Death Likes It Hot (2 page)

I was well into the
N.Y. Globe
’s account, written by my old friend and rival Elmer Bush, when a fragrant thigh struck mine and a soft female voice said, “Excuse … why if it isn’t Peter Sargeant!”

“Liz Bessemer!” We stared at one another in amazement though why either should have been particularly surprised I don’t know since we see each other at least once a month at one party or another and I have, on several occasions, tried to get a date out of her without success since I’m shy and she is usually engaged to some young blade around town. Though it was perfectly logical that we both find ourselves on a Friday heading for a week end on Long Island by Cannon Ball Express, we professed amazement at seeing each other.

Amazement turned to excitement, at least on my part, when I found she was visiting an aunt and uncle in Easthampton. “I just had to get out of the city and since Mummy is out in Las Vegas getting a divorce” (Liz though a big girl of twenty-five with blue eyes and dark brown hair and a figure shaped like a Maiden-Form Bra ad still refers to her progenitress as “Mummy” which is significant, I think), “and I wasn’t invited any place this week end, I just thought I’d go on out and stay with my aunt who’s been after me all summer to visit her. So you’re going to be there too?”

I nodded and we kicked that ball around a bit. She knew of Mrs. Veering, even knew her place which, it seemed, was about half a mile down the road from where
she
would be staying. I experienced lust, mild but persistent. Mentally, I caressed the generous arm of coincidence.

“I hope you’re not a friend of Mrs. Veering’s … I mean, she’s perfectly nice but, well, you know.…”

“Kind of on the make?”

“That’s putting it gently.” Liz made a face; I noticed she was wearing nothing under her simple worth-its-weight-in-gold cotton dress; absolutely nothing, at least from the waist up. I felt very good about this for some reason and decided Christian Dior was a regular fellow after all.

“Well, it’s only a job,” I said vaguely, as we rattled desperately through Jamaica. “She’s got some project or other
she wants me to look into for her. So, what the hell … it’s a living and I get out of town for the week end … maybe longer,” I added softly but Liz, according to legend at least, is the least romantic girl in New York and though she’s gone around with some sharp boys in her time and no doubt given them a certain satisfaction, she has never been the type to hold hands in the moonlight or exchange radiant myopic glances across crowded rooms. She’s very matter-of-fact which I like, in spite of the “Mummy” business.

“That’s right.” She looked at me coolly, at least as coolly as it’s possible to look with the cinders flying about your head and the heat one hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the car. “You have your own firm, don’t you?”

I nodded. “Ever since I left the
Globe.
”

“It must be awfully interesting,” she said in the vague tone of Bryn Mawr. “I’m at
Harpers Bazaar
now.”

I said I didn’t know she worked.

“Oh yes … every now and then.”

“What do you do there?”

“Oh … well, you know: that sort of thing.”

I knew indeed. All New York is the richer for these vague elegant girls with some money, a set of Tecla pearls and a number of basic black dresses who, while marking time between college and their first marriage, work for the fashion magazines. They are charming and they love art like nobody’s business … zooming around the galleries on 57th Street to look at pictures and around Second Avenue to various “fun-apartments” where High Bohemia gives cocktail parties for Edith Sitwell and worries about Marlon Brando.

Liz was a member in good standing of this community but she was also careful not to get typed: she was not one of the fashionable
ugly
girls who end up making a career out of that kind of thing; she kept the lines of communication open with the young Wall Street set, the Newport gang, the Palm Beach crew and even the night-club bachelors who
think that 57th Street is just something you pass on your way from the Plaza to the St. Regis.

We talked about mutual acquaintances. I haven’t the time to circulate much in her world but I know it well enough since it’s made up of old school friends of mine as well as those professional zombies that you’re bound to meet sooner or later if you live in New York and go out at all.

It wasn’t until we had stopped for water, or whatever it is the train stops for besides passengers at Speonk, that I asked her what she knew about Mrs. Veering.

“I don’t think I know anything about her except what everybody does. You see her around, that’s all. She comes from somewhere out West and she has a lot of money from a husband who’s dead, I guess. I suppose she’s out to make the grade as a dowager.”

This was as much as
I
knew about my hostess-to-be, so we talked of other things, agreeing to meet Saturday night at the Ladyrock Yacht Club where a big dance was being held. It was assumed I’d come as a guest of Mrs. Veering but just in case she didn’t go I said I’d sneak over somehow. Liz thought this was a fine idea.

Then we read our tabloids while the train passed millions of white ducks and potatoes, the principal crop of this green island.

Shortly before we arrived at Easthampton, we both agreed that someone had undoubtedly pushed Peaches Sandoe in the way of that elephant. But who?

The North Dunes is a large gray-clapboard house sitting high on a dune to the north of the Ladyrock Yacht Club which, in turn, is north of the village.

I was met by a slovenly fellow in a chauffeur’s hat and
Overalls who spotted me right off and said Mrs. Veering had sent him to fetch me. I climbed in the station wagon which was parked with all the others beside the railroad, waved to Liz who was getting into a similar station wagon and sat back as I was driven in silence through the handsome village with its huge elm trees and silver pond and the house where somebody did not write
Home Sweet Home
but was perhaps thinking about it when he did write the song.

On the ocean front, one vast gloomy house after another sat among the treeless dunes where clumps of sword grass waved, dark upon the white sand. The lush green-gold course of the Maidstone provided a neat, well-ordered touch to the road which runs north of the village toward Montauk Point, a road off which, to left and right at this point, are the big houses and the cottages of the summer residents.

The North Dunes was one of the largest and gloomiest. A screened-in porch ran halfway around the house on the ocean side and, from the outside, the place looked like nothing so much as a palace of bleached driftwood.

Inside it was better.

A lean butler took my suitcase and showed me into the sunroom: a big chintzy place on the south side of the house with a fine view of the golf course and ocean: high trees screened the village from view.

Mrs. Veering greeted me, rising from the chair where she’d been seated beside the empty fireplace.

“I couldn’t be more delighted, Mr. Sargeant, to have you here on such short notice.” She shook my hand warmly: she was a big competent woman with a mass of blue hair and a pale skin from which two small blue eyes stared at the world expressionlessly. She was in her fifties with a bosom like a sandbag and a clear voice which was neither Western nor Colony-Restaurant-New-York but something in between. “Come sit over here and have a little drink. I’ll ring for … unless you’d rather mix your own … it’s over there.
I’ll just have a dash of Dubonnet: I never have anything else; just a bit before dinner is nice, don’t you think?”

She gabbled away and I made all the expected answers as I mixed myself a Scotch and soda and poured her some Dubonnet over ice. Then I sat down in the fat chair opposite her and waited.

Mrs. Veering was in no hurry to get to the point.

“Alma Edderdale is coming next week, Monday, did you know that? I love her. She’s staying at the Sea Spray … she’s an old friend of yours, isn’t she? Yes? I’ll want to see her of course. I would’ve asked her here but she likes to be alone and besides I have a house full of friends this week end.” She finished the Dubonnet in one lightning gulp. “Friends and acquaintances,” she added vaguely, looking out the window at the golf course, golden in the afternoon sun.

“I wonder …” I began, wanting to get to business right away.

“Will I have another? yes, I think I might. It does me good the doctor says: ‘just a touch of Dubonnet, Rose, before dinner, to warm the blood.’ ”

I poured a highball glass of the stuff which should, I thought, be enough to bring her blood to a boil. Two ladylike sips got her to the bottom of the glass and I could see what one of her problems undoubtedly was. Anyway, the drink seemed to do her good and her eyes glistened as she put the glass down and said, “I like a mixture, don’t you?”

“A mixture of what, Mrs. Veering?” I had a feeling we were operating on two different frequencies.

“People. What else?” She smiled a dazzling smile, her dentures brilliant and expensive. “Now this week end I’ve tried to bring together
interesting
people … not just social … though they all are of course. Brexton is here.” She paused, letting this sink in.

I was reasonably impressed … or maybe surprised is the better word. My interest in modern painting ranges somewhere
between zero and minus ten; nevertheless, having batted around New York in pretentious circles, I’ve picked up a smattering and I can tell Motherwell from Stuempfig with a canny eye. Brexton is one of the current heroes of 57th Street. He’s in all the museums. Every year
Life
magazine devotedly takes its readers on a tour of his studio, receiving for their pains a ton of mail saying they ought to know better than waste space on a guy whose pictures aren’t any better than the stuff little Sue painted last year in fourth grade. But Brexton has hit the big-time professionally and it was something of a surprise to hear that he was staying with Mrs. Veering. I found out why.

“His wife is my niece Mildred,” she said, licking the ice daintily for one last drop of Dubonnet. “What a fuss there was in the family when she married him ten years ago! I mean how could we know he was going to be famous?”

I allowed this was always a hazard.

“Anyway it’s terribly nice having them here. He isn’t at all tiresome, though I must say I love art and artists and I don’t really expect them to be like other people. I mean they
are
different, aren’t they? Not gross clay like ourselves.”

Speak for yourself, hon, I said to myself while I nodded brightly. I wondered if the Brextons had anything to do with my being asked for the week end: a big stunt of some kind to put him over maybe? I held my fire.

Mrs. Veering helped herself to another tumbler of Dubonnet. I noticed with admiration that her hand was steady. She chattered the whole time. “Then the Claypooles are here. They’re great fun … Newport, you know.” She socked that one home; then she went back to her chair. “Brother and sister
and
utterly devoted which is so rare. They’ve never married, either of them, though of course both are in great demand.”

This sounded like one for Dr. Kinsey or maybe Dr. Freud but I listened while Mrs. Veering told me what a nice couple they made and how they traveled together and were
patrons of the arts together. I had heard of them dimly but I had no idea how old they were or what arts they patronized. Mrs. Veering assumed I knew everyone she did so she didn’t bother to fill me in on them … not that it made too much difference. I was assuming my duties would have nothing to do with this collection of guests.

She was just about to tell me all about the last guest: Mary Western Lung, the penwoman, when the butler crossed the room silently, swiftly, without warning and whispered something in her ear. She nodded then she motioned for him to leave, without instructions.

Whatever he had said to her had the effect of turning off the babble, to my relief. She was suddenly all business, in spite of the faintly alcoholic flush which burned now behind her white make-up.

“I’ll come to the point, Mr. Sargeant. I need help. As to the main reason for my asking you here, I’ll give you the general details right now. I plan to give a Labor Day party which I want to be the sensation of the Hamptons. It can’t be cheap; it can’t be obvious. I don’t want anyone to know I’ve hired a press agent … assuming you will take the job. I’ll expect full coverage, though, in the press.”

“My fee …” I began; even as a boy scout of eleven I’d discovered that it’s best to get that part of the business over first.

“Will be met.” She was just as businesslike. “Write me a letter tonight saying how much you want, putting yourself on record, and I’ll give you what you need.” I was filled with admiration for her next few remarks which had to do with hiring me and also with her purpose.

“The reason I’ve picked you is because it’s possible for me to have you here as a guest without people asking questions.” I was duly flattered and wished I’d worn my Brooks Brothers gabardine suit. “So don’t say anything about your profession; just pretend you’re a … writer.” She finished brightly enough.

“I’ll do my best.”

“Tomorrow I’ll go over the guest list with you. I think it’s in good shape but you might be able to advise me. Then we’ll discuss what publicity would be wisest. I shall want a very great deal.”

I stopped myself just in time from asking why. That’s one question in my somewhat crooked business you never ask. Being a publicist is a little like being a lawyer: you take on a case without worrying too much about anything except putting it over. I figured Mrs. Veering would let me in on her game sooner or later. If not, considering the fee I was going to ask, it didn’t make a bit of difference.

“Now you’ll probably want to go to your room. We dine at eight thirty.” She paused; then: “I must ask a favor of you.”

“What’s that, Mrs. Veering?”

“Don’t be disturbed by anything you might see or hear while you’re in this house … and be discreet.” Her rather silly face had grown solemn and pale while she spoke; I was alarmed by the expression in her eyes. It was almost as if she were frightened of something. I wondered what. I wondered if she might not be a little off her rocker.