by Frances
Grogan started to walk back along the pier, and Jerry went with him. When Grogan had walked twenty feet or so, he turned.
“Oh, Jimmy,” he said. “Don’t make it sound too permanent, huh? Tell them we’ll have the pier fixed in—oh, a couple of hours.”
Jimmy said, “Yes, sir.”
Pam was sitting in a corner of a sofa in the hotel lobby. The sofa was much too large for her. She was sitting as straight as one may on a deep sofa; her hands were clasped in her lap. Jerry went over and sat beside her.
“I told him about the pelicans,” Pam said. “Do you suppose he—he went to watch them? And that that was—”
“No,” Jerry said. “I don’t, Pam.”
“That, if I hadn’t told him—”
“No.” He put an arm around her shoulders. “No.”
The sirens came closer. They came up the drive from Flagler Avenue, and to the circle in front of The Coral Isles. The first one stopped, but another continued. They were, Jerry thought, policemen in love with the sound of their own sirens.
Two state troopers came in, revolvers heavy at their sides; their expressions those of men ready for anything, and rather expecting riots. They stood inside and looked around the lobby, the right hand of each close to a holstered gun.
“My,” Pam North said, “what fierce policemen. You’d think somebody’d passed a stop sign.”
Jerry was relieved. The implacable troopers had changed the subject.
The second siren stopped its wailing. After a few seconds a tall and youngish man, wearing a blue suit, came in and looked around the lobby. He was very tanned; he had light hair in sharp contrast to the mahogany of his face. He went to the desk. Paul Grogan had been behind the desk; now he came around it and joined the man in the blue suit and walked with him to where the Norths waited.
“This is Deputy Sheriff Jefferson,” Grogan said. “This is Mr. and Mrs. North, sheriff.”
“Deputy,” Jefferson said. “Mr. North. Ma’am.”
He turned. Two other men, also in civilian clothes, had come through the entrance. One of them had a camera. Deputy Sheriff Jefferson nodded at them, and indicated with his head the direction they were to take. He turned back to the Norths.
“Like to talk to you after a bit,” he said. “Have a look-see first. All right?”
“We don’t—” Jerry North said.
“Sure you don’t,” Jefferson said. “All the same. Won’t be long.”
“We,” Pam said, “aren’t going anywhere, sheriff.”
Then he went across the lobby, and out onto the porch beyond it.
“I’d so hoped,” Pam North said, “that we’d never find another body.”
Grogan had gone back behind the desk. Now he came from behind it and went to the two state policemen who still stood, ready for anything, just inside the main entrance. He spoke to them. The Norths could not hear his words, but could guess. “They make it look as if the joint was raided,” Jerry said. The policemen looked at each other; one of them shrugged. It was the shrug of a man who humors the not particularly rational. The two policemen went out. The Norths could hear their cars start up.
They waited. The young woman who ran the newsstand came in, and behind her a bellman carrying newspapers in a bundle. She opened the newsstand. A plump man and a plump woman came the length of the lobby, wearing bright clothing, bound for breakfast. Grogan said, “Good morning, Mr. Umph. Mrs. Umph. Looks like another beautiful day.” Mr. Umph said “umph,” or something like it. A tall young man and a pretty girl walked through the lobby hand in hand. A little girl of about three, in a bright yellow dress, ran through the lobby, screaming. Her screams were happy screams. From the far end of the lobby a man called, “Margie!” If the little girl was Margie she chose not to be reminded of it. A waiter went through the lobby, wheeling a breakfast cart. The Coral Isles was beginning to stretch itself awake.
Deputy Sheriff Jefferson came in from the porch side and spoke first to Paul Grogan, who was standing near the desk. Grogan nodded his head. Jefferson came to the Norths. He pulled a chair up and sat in front of them.
“Now, ma’am,” Jefferson said. “About when was it?”
“About,” Pam said. She looked at the clock over the fireplace—the fireplace which showed no sign of any use. “About forty-five minutes ago.”
Jefferson looked at the clock.
“About seven-fifteen,” he said. “That about right?”
“Yes.”
“By yourself, Mrs. North?”
“Yes.”
“Do you mind telling me why, Mrs. North?”
Jerry could feel it coming. It came. He noticed, not without sympathy, the expression in the eyes of the deeply tanned, youngish deputy sheriff.
“That is,” Jerry said, “to catch fish for the pelicans. People do, you know.”
Jefferson looked at him.
“They expect it,” Pam said. “Mr. Grogan says they’re called Teddy and Freddy. And I always get up early anyway.”
Jefferson looked at Mrs. North. He took a deep breath. His wide chest swelled with it.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I see. You went out to fish for—to catch fish for pelicans. You found Dr. Piersal. You thought he was dead?”
“Yes,” Pam North said. “I was quite sure he was dead. You can almost always tell. And there was so much …” She did not finish that. Jerry could see her pale again under the beginning sunburn.
“A lady like you,” Jefferson said. “I shouldn’t think—well, ma’am, it sounded as if you had—” He paused, clearly seeking words. “Had experience,” he said, coming up with them. “With—that is, with dead bodies.”
“Oh, yes,” Pam said. “Quite a little, sheriff. Since the one in the bathtub.”
It was true, of course. Pamela North is a truthful person. And she had, of course, been asked. She might, Jerry thought, have left out the bathtub bit. She had, he realized, put it in for clarification.
“Bathtub?” Jefferson said. “What’s about a bathtub?”
“It was a long time ago,” Jerry said, rather hurriedly. “It hasn’t anything to do with this.”
“Of course not,” Pam said. “That one was named Brent. And he was a lawyer, not a doctor.”
It had all come about naturally, Jerry thought. One thing had led to another. For some reason, one thing always did. Particularly, of course, with Pam.
“Sheriff,” Gerald North said firmly, “several years ago we found the body of a murdered man in a bathtub. As a result of that we met a detective—a New York City detective. Captain William Weigand, a homicide man. As a result of meeting him we’ve been—” He checked himself. The words “mixed up in several murders” would not, he thought, be wellchosen words. “Interested in some of his cases,” Jerry said.
Deputy Sheriff Jefferson appeared to consider this. Then he said, “Oh.” Then he said, “I guess that explains it.” He did not speak with assurance. He said, “Let’s get back to Dr. Piersal, ma’am.”
Pam said, “Let’s.”
“You didn’t expect to find him there?” Jefferson asked her.
“Of course not.”
“I meant,” Jefferson said, “find him alive?”
“If you think I went out there to meet him, I didn’t. Why—that is, I certainly didn’t. We hardly knew him at all.”
“Sheriff,” Jerry said, “we met him for the first time day before yesterday. Played tennis with him yesterday. Had a drink with him before lunch.”
“He comes from New York,” Jefferson said. “Came. You’re New Yorkers, aren’t you?”
Both Norths nodded their heads.
“You didn’t know him there?”
Jerry said, “No.”
Pam said, “There are millions of people in New York.”
“You’d heard of him? Mr. Grogan says he was a very well-known man.”
“I’d heard his name,” Jerry said. “I realized that after we met him here.”
“You came down here to fish, I sup
pose?”
“I don’t—” Jerry said.
“Most people come to the Keys to fish,” Jefferson said.
“We,” Jerry said, “came because it’s warm here.”
“Wonderful climate,” Jefferson said. “Best in the country. Except for hurricanes, of course. You’re not a fisherman, then? Game fish?”
“No. What’s this got to do with anything?”
“The doctor was knifed,” Jefferson said. “A good many fishermen carry knives. Pretty big knives. Pretty sharp.”
“Piersal was killed with a knife like that?”
“We don’t know yet,” Jefferson said. “Could be. We haven’t found it, if it was. You’re the fisherman of the family, ma’am?”
“I never,” Pam said. “Oh—for the pelicans, you mean? That was just yesterday. A Miss Brownley told me about the pelicans and she was leaving and I—” She paused. “I was just being a substitute,” Pam said. “A stand-in.”
“Sheriff,” Jerry said, “Dr. Piersal was a big man. A strong man. For his age—for almost any age—he was a very quick man. We played tennis with him. And … he wasn’t stabbed in the back.”
“Surprise,” Jefferson said. “A knife—a good sharp knife—can be very quick. Somebody you have no reason to suspect. Maybe shows you a knife. Holds it out in front of you. Then …”
Deputy Sheriff Jefferson moved his right hand, the fingers clenched as if around the handle of a knife, in a short, violent gesture. He made his point.
“A man could stab himself,” Jerry said. “As he fell, the knife could slip out of his hand. Fall into the water.”
“Yes,” Jefferson said. “We’ve got a skin diver coming. Only—” He looked at Gerald North. “You’d think a doctor would know an easier way, wouldn’t you? Ma’am, did the doctor know you were going out to the pier this morning? You tell him you were?”
“I told him about the pelicans,” Pam said. “How they waited, how impatient they got, how each knew when it was his turn—yes, I think I told him I might go out this morning.”
“He didn’t say anything about going out to watch?”
“No,” Pam said. “But—he did seem interested. Of course, he was polite. A polite man. So …” She raised her hands, in the gesture of not knowing. She said, “I don’t know, sheriff. I hope it wasn’t …”
She did not finish.
“A dozen reasons why he should have gone out there,” Jerry said. Deputy Sheriff Jefferson waited politely. “For the walk,” Jerry said. “To look at the ocean. Maybe to fish. It’s supposed to be a fishing pier.”
“No rod,” Jefferson said.
“To see if the pelicans were really there,” Jerry offered. He wasn’t, he realized, going to come up with a dozen reasons. He thought of saying, “To kill himself,” and decided against it. Jefferson waited for some further seconds. Then he said, “Let’s get it in order.”
Always, Pam North thought, people want to get things in order. It is the most futile of human aspirations.
“You got here?” Jefferson said, which seemed to be taking things back a bit.
They had got to Key West, and The Coral Isles, late Thursday—after dinner Thursday. Because the train from New York to Miami was late; because they had to grope, in a rented car, across Seven Mile Bridge, in a thunderstorm; because from the car rental office to the little island which is the city of Key West is some hundred and sixty miles.
They had met Dr. Edmund Piersal, a rangy, pleasant man who was sitting at the tennis court, waiting for somebody to show, Friday morning about eleven. Jerry had played a set with him, and lost it. Later, three young men had shown up and Dr. Piersal had made a fourth with them, a flip of the racket putting him in and leaving Jerry out. The set had dragged on; Pam and Jerry had left before it was finished.
“Any idea who these men were? The doctor seem to know them?”
“I think he had played with them before,” Jerry said. “Navy people, I gathered.”
“There was a girl dressed for tennis who just watched,” Pam said. “A Miss Payne.”
“The doctor know her?”
There had been nothing, then, to indicate that he had. But by later in the day he had met her and had arranged with her for mixed doubles, with the Norths if available, the next morning. “Yesterday morning,” Pam said, doing her bit to get things in order.
“Yes,” Jefferson said. “You played tennis with him and this Miss—what did you say her name was?”
“Rebecca Payne. The poor child.”
Jefferson raised blond eyebrows.
“Nothing,” Pam said. “She’s—terribly unsure of herself. It hasn’t anything to do with anything. She—you felt she was expecting to be laughed at. Ridiculed.”
“Know the type,” Jefferson said. “Then you had a drink with the doctor. Lunch with him?”
“He said he was going downtown for lunch. Some place near the Aquarium.”
“‘The Pompano,’” Jefferson said. “Good fish place. Last you saw of him until—last you saw of him alive?”
Jerry said, “Yes.” Pam started to repeat the word, but hesitated.
She wasn’t sure; said she wasn’t sure. They had danced for a while the night before on the patio; had left early. As they were leaving she had seen a man slie thought was Piersal. He was standing, bending down, at a table. There was a girl at the table, there alone.
“I only saw his back,” Pam said. “Thought it might be the doctor. Thought the girl might be Miss Payne. Whoever it was, she was shaking her head. I thought the man was asking her to dance, and that she was saying no. But I’m not sure at all.”
“Let’s go over this morning once more,” Jefferson said. “Be sure we’ve got things in order.”
Pam, then Jerry, went over the morning, getting it in order. It was, Pam thought, in the same order it had been before—the same ugly order.
Jefferson thanked them; he said it was all pretty clear. He said he hoped he wouldn’t have to bother them again. He said, “Staying long?” and when Jerry said, “About two weeks,” he nodded his head. He said the weather was almost always fine this time of year. He went across the lobby and out onto the porch.
Jerry said, “Well,” and the Norths stood up. It was Pam who said, “Let’s see what they’re doing”; she led the way to the porch.
They could see the end of the pier; men were clustered there. Deputy Sheriff Jefferson was walking toward the pier. A uniformed man stood at the shore end of the pier, doing nothing, yet cutting off the activity there from the slowly increasing activity of the hotel—from Larry Saunders, dragging his brush across the tennis courts; from the beach boy raking at the seaweed the tide had left on the beach.
A tall, lithe young man stood on the diving board of the pool, bouncing his preparation; in the pool a girl in a white bathing cap looked up at him in evident admiration. The little girl in the yellow dress was dipping her feet in the flat pan of disinfectant solution at pool’s edge. All at once, dress and everything, she sat down in it. “Goodness,” Pam North said. The young man quit bouncing on the diving board and knifed into the pool. One of the gardeners came, a little wearily, along a path, dragging a hose reel. He coupled the hose to a spigot set into the lawn, and dragged the reel away again, the hose unwinding.
There was nothing to see, except the hotel’s life stirring. The Norths went back into the hotel.
*The Norths Meet Murder (1940).
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