The Faceless Adversary

by Frances

Probably the Corvette had been in during the night. It seemed, but dimly, that he remembered seeing it around seven in the morning, when he went across the street for a cup of coffee. But he couldn’t swear to it. Maybe that was yesterday morning. What it came to, you got so you didn’t notice.

  “Nice convenient place to pick up a car if you wanted one,” Grady told Shapiro.

  “Where isn’t?” Shapiro said.

  The alarm went out—John Hayward, thirty-two, five-eleven, one hundred and sixty; light brown hair; probably driving a 1955 Corvette. Wanted for questioning in re suspected homicide.

  It was a few minutes before eleven when John Hayward said, “This looks like it,” and turned the Corvette onto a narrow, black-topped road, some distance above Katonah. The road skirted a lake. It was a pretty lake, set among hills. After a time, on the side away from the lake, there was the rolling green of a golf course, with golfers walking on it. Then, on the right, there was a dignified sign: “Carabec Country Club. Members only.”

  “Trespass,” John told Barbara, and drove the car between posts, into a parking lot in which there were half a dozen cars, and room for a hundred. He stopped with the bumper against a log barrier. They did not need to leave the car to see the courts—and to see, behind, bending above, the farthest court, a great maple tree, just coming into leaf.

  “I must have been standing about there,” John said, and pointed. “Whoever took the picture must have been about—” He hesitated. “There,” he said, and again pointed. “Near the caddy house.”

  “You remember?” Barbara said.

  “Not the picture,” John said. “I mean, not anyone’s taking it. The rest—yes, pretty much.” He paused. “It’s Hank Roberts’s club,” he said. “He brought me over. It was—it was the last week end in August, I think. It was hot as hell and—”

  Roberts had made the suggestion at the office, Friday afternoon. It had been a dull, rather lazy, afternoon; an afternoon of marking time, waiting for the week end to begin. He and Hank Roberts had begun talking of tennis, starting, as he remembered, with discussion of the approaching national championships at Forest Hills. And Roberts had asked what he had on for the next day.

  For the next day, John had had on only the Shipmans—a beach party in the evening at Southport, in Connecticut on the Sound. “Tell you what,” Hank Roberts said, and told him what—he was to get up early, for once. On his way to Southport, he would drive to Lake Carabec and get in some tennis. There were some pretty good players who were always around on Saturdays. Hank would tell him how it was, and did. The same group played pretty much every week end; good group and good game. But it brightened things to get a new man in. And, after all, it was “more or less” on John’s way to Southport.

  John had agreed. He remembered it all quite clearly now, sitting in the car beside Barbara, looking at the tennis courts, and the tree which shadowed the farthest. On the court surface now there was only a splattering of leaf shadows. In August, the shade had been dense on half the court. Out of that heavy shade, tennis balls had seemed to leap, as if newly created. And into it, when one played that side, balls seemed to plunge, as the light was erased from them. But it was cooler in the shade.

  “Oh,” Barbara said. “That night. When we first—”

  She did not finish, but took John’s hand instead, and her slender fingers twined with his. It had not, at the Shipmans’, on the beach at the Shipmans’ club, been the first time she and John had met. Or perhaps, when one thought of it, it had been.

  “I remember now,” she said. “You said something about having been playing tennis. You started to say something about playing tennis and then—then you didn’t go on with it.”

  (It had been warm on the beach. They had been in the water and had come out of it and were lying on the beach, a little way from the others. Their hands had touched, almost as if by accident. It had been their hands’ first meeting.)

  “I got here,” John said, “about—oh, between ten-thirty and eleven. Hank had said ten, said they always started at ten. But I had a little trouble finding the place.”

  They had been finishing a set when John arrived—Hank Roberts and three other men, all much like Hank Roberts; all much like John Hayward. When the set was finished, Hank had taken him to the locker room and he had changed, and hung up the clothes he had been wearing in a locker. He could remember very clearly—there had been no lock on the locker. On lockers vacant for the use of guests there was never a lock. In a club it didn’t matter. That was the theory, anyway. He had never had cause to question the theory.

  He had got in a doubles game about eleven, or a little after, playing as Roberts’s partner. “We won,” he told Barbara. “Too easily. After that, we switched around.”

  The group had not been static. One man had been summoned to help take children to the beach; another had moved in. No one of them had played continuously; it had been pleasant, from time to time, to sit in the shade, sip at a beer—slowly, since beer interferes with timing—and watch. It had been after one when they knocked off for lunch. Since they could eat outside, planned to play again after eating, they had not bothered to change. There had been six of them, in chairs on the lawn, around a table, eating sandwiches with a drink or two to wash food down. It had been lazy, relaxed. By that time he had been John to the others, except for one man who preferred Johnny.

  “But,” Barbara said, “you didn’t really know them?”

  Only Hank Roberts, really. If his life depended on it— He paused. “As,” he said, “maybe it does.” He was told not to be ridiculous. Well, then, if his life depended on it, he could not remember the names of any of the others. Not now. He could not remember their names or what they looked like, except that they looked like members of a club like Carabec.

  The two were silent for a time, sitting in the small car, in the sun, trespassers at the Carabec Country Club, looking at a tree-shaded tennis court.

  “Right about there,” John said, and pointed again. “I would have been standing near the net post. Perhaps we were changing sides.”

  “But you don’t remember anyone taking pictures?”

  He did not.

  “Mr. Roberts,” she said. “Does he?”

  “I don’t know,” John said. “I don’t remember his ever making a point of it, anyway.”

  “But,” she said, “he was around all the time. You played tennis with him. Had lunch with him—and those others?”

  He hadn’t, he said, made it clear. That was generally true. But in some of the sets, Roberts had not played. It was rather, John said, like being dummy at bridge. And, engrossed in the game, those who were not dummies paid little attention to the one—or to the two—who were. And—

  He interrupted himself.

  “Pit Woodson was around,” he said. “Mentioning of bridge made me think of it. He was on the porch.” He looked around at the club house. “There,” he said, and pointed to the porch, from which one could, if one chose, look out across the tennis courts. “Playing bridge, of course. And—Dick Still was one of those playing. I didn’t know the others. I remember Pit saw me and gave a kind of salute and said something to Dick, and Dick did too. I wiggled my racket at them.”

  Later, as the tennis players were going back to it after lunch, he had said hello to Dick Still and Pit, who had not left the porch, but had lunched there. Pit had said something about the club, meaning the Harvard Club, being hopeless on Saturday afternoons in the summer and had suggested that, later, John might want to cut in. “Maybe,” John said, not meaning a syllable of it.

  “Most of the time, anyway,” Barbara said, “Mr. Roberts was around?”

  “Sure,” John said, and then, “No. Wait. After lunch he said he had an errand to do, and that we had enough without him. Which we had. He came back just as we were knocking off—around four, maybe.”

  Then they had showered and changed. A little before five, John had driven across to Ridgefield and then down, through the rolling Connect
icut hills, to Route 1 and off it, beyond Westport, to the pleasant village of Southport. (Carabec had not really been on his way.)

  “While you—” Barbara began, and stopped. They watched a youngish man, dressed for golf, walk to a car and put his bags in it. He saw them. He waved heartily. They waved back. He got in the car and drove off.

  “A big, happy family,” Barbara said.

  “He assumes we’re members,” John said, and was told, of course, they looked like members. Probably, Barbara said, it was crowded on week ends.

  “It was that week end,” John said.

  “Members,” she said. “Guests of members. And—what would prevent people like us, who look as if we might be members, merely walking in? So long as they didn’t try to charge food or drinks?”

  “I don’t know there’s anything,” John said. “Except people don’t.”

  She smiled at that. He caught the smile.

  “All right,” he said, “it’s still true.” He considered. “Generally,” he said, and at that she smiled again, thinking that, slowly, he was learning—and thinking that, along with other things, he was very nice.

  “If you mean, could anyone, club member or guest or plain outsider, walk in with a camera and take a picture of me,” John said, “I’d say the answer is yes.”

  He looked at her, and his eyes narrowed a little.

  “And,” he said, “if you mean, could anyone have walked into the locker room and taken anything he wanted out of somebody’s pockets—my pockets—the answer to that is yes, too. If he’d known which locker I was using.”

  “Mr. Roberts knew,” she said.

  “Actually,” he said, “there aren’t more than a dozen open lockers. Anybody, with time enough could find what he wanted. The tailors put buyers’ names on labels in pockets,” he said. “Usually. Anyway, mine does.”

  “And,” she said, “your keys were in your pocket. Weren’t they?” He nodded. “And you were here for hours. And anyone who wanted to could get your keys and have duplicates made somewhere—Katonah probably—and be back in—in how long, John?”

  “An hour,” he said. “Probably less than an hour.”

  “We’re learning a little,” she said. “Aren’t we, John?”

  He nodded. But he added that they were learning little that was more than a kind of filling in. The photograph could have been taken, the key abstracted and duplicated, by anyone—by Hank Roberts or Pit Woodson or Dick Still, certainly, but also by almost any man who looked like a country club member. And that this man did, they already knew.

  “Well,” she said, “we’ll just have to ask some more people.”

  “I suppose,” John said. He started the car. He backed it in a circle and headed out of the parking area. He turned right, toward Katonah, on the road which skirted Lake Carabec. They had gone perhaps a mile when a siren sounded behind them—sounded imperiously. John pulled to the right, almost on the narrow shoulder, to let the demander pass. The State Police car passed—and turned in to block the Corvette. John stopped and a uniformed trooper got out of the car. He came toward the Corvette. He had a pleasant face, which displayed no animus. He looked, John thought, as if he might be planning to sell tickets to a policemen’s ball.

  “Mr. Hayward?” the trooper said. “Mr. John Hayward?”

  He was not selling tickets to a policemen’s ball.

  “Yes,” John said.

  “They want to talk to you,” the trooper said, still pleasantly. “Like you to come along with us.”

  “Where?” John said.

  “Hawthorne,” the trooper said. “But we’ll take you there, Mr. Hayward. You just come along and get in.” There was still no animus in his voice. “The lady can take care of your car.” He looked at Barbara Phillips. “That right, miss?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “But—”

  “Listen,” John said, “they’ve been all over it. Over it and over it.”

  “So?” the trooper said. “I wouldn’t know, Mr. Hayward. Except, how could they? Whoever ‘they’ are? Because it only happened last night, didn’t it?”

  There was a long pause. Then John Hayward said, “What happened?” He could hear caution in his own voice, and a kind of apprehension.

  “Mrs. Piermont got killed,” the trooper said. “That’s what they want to talk to you about, Mr. Hayward. Seems they think maybe you killed her.”

  He was still mild of voice; still noncommittal of voice. But then he said, “All right. Come along, Mr. Hayward,” and his voice, although still there was no comment in it, was a policeman’s official voice. “Come along and get in.”

  John Hayward went along and got in. They drove him to Hawthorne.

  There they kept him waiting. He sat on a wooden bench, in the barracks of the State Police. A trooper sat beside him, waiting too. Finally, another trooper came to a door and said, “All right. You can come in now.” It was rather as if John had sat in a dentist’s reception room, waiting his turn.

  He went into a bare room, with several chairs along one wall, and a table in the center. There were chairs at the table. Miller was in the room, and Grady, and a state trooper with sergeant’s chevrons. “Well,” Grady said, “here we are again, Mr. Hayward. What did you kill her for? An old lady like Mrs. Piermont?”

  “Mrs. Piermont?” John said. “I didn’t kill her.”

  “Didn’t kill anybody,” Grady said. “Makes it—”

  “All right,” Miller said. “Take it easy. It seems, Mr. Hayward, that you do know Mrs. Piermont’s dead?”

  “Yes,” John said. “The trooper told me.” He was careful again, watchful again.

  “You were there yesterday,” Miller said. “Asking about her. Why?”

  “We—” John said.

  “You and the girl,” Miller said. “Yes, asking about Mrs. Piermont. And about the Titus girl. I suppose it was the only thing you could do, after Miss Phillips found the dress. Play along with her. Play innocent. Did you think if you killed Mrs. Piermont nobody could identify the Titus girl?”

  “No,” John said. “That would have been stupid, wouldn’t it? Probably a dozen people could say Nora Evans was Julie Titus. If she was.”

  “So,” Miller said, “you admit knowing she was. But I suppose you say you didn’t know her, either. Didn’t take her to the restaurant around here and bump into this preacher. Didn’t get her to come to New York with you, and use another name, and shack up with her. Why the name change, Mr. Hayward?”

  “I don’t know,” John said. “I don’t know anything about it. I’ve been trying to find out.”

  Grady used, violently, a short, characterizing word.

  “Take it easy,” Miller told him. “Suppose you tell Mr. Hayward about this new one, sergeant. Since he doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “Sure,” the sergeant said. “Why not? It was this way, Mr. Hayward. ’Long about—”

  Along about two o’clock that morning, or a little after two, Ebenezer Titus—yardman, occasional chauffeur, for Mrs. Piermont—had been awakened in his room over the garage. He had been awakened by the sound of a shot, coming from the house.

  He had put on a pair of trousers and a pair of shoes, and had started toward the house, running. But he had heard the sound of other running feet and had turned in pursuit. Almost at once, however, he had changed his mind, deciding whoever was running already had too great a start. He had turned back toward the house, and had seen that the front door was open and that light was streaming through the door.

  He had called Mrs. Piermont’s name as he ran toward the house, and into it. Then he had stopped calling, seeing she could not hear. She lay sprawled in the hall, near the foot of the stairs, and her head was blown open. It didn’t take a doctor to tell she was dead. He went around the body. He called the police.

  It did not take much of a search to find the way the fleeing murderer had gone. He had run across a field and gone under a barbed wire fence—but not cleanly under the fence.
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br />   “O.K.,” Miller said, and took a loosely wrapped package from the table and unwrapped it. He dangled a boldly patterned sports jacket from his big hands.

  “Seen this before, haven’t you, Mr. Hayward?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Yours, isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t mine. We’ve been over that.”

  “Show him, Grady,” Miller said, and Grady took an envelope from his pocket, and strands of wool, in two colors, from the envelope.

  “On a barb in the fence,” Miller said. “Fits. See?” He showed the back of the coat, and a rent in the back. He said, “Well, Mr. Hayward?”

  “When I got home last night, the jacket wasn’t there,” John said. “When I left this morning, it wasn’t there. Where did you get it?”

  “Tell him, Grady,” Miller said. Grady told him.

  “So you see how it is,” Miller said. “Where were you at about two o’clock this morning, Mr. Hayward?”

  “At home,” John said. “In bed.”

  “Sure,” Miller said. “About what time would you say you got home, Mr. Hayward?”

  John thought. He guessed it at about eleven.

  “Sure,” Miller said. “Then you’re all right. Out of it. All we’ve got to do is have the elevator man say what time he took you up, and that he didn’t take you down again. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “No,” John said. He spoke very slowly. “I walked up.”

  “Walked up?” Miller said, and his tone was full of innocent surprise. “Now how did you happen to do that, Mr. Hayward? Just tell us about walking up.”

  XI

  She had found again the little cluster of white houses, and the white church, in the hills near Brewster. She had not known whether she could find it; when she did come on it, she came as unexpectedly as they had come the day before. She pulled off the road in front of the rectory.

  Father Higbee was in the garden at the side of the house. He was on his knees, bent very low toward the ground, peering at the ground. He wore what appeared to be old army trousers and shirt. Now and then, after examining it very carefully, he pulled a weed. From near by, Barbara spoke to him, spoke his name. He looked up at her and smiled benignly and it was clear he did not in the least recognize her. But he got up. He stood, smiling, a little rotund, rubbing his back.