Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

“Tell it any way you please.” The eyes were very clear, not difficult to talk into.

When the war was over, I — like lots of GI’s — felt the time had come to make up for lost years. I still had two years to spend at Carnegie Tech before I would get my mining engineer’s degree, and I had every intention of completing the course. And it would be easier, what with the GI Bill. My parents were quite well-to-do, but I was twenty-four and it was nice to know that I wouldn’t have to lean too heavily on them.

But first... There was that mustering-out pay and, I figured, a vacation coming to me — two weeks per annum for almost six years, four years of war, two of Occupation. Say, three round months. “Where,” asked William Dentelle of William Dentelle, “is the juiciest, ripest, to-say-nothing-of-gayest vacation spot in the world?”

William Dentelle answered himself and ended up on the French Riviera.

Cannes. In April, 1947. I was twenty-four. And I had company, lots of company. The place was teeming with GI’s who had figured it out the same way I had. And there were girls — French girls, English girls, even American girls. Of the people of middle years, there were few; they were repairing their lives. But those of the old who could possibly afford it came to the sun to mend their tired bones and souls, and the young, whether they could afford it or not, came to find the gaiety they had been cheated of. “Affording it” wasn’t too difficult. The beautiful beach-front avenue — le Boulevard de la Croisette — had almost completely regained its prewar glamor and beauty, but not, as yet, its prices.

Also, of course, there arrived at Cannes the leeches — gamblers, con men, gigolos, budding syndicalists, and plain adventurers; they too had been deprived of their callings, of their chosen way of life, by the years of upheaval. They rushed, as their kind always has, to the spot where people were living easy, free, and in the slight delirium of relaxation that tends to bring incaution.

First there was Irene. Irene was a delight. Then there were three others — I’ve forgotten their names — all delights. They were displaced by Valerie — English, despite her name. Valerie specialized in just lying on the beach. With Valerie’s figure that was enough.

And then there was Anne.

For fifteen years, not a week has passed in which I have not remembered Anne.

I am a married man now. I have two sons, good boys. My wife is a dear and charming woman whom I love with almost all my heart. But a piece of that heart has remained always with Anne. For fifteen years I have remembered and ached, and for the first few I did more than that: I wept. I am six feet two inches tall and I have a broken nose that makes me look a little dangerous, but I wept half the nights of my life during my mid-twenties.

I hope you can forgive a little com — I feel impelled to corniness. Thing is, only repetition makes clichés, and only profound truths are repeated With Whittier, I point out that my regret was based on those saddest of words, “It might have been.” There was a time, you see, when I think I could have married Anne, but I didn’t push it. I can find a dozen excuses for myself — my age, my need to finish college, money, the ambiance of the times — but the excuses have never afforded me solace. Always I have felt that I not only failed to get my heart’s delight — by my selfishness I was guilty of destruction. Of murder...

Anne was swept into town on a wave of medical students, both American and French, from the Sorbonne. It was a confused, practical-joking, somewhat hysterical crowd she traveled with; I understand medical students are often like that, and all such tendencies were heightened in 1947.

Anne wasn’t the least like her companions.

She was sitting on the edge of a crowd, a slender girl, obviously American. She had a very slight figure; what there was of it was startlingly swathed in an unusual bathing suit, a vivid green woven with silver. Metallic material like that was almost unknown in the making of bathing suits at that time. She was also wearing a small smile; the conversation didn’t deserve more. The boys were discussing who they would plant a cadaver on.

I took a chance. “Do they travel with them?”

“With what?”

“Cadavers.”

“Part of the necessary equipment of their lives.”

“But—” And then I realized she did not mean of their professional lives but of their juvenility. “You’re not one of them?” I asked.

She shook her head; straight brown hair, very simply cut, fanned out in the sun. “I’m with them,” she said, “but mine is the world of the good old liberal arts.”

“And so why are you with them?”

“I like them. Perhaps I’m morbid too.”

“I don’t believe it. What is it you’re looking for?” — I should explain that the direct-and-searching question was a ‘line’ with me in 1947. It seemed to intrigue girls. I was too immature to realize that questions about themselves intrigued girls, boys, men, women, and the senile. I thought I had discovered a formula.

It was not a formula to use on Anne, however. The truth of that was the beginning of her attraction for me. My question caused her to focus on me for the first time — a surprisingly penetrating look. She had large, very light eyes, with small pupils. They were her only beauty, but that beauty was reinforced by the contrast the lightness made against her tanned skin, and by the fact that her undistinguished features were set in a thin little face, with a slightly pointed chin.

“I am looking for a husband.”

I backed up — mentally and probably physically as well.

She gave me her small smile. “Is that unusual?” she asked.

“Well, no. I suppose not. But—”

“The statement of truth is unusual?”

“Well — yes. I suppose so.”

“That is a difference between us,” she said. “You suppose things. I know them.” She sounded factual, not arrogant. She stood up, gracefully but with no effort wasted, no coquetry expended. “Excuse me,” she said and joined the budding doctors.

A few days later I ran into her again. In the water. It was 6:30 on a Riviera morning, sky clear, air warm, water not too warm, beach almost empty. A delightful time to swim.

My frenzied Australian crawl — fashionably if unscientifically practiced to cause a maximum of froth and fury — had isolated me from everything, even something as near as Anne, until she raised her voice and shouted, “Hi!”

She was five feet away, drenched. Of course, she’s drenched, I told myself, and realized that the fact was underlined by her lack of a bathing cap. She was less attractive — a drowned-mouse look. But her eyes seemed even bigger when one saw the smallness and narrowness of her skull.

I stopped flailing and said, “Hi.”

“You swim very well, don’t you?” Not a comment but a question, it was earnestly delivered.

That earnestness trapped me into honesty. “Not really,” I admitted. “Wear myself out — raft and back and I’ve about had it.” I treaded water, gasping for breath, thoroughly surprised at myself.

“Oh.”

Was she disappointed? Perhaps she had cast me as an Apollonic hero. I used my formula and veered the subject hastily. “How about you? You don’t seem winded and we’re quite a way out.”

“Oh, I don’t swim at all. Not really. I just sort of half float, and do a little bit of sidestroking. I can go practically anywhere but it takes me forever.”

“Well, let’s go in and talk about forever.” I had quite a line in those days.

As she emerged from the water, the same gleaming green-and-silver bathing suit came into view. (I later realized it was the only one she had.) The material shimmered even more when wet. I said, “That’s quite a thing, that suit.”