“Did you tell the police that?” Park asked.
“Why should I? She never went there except when we went together, or when we were going to meet there.”
“Her body might be there, Hewett. She could have been decoyed there.”
“How do you mean?”
“A faked message from you. It wouldn’t be hard. Any of your apartment mates could get their hands on your handwriting.”
Bill Hewett looked down at his plate. Suddenly he looked no longer young, as though he had donned the mask he would wear in middle age. “I went back once. Alone. It was like visiting some damnable cemetery. The wind whined. She could be there, all right.”
“I’ll wire the New York police. Tell me the name of the farm or how to direct them to it.”
“About a mile and a half north of the village on the left of a curve. Route Eight. They call it the Harmon place.”
He sent the wire after breakfast. At eleven thirty they were all out by the pool. Park was nursing a purpling bruise high on his cheek where Mick Rogers had tagged him heavily during the usual morning workout. Mick hummed as he made drinks. He seemed well pleased with himself.
“Gotta remember to keep that left hand higher, boss,” he said, grinning.
Taffy swam effortless lengths of the pool, her brown arms lifting slowly from the pale-green water. Stacey Brian, in deference to his redheaded lack of skin pigmentation, was the only one in the shade. Stocky Prine Smith was whispering to June Luce. He was propped up on his elbows. She lay on her back with plastic linked cups on her eyes to protect them from the sun glare. From time to time she giggled in a throaty way. Stacey glared over at them. Georgie Wane was trying to teach big Guy Darana how to make a racing turn against the end of the pool.
From the amplifier came muted music, old jazz piano by Errol Garner and Mary Lou Williams and Art Tatum. The last record, one by Garner, had played twice. Park thought of sending Mick up to reverse the stack, but suddenly an idea came to him. He went up himself, walking slowly, planning it in detail. It was based on the sensitive mike he had hooked into the set. Once, when it had been left turned on quite inadvertently, during a party, one couple who had sneaked away from the crowd came back to find that every word, every sound, had blared out above the noise of the music. He had had the mike installed to simplify some of the problems of running the household.
He reversed the stack of records, waited for the music to start, clicked on the mike at the point of a loud remembered chord in the music, hoping that it wouldn’t be heard. He picked the table mike up gingerly and carried it away from the set. He set it on the bedside table, picked up the phone, and dialed the number of the hotel. Before anyone could answer, he pushed the receiver down with his ringers.
“Give me Mr. Norris’s room, please. Four-twelve, I think it is... Hello, Lieutenant Norris? This is Falkner. I guess your trip hasn’t been a waste after all... Yes, I think I know who our man is... Right. He’ll crack under the strain, and we’ll have something definite to go on... Yes, I’ll call you just as soon as—”
The door burst open and Mick came running in, panting from the run up the stairs. “Hey, the mike’s on! Every word is coming over the—”
Park reached out quickly and clicked the mike off.
He grinned. “Thanks, Mick.” He hung up the phone.
Mick’s eyes widened with comprehension. “So! A fake, is it?”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“No. I started running when I heard you dial.”
Park repeated the conversation. “What do you think?” he asked.
Mick scrubbed his heavy jaw with his knuckles. “It ought to make the guy pretty uneasy. I can’t figure which one it could be. Maybe it isn’t any one of the three.”
“I’m placing my bet that it is one of them.”
They went back down. The atmosphere had changed. Hewett was the color of watery milk under his two-day tan. He stood with his fists clenched, staring at his friends, one by one. June had sat up, moved a bit away from Prine Smith. Taffy stood near the diving tower, toweling herself. Georgie sat alone on the edge of the pool, her feet in the water. Guy Darana stood behind her, his eyes slitted against the sunlight, looking half asleep. Stacey Brian looked at Hewett and said, “Easy, boy. Easy.”
“I’m terribly sorry that happened,” Park said. “It shouldn’t have happened. Like a fool I forgot the mike was on. I’m afraid I’ve forewarned the man who killed Lisa Mann.”
Hewett walked over to Park. “Who is it?” he said. “Tell me who it is.”
“Not quite yet, Bill,” Park said soothingly.
“Tell me, damn you!”
“I don’t think I’m wrong, but there’s always that chance. I’m not ready to tell you. You’re in no emotional condition to handle yourself properly if I should tell you.”
Hewett threw his fist full at Falkner’s face with an almost girlish ineptitude. Park caught the fist in the palm of his hand and squeezed down on it. Hewett’s mouth changed with the impact of the sudden pain.
“Don’t try that again,” Park said.
Hewett yanked his hand free, turned without a word, and walked across to the house.
Everyone started to make bright, shallow conversation to cover the awkwardness. Taffy came over to Park and lowered her voice so that only he could hear her. “Dirty pool, friend,” she said. “Very dirty pool.”
“I don’t understand, Taff.”
“The music suddenly got louder and then faded back again. The mike stands near the set. You should have carried it over to the phone before turning it on.”
“You know, you’d be a very difficult type to be married to.”
“I don’t think I can quite class that as a proposal. You and your mythical lieutenants!”
He grinned with a flash of white teeth against the deep brown of his face. “That’s where I got you, Taff. There is a Lieutenant Norris, and he is registered at the hotel, and he is from New York. But he’s on an extradition case. If I can’t give him something to get his teeth into by tomorrow night, he has to start back with his man.”
He fell silent, and the talk around him was meaningless. It had to be a clever trap. There was nothing Falkner could know. Nothing. But the man was clever. It took cleverness to locate a body sixteen hundred miles away, a body that had been searched for by experts. They might not find it. Probably they would. He hadn’t risked going back to see if the dirt had settled. The laboratories would go to work on the body. He had carried the body a short distance. Could some microscopic bit of evidence have been left?
Dusk broke up the badminton doubles. The last set had been Guy Darana and June Luce against Georgie and Stacey Brian. Everyone had played in their swimsuits. Brian’s wiry quickness had made up for Darana’s advantage in height. Georgie was nursing a swollen underlip which, in some strange fashion, she had managed to club with her own racket.
All four were winded. Mick had wheeled the rolling bar out onto the edge of the court, plugging in the ice compartment at the outlet near the tennis court floodlights.
“Sometimes,” Stacey said, “it’s good to become bushed. When the infantry reluctantly let me go, I swore I’d never get physically tired again for the rest of my life. Here I am, running around in the sun and beating on a cork with feathers sticking out of it.”
“Infantry!” Darana said with heavy disgust. “Why didn’t you pick yourself a branch?”
“Don’t tell me what you were, Guy,” Georgie said. “Let me guess. A fly boy. A hot pilot. A tired hat and nine rows of ribbons.”