by Gore Vidal
We were both silent. I recalled as closely as I could everything which had happened the night before: had there been any sound when Randan and I circled the house? Any marks upon the sand? All I could see in my mind though was that great dark house in the wild moonlight. Dark! I thought I’d found a hole in his story.
“If you were talking to Miss Claypoole how come you were in the dark? There wasn’t a light on in the house when we got there.”
“We were on the porch, in the moonlight.”
“The porch overlooking the terrace?”
“No, on the south side, the golf course side.”
“I wonder where the police were.”
“One patrolled the house regularly while the other was looking for extra fuses which the butler had mislaid. The policemen had flashlights,” he added, “to round out the picture.”
“Picture of what is the question.”
“Picture of a murderer,” said Brexton softly and with one finger he stabbed the torso of the figure in the sand. I winced involuntarily.
“Is there anything you’d like me to say?” I asked, trying to make myself sound more useful than, in fact, I was. “I’ll be doing another piece tomorrow and.…”
“You might make the point that not only was I with Miss Claypoole when her brother was killed but that my wife was in the habit of taking large quantities of sleeping pills at any time of day or night and that four was an average dose if she was nervous. I’ve tried to tell the police this but they find it inconvenient to believe. Perhaps now they’ll take me seriously.”
“Mrs. Brexton was not murdered? She took the pills herself?”
“Exactly. If I know her, her death was as big a surprise to her as it was to the rest of us.”
“You don’t think she might have wanted to kill herself? to swim out where she knew she’d drown.”
“Kill herself? She planned to live forever! She was that kind.” But he wouldn’t elaborate and soon we went back to the house while the plain-clothes man watched us from the shadow of the porch.
That afternoon Liz paid me a call and we strolled along the beach together to the Club; apparently the policeman didn’t much care what I did.
Liz was lovely and mahogany-dark in a two-piece affair which wasn’t quite a bathing suit but showed nearly as much. I was able to forget my troubles for several minutes at a time while watching her scuff along the sand, her long legs were slender and smooth with red paint flaking off the toenails as she kicked shells and dead starfish.
But she wouldn’t let me forget the murders for one minute. She had read my piece in the Globe which was just out, and all the other papers too. “I don’t think it’s safe,” she said after she’d breathlessly recited to me all the bloody details she’d read that afternoon.
“I don’t think so either, Liz, but what can I do?” I was willing to milk this for all it was worth … the thought that she might be erotically excited by danger to the male (cf. behavior of human females in wartime) was appealing, but not precise. Liz, I think, has no imagination at all, just the usual female suspicion that everything’s going to work out for the worst if some woman doesn’t step in and restore the status to its previous quo. There wasn’t much room for her to step in, though, except to advise.
“Just leave, that’s all you have to do. They can’t stop you. The worst they can do is make you appear at the trial, to testify.” The dramatic possibilities of this seemed to appeal to her; her knowledge of the technicalities were somewhat vague but she was wonderful when she was excited, her eyes glowing and her cheeks a warm pink beneath her tan.
I maneuvered her into the dunes just before we got to the Club. She was so busy planning my getaway that she didn’t know until too late that we were hidden from view by three dunes which, though they didn’t resemble the mountains of Idaho did resemble three pointed smooth breasts arranged in a warm triangle. She started to protest; then she just shut her eyes and we made love, rocking in the cradle of white hot sand, the sky a blue weight over our heads.
We lay for a while together, breathing fast, our hearts in unison quieting. I was relaxed for the first time in two tense days. Everything seemed unimportant except ourselves. But then the practical Liz was sitting up, arranging her two-piece garment which I’d badly mangled in a bit of caveman play.
I waited for some vibrant word of love. Liz spoke: “You know, darling, there are such things as beds, old-fashioned as that may sound.”
It served me right, I decided, for expecting the familiar thick honey of love. “I bet it doesn’t scratch you as much as it does me,” I said, pulling up my old G.I. slacks, aware that sand had collected in private places.
“You know so little about women,” said Liz kindly. “I’ll get you a chart and show you how our anatomy differs from the male who is based on a fairly simple, even vulgar plumbing arrangement.”
“I suppose the female is just dandy.”
“Dandy? Magnificent! We are the universe in symbol. The real McCoy. Gate to reality, to life itself. All men envy us for being able to bear children. Instead of walking around with all those exterior pipes, we.…”
“Sexual chauvinism,” I said and rolled her back onto the sand but we did not make love this time. We just lay together for a while until the heat became unbearable; then both wringing wet, we ran to the Club a few yards down the beach.
The Ladyrock, by day, is a nautical-looking place with banners flying, a pool where children splash around, a terrace with awning for serious drinkers, rows of lockers and cabanas, a model Club on a model coast and full of model members, if not the pillars, at least the larger nails of the national community.
I was a little nervous about being introduced to Liz’s aunt who sat with a group of plump middle-aged ladies in pastel-flowered dresses and wide hats, all drinking tea under a striped umbrella. I was sure that our lust marked us in scarlet letters but, outside of the fact that on a fairly cool day we were both flushed and dripping sweat, there was apparently no remarkable sign of our recent felicities. Liz’s aunt said we were both too old to be running races on the sand and we were dismissed.
“Races she calls it!” I was amused as I followed Liz to her family’s cabana.
“I’m sure that’s what she thinks sex is anyway.” Liz was blithe. “They had no sense of sport in those days.” I don’t know why but I was shocked by this. I realized from hearsay that, although Liz was occasionally willing, she was far from being a sexual gymnast like so many girls of her generation. The real rub of course was to hear her talk the way I usually did. I resented her lack of romance, of all the usual messiness which characterizes even the most advanced modern lovers. I wondered if she was trying deliberately to pique me; if she was, she was succeeding. I was willing to do almost anything to get a rise out of her: just one soulful look, one sigh, one murmured: “I wish this could go on forever,” would have made me feel at home. Instead, she was acting like a jaded high school boy in his senior summer.
We washed up carefully in the shower of the cabana and then I put on a pair of her uncle’s trunks which hung sadly from my pelvis, to her delight. “I wish all men would wear them like that,” she said, pouring herself into a bright green creation which fitted her like scales do a snake. “Leaves more to the imagination.” And then she was off in a lightning break for the ocean. I didn’t overtake her until she was well into the first line of breakers.
We weren’t back on the beach until the cocktail crowd had arrived. Hundreds of brightly dressed men and women were gathering beneath the umbrellas. They formed in separate groups like drops of oil in a glass of water. Certain groups did not speak to others. Those with too much money were treated as disdainfully as those with too little. Even here in paradise you could tell the cherubim from the seraphim.
Liz’s aunt belonged to the top-drawer-but-one old guard: a group of middle-aged ladies who played bridge together, deplored the wicked influences which each year gained ground in the village, whispered about the depr
avities and bad taste of those richer than they, smiled tolerantly at the nervous carefulness of those poorer and, in general, had themselves a good time while their husbands, purple of face, slow of mind, wheezed about golf scores in the bar.
Liz spared me her aunt and we found ourselves a vacant table close to the pool where we drank a newly invented cocktail, the work of the club bartender who was obviously some kind of genius: gin, white mint, mint leaves, a dash of soda. I looked forward to getting drunk. The sun was warm, though late. The salt dried with delicate tickle on my skin. Liz was beside me … everything was perfect except Dick Randan who joined us, wearing a jazzy pair of plaid trunks which set off the sallowness of his skin, the millions of visible sharp bones in his skinny body.
“Playing hooky, I see,” he said with a boom of heartiness in imitation of the old bucks at the bar. Uninvited, he sat down.
“How are you today, Miss Bessemer?” He turned his spectacles in her direction. I wanted to kick him.
“Fine, thank you,” and Liz gave him her best Vivien-Leigh-as-Scarlett-O’Hara smile.
“I suppose you heard about what happened to us last night after we left you.”
“Yes,” said Liz softly and she fluttered her eyelids shyly; she was giving him the business and I almost burst out laughing. Randan fell deeply.
“It’s been a terrible strain,” he said tensely, flexing one minuscule bicep.
“You must have nerves of absolute steel!” Liz trilled.
“Well, not exactly but I guess Pete here has told you a little what it’s like.”
“I should crack up in five minutes,” said that girl of stone with an adoring glance at both of us.
“It’s not easy,” said Randan with lips heroically thinned.
I intervened. “Was I missed at the house?”
“No, the guard saw you coming over here with Miss Bessemer.”
“Oh?” I waited to hear more of what the guard saw but evidently he was a man of discretion. Randan went on: “So I thought I’d come over and see who was around. I was getting a bit tired of that atmosphere. You know Allie is still knocked out, don’t you?”
“I thought she was up by now.”
Randan shook his head. “No, she’s been raving, in an awful state. Nobody’s allowed near her except Greaves. I finally went to him … you know, as next of kin, and demanded a report on her condition. He told me she hadn’t made sense since early this morning. I told him her place was in a hospital but he said she was under expert medical care, whatever that is around here.”
Liz stopped her teasing at last, enthralled as usual by our situation. “Do you think they’ll really arrest Mr. Brexton?” she asked.
Randan shrugged. “It’s hard to say. Some of us aren’t entirely sure he’s responsible,” he added weightily.
“Oh, but it has to be Mr. Brexton.”
“Why is that?” I was surprised by her confidence.
“Because only a man could have cut Mr. Claypoole’s throat. Peter hadn’t any reason to do that, so that leaves just Brexton.”
“And me,” said Randan, nodding. “I’m a suspect too.”
“Oh, but you were out that night; besides you wouldn’t kill your uncle … anyway even if you could’ve there was no way for you to kill Mrs. Brexton since you were in Boston.…”
“Spending the day with friends,” added Randan stuffily. “Don’t think I didn’t have to prove to Greaves that I was up there when it happened.”
“So then you have two alibis, which rules you out. Only poor Mr. Brexton could’ve done both murders.”
“Very neat,” I said. “But suppose ‘poor Mr. Brexton’ has an alibi for the second murder and a good explanation for the first?”
“What’s that?” They both looked at me curiously.
“I have no intention of telling either of you anything until you read it tomorrow in the Globe. But I will say that I happen to know Brexton was with Allie Claypoole at the time of the murder.”
Randan looked at me with some interest. “Are you sure of this?”
“Certainly. And I think it rules him out.”
“Unless.…” Liz paused. We both looked at her, a little embarrassed by the sudden consequences of what I’d said.
“Unless what?” Randan’s voice was edgy.
“Unless, well, they did it together … which might explain why she went to pieces afterwards.” This fell cold and unexpected between us.
“Miss Claypoole is my aunt …” began Randan dryly.
Liz cut him short with luminous apologies. “I didn’t mean anything, really, I was just talking. I don’t know anything about anything; just what I’ve read and been told. I wouldn’t for the world suggest that she or anyone.…” Liz brought the scene to a polite end. But we left her, after another round of drinks, with the definite sensation that something shocking had happened, that some strange vista had been unexpectedly opened.
We were halfway down the beach to the house before either of us spoke. It was Randan who broke the silence. “I can’t believe it,” he said finally.
“About your aunt and Brexton? Well, it was just one of Liz’s more hairbrained theories.”
“But the damned thing is it might make sense to that fool Greaves; I couldn’t let that happen.”
“I’m sure it won’t occur to him.”
“Won’t occur to him? What else will occur to him when he hears they were together? It leaves only three other possibilities: myself, Miss Lung and Mrs. Veering. I wasn’t around and I don’t think the two ladies have any motive. Brexton was trying to bluff you.”
I nodded. “I’ve taken that into account. It’s more than possible.”
Randan shook his head worriedly. “But that doesn’t make sense because when Allie recovers she’ll deny his story … if he’s made it up.”
I was soothing. “There’s probably more to the murder than we know. Maybe he was killed before the time supposed. Maybe Brexton zipped out of the house, murdered him and then came back in again, all under the pretext of going to the bathroom.”
“Too complicated.” But his face brightened as he considered these complexities. “Anyway we’ve got to look after Allie now. I’m going to suggest they put an extra guard on duty just to look after her.”
“Why?”
“Well, if he was bluffing he won’t want her to come to, will he?” The logic was chilling, and unarguable.
We found Greaves standing in his crumpled gray business suit along on the terrace, studying the swing.
“How’s my aunt?” asked Randan.
“Where the hell you been?” Greaves looked at him irritably. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“I went over to the Club, Is she.…”
“Still the same.”
“What did you want to ask me?”
“We’ll go into that after dinner.”
Randan then demanded a full-time guard for Allie which was refused on the grounds that two plain-clothes men in the house and a full-time nurse was quite enough. When Greaves demanded to know why protection was needed, Randan clammed up; then, with a look at me to implore silence, he went into the house to change for dinner.
Something occurred to me just as I was about to go inside myself. “I was wondering,” I said, “why you haven’t asked me any more questions about that note you found, the one you thought I’d manufactured for your amusement.”
“You said you didn’t, so that’s that.” But this fell flat.
“You think you know who fixed it, don’t you?”
“That’s possible.”
“The murderer?”
Greaves shook his head. “Claypoole,” he said.
I was more surprised by his admission than by his choice. “Why? Did you find fingerprints or something?”
“Just plain horse sense,” Greaves was confident. “Claypoole suspected all along Brexton was the murderer. He didn’t dare come out in the open and accuse him because of family connections, scandals, things which woul
d affect him too. So he sent the note to give us a clue. Unfortunately, it gave Brexton a clue too and he was able to kill Claypoole before he could tell us the inside story of what went on between the three of them, or maybe even the four of them. A story which we’re unraveling pretty fast right now.”
This left me breathless to say the least. “You realize you’re accusing Brexton of murder?”
“That’s right.” Greaves was almost frivolous. I wondered what new evidence the police had unearthed. Greaves enlightened me. “It seems that Claypoole was first knocked unconscious; then he was dragged up to the terrace where his throat was cut.”
“How do you know he was dragged? Were there any marks on the sand?”
“Sand in his clothes. The tracks, if there were any, got rubbed out by the tide.”
I didn’t follow his reasoning. “Why do you think this implicates Brexton?”
Greaves only smiled.
I thought of something. “If Claypoole was first knocked unconscious, it means that a woman could’ve done it, doesn’t it? Isn’t that what a woman would do? And since she wasn’t strong enough to carry him, she’d be forced to drag the body up to the terrace where she’d then cut his throat with … with.…”
“A knife belonging to Brexton. A knife covered with his fingerprints.” Greaves looked at me slyly, his case nearly done.
CHAPTER SIX
I
I’M quite sure now that Greaves was bluffing. He suspected Brexton was the murderer and he had enough circumstantial evidence to turn the whole thing over to the District Attorney’s office but he knew that many a good minion of the law has hung himself with circumstantial evidence which a bright defense has then used to embarrass the prosecution. Greaves had no intention of moving for an indictment which would not stick. His bluff to me was transparent: he wanted to create in everyone’s mind a certainty of Brexton’s guilt; if this could be done, the case would certainly be strengthened psychologically … and Greaves, I’d already discovered, was a devoted if incompetent amateur psychologist.
I went up to my room and took a long bath, reconstructing the revelations of the day. There had been a number and none seemed to fit the picture which was slowly beginning to form in my mind.