with all his clothes on.'
'This beach?'
I gestured towards the window. The tide was out: the surf was far down the beach and visible only as a recurring whiteness.
'Not right here, no. He went in about half a mile from here.'
Peter pointed towards a headland which loomed dark against the more distant harbor lights. 'But there's a current in this direction and when his body came up it was right offshore here. I didn't go in the ocean for quite a while. I don't think Ginny ever went in again. She uses - she used the pool.
He sat hunched over in silence for a moment. 'Mr. Archer, can't we do something about Martel? Find out if they're married legally or something?'
'I'm sure they are. Ginny would have no reason to lie, would she?'
'No. But she's very much under his spell. You could see for yourself that it isn't a natural situation.'
'She seems to be in love with him.'
'She can't be! We've got to prevent him from taking her away.'
'With what? It's still a free country.'
Peter leaned across the table. 'Have you considered the possibility that he's in this country illegally? He admitted he had no passport.'
'It might be worth looking into. But the worst they'd do is deport him. And Ginny would probably go along.'
'I see what you mean. It would only make matters worse.'
He lowered his cushioned chin onto his fist and became thoughtful. Our side of the dining room was filling up as people came in from outside or from the bar. A few of them wore dress clothes, and occasional diamonds and rubies sparkled on hands and throats like drippings from the past. The low sound of the ocean was lost in the rise and fall of conversation and music.
The people seemed to be talking against the darkness that pressed at the window. Fablon and his death were still on my mind. 'You say that Ginny was very fond of her father?'
Peter came out of his thoughts with a start. 'Yes. She was.'
'What sort of man was he?'
'He was what they call a sportsman, I guess. He went in for big-game hunting and fishing and yachting and polo and sports cars and planes.'
'All those?'
'At various times. He'd lose interest in one sport and try another. He couldn't seem to find the one thing that would absorb his mind. For a while, when I was a kid in high school, he let me follow him around. He even used to take me up in his plane.'
Peter's eyes blurred reminiscently. 'He was in the Air Force at one time, until they invalided him out.'
'What was the matter with him?'
'I don't know exactly. He crashed his plane in a training flight and so he never got into the war. That was a big disappointment to him. He walked with a bit of a limp. Which is one reason I think he went in for all those sports.'
'What did he look like?'
'I suppose you'd say that he was good-looking. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed, and he always had a deep tan. Ginny got her coloring from her mother. But I don't know why you're so interested in her family. What's the point?'
'I'm trying to understand her, and understand why she fell so hard and suddenly for Martel. Does he resemble her father?'
'Some,' he admitted reluctantly. 'But Mr. Fablon was better looking.'
'You said he was partly French. Did he speak French?'
'I guess he could when he wanted to. He lived in France at one time, he told me.'
'Where?'
'Paris. That was when he was studying painting.'
I was beginning to get some idea of Fablon. In these circles he was a fairly common type: the man who tried everything and succeeded at nothing.
'Where did he get the money for all his hobbies? Was he in business?'
'He tried various businesses. Right after the war he started 58 an air-freight business. The trouble was, he was in competition with airlines like the Flying Tiger. He told me once he lost fifty thousand dollars in six months. But he had a lot of-fun with it, he said.'
Peter's tone was elegiac, nostalgic. At another time, in another body, he might have liked to live as the dead man had.
'Who paid for the fun?'
'Mrs. Fablon did, I guess. She was a Proctor.'
He paused, frowning slightly. 'I just remembered something. It's nothing to do with anything, but it's interesting.'
He turned to the window, indicating the dark headland again. 'That beach where Mr. Fablon walked into the water used to belong to the Proctors. It was part of their estate. Ginny's mother had to sell the estate about ten years ago.'
'Three years before Fablon died.'
'That's right. If she could have waited until now, she'd have got at least a million. But I heard it went for peanuts to pay Mr. Fablon's debts.'
'Who bought it?'
'A cemetery company. They haven't put in the cemetery yet.
'I can hardly wait,' I said.
Peter frowned at my levity. A minute later he left the table and ducked out of the room. I saw him a few minutes after that talking at the entrance with a tall man in a tuxedo. The tall man moved his head, and I noticed the hard line of his jaw. It was Dr Sylvester, whose lunch with Mrs. Fablon I had interrupted.
He went into the bar. Peter trudged to the end of the line that had formed at the dessert table. He stood like an earnest communicant, his eyes dreaming over the pies and cakes and pastries.
10
I FOLLOWED DR SYLVESTER into the bar. A bartender whose eyes moved like black quicksilver poured him a double scotch without being asked to. Sylvester called the bartender Marco. Marco wore a red waistcoat, a white shirt with long collar-points, and a flowing black silk tie.
I waited until the doctor had knocked back about half of his drink. Then I sat on the bar stool beside him and watched Marco making a daiquiri.
Sylvester's square hairy-backed hands fiddled with his lowball glass. The hairs were slightly grizzled, like the hair on his head. The bones of his face were prominent, and accentuated by harsh lines running from the base of his nose to his mouth. He didn't look like an easy man to strike up a conversation with.
To have something to do with my hands, I ordered a bar bourbon. The bartender wouldn't accept my dollar.
'Sorry, no cash. Are you a member, sir?'
'I'm Peter Jamieson's guest.'
'I'll put it on his bill, sir.'
Dr Sylvester turned and raised his black eyebrows at me. He used them so conspicuously that they seemed to be his main sense organs, distracting attention from his hard bright eyes.
'Jamieson senior or junior?'
'I know them both. I noticed you were talking to the young one.'
'Yes?'
I told him my name and trade. 'Peter hired me to look into this business of his ex-fiancee.'
'I was wondering how you got in here.'
He wasn't trying to insult me, exactly, just letting me know my place in his scheme of things. 'Didn't I see
