“Ready to make an arrest?” I asked cheerfully.
“What? Oh . . . you plan to go out tonight again?”
“Yes, I was going to ask you if it was all right.”
“I can’t stop you,” said Greaves sadly. “Do us a favor, though, and don’t mention anything about what’s been happening here.”
“I can’t see that it makes much difference. Papers are full of it.”
“They're also full of something else. We have two men on duty tonight,” he added.
“I hope that’ll be enough.”
“If you remember to lock your door.”
“The murderer might have a key.”
"One of the men will be on the landing. His job is to watch your room.”
I chuckled. “You don’t really think anything will happen with two policemen in the house, do you?”
“Never can tell.”
“You don’t have any evidence, do you?”
“Not really.” The answer was surprisingly frank. “But we know what we’re doing.”
“As a bit of live bait and a correspondent for the Globe, what are you doing?”
“Wouldn’t tell you for the world, Mr. Sargeant.”
“When do you think you’ll make your arrest? There'll be a grand jury soon won’t there?”
“Friday, yes. We hope to be ready ... we cal! it Special Court, by the way.”
“Already drawn up your indictment?”
“Could be. Tell me, Mr. Sargeant, you don’t play with paper dolls, do you?”
This set me back on my heels. “Dolls?” I looked at him, at sea.
“Or keep a scrapbok?”
“My secretary keeps a scrapbook, a professional one . . . what’re you talking aobut?”
“Then this should amuse you, in the light of our earlier discussions.” He pushed the pieces of paper at me.
It was an ordinary piece of typewriter paper on which had been glued a number of letters taken from headlines: they were all different sizes; they spelled out ‘Brescton is Ciller.”
“When did you get this?”
“I found it right here, this morning.” Greaves indicated the telephone table. “It was under the book, turned face down. I don’t know how I happened to turn it over . . . looked like scratch paper.”
“Then it wasn’t sent to you?”
“Nor to anybody. Just put on the table where anyone might 59
find it. Very strange.”
“Fingerprints?"
He looked at me pityingly. “Nobody’s left a set of fingerprints since Dillinger. Too many movies. Everybody wears gloves now.”
“I wonder why the words are misspelled?”
“No ‘X’ and not many ‘K’s’ in headlines . . . these were all taken from headlines apparently. Haven't figured out which paper yet.”
“Who do you think left it there?”
“You.” He looked at me calmly.
I burst out laughing. “If I thought Brexton was the mur-dreer I’d tell you so.”
Greaves shrugged. “Don't tell me. It’s your neck, Mr. Sargeant.”
"Just why would I want to keep anything like that a secret?”
"I don’t know . . . yet.”
I was irritated. “I don’t know anything you don’t know.” “That may be but I’m convinced the murderer thinks you know something. He wants you out of the way. Now, before it’s too late, tell me what you saw out there in the water.”
"Nobody can say you aren’t stubborn.” I sighed. “I’ll tell you again that I didn’t see anything. I can also tell you that, since I didn't send you that note, somebody else must’ve . . . somebody who either does know what happened or else, for reasons of his or her own, wants to implicate Brexton anyway. If I were you, I’d go after the author of that note.” A trail which, I was fairly certain, would lead, for better or worse, to the vindictive Claypoole.
Greaves was deep in some theory of his own. I had no idea what it was. But he did seem concerned for my safety and I was touched. “I must warn you, Mr. Sargeant, that if you don’t tell me the whole truth, everything you know, I won’t be responsible for what happens.”
"My unexpected death?”
“Exactly.” I had the sensation of being written off. It was disagreeable.
CHAPTER FOUR
1
AT midnight I arrived at the party which was taking place in a rundown gray clapboard cottage near the railroad station, some distance from the ocean. The Bohemian elements of Easthampton were assembled here: thirty men and women all more or less connected through sex and an interest in the arts.
Nobody paid any attention to me as I walked in the open front door. The only light came from stumps of candles stuck in bottles: the whole thing was quaint as hell.
In the living room somebody was playing a guitar, concert style, while everybody else sat on the floor talking, not listening. I found Liz in the dining room, helping herself to some dangerous-looking red wine.
She threw her arms about me dramatically. “I was so terrified!” I murmured soothing words to her while a bearded fat man drifted by, playing with a yo-yo.
The she looked at me carefully and I could see, under the play acting, that she was genuinely concerned. "You’re sure you feel all right?” she felt my head; her eyes growing round when she touched the bump which was now like a solid walnut.
"I feel just fine. Do you think you ought to drink that stuff?” I pointed to the wine which had come from an unlabeled gallon jug, like cider.
“I don’t drink it. I just hold it. Come on, let me introduce you to the host.”
The host was a burly man with an Indonesian mistress who stood two paces behind him all evening, dressed in a sari, wedgies and a pink snood. She didn’t know any English which was probably just as well. Our host, a sculptor, insisted on showing me his latest work which was out in a shed at the back of the house. With a storm lantern we surveyed his masterpiece in reverent silence: it was a lump of gray rock the size of a man with little places smoothed off, here and there.
"You get the feeling of the stone?” The sculptor looked at me eagerly; I wondered if Liz had told him I was an art critic.
"Very much so. Quite a bit of stone too. Heavy.”
“Exactly. You got it the first time. Not many people do. Heavy . . . the right word though you can’t describe sculpture in words . . . but it’s the effect I was after: heavy, like stone ... it is stone.”
"Heavy stone,” I said, rallying.
He was in an ecstasy at this. “You have it. He has it, Liz. Heavy stone ... I may call it that.”
“I thought you were calling it the ‘Diachotomy of St. Anne’?”
"Always use a subtitle. By God, but that’s good: heavy stone.”
In a mood of complete agreement and mutual admiration, we rejoined the party.
Liz and I joined a group of young literary men, all very sensitive and tender with sibilants like cloth tearing; they sat and gossiped knowingly about dissident writers, actors, figures all of the new decline.
While they hissed sharply at one another, Liz and I discussed my problems or, rather, the problems at the North Dunes.
I told her what I really thought about the morning’s adventure. “I don’t think anybody was trying to kill me. I think somebody was up to something in the house and they didn’t want to be observed. They saw me coming and they were afraid I might interefere so I was knocked over the head while they made their retreat. Anybody who wanted to kill me could’ve done so just as easy as not.”
“It’s awful! I never thought I'd know somebody mixed up in anything like this. How does it feel, living in a house with a murderer?”