Death Likes It Hot

DEATH LIKES IT HOT
Gore Vidal
as
Edgar Box

Gore Vidal is the author of twenty-four novels, six plays, two memoirs, numerous screenplays and short stories, and well over two hundred essays. His
United States: Essays, 1952–1992
received the National Book Award.

Books by Gore Vidal

NOVELS

Williwaw

In a Yellow Wood

The City and the Pillar

The Season of Comfort

A Search for the King

Dark Green, Bright Red

The Judgment of Paris

Messiah

Julian

Washington, D. C.

Myra Breckinridge

Two Sisters

Burr

Myron

1876

Kalki

Creation

Duluth

Lincoln

Empire

Hollywood

Live from Golgotha

The Smithsonian Institution

The Golden Age

AS EDGAR BOX

Death in the Fifth Position

Death Before Bedtime

Death Likes It Hot

NONFICTION

Inventing a Nation

SHORT STORIES

A Thirsty Evil

Clouds and Eclipses

PLAYS

An Evening with Richard Nixon

Weekend

Romulus

On the March to the Sea

The Best Man

Visit to a Small Planet

ESSAYS

Rocking the Boat

Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship

Homage to Daniel Shays

Matters of Fact and of Fiction

The Second American Revolution

At Home

Screening History

United States

The Last Empire

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace

Imperial America

MEMOIRS

Palimpsest

Point to Point Navigation

In the early 1950s, Victor Weybright, then an editor at E. P. Dutton, suggested that Gore Vidal try writing a mystery novel under a pseudonym. Inspired by writers like Agatha Christie, whose work he knew well, Vidal took the suggestion and began writing mysteries under the name “Edgar Box.” (Edgar suggests Edgar Wallace, the creator of the mystery story; Box is from an actual family that Vidal had recently met.) In all, he wrote three books as Box, each of them featuring the dashing public relations man and amateur sleuth, Peter Sargeant II.
Death Likes It Hot
was the third and final book to feature Sargeant, who finds himself up against a killer hiding out in the Hamptons.

Death Likes It Hot
was the successor to the first two appearances of Peter Sargeant II. He had already demonstrated his talents as a sleuth in
Death in the Fifth Position
and
Death Before Bedtime
—novels that proved commercially successful and did a good deal to keep me afloat during the years when, for unpleasant reasons, I was blackballed by the
New York Times
, making it difficult for me to find an audience. Like most writers, I sometimes find myself in worlds that seem to present themselves as wonderful subjects for satirical treatment, and at that point in the early ’50s nothing was quite so fetching as the Hamptons. It was home to a new generation of “advance guard,” as they insisted on being known. This part of Long Island was famous for painters such as Jackson Pollock, and other disturbers of the peace, who soon made themselves national stars on one stage or another. I
felt that my increasingly robust character, Peter Sargeant, would fit in nicely with their compulsive performing.

During the writing of
Death Likes It Hot
, I was spending more time than was wise in the Hamptons, a piece of expensive real estate largely ignored by the media in those days although it had been for some time a playground for artists, writers, theater and film people, and various hangers-on—some of them extremely rich—who like to associate with the artsy crowd. The parties were, of course, fabulous, but it was easy to lose one’s way in that thicket, as my hero in this novel would discover.

But the voice of Edgar Box continued to buzz in my head after I had finished its two predecessors, and
Death Likes It Hot
, the third novel in the series, came in a rush. Again, I was writing about what lay before me, thus following the familiar advice of my editor at Dutton. “Write what you know,” he had said. I knew the Hamptons and its sumptuous, frenetic world. I had met the people who lived in those large houses, and their speech was familiar to me. And so I thought it might be a very good idea for Peter Sargeant to mix business with pleasure on a lively weekend in the Hamptons—the details were close at hand. This book is very much in the Agatha Christie vein, of course, with a cast of characters who might all be guilty parties. The guest list is not accidental at the particular house party at the center of the book. Sargeant inadvertently finds himself among a dangerous and seductive coterie of guests—people who are not quite as congenial as they might appear at first glance. One expects the usual treachery in these circumstances, but what happens is much worse than he imagined. The guests seem obsessed with their new form of amusement, which is usually known as murder. But it’s only a game for these people, a game of life or death.

—Gore Vidal, 2010

THE death of Peaches Sandoe the midget at the hands, or rather feet, of a maddened elephant in the sideshow of the circus at Madison Square Garden was at first thought to be an accident, the sort of tragedy you’re bound to run into from time to time if you run a circus with both elephants and midgets in it. A few days later, though, there was talk of foul play.

I read with a good deal of interest the
Daily News
’ account. A threatening conversation had been overheard; someone (unrevealed) had gone to the police with a startling story (unrevealed) and an accusation against an unnamed party. It was very peculiar.

Miss Flynn, my conscience and secretary, elderly, firm, intolerant, ruthless but pleasingly gray, looked over my shoulder as was her wont. “You will not, I presume …”

“Get involved in this grisly affair? No. Or at least not until I’m asked which is unlikely since the circus has its own public relations setup …”

“It’s possible that some member of the circus, however, knowing your propensity for Shady Personages and Crime might engage your services …”

“They’ll have to catch me first. Miss Flynn, I’m gone.” I stood up abruptly; she looked bewildered … wondering if perhaps I had gone over to the world of be-bop: Miss Flynn is a student of argot though her own conversation is very courtly, cool in fact.

“I’m gone for a week,” I explained.

She nodded, understanding at last. “You’ll accept Mrs. Veering’s invitation to partake of the sun at her palatial estate on Long Island?”

“Just this moment decided. No reason to hang around here. August is a dead month. We haven’t any business you can’t handle better than I.” She inclined her head in agreement. “So I’ll go out to Easthampton and see what it is she wants me to do.”

“Social Position has never been Mrs. Veering’s aim.” Miss Flynn is a resolute snob and follows with grim fascination Cholly Knickerbocker’s rich accounts of the rich.

“Well, she won’t be the first dowager we put over on an unsuspecting public.”

Miss Flynn scowled. Next to my affinity for Shady Personages and Crime she dislikes nearly all the clients of my public relations firm: ambitious well-heeled characters trying to exploit products or themselves in the press. With the exception of a singing dog who lost her voice, my record has been pretty good in this crooked profession. Recently business had slowed down. In August New York dies and everybody tries to get out of the heat. Mrs. Veering’s mysterious summons had come at exactly the right time.

“Alma Edderdale, I know, is a friend of yours … and a dear one of mine … it was at the advice of a friend of hers that I got your name. I do wish you could come see me here Friday to spend the week end and talk over with me a little project close to my heart. Let me know soon. Trusting you won’t let me down, I am, sincerely yours, Rose Clayton Veering.”
That was the message on thick expensive note paper with the discreet legend at the top: “The North Dunes, Easthampton, Long Island, N.Y.” No hint of what she wanted. My first impulse had been to write and tell her that I’d have to have a clear idea before I came of what she wanted. But the heat of August relaxed my professionalism. A week end in Easthampton, in a big house.…

I dictated an acceptance telegram to Miss Flynn who snorted from time to time but otherwise said nothing.

I then fired a number of instructions in my best business-executive voice, knowing that in my absence Miss Flynn would do exactly as she pleased anyway. Then we gravely shook hands and I left the office: two small rooms with two desks and a filing cabinet in East 55th Street (good address, small office, high rent) and headed down Park Avenue through the sullen heat to my apartment on 49th Street (big rooms, bad address, low rent.)

The Long Island Cannon Ball Express pulled away from the station and there was every indication that it would be able to make Montauk before nightfall; if not … well, those who travel that railroad are living dangerously and they know it. Cinders blew in my face from an open window. The seat sharply cut off the circulation in my legs. The hot sun shone brazenly in my face … it was like the days of my childhood fifteen years (well, maybe twenty years) before, when I used to visit relatives in Southampton. Everything had changed since then except the Long Island Railroad and the Atlantic Ocean.

The
Journal American
was full of the Peaches Sandoe murder case even though there were no facts out of which to make a story. This doesn’t bother newspapers, however, and there were some fine pictures of naked girls wearing sequins and plumes. Peaches Sandoe herself was, in life, a rather dowdy-looking, middle-aged midget with a 1920’s bob.