by Gore Vidal
The clubhouse was lighted with Japanese lanterns. A good band was playing. College boys and girls were necking on the dark pier which extended out into the sea. After a fumble with a pile of cards at the door, I was let in to join the nice people who were, all in all, a fairly handsome crew, divided evenly between the well-groomed, well-fed, middle-aged and the golden young on their summer vacation. The middle generation, mine, were all off working to make enough money to get a summer place out here and, at forty, to join the Ladyrock Yacht Club.
Liz found me at the bar where I was ordering a Manhattan and hoping she’d come along to sign for it.
She was beautiful, in black and white with something or other shining in her hair: her eyes glittered and she was pleasantly high.
“Oh, it’s wonderful you got away! I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to.” She signed for my drink like a good girl. “Come on, let’s dance.”
“Not until I’ve had this.”
“Well, come on out on the pier then. I want to talk to you.” We made our way slowly across the dance floor. Young and old bucks pawed Liz who apparently was the belle of this ball. Several old school friends of mine, bald and plump (guests like myself; not yet members) greeted me and I knew at least a dozen of the girls, which Liz didn’t like.
“You’re such a flirt,” she said, once we were on the pier. The moon shone white upon our heads. The young lovers were farther out the pier. A number of alcoholics reeled cheerfully along the boardwalk which separated the pier from the club itself.
“I’ve just been around a long time.”
But she was more interested in the murder. And she knew it was murder. “It’s all over town!” she said excitedly. “Everybody says Brexton drowned her.”
“I wonder how that rumor started?” I hedged.
“Oh, you know and you won’t tell me.” She looked at me accusingly. “I promise I won’t breathe a word to anybody.”
“On your honor as a Girl Guide?”
“Oh, Peter, tell me! You were there. You saw it happen, didn’t you?”
“I saw it happen all right.” I put my empty glass down on the railing and put one arm around her; she shook away.
“You have to tell,” she said.
“Don’t I appeal to you?”
“Men don’t appeal to women, as you well know,” she said loftily. “We are only interested in homemaking and, on top of that, our sexual instinct does not fully develop until the late twenties. I’m too young to have any responses.”
“But I’m too old. The male, as we all know, reaches his sexual peak at sixteen after which he declines steadily into a messy old age. I am long past my prime … an erotic shell, capable of only a minor.…”
“Oh, Peter, tell me or I’ll scream!” Her curiosity brought an end to our Kinsian dialogue. It has recently become the aim of our set to act entirely in accordance with the master’s findings and what the majority do and feel we do and feel, more or less. I was all ready to launch into the chapter on premarital petting which leads to climax but not penetration; unfortunately my companion, deeply interested in murder like any healthy girl, had begun to scream.
“For God’s sake, shut up!” I said nervously. Luckily only alcoholics were on the terrace … a trio of minor executives in minor banks applauded softly her first scream; the couples on the pier were all engaged in premarital petting (college-type) and chose not to hear her.
“You’ll tell me?” she took a deep breath, ready for a louder scream.
“There’s nothing to tell. Mrs. Brexton took four sleeping pills, went in swimming and drowned before we could get to her.”
“Why did she take four sleeping pills?”
“That is the question which hovers over all our heads like the sword of Themistocles.”
“Damocles,” said that classical scholar. “Somebody give her the pills?”
“Who knows.”
“She took them herself?”
“So I think, but the police have other ideas.”
“Like Paul Brexton giving them to her secretly?”
“Or someone else … though why the nonfatal four, I’ll never know. If he really wanted to do her in, I should think the usual dozen would have been in order.”
“It’s all a devious plot, Peter. Any fool can see it. She was going in swimming: what could be smarter than giving her something to make her groggy just as she got out in that awful undertow?”
“I can think of a lot of things which’d be smarter. Among them.…” I slipped my arm around her again but she was extremely unresponsive.
“On the other hand, I don’t suppose there was any way of knowing for sure she would go in the water. Oh, isn’t it terribly exciting? and happening to Brexton too, of all people.”
“It will cause unpleasant talk,” I said, drawing her even closer to me: I smelled lilacs and the fresh warm odor of Liz.
“What on earth do you have in mind, Peter?”
“It’s not in my mind.…”
“Filthy, brutish creatures … all men are the same.”
“If you’d rather I’ll get you a sixteen-year-old boy.”
“And what on earth would I do with one of those?”
“Modesty impels me to draw a veil over.…”
“It’ll be in all the papers, won’t it?”
“What? the sixteen-year.…”
“No, you idiot, Mrs. Brexton’s death.”
“Well, of course.…”
“Isn’t that just wonderful for you? that’s your job, isn’t it?”
“I wasn’t hired to handle Mrs. Brexton’s murder.” As I said this, I was suddenly startled by the implications. It was too wild … yet mightn’t Mrs. Veering have suspected there’d be trouble and hired me in advance, just in case? She was the kind to look ahead: a combination Hetty Green and lush. The possibility that she might have been the one to ease her niece into a more beautiful world occurred to me then. Motive was obscure but then I didn’t know anybody’s motive … they were all strangers to me. Even so it was the kind of thing Mrs. Veering might do … she was both mad and methodical, an unusual combination. The thought was sobering.
Liz noticed my sudden thoughtfulness. “What’re you thinking about?” she asked. “Are you considering ways of seducing me?”
I snorted. “What is more ignoble than a woman? You have not the slightest sensual interest in the male, even in such a perfect specimen as myself, yet at all hours of the day and night you think about seduction.…”
“And homemaking. A little two-room apartment in Peter Cooper Village. Birdseye products in the frigidaire … Clapp’s strained baby food on the shelf and a darling fat baby wetting itself periodically in a special fourteen ninety-five Baby-Leroy crib from Macy’s.”
“My God, you are prepared for marriage!”
Liz smiled enigmatically. “We all are. Actually, I’m doing a piece on the young married couple in New York City for one of the magazines, not Harpers Bazaar. Something more middle-class. They want me to describe bliss on thirty-five dollars a week. You don’t know what a good wife I’ll make!”
“There’s more to marriage than that.”
“Than thirty-five dollars? I suppose there is. I think I’d like someone very rich. But seriously, Peter, you don’t really believe Brexton killed his wife, do you? I mean it just isn’t the kind of thing that happens.”
“I don’t know what to think.” This was my clearest statement so far, and the most accurate. I then swore her to secrecy and we went back inside.
Everyone was fairly tight. The very nicest people had gone home. Only one stag had been knocked down in the john (you may recall what happened to the late Huey Long in a Long Island men’s room some years ago); a husband and wife (another woman’s husband, another man’s wife) were locked tight together in a dim corner of the room. The college set, a particularly beautiful gang of sunburned animals, were singing songs and feeling each other happily while plotting their next move which, from what I overhear
d, was an all-out attack on Southampton. Already I could hear the crash of cars into solid objects, the tinkling of broken glass: youth!
And youth, in the congenial form of Liz Bessemer, was all mine that night. Her uncle and aunt had gone home. The various bucks who had been competing for her favors had either gone off with whatever available girls were on hand or had quietly passed out among the parked convertibles.
“Let’s go to Montauk!” This brilliant idea came to Liz as we moved slowly around the dance floor, waltzing to a fox trot … I have no sense of beat and, besides, only know how to waltz which I do fairly well to any music.
“Walking?”
“I’ll drive. I’ve got the car … at least I think I have. Aunt went home in our house guest’s car … I hope.”
Aunt had indeed gone home in the house guest’s car, leaving us a fine Buick with its top down.
She leaped into the driver’s seat and I relaxed beside her as we drove swiftly down the center of the long straight road which runs parallel to the dunes all the way to Montauk, Long Island’s sandy terminus.
The moon almost blinded us; it shone directly in our eyes. We stopped a long way before Montauk. At my direction, we turned off the road and drove down a sandy trail which ended in the Atlantic Ocean. Between two dunes, a mile from the nearest darkened house, we made love.
I’ve never seen such a night as that one. The sky was filmed with all the stars available in that happy latitude while everywhere, in every part of the sky, meteors were falling.
When it was over, we lay side by side on the sand which was still faintly warm from the sun and we looked at the stars, the meteors and the moon. A salt breeze dried our naked bodies. She shivered and I put my arm under her and pulled her close … she was light in my arms.
“I ought to get back,” she said, her voice small, no longer teasing.
“Almost day.” We thought about that for a while. She pulled herself up on her elbow and looked at me curiously in the moonlight. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“Nothing … except maybe how pleasant it is on the beach like this and how much I’ll hate having to get dressed again and go back to that house.”
She sighed and stretched. “It was nice, wasn’t it?”
I pulled her down on my chest and kissed her for answer; her small breasts tickled my skin. I was ready again even though at my age I’m officially past the peak but she sensed this and, instead, got to her feet and ran down to the water and dove in.
Remembering what had happened less than twenty-four hours before, I was scared to death. I leaped into the cold black water after her. Fortunately, she was a good swimmer and we kept well within the surf line. It was strange, swimming in that black ocean under a black sky … the moon and the beach white, and the tops of the waves, bright with phosphorus.
Then, shivering and laughing, we ran back to the car and dried ourselves with her aunt’s lap rug.
We both agreed that the other looked just fine with no clothes on and Liz admitted shyly to me that she got a minor thrill out of observing the male body in a state of nature if she liked the person who owned the body. I told her she was unnatural and might end up as a footnote in a textbook.
In a happy mood, we drove south and she let me off a few yards from the North Dunes just as daylight, gray and pink, smudged the east.
“Tomorrow?”
She nodded. “If I can manage it. I don’t know what’s on.”
“I don’t either but I can sneak off.”
“I can too. I’ll call you when I know.” We kissed long and blissfully; then she was gone in a screech of gears. She was one of the worst drivers I’ve ever known, but she was also a wonderful girl. I experienced an emotion which was something more than my usual athleticism; then I quickly put all romantic thoughts out of my head. She was a lovely girl; the night had been perfect; the moon bright; what should’ve happened did happen and that was that. I am not the serious kind in these matters, I said to myself sternly as I opened the back door quietly and stepped into the kitchen.
II
I came to in bed.
My head felt as if someone had whetted an axe on it and at first I suffered from double vision. Everything was blurred. Then, with an effort, I brought Mrs. Veering into focus.
She was standing over me, an anxious look on her face. Light streamed in the window.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Ten o’clock. You certainly had us scared out of our wits! What on earth happened to you?”
I put my hand to my head where an enormous lump had formed. No skin had been broken and there was no bandage, only an aching head. “I haven’t any idea. I got home about dawn and.…”
Greaves appeared in the doorway. “Has he been conscious long, Mrs. Veering?”
“Just this moment. If you.…”
“Could you leave us alone, please. I’d like to ask Mr. Sargeant a few questions.”
“Certainly.” With a reassuring pat, Mrs. Veering trotted off, shutting the door behind her.
“Well?” the policeman looked at me, half smiling.
“Well what?” I felt awful. I noticed I was wearing only a shirt and shorts. I was suddenly very hot under the blanket. I threw it off and sat up dizzily, swinging my legs over the side of the bed.
“Were you trying to do our job for us, Mr. Sargeant?”
Go away.
“I’m afraid you must answer my questions. You received a severe blow but according to the doctor there was no concussion and you’ll be able to get up whenever you like.”
“Would you do me the courtesy of going away and coming back when I feel better?” My head was pounding with pain as I moved shakily toward the bathroom. “I’m about to perform a natural function,” I said sharply.
“I can wait.”
I groaned and went into the bathroom where I put my head under the cold water tap; then I took two Empirin tablets, figuring if I wasn’t supposed to take any I’d have been warned. I was being treated too damn casually, I thought.
When I returned, Greaves was seated in the armchair by my bed, making marks in a small notebook.
“You still here?”
“What happened?” He looked at me expectantly.
“A woman dressed all in black and carrying what seemed to be calla lilies was crossing the kitchen when I entered. When I asked her if I might be of assistance, she brought the lilies down on my head, shrieking ‘Thus to all members of the MacTavish Clan!’ ”
Greaves looked faintly alarmed, as though not sure how serious the blow might have been. “Calla lilies?” he asked.
“Or something.” I took my clothes off, hoping that would get rid of him, but he still regarded me with the same abstracted air while I got into a bathing suit.
“You didn’t see her face?”
“I am making fun of you,” I said, feeling light in the head, as though I’d drunk too much too fast. I sat down weakly on the edge of the bed. “Didn’t see anybody. Walked in the kitchen door and bang! that was the end until I just now opened my eyes.”
“You were struck from the right side by a metal object held by a person as tall or a little taller than yourself.…”
“Or standing on a chair.…”
“Or standing on something, yes. You were discovered at seven-thirty by the cook who screamed for four minutes. One of my men brought you up here and a doctor was called.”
“No clues?”
“We call them leads, Mr. Sargeant. The police department is not.…”
“Then were there any leads? like a strand of blond hair soaked in blood or maybe the old dandruff of a middle-aged murderer scattered beside my still form?”
“Nothing but your still form was found.” He paused, indicating that for his money it wasn’t still enough.
“Well, there’s nothing more I can say.”
“You were out. You left the house after I expressly
asked everyone to stay in. You were dressed in a.…”
“Tuxedo with a loose inner button. I went to the Ladyrock Yacht Club.…”
“After which you and a Miss Liz Bessemer drove north to Amagansett.”
This stopped me. “What happened then, in Amagansett?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. Miss Bessemer dropped you off here at five-twenty or thereabouts.”
“I suppose your man saw all this? the one who was sound asleep when I came home.”
“He was sound asleep and he’s been replaced.” Greaves was calm, implacable. “Sargeant, what do you know?”
He whipped this last out like a spray of cold water in my face. He was leaning forward now, intense, grimly serious.
“About what?” The Empirin hadn’t begun to work yet and my head ached fiercely.
“You know something you haven’t told us, something important … you know enough for the murderer to want to kill you.”
This had occurred to me some minutes before when I came to, aware I’d been clubbed. I was in the dark, though. I was fairly certain neither Brexton nor Claypoole knew I’d overheard their conversation. They were the likeliest pair.
Greaves was on a different tack, however. I found out soon enough what was on his mind. “What did you see out there in the water, when Mrs. Brexton was drowning? What did Brexton do exactly? what did Claypoole do? and the woman, did she speak? did she call for help?”
“You think I saw something out there that somebody … the murderer, didn’t want me to, is that it?”
“That’s it.”
I shook my head which was beginning, slowly, to clear. “I’ve gone over the whole thing a dozen times in my mind since it happened, but I can’t find anything unusual … anything you don’t already know.”
“How close was Brexton to his wife when you got to him?”
“About five feet, I’d say … not very close. He was gagging and getting blue in the face. I grabbed him while.…”
“Claypoole grabbed Mrs. Brexton.”
“Yes. Then we came in to shore.”
“Brexton never touched his wife, did he?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. The spray was in my eyes. I was bucking surf all the way. When I got there, she was sinking, going down again and again, hardly struggling enough to get herself back up. She didn’t make a sound.”
