“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 trenchcoat 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 up. “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 for 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 mo-125
ment, 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.
5- “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 herol 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...”
Liz’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I must say I suspected him too. Oh, I didn’t say anything about it but I had a hunch . . . you know how it is. Especially that night at Evans’ party, right after he killed his uncle ... his eyes were set too close together.”
“Eyes?”