Джеймс Чейз - One Bright Summer Morning

At five-thirty-seven on what promised to be a bright summer morning, Victor Dermott came awake suddenly in a cold sweat of fear.

Victor Dermott was thirty-eight years of age. He was powerfully built, tall and dark. From time to time, he had been mistaken for Gregory Peck by shortsighted autograph hunters. This was something he shrugged off, but which had secretly annoyed him. It had annoyed him because he was successful and wealthy in his own right. During the past ten years he had written four very successful plays that had been produced on Broadway, and were even now earning him a substantial income in the capital cities of Europe. His success and wealth hadn’t spoilt him. He was considered by those who came into contact with him as a nice guy: that was what he was. He was happily married to a twenty-eight year old redhead who adored him as much as he adored her. They had a ten-month old baby.

Two months previous to this hot summer morning, Vic Dermott had suddenly conceived an idea for his next play. It was one of those white-hot inspirations that demanded to be written at once and without interruption, without the clamour of the telephone bell and without any social commitments.

Dermott had asked his secretary, a grey-haired and efficient woman named Vera Synder, to find him a place where he could work for three months in complete isolation. Within two days, she had found him the exact place: a compact, de luxe ranch house on the fringe of the Nevada desert, some fifty miles from Pitt City and some twenty miles from Boston Creek.

Pitt City was a major town, but Boston Creek had little to offer except a service station, a number of cafes and a general store.

The ranch house was called “Wastelands.” It was owned by an elderly couple who spent most of their lives travelling in Europe. They were happy to rent the place to such a well-known person as Victor Dermott.

The ranch house had a long private drive that met a dirt road that in its turn went on a further fifteen miles through scrub and sand to meet the main highway to Pitt City. For genuine isolation and de luxe comfort, it would be hard to find a better place to live in than Wastelands.

Vic Dermott had driven with his wife, Carrie, to inspect the ranch house. He saw at once that it was exactly what he wanted and he signed a three-month agreement without a quibble.

Wastelands had a big living room, a dining room, a study-cum-gun-room, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a well-equipped kitchen and a swimming pool. It also had a garage for four cars, a tennis court and a go-kart track complete with four go-karts. Some two hundred yards from the house was a five-roomed wooden cabin for the staff.

The rent came a little high, but as Vic was making plenty of money, and the place pleased him, he didn’t argue about the cost. But before deciding to take the ranch house, he had talked it over with Carrie.

“It could be pretty dull for you,” he had pointed out. “We won’t see anyone until the play is finished. Perhaps it would be better if you stayed home and I went there on my own.”

This Carrie wouldn’t consider. She would have plenty to do, she said. She had Junior to look after. She would do Vic’s typing. She would do the cooking, and she would take along a couple of unfinished paintings she had been working on.

They decided to take with them only one servant: a young Vietnamese, Di-Long, who had been with them for just over a year. He was not only highly domesticated, but also a trained mechanic. Being so far from a service station, Dermott had decided he should have someone around who could cope with a car breakdown.

After two months of hard, concentrated work, the play was practically finished. Vic was now polishing the dialogue and wrestling with the second act curtain that didn’t entirely satisfy him. He was sure that in another couple of weeks the play would be ready for production and he was certain he had written yet another big success.

During the two months they had spent at Wastelands, both Vic and Carrie had come to love the place. They regretted that in a few more weeks they would have to return to the hustle and bustle of their Los Angeles home. For the first time, since their honeymoon, they had been given the opportunity of being entirely alone together and they liked the experience. They now realized the pressure of their social life, the continuous parties, the constant ringing of the telephone bell had been robbing them of the experience of getting to know each other more intimately and also had been robbing them of having the time to watch their baby growing up.

Although Wastelands was a big success with the Dermotts, it was far from being a success with their Vietnamese servant who became more and more morose as the weeks went by and more indifferent in his work.

Both Vic and Carrie worried about this little man. They wished he had a wife to console him. They encouraged him to take the second car into Pitt City to see a movie, but they understood when he shrugged irritably that a movie had to be pretty good to make a fifty-mile journey there and back in a day.

Every so often Vic would lose patience, pointing out to Carrie that Di-Long was being paid three times the amount anyone in their right minds would pay a servant. Carrie, who had a prickly conscience regarding servants, had argued that Di-Long, no matter how much he was paid, had reason to complain about his loneliness.

This story begins on a July morning, a little after five-thirty, when Vic Dermott came awake with a start to find his body clammy with cold sweat and his heart thumping so violently he had difficulty in breathing.

He lay motionless: all his senses alert. He could hear the ticking of the bedside clock and the faint rumble of the refrigerator in the kitchen as it turned itself on, but the rest of the ranch house was silent.

He couldn’t remember having had a bad dream to frighten him, and yet, here he was, woken from a deep sleep and more frightened than he had ever been before in his life.

He raised his head and looked over at the twin bed in which Carrie was sleeping peacefully. He regarded her for a brief moment, then he looked across the room to where Junior was also sleeping peacefully.

He took his handkerchief from under his pillow and wiped his sweating face. The silence, the familiar room and the fact that his two most precious possessions were undisturbed lessened this odd fear that gripped him, and after a few seconds, his heartbeats gradually returned to normal.

I must have been dreaming, he thought, but it’s odd I can’t remember...

Not satisfied, he threw off the sheet and slid out of bed.

Moving silently so as not to wake Carrie, he put on his dressing gown and thrust his feet into heelless slippers. Then he crossed the room, gently opened the bedroom door and moved out into the big square-shaped lobby.

Although his heartbeat was now normal, he still had a feeling of acute uneasiness that worried him. Quietly, he went into the big lounge and looked around. Everything was just as he had left it the previous night. He crossed the room and looked through the big window across the patio at the fountain throwing its lively cascade of water, at the lounging chairs and at the magazine Carrie had left lying on the paved terrace.

He walked into his work-room and looked around. He looked out of the window at the staff cabin some two hundred yards across the way where Di-Long slept. There was no sign of life, but that didn’t surprise him as Di-Long never got up before half past seven.

Unable to find an explanation for his uneasiness, he shrugged irritably and made his way to the kitchen. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he returned to his bed. He might as well make some coffee, he told himself, and begin work.