Death Likes It Hot Read Free Page B

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.
IV
    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 quicksecret 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