The sailcloth shroud - By Charles Williams Page 0,41

far was to establish that aboard the Topaz Baxter had died for the third time with great finality and dramatic effect without leaving a body around to prove it. So all I had to do was convince everybody that this time it was for real. If he died of bubonic plague on the speaker’s platform at an AMA convention, I thought bitterly, and was cremated in Macy’s window, nobody would take it seriously. He’ll turn up fellas; just you wait.

“Does the name Slidell mean anything to you?” I asked

“No,” she said. I was convinced she was telling the truth. “I’ve never heard it before.”

“Do you know where he could have got that money?”

She ran despairing hands through her hair, and stood up. “No. Mr. Rogers, none of this makes the slightest sense to me. It couldn’t have been my father.”

“But you know it was, don’t you?” I said.

She nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“Did you say he worked for a bank?”

“Yes. In the Trust Department of the Drovers National.”

“There was no shortage in his accounts?”

For an instant I thought the anger was going to flare again. Then she said wearily, “No. Not this time.”

“This time?”

She made a little gesture of resignation. “Since he may be the one who got you into this trouble, I suppose you have a right to know. He did take some money once, from another bank. I don’t see how it could have any bearing on this, but maybe it has. If you’ll wait while I shower and change, I’ll tell you about it.”

10

She brushed sand from her bare feet and opened the door at the left end of the porch. The kitchen was bright with colored tile and white enamel. I followed her through an arched doorway into a large dining and living room. “Please sit down,” she said. “I won’t be long.” She disappeared down a hallway to the right.

I lighted a cigarette and looked around at the room. It was comfortable, and the light pleasantly subdued after the glare of the white coral sand outside. The drapes over the front window were of some loosely woven dark green material, and the lighter green walls and bare terrazzo floor added to the impression of coolness. Set in the wall to the left, next to the carport, was an air-conditioner unit whose faint humming made the only sound. Above it was a mounted permit, a very large one. Between it and the front window on that side was a hi-fi set in a blond cabinet. At the rear of the room was a sideboard, and a dining table made of bamboo and heavy glass. A long couch and two armchairs with a teak coffee table between them formed a conversational group near the center of the room. The couch and chairs were bamboo with brightly colored cushions. On the other side of the room, between the hallway and the front, were stacks of loaded book shelves. Just to the right of the hallway was a massive desk on which were a telephone, a portable typewriter, several boxes of paper, and two more cameras, a Rollieflex and a 35-mm job. I walked over to the desk arid saw that it also held several trays of colored slides and a pile of photographs of Keys scenes, mostly eight-by-ten blowups in both black-and-white and color. I wondered if she’d done them, and then remembered Music in the Wind. She was an artist with a camera. Somewhere down the hall was the muted sound of a shower running.

In a few minutes she came back. She had changed to a crisp summery dress of some pale blue material, and was bare-legged and wearing sandals. Her hair, cut rather short in a careless, pixie effect, seemed a little darker than it had in the sun. Patricia Reagan was a very attractive girl. She had regained her composure somewhat, and managed a smile. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Not at all,” I said. We sat down and lighted cigarettes.

“How did you locate me?” she asked.

I told her. “Your roommate in Santa Barbara said you were doing some magazine articles.”

She made a deprecating gesture. “Not on assignment, I’m afraid. I’m not a professional yet. An editor has promised to look at an article on the Keys, and I had a chance to stay in this house while Mr. and Mrs. Holland are in Europe. They were neighbors of ours in Massachusetts. And in the meantime I’m doing some colored slides, under-water shots along the reefs.”

“Skin-diving