“Things have changed,” Carmody said. “I can’t do anything for you.”
Sloade’s face grew dark with anger. He raised his voice and called: “Chatz! Joe!”
“Now, wait a minute—” Carmody began.
“You scum!” Sloade yelled. “You and your friends, that’s all you are—just scum!”
The blond brothers came into the room with military precision, shoulder to shoulder.
Sloade yelled: “Work him over. You each get a hundred dollars if you break his hands.”
“Yes, Mr. Sloade,” both men said in unison.
They marched toward him. When they were two paces away they jumped for him. Carmody slammed his knee into the first man’s groin and swept up a lamp from a nearby table and smashed it over the second man’s head. The one he had kneed fell back with a scream and landed on the floor doubled up, holding himself. The second one punched Carmody in the stomach and then in the face, and the shattered china shards of the lamp scattered around him on the floor. Carmody backed up and swung in a half circle so his back was toward the doors leading to the gallery and he hit the standing man on the jaw and then he felt his left arm grabbed by Sloade. The man on the floor got up on his hands and knees and gripped Carmody’s ankle. Carmody kicked at his face and hit his shoulder. The other brother punched him in the stomach again and doubled him up. Carmody’s left arm was wrenched around by Paul Sloade and pulled up into the small of his back, and he went all the way around with it in a quick spin, freeing his arm and swinging at Sloade with his right at the same time. Something hit the back of his head and he staggered through the doorway, caroming off the sash, and hit the gallery rail with his side.
The bright sky and shining sea swung slowly around before his eyes in a lazy, tilted circle. He steadied himself on the gallery rail and pushed at Sloade and saw both brothers coming at him now. He broke away from the cottage front and ran along the narrow gallery.
Too late he saw he had chosen the wrong direction. The dead end of the gallery was ahead. There had once been a flight of wooden steps down the bluff to the rocky beach below, but a storm had washed away the staircase and a temporary gate painted red ended his chance to escape this way. He halted, panting, and felt his back against the red wooden gate and a sudden spasm of alarm went through him as he felt the barrier swing outward with his weight. He stepped forward, away from the danger of the empty drop behind him.
He saw Sloade behind the two blond men, a thin trickle of blood running from a cut over one dark eyebrow.
“His hands,” Sloade yelled. “His hands, Chatz!”
Both men came down the gallery toward Carmody. They were breathing hard. Carmody looked to the right and left and saw there was no place to go. He was bottled up. He felt for the gate behind him and found a hasp and steel catch that should have been locked with a padlock, but there was no lock and he knew that if they pushed him backward he would go off into space to the rocks and the seething surf down there.
He turned and looked down, and saw Irene Sloade on the rocks blow.
He heard a yell that split the quiet booming sound of the surf and he knew the yell came from himself. The blond men stopped and looked confused. Carmody yelled again and pointed over the open swinging gate at Irene down there on the rocks. Paul Sloade frowned delicately and said something to the men and they came to a halt five steps away from Carmody, looking at him as if he had lost his senses.
“Irene is down there,” Carmody said.
“Is this some kind of trick?”
“You bastard,” Carmody said. “I’m going down.”
Sloade spoke to his two men. “Don’t touch him.”
Carmody turned his back on them and swung the temporary barrier wide into space. There were some remnants of the stairway down the bluff to the rocks below, some two-by-fours that looked like fragile toothpicks sunk into crumbling cement fastened to the rocky wall. Carmody sat on the edge of the gallery where it ended and lowered himself to a toehold against one of the studs and then let go and went sliding and jolting to the next hand-grip. Halfway down there was nothing left to get a grip on and he let himself drop to a tiny patch of sand among the rocks. The jolt when he hit drove him to his knees and one knee banged his chin and he felt a quick gush of blood where his teeth caught his upper lip. He stood up, staggering, and looked toward the place where Irene Sloade lay on the rocks.
She wore the same tan straw dress he had seen her in last night. She lay on her back across the sharp ridge of a gray rock overgrown with black and green barnacles, and her head and feet hung down on opposite sides of the rock. Her long lemon-yellow hair streamed lankly from her head. As he watched he saw a surge of water come crashing into the narrow chasm and wash up over her head and he saw her hair swing from side to side with the push and pull of the sea, floating like a fan all around her head. Her eyes were closed in the sunlight. The foaming water ran over her face and into her open mouth and nostrils and then went sucking away again among the rocks.
Sloade was screaming something to him from above, on the gallery.
Carmody looked up and saw other heads and shoulders staring down at him from the gallery rail and he moved back, climbing over the rocks away from where Irene Sloade lay, knowing that there was no use touching her, knowing from the way her body was that her back was broken and that she had died instantly.
6
SOMEBODY with a fat face that looked like a purple plum about to burst leaned cautiously over the edge of the bluff and gave Carmody a hand up. He fell forward over the gallery rail and the little crowd of shocked people stepped back from him, as if they didn’t want to be touched by him. He knelt for a moment, pumping breath back into his lungs. He felt a terrifying tremor go all through his body and when he finally stood up, his legs were weak. He looked at the faces surrounding him and heard the babble of voices and looked back over the edge of the bluff and saw that the two blond men were making preparations to retrieve Irene’s body. Paul Sloade was not in sight. Carmody pushed through the crowd and it made way for him, and he walked carefully and purposefully along the gallery toward Sloade’s cottage and stepped into the cool shadows of the living room where Sloade had first ordered the two brothers to break his hands.
Sloade wasn’t there.
He stepped out and looked at the red gate at the end of the gallery and saw that a padlock now held the swinging gate fast.
There was a small frosted bathroom window at his back and he heard the sudden breaking of glass behind it. Turning, Carmody went back into the cottage, seeing the people huddled on the gallery with their faces turned downward to watch the men trying to reach Irene Sloade’s body. In the gloom of the living room Carmody saw his face in a bluetinted mirror and stopped in dismay, seeing his disheveled black hair and a welted bruise under one eye and a long scratch on one cheek that he couldn’t remember receiving. His nose was thin and his dark blue eyes looked black and sunken under their heavy brows.
Somebody was being sick in the bathroom. He turned that way and pushed the door open without knocking and saw Paul Sloade bent over the lavatory. Sloade heard him come in and straightened and looked at him for a moment, shuddering, and then ran a glass of water from the tap and drank it and sat down on the edge of the sunken tub.
“Bill, help me,” he whispered.
“So you can break my hands?”
“I don’t know anything about this.”
“Who did it, Paul?”
“The last time I saw her was with you, at your house on the beach.”
“Then why are you so afraid?” Carmody asked. He had trouble keeping himself from hitting the man.
“Listen. We don’t have much time before they come. The police, I mean.” Sloade looked sick and haggard. “What did Irene tell you about me last night?”
“She said she was in love with you and that you hated her and that she had the feeling you wanted to kill her.”
Sloade made a strange sound in his throat. “Oh, God.”
>
“I think you did kill her,” Carmody said. “I saw the padlock on the gate just now. It wasn’t there before.”
He saw a swift change in Sloade. The fear was suddenly erased, and there was a quick shifting of thought behind the man’s eyes and then anger and resentment made him raise his voice.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, I get it now. You’re pinning it on me. I’ve been wondering. Trying to figure out what you and Link and Ravelle had in mind. This is what you had in mind, isn’t it?”
Carmody’s fists were hard and tight “What are you talking about?”
Sloade laughed. He looked as if he were going to cry. “You taped the situation pretty well. Irene was my weak spot. You put me in this fix just to get even, didn’t you? You killed Irene. I’ll tell the cops—”
Carmody hit him. He struck just once, and Sloade fell back against the glass shower cabinet and slid to the floor and sat there, shaking his head and laughing and crying all at once while blood ran from his mouth. Carmody turned on his heel and walked out.
Markham Dunning stood just outside the cottage door, his arm around Martha. The thin man looked better than he had a half hour ago. Martha’s face was pale, with little lines of white around her tightly clenched lips. She looked at Carmody as if he were a stranger, and he looked at her and wanted to be the one with his arm around her, wanted to console her in Dunning’s place.
“Oh—Carmody!” Dunning said, surprised. “Is Paul in there?”
“He’s in no condition to see anyone.”
“Martha, my dear—”
The girl looked up at Carmody. Her eyes were wide and dry. She would cry later, Carmody thought when it really hit her as a reality.
“Bill, is it true?” she asked in a small voice.
“Yes, she’s dead.”
“Was it an accident?”
“I don’t know.”
“She was always so careful—”
Dunning said: “She was also unhappy, Martha, child.”
The girl looked stricken. “She didn’t do it herself?”
“The police may think so,” Carmody said. “Is there anything I can do for you, Martha?”
“I want to see her.”
“Not just now,” Carmody said. He looked at Dunning, and Dunning nodded briefly in understanding. It was remarkable how the man had pulled himself together, Carmody thought. Then he caught the smell of liquor from Dunning and understood it a little better. He looked beyond them and saw Monte Bachore coming down the path from around the tennis courts and the main building. “Excuse me,” Carmody said. “I have to get cleaned up.”
He walked toward the bearded man.
Monte Bachore was followed at a respectful distance by two policemen in pale blue uniforms and topees. One of the cops had a gold badge on his shirt and the other a silver one. When Carmody came up to them Monte turned and spoke to the police, saying: “Just a moment, gentlemen. Bill, come here a minute.”
Carmody felt Monte tug at his sleeve and he let himself be drawn across the neatly clipped lawn until they were out of earshot of the two men in uniform. Both policeman stood waiting, pretending not to be aware of having taken orders from Monte.
Carmody said: “Are you in charge of this thing, Monte?”
The pink mouth over the beard stretched in a grin. “You bet, Bill. They’re in my pocket.”
“You work fast.”
“A man has to take advantage of his opportunities. This one is pure gold. The damned fool knocked off his wife and now we have him in our pocket, too.”
“I’m not so sure Paul killed his wife,” Carmody said.
“Keep your ideas to yourself. I’m running this. You keep quiet until I talk to you, and don’t say any more than you have to, understand?”
“All right.”
“What happened to your face?”
“Nothing,” Carmody said. “I wear it this way.”
Monte laughed and went back to his two policemen. Carmody saw they had thick, leathery red necks, deeply seamed, and big hands with dirty fingernails. He imagined they were potato farmers first and cops in their spare time. He heard Monte say, “This way, gentlemen,” and turned away and walked the rest of the distance back to the main building of the hotel.
In the bar Carmody had the bartender mix him a glass of milk with a raw egg and a double jigger of rum blended into it. There was no one else in the bar or the lobby. In the fifteen minutes since he had left here to see Paul Sloade, almost all the guests had congregated on the beach or on the bluff to watch the two blond brothers retrieve Irene Sloade’s body from the tide. The bartender looked as if he wished he could be there, too.
Carmody paid for the drink and walked away from there into the washroom. His stomach felt queasy and he didn’t know whether to blame it on the drink, or on the fight with Sloade and his bouncers, or on the sight of Irene Sloade’s open mouth with the sea running into it. He ran cold water over his wrists for a few moments and then washed his hands and face again. He felt unclean. He knew that what he ought to do was get the police and tell them everything he knew, all of it, right back to the job in Jersey with Monte Bachore. He knew he wouldn’t do it. Not just yet. He looked at his face in the mirror and wondered if he were afraid. He didn’t feel afraid. Be smart, he told himself. Take your time. You’ll get out of this. Don’t go all to pieces. There’s a way out of everything.
He felt as if something inside of him were flying apart in all directions.
He lit a cigarette and dropped it on the tiled floor of the washroom and stepped on it and lit another. His hands were shaking. He put his head under the water tap and let the cold water run over his scalp and then combed his wet hair, concentrating on what he was doing and not thinking of anything else. Take your time. Everything will be all right Go see what you can do for Martha.
He left the washroom and crossed the lobby and went down the front steps of the hotel that faced the yacht basin. Gulls were screaming in the wake of a small fishing boat that looked like an ugly duckling as it threaded its way among the graceful yachts. Monte Bachore and the cop with the gold badge were just walking up the steps as Carmody came outside.
“Oh, there you are, Bill. Chief Hallowell wants to talk to you, since you were the one who discovered the poor lady’s body.”
“All right,” Carmody said.
He waited.
The chief cleared his throat and took a dog-eared notebook from his back pocket and hitched up his gun belt and looked around for a place to spit and then changed his mind and hawked and swallowed.
“You William Carmody?”
“Yes.”
“You found the body?”
“Yes.”
“You knew the lady pretty good?”
“I just met her last night.”
“What’s your home address, Mr. Carmody?”
“North Haven, Massachusetts.”
“You’ll be here for the inquest?”
“If you want me.”
The chief looked at Monte, and Monte said: “Bill will be here. He’s my business associate. We are considering a joint venture in the hotel with Mr. Sloade.”
“Oh, sure. I guess that’s all, then.”
Carmody said: “Did she jump, chief?”
“Looks that way.”
“Or maybe she fell?”
“That could be, too.”
“Bill,” Monte said, “why don’t you go back to your place and take it easy? I’ll see you there later.”
Carmody said: “There’s the matter of the padlock, chief. It wasn’t there before.”
“What padlock?”
Monte Bachore said: “You have a lot of other people to question, chief. This young man will be available any time you need him.”
“All right, fine.”
The chief went away. Monte Bachore looked at Carmody and smiled and said: “The mailbox, Bill? Shall I drop Lou Cannon’s letter in the box?”
“To hell with you.”
“It
’s your choice. What’s with the padlock?”
Carmody said: “You’re mumbling in your beard, Monte.”
“And you’d better behave, Bill.”
“All right.”
“I hold all the aces.”
“O.K.”
“Go back to the beach and brief Sam Link and Robbie on this. I’ll be there later.”
“Yes, sir,” Carmody said.
Monte laughed suddenly and punched his arm. He looked very distinguished and polished with his neatly trimmed beard and pale blue coat and dark slacks.
“You’re my boy, Bill.”
“You said it.”
7
THE HOUSE was empty. The car Sam Link and Ravelle had arrived in was gone. Carmody went into his room and unpacked his bag and hung up his suits and took his music from the leather case and put it back on the piano. He stood there for a few moments, his fingertips resting lightly on the keys, but nothing stirred in him. It was afternoon now, and the sun was a blinding glare on the white combers that came rolling and crashing up on the empty beach. He stood up and stripped off his clothes and put on a pair of faded khaki shorts and stepped outside, walking down to the water’s edge. He waded in and when the water foamed around his knees he dived under a comber and swam straight outward with hard, clean strokes until he was out beyond the breaker line, and then he rolled over on his back and floated, looking up at the fleecy white clouds in the sky.
He remembered when he used to go swimming as a kid in the water near Marblehead, how the ocean was always cold there, even on the hottest days of summer. There were all the yachts at Marblehead, too, and he recalled how he used to feel torn between his love for the graceful yawls and sloops and the music bubbling in him. His mother had always insisted on the music. She had planned a long course of training for him at Juilliard, but when his father died everything changed, and he’d had to come home with only one year of it behind him, and six months of odd jobs in the shoe mills around Lynn and Salem had settled it for him. That was when he had gone back to New York and had met Monte Bachore.
Say It with Murder Page 5