there.'
'I'm surprised you didn't.'
He colored faintly. 'Well, you know, he is - or was - Mrs. Bagshaw's protege. She's one of our oldest members, and now she's moved into the cottage next to mine - I hated to upset her. I feel my essential role is that of a - buffer.'
He raised his eyes to the ceiling again, as if the god of innkeepers resided just over his head. 'I try to stand between our members and the unpleasantness of life.'
'You're very good at it, I'm sure.'
He accepted the compliment formally with a bow. 'Thank you, Mr. Archer. The Tennis Club is known in the trade as one of the better run clubs. I've given it ten years of my life, and I was trained in the hotel schools of Zurich and Lausanne.'
'What did you mean when you said that French was one of your native languages?'
He smiled. 'I have four native languages. French and German and Italian and Romansch. I was born in the Romansch section of Switzerland, in Silvaplana.'
His tongue caressed the name.
'Where was Martel born, Mr. Stoll?'
'I have asked myself that question. He claims to be Parisian, Mrs. Bagshaw tells me. But from what little I heard of it, his French is not Paris French. It is too provincial, too formal. Perhaps it is Canadian, or South American. I don't know. I am not a linguistic scientist.'
'You're the next thing to it,' I said encouragingly. 'So you think he might be Canadian or South American?'
'That's just a guess. I'm not really familiar with Canadian or South American French. But I'm quite sure Martel is not Parisian.'
I thanked Stoll. He bowed me out.
I had noticed a bulletin board on the wall outside his office. Pinned to its cord surface were some blownup candid pictures of people dancing at a party. Below them, like a reminder of purgatory at the gates of paradise, was a typed list of seven members who were behind with their dues. Mrs. Roy Fablon was one of them.
I mentioned this to Ella.
'Yes, Mrs. Fablon's been having a hard time recently. She told me some of her investments went sour. I hated to post her name, but those are the rules.'
'It raises an interesting question. Do you think Virginia Fablon is after Martel's money.'
She shook her head. 'It wouldn't make sense. She was going to marry Peter Jamieson. The Jamiesons have ten times as much money as Mr. Martel ever dreamed of.'
'Do you know that?'
'I can tell people with money from people without, and people who have had it for a while from people who haven't. If you want my opinion, Mr. Martel is nouveau riche, and more nouveau than riche. He's felt out of place here, and he's been spending his money like a drunken sailor, and it hasn't helped much.'
'Except that it's got him Ginny. They were married over the weekend.'
'Poor girl.'
'Why do you say that?'
'On general principles. Mr. Jamieson is having a long wait. Is he the one you're working for?'
'Yes.'
'And you're a private detective, aren't you?'
'I am. What do you think of my client?'
'He reminds me of something I read once, that inside every fat man is a thin man crying to get out. Only Peter's just a boy, and that makes it worse.' She added meditatively: 'I suppose he has the makings of a man.'
'We'll see.'
I jerked a thumb toward the bulletin board. 'You have some pictures on the board. Does this club have a regular photographer?'
'A part time one. Why?'
'I was wondering if he took a picture of Martel.'
'I doubt it. I could check with the photographer. Eric isn't on tonight though.'
'Get him on. Tell him I'll pay him for his time.'
'I'll try.'
'You can do better than try,' I said. 'There's a question about Martel's identity, and we need a picture if there is one.'
'I said I'd try.'
She directed me to the dining room. It was actually two adjoining rooms, one of which had a polished dance floor. A small orchestra was on the stand, momentarily silent. The other room contained about thirty tables, brilliant with flowers and silver. Peter was sitting at a table by the windows, staring out gloomily at the dark beach.
He got up eagerly when he saw me, but his eagerness had more to do with dinner than with me. It was served buffet style by men in white hats. At the sight of food Peter underwent a transformation, as if his melancholy passion for Ginny had been switched to another channel. He loaded two plates for himself, one with five kinds of salad, cold ham, shrimp, crabmeat: the other with roast beef and potatoes and gravy and small green peas.
He gobbled the food with such eager straining gluttony that he made me feel like a voyeur. His eyes were fixed and mindless as he chewed. Sweat stood out on his forehead.
He wiped his plate with a piece of bread, which he ate. Then he went into contemplation, leaning his chin on his hand. 'I can't decide what to have for dessert.'
'You don't need dessert.'
He looked at me as if I'd threatened to put him on bread and water for a month. I felt like telling him to go to hell. Watching him eat, I'd asked myself if I'd be doing Ginny a favor by bringing her back to my client. Martel at least was a man. Maybe Peter had the `makings of a man, as Ella said, but when he sat down at the table he turned into something less, an appetite that only walked like a man.
'I don't know whether to have a chocolate eclair or a hot fudge sundae,' he said seriously. .
'Have both.'
'That isn't funny. My body needs fuel.'
'You've already stoked it with enough fuel to run a Matson liner to Honolulu.'
He flushed. 'You seem to forget that I'm your employer, and you're my guest here.'
'I do, don't I? But let's get off the subject of personalities and food, and talk about something real. Tell me about Ginny.'
'After I get my dessert.'
'Before. Before you eat yourself stupid.'
'You can't talk like that to me.'
'Somebody should. But we won't argue about it. I want to know if Ginny is the kind of girl who goes off half- cocked about men.'
'She never did before.'
'Has she had much to do with men?.'
'Very little,' he said. 'Mainly me, in fact.'
He flushed again, avoiding my eyes. 'I wasn't always so fat, if you want to know. Ginny and I sort of went steady in high school. But after that for a long time she wasn't interested in - well, sex, necking and stuff: We were still friends, and I used to take her places sometimes, but we weren't going steady in the true sense anymore.'
'What changed her?'
'She was hitting the books, for one thing. She did well at college. I didn't.'
The fact seemed to nag him. 'But it was mainly what happened to her father.'
'His suicide?'
Peter nodded. 'Ginny was very much attached to her father. Actually it took her until just about now to get over his death.'
'How long ago did it happen?'
'Nearly seven years. Seven years this fall. He came down to the beach one night and walked into the water
