Ill Met by Moonlight

by Zenith Brown

  “All right,” Colonel Primrose said. “All right. Take your time.”

  Dr. Potter seemed like a man coming out of a stupor. He passed his hand across his wet forehead and moistened his lips.

  “No, no,” he said. “I tell you, I saw her, but I didn’t believe it was her. I thought I was ill. I . . . I haven’t been sleeping nights.”

  Mr. Parran leaned forward again. “Something on your mind?” he drawled.

  Adam Potter looked at him more quietly with a little of his normal self showing in his face. He even smiled a little. “No,” he said. “My customers have been having babies.”

  “Where were you Saturday night, Dr. Potter?” Colonel Primrose said. “After the boat episode at the club? When your wife was undoubtedly out of the house?”

  Dr. Potter stared at him for an instant. A light dawned slowly in his haggard face.

  “So that’s it,” he said, half to himself. He looked directly at Colonel Primrose.

  “I got a call at the clubhouse just after the orchestra came, Saturday night—some people up at Nag’s Head. Their first baby, and they called me in hours before they needed me. I phoned Maggie from the club, then I tried to get her from Nag’s Head about one, to tell her I probably wouldn’t be in till morning. I couldn’t get her. I was worried about it, but I couldn’t leave. When I got back, around three-thirty, she said the phone hadn’t rung. I put it down to the fact that she must have been asleep and didn’t hear it.”

  “You said no more about it?”

  “No, no. I . . . anything else was impossible, I tell you!”

  Dr. Potter shuddered, motioning towards the living room. “But why that—for Maggie? I don’t understand . . .”

  “She was out having an eye on you, Potter,” the State’s Attorney drawled. “She thought you were keeping a late date with Sandra Gould. She was seen quarreling with Sandra at the garage, just about the time the murder took place. Were you there too?”

  Adam Potter’s face, lean and sallow and hot, flushed a sudden angry red. He controlled himself with a painful effort, and shook his head.

  “I don’t understand it at all,” he said to Colonel Primrose. “I still can’t understand it. I’ve seen a lot of Sandra Gould professionally and around the Colony. Maggie never acted as if she’d . . . heard any gossip. God knows there’s always enough of it around, about anything. Maggie only complained because nobody ever told her any.”

  “You never noticed anything unusual about her manner, lately?”

  He shook his head wearily.

  “I suppose I’d quit noticing anything. I see so much sickness, real and imagined. I get used to it, I guess. Maggie wasn’t sick, she’d just gone under. Neurotic, nothing to do, good way to get sympathy—dramatizing herself. Oh, I guess she’d have been different if I’d been a successful practitioner in Baltimore—instead of a country hack.”

  He gave me a tired smile.

  “I guess that’s why Sandra Gould appealed to me. Just a healthy animal, lively and gay. No history of her ills to drive you crazy with.”

  He ran a disillusioned hand over his damp forehead, took a deep breath and got to his feet.

  “That’s all I can tell you about it, Colonel Primrose.—Do you want me to . . . look at her?”

  They went inside. After a while Colonel Primrose came out, with the Sergeant and Mr. Parran.

  He sat down and shook his head soberly.

  “It’s an odd thing,” he said. “He saw her, standing out there talking to Julius when he went by, but he knew she wasn’t there, couldn’t be. So he analyzed himself and decided he was getting pathological. I imagine Mrs. Gould probably was on his mind—more than he’d admit to us. Well, my next move is the clubhouse. I leave this end to you, Parran. Will you come with me, Mrs. Latham?”

  I wanted so much to get away from there that I would have gone to China with him. I said, “I’d love to,” and picked up my hat.

  Sergeant Buck, standing at a sort of sentry post by the door, cleared his throat abruptly, and said, quite out of an empty sky, “There’s no fool like an old fool.”

  We all looked at him, planted there, a solid mountain of disapproval; and I’m sure Colonel Primrose reddened a little.

  “I was referring back to Dr. Potter,” Sergeant Buck added stiffly.

  “Oh,” Colonel Primrose said. He gave me a sideways grin, and I felt definitely like a fool myself. “Well, in that case let’s go along, Mrs. Latham.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  We didn’t stop at the clubhouse. We went down the stone steps to the dock. It was a gorgeous sunny day. A few men who hadn’t had to get back to town for business were there in old slacks and sweat shirts or in bathing trunks, puttering about their boats or getting blistered in the sun. They would glance up as we came to them, say “Hi, Grace,” and nod to the Colonel, and then, as we passed, I could hear the uneasy silence settle down, feel it behind me. I knew they were looking and wondering, as well they might.

  “I’m afraid I’m ruining your reputation, Mrs. Latham,” Colonel Primrose said as we came to Andy’s boat with the broken mast tied to the dock.

  “Nobody will ever trust me with a secret again, certainly,” I said.

  He had passed that and was down on one knee, looking into the shallow boat rocking there gently on the little waves.

  “They brought them in here?”

  “Farther down,” I said. “Both Jim and Andy dived in. Somebody else must have got the boat.”

  “Sandra was a good swimmer?”

  “She was a marvelous swimmer. Her parents were undoubtedly amphibian.”

  “And George Barrol?”

  “George’s parents dwelt on a mountaintop,” I said. “He’s terrified of water.”

  Colonel Primrose shook his head. “Dreadful experience for him,” he said. “That woman had a powerful attraction, to get him out.—It’s odd, though, isn’t it?”

  I looked at him, puzzled.

  “I mean, odd that he held her up, till Jim got there?”

  “That’s his story,” I said. “She was struck by the jib and knocked out. He hung on to her till his strength gave out. She came to—it couldn’t have taken very long, either for her to come to or for George’s strength to give out—and held him up. She had him by the collar when Jim got out there.”

  Colonel Primrose nodded. “It’s reasonable,” he said. “She was certainly entirely recovered from the crack on the head when she came up to the clubhouse.”

  He pulled the jib out from under a pile of white sail and looked carefully at it. He shook his head. “It went overboard, of course. Raining hard anyway.”

  He got painfully to his feet and brushed off his knee.

  “She was so perfectly herself,” he went on, “that that’s why I couldn’t think she’d been hit very hard with this thing.”

  “Did you see them when they came up?” I asked. I don’t know why I’d just assumed he hadn’t.

  “Oh, yes. There was a great to-do about getting them dry, and borrowing a blazer from somebody’s locker to put on Sandra, and so on. She was quite the heroine of the occasion. I take it, of course, she’d be delighted to be the center of attention. George looked like a drowned rat. She was exactly herself, just as if she’d been out for a plunge.”

  He stood there a moment, thinking. “You and Jim Gould didn’t go up with them?”

  “No. Jim was pretty sore. He thought Sandra was putting on an act. I don’t think he really believes yet that she was in any danger—just scaring the wits out of George for the fun of it. So she’d manage to get the spotlight away from Rosemary too, of course. They’d been out there five minutes, you see, before they capsized. I think Jim still thinks she did it on purpose—it was one of her favorite tricks. She’d love it, and the rougher the better. Poor George! It must be a pretty sickening feeling if you can’t swim.”

  Colonel Primrose nodded absently. “It must be that,” he said.

  We went back up the steps and acro
ss the lawn, parched brown in spots with the summer heat, to the broad cool veranda of the old mansion. A few children were playing there; hardly anybody comes out, as a rule, until afternoon. Alec, the colored houseboy, was polishing the brass knocker on the big front door. We went on into the hall. A few people were in the lounge having early cocktails, talking about Sandra, I suppose, because they stopped abruptly when we looked in. I don’t know what else they could be expected to be talking about.

  “Is there a maid in the ladies’ powder room?” Colonel Primrose asked.

  “Not ordinarily. Clara’s around all the time. She was there, Saturday night, to take care of people’s wraps, if that’s what you mean.”

  He nodded. “See if she’s there now, will you?”

  I crossed the lounge to the door in the corner and looked in. Clara was there with a dust mop in one hand and a fly swatter in the other, a sun-tan silk stocking pulled toboggan-fashion over her kinky old head. She peered at me through her gold-rimmed spectacles.

  “Mo’nin’, Mis’ Grace. How’s those boys?”

  “Fine, Clara. Look here—Colonel Primrose wants to ask you some questions.”

  Her old lips drew into a thin line.

  “I ain’ tellin’ that man nothin’,” she said.

  “Can I bring him in?”

  “Ah don’ know—”

  We didn’t need to argue. He was already in. I saw that in the scared look in her eyes as the door opened behind me.

  “I want to ask you about last Saturday night,” he said, after I’d formally introduced him. Clara has a strong sense of the proprieties, and having an Army gentleman in the ladies’ dressing room obviously was a gross infringement of them.

  “Ah don’ know nothin’ ’bout Sa’day night,” Clara said. “First Ah heard ’bout Mis’ Gould’s carryin’s-on was when Miss Rosemary tol’ me ’bout it.”

  “Oh?” Colonel Primrose said. “When was that?”

  “When they was out in the bay.”

  “Miss Rosemary came in here?”

  “She come in lookin’ lak a ghost, an’ Ah says, ‘Honey, what’s the matter?’ She says, ‘Nothin’, Clara.’ Then Ah heard a lot of shriekin’ an’ yellin’. Ah didn’ know whether Ah could go out or whether Ah best stay with her. She says, ‘Go on, Clara, it’s a good show, go an’ watch it.’ ”

  Clara wagged her old head, and Colonel Primrose nodded his, with apparently a good deal of interest.

  “She did?” he said. “What did you do?”

  “Ah didn’ lak her looks, an’ Ah tol’ her so, an’ she jus’ laughed.”

  “What did you think was—”

  It wasn’t necessary for him to finish his question. Like so many of these old colored folk who can’t read or write, Clara is as bright as a whip.

  “Ah couldn’ say ’zactly, Colonel Primrose. She was settin’ by the fireplace, jus’ starin’ at the grate, jus’ studyin’ like. She says, ‘Go on, Clara, Ah’m O.K.’ So Ah went, but they was all acomin’ up the hill. Ah come back an’ Ah says, ‘Thank God, they’s safe.’ Miss Rosemary she got up, throwed her cigarette in the fireplace, an’ says, ‘Well, that’s that.’ Ah declare Ah was s’prised at Miss Rosemary. ’Deed Ah was—ain’ nobody sweeter round here.”

  Colonel Primrose nodded. “Did anybody else come in?”

  “Nobody but Mis’ Alice. She come in an’ didn’ say nothin’, she jus’ walks over to Miss Rosemary an’ kisses her on the forehaid an’ goes out again, an’ Miss Rosemary she didn’ say nothin’ either. After a while Miss Rosemary goes over to the lookin’ glass, powders her nose an’ goes out herself. ’Deed Ah ain’ never seen people act lak that in all mah days.”

  “Then Miss Sandra came in later?”

  “You mean Mis’ Gould?” Clara inquired. The colored people around the place have been there, most of them, for a long time. We knew some of them when we were children. They called Mrs. Gould ‘Mis’ Alice,’ but Sandra was always ‘Mis’ Gould.’ It was curiously effective, of course, in emphasizing the fact that she really didn’t belong.

  “Mis’ Gould? Yas, suh. She come in. She never looked lak she even been scared. She come in dancin’ on her toes, singin’ a foreign song. An’ she never said nothin’ either, she jus’ went over to the lookin’ glass, grinnin’ an’ makin’ pretty faces at herself. Then she come over to the writin’ table.”

  The old woman pointed to the desk against the wall under the window.

  I listened to her with a sort of measured interest. It’s often occurred to me later that it was strange I didn’t realize the tremendous importance of what she was telling us. I don’t think Colonel Primrose did either—not just at the moment, while we were both standing there in the powder room. But, as I saw in just a moment, he had far more excuse for not realizing it than I had.

  “She sat down an’ wrote.”

  “She wrote?” Colonel Primrose asked.

  “Yas, suh. Look lak she couldn’ make up her min’ ’bout what she want to write, ’cause she kep’ writin’ a little an’ then pullin’ out a fresh piece of paper an’ writin’ some more.”

  “What did she do with the old ones?”

  “When she got all through she picked ’em all up an’ took ’em over to the fireplace, an’ she set a match to ’em,” Clara said. “An’ then out she traipses, never sayin’ a word an’ looking almighty pleased with herself.”

  Colonel Primrose smiled a little. He looked over at me again. “I suppose she knew it was a good show,” he said.

  He took an envelope out of his pocket and opened it. I watched him with increasing interest. He took out the folded creased piece of paper I’d seen on the table in my living room the night before, next to Sandra’s suicide note and the blue petals.

  “Could this be the piece of paper?”

  Clara looked at it and nodded.

  “That there’s one paper—Ah cain’ say it’s the same piece, ’cause they’s paper all through the club lak it, but it might be, an’ she never took no envelope.”

  Colonel Primrose handed the paper to me. “That’s her writing, isn’t it, Mrs. Latham?”

  I could only suppose he intended me to read it. I did. It said:

  I think I must talk to you. I have a proposition. I will forget what I know if you will do a very little easy thing for me. I will meet you in my garage as soon as I can after I go home. Be sure.

  That was all. No signature, no salutation; no names to show who had written it or for whom it had been written. I handed it back to Colonel Primrose.

  “It’s her writing,” I said. “You could compare it with the other note.”

  He looked at me oddly for just a fleeting instant. My heart chilled a little in spite of all I could do.

  “I’ve done that, Mrs. Latham,” he said. He put the letter back in his pocket.

  When we were outside I asked him about it, but he shook his head.

  “You know,” he said, “I can’t make out Sandra Gould’s literary remains. In fact, this whole business gets harder and harder.”

  He spoke with a sort of resigned humorous petulance.

  “You don’t believe those two notes are hers?” I inquired sweetly.

  “Oh, yes. That’s what makes it hard. There seems no doubt they are hers. But why should she write the suicide note at all? And why write this thing at all? And why write all the notes and start off on another, as the maid there says? And why burn all the ones she’d done?”

  He looked at me with a puzzled frown.

  “It doesn’t make sense, Mrs. Latham.”

  “Well,” I said, “Sandra was always scribbling notes. Have you found out who that one was written to?”

  He nodded.

  “This is strictly in the lodge. It was found—I prefer not to say how or by whom—in Dikranov’s pocket.”

  “Oh.” I had the feeling, which turned out to be perfectly stupid, that this was beginning to make things clearer to me.

  “He says she didn’t give it to him and
he never saw it before I showed it to him. As a matter of fact, I saw her when she came out of the powder room. He was dummy at the bridge table. I saw her go up to him in the hall before she went out. Andy Thorp had come up and was looking for her. She didn’t have time to speak to him, but she certainly had time to thrust that note into his hand—or his jacket pocket.”

  “Did he meet her?” I asked.

  “And did he hit her over the head with a monkey wrench?” he said. “I don’t know. I presume he did meet her.”

  He grinned suddenly.

  “All I know about the wrench is that it has your fingerprints on it, Mrs. Latham.”

  “I picked it up off the floor—” I began patiently, and a little annoyed too.

  He smiled again. “I know. The point is that Jim Gould says he left it on the kitchen porch when he came from town. He admits buying it at Toplady’s.”

  I could remember so clearly that Saturday morning. He had it in his hand when he spotted George Barrol coming across the street.

  “You see, Mrs. Latham, I know everybody here would perjure himself to hell and back again to save the Goulds. But just think about Jim Gould a minute. What a case the State’s Attorney’s got against him! He’s not himself, to begin with, he’s been drinking heavily—more than he ever had in all his life. He and Sandra are quarreling constantly. All the servants say that. He’s fed up to the teeth with her. I saw that long before I knew any of the Rosemary business. She’d ruined his career, ruined his life. She was flirting with every stray male she met—even poor old Dr. Potter.”

  He smiled a little as I shook my head.

  “I don’t say Potter was having an affair with her. Well, she was ruining Jim’s sister’s life too. Thorp had obviously lost his head over her. He was acting—still is—like a first-rate jackass. To cap it all, Rosemary comes back quite suddenly. He doesn’t know anything about it. Nobody tells him. He sees her cold. The shock sends a mint julep crashing out of his hand onto the floor—in public. Then Sandra puts on a scene that makes him ridiculous and cheap, in front of all his friends. He goes home with you, sore and hurt and desperately unhappy, I’d imagine—and ready to throw in the sponge. Then he goes home, leaving your place at ten minutes to one. He meets her. Maybe he met Rosemary first, which wouldn’t help anything certainly. Let’s say he met Sandra with Dikranov. He goes to the house. She follows him. You can imagine the state he’s in. He hits her over the head with the wrench and goes on inside—or goes along to meet Rosemary, Whichever way it happened. It doesn’t make much difference.”