She looked at me with vague eyes when we were introduced: I’ve known her for years. “Charmed,” she sighed, her face milk-pale beneath the wide hat she wore to protect herself from the sun. On her arms elbow-length gloves, circled at the wrist by emeralds, hid the signs of age. Her face had been lifted so many times that she now resembles an early Sung Chinese idol.
Liz quickly pulled me away. She was delighted with the news. “It’s all just as I said, isn’t it?” Only the fact she looked wonderful in red kept me from shoving her face in.
“Just as you said, dear.”
“Well, aren’t you glad? You’re out of that awful house and the thing’s finished.”
“I’m holding up as well as possible.”
“Oh, you’re just being professional! Forget about it. People make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. I read your pieces in the Globe faithfully ... of course it was perfectly clear you thought Brexton didn’t do it but I’m sure the Globe won’t be mad at a little thing like that. I mean, look at Truman that time.”
“Truman who? at what time?”
“Truman the President the time when he got elected and they said he couldn’t. Nobody minded everybody being wrong.”
I maintained her innocence. Heads had fallen that dark year. One head might fall this year. Of course I could live without the Globe, but even so an old alliance would be forever gone if I didn’t dish up something sensational.
At that moment my nemesis, Elmer Bush, wearing canary yellow slacks, a maroon sports jacket, alligator shoes and a smile such as only the millions who watch him on television ever get from his usually flint-like face, moved resolutely toward me, hand outstretched, booming, “Long time no see, Brother Sargeant!”
I forced down a wave of nausea and introduced him to the table; everyone seemed more pleased than not to have this celebrated apparition among them,
“Quite a little to-do you been having in these parts,” said the columnist, slapping me on the back in the hopes I had a sunburn. I didn’t. I punched his arm fraternally, a quick judo-type rabbit punch calculated to paralyze the nerves for some seconds. But either he was made of foam rubber or I’ve lost the old magic. He didn’t bat an eye.
“Globe felt I ought to come down for a look-see.”
“A what?” I still kept my old buddy smile as a possible cover-up for another friendly jab in his arm (I’d figured I’d missed by an inch the nerve center) but he moved out of range.
“A look-around . . . always the kidder, Pete. Ha! Ha! Been reading those pieces you wrote. Some mighty good on-the-spot coverage, if I say so myself.”
“Thanks." I waited for the blow to falclass="underline" it did.
“Of course you backed the wrong horse. Got them sort of peeved at the city desk. You know how sensitive they are. Course I never figure anything you say in the papers makes a damned bit of difference since everybody’s forgot it by the next edition but you can’t tell an editor that.” This was the columnist’s credo, I knew. I had often wondered how Elmer had avoided a lynching party: his column is in many ways the dirtiest around town . . . which puts it well into the province of the Department of Sanitation, Sewer Division.
“He hasn’t been indicted yet.”
“Friday.” Elmer smacked his lips. “Had a little chat with Greaves ... old friend of mine. Used to know him when I covered Suffolk County in the old days." This was probably a lie. Elmer, like all newsmen, tends to claim intimacy with everyone from Presidents to police officials. “He's got a good little old case. That key! man, that’s first-class police work.”
I groaned to myself. Liz, I saw, was enchanted by the famous columnist. She listened to him with her pretty mouth faintly ajar. I said wearily: “You're right, Elmer. It takes real cunning to search a man’s room and find a key. They don’t make policemen nowadays like they used to in Greaves’ day."
Elmer sensed irony . . . something he doesn't come in contact with much in his line of snooping in the wake of elopements and divorces and vice-raids. “Don't sell Greaves short," he said slowly, his face solemn, his manner ponderous. “There aren’t too many like him around . . . clear-headed thinkers. That’s what I like about him. You could’ve picked up a lot from him. I did. I’m not ashamed to admit it. . . I’ll learn from any man." There was a pause as we all considered this.
Then I asked gravely, innocently, “You also find out why Brexton used the key to get into Miss Claypoole’s room?”
Bush looked at me as though I’d gone off my head. “You been in publicity too long," he said at last, contemptuously.
"He stole the key from Mrs. Veering ... it was kept in her desk, by the way, right in the top drawer where anybody could’ve swiped it . . . and he unlocked Miss Claypoole’s door when he heard the nurse go off duty. Then he tiptoed in, took a hypodermic, filled it with strychnine, tried to give her a shot, failed . . . ran back to his room and locked the door, hiding the key in his pillowcase."
“Oh, isn’t that fascinating!” Treacherous Liz was carried away with excitement.
“The strychnine," I said quietly, "was kept in Mrs. Veering’s room, not in Miss Claypoole’s. How could he’ve got it?”
“Any time . . . any time at all.” Elmer was expansive.
“Perhaps. That leaves only one other mystery. I’m sure you and Greaves have it worked out though: why did Brexton want to kill Allie?"
"Keep her from testifying.”
“Yet she has already testified that she was with Brexton at the time her brother was killed, isn’t that right? Well, it doesn’t make sense, his trying to destroy his only alibi."
Elmer only smiled. “I’m not at liberty to divulge the prosecution’s case . . . yet."
I was appalled at the implications. Neither Elmer nor Greaves was a complete fool. Did this mean that the state was going to try to prove that Allie and Brexton together had killed her brother? That Brexton might’ve then wanted her dead to clear himself? . . . No, it didn’t add up; the police weren’t that stupid. They knew something I didn’t or they were bluffing.
Alma Edderdale invited us all to her cabana. Liz and I followed her, leaving Elmer to circulate importantly among the important members of the Club.
Lady Edderdale’s cabana was a choice one on the end of the row, with a bright awning, a porch and a portable bar. A half dozen of us arranged ourselves in deck chairs. The afternoon was splendid with that silver light you only get in the autumn by the sea.
Lady Edderdale talked to me for some minutes. At last she began to place me. She seemed almost interested when I told her I was staying with Mrs. Veering.
“Poor dear Rose,” she murmured. “What a frightful thing to have happen! Brexton was my favorite modern old master too. Why should anyone want to have murdered him?”
I tried to explain that it was not Brexton but his wife who’d been murdered but Alma only nodded like a nearsighted horse confronted with oats in the middle-distance.
“His wife, Peggy, was always a trial, wasn’t she? But, poor darling, what will she do without him now? She was Rose’s daughter, you know."
I gave up. Lady Edderdale’s confusion was legendary. She ambled on in her rather British, dying-fall voice. “Yes, it must be a strain for all of them. I’m sure the person who killed him must be terribly sorry now. I should be, shouldn’t you? Such a fine painter, I mean. How is Rose, by the way? I haven’t seen her yet.”