Gulf Coast Girl - Charles Williams(4)

I drove the car out on the pier and as I got out I thought of
him down there somewhere below me in the impenetrable
blackness of night and silt-laden water, and for a moment he
wasn’t a vicious little hoodlum but just somebody who’d been
alive a few hours ago looking at sunlight and feeling hungry
and thinking about girls and inhaling smoke from a cigarette.
I brushed it away savagely. There wasn’t any time for being
morbid about a dead gangster. I’d be dead myself very shortly
if I didn’t get out of there.
I hurried down the ladder. The waterway was dark and still,
like a jungle river, and it was hot in the thick clots of shadow
below the side of the pier. When I opened the door and went
inside the trapped air was stifling. I looked at my watch. It
was nearly three.

Gulf Coast Girl - Charles Williams(3)

I was ready. Then I hesitated, thinking coldly. I didn’t know
much about law or the workings of courts, but I had sense
enough to realize that what I was about to do was
deliberately criminal. The other hadn’t been, even though it
had killed him. I could still go call the police and report it,
and everything would be on my side. A half dozen generations
of lawyers and New England clergymen leaned over my
shoulder and whispered fiercely that that was the only thing
to do.
And on the other hand? Once I did this it was irrevocable,
and I was on my own. If they caught me then there’d be no
evidence of a fight or accident. They might convict me of
deliberate murder, because I’d tried to cover it up. Even
there in the hot night I could feel the chill run up my back.
I waited, trying to make up my mind. I didn’t have all night.

Gulf Coast Girl - Charles Williams(2)

I waited, feeling the hot tension in the room. It was going to
be rough if he started asking her some more. I wasn’t any
hero, and didn’t want to be one, but it wasn’t the sort of thing
you could watch for very long without losing your head, and
with Tweed Jacket you probably never lost it more than once.
Tweed Jacket’s amused gaze flicked from me to the girl and
he shook his head again. “Waste of time,” he said. “He’d
scarcely be here, under the circumstances, unless the rules
have changed. Might go through the rooms, though, and have
a dekko at the ash trays. You know his brand of cigarettes.”
The pug went out, managing to bump against me and push
me off balance with a hard shoulder as he went past. I said
nothing. He turned his face a little and we looked at each
other. I remembered the obscene brutality of the way he was
holding and hitting her, and the yearning in the stare was
mutual.

Gulf Coast Girl - Charles Williams(1)

Sunset
There was something ghostly about it. The mate and the two
ABs of the boarding party looked at each other, unable to
believe what they saw.
There were no signs of violence or even sickness aboard,
and the Gulf itself had been in a benign mood for weeks. Her
sails were set and drawing gently in the faint airs of sunset,
her tiller lashed, and she was gliding along with serene
purpose on a southeasterly course which would have taken
her into the Yucatan Strait. Her dinghy was still there, atop
the cabin, and everything was shipshape and in order except
that there was not a soul on board. She was as mysteriously
deserted as the Mary Celeste.
She was well provisioned, and she had water. The two
bunks were made and the cabin swept. Dungarees and some