Death Likes It Hot

  “Just an ordinary knife, very sharp. A kind of kitchen knife with a bone handle and Brexton’s initials on it.”

  “Initials?” That was it! “Were they prominent?”

  “Yes, they were pretty big. What’re you up to, Sargeant?” He looked at me suspiciously.

  “I may have a surprise for you.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the real killer.”

  Greaves snorted. “We got him and don’t you go rocking the boat. We have enough trouble without your interference. Elmer Bush’s told me about the way you operate. I told him if you tried anything.…”

  “Elmer is my best friend,” I said, hardly able to contain my delight. “One other question and then I’m through. Sunday morning Claypoole said he went to the John Drew Theater to look at the paintings. Well, I happen to know the theater was closed that morning, I figure he went to see you.”

  “What if he did?” Greaves squirmed uncomfortably.

  “I have a hunch he drove over to Riverhead and told you Brexton murdered his wife. I believe your district Attorney, misled by you, is building his case and political ruin on that visit.”

  “I don’t like your tone, Sargeant.” Greaves had turned very red. “But since you know so much already I’ll tell you that, yes, Claypoole came to see me and he accused Brexton. I don’t think Brexton knew it … that’s why he killed him that same night, to keep him quiet, not knowing it was already too late. I should’ve acted right away. I realize that now but I didn’t think anything could happen in a house with two M.C.I. men on hand. Anyway it’s all over. Nobody can save your friend Brexton,” said Greaves, quietly folding his napkin and placing it beside his plate.

  “He’s not my friend; he’s also not your clay pigeon, Greaves.”

  “Now look here.…” but Mrs. Veering had got to her feet; she led us all into the drawing room for coffee.

  I got Allie Claypoole away from Randan for a moment. “You’re not giving in, are you?”

  “About Paul?” She sighed and sat down shakily. I sat down beside her. “I don’t know what to think. Greaves has been with me all morning. He’s trying to make me believe Paul tried to murder me but I can’t … I just won’t believe it.”

  “Good,” I said. “You stick by what you feel. You’re right.”

  She clenched her slender white hands into two fists. “But if Paul didn’t who could’ve done it?”

  “The same person who killed your brother.”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  I nodded. She looked at me with real terror in her eyes. Then Greaves, suspecting I might be intimidating a valuable witness, joined us and I excused myself.

  I was about to go telephone 1770 House to see if they might have a room for the night when Randan, with a smirk, said: “What happened to you and Liz? Suddenly you both just disappeared and Miss Lung tells me you didn’t come home at all last night. I looked around for you when I left but you’d gone by then.”

  “Miss Bessemer and I spent the night with the Times crossword puzzle at the New Arcadia Motel,” I said and walked away.

  I made a reservation for that night by telephone. Then I slipped out of the house by way of the front door. I wanted one more look around before I finished my case.

  I walked among the umbrellas on the terrace, sad-looking in the gray fog which had already blotted out the ocean only a few yards away. It was as thick a fog as I’d ever seen. The umbrellas looked like monsters, looming in the mist.

  Then I took out my watch and began to walk, at a good pace, down the beach to the Club.

  Five minutes later I reached the Club.

  It was a strange walk. I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me. If it hadn’t been for a cluster of rotten black pilings which marked the beginning of the Club beach I shouldn’t have known where I was. The Club House was invisible. There was no sound from its general direction.

  I had the impression of being packed in cotton wool. I almost felt that if I put my hand out I could touch the fog, a gray heavy damp substance.

  Far out to sea, I heard the horn of a ship, lonely and plaintive. Well, it would soon be over, I told myself. I was oddly depressed. I had solved the case but there was no elation, only relief and perhaps a certain fear.

  I made my way back slowly. I followed the edge of the water which eddied black upon the white sand. If I hadn’t, I would’ve got lost for there were no landmarks: nothing but white sand and gray fog.

  I timed my return trip so that I’d know when I was abreast the North Dunes. Otherwise I knew I might keep on until Montauk without ever knowing where I was.

  I was three minutes and two seconds from the Club when a figure appeared, tall and dark. We both stopped at the water’s edge: each had been following the water line. Then Randan approached. He was carrying my suitcase.

  “I thought you were talking a walk,” he said amiably. “I followed you.”

  “You thought I’d walk to the Club?”

  He nodded. “It’s a nice walk, isn’t it? Perfect for a foggy day.”

  “I like the fog.” I glanced at the suitcase in his hand: this was it at last. I knew what was coming. “Not such a good walk, though, if you’re carrying something.”

  “Like your suitcase?” He grinned.

  “Or like your uncle.”

  The smile faded from his face. We were only a yard apart and yet his features were faintly blurred by the intervening fog, white and enveloping. We stood within a circle of visibility whose diameter was not more than a yard. Somewhere far above, in another world, the afternoon sun was shining. We were like the last survivors of a disaster, alone with our secrets.

  A wave broke close to us. Water swirled about our shoes. Simultaneously we moved farther up the shore, each keeping the other in range. Was he armed? The question repeated itself over and over in my brain. If he was.…

  “You know a great deal,” said Randan. He put the suitcase down. He was wearing a trench coat, I noticed … very sensible, I thought inanely, keep the damp out: fog caressed us like damp cotton; my clothes were soaked, and not only from fog.

  “I have my suspicions,” I said, trying to sound casual. “But they don’t do me much good since there’s no evidence of any kind.” Anything to throw him off the track. I was positive he was armed. I planned a sudden break up the beach, into the fog. One leap and I’d be out of sight. But if he were armed.…

  “You’re not stupid,” Randan sounded somewhat surprised.

  “Thanks. Unfortunately neither are you. There’s no way of making a case against you. I think I know exactly what happened but there’s no proof of any kind. You thought of everything.” But he was too smart for such flattery. I was talking fast, to no point. My suitcase in his hand meant this was the pay-off.

  “Tell me what you know, Sargeant.” The question was put quietly, without emphasis.

  “Not enough.”

  “Tell me anyway.” He put his hand in the pocket of his coat. I went death-cold: was he armed? was he armed?

  I decided to talk, my legs tensed for a spring into the whiteness about us, into the protecting, the murderous fog. My mouth was dry. Sweat trickled down my side. With difficulty I kept my voice steady. “I think you made your plan in Boston, the night before you came here. You heard about the murder on the radio … or rather the mysterious death of Mildred Brexton. You knew her husband would be held responsible. You also knew of Fletcher’s dislike of Brexton, on Mildred’s account. On a wild chance, you thought there might be an opportunity for you to kill your uncle, making it look as though Brexton had killed him.”

  “All this from having heard over the radio that Mildred Brexton drowned accidentally?” He sounded amused.

  I nodded. “Also from a conversation with Allie, by telephone, the day before. I think she told you pretty much the situation down here. You knew what to expect.” This was a guess. It was accurate.

  “I didn’t think Allie would mention that telephone call,”
said Randan. “Yes, that gave me the … the background of the week-end party. Go on.”

  “Just in case, you prepared, in Boston, the note saying Brexton was the killer. I had my secretary check the Boston papers for your last day there: none carried an account of Mildred’s death … too soon. Because of that you weren’t able to get an X or a K out of the headlines. This bothered me when I first saw the note. I figured that anyone of us preparing such a note would have had no trouble finding Xs and Ks since the papers were full of references to Brexton, to Mildred’s death.”

  “Good, very good.” Randan seemed pleased. “I was worried that the police might discover my note was made from Boston papers. Fortunately, they were so positive Fletcher fixed the note that they didn’t bother tracking it down. Then what happened?”

  “You arrived in the early morning, Sunday, by car. You went straight to the house. The guard was asleep. You looked around. In the living room you found Brexton’s palette knife with his initials on it, left there after Mildred attacked Mrs. Veering Friday night. You took it, for future use. You were in the kitchen … perhaps examining the fuse box, when I arrived. You struck me with.…”

  “Of all homely items, a rolling pin.” Randan chuckled. “Not hard enough either.” A gull shrieked. The surf whispered.

  “You then left the house, making your official appearance later on that day. You found out soon enough what was going on. Your uncle no doubt told you he suspected Brexton of murdering his wife. He might even have told you of his denunciation of Brexton to the police. If he did, and I think he did, the moment was right. Your uncle had accused Brexton of murder. Your uncle is murdered. Brexton, without a doubt, would be held responsible. The rest was comparatively simple.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  I watched his face while I talked, reading his responses in his expression rather than his words. I recapitulated quickly. “Mildred died by accident. Brexton knew this. The rest of us did too until that policeman, prodded by your vindictive uncle, scenting an easy case, decided to make something out of it. Both he and your uncle played your game to perfection … to their regret.”

  “Greaves will certainly benefit. He’s already a hero.” Randan was smug. I played right along.

  “That’s right. I don’t suppose Greaves will ever know that he’s sent an innocent man to the chair.”

  “No, he’ll never know,” Randan agreed cheerfully. “There’ll be no one to tell him he was wrong.”

  I pretended not to get this but I did and I was ready: he was armed all right. Under cover of the fog he would commit his last murder, destroy the only witness of his cunning. I made plans while we talked.

  “You fixed two alibis for Sunday night, the night you killed your uncle. First was at the Club. The second was at the Evans party where you ran into us … an unexpected meeting, I’d say. You made a date to meet your uncle at the Club around twelve thirty. You drove over. He walked … along the beach. You met on the beach, I think, probably near the cabanas, in the dark. You talked. Perhaps you strolled away from the Club, toward the house. At some point you both sat down. You struck him on the head with some object.…”

  “Very like a stone.”

  “And dragged him to the house where you knew the police would be busy with the tampered fuse box and the others would’ve gone to bed. You then cut Claypoole’s throat with Brexton’s knife and rolled the body under the swing, leaving the knife near by to implicate Brexton. Aware that friend Greaves would be sufficiently simple to think that a man of Brexton’s intelligence would leave a knife with his own prints and initials on it beside a dead body.”

  “Pretty good, Sargeant. You’ve missed a few subtle touches here and there but you have the main points. Go on.”

  “Then you went back to the Club, putting in a second appearance, pretending you were there all along. After that you went on to Evans’ party. You didn’t make a single mistake.” I laid it on. I had two alternatives. One was to disappear into the fog and run the risk of being shot; the other was to try a flying tackle before he could pull the trigger of that pistol which, I was sure, was pointed at me in his trench-coat pocket.

  While I made up my mind, I talked quickly … flattered him, made it appear that I thought he was in the clear, that I was only an appreciative audience, not dangerous to him. He was too smart to fall for this but he enjoyed hearing me praise him. “After all,” he said, “you’re the only person I’ll ever be able to talk to about this. Tell me how you happened to suspect me. No one else did.”

  “Just luck. I told you something you didn’t know, remember? I told you Allie had been with Brexton at the time of Claypoole’s death. I knew this was something the murderer couldn’t know and that the others hadn’t heard. You acted quickly, as I thought you would. Allie must never regain consciousness. Her testimony would save Brexton. Her death would incriminate him once and for all. You had to kill her. At this point, though, you brought up a second line of defense which I admired particularly. Rose’s tax difficulties. No doubt your uncle or Allie had told you about them. You knew she was a potential candidate for murderer of Mildred … she had the best motives of all, really. You took one of her handkerchiefs with the idea of planting it in Allie’s room in case something went wrong. It would’ve implicated Rose but either you forgot to use it or else you were too sure of success. You came back to the house when the nurses were changed, at midnight. You had less than five minutes to give Allie the strychnine which you’d already got from Mrs. Veering’s bathroom. You pushed the screen out of your window. You walked along the top of the porch to Allie’s room. You pushed that screen in. You turned the key to Mrs. Veering’s room which was lucky because you nearly had a visit from Miss Lung. You started to give Allie a hypodermic but there wasn’t time to do it properly. Miss Lung had sounded an alarm. You unlocked the door between the two rooms, went back out the window to your own room and then made an appearance.”

  “Excellent.” Randan was pleased to hear from me the story of his cleverness. “Couple of good details involved. One was planting the key to Allie’s room in Brexton’s pillow the day before … just in case. The other was the business of the screens. Had to loosen them with a knife … I thought I’d never get them right. Fortunately, they were all warped from the damp weather and they stuck in place even after being loosened. You’re right about the handkerchief bit too. I was going to use it if Allie got Brexton off the hook.”

  “Your mentioning the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury helped put me on to you.” I moved a millimeter closer to him. “The case was somewhat the same.…”

  “Not at all the same. Did I mention him? I’d forgotten that. A slip. What else put you on to me?”

  “A remark … you said something about ‘spur of the moment.’ It stuck in my head; I don’t know why. I never believed, frankly, that Mildred was murdered. Claypoole of course was. It could only have been a spur-of-the-moment murder, improvised on the spot, under cover of a suspected killing and arranged to fit in with the details of the first, the false murder. Then, last night, Liz gave me a piece of information I needed: she’d seen Claypoole at the Club a few minutes before he died. Nobody knew he’d gone there. She got a glimpse of him only by chance. We knew that you had been there at the same time. Everything began to add up. Then, when I found out about the Boston newspapers.…”

  “It’s been nice talking to you.” He stepped back a pace.

  Soon. Soon. Soon. I braced myself. I talked fast. I inched toward him as I did. My plan decided upon. “Why did you kill him though? That’s one thing I could never figure out. I could never fix a proper motive.”

  “Money. He was permanent executor of my trust fund. As long as he lived I couldn’t touch my own money until I was forty. I didn’t want to wait until then. He was severe. I always hated him. When Mildred died I saw my chance. There’d never be another opportunity like it. I improvised, as you said. It was fascinating too. I’ve always studied murders. Planned them in my head, just f
or sport. I was surprised how easy it was to commit one … how easy to get away with it.” I had moved, without his noticing it, a foot closer to him.

  “But now,” he said quietly, “Mr. Sargeant will unexpectedly leave Easthampton before the Special Court, baggage and all. By the time he is reported missing in Manhattan, Brexton will be well on his way.…”

  I hit him low and hard. There was a pop, like a cork being blown from a bottle. A smell of gunpowder. For a moment, as we wrestled, I wondered if I’d been hit. Sometimes I knew, from the war, you could be shot and not know it.

  But I was not hit. We fought hand to hand grimly at the water’s edge. Randan swore and gasped and kicked and struggled like a weak but desperate animal; it was no use though and in a moment he lay flat on the sand, breathing hoarsely, barely conscious, a hole the size of a silver dollar burned in his coat where he’d fired at me … his revolver a yard away in the sand. I pocketed it. Then I picked him up and carried him back to the house … sea foam, frothy as beer, in his hair as I followed the same route he himself had taken three days before when he had dragged the unconscious body of Fletcher Claypoole to the house.

  V

  “A Miss Bessemer is in the Outer Office.” Miss Flynn looked at me with granite eyes. “She has No Appointment.”

  “I’ll see her anyway. Poor child … she was involved in a white slave ring in Georgia. I’m trying to rehabilitate her.”

  Miss Flynn’s reply was largely italics. She disappeared and Liz bounded into my office, her face glowing. “A hero! Darling Peter a hero! When I read about it I didn’t believe it was the same one I knew … the same Peter Sargeant who.…” Words for once failed her. I allowed her to kiss my cheek.

  “I had no idea you were so brave.…”

  “Ah.”

  “And so right.” Liz sat down in the chair beside my desk and stared at me.

  I waved modestly.“I was merely doing my duty, Ma’am.

  We here in southern Ontario feel that duty’s enough without any of this horn-blowing.…”