Death Likes It Hot (3 page)

“Of course I won’t say anything but …”

She looked about her suddenly, as though afraid of eavesdroppers. Then she gestured. “Do run along now, please.” I could hear footsteps in the main hall, approaching us.

I was almost to the door of the drawing room when she said, in her usual voice. “Oh, Mr. Sargeant, may I call you Peter?”

“Sure.…”

“
You
must call me Rose.” It was like a command. Then I went out into hall, almost bumping into a pale youngish woman who murmured something I didn’t catch. She slipped into the drawing room while I went upstairs; a maid directed me to my room.

I was uneasy to say the least. I wondered whether or not
I should take my bag and head for one of the local inns, like the 1770 House. I didn’t need the job that much and I did need a vacation which, under the circumstances, might not be in the cards. Mrs. Veering was a peculiar woman, an alcoholic. She was also nervous, frightened … but of what?

Out of curiosity more than anything else I decided to stay. It was one hell of a mistake.

At eight o’clock I went downstairs after a long bath and a slow ceremony of dressing while studying the faintly clammy but well-furnished room (all houses on dunes anywhere beside an ocean have the same musty smell) and reading the titles of the books on the night table: Agatha Christie, Marquand, the Grand Duchess Marie … I have a hunch those same books were beside every guest bed in the Hamptons … except perhaps in Southampton they might have Nancy Mitford and maybe something off-color. I decided I would devote myself to Mrs. Christie in lieu of Miss Liz Bessemer, whom I’d probably not be able to see until Saturday, if then.

I found the other guests all milling around in the big room which was now cheerful and full of light, the curtains drawn against the evening. Everyone was there except our hostess.

The woman I had bumped into earlier came to my rescue. She was slender, not much over thirty with a pleasant muted face and dressed in gray which made her seem somehow old-fashioned, not quite twentieth-century. “I’m Allie Claypoole,” she said, smiling; we shook hands. “I think I ran into you.…”

“In the hall, yes. I’m Peter Sargeant.”

“Come and be introduced. I don’t know what Rose is up to.” She steered me about the room.

On a love seat for two, but just large enough for the one of her, sat Mary Western Lung, the noted penwoman: a fat dimpled creature with a peaches-and-cream gone faintly sour complexion and hair dyed a stunning silver blonde. The fact she was very fat made the scarlet slacks she was wearing seem even more remarkable than they were. I counted four folds in each leg from ankle to thigh which made it seem as though she had four knees per leg instead of the regulation one.

Next stop was the other side of the room where Mrs. Brexton, a small dark-haired woman with china-blue eyes, was examining a pile of art books. I got a brisk nod from her.

Brexton, who was supervising the tray of whisky, was more cordial. I recognized him from his pictures: a small, stooped man of forty with a sandy mustache, a freckled bald pate, heavy glasses and regular, ordinary features, a bit like his few representational paintings.

“What can I do you for?” he asked, rattling ice around in a martini shaker. Next to, “long time no see,” I hate, “what can I do you for,” but after his wife’s chilly reception I fell in with him like a long-lost brother.

“I’ll have a martini,” I said. “Can I help?”

“No, not a thing. I’ll have it in just a jiffy.” I noticed how long his hands were as he manipulated the shaker: beautiful powerful hands, unlike the rest of him which was nondescript. The fingernails were encrusted with paint … the mark of his trade.

Allie Claypoole then introduced me to her brother who’d been in an alcove at the other end of the room, hidden from us. He was a good deal like her, a year or two older perhaps: a handsome fellow, casual in tweed. “Glad to meet you, Sargeant. Just rummaging around among the books. Rose has got some fine ones; pity she’s illiterate.”

“Why don’t you steal them?” Allie smiled at her brother.

“Maybe I will.” They looked at one another in that quick
secret way married people do, not at all like brother and sister: it was faintly disagreeable.

Then, armed with martinis, we joined the penwoman beside the fire. All of us sat down except Mrs. Brexton who stood aloof at the far end of the room. Even without indulging in hindsight, there was a sense of expectancy in the air that night, a gray stillness, like that hush before a summer storm.

I talked to Mary Western Lung who sat on my right in the love seat. I asked her how long she’d been in Easthampton while my eye traveled about the room, my ears alerted to other conversations. Superficially, everything was calm. The Claypooles were arguing with Brexton about painting. No one paid the slightest attention to Mrs. Brexton; her isolation officially unnoticed. Yet something was happening. I suppose I was aware of it only because of my cryptic conversation with Mrs. Veering; even so, without her warnings, I think I would have got the mood on my own.

Mary Western Lung was interminable; her voice was shrill and babyish but not loud; as a matter of fact, despite the size of her person which could’ve easily supported a voice like a foghorn, it was very faint for all its shrillness and I found I had to bend very close to catch her words.… which suited her just fine for she was flirting like a mad reckless girl.

“Except now, with Eisenhower, it’s all changed.” What was all changed, I wondered? not having listened to the beginning of her remarks.

“Nothing stays the same,” I said solemnly; hoping this would dovetail properly. It did.

“How clever of you!” She looked at me with faintly hyperthyroid eyes; her big baby’s face as happy and smooth as another part of a baby’s anatomy. “I’ve always said the same thing. This isn’t your first visit to these parts, is it?”

I told her I’d spent a lot of childhood summers here.

“Then you’re an old-timer!” This news gave her a great deal of inscrutable pleasure. She even managed to get her hand on my left knee for a quick warm squeeze which almost made me jump out of my skin; except under special circumstances, I hate being touched. Fortunately, she did not look at me when she administered her exploratory pinch, her attention addressed shyly to her own scarlet knees, or at least to a spot somewhere between two of the more likely creases.

I managed, after a few fairly hysterical remarks, to get to the console where the remains of the martinis were, promising I’d bring her back one. While I poured the watery remains from the shaker into my glass, Mrs. Brexton suddenly joined me. “Make me one too,” she said in a low voice.

“Oh? why sure. You like yours dry.”

“Any way.” She looked at her husband who was seated with his back to us, gesticulating as he made some point. There was no expression in her face but I could feel a certain coldness emanating from her, like that chill which comes from corpses after rigor has set in.

I made a slapdash martini for her and another for Mary Western Lung. Without even a “thank you” Mrs. Brexton joined the group by the fire, talking, I noticed, to Miss Claypoole only, ignoring the two men who were still arguing.

Since there was no place else to go, I had to rejoin Miss Lung who sipped her martini with daintily pursed lips on which sparkled a few long golden hairs.

“I never like anything but gin,” she said, putting the drink down almost untouched. “I can even remember when my older brothers used to make it in bathtubs!” she roared with laughter at the thought of little-old-she being old enough to remember Prohibition.

I then found out why she was a noted penwoman. “I do a column called ‘Book-Chat’; it’s syndicated all over the
United States and Canada. Oh, you’ve read it? Yes? Well, isn’t that sweet of you to say so. I put a
great deal
of myself in it. Of course I really don’t have to make a living but every bit counts these days and it’s a lucky thing for me it’s gone over so big, the column that is. I’ve done it nine years.”

I troweled some more praise her way, pretending I was a fan. Actually, I was fascinated, for some reason I couldn’t define, by Mrs. Brexton and, as we talked, glanced at her from time to time out of the corner of my eyes: she was talking intently to Allie Claypoole who listened to what she said, a serious, almost grim expression on her face; unfortunately their voices were too low for me to catch what they were saying. Whatever it was I did not like the downward twist to Mrs. Brexton’s thin mouth, the peevish scowl on her face.

“Rose tells me you’re a writer, Mr. Sargeant.”

Rose picked the wrong disguise, I thought to myself irritably; I could hardly hope to fool the authoress of “Book-Chat.” I stalled. I told part of the truth. “I used to be assistant drama critic on the
New York Globe
up until a few years ago when I quit … to write a novel.”

“Oh? how exciting! Throwing everything to the wind like that! To live for your art! How I envy
and
admire you! Do let me be your first reader and critic.”

I mumbled something about not being finished yet but she was off, her great bosoms heaving and rippling. “I did the same, too, years ago when I was at Radcliffe. I just left school one day and told my family I was going to become a Lady of Letters. And I did. My family were Boston … stuffy people, but they came around when I wrote
Little Biddy Bit
 … you probably remember it. I believe it was considered the best child’s book of the era … even today a brand-new generation of children thrills to it; their little letters to me are heart-warming.”

Heartburning seemed to me a more apt description. Then
the career of Mary Western Lung was given me at incredible length. We had got her almost down to the present, when I asked what was keeping our hostess. This stopped her for a split second; then she said. “Rose is often late.” She looked uncomfortable. “But then you’re a friend of hers … you probably know all about it.”

I nodded, completely at sea. “Even so …”

“It’s getting worse. I wish there was something we could do but I’m afraid that, short of sending her to a sanitarium,
nothing
will do much good … and of course since she won’t even
admit
it there’s really no way for those of us who are her oldest and most treasured friends to approach her. You know what her temper is!” Miss Lung shuddered.

“I thought she seemed a little, well, disturbed this evening. She.…”

Miss Lung’s hand descended with dramatic emphasis on my left thigh where it remained some seconds like a weight of lead. “I’m afraid for her!” Her high voice grew mysterious and feeble. “She’s heading for a breakdown. She now thinks someone is trying to kill her.”

It was out at last and I was relieved to find that Mrs. Veering was only a mild psychotic and not, as I’d first thought, really in danger of her life. I relaxed considerably, prematurely. “Yes, she told me something like that.”

“Poor Rose,” Miss Lung shook her head and withdrew her hand from its somewhat sensitive resting place. “It all started a few years ago when she was not included in the New York Social Register. I suppose you weathered
that
with her like all the rest of us … what a time it was! It was about then that her.…” Miss Lung looked about to make sure no one else could hear. “Her
drinking
began. I remember telling Allie Claypoole (who’s also from Boston by the way) that if Rose didn’t get a grip on herself she’d.…”

But grip or no grip, our hostess appeared in a magenta dinner dress, looking handsome and steady, no worse for the gallon of Dubonnet she’d drunk before dinner.

“Come along, children!” she said, waving us all toward the dining room. I admired her steadiness. She obviously had the capacity of a camel. “I’m sorry I’m late but I got held up. We have to go in now or the cook will make a scene.”

It was while I accompanied Mrs. Brexton in to dinner I noticed, when she turned to speak to her husband, that across her neck, ordinarily covered by a long bob, was an ugly purple welt extending from under the ear down the side of her neck and disappearing into the high-necked dress she was wearing. It was a bruise, too, not a birthmark nor a scar … it was a new bruise.

When she turned from her husband to speak to me, hair covered the discoloration. There was an odd look in her eyes, as though she could detect in my face what it was I’d seen, what I thought for, as she made some remark about the dance to be held the next night at the Yacht Club, her hand strayed unconsciously to her neck.

Dinner went well enough. Mrs. Veering was in fine form, no trace of the earlier fear which had marred our first meeting. I studied her during dinner (I sat on her left; Brexton was on her right; Allie Claypoole was on
my
left). She was animated and probably quite drunk though she didn’t show it except, perhaps, in the feverish brightness of her eyes and in her conversation which made no sense at all though it sounded perfectly rational.

It was a queer crew, I decided. A hostess on the make socially in spite of her alcoholism and a big snub from the Social Register; a highbrow painter; his wife whose blood could probably etch glass, with a bruise on her neck which looked as if somebody had tried to choke her to death and then decided what the hell and left the job half done. The
somebody was probably her husband whose hands looked strong enough to twist off a human head like a chicken’s.

And the mysterious Claypooles, brother and sister and so in love, or something. He sat next to Mrs. Brexton at dinner and they talked together intently, ignoring the rest of the company which seemed to irritate his sister. Brexton was oblivious of everyone, a good-humored, self-centered type who saw to it that the conversation never got too far away from him or from painting.

And of course my penwoman, a massive giggling friend to man … at least so she seemed underneath all the “Book-Chat.” Since her score was probably quite low, all things considered, her predatory instincts doubtless expressed themselves only in pats and pinches at which she was pretty expert.

After dinner, a little high on white wine, we all went back to the drawing room where a card table had been set up.