Talmage Powell

Sunstroke at Midnight

It took three hours and forty-seven minutes for Uncle Phineas Slack to die. I ought to know; I was there.

I killed him.

It’s funny, the way murder grows in a man’s mind. So many little things added together, gaining momentum, until, without quite knowing what you’re doing, you’re killing a man.

It was no different with me, except perhaps that I’d always hated the old codger’s soul, his flippant manner, his penchant for young blondes. I think the desire to do away with him had been in my mind a long time.

Yet I wasn’t thinking of it the night I got out of the taxi in front of his angular, modernistic stucco house. He had sent for me without explanation.

It seemed a pleasant night, with a soft Florida breeze gently stroking my checks. The moon and stars were softly visible in a lovely sky.

I paid the cab driver, went up the flagstone walk, and when I approached the door, I saw that it was open slightly. I could hear voices in my uncle’s living room, his own voice, and a strange one. The new voice was old, dull, its intonations slightly cracked.

Just inside the doorway I paused. My uncle, a plump little sunburned man with a round, chubby face, a glistening bald head and young-looking blue eyes, was sitting in a yellow tapestry chair. A shriveled up man with a drooping mustache sat awkwardly opposite him. He looked feeble, as he sat there twisting his dust-stained hat in his hands. A few moments later I learned that this helpless specimen was the county sheriff; then it was, I think, that the ugly flower of death bloomed in my mind.

Phineas Slack lived outside the city limits of Landan. His house was built right on the beach, with a large strip of the beach his own private domain. Thus the sheriff would be in charge of an investigation — and it was easy to sec that anything could be pulled over this old man.

The sheriff was saying something about my uncle’s dogs when old Phineas looked up and saw me standing there.

“Well, Robert,” he said, a chill in his voice, “I’m glad you had the good sense to come.”

I gave him a mocking little smile.

“This is my nephew, Robert Slack,” Phineas said to the sheriff. “Not that I’m proud of it. Robert, this is Sheriff Hunk Slocum.”

A fitting name, I thought, except that this hunk was dried and withered.

“Howdy,” the sheriff said, blinking uncomfortably at my uncle’s candid admission of our dislike for each other.

I said hello to him and came on in the room. I did not have a bag with me. I planned to be here only a few hours.

Pointedly ignoring me. Uncle Phineas continued to chat with the sheriff about the fine points of hunting dogs. My uncle could use his dogs no longer — doctor’s orders that he remain quiet, which, in various ways, he constantly disobeyed — but he had kept his fine kennel. The sheriff, it seemed, had simply been in the neighborhood and dropped in to chat.

I sat down near Phineas, making no effort to join in the conversation. His attitude usually irked me, but not tonight. I was feeling a strange, new exhilaration.

He was wearing cream-colored gabardine slacks, a sport shirt open at the throat, and white shoes. His knobby nose looked very red, and I guessed he had been secretly pulling at a bottle. His eyes would dart to me every few moments, and for the first time in my life, my gaze mastered that of my uncle.

In a few moments, Sheriff Hunk Slocum excused himself, and Phineas Slack and I sat in silence. Then he said, “Well, Robert, I guess you’re wondering why I called you down here.”

I slouched in my chair, saying nothing.

He paced back and forth before me, his hands clasped behind him.

“Robert,” he said sternly, “you expect to inherit my money, don’t you?”

“If there’s any left, what with five fiancées, young enough to be your grandchildren, in the past two years! And each of them costing you at least a hundred thousand berries. Half a million bucks!”

His lips tightened and he said harshly, “That’s none of your business. I made that money! I worked thirty years, night and day for it! I want to spend every cent I can!”

I looked scathingly at the cream colored slacks, the sport shirt. “By reverting into childhood again?” I raised my eyebrows.

At that he stopped his pacing and stood still a moment, getting himself in hand.

“You’re deliberately leading the conversation at a tangent,” he said slowly. “Now you listen to me, you young pig, I called you here tonight for a very definite purpose.”

He tilted on his heels, his body like one of those fat toy dolls that is weighted at the bottom and cannot be knocked over.

“Robert,” he said, “you’re not the sort of man I had hoped you would be. You have no head for business, only for frills and a good time. You couldn’t make a dollar if your life depended on it. You have no sense of honor, no sense of decency. You’re weak!”

“Blood will tell, Uncle,” I grinned.

“You parasite,” he shouted, “if you had any of my blood in your rotten veins, you’d have something in your skull besides air, something in your heart besides a constant, nagging desire to sponge and slide your way through life. Even the army wouldn’t have you!”

A quavering voice came from the doorway. It was Higgins, my uncle’s one regular servant. He was a small man, bent with age, his head fringed with white hair like tiny duck feathers. “Did you call, sir?”

“No, I didn’t call! Scram, Higgins!”

“But your heart, sir...”

“Take a powder!”

Hesitantly, Higgins retreated. I’d have to take care of Higgins, I know.

“You’re learning the slang of a new generation well, dear Uncle,” I sighed.

He looked back at me. “Robert,” he said, his breath strengthening, “I wanted to talk to you about Vivian Gray.”

I sat stiffly erect. I hadn’t thought he knew about Vivian. She was everything a man could want: sleek blonde perfection. You know what I mean; the sort of woman who puts up at the beat hotels, the swankiest resorts, with never a qualm about beating a bill. The sort of woman who can drive a man insane, turning every male head when she walked into a room.

“You see, Robert,” the old man said blithely, “there were six women in the past two years — not five. Vivian was one of them. She was quite a tigress when I broke with her. She said she’d get even. The next I heard of her, she was running around with you. See what I mean, Robert? The whole set-up is very unhealthy.”

I sat very still, slow rage coming to life inside me. I hadn’t known that Vivian had been on the old man’s string. I could now see her motive. She was like that. I knew Vivian very well.

“She thinks she’s got us where she wants us, Robert,” his voice sounded a long way off. “She thinks she’ll play one against another and end up with all the money. I’ve been very patient with you, Robert, but you’ll see no more of Vivian Gray or I’ll cut you off without a dime! And don’t try to crook me, boy. Crooked money never stays in one hand long. So,” his voice dropped, became confidential, faintly friendly, “we’ll not let Vivian get the best of us, will we? Tomorrow morning I’ll call her and tell her that we’ve had a talk and she might as well forget our existence. Huh, Robert?”

I nodded dumbly. The ugly thought of murder was now fully born.

For you see, I was already married to Vivian...

Our conversation ended there. He retired to a chair across the room to read. I picked up a magazine, shielding my face behind it. I didn’t want him to see my face.

I wasn’t shaken or alarmed by the knowledge that I was going to kill him. I wasn’t afraid of the fact; I was afraid only of what might happen afterward, of getting caught. But I wouldn’t allow my mind to dwell on that.

Thoughts of Vivian tore at me, the knowledge that I must do away with the old man before he found out. I knew he would stick to his word if he found that Vivian was now Mrs. Robert Slack. Every dime of his money would go to charity.

The prospect of having to work for a living almost made me ill.

I glanced across the room at him, watching the way the light reflected from his glistening, sun-browned bald head. How could I rid myself of him with safety? I had no desire to pay with my life for his worthless one.

Then there was the sound of a car stopping in front. Uncle Phineas listened a moment, sitting up in his chair, and said under his breath, “That doctor!”

He got to his feet quickly, saying: “Robert, I’m going upstairs to get in bed. Bring the doc up.”

He scurried across the room, hurrying up the stairs, and I heard his door slam in the upper hall. He was, I knew, frantically stripping and getting into pajamas.

There was the sound of footsteps outside the front door; then the chimes, softly muted, pealed twice. I waited, intending to let Higgins answer the door. That would give my uncle that many more seconds to get in bed, where the doctor had probably left him on the last visit. If the old fool wanted to deceive the doctor, that was his affair; I had more important matters on my own mind.

Higgins padded toward the front door, pulled it open, and the doctor came in. I looked up quickly. The doctor was a well-built woman, with softly waving auburn hair, who still retained a great deal of mature beauty.

“Is Mr. Slack upstairs, Higgins?” she asked.

He hesitated, and I rose and said, “Yes, he’s in his room, Doctor...”

“Merriwell,” she said. “Doctor Hazel Merriwell.”

When we reached my uncle’s room, we found him propped up in bed, innocently reading a book. Doctor Merriwell proceeded me into the loom. lie laid aside his book and smirked at her.

“Well, doc, how’m I looking?”

“Not much change — in looks. Have you been in bed since the last attack?”

“Last attack?” I echoed.

“Four days ago,” she said, tilting her head toward me. “He almost died.” It seemed that her shoulders slumped a little. “I do wish I could impress on him the seriousness of his illness.”

He laughed flippantly, but deep down there was a note of fear. And I knew that he was keeping up the pace he had set for himself five years ago, when he’d retired from business, in order to convince himself that he was as young as ever.

I stood by until Dr. Merriwell was ready to leave. She put her stethoscope back in the bag, snapped it shut, and I trailed her out of the room.

At the foot of the angular stairway, she turned to me and said seriously, “I’m glad you are here, Mr. Slack. Didn’t you say you are his nephew?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I won’t be here long, not long enough to do anything for him, I’m afraid.”

“That’s too bad.” She smiled a little wanly. “He’s quite a problem. If he’d be sensible, he might live indefinitely. But you know how he is. He insists on those long sun baths, late hours, and... and too much alcohol, I’m afraid, Mr. Slack.”

“Sun baths?”

“Blood pressure,” she said. “The attack four days ago was brought on when he got a little tight and went down on the ocean’s edge and went to sleep in the sun.”

I opened the door for her. “I’ll look after him,” I said with a smile, “and thank you, Doctor.”

“Not at all.”

I closed the door behind her and stood looking up the stairs.

The clearness of it, the simplicity made me a little giddy. I wouldn’t even have to bother about getting Higgins out of the house, only be careful not to awaken him. Since he was slightly deaf, that didn’t worry me a great deal. At midnight, I thought, Uncle Phineas Slack would die of sunstroke... And the doctor had given me the inspiration.

I was reading when Higgins came into the living room at ten o’clock.

“Is there anything you wish before I retire, sir?”

“No, thanks, Higgins.” He left and closed the door.

Silence settled over the house. Outside the palms whispered sleepily as a faint breeze from off the ocean played through them. It was the worst part of it all — the waiting. The silence in the room was choking. I turned on every light, catwalking about the floor. I filled an ashtray with cigarette stubs.

Uncle Phineas was still awake when I went up to his room just after eleven o’clock. Now that the time was so near, I felt a cold, nagging fear inside me; but no worse than the fear of what he would do when he found out the full truth about Vivian and me.

He looked up at me as I closed the door and came on in the room. Beside his bed, I smiled and held out my hand.

Slowly, a frown deep upon his tanned, chubby face he grasped my hand and shook it. The expression of friendliness on my face had fooled him utterly.

He kept shaking my hand, almost clinging to it, and his eyes changed. I’d never seen him this way before — like a lost boy — or a lonely old man.

“I... I guess I’ve dreamed about this moment a long time, Robert boy. You’re really waking up, aren’t you?” Then he noticed that he was still holding my hand, and dropped it in embarrassment.

He looked out the window, as if he could see anything through the cracks in the Venetian blinds in the darkness beyond.

“I’ve been pretty lonely, Robert. Spent my life making money; never had time for friends.” His voice was reaching out to me, begging me. Cone was all pretense, all flippancy. I felt sickened. Such weakness!

“I talked to the doctor,” I said.

“Ah...” he said slowly. “Yes, the doctor. Maybe... maybe I should change doctors, Robert, get a specialist.”

“You’re thinking...?”

“That maybe I would have something to live for now,” he said. “Robert,” his voice lowered, “you did mean that handshake, didn’t you? It’s the first time you’ve ever come to me and done that.”

“Sure I meant it.” I walked to the window, turned to him, my hands thrust down in my pockets. “I’ve been doing some tall thinking in the last couple of hours, and I can tell you — you needn’t worry about a specialist.”

He started, and I laughed easily.

“Doctor Merriwell,” I said, “confided in me. Your case is not really serious. She’s been exaggerating, thinking to scare you into being good. But maybe things will change now. I’ve been sitting down there in the living room thinking that it wouldn’t be so bad. You and I taking a crack at some business, I mean. I...”

He sat bolt upright in bed, laughing to keep from crying. I waited, watching my every expression.

Then I said, “Let’s have a drink on it.”

“Think I should?” The laughter was still tugging at his lips, causing them to tremble. His eyes were faintly moist.

“Of course,” I laughed. “Just to seal the bargain.” Without saying anything more I crossed the room to his walnut liquor cabinet, opened it, and came back toward the bed with a bottle of bourbon and two glasses.

It was ridiculously easy. Five years of self-imposed riotous living had whetted his appetite for strong drink. Soon his words were becoming thick; and at three minutes after twelve he was putting out his hands on either side of him to steady himself. Gently, I kept forcing it upon him, one drink after another. Color rose high in his face, and his eyes began to glaze. Without warning, he went limp, sprawled with his head over the side of the bed, his mouth open, his breath sharp and shallow.

I looked down at him a moment; then, very gently, I bent, grasped his arms, and pulled him up so that he sagged across my shoulder. Wobbling a little under his weight, I carried him out of the room.

I eased my way down the steps slowly, perspiration running down my back in a shallow film. I stood, my limbs as rigid as steel, waiting. Nothing happened, and I began to breathe again. I had nothing but my own nerves to fear, I told myself.

The gymnasium was in the basement. Cautiously, sliding one foot silently before the other, inching my way along to keep from colliding with Indian clubs, horizontal bars, or medicine balls, I made my way across the floor.

I eased Phineas Slack to the rubbing table.

I didn’t move for a moment, weak from reaction. On the table, he began to snore faintly. I pressed my hand over his mouth to stop the sound, which thundered in my cars; then I knew that would never do, and withdrew by hand.

From one window to the other I went, closing the blinds, until the room was totally black. Then I switched on a light.

He looked grotesque, lying there on the rubbing table in the corner, in his purple striped pajamas. I went to a small dressing room at the east end of the gyro, opened a locker, and took out his swimming trunks.

It was not an easy job, getting him out of pajamas into those trunks. He rolled loosely on the table, his arms dangling. I laid the pajamas on the floor near the table. When I was through with him, I would return the pajamas to his room.

I set the two huge lamps up beside the table and turned the switches. The strong rays of the lamps beat down upon him.

I was trembling now, weak and a little sick. I would have liked to go to the living room and wait until it was over; but I had to watch the operation during every moment. I had to regulate the rays, changing the positions of the lamps now and then. He had a very deep tan, which would keep the lamps from changing the hue of his skin, but I would not take chances. I didn’t want him to be cooked in one spot.

We were together like that for three hours and forty-seven minutes. Then he was dead.

That’s all there was to it, no spasms, no disturbance. His heart, and I, had killed him.

Throughout this time I had not smoked, not wanting ashes to be found on the floor. My nerves were crying for a cigarette, but I knew if I paused now, I could never have finished.

With his bulk over my shoulder again, I left the gym by a door that opened on the back yard. I carried him down to his own private strip of beach. Not knowing the time of the tide, I placed his body well back from the water’s edge. Face downward, arms outspread, he lay on the white, pure sand. I shuddered and started back toward the bulk of the house that reared in the darkness, unrelieved by moon or stars.

Tomorrow they would find him. His absence would give Higgins no immediate cause for alarm, as he was often absent. Tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday afternoon, would be about the time. No, this afternoon, for it was now past midnight.

Back in the gym, I replaced the lamps in their accustomed spots, gathered up the purple striped pajamas, switched off the lights, and raised the blinds. The gym was now exactly as I had entered it.

This afternoon they would find him. Very regrettable, they would say, shaking their heads. But he should have steered clear of the things his doctor had warned him against. Only four days ago he had almost killed himself by getting tight and going to sleep in the sun. Now he had. done exactly that! What other conclusions could they draw?

On tiptoe, I climbed the stairs and left his pajamas on the floor beside the bed, the way he would leave them.

Then I returned to the living room, picked up the phone, and softly called a cab. “I’ll be waiting in front,” I said, “don’t blow your horn.”

Now I smoked three cigarettes, dragging on them until they became soggy with heat. Death lay on the beach, and the house was chill and clammy, as if that death were making its presence felt here in the living room.

There was a flash of light through the window. The cab was coming to take me away.

At nine o’clock Wednesday night Vivian and I had our dinner sent to our suite in our Savannah hotel. I’d just got in, and I was tired from the long train trip up from Landan, but inside me there was deep elation.

Vivian was radiant in a black gown, her blond hair piled on the top of her head.

We’d been talking of Uncle Phineas, and I’d told her nothing. I realized that Vivian, too, would have to be watched closely. She’d sworn to get even with the old man...

We had just sat down when there was a knock at the door.

“I’ll get it,” I said. The telegram!

But it wasn’t. I opened the door and saw the slouching, lean figure of Sheriff Hunk Slocum. He twirled his hat in his hand, awkwardly, as I’d first seen it.

“Can I come in, son?”

“Why... why, of course.” Behind me, Vivian had risen from the table. I stepped aside to let the sheriff in.

“Your uncle is dead, son,” he said gently.

“Dead?” I sounded surprised, but not pained. I’d already decided how to play it. People knew how we had felt about each other. If I adopted a sorrowful role, it might strike a false note.

“Dead?” I repeated. “Well, I can’t say that I’m exactly sorry.”

“No,” he said, coming on into the room, “I didn’t think you’d be. We found him on the beach. It looked like he got drunk, wandered down there, and went to sleep in the sun.”

“Nice of you to come up to tell me in person, sheriff. But a telegram would have done just as well.”

“Maybe not. I came in an airplane.”

Slivers of cold gathered in my stomach. Why? Why had he taken a plane, hard as it was to fly these days?

“Yes,” he repeated, “it looked like your uncle got drunk and went to the beach and went to sleep in the sun and died.”

“Looked like?” My voice was thick.

He nodded. “Just looked like. Want to hear what happened?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “I’ll tell you, son. You made your uncle drunk. He was just a lost old man, and deep down he loved you better than life. So you could make him drunk. Then you carried him down to the gymnasium and put him under them ultra-violet ray lamps. The alcohol and the heat and his blood pressure and weak heart knocked him off. You killed him.”

My lips felt dry and cracked. At his every word I was reliving the three hours and forty-seven minutes, walking down the stairs, bent under my uncle’s weight, seeing the purple striped pajamas, blinking in the glare of the lamps, feeling the icy hand of death creeping out from the beach to wrap its fingers about the house.

“You’ll never prove it,” I said hoarsely. “You...”

“But I can, son.” He moved quickly toward me, his hand digging for handcuffs in his rear pocket. The cuffs gleamed, but I was quicker. I had sprung back, my own hand darting into my coat pocket, and now Hunk Slocum drew up stiffly at the sight of the small automatic in my hand.

“All right,” I said, “you’re a pretty smart old geezer. I did kill him. How you reconstructed it I’ll never know, but I think your reconstructing days are over.”

His leathery old cheeks whitened, but he said nothing. And suddenly I didn’t want to kill him. I didn’t want to kill anyone, not any more.

What was it Uncle Phineas had said? “Crooked money is sorrow money, Robert.” I knew now it was so. My gaze flicked to Vivian, who stood frozen beside the table. She’d crooked her way to where she now would get the money, if Slocum took me in. I wondered how long she would keep it, who would take it from her, and with what sorrow...

“I hate to do this, Sheriff,” I said. “But I’m going to wrap a towel around this gun and pull the trigger.” I glanced at Vivian, and my voice caught. “I might even pull it twice.”

Then the hard end of a gun-barrel jabbed me in the spine, and a voice said, “Drop it.”

My hand went suddenly numb, and the gun slipped from my fingers. Hunk Slocum scooped it up.

“Did you hear him, Dix?” Slocum asked.

“Yes,” the voice behind me said, “I heard him admit it.”

“The man behind you,” Slocum said to me, “is Dix Maney, a local detective. He came up with me, son, but not in. You were right when you said I couldn’t prove it. I could only post Dix outside and make you admit it. Luckily, you’re staying in a swank hotel where the doors open without noise — or you might have got the drop on Dix too.”

Vivian screamed and buried her face in her hands. Hard sobs shook her.

Dumbly, I let Slocum snap the handcuffs tight. All strength drained out of me and my mind was filled with the flaming apparition of the electric chair. I would have collapsed, if Maney and Hunk Slocum, one on either side, hadn’t supported me.

That’s the way they dragged me from the hotel, people staring, my toes sliding along on the floor, two firm hands under either shoulder, my wrists manacled with steel.

On the sidewalk, as we approached a squad car at the curb, the cool air cleared my senses a little.

“But how,” I choked. “How did you know? How could you have known? It was perfect...”

“Perfect,” Slocum said slowly. “Yes, maybe it was. Or maybe it was a little too perfect. There wasn’t a thing you overlooked. But you see, son, it started raining in Landan just before the sun came up this morning, and it’s been raining ever since...”

The squad car door slammed in my face.

Content

Talmage Powell
Sunstroke at Midnight