Murder by the Book (8 page)

Grogan watched the tall, youngish man. He watched, it seemed to Ronald Jefferson, with some anxiety. Which was, on the whole, understandable; Paul Grogan was not happy about any of this.

“You've no idea where she may have gone?” Jefferson asked.

Grogan had not. There were many places she might be—on the tennis court, sunning in the protected area of the beach, in the solarium. But she had been paged in all these places—except in the women's solarium—by a boy who knew her. The attendant in the solarium reported three women sunning, and one under the vigorous hands of a masseuse, and that none of them, to her certain knowledge, was Mrs. Rebecca Payne.

Jefferson got what description Grogan could give—a slender dark girl, black hair and black eyes, a thin face. “Probably if she went to the trouble—” Grogan said, and shrugged. “She's got a sad expression. Looks sort of … oh, licked.”

Jefferson called in, found that Sheriff Reppy was still out, fishing. Which left it still up to Jefferson. Pickup to be sent out for one Rebecca Payne, small, dark young woman; age? “Mid-twenties,” Grogan guessed. “Weighs not much over a hundred,” Grogan guessed. A slight young woman, dark, with a sad expression on a thinnish face. Not much to go on, but what they had.

Autopsy report in on Dr. Edmund Piersal. There was a good deal of it, and it boiled down to one thing: Piersal had been stabbed with a knife with a rather wide blade, possibly a fisherman's knife. The knife had punctured the aorta.

Skin divers had not found a suitable knife in the waters at, or around, the end of the pier. But the water deepened abruptly there; it would take days to search adequately and, even then, there would be no certainty. Piersal might have held the knife himself; falling, released it from a nerveless hand. The knife might have fallen into the deep water. It might equally well have been thrown there, by another hand. And it might, evidently, not be there at all. The murderer might have carried it away.

Jefferson arranged to have the room checked for fingerprints. If they picked up a slender black-haired young woman—and they might pick up several—it would be helpful to be able to prove who she was. Grogan agreed to see that the room would not be entered by a member of the staff.

Jefferson understood that Dr. Piersal had treated Mrs. Tucker Upton the day before. He would like to talk to Dr. Upton. Grogan repeated Dr. Upton's name, rather as if he had never heard it before. He said, “Why on earth?” He said, “What possible reason?”

“Fill in the picture,” Jefferson said, as firmly as he could manage. Grogan looked doubtful, but shrugged his shoulders.

He had, naturally, stood by Dr. Tucker Upton, offering what help and solace he could. He had even offered to go with the doctor to help with the arrangements. Dr. Upton had thanked him; had gone alone. That was about an hour before. He expected Dr. Upton to return. He had no idea when.

“Happen to know where this Mr. and Mrs. North might be?” Jefferson said.

Paul Grogan shrugged again. He looked at his watch. They might be in their room, changing. It was about the time people went to their rooms to change.

The telephone in the room of Mr. and Mrs. Gerald North rang unanswered.

“The lounge,” Grogan said. “I've noticed they go there.”

Grogan kept track of those who went to the Penguin Bar—kept track a little anxiously. He had seldom, in his considerable experience, had a hotel so full of such un-thirsty guests. An almost empty bar is a considerable disappointment to an innkeeper.

6

The Penguin Bar of The Coral Isles could be reached by going through the dining room or, alternatively, by going around the hotel—past the tennis court, across the patio. Hopefully, the hotel had left, at a corner of the patio, a gap in its fence, so that passersby could enter the bar from Flagler Avenue. Now and then a customer was thus captured.

The lounge—which for some reason was octagonal—was empty when the Norths went into it. The bartender leaned on his bar, looking sadly at the opposite wall, where penguins strutted through a mural. “Birds,” Jerry said, with distaste. “This place is hipped on birds.”

They sat at a corner table, from which the penguins were not intrusive. The bartender came around his bar to them. “Quiet,” Jerry said. “Early yet,” the bartender said. It was about five-thirty. At any moment, the bartender implied, hordes would descend. Jerry said, “Extra-dry martinis, lemon peel.” Pam said, “Very cold, please.” The bartender said, “Sir.” He added, “Ma'am.” He went away and clattered ice.

“Actually,” Pam said, “birds are very nice, I think.”

Jerry said, “Pelicans.”

“Do you really mind so much?” Pam said.

“I don't see why it so often happens to us.”

Pam nodded her head, indicating that she didn't, either.

“We're on vacation,” Jerry said. “Thanks.” This was to the bartender, in exchange for two stemmed glasses, which had lived in crushed ice before they were filled. “It follows us around.”

“Homicide prone,” Pam agreed. “It's a very good martini. There's no point in blaming the pelicans. You mean you're really not interested?”

She looked at him, her eyes intent; she studied him.

“Of course I am,” Jerry said. “Damn it.”

“Of course,” Pam said. “Aside from everything else, he was a nice man. Nice to that poor Mrs. Payne. A nice man. And Bill more or less promised Mr. Jefferson we'd help.”

“Bill's very free with—” Jerry said, and broke off and looked at Pam, who wore a sleeveless white dress, with a gold band circling either slender wrist. “All right,” Jerry said. “I'll never feel the same about pelicans again, but all right. You don't really think he killed himself?”

Pam looked at her drink; raised it and sipped from it. She shook her head slowly.

“Neither do I,” Jerry said. “Particularly not that way.”

“Because he was a doctor?”

It was Jerry's turn to shake his head. He said that, of course, one would expect a doctor to know an easier way of ending life. But it wasn't that, or only partly that.

“It would be,” Jerry said, “a theatrical way to kill yourself. A—showy way. Like—oh, like standing on a ledge.”

Pam North said, “Yes.”

“If that sort of thing's in you,” Jerry said, “it comes out on a tennis court. Dramatizing. Acting it out as much as playing. You know what I mean. Piersal just hit tennis balls. Where the opposition wasn't. To go out to the end of a pier—” He did not finish, except with lifted shoulders.

“Suicide is a private matter,” Pam said. “Yes. You don't force it on other people. I still wonder if poor Sheriff Jefferson found—”

She stopped suddenly. “Poor” Deputy Sheriff Jefferson was coming down the staircase from the dining room. She hoped he hadn't heard the “poor.” He did not look especially happy, but there might be other reasons for that.

He came across to them. He said, “Mind if I join you a minute?” and sat down. He said, over his shoulder, “A beer, Charlie.” He said, to Pam, “You were right about the notebook.” He took a small black notebook out of his pocket, and opened it. He handed it, open, to Pam North. She looked at it.

“The light's not very good,” Pam said.

“It isn't the light,” Jefferson said.

Pam put the little book on the table, where Jerry, too, could see it. Jerry looked at it. He said, “Hmmm.”

“It's the way doctors are,” Pam said. “If it isn't Latin, it's this sort of thing. To keep things from laymen, What did he tell us, Jerry?”

“Not much,” Jerry said. “That Mrs. Upton had a—” He snapped his fingers. “Stomach ache,” he said. “For which the medical can be ‘gastrointestinal upset.' Or ‘g-i up.' And that she'd had them before. Hence, ‘hist of.' Since 1949?”

“Or,” Pam said, “that could be her age. ‘Dehy'?”

Jerry spread his hands. Jefferson reached for the book and turned it around and studied the entry. He said, “Dehydrated?” and turned it back. “I mean, if she had a really bad spell. Throwing up and—well. I'm not a doctor, but—”

“Of course,” Pam said. “She was sick at her stomach and dehydrated and—” She paused and shook her head. “S-l-h-t?” she said. “Slight, with the vowels left out?”

“
G
isn't a vowel,” Jerry said. “But—”

He picked up the little book and held it to what light there was. “Space between the
l
and the
h,”
he said. “Slight something or other? ‘Slight hurt?' ‘Slight'—hell, ‘slight hysteria?' Wait—‘slight hypertension?'”

He gave the little book back to Pam. She said, “‘Comp.' could mean ‘compensated,' I suppose. ‘Slight hypertension compensated.'” She looked at Jerry; looked at Ronald Jefferson. “Does that mean anything?” she said.

“Not to me,” Jerry said, and Jefferson shook his head sadly. But then Jefferson said, “Let me have it a minute,” and reached for it. “Dehydrated,” he said. “‘Comp. th.'—could be, ‘complained of thirst,' couldn't it?”

He handed the book back. His expression was more hopeful.

The Norths were pleased—pleased at progress, pleased with Deputy Sheriff Ronald Jefferson. It was, Jerry thought, as if they had broken into a difficult corner of a crossword puzzle. And as he thought that, his mild elation drained away.

“All right,” Jerry said to Pam. “You get all the squares filled in and what have you got? All the squares filled in. An exercise completed, but an exercise without meaning. Mrs. Upton had an upset stomach, which we already knew. Suppose the doctor called it a ‘gastrointestinal upset' when he was talking to himself. So what?” He turned from Pam to Jefferson, and raised his eyebrows.

Hope retreated from the deputy sheriff's face.

“I guess you're right,” he said. “We're just working a crossword. Hasn't anything to do with what we're after.”

Jerry noticed Jefferson used the first person plural. It was rather, Jerry thought, as if he had pinned a badge on them. Which was—well, which was the recognition of the inevitable.

“We don't know,” Pam said. “Double-Crostics are different.”

They looked at her.

“You come up with a message,” Pam said. “A few lines of poetry, or something.”

“That,” Jefferson said, “will be just fine.”

But he reached out and took the notebook back again.

“Mrs. Upton,” he said, “had a gastrointestinal upset, and she'd had them before. She was—”

“Nervous indigestion,” Pam said. “That's what he called it.”

“All right,” Jefferson said. “She'd had it since 1949, or she was 49 years old. She was dehydrated. This made her slightly hysterical, or slightly hypertensed.” He blinked at that word. As well he might, Pam thought, and shook her head. She said, “Let me see it,” and Deputy Sheriff Jefferson let her see it. Pam made sounds—sluh, hut, or thereabouts. She tried it again. “Sluh. Hit.”

“I don't really think we've got it right,” Pam said. “It's hard without vowels. Unless you're Polish or something. S-l h-t.” This time she pronounced the letters. She shook her head. Then she said, “Wait a minute,” in a different tone. “She died of her heart. So—why isn't ‘ht' heart? She had a—a what? Slight heart? Sluggish?”

“I don't know,” Jerry said. “I still think it's a crossword puzzle.” He looked at the bartender, who was still alone, who was looking at him. Jerry looked at his glass, at Pam's. He raised two fingers. The bartender said, “Sir.”

“All right,” Pam said. “A something heart. For the time being. Then she complained of thirst. Then there was an admiral.”

Jerry took the book from her and read again Dr. Piersal's cryptic notes. They read the same way:

“Mrs. T. Upton. g-i up. hist of 49. Dehy. sl ht. comp. th. adm. dr int. v. adv bl d & gis. hs MD cf w.”

He saw where Pam had found an admiral. It seemed an odd place—

“Wait a minute,” Jerry said. It was his turn. And, in spite of his better judgment—his conviction that Deputy Sheriff Jefferson, with the assistance of Mr. and Mrs. North, was wasting time—he felt somewhat pleased with himself. “Not ‘admiral,'” he said. “At least, ‘administered' would fit better, wouldn't it? ‘Administered d-r,' whatever that is. Administered a dram of—of something called ‘i-n-t v.' And ‘a-d-v'—of course. ‘Advised b-l-d.'”

“Blood, probably,” Pam said.

But then, once more, Jerry could see her face whiten under sunburn, and knew she was at the end of the pier again, and that the game had gone out of it. Pam picked up her glass, and finished, in one swallow, what was in it, and that was very unlike Pamela North. It was all right as long as detachment held; as long as it was really like a crossword puzzle. If it turned real, it wasn't all right at all. If it was a man they had played tennis with, lying in his blood—

“Jefferson,” Jerry said, “I think you'd better count us—”

But Pam put a hand on his hand and said, “No, Jerry. I'm all right.” He looked at her carefully. She looked all right again. She took the little book back.

“You'd think,” she said, “he'd have noted down a dram of what, wouldn't you?”

“Int v,” Jerry said. He said it again, more slowly.

“Intravenous,” Jefferson said, and Pam said, “Yes, I think so. A dram of something intravenously. Of—of something wrong?”

“You're back where you started,” Jerry said, and Pam, slowly, said “Perhaps.” She continued to look at the notations—at what was the last case history Dr. Edmund Piersal had written, would ever write. It began to look, she thought, as if he had omitted the one detail which was essential, which might now be revealing.

“Advised a blood transfusion?” she said, her tone doubtful. “Do they give them for indigestion? Or, for that matter, whatever a sluh heart is?”