Death Likes It Hot by Gore Vidal Read Free Book Online Page B

banishes care.
    An hour later, I had the drawing room all to myself, which was fortunate because the butler advanced upon me with a member of the press, a chinless youth from one of the News-Services.
    I waved him into a chair grandly.
    “I want to speak with Mrs. Rose Clayton Veering and Mr. Paul Brexton,” said the newshawk firmly, adenoidally.
    “You must be satisfied with me.”
    “I came here to talk with Mrs. Rose …”
    “And now you must talk to me,” I said more sharply. “I am authorized to speak for Mrs. Veering.”
    “Who are you?”
    “Peter Cutler Sargeant II.”
    He wrote this down slowly in what he pretended was shorthand but actually was I could see, a sloppy form of longhand. “I’d still like to …” he began stubbornly, but I interrupted him.
    “They don’t want to talk, Junior. You talk to me or get yourself out of here.”
    This impressed him. “Well, sir, I’ve been to see the police and they say Mrs. Brexton was drowned this morning at eleven six. That right?”
    I said it was. I fired all the facts there were at him and he recorded them.
    “I’d like to get a human interest angle,” he said in the tone of one who has just graduated from a school of journalism, with low marks.
    “You got plenty. Brexton’s a famous painter. Mrs. Veering’s a social leader. Just rummage through your morgue and you’ll find enough stuff to pad out a good feature.”
    He looked at me suspiciously. “You’re not working for any paper, are you?”
    I shook my head. “I saw a movie of
The Front Page
once … I know all about you fellows.”
    He looked at me with real dislike. “I’d like to see Mrs. Veering just to …”
    “Mrs. Veering is quote prostrate with grief unquote. Paul Brexton quote world-famous modern painter refuses to make any comment holding himself incommunicado in his room unquote. There’s your story.”
    “You’re not being much help.”
    “It’s more help than nothing. If I didn’t talk nobody would.” I glanced anxiously around to make sure none of the other guests was apt to come strolling in. Fortunately, they were all out of sight.
    “They’re doing an autopsy on Mrs. Brexton and I wondered if …”
    “An autopsy?” This was unusual.
    “That’s right. It’s going on now. I just wondered if there was any hint …”
    “Of foul play? No, there wasn’t. We all witnessed her death. Nobody drowned her. Nobody made her swim out into the undertow. She’d had a nervous breakdown recently and there’s no doubt but that had something to do with her death.”
    He brightened at this: I could almost read the headline: “Despondent Socialite Swims to Death at Easthampton.” Well, I was following orders.
    I finally got him out of the house and I told the butler, in Mrs. Veering’s name, to send any other newspaper people to me first. He seemed to understand perfectly.
    Idly, wondering what to do next, I strolled out onto the porch and sat down in a big wicker armchair overlooking the sea. Walking alone beside the water was Allie Claypoole. She was frowning and picking up shells and stones and bits of seaweed and throwing them out onto the waves, like offerings. She was a lovely figure, silhouetted against the blue.
    I picked up a copy of
Time
magazine to learn what new triumphs had been performed by “the team” in Washington. I was halfway through an account of the President’s golf scores in the last month at Burning Tree when I heard voices from behind me.
    I looked about and saw they were coming from a window a few feet to my left. The window, apparently, of Brexton’s bedroom: it was, I recalled, the only downstairs bedroom. Two men were talking. Brexton and Claypoole. I recognized their voices immediately.
    “You made her do it. You knew she wasn’t strong enough.” It was Claypoole: tense, accusing.
    Brexton’s voice sounded tired and distant. I listened eagerly; the magazine slipped from my lap to the floor while Istrained to hear. “Oh,