Murder by the Book (14 page)

“You dreamed it,” Pam said. “Please, dear. I'm so sl—”

“About an oath,” Jerry said. “You spoke quite clearly.”

“All right,” Pam said. “I was talking in a dream. Please, Jerry. I'm so …”

And again her breathing was the slow, just audible, breathing of one who sleeps.

Jerry puzzled for a few minutes. It is not usual for Pam to “talk in a dream.” But it is not unheard of. She had had a long, disturbing day. The disturbance had lasted into sleep. That was all it was. Jerry could not remember that, during the day, there had been any special amount of swearing, but—It'll all come out in the wash, Jerry thought, and knew, vaguely, that he did not mean wash, but meant morning, and sleep recaptured him.…

“I never see why the glass doesn't break,” Pamela North said, at a little after eight o'clock Monday morning. She was wearing a short nightgown and was pleasantly visible through it. She was watching a glass of water into which the gadget had been inserted. The gadget was doing its electrical duty; the water in the glass bubbled. Pam took the gadget out quickly and put it in the other glass. She was supposed to detach it between glasses; it had said so on the directions. This was something Jerry had given up mentioning. She put powdered coffee and a cream substitute in the first glass and wrapped it in facial tissue and carried it to Jerry, who propped himself up and took the glass and said, “Ouch. Thank you.”

“But they never do,” Pam said, and disconnected the gadget and took it out of the other glass, and made instant coffee again and picked it up in tissue—and said, “Ouch”—and carried it to her own bed.

“You can
still
taste the chlorine,” Pam said, after tasting. “Right through everything.”

“It's fine coffee,” Jerry said. “You were talking in your sleep last night.”

“I'm sorry. About what?” She sipped again. “Because,” she said, “I hope I didn't miss anything interesting.”

“Obscure,” Jerry said. “Something about something's being in an oath.”

“I couldn't have.”

Jerry lighted a cigarette. “It's before breakfast,” Pam said. Jerry pointed at his glass. “That's cheating,” Pam said. “Also, there's a Florida law against smoking in bed. It says so on the card.”

“Enforceable,” Jerry said, “after you've burned up. Unless they make surprise bed checks from time to time.”

“An embarrassing thought,” Pam said. “Aren't you going to light me one?”

He lighted her one. He said, “You don't remember anything about it?”

“No. I was dreaming something. I don't know what. If I really—”

“Yes. You said, ‘Probably it's something in the oath.'”

“I've no idea,” Pam said. “I never remember dreams, you know. You ought to be glad. I've been reading
The Will of Zeus
. Lovely book, but people in it are always making oaths of one sort and another. To soften up the gods, mostly. Probably it was that. More instant chlorine?”

She made more coffee. Jerry watched her with pleasure. They drank more coffee. They debated whether to have breakfast sent up, and on other matters of importance—should they, if they decided to go down for breakfast, dress for tennis or for going down to breakfast? Was this the day they would drive up to Marathon and lunch at Hahley's, where people said there were always-stone crabs? Holidays are times for decisions.

The decisions were for going down—“because it takes forever, and everything's cold”—and against dressing for tennis. “Because we can't tell what may come up.”

They walked along the corridor toward the stairs, and a rotund man in a very noticeable sports shirt came toward them. He carried a physician's black bag; he had a border of white hair around a sunburned head; he walked, Pam thought, with the resolute youth of a man who knows himself aging. Before he reached them he stopped at a door and knocked and then, in answer to something they did not hear, “Dr. Townsend, Mr. Porter.” He had a hearty voice. As they passed him, still waiting for the door to open, he gave them a brief and hearty nod, and a smile to go with it.

“Doctor's back on his feet again, apparently,” Jerry said, when they were going down the stairs.

“I hope we don't get sick,” Pam said, and they walked the long length of the lobby toward the dining room. They picked up the Miami
Herald
. Dr. Tucker Upton, his tanned face without expression, came out of a telephone booth and walked toward Paul Grogan at the desk.

“There's something on the tip of my mind,” Pam said. “Only it keeps falling off.”

“About an oath?”

She didn't think so. Nothing about an oath seemed to come into it. She still thought she must have been dreaming about Greeks. She also thought she would have wheat cakes and sausage.

“And,” Jerry said, “the hell with it.”

“Precisely.”

They were drinking coffee and smoking—this time legally, breakfast being past—when a boy brought them a telegram. It read:

“Mrs. Peter Coleman left Green Acres, private sanitarium, own volition ten days ago. Voluntary patient. Mild depression, marked improvement doctor says. Is in fifties, black hair and eyes, wt. 120. About five-four. Good fig. Returned apartment but left week ago. Mail to be forwarded her attorney. Maid denies knowledge employer's whereabouts but thinks quote somewhere South unquote. Says plays races. Re daughter. Husband is in Washington, says she South for rest, denies separation. Don't stick necks out too far. Wish we were there. Bill.”

“As if we ever do,” Pam said. “She could be here, then.”

“Or a hundred places. There's no racing here.”

“Dogs,” Pam said. “But you're probably right. Still …”

Still—Jerry called the office of the Monroe County sheriff to report that one Mrs. Peter Coleman was, in a manner of speaking, on the loose. Chief Deputy Sheriff Ronald Jefferson had been in and gone out. Sheriff Reppy, on the other hand, had not yet come in. A message was taken.

The Norths went to the porch to read the Miami
Herald
. Winter was “on a rampage” in the Middle West.

Ronald Jefferson had awakened and found himself on top of the world. He was usually there, or thereabouts, on awakening, but this morning he felt especially exuberant. After a few minutes—and a cup of coffee—he realized why. He was going to take that supercilious little bastard up to Marathon and watch him squirm. It was going to be a fine day, and probably the last day of this particular mess.

He was glad, on the whole, that the dark girl was out of it. He didn't like cracking down on ladies if it could be avoided. There was, to be sure, the girl Roy had seen—the girl in white shorts and a blue jacket. But she probably hadn't had anything to do with it. She'd been for a dip in the salt-water pool. Maybe she'd slipped in from outside, trespassed on hotel property. That would account for her getting out fast when she was seen.

It was, Jefferson told, himself as he drove to his office, narrowing down nicely.

Sheriff Reppy hadn't got in yet. That was all right, too. The old boy wasn't always in good humor after a day of fishing, particularly when the big one had got away. The old boy might want, in spite of what he had said, to put an oar in. Not that he often did, but still—

There were other deputies around now, with Sunday over. Now that there was nothing much to do, there were plenty to do it. Jefferson sent one of them to get a car and take it to the jail entrance, told him they were going to take a little ride up to Marathon.

He had wasted a good deal of time yesterday, Jefferson thought. With those Norths, who hadn't really helped much—she had suggested the alibi was faked, but he'd have come on that without her. With Dr. Upton, the poor guy. It was obvious, now, that Upton didn't come into it at all, that Dr. Piersal's professional visit to Mrs. Upton had nothing to do with anything. It was the Norths, come to think of it, who had led him up that blind alley. Nice people, but given, as amateurs were, to going up blind alleys. Which reminded Deputy Sheriff Jefferson.

He called the morgue. No use in going on with that autopsy on poor Mrs. Upton. The old boy wouldn't have started yet.

The old boy, which was to say Dr. Ferdinand Meister, had started. He sent out word: “Tell him I'm working on his cadaver.” The wording gave Deputy Jefferson a momentary start.

It was, Jefferson decided, hanging up the telephone, probably just as well. Nothing would come of it, but if a defense attorney got to nosing around, the way defense attorneys did, it would do no harm to be able to say, “Oh, but we did think of that, counsellor. Left no stone unturned, counsellor. Results negative, of course.”

He checked with the state police. Matters were in hand.

The narrow-shouldered man was ready at the jail. He wore a blue suit and a white shirt and a necktie—a conservative necktie. He looked quite cool and quite confident. But this time Jefferson had no intention of letting that get his goat. (He'd been tired, yesterday; hot and tired.)

“Going to take you for a little ride up to Marathon,” he told Jasper Bradley, small-time crook who'd stepped over the line into the biggest time there was.

“It's a pretty drive,” Bradley said. “Don't tell me you're going along yourself, sheriff.”

There was nothing really out of the way about what Bradley said, nor in the way he said it. No ridicule. Nothing to get a man's goat, not really. And when Jefferson cuffed Bradley to him, Bradley's right wrist to his left, there was again nothing out of the way in Bradley's attitude. He sighed, as a man so fettered might well. There was really nothing to suggest that it was a man's tolerant sigh over another's boyish behavior.

“Let's get going,” Jefferson said, his voice rough. (The man rubbed him the wrong way; he was letting himself be rubbed the wrong way.) “If you're ready, mister,” he added.

They sat in the back seat while Deputy Williams drove. On Stock Island Williams used his siren once or twice.

“No hurry, Willie,” Jefferson told him. “Mr. Bradley says it's a pretty ride. Give him time to enjoy it.”

That was the way to play it.

It is fifty miles or so from Key West to Marathon, and it is a very pretty ride indeed—a ride with water on either side, water which is iridescent in the mornings, water which changes color before the eyes; which is green and blue and a dozen shadings of green and blue; water over which white birds circle, on the shores of which white birds stand on legs breathtakingly fragile. Pelicans chug above the varicolored waters and gulls coast and dive. Far to the right as one drives north and east the water is the deepest blue of all, and that is the Gulf Stream, just beginning its journey to far places.

Jasper Bradley, disbarred lawyer and small-time crook, on his way to have an alibi broken so he could be tried for Murder One, seemed to enjoy the beauty of sea and sky very much indeed. It was a morning of puffy clouds, and Bradley commented on the serene charm of such formations. He was also audibly delighted by the water's shifting hues.

He was, in all respects, a most appreciative guest. Ronald Jefferson could have throttled him.

There are numerous motels in Marathon, from the simplest, which announce their overnight rates on their signs and are even, in some cases, permissive of house trailers, to those which mention pools and cocktail lounges and golf privileges, and consider public mention of rates vulgar. The names of some are fanciful, and often have to do with pirates. (Self-criticism is not intended; the reference is to ancient days, when buccaneers did foray from the Keys.)

Lem Hunter's motel was comparatively austere. It announced itself as “Hunter's Lodge,” and its sign's only other comment was, “Entrance.” It was on the Gulf side, just visible from the road. Its beach was on the Gulf; palms shaded its fresh-water pool.

Deputy Williams stopped the official car in front of the door marked “Office.” Chief Deputy Jefferson said, “End of the line, Bradley,” and slid toward the door. Bradley, perforce, slid with him.

Bradley said, “Of course, it's up to you, sheriff. I quite realize that. Only—these.” He lifted his right arm, shook it slightly so the chain between them clicked.

“What about them?” Jefferson said. “You don't like them, mister?”

“Not especially,” Bradley said. “But I wasn't thinking of that. However, the point has probably occurred to you already.”

Jefferson tried to stop himself. He was not in time. He said, “What're you getting at?”

“You want an identification,” Bradley said, “Preferably, of course, you want no identification. You hope that Mr. Hunter will say he has never seen me before. Eventually, you no doubt hope to bring his identification, or non-identification, into court.”

“So?”

His voice was very harsh on “So.” He somehow got a “z” sound into it.

“I didn't mean to annoy you,” Bradley said. “It was quite presumptuous of me, under the circumstances. I realize that, sheriff. And that you know your business. I don't question that.”

He was at it again, Jefferson realized. He was—damn it to hell, Jefferson thought. It's like he was patting me on the head, because I'm such a good little boy.

“What the hell you getting at?” Jefferson said. He had tried not to.

“Nothing, really,” Bradley said. “I'm sure you've often given evidence in court, sheriff. Know how niggling little points get dragged in. What a lot lawyers try to make out of nothing.” He sighed, apparently at the habits of attorneys. “I was quite bad at that—or good, looking at it another way—in the old days. I'm afraid I would have made quite a point of the handcuffs, sheriff. Unfairly, perhaps. But that's the way things are, isn't it?”

“What point?” Jefferson said. He kept his voice harsh, but he asked.

“Oh,” Bradley said. “I'm sure you've thought of it, sheriff. As an experienced law officer. Prejudice would be a word for it. Prejudicial circumstances. Mr. Hunter picked this man out—or didn't pick him out—from among several other men? A lawyer will almost certainly ask something like that. No. That would have to be your answer, wouldn't it? The lawyer would look surprised, you know. Shocked, even. He'd look at the jury long enough to let them see how shocked he was. Then he'd say—I'm remembering how I used to do these things, sheriff—‘Suppose you tell us the circumstances of this identification, sheriff?' So you say, ‘Well, I dragged him up to the desk and—' and the lawyer says, ‘Dragged? Just what do you mean, dragged, sheriff?' And you say, ‘Well, I had handcuffs on him and—'” Bradley broke off to sigh; the sigh was clearly one of pity.