“Did she try to talk you out of it?”
“Yes, but I—I was determined to get rid of Paul for her.”
“For yourself, you mean.”
“Well—perhaps.”
“Even when she pleaded with you not to do anything?”
“She stepped back—before I could stop her—and she fell through the open gateway. I don’t remember much after that. I guess I just ran away, that’s all. And then you found her in the morning.”
Carmody sat down on the beach. Dunning moved a little away from him, toward the dark line of the jetty that reached out into the sea. Carmody said, “I never considered you until Martha mentioned that you were once in love with Irene. Then it all fitted. I was confused because I couldn’t understand why any of my associates would want to kill Irene. They don’t do anything without a good reason for it. And when Paul was killed tonight, I was damned sure they hadn’t done it, even if the body was found in Monte’s room.”
“That’s where I caught up with Paul,” Dunning said.
“So you finished what you started out to do.”
“Yes.”
“But Lila saw you.”
“I didn’t know about that until later. And I didn’t give Monte Bachore credit for his quick thinking. He found the body and had it removed to Martha’s cottage. I was quite frantic about it. I didn’t know what to do or how to straighten it out then. I didn’t intend to get Martha involved.” Dunning’s voice altered slightly. “Bill, I have a gun, too.”
“I thought you might have,” Carmody said.
“Get up, Bill.”
“Are we going to Lila now?”
“Yes. Get up. Keep your hand out of your pocket.”
“That’s not the gun you killed Paul with.”
“No. This one is my own.”
“And the other was Martha’s. Why did you use Martha’s, if you didn’t want her to be involved?”
“Get up, Bill. We’re wasting time.”
Carmody stood up. “I think I can understand everything you did, Mark, up to a point. I think I understand how you felt when Irene died, when all you wanted was to save her and make her happy, according to your idea of what might make her happy. But killing Lila simply because she happened to witness your murder of Paul Sloade, and killing Martha and me, is something else. Something in a different category.”
“I don’t want to kill anybody else, Bill.”
“But you intend to, anyway.”
“I have to.”
“There are police right down the beach. You could go to them right now and give yourself up.”
“I thought I was going to do that, but I couldn’t. Start walking, Bill. Up over the jetty.” As Carmody got up and climbed the boulders that were piled against the jetty, Dunning’s voice reached after him. “A man never really knows himself until he’s in a position like this. I didn’t want to live, right after Irene died. I thought I had blundered everything, and couldn’t forgive myself. But a man clings to life the way the sea keeps moving, endlessly, never giving up. I was surprised at the reasons I thought of for delaying telling the police the truth about Irene. I told myself it was because it was all Paul Sloade’s fault, really, you know. And it was. I decided that at the very least, I owed it to myself to finish the job that Irene had unwittingly lost her life for. So I didn’t go back to New York. I stayed here and waited for a proper opportunity to finish what I had started. After that, I told myself, it will be the right time for me to give myself up.
“But I don’t suppose there ever is a right time for a man to die, is there? Not to himself, at any rate. Whenever and however it comes, he wishes it were a little later, wishes desperately to postpone it. I told myself that all I would do would be to help Martha out of it, since Monte Bachore tried to frame her by moving Paul’s body. Then I told myself that in all justice to the whole thing, I should find out what Lila knew about it. One delay led to another. And when I finally found Lila here on the beach, I knew I was only rationalizing the whole thing to myself, all this time. I knew I wasn’t going to give myself up.”
“So you killed her,” Carmody said.
“She was about to do it herself.”
There was a long line of shadow cast by the jetty on the other side, and the beach became a series of low dunes pitted with shallow salt-water pools left by the tide. Far out at the end of the jetty, the Apollo was a dim graceful shape against the darkness of the sea. Brush and grass grew waist-high along the sheltered side of the jetty, where the tide never quite reached.
“Where is she?” Carmody asked.
“Right here. A little to your left.”
He looked for her and didn’t see her. The shadows were very dark close up against the barnacled rocks and moss-grown pilings of the sea wall. Carmody looked back and saw Dunning standing behind him with the gun pointed at him. He felt his muscles crawl in reflex, as if to resist the expected impact of a bullet. Take it easy, he told himself. He’s not ready to finish you yet. Find the girl first.
Then he saw her.
She lay on the sand close to the base of the jetty, her dark hair fanning into the shadows that cloaked her. She looked small and lost against the loneliness of the beach and the sea. Carmody ignored Dunning and went into the shadows, dropping to his knees beside her. The girl’s face was upturned in the dark like a pale flower closed against the night. Even in the dimness, he could see the ugly bruises on her slender young throat. He heard the sudden scurry of clawed feet skittering away across the crusted pilings, and the gray shape of a beach rat flicked across a corner of his vision. Carmody touched the back of his hand to the girl’s cheek, then suddenly took her wrist in his fingers.
He looked up to see Dunning above him. Moonlight glinted blue on the barrel of his gun.
“She isn’t dead,” Carmody said.
“What?”
“There’s still a pulse.”
Dunning’s mouth fell open. “You’re lying.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“She can’t be alive!”
“Well, she is. Just about. She needs a doctor, fast. Stay away from her, Mark.”
Dunning trembled. His open mouth looked dark and ugly. “Damn you, if this is a trick—”
“You thought you had finished her, didn’t you?”
“She didn’t want to live, I tell you. I don’t know what happened to make her feel so blue—maybe she finally saw how soon she had ruined her life, coming here with Robbie, and all that. She was hysterical. She said she was going to walk out into the sea and drown herself, but she didn’t quite have the nerve. It’s true, you know. She really wanted to die.”
“She’s only a child,” Carmody said.
“But she looked at me in such a strange way, when I found her standing here. We talked for a minute and then she said I had changed her mind for her, although I hadn’t said much, really. She said she’d go to the police first, and something happened to me—I don’t know what—and we struggled. I had her throat in my hands and I just kept squeezing—I couldn’t help myself—”
Dunning paused as a shadow darkened his face. Carmody looked back at the height of the jetty behind him and saw Robbie Ravelle blacking out the moonlight.
There was something uncanny about that silent apparition, huge against the night sky. From Dunning came a whickering scream of denial. Carmody lunged to his feet, the sand sliding away from the push of his shoes. Robbie made an animal sound and launched himself from the top of the jetty. Dunning fired. The crash of the gun was explosive against the soft murmuring of the surf. Robbie’s body turned in mid-air, but his leap carried him over Carmody’s head into Dunning. Both men crashed to the sand and rolled over and over. Carmody picked himself up and began yelling and tearing at Robbie’s hands that had closed around Dunning’s throat. He got nowhere with it. The two men rolled away from him, toward the girl’s limp figure, and then rolled back again. Carmody got up and grabbed a handful of Robbie’s hair and ya
nked back savagely on the big man’s head, kneeling beside him on the sand.
“Robbie! Robbie, cut it out! She isn’t dead! Stop it!”
Robbie began shaking Dunning’s head with such violence that it seemed as if the other man’s neck must surely break.
“Robbie, she’s alive! Let him go!”
The big man’s head came up, teeth bared and glistening in the pale moonlight. His eyes glinted with metallic silver, unnatural and glazed with a deep-rooted madness. Dunning sprawled limp and broken under him.
“Alive?” Robbie whispered.
“Go look at her,” Carmody panted. “Go on, Robbie.”
The big man took his hands from Dunning’s throat and leaned back on his knees. He shook his head as if to clear it. Tears glistened on his broad face. He stood up and shambled into the shadows beside the pilings where Lila lay. Carmody straightened and brushed sand from his clothes. He was shaking. He didn’t look at Dunning. From far down the beach he saw the quick bobbing and flickering of several flashlights, like distant fireflies. He felt in his pocket for his gun and couldn’t find it and looked about on the sand for it futilely for a moment and then went to where Robbie knelt and moaned beside Lila.
“Robbie.”
“He tried to kill her, Billyroony.”
“She’ll be all right. Where are Monte and Sam?”
“Gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Everything’s a mess. The state cops hit the ballroom like a ton of bricks. I never seen anything like that Monte. And Sam grabbed the cash. Everything is a mess.” Robbie was chafing Lila’s wrist. “He had no right to hurt the doll. No right at all.”
“Listen, Robbie. Listen to me. Try to remember where Monte and Sam went. Were they with you on the beach before you found us?”
“Yeah.”
“And then you split up?”
“I seen you and Dunning here. So I slipped up and heard how he tried to kill the doll.” Robbie stood up and began to shake the way an oak tree begins to tremble and shudder just before the last decisive bite of the woodsman’s axe. “I don’t feel so good.”
Carmody looked at the flickering lights far down the beach. They seemed to be closer. “Take it easy.”
“I’m scared, music man. I see things. I’m awful scared. I’m sick.”
The voice was that of a child, a frightened little boy, coming out of the huge bulk of the man. Robbie began to shake even harder, and his face worked out of shape, the mouth open and distorted, his eyes wild and distended. He put his knuckles in his mouth and began biting his hand and moaning and then he crashed to his knees and rocked from side to side, the sounds coming from his throat like nothing human Carmody had ever heard. Carmody looked down at him and remembered that Robbie had been ready to kill and torture him only a short half hour ago, but he felt no pleasure or gratification at seeing the man like this. Robbie fell forward over Lila’s hips, shuddering and crying out in little plaintive cries, clawing at the yielding cold sand with his big uncertain hands. Carmody looked at the lights down the beach. They were definitely nearer.
He stood up and looked at the dim outline of the Apollo tied to the far end of the jetty that thrust out into the sea, and then at the lights on the beach that were coming toward him. He started to climb up on the jetty, moving toward the men who were running this way, and Dunning’s voice stopped him.
“Wait, Bill.”
He looked down and saw Dunning on his feet, still with the gun in his hand.
“Don’t go to the police, Bill.”
“It’s about time, don’t you think?”
“Get out on the jetty. Get on the boat.”
“Mark, listen to me. Haven’t you done enough?”
“Hurry, Bill.”
Carmody looked at the man and saw that there was something different about him now. He seemed more sure of himself, and colder, and he was suddenly more afraid of Dunning than he had ever been of Monte or Robbie or Sam Link. He saw in Dunning an intellectual hatred, a sudden congealing of distorted thought and emotion that made him, in his own way, a far greater threat to his life and safety than ever the others had been. And he thought of Martha, alone on the boat, perhaps waiting in innocent hope and fear. He looked down at the gun in Dunning’s hand and looked again at the lights down the beach. He had no choice. With Dunning close behind him, he began walking out among the dark rocks and pilings to the catwalk that led out into the sea.
16
THE Apollo rocked and bumped against the pilings at the far end of the jetty, out in deep water. The tide was setting in, and the sea made a swift rushing sound as it poured around the deflecting bulwarks. A light shone in the cabin portholes, but he saw no one on deck. Some of the litter of the storm damage had been cleaned up, he saw, and a new main and jibsail had been bent on the masts some time during the early hours of evening. Dunning prodded him with the gun and he jumped down into the cockpit and caught his balance and suddenly whirled around to catch the other man off stride as Dunning came after him; but he was too late and the gun was still pointed at him.
“What are you going to do with us?”
“We’re going for a cruise,” said Dunning.
“Do you plan to come back?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Mark, don’t hurt Martha. She had nothing to do with this.”
“I can’t help it.”
Carmody looked toward the shore, and the beach seemed to be a long way from this end of the jetty. The men with the flashlights still had not arrived at the spot where Robbie writhed in his agonies and Lila struggled through unconsciousness toward life. He went below at Dunning’s gesture and started the engine. There was no sound from the maincabin, where Martha was supposed to be. The auxiliary motor started smoothly now, and he saw that the sloop had been pumped tight and dry again. Once more at Dunning’s order, he went back up on deck and cast off and then took the wheel.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Due south.”
“There’s nothing out there,” Carmody said.
“Just do as you’re told, Bill.”
“I want to see Martha.”
“She’s all right.”
“I don’t believe you. I haven’t seen or heard her.”
“She’s tied to the bunk.”
“I want to see her.”
“All right. Stay at the wheel. Don’t try anything.”
Dunning went below. As soon as he was out of sight, Carmody changed course, bringing the bow of the sloop parallel to the dark shore, heading east instead of south. He wished he hadn’t lost his gun on the beach. He looked around for a marlin spike, for anything to use as a weapon. Then he heard the sudden scream of pain from below and it was followed by a thumping and bumping noise and he heard the scuffle of struggling feet. He left the wheel to its own devices and ran toward the forward hatch, but before he got there he felt the eruption of two or three struggling bodies as they came up the ladder and something hit him across the face and he went down, skidding along the deck His grasping fingers closed on a wire halyard and he saved himself from going over into the sea and then he looked up and saw Monte Bachore and Sam Link and Dunning, and he laughed. He couldn’t stop laughing.
Monte stood over him.
“What’s so funny?”
“Everything,” Carmody said. “Where did you come from?”
“We were with Robbie when he spotted you, and we told him to join us on the boat. Isn’t he here?”
“Robbie is gone. He’s gone for good. He’s finally lost all his pebbles.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Never surer.”
“The cops will get him, then. He’ll tell them everything.”
“Is there anything left for him to tell that they don’t know already?”
“Shut up. Get on your feet.”
Carmody stood up and saw Martha in the cabin doorway. He went toward her and touched her hand and looked at her and felt so relie
ved that his legs trembled and he didn’t think he could continue to stand up. “Are you all right?”
“I’m all right. Mark didn’t hurt me. He had me tied up, but Monte and Sam came aboard and cut me loose and then made me keep quiet until you came on board again.”
Her eyes told him nothing else. Her voice was flat and without emotion. He heard the sound of someone sobbing, and looked across the deck and saw Mark Dunning sitting on the edge of the cockpit, a streak of blood dark across his face, his body bent forward in ultimate despair. Monte chuckled. He looked bedraggled, his beard unkempt, a smear of mud across his forehead, a rip in his dinner coat, his ascot tie in loose shreds. Sam Link somehow had managed to retain his neatness, although Sam, too, looked as if he had run hard and fast. Carmody felt the sloop lift and fall under his feet and he saw that the boat was heading toward the shore again. Without asking anyone’s permission, he walked aft to the wheel and turned the vessel to the east once more. Nobody objected. He doubted if any of them paid any attention at this moment to where they were going. He hoped not. To keep their minds elsewhere, he said, “What happened to you, Monte?”
“Those cops,” Monte breathed. “They came around looking for Bobbie’s doll, and they got wind of the gambling room just opened and they came up for a look. No warrant or anything. It wasn’t a raid, but it might just as well have been. And then that damned Hallowell crossed me, with my money burning holes in his pockets, and told them about the whole setup. Said he was just letting me hang myself. The operation is finished. All over. I was lucky to get out of there before the cops collared me.”
“How far do you think you can run now, Monte?”
“Far enough. They got the roads blocked off and the railroad under surveillance, I hear. So I figured this boat will do the trick better than anything. You can run it, can’t you, Bill?”
“Yes,” Carmody said. “I can run it.”
“You know how we can get to Connecticut? I got some friends in Bridgeport can help me out. Can you get us there?”
“We’ll have to go around Montauk Point. It’s a long trip.”
Say It with Murder Page 15
