Death Likes It Hot

  “A key.”

  “Have you ever seen it before?”

  “How do I know! All keys look alike.”

  “This is the key to the door which leads from your room to Miss Claypoole’s.”

  “So what?”

  “It was found twenty minutes ago, hidden in the pillowcase of your bed. Mr. Brexton, I arrest you on suspicion of an attempted murder in the first degree. You may inform your attorney that a Special Court will be convened this Friday in Easthampton. I am empowered by the State of New York.…”

  Miss Lung fainted.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I

  BREXTON was arrested and taken to jail at two A.M. Tuesday morning. The Special Court was scheduled for Friday. This gave me two days to track down the actual murderer for the greater glory of self and the blind lady with the scales. Forty-eight hours in which I was apt as not to find that Brexton was indeed the killer.

  I got up the next morning at nine o’clock. I was barely dressed when the managing editor of the Globe was on the phone.

  “Listen, you son of a bloodhound, what d’you mean by slanting those damned stories to make it sound like this Brexton wasn’t the murderer?”

  “Because I don’t think he is.” I held the receiver off at arm’s length while my one-time employer and occasional source of revenue raved on. When the instrument quieted down, I put it to my ear just in time to hear him say, “Well, I’m sending Elmer out there to look into this. He’s been aching to cover it but no, I said, we got Sargeant there: you remember Sargeant? bright-eyed, wet-eared Sargeant, I said, he’ll tell us all about it he’ll solve the god-damned case and what if the police do think Brexton killed his wife Sargeant knows best, I tell him, he’ll work this thing out. Ha! You got us out on a sawed-off limb. Elmer’s going to get us off.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” I said austerely. “Neither will Elmer. Anyway what would you say if I got you the real murderer, exclusively, and by Friday?”

  “Why don’t you.…”

  I told him his suggestion was impractical. Then I told him what he could do with Elmer, if he was in the mood. I hung up first.

  This was discouraging. Elmer Bush, author of the syndicated column “America’s New York” which, on television, became the popular weekly resumè of news “New York’s America” was my oldest rival and enemy. He had been a renowned columnist when I was only assistant drama editor on the Globe. But, later, our paths had crossed and I had managed twice to get the beat on him news-wise, as we say. This was going to be a real trial, I decided gloomily.

  I called Liz who sounded wide-awake even though I was positive she’d only just opened her eyes.

  “They arrested Brexton last night.”

  “No!” She made my eardrum vibrate. “Then you were wrong. I thought he did it. Of course that’s just woman’s intuition but even so it means something. Look at all the mediums.”

  “Medium what’s?”

  “The people who talk to the dead … they’re almost always women.”

  “Well, I wish you’d put in a call to Mildred Brexton and.…”

  “Oh, don’t tease. Isn’t it exciting! Can I come over?”

  “No, but I’ll see you this afternoon if it’s all right.”

  “Perfect. I’ll be at the Club after lunch.”

  “What happened to you last night?”

  “Oh, I was at the Wilsons’ dance. I was going to call you but Dick said you’d gone to bed early.”

  “Randan? Was he there?”

  “Oh yes. He’s sweet, you know. I don’t know why you don’t like him. He was only there for a while but we had a nice chat about everything. He wanted to take me up to Montauk for a moonlight ride in his car but I thought that was going too far.…”

  “I’m glad you have limits.”

  “Don’t be stuffy.” After a few more cheery remarks, I hung up. This was apparently going to be one of those days, I decided. Elmer Bush was arriving. Randan was closing in on Liz. Brexton was in jail and my own theories were temporarily discredited.

  Whistling a dirge, I went down to breakfast.

  The sight of Randan eating heartily didn’t make me feel any better. No one else was down. “See the papers?” He was beaming with excitement. “Made the front pages too.”

  He pushed a pile toward me. All the late editions had got the story “Painter Arrested for Murder of Wife and Friend” was the mildest headline. By the time they finished with the relationships, it sounded like something out of Sodom by way of Gomorrah.

  I didn’t do more than glance at the stories. From my own newspaper experience I’ve learned that newspaper stories, outside of the heads and the first paragraph, are nothing but words more or less hopelessly arranged.

  “Very interesting,” I said, confining myself to dry toast and coffee … just plain masochism. I enjoyed making the day worse than it already was.

  “I guess neither one of us got it,” said Randan, ignoring my gloom. “I suppose the obvious one is usually the right one but I could’ve sworn Brexton didn’t do it.”

  “You always thought he did, didn’t you?”

  Randan smiled a superior smile. “That was to mislead you while I made my case against the real murderer, or what I thought was the real murderer. But I didn’t get anywhere.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “That business of the key clinched it, I suppose,” said Randan with a sigh, picking up the Daily News which proclaimed: “Famous Cubist Indicted: Murders Wife, Cubes Friend.”

  I only grunted. I had my own ideas about the key. I don’t like neatness. I also respect the intelligence of others, even abstract painters: Brexton would not have left that key in his pillow any more than he would have left his palette knife beside the body of Claypoole. In my conversations with him he had struck me as being not only intelligent but careful. He would not have made either mistake if he’d been the killer.

  I kept all this to myself. Accepting without comment Randan’s assumption (and everybody else’s) that justice was done and murder had out.

  Mrs. Veering and Miss Lung came down to breakfast together. Both seemed controlled and brisk.

  “Ah, the gentlemen are up with the birds!” exclaimed the penwoman brightly, fully recovered from her dramatic collapse of some hours before.

  “I’m afraid it’s been something of an ordeal, Peter.” Mrs. Veering smiled at me. She was pale but her movements were steady. Apparently she had, if only briefly, gone on the wagon: she was quite a different person sober than half-lit.

  I mumbled something inane about: well, things could’ve been worse.

  “And I’m afraid we won’t be able to carry through our original project either.”

  I had already given it up but I pretended to be thoughtful, a bit disappointed. “Yes, I think you’re right under the circumstances,” I said, nodding gravely. “It might not be the wise thing to do.…”

  “I knew you’d understand. I’m only sorry you’ve wasted nearly a week like this.…”

  “Not all wasted.”

  She smiled. “That’s right. You got several stories out of it, didn’t you?”

  Miss Lung chimed in. “Thrillingly presented, Mr. Sargeant! I can’t wait to see what your account of the murderer at bay will be like.”

  “Tense,” I said, “very tense.”

  “I can hardly wait! Though Heaven knows any reminders of what we’ve just gone through will be unpleasant, to say the least. Rose, we have been tested, all of us, in the furnace of experience.”

  “And emerged bloodied but unbowed,” said Mrs. Veering who could scramble a saw with the best of them. I asked to be excused, pleading work.

  “Certainly.” Mrs. Veering was amiable. “By the way, Mr. Graves or whatever his name is, called me this morning to say he’d like us all to stay together, in Easthampton, that is, until after the Special Court. I hope it won’t inconvenience you; you’re welcome to stay here of course till then.”

  I said
that was fine by me.

  I went to my room and telephoned my secretary, Miss Flynn.

  “The Case has broken Wide Open,” she said in the tone of one who follows crime at a careful distance.

  “Looks like it.” I had no intention of saying anything over that phone which would give anyone listening in an idea of my private doubts. “I’ll be back Friday afternoon. Any news?”

  She gave me a precise summary of what had happened in my absence. I told her what should be done for the various clients. I then asked her to check a few things for me Though they sounded odd she was, as usual, reticent; she made no comment.

  “I shall, as you know, exert every effort to comply with these Requests,” she said formally. “Incidentally, a Mr. Wheen has been calling you every day. Has he attempted to Contact you yet?”

  I said no and she said he hadn’t stated his business so that was that.

  My next move, after hanging up, was strategic.

  In the room next to me, Miss Lung’s, I could hear a maid vacuuming. The entire second floor was empty, except for the one maid. Stealthily, I left my own room, crossed the hall, and entered Dick Randan’s room.

  It was a fair duplicate of my own. He hadn’t bothered to unpack and his suitcase lay open and full of rumpled clothes. I went through everything quickly. Aside from the fact that he wore Argyle socks with large holes in them, there was nothing unusual to be found. I was looking for nothing in particular, which naturally made my search all the more difficult. I did want to get the layout of the rooms clear in my mind though.

  I cased the bathroom and found the usual shaving things: I also found a woman’s handkerchief with the initials R.V. It was wadded up and stuck in a glass on the second shelf of the medicine cabinet. R.V. was Rose Veering but why Randan had her handkerchief in his bathroom was a mystery. It was unmarked … no blood stains or anything interesting, just a lace-type handkerchief, as they say in bargain basements. Puzzled, I put it back. Could he be a kleptomaniac? Or a fetishist? Or had Mrs. Veering made love to him in the night, leaving this handkerchief as a token of her affection? Or had he just happened to find it and picked it up and stuffed it in the nearest receptacle which was, in this case, a drinking glass? I decided I was going out of my mind, ascribing significance to everything.

  I went back into his bedroom and looked at the two windows, both of which were open. Being a corner room he had two views: one of the dunes to the north with a half glimpse of beach, the other of the terrace directly below and the umbrellas; the sea was calm, I saw. On this side, directly beneath the window, the roof of the first-floor porch sloped. The window screens, I noticed, were the permanent, all-year-round kind.

  Then I opened the door between Randan’s room and the next bedroom, Mrs. Veering’s. This was the largest of all the rooms with three windows overlooking the ocean. It was expensively furnished, very pink and silken and lacy. It was also full of bric-a-brac, clothes … too much stuff to do more than glance at.

  I did find something fairly interesting in her bathroom. On a metal table was a small autoclave on which was placed several hypodermic needles and vials of medicine, all neatly labeled with her name and the contents. Two of the vials contained strychnine which, I knew vaguely, was the stuff to be given a failing heart in an emergency. Obviously Mrs. Veering was prepared for anything.…

  The door to what had been Allie Claypoole’s room was unlocked. It smelled like a hospital. Her clothes were still there, all neatly arranged in the closet and in the drawers of the bureau. If there was anything remotely like a clue the police had doubtless found it by now. I skimmed hurriedly through everything and then went on to Brexton’s room. It was a mess with the mattress on the floor and the sheet and pillows scattered around on the floor. Someone had come for his clothes apparently; and there was no longer any sign of his residence. I found nothing … except that the window to his room, the window which looked east on the ocean, was directly above the metal swing beneath which I’d found the body of Fletcher Claypoole. Since there had been a full moon that night, Brexton could have seen the murderer if he had looked out that window … his view was the only one from the second floor which allowed an unobstructed view of the swing; the others had their view of it blocked by umbrellas and awnings.

  Not much to go on but still a possibility … and it might explain Brexton’s seeming confidence: he had actually witnessed the murder of Claypoole. Yet, if he had, why had he kept silent? It was a puzzle. I had no idea the solution was already at hand.

  II

  I waited around until eleven thirty for Greaves to show up but it developed that he was about the state’s business in Riverhead, and wallowing in a sea of official approbation. The legal machinery was now being set in motion by the District Attorney’s office and the doughty Greaves could rest on his laurels.

  When I was sure that he wasn’t going to pay us a visit, I asked Randan if I could borrow his car. He was gracious about it, only asking me if I was sure I had a driver’s license. I said I was and took the car.

  The day was crisp and clear, more autumn than summer. Along the main street of Easthampton the elms had begun to yellow a bit at the edges. Winter was near.

  I drove straight to the Hospital of St. Agatha where I knew Allie Claypoole had been taken.

  With an air of confidence which I didn’t feel, I walked into the gloomy Victorian brick building, told the receptionist that I was Dick Randan, Miss Claypoole’s nephew, and that I wanted very much to see her.

  To my surprise, after a few minutes of whispering into telephones, I was told that I could see her, for ten minutes but that I must not in any way excite her. She had been, it developed, conscious and collected for some hours.

  She lay propped up in a hospital bed, her face white as paper but her eyes clear and bright. She was completely rational. She was startled to see me. “I thought Dick …” she began.

  I interrupted her quickly. “Wanted to come but sent me instead. I wonder if I could talk to you alone.” I glanced at the nurse who was fumbling efficiently with various sedatives on a tray.

  “Against doctor’s orders. And police’s orders,” said the nurse firmly. “Don’t worry; I won’t listen.”

  Allie smiled wanly. “I’m afraid we’ll have to obey orders. Why do you want to see me, Mr. Sargeant?”

  I sat down close to her bedside, pitching my voice low.

  “I wanted to see how you were, for one thing.”

  “Nearly recovered. It seems the strychnine, instead of killing me, provided just the jolt I needed. They tell me I was in some danger of losing my mind.” She said all this matter-of-factly. She was in complete control of herself.

  “You don’t remember anything? I mean about the strychnine.…”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t come to until the ambulance.”

  “You were with Brexton when your brother was killed?”

  She nodded. “I’ve already told the police that, this morning when that awful little man came to see me.”

  “They didn’t want to believe you, did they?”

  “No, they didn’t. I can’t think why.”

  “Did you know they’ve arrested Brexton?”

  Her eyes grew wide; she skipped a breath; then she exhaled slowly and shut her eyes. “I should have known,” she whispered. “No, they didn’t tell me but that explains why they seemed so disappointed when I told them. I think they wanted to cross-question me but the doctor told them to go. Paul couldn’t have done it. He had no reason to do it. He was with me.”

  “We haven’t much time,” I spoke rapidly. “I don’t think Brexton did it either but the police do and they’ve got a good deal of evidence, or what they think is evidence. Now you must help me. I think this thing can be solved but I’ve got to know more about the people involved, about past history. Please tell me the truth. If you do, I think we can get the charges against Brexton dismissed.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Who had any re
ason to kill your brother?”

  She looked away. “It’s hard to say. I mean, what exactly is enough reason. There are people who have grievances but that doesn’t mean they would kill.…”

  “Like Miss Lung?”

  “Well, yes, like her. How did you know about that?”

  “Never mind. What actually happened between her and your brother?”

  “Nothing. That was the trouble. She was in love with him. He was not in love with her. We all lived in Boston then, as you know. We saw a great deal of each other. I suppose you know she wasn’t fat in those days … she was rather good-looking. It nearly killed her when he took up with Mildred. About that time she began to get fat … I don’t think it was glandular, just neurotic reaction. She never went with another man, as far as I know, and she never stopped loving Fletcher.…”

  “Could she have drugged Mildred do you think?”

  “I … I’ve wondered that all along. She hated Mildred. I think she hated Mildred even more when she turned down Fletcher … one of those crazy things: hates her for being a rival and then hates her even more for rejecting the man she herself loves. Yes, I think she might’ve drugged Mildred but it seems odd she should wait fifteen years to do it.”

  “Perhaps this was her first opportunity in all that time.”

  “Perhaps. I don’t know. Even if she did, why would she then kill Fletcher?”

  “Revenge? for his having turned her down.”

  “I wonder. At first I thought it was an accident, that Mildred had just taken an overdose of pills and gone in swimming but then, when the police got involved, why, it occurred to me that Mary Western Lung gave Mildred those sleeping pills if only because no one else there really hated poor Mildred.…”

  “Not even her husband?”

  Allie shrugged. “He was used to her. Besides, he had plenty of better opportunities: he wouldn’t pick a week-end party to kill his wife.”

  “You disliked Mildred, didn’t you?”

  “She was not a friend of mine. I disliked the way she tried to hold on to Fletcher after she’d married Brexton. We quarreled whenever we met, usually about my keeping him in Cambridge when she thought he should live in New York where she could get her claws into him.”