“I told her that when a hard, shrewd man lived in a small town and made a fetish of secrecy, rumor always credited him with a fortune he didn’t have. Instead of a mythical fortune, it would have been far better, I said, if he had left her a legacy of decency and manners. She started to tell me, violently, how nice her dear daddy had been to her when she was little. And quite suddenly she stopped. She looked as if she had quite forgotten I was there. When I spoke to her she stared at me as if she didn’t know my name, and turned and walked away.”
Celia M’Gann was talking tensely and rapidly, with a threat of hysteria in her voice. He sensed that it was compulsive talking, a device she was using to hold herself together.
“I worried about the quarrel, Mr. Doyle. I felt I had handled her wrong. Better if I had tried to bribe her to put less strain on my brother. She was a greedy little thing. I didn’t get a chance to try a new tack on Thursday or Friday. I couldn’t sleep Friday night. I knew her habits. Many times she had walked back from town alone, along the beach, because the walking was better and there were fewer mosquitoes on the open beach. It was more probable that she would have a date, and then there would be no telling when she would come rolling in. But, because I couldn’t sleep with the problem on my mind, it seemed worth taking a chance of meeting her. I got up very quietly, and left the cottage. It was a little after two. Even if I missed her, I thought the walk would help.
“I met her not far beyond the cottage where you are. She was quite unsteady, but she was coherent. She was surprised to see me. There was a little moonlight. We stood there and I tried to reason with her. If all else failed, I was going to offer her all my savings to leave and never come back. It’s an… adequate amount. She teetered and leered at me there in the moonlight and then in the most foul possible way she hinted at… an unspeakable relationship between my brother and myself. She tried to soil the finest thing in my life. I do not know exactly what happened. It was as though I went blind and numb. When sensation came back I was standing over her. She lay unconscious on the sand, and I had a terrible blazing pain in my clenched fist. I had never struck anybody with my fist before. I’m a strong woman. I had noticed the tide was coming in. I bent over her and thought of dragging her into the water. I tried but I could not force myself to touch her. Then I saw that the tide would reach her before very long. I turned and ran, literally ran back to our cottage. I sank exhausted on the sand, trembling, nauseated.
“In a little while I knew it was something I could not do. I could not leave her there. No matter how dangerous she was to my brother, I could not kill. And so I went back. I stopped just about in front of your cottage when I saw, far off in the moonlight, somebody bending over her. I could not tell if it was a man or a woman. I knew she would be all right. It was even possible she wouldn’t remember me striking her. And so I went back to bed and stayed awake waiting for her to come in. She was always noisy when she came in. She had no consideration. None. I fell asleep. And we were both awakened by that Darcey woman, screaming and gibbering outside the cottage.”
“You haven’t told anyone this.”
“No. What good would it have done to subject myself to a lot of clumsy interrogation? I couldn’t possibly identify the person I had seen with her. And she had died of strangulation, not drowning. I suppose in a certain sense I did contribute to her death.”
“Do you think you were seen by the person who killed her? He could have been following her, or waiting to intercept her.”
“I thought of that. I worried about it. But he could not have told of seeing me without implicating himself. Unless he were caught, and then there was the chance he would try to blame it all on me. That was a risk I had to take. And, you know, I could not be at all certain I had been seen. When I woke up, my hand was badly puffed. I pretended to burn it when I fixed breakfast. It gave me a chance to bandage it so the puffiness did not show. It did not last long. And now… it all ends this way. And all for nothing. Because I tried to save him.”
They were far beyond the Proctor cottage, and beyond where the road ended at the Janson land.
Doyle had been shining the flashlight on the smooth unmarked sand. And suddenly he picked up the indentation of a naked foot, and another, walking away from the water. She clutched his arm. She looked at the empty beach and toward the blackness of the brush.
“Crawford!” she called, her voice wild and lost in the emptiness of the night. “Crawford!”
“I’m right here,” he said, so close that it startled both of them. Doyle turned his light toward the shadows. Colonel M’Gann sat slumped on the sand, his back against the bole of a big Australian pine that had been brought down by erosion. Celia ran to him and dropped to her knees in the sand and, with a strange harsh cry of pain and gladness, put her arms around him. Doyle turned the light away from them. The woman was sobbing quietly.
M’Gann said, apparently addressing Doyle, ignoring his sister, “The survival instinct is a strong and curious thing, I walked up this way and swam out beyond my limit. I knew it was beyond my strength to get back. And at the first edge of panic, the brute body took over, pacing itself, struggling to live. The heart should have quit, but it didn’t. And so I lay in the shallows finally, until I had the strength to get up.”
“She has something to tell you, Colonel.”
“I know what she has to tell me.”
“I don’t think you do.”
Doyle went up the beach. The murmur of her voice faded away. He waited a long time. Finally Celia called him and he walked back to them.
“I guess I’ve been a fool,” the colonel said.
“We… I think I know who killed her.”
“Can you tell us? Not that it matters terribly,” he said.
“Not yet. If we can’t prove it somehow, I’ll tell you.”
“Mr. Doyle, my sister’s protective instinct toward me has always been obsessive. She has had so little emotional release in her own life that her concern has not been entirely… healthy. Hush, Celia, please. Jenna’s behavior was hampering my recovery. I heard Celia go out and I heard her come back, but I lied to the sheriff, as she did. And I let myself believe she had done something I should have known her to be incapable of. I’m ashamed of that. I decided to call it justifiable homicide. Be her judge and jury. But I would find myself looking at her hands and thinking of how Jenna had been when we were first married. I thought I knew what she was keeping from me. Early this evening I finally tested her. From the way she answered, I knew I could no longer afford the small luxury of doubt. And my solution seemed to me to be… apt. As I told you, Mr. Doyle, I was faced with an emotional problem. An ethical problem.”
“Why would you say that to him?” Celia asked.
“Colonel, what can I tell Colonel Presser now?”
“I don’t know yet. I have to adjust to… new knowledge. And I will have to find out what damage was done by this… asinine little adventure of mine. God help the man who takes himself so seriously, Mr. Doyle.”
“What is this talk about Colonel Presser?” Celia demanded. “Has this Mr. Doyle sneaked around my back and…”
“Please be still, Celia. Mr. Doyle is a very competent and effective man. Mr. Doyle, it would be inefficient to keep you here while I make one of my slow decisions. Mission accomplished, I would say. There’s no more you can do. You can tell Austin that I will be in touch with him in a week or two. If I say yes, and I think I might, he could then send some people down here to bring me up to date.”
Celia had jumped to her feet. “I will not have it! You are not going to go back and let them work you to death. You’re a sick man and I will not…”
“Celia!” he roared.
“But…” she said in a small voice.
“You will order the lives of those female clerks of yours, but you will not order my life for me. I am grateful for your care. It does not give you the authority you seem to think is yours. My apologies, Mr. Doyle. Family scene.”
“
Can I help you back to the cottage?”
“No thanks. I’ll rest a little longer. And then Celia can help me if necessary. I suppose you’ll be going back now?”
“Not yet, Colonel. One mission accomplished. The official one. And now there’s a personal one. It seems to be… necessary. Miss M’Gann, could I ask you one question?”
“After you lied to me about…”
“My sister will answer your question, Mr. Doyle. She’ll remember later she has reasons to be grateful to you, and she’ll regret her rudeness.”
“You said you were too far to identify the person you saw bending over Jenna.”
“That’s right.”
“Was there any distinguishing thing at all? Light clothing or dark clothing?”
“I was much too far away, in that light. But… I got the impression that the figure was wearing a beach hat. One of those straw things, like a coolie hat. It somehow gave me the impression that it was a woman, but it seemed strange for her to be wearing it at night.”
“Do you recall Deputy Capp’s hat?”
“Of course. That Texas-looking thing. I see what you mean. I couldn’t swear to it. But at that distance that cream-colored hat could have given me that impression. You must realize that had I known I was seeing a murderer, I would have been more observing.”
“Thank you. And good night. If there’s anything I can do…”
“We’re all right now,” the colonel said. They both said good night to him. He walked back to his cottage. Now the pattern was more distinct. The blurred area was gone. Donnie Capp had bent over the unconscious woman. Perhaps he, too, had thought of pushing her into the water. And then she had begun to stir. And before she was conscious enough to fight him, he had closed that small, sallow, wiry hand around her throat. Maybe it had not been premeditated. Maybe her very helplessness had triggered a new aspect of that deep sadistic aspect of him.
He knew it was not yet finished here for him. Now that he was free to leave, he could not. It was not revenge against Donnie, or the desire to protect Lucas, or even the strange enchantment of the handsome and unapproachable girl. It was part of being home again. As though, by accomplishing something difficult and perhaps dangerous, he could pay in partial measure for the long years of exile, self-imposed.
As he ate and as he showered and as he lay sleepless in a slant of April moonlight, he thought of Donnie Capp.
chapter NINE
SATURDAY was a strange day. The sun shone through a mist that would not burn away. The Gulf had a silvery, milky look, a shining calm, yet with a swell that lifted slowly, sleekly to break finally after long hesitation against the sand—like long-spaced recurrent sighs. The terns swooped and yelped in an unknown excitement, and Doyle could not see where the sea joined the sky at the distant horizon. He stood on the beach and saw something he had never seen as a child or as a young man.
Five hundred feet from shore a giant ray—a devil fish—burst up through the pearly surface and seemed to hang for one incredible moment suspended, as black as evil, between sea and sky before falling with its hundreds of pounds of weight, cracking its great wings against the water surface with a sound that had a sharp echoing resonance. The look of it gave him a crawling, shuddering sensation, a special awareness of his own mortality.
At mid-morning he drove over into the town to the boat yard. Buddy said secretively that he had plugged the cooling system on Donnie’s motor without being seen, and that he had told enough people about the expected return of Lucas to be assured that the news would spread quickly. He had seen Donnie Capp’s car parked on Bay Street earlier in the morning, but he had not seen Donnie.
They stood talking at the far end of the work shed. Buddy said, “I don’t hardly ever dream. But I dreamed last night about Donnie. And today it seems more like he could have done it. Funny, isn’t it? But… this is the kind of a day I guess when it’s easier to think of people killing people. Line storms out in the Gulf. We ought to get weather before the day’s over.”
“Nothing to do now but wait.”
“I stopped in the Mack last night. Arnie Blassit came in. Told him that if Lucas showed up to bring him right to me fast as he could make it. He wanted to know why. I told him I’d tell him why later on, that it was important. Told him to keep his mouth shut about it.”
Betty came toward them. “Now what’s going on? Are you people forming some kind of a secret club? Maybe you should build a nice tree house for meetings. Alex, did you see my watch?”
“No.”
“I keep looking at my empty wrist. I left it on that little shelf near your outside shower stall. Very stupid of me. I can see it sitting there, just as plain. I don’t want it to get rained on.”
“I’ll go get it right away.”
“Would you, please?” She walked to where she could get a better look at the sky. “On second thought, it isn’t going to rain right away. John has gone off in the jeep. This whole place is dead as a tomb. And a day like this makes me feel stickier and restlesser than a real hot one. Brother, dear, I think I’ll goof off and take a short swim and pick up my watch and let Alex take me to lunch in something air-conditioned. And I will slave like a dog all afternoon to make up. Why don’t you come too?”
“I’ve got to get Marty’s boat ready. He’s picking it up at twelve-thirty. We can’t all goof off around here.”
Alex waited a few minutes for Betty in front of the office and then they got into the old Dodge and he drove back toward the beach. She looked slightly wilted. The bridge timbers rumbled under the wheels. After the bridge there was a short stretch of causeway, and then a sharp right-hand turn onto the narrow key road, a turn made almost blind by a big tangle of palmetto and yucca at the corner.
Just as he reached the turn he caught a glimpse of something through the mass of foliage, something big and fast—and heard the hard high roar of a truck moving fast in low gear. He knew at once that if he tried to make the turn, he would turn right into it. If he tried to stop, his momentum would take him across its bows and he would be smashed broadside. With both luck and instinct, he took the only course possible. He swung the wheel hard left and stamped on the gas to swing the rear end around, knowing that if the truck tried to make the turn onto the causeway instead of continuing south on the key road, it would smash into him.
The truck was upon them, and for a frozen moment the blunt bow of the big dusty GMC seemed to hang over them. But then the sliding turn pulled his hood away. For one microsecond they were side by side, both headed in the same direction. And then his right rear corner, still sliding, slammed into the big rear duals of the truck, bounced away so violently that the Dodge hung for a moment on the verge of going over, came down with a force that burst a tire, and wobbled crazily into the ditch, the wide and shallow ditch on the other side of the road, the car aimed back toward the bridge and the causeway. He turned off the engine and they could hear the roar of the truck receding south in the distance.
They stared at each other. She looked sick under her tan. “Absolutely insane!” she said.
“Who was it?”
“I haven’t the faintest. But he’s still on the key, and this is the only way off. Drunk, I’d say. Alex, you did a perfectly wonderful job!”
“Thanks.” He took out cigarettes, gave her one. When he tried to light hers, they had difficulty getting the flame and the cigarette end together until she grinned at him and held his wrist.
“I’d get out,” he said, “if I was sure my knees would work.”
“You’ll have to get out first. It’s all bayonets on my side.”
He got out onto the sand road and she got out and stood beside him. Except for the constant metallic song of insects in the brush, the morning was breathlessly still.
“I’ll have to run it forward and up out of the ditch before I can change that tire,” he said.
“Listen!”
He heard the truck sound again, as faint as the shrilling of the insects, but growi
ng louder as it came toward them.
“We should flag that maniac down!” she said. “At least we’ll find out who he is so it can be reported.”
“Get back in the ditch, Betty, out of the way. We don’t know how drunk he is.” She moved into the ditch behind the car. He stood out beside the car. In a moment he could see the truck, and he heard the motor sound change as it slowed to make the turn into town. He began waving his arm in a big arc, palm down, trying to flag the truck down. He saw the big hood and a face behind the window of the cab and, with a feeling of incredulity, he saw the big wheels cut toward him. He whirled and dived headlong across the left front fender of the Dodge, banging his right knee sharply on the fender. He hit on his shoulder in the ditch and rolled into a thousand knives. And looked just in time to see the truck bounce high as it hit the crown of the wooden bridge and continue at high speed toward the foot of Bay Street.
He sat and hugged his leg, grimacing with pain. Betty ran to him, her eyes wild and her mouth working.
“Did he hit you?”
Pain made him irritable. “Yes. He hit me square and killed me dead, for God’s sake.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t see. He came so close.”
“Help me get up so I can walk on this thing.”
She took his hand and pulled him up. He limped around in a small circle and felt the pain diminish. In a very few moments he could put all his weight on the leg without wincing. He looked at the dual tracks in the hard sand and shell surface. The truck had barely missed the car, and the duals had run well inside where he had been standing.
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