Say It with Murder

by Edward S. Aarons

  “I will,” Carmody said. “Thanks.”

  He went down the veranda steps and cut across the lawn to the yacht club pier. The Apollo was a twenty-six foot cabin sloop with a marconi rig and sleek white lines that made him think back to his days on the Massachusetts North Shore around Marblehead. She was tied up at the float next to the pier and Carmody dropped down the ladder and crossed the float and jumped down onto her immaculate deck. Martha was adjusting a turnbuckle on one of the wire halyards. She wore her faded dungarees again and a white shirt and sneakers and had a dark blue bandanna tied through her thick wheat-colored hair. Her face as she turned toward him looked freshly scrubbed. Carmody half expected to see Paul Sloade with her, but apparently she was alone.

  “May I come aboard?” he asked. Her gray eyes told him nothing. “I want to talk to you, Martha. Don’t turn me down this time.”

  “All right. But I’m going for a sail. Do you know how to handle a boat?”

  Carmody grinned. “I was brought up with them.”

  “Then lend a hand. You can talk later.”

  He looked at the lowering gray skies. “Do you think it’s wise to take her out today?”

  “I feel like it,” she said. “Wise or not.”

  Her manner was cool and short and he did not pursue the topic. He went below to start the Gray engine, noting the shipshape galley with its stainless steel gasoline stove and icebox and the neat bunks forward and the expensive fittings of the main cabin. He checked the fuel and when he had the motor started and idling easily he went up on deck again, enjoying the feel of the vessel underfoot, and cast off the lines while Martha took the wheel. As they passed the small protective breakwater he went forward and raised the jib, and the puffy wind began to heel the sloop over to starboard. Beyond the breakwater the rough water began in earnest pounding the spoon bow and breaking spray over the deck “The mainsail,” Martha called.

  “I don’t think—”

  “Do you want me to do it?” Her manner was imperative. “Are you afraid?”

  He raised the tall nylon sail, hauling hard on the line, and when the wind took it Martha cut out the auxiliary engine. The ocean looked gray and sullen and restless to the south. Small-craft warnings flew from the flagpole over the yacht club. To the east he could see the erratic shadows of rain squalls marching across the surface of the sea. He waited a moment, noting the way the Apollo sailed close to the wind, testing with senses he thought had long been forgotten to see the manner in which the girl handled the vessel in the uncertain, gusty weather. Satisfied, he dropped to the cushioned seat beside her, half expecting her to relinquish the wheel to him; but she did not look at him. The wind streamed her hair about her face and pressed her thin white shirt close to the firm contours of her young body.

  “Martha, I want to tell you something.”

  “I’ve been hoping you’d get around to it.”

  “Why are you angry with me?”

  “I’m not,” she said.

  “You haven’t spoken to me all week.”

  “You’ve been a pretty busy fellow,” she said. “You and your strange friends have just about taken over the whole hotel, haven’t you? It’s no secret what you’re doing. Tonight’s the grand opening, isn’t it?”

  “I gather you don’t approve.”

  “Should I?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t like it, either.”

  “Then why are you working for Mr. Bachore?”

  “I have to,” he said. “I can’t help it.”

  She looked at him directly for the first time. “Bill, are you in some kind of trouble with them?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Bad trouble?”

  “Yes.”

  “Recent?”

  “No. It happened before the war.”

  “Is this the something you want to tell me about?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly.

  He had never told anyone except Major Deegan about the death of the square and his panic and how he had run away to enlist and spent the rest of the time wondering and worrying. It was something he had bottled up inside himself and tried to forget telling himself he wasn’t guilty, he was not responsible. As he talked he saw a new pattern unfolding in the things that had happened to him.

  “I think I wanted to get killed,” he said. “I know I took foolish risks over in Korea, risks that weren’t bravery but stupidity, that bought the platoon nothing at all. I wanted a bullet to finish it and I guess I had in the back of my mind the thought that if I died in the war it would somehow even things up. But I didn’t die. I was taken prisoner while I was unconscious and that’s how I met Sam Link and Robbie Ravelle. In the prison compound. And that’s where I met Lucas Deegan.”

  “This man that Monte Bachore killed,” Martha said. “Who was he?”

  “I didn’t know until yesterday,” Carmody said. He told her of his trip to New York and watched her face and saw nothing in it except a softness that grew in her large gray eyes as she looked at him. “Now I know,” he said, “that I’ve got to do something about it. I can’t go on living with it. I was frightened and alone when I ran the first time. I’m not making any excuses for myself, but I just didn’t know any better. But now I want to tell the police. Yet if I do, then I’ll stand trial as a murderer.”

  “You’re not a murderer, Bill.”

  “Legally, I’m just as guilty as Monte Bachore. Nobody would believe that I just thought we were seeing the man safely back to his hotel with his winnings.”

  “But you didn’t kill him.”

  “I was there when it happened, working for Monte.”

  He told her about the confession Monte had, signed by Lou Cannon. “I can’t find it. I’ve looked, but Monte has it hidden away somewhere.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t exist.”

  “I’ve thought of that, but how can I take the chance?”

  “Bill, nobody could possibly call you guilty.”

  “Nobody but a jury,” he said

  “Then are you going to go around the rest of your life working under Monte’s thumb, worried and sick and full of this feeling of guilt that bothers you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said “I have a feeling that something is going to happen soon. Something pretty awful.”

  “Like Irene?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You have to go to the police, sooner or later. The sooner the better, and—”

  They had been too busy to notice the squall, racing down on them. Now, without warning, the wind and rain struck the boat like a hammer. The sloop shuddered, heeled far over, and took a heavy sea into the cockpit. The wall of cold water slashed over Carmody and tore his grip loose and slammed him beyond the binnacle. His clawing fingers caught the cold brass and slipped and held and slipped again. The smashing force of the sea filled the air with its sudden, triumphant roar, and then over it came the sharp report of the mainsail ripping and then over that he heard Martha’s frantic scream. Carmody glimpsed her through the white water between them and braced his legs and plunged for her, catching an arm, losing his grip in the wetness, then holding on to her leg as she went washing over the lee rail. For long moments he did not know if the Apollo would right herself. Sea and sky and rain merged and blended into one roaring, watery element. He breathed water, choked on it, coughing, and got a new grip on Martha and pulled her back into the cockpit. Ever so slowly, the sloop straightened, wallowing broadside to the wind.

  The ragged, tattered remnants of the mainsail streamed in the howling gusts of the storm, sounding like pistol shots. Wherever he looked toward the horizon, he saw nothing but the gray, angry wastes of the churning ocean.

  Martha was extraordinarily light in his arms as he put her down on the sodden seat cushions behind the wheel. A thin trickle of blood came from a cut high on her forehead and her eyes were closed. He felt a moment’s panic, torn between the need to take care of her and to save the boat from imminent disaster. Saving the boat was
the most immediate need.

  Another few moments unattended, and the Apollo would surely founder and they would both go down. He wedged the girl more tightly into the seat, found a longbladed knife in a box under the wheel, and went forward over the tilting, streaming deck.

  His progress was measured in inches. Every few moments a sea crashed against the port side and threatened to tear him loose from his grip on whatever came to hand. Using the knife, he slashed desperately at the dragging mainsail, cutting it away in shreds and long tatters, then working his way still farther forward. Half buried under the foaming seas, he bundled the foresail and found loose line and tied it in a heavy, sodden mass, making it fast to the anchor cable with numb and trembling fingers and pushed, heaved and hauled the unwieldy bulk until it splashed overside and served as a sea anchor.

  Almost at once the jury-rigged anchor swung the bow of the sloop into the wind. She lifted high, then fell, then high again. He saw they would ride out the seas if the storm didn’t grow much more violent. Staggering, he made his way aft again toward Martha, picked her up in his arms and carried her below. He did not allow himself to think of what he was doing. He was aware of the pliant warmth of her wet body through the thin shirt plastered to her skin, aware of her first struggling movements as she came back to consciousness. Water six inches deep sloshed on the cabin floor, littered with debris. Carmody put her down on the bunk and saw her eyes open in bewilderment then quickly settle oh his face. She smiled and then frowned and began to shiver.

  “Are you all right?” Carmody asked.

  Her teeth chattered.

  “Do you hurt anywhere?”

  “Just—my head.”

  “You have a bad lump there. Nowhere else?”

  “N-no.”

  “Let me find you some dry clothes.”

  In a cabinet above the level of the water he found a soft flannel shirt and white slacks and he handed them to her. Her wet fingers caught at his arm and she half lifted herself from the bunk.

  “Bill. Thanks.”

  He grinned. “I’d better look at the motor.”

  He didn’t move.

  She reached up and touched the back of his hand to her face.

  “About Paul,” she whispered.

  “I’ve been wanting to ask you about him.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Not any more.”

  “Sure of yourself?”

  “Hopeful,” he said.

  “I’ve been letting Paul pay all that attention to me because of Irene. I want to know the truth about how she died.”

  “Has he told you anything yet?”

  “He says he thinks you killed her,” Martha said quietly.

  “I didn’t, Martha.”

  “I know you didn’t. But Paul knows the real truth. I’m trying to get it out of him.”

  “You won’t get it from Paul,” Carmody said. “He doesn’t know the truth.”

  “Then who does?”

  “Somebody. I don’t know his name yet. But I’m going to find out.”

  “Why?”

  “For you,” he said. “I ought to look at the engine.”

  “Not yet, Bill.”

  He bent down and kissed her and then quickly straightened. “I’d better. Right now.”

  She was smiling when he left the cabin.

  There was water in the tiny engine room, and water all over the auxiliary engine, and when he tried to start it the electric motor whined futilely, over and over again, and he gave it up. It was strange how his mind sheered away from the present, deliberately away from Martha and what he had seen in her eyes. It was not to be considered now. Think about the boat, he told himself. Or anything else. Think about Camp Five, and the first time you went up to the post where the Chinese had tied up Major Deegan and no one was allowed to go near him or talk to him. His mind jumped away from that, too. The other day he had almost thought of something that seemed important, but it had eluded him. What was it? It couldn’t have been important. But it was. He knew it was. His thoughts moved this way and that while his hands mechanically tested the engine and found it useless to tinker with any more.

  He went up on deck.

  The rain had slackened but the wind was still strong, blowing straight from the south now. He could not see the shore. The sloop was riding steadily enough, and they were no longer taking in water. They were safe. He told himself that this was good, that this could have been a terrible, tragic thing, and that he and Martha were lucky to be alive.

  What was it about Major Deegan that he couldn’t remember?

  He started back toward the cabin door and heard Martha call him and he turned away again and stood at the wheel in the cockpit and looked at the gray-green sea and the rain and the lowering sky. It had been snowing that night in the prison compound, the first night they kept Major Deegan tied to the punishment post. Paul Sloade had been in the shade reserved as the sick bay then, along with the dying wounded and the frostbitten and the insane and the tubercular prisoners, all of them dying. Sam Link was already talking about the traitor who had turned the attention of their jailers toward Lucas Deegan. Sam and Robbie were going around from bunk to bunk, talking about Paul Sloade taking it easy and hiding out in sick bay, getting good food where they couldn’t see him getting it, taking his reward from their jailers in secret.

  If this southerly wind continues, he thought the Apollo will wind up piling up on shore.

  Never mind the wind. It’s a matter of hours away. Think about Deegan and Link and Paul Sloade.

  He felt himself tremble as he remembered the cold of the frozen Korean night when he crept out with hot water to give Lucas Deegan, to give him some warmth against the icy night. They would have shot him if they had caught him. But they hadn’t seen him and they hadn’t shot him and he had asked Deegan. “Lucas, who put the finger on you? Tell me, Lucas, who did it. Was it Paul Sloade?”

  “No,” came the answer.

  No and no and no.

  Maybe he ought to go below and see why Martha had called to him just now, he thought.

  Never mind Martha. Work it out. Work out the no and the yes.

  Why worry about something that’s dead and forgotten and over with?

  Work it out, he told himself. Go on with it.

  All right, he told himself. Suppose Paul Sloade was telling the truth? Suppose Paul Sloade was not the traitor?

  Don’t make any excuses for Paul, he told himself.

  I’m not, he thought.

  But suppose he was telling the truth?

  Maybe I ought to try the engine again.

  Then who was the traitor?

  Who?

  He held the spokes of the wheel so tightly that his knuckles hurt and his hands hurt and his arms hurt, and he remembered Paul Sloade, bearded, in the ragged tatters of his uniform, and the card game with Sam link, the merchant of cigarettes, the conniver, the smart one. There had been a quarrel. When? A week before they took Lucas Deegan. Over what? Cheating. Carmody tilted his head back and let the cold rain strike his face. Who had said what? Who had accused the other of cheating?

  Paul Sloade.

  Paul had accused Sam Link of cheating.

  And a week later Sam Link went around saying he had heard Paul Sloade urge the guards to question Lucas Deegan about germ warfare.

  Suddenly it all clicked, he could almost hear the clicks in his mind as it all fell together in place and time and formed a new pattern, one that had always been there, except that he had been too weak from imprisonment and too blind to see it No excuses for all the other petty, rotten, nasty little things Paul Sloade had done. But in this one thing, this one all-important thing, Sam Link had been lying and Paul was innocent.

  Sam Link had been lying.

  Sam Link had been the traitor.

  Don’t drop it he told himself quickly. Take it from here. One and one makes two. If Link is a liar, then maybe Monte Bachore is a liar, and maybe there is no confession signed by Lou Cann
on. Maybe Lou Cannon isn’t even dead.

  At least you ought to find out, he told himself.

  He looked around and saw that the rain had stopped and there was even a stray, watery streak of sunlight on the surface of the ocean. He looked forward and saw Martha watching him from the cabin doorway. She had changed into dry clothes and combed her long butter-bright hair. She came toward him and took him in her arms.

  “What is it Bill?”

  “I was thinking about something.”

  “Are you going to the police?”

  “Yes. Very soon.”

  “I’m glad,” she said.

  He looked at her and saw that what he felt toward her was right and when he looked in her eyes he saw that she felt it, too; it was the thing that had been there instantly between them, from the first moment of their meeting, an inevitability about it that was right and proper and good.

  Suddenly he felt as if a great dead weight had been lifted from around his neck, a burden of guilt that had distorted everything he did and thought for all these months and years. He put his head back and laughed aloud and Martha looked up at him and smiled and pulled his head down toward her and kissed him on the mouth while he laughed, and he put his arms around her and watched the sunlight move across the turbulent ocean toward them.

  10

  AT FIVE o’clock that afternoon a lobster fisherman took the Apollo in tow, and it was after eight o’clock when Carmody waved his thanks and came ghosting into the Crescent Beach inlet under a jury-rigged jib sail. The parking lot beside the hotel was crowded with twice the usual number of cars. The clouds were breaking up and the night promised to be clear. Band music drifted across the water from the yacht club and merged with the hum of voices from the hotel. He helped Martha to the dock and made the lines fast and Martha turned in the dimness and clung to him for a long moment. “Be careful, Bill,” she whispered.

  It was all arranged. “Sure.”

  “I think I can make it to the library at Matachogue before it closes. They have an excellent reference room there.”

  “Don’t let anyone know what you’re doing.”

  “I won’t. Where will I find you?”

  He laughed softly. “Working for Monte in the ballroom. Big night. A lot of money will change hands up there this evening.”