“Uncomfortable . . . but kind of interesting.”
“You should hear the talk at the Club!”
“What’s the general theory?"
“That Brexton killed his wife. Everybody now claims to’ve been intimate friends of theirs and knew all along something horrible would happen.”
“They may have a surprise ahead of them.”
“You don’t think he did it, do you?”
“No, I don’t think so; he must’ve been tempted though.” “Then what makes you think he didn't do it?"
“A hunch . . . and my hunches are usually wrong.” I was getting tired of the whole subject. Every lead seemed to go nowhere and there weren’t many leads to begin with.
We tried to figure on possible places to go later on that evening but since I was tired and not feeling particularly hearty from my blow on the head and since we were both agreed that though sand was glamorous and all that for making love on in the moonlight it was still scratchy and uncomfortable: several sensitive areas of my body were, I noticed earlier that day, a little raw, as though caressed with sandpaper, it seemed best to put off until the next night our return engagement. But though we were both fairly blithe about the whole thing, I found her even more desirable than before we’d made love which is something that seldom happens to me: usually, after the first excitement of a new body, I find myself drifting away; this time it looked as if it might be difficult. I vowed, though, that there would be no serious moments if I could help it.
Along about one o’clock somebody began to denounce T.S. Eliot and a thick blond girl took off most of her clothes to the evident boredom of the young men who were recalling happy days on Ischia while two intense contributors to the Partisan Review began to belt each other verbally for derelictions which no one else could follow: it was a perfect Village party moved out to the beach.
Liz and I lay side by side on the floor, talking softly about nothing at all, everything forgotten but the moment and each other.
I was interrupted by Dick Randan. “ Didn’t expect to find you here,” he said, looking at us curiously.
“Oh . . . what?” I sat up and blinked at him stupidly. I’d been so carried away I’d lost all track of everything. He was
about the last person I’d expected to see in that place. I told him as much.
He sat down on the floor beside us, a little like a crane settling on a nest. “I'm an old friend of Evans’,” he said, indicating our host who was showing a sheaf of his drawings to the bearded man who'd put away his yo-yo and gone to sleep sitting bolt upright in the only armchair in the room.
“How were things back at the house?” I asked.
“All right, I guess. I left right after you did and went to the Club; there wasn’t much on there so I came over here . . . took a chance Evan might still be up. I handled his Boston show, you know.”
Then I introduced him to Liz. They nodded gravely at each other. Across the room the half-naked blond was sitting cross-legged like a Yogi and making her heavy white breasts move alternately. This had its desired effect. Even the sensitive young men stopped their cobra-hissing long enough to watch with wonder.
“Nothing like this will ever happen at the Ladyrock Yacht Club,” I said austerely.
“I’m not so sure,” said Liz, thoughtfully. “I wonder how she does that.”
“Muscle control,” said Randan and, to my surprise, he showed certain unmistakable signs of lust; for some reason I had automatically assigned him to the vast legions of Sodom . . . showing you never can tell.
“Somebody did something under the table once at the Club,” said Liz. “But it was one of the terrace tables and there wasn’t any light to speak of,” she added, making it all right.
The blond ecdysiast then rose and removed the rest of her apparel and stood before us in her mother-earth splendor: she was, as they say with a leer in low fictions, a real blond.
The Indonesian mistress then decided that this was too much; she went out of the room, returning a moment later with a large pot of water which, with an apologetic oriental smile, she poured all over the exhibitionist who began to shriek.
“It’s time to go,” said Liz.
A brawl had just begun, when we slipped out a side door into the moonlight. Randan came with us, still exclaiming with awe over the blond’s remarkable control. “People study for years to learn that,” he said.
“It must be a great consolation on long winter evenings,” I said. Then I discovered that Liz had no car tonight and, though I much preferred getting a taxi or even walking home, Randan insisted on driving us in his car.
I gave Liz a long good-night kiss at the door to her house while the collegian looked the other way. Then with all sorts of plans half-projected, she went inside and Randan drove me back to the North Dunes.
He was more interesting than I’d thought, especially about the murder which intrigued him greatly. “I’ve made a study of 63
such things,” he said gravely. “Once did a paper on the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury . . . fascinating case.”
"Seventeenth century, wasn’t it?” I can still recall a few things to confound undergraduates with.
“That’s right. I hadn’t planned to come down here though Allie invited me. Then, when I heard about what happened, over the radio in Boston, I came on down. I used to know Mrs. Brexton slightly . . . when she was going with my uncle."
“That was quite a while ago.”
“Fifteen years, I guess. I remember it clearly though. Everybody took it for granted they’d be married. I never understood why they didn’t . . . next thing we knew she married Brexton.”
“Your uncle and aunt seem awfully devoted to each other.”
But he was too shrewd to rise to that bit of bait. “Yes, they are,” he said flatly.
The North Dunes was black against the white beach. It looked suddenly scary, sinister, with no lights on ... I wondered why they hadn’t left a hall light for me.
We parked in the driveway. I couldn’t see anybody on the darkened porch. I remembered only too well what had happened the last time I stepped into that gloomy house, late at night. “You staying here?" I asked turning to Randan.
“No, I’m in the village. I don’t want to get involved; lot of other people I want to see while I'm in Easthampton.” He got out of the car. “I’ll walk you to the house.”
I was ashamed of my own sudden fear. I hoped Randan hadn't noticed it.
We skirted the front porch and approached the house from the ocean side.
He talked all the time about the murder which didn’t make me any too happy. For the first time since the trouble began, I was afraid, an icy, irrational fear. I wanted to ask him to go inside with me but I didn’t have the nerve, too ashamed to admit how shaky I was. Instead, I filibustered, answering his questions at great length, putting off as long as possible my necessary entrance.
We sat down on a metal swing which stood near the steps to the porch, a little to one side of the several unfurled beach umbrellas, like black mushrooms in the night. Moonlight made the night luminous and clear.
We sat very still to keep the swing from creaking.
“I came down here,” said Randan softly, “for a definite reason. I know Allie thinks I’m just morbid but there’s more to it than that. I'm very fond of her and my uncle. I was worried when I heard all this had happened.”
“You mean that they might be . . . involved?”
He nodded. “I don't mean directly. Just that an awful lot of stuff might come out in the papers that shouldn’t . . . gossip.”