of going into that house alone.
“Didn’t notice anything odd, did you? No footprints or anything?”
“Nothing. Why were the lights out?”
“We don’t know. Something wrong with the master fuse. One of our men was fixing it while the other stood guard.” Greaves sounded defensive. I could see why.
“And the murder took place at twelve forty-five?”
“How do you know that?” He snapped the question at me, his sleep-heavy eyes opening suddenly wide.
“It fits. Murderer tampers with fuse box; then slips outside, kills Claypoole in the swing while the police and others are busy with the lights; then.…”
“Then what?”
“Well, then I don’t know,” I ended lamely. “Do you?”
“That’s our business.”
“When did the murder take place?”
“None of your …” but for reasons best known to himself, Greaves paused and became reasonable: I was the press as well as a witness and suspect. “The coroner hasn’t made his final report. His guess, though, was that it happened shortly after the lights went out.”
“Where’s the fuse box?”
“Just inside the kitchen door.”
“Was a policeman on guard there?”
“The whole house is patrolled. But that time there was no one in the kitchen.”
“And the door was locked?”
“The door was unlocked.”
“Isn’t that odd? I thought all cooks were mortally afraid of prowlers.”
“The door was locked after the help finished washing up around eleven. We have no idea yet who unlocked it.”
“Fingerprints?”
Greaves only shrugged wearily.
“Any new suspects?”
“No statement, Mr. Sargeant.” He looked at me coldly.
“I have a perfect alibi. I’m trustworthy.” I looked at him with what I thought were great ingenuous spaniel eyes. He was not moved.
“Perfect alibis are dirt cheap around here,” said the policeman bitterly.
II
I found out the next morning what he meant.
I awakened at eight thirty from a short but sound sleep. I spent the next half hour scribbling a story for the Globe … eyewitness stuff which I telephoned to the city desk, aware that I was being tuned in on by several heavy breathers. Then I went downstairs to breakfast.
Through the front hall window I caught a glimpse of several newspapermen and photographers arguing pathetically with a plain-clothes man on the porch … I had, I decided, a pretty good deal, all in all … if I stayed alive of course. The possibility that one of the guests was a homicidal maniac had already occurred to me; in which case I was as fair a victim as anyone else. I decided the time had come to set my own investigation rolling … the only question was where?
In the dining room a twitchy butler served me eggs and toast. Only Randan was also down. He was radiant with excitement. “They asked me to stay over, the police asked me, so I spent the night in my uncle’s room.”
“Wasn’t that disagreeable?”
“You mean Allie?” His face became suddenly gloomy. “Yes, it was pretty awful. But of course the nurse stayed with her all night, knocking her out, I guess, pretty regularly. I didn’t hear anything much even though the walls around here are like paper. It was also kind of awful being in Fletcher’s bed like that … luckily, the police took all his things away with them.”
“You see anybody yet this morning?”
He shook his head, his mouth full of toast. “Nobody around except the police and the reporters out front. They certainly got here fast.”
“It’ll be in the afternoon papers,” I said wisely. “Have they found out anything yet about the way he was killed?”
“Don’t know. I couldn’t get much out of Greaves. As a matter of fact he got sore when I asked him some questions … said one amateur detective was enough for any murder case. Wonder who he meant?”
“ ‘Whom’ he meant,” I said thoughtfully, aware that Harvard’s recent graduates were not as firmly grounded in Fowler’s English Usage as my generation. “I expect he meant me.”
“You’re not a private detective, are you?” He looked at me fascinatedly, his eyes gleaming behind their thick lenses.
“No, but I’m an ex-newspaperman and I’ve been mixed up in a couple of things like this. Nothing quite so crazy, though.”
“Crazy? I’ve got a hunch it’s perfectly simple.”
“Well, that’s good to hear. Why keep us in suspense any longer.” My sarcasm was heavy; I am not at my best at breakfast.
“Maybe I won’t.” He looked mysteriously into his coffee cup. I found him as irritating as ever. He was my personal choice for murderer with Mary Western Lung a close second.
“I suppose you think Brexton did it because he’s jealous and wanted to kill not only his wife but her lover too, selecting a week end at his wife’s aunt’s house as the correct setting for a grisly tableau?”
“I don’t see what’s wrong with that theory … even if you do try to make it sound silly. There’s such a thing as spur-of-the-moment murder, isn’t there? And this was the first chance he had of getting them both together.” Randan was complacent.
“Why wasn’t he cleverer about it? I know most painters are subaverage in intelligence but if he wanted to get away with these murders he couldn’t have picked a worse way of going about it.”
“Well, I’m not saying I think he did it. I’ll make you a bet, though: that I figure this out before either you or Greaves.” I told him I’d take him up on that: twenty dollars even money.
The morning was sunny and cool outdoors; the sea sparkled; the police were everywhere and Greaves, it developed, had moved over from Riverhead and was now staying in the house, in Brexton’s downstairs room (the painter was assigned a room upstairs) and we were all told to stay close to the premises for the rest of the day.
I set to work on the alibis.
Both Mrs. Veering and Miss Lung, it developed, had gone to bed at the same time, about twelve thirty, leaving Allie and Brexton together in the drawing room. Randan was at the club. Claypoole took his last walk at midnight. None of the ladies had, as far as I could tell, an alibi. Allie of course was still knocked out and no one had been able to talk to her. I was beginning to wonder what Greaves had meant by perfect alibis being cheap. I discovered after lunch.
Brexton was treated like a leper at lunch. Everyone was keyed up, and frightened. It was easy for me to get him away from the others.
“Let’s take a walk,” I said. We were standing together on the porch overlooking the ocean.
“I wonder if they’ll let us … or me,” said the painter.
“We can try.” We strolled out the door, pausing a moment on the terrace. New sand had been raked over the dark blood beneath the swing. The sea was calm. No visible sign of death anywhere to mar the day.
We walked, a little self-consciously, past the swing and down onto the sand. A plain-clothes man appeared quietly on the terrace, watching us. “I feel very important,” Brex
ton smiled dimly. “We’d better not walk far.”
In plain view of the detective, we sat down on the dunes a few yards from the house. “You’re a newspaperman, aren’t you?” Brexton was direct.
“Not exactly. But I’m writing about this for the Globe.”
“And you’d like to know how I happened to drown my wife and murder an old family friend on a quiet week end at the beach? That would be telling.” He chuckled grimly.
“Maybe something short of a confession then,” I said, playing along.
“Do you really think I did it?” This was unexpected.
I was honest. “I don’t know. I don’t think so, for a number of reasons that would be of no use to you in court.”
“My own approach exactly.”
“Who do you think did it?”
He looked away. With one hand he traced a woman’s torso in the sand: I couldn’t help but watch the ease with which he drew, even without watching the lines … not at all like his abstractions. “I don’t think I’ll say,” he said, finally. “It’s only a hunch. The whole thing’s as puzzling to me as it is to everybody else … more so since most of them are quite sure I did it. I’ll tell you one thing: I couldn’t have committed either murder.”
This had its desired effect. I looked at him with some surprise. “You mean.…”
“Last night when Claypoole was killed, assuming it happened before one fifteen, just before your arrival on the beach with Randan, I was with Allie Claypoole.”
This of course was the big news; the reason for Greave’s gloom early that morning. “You told the police this?”
“With some pleasure.”
“And they believed you?”
“All they have to do is ask Allie.”
“But she’s been hysterical or unconscious ever since, hasn’t she?”
He frowned slightly. “So they say. But when she’s herself again they’ll find out that there was no way on earth I, or Allie for that matter, could have killed her brother.”