“If you were talking to Miss Claypoole how come you were in the dark? There wasn't a light on in the house when we got there.”
“We were on the porch, in the moonlight.”
“The porch overlooking the terrace?”
“No, on the south side, the golf course side.”
“I wonder where the police were.”
“One patrolled the house regularly while the other was looking for extra fuses which the butler had mislaid. The policeman had flashlights,” he added, “to round out the picture.”
“Picture of what is the question.”
“Picture of a murderer,” said Brexton softly and with one finger he stabbed the torso of the figure in the sand. I winced involuntarily.
“Is there anything you’d like me to say?” I asked, trying to make myself sound more useful than, in fact, I was. “I’ll be doing another piece tomorrow and...”
“You might make the point that not only was I with Miss Claypoole when her brother was killed but that my wife was in the habit of taking large quantities of sleeping pills at any time of the day or night and that four was an average dose if she was nervous. I’ve tried to tell the police this but they find it inconvenient to believe. Perhaps now they’ll take me seriously.”
“Mrs. Brexton was not murdered? She took the pills herself?”
“Exactly. If I know her, her death was as big a surprise to her as it was to the rest of us.”
“You don’t think she might have wanted to kill herself? to swim out where she knew she'd drown.”
“Kill herself? She planned to live forever! She was that kind.” But he wouldn’t elaborate and soon we went back to the house while the plain-clothes man watched us from the shadow of the porch.
That afternoon Liz paid a call and we strolled along the beach together to the Club; apparently the policeman didn’t much care what I did.
Liz was lovely and mahogany-dark in a two-piece affair which wasn’t quite a bathing suit but showed nearly as much. I was able to forget my troubles for several minutes at a time while watching her scuff along the sand, her long legs were slender and smooth with red paint flaking off the toenails as she kicked shells and dead starfish.
But she wouldn’t let me forget the murders for one minute. She had read my piece in the Glnbe which was just out, and all the other papers too. “I don’t think it’s safe,” she said after she’d breathlessly recited to me all the bloody details she’d read that afternoon.
“I don’t think so either, Liz, but what can I do?” I was
willing to milk this for all it was worth . . . the thought that she might be erotically excited by danger to the male (cf. behavior of human females in wartime) was appealing, but not precise. Liz, I think, has no imagination at all, just the usual female suspicion that everything's going to work out for the worst if some woman doesn’t step in and restore the status to its previous quo. There wasn't much room for her to step in, though, except to advise.
“Just leave, that’s all you have to do. They can’t stop you. The worst they can do is make you appear at the trial, to testify.” Th dramatic possibilities of this seemed to appeal to her; her knowledge of the technicalities were somewhat vague but she was wonderful when she was excited, her eyes glowing and her cheeks a warm pink beneath her tan.
I maneuvered her into the dunes just before we got to the Club. She was so busy planning my getaway that she didn’t know until too late that we were hidden from view by three dunes which, though they didn’t resemble the mountains of Idaho did resemble three pointed smooth breasts arranged in a warm triangle. She started to protest; then she just shut her eyes and we made love, rocking in the cradle of white hot sand, the sky a blue weight over our heads.
We lay for a while together, breathing fast, our hearts in unison quieting. I was relaxed for the first time in two tense days. Everything seemed unimportant except ourselves. But then the practical Liz was sitting up, arranging her two-piece garment which I’d badly mangled in a bit of. caveman play.
I waited for some vibrant word of love. Liz spoke: “You know, darling, there are such things as beds, old-fashioned as that may sound.”
It served me right, I decided, for expecting the familiar thick honey of love. “I bet it doesn’t scratch you as much as it does me,” I said, pulling up my old G.I. slacks, aware that sand had collected in private places.
“You know so little about women,” said Liz kindly. “I’ll get you a chart and show you how our anatomy differs from the male who is based on a fairly simple, even vulgar plumbing arrangement.”
“I suppose the female is just dandy.”
“Dandy?” Magnificent! We are the universe in symbol. The real McCoy. Gate to reality, to life itself. All men envy us for being able to bear children. Instead of walking around with all those exterior pipes, we . . .”
“Sexual chauvinism,” I said and rolled her back onto the sand but we did not make love this time. We just lay together for a while until the heat became unbearable; then both wringing wet, we ran to the Club a few yards down the beach.
The Ladyrock, by day, is a nautical-looking place with 72
banners flying, a poo! where children splash around, a terrace with awning for serious drinkers, rows of lockers and cabanas, a model Club on a model coast and full of model members, if not the pillars, at least the larger nails of the national community.
I was a little nervous about being introduced to Liz’s aunt who sat with a group of plump middle-aged ladies in pastel-flowered dresses and wide hats, all drinking tea under a striped umbrella. I was sure that our lust marked us in scarlet letters but, outside of the fact that on a fairly cool day we were both flushed and dripping sweat, there was apparently no remarkable sign of our recent felicities. Liz’s aunt said we were both too old to be running races on the sand and we were dismissed.
“Races she calls it!” I was amused as I followed Liz to her family’s cabana.
“I’m sure that’s what she thinks sex is anyway.” Liz was blithe. “They had no sense of sport in those days.” I don’t know why but I was shocked by this. I realized from hearsay that, although Liz was occasionally willing, she was far from being a sexual gymnast like so many girls of her generation. The real rub of course was to hear her talk the way I usually did. I resented her lack of romance, of all the usual messiness which characterizes even the most advanced modern lovers. I wondered if she was trying deliberately to pique me; if she was, she was succeeding. I was willing to do almost anything to get a rise out of her: just one soulful look, one sigh, one murmured: “I wish this could go on forever,” would have made me feel at home. Instead, she was acting like a jaded high school boy in his senior summer.
We washed up carefully in the shower of the cabana and then I put on a pair of her uncle’s trunks which hung sadly from my pelvis, to her delight. "I wish all men would wear them like that,” she said, pouring herself into a bright green creation which fitted her like scales do a snake. “Leaves more to the imagination.” And then she was off in a lightning break for the ocean. I didn’t overtake her until she was well into the first line of breakers.
We weren’t back on the beach until the cocktail crowd had arrived. Hundreds of brightly dressed men and women were gathering beneath the umbrellas. They formed in separate groups like drops of oil in a glass of water. Certain groups did not speak to others. Those with too much money were treated as disdainfully as those with too little. Even here in paradise you could tell the cherubim from the seraphim.