'Yeah?' I swallowed the rice. 'What for?'
'Nothing in particular. Only I'm sure we'll see each other, because if you weren't curious about me you wouldn't be so rude, and I was curious about you before I ever saw your face, when I saw you walking across that pasture. You have a distinctive way of walking. You move very… I don't know…'
'Distinctive will do. Maybe you noticed I have a dis- tinctive way of getting over a fence too, in case of a bull. Speaking of bulls, I understand the barbecue is off.'
'Yes.' She shivered a little. 'Naturally. I'm thinking of leaving this afternoon. When I came away at noon there was a string of people gawking along the fence, there where your car had been..,. where we were last night. They would have crossed the pasture and swarmed all over the place if there hadn't been a state trooper there.'
'With the bull in it?'
'The bull was at the far end. That what's-his-name-Mc- Millan-took him there and tied him up again.' She shivered. 'I never saw anything like last night… I had to sit on the ground to keep from fainting. What were they asking questions for? Why did they ask if I was with you all the time? What did that have to do with him getting killed by the bull?'
'Oh, they always do that in cases of accidental death. Eye-witnesses. By the way, you won't be leaving for New York today if they hold an inquest, only I don't suppose they will. Did they ask if you had seen Clyde Osgood around there after dinner, before you went for your walk and ran onto me?'
'Yes. Of course I hadn't. Why did they ask?'
'Search me.' I put sugar in my coffee and stirred. 'Maybe they thought you had deprived him of all hope or something and he climbed into the pasture to commit suicide. All kinds of romantic ideas, those birds get. Did they ask if Clyde had come to Pratt's place to see you?'
'Yes.' Her eyes lifted up at me and then dropped back to her coffee cup. 'I didn't understand that either. Why should they think he had come to see me?'
'Oh, possibly Clyde's father sicked them on. I know when I mentioned your name to him last night and said you were there, he nearly popped open. I got the impression he had seen you once in a nightmare. Not that I think you belong in a nightmare, with your complexion and so on, but that was the impression I got.'
'He's just a pain.' She shrugged indifferently. 'He has no right to be talking about me. Anyway, not to you.' Her eyes moved up me and over me, up from my chest over my face to the top of my head, and then slowly traveled down again. 'Not to you, Escamillo,' she said. I wanted to slap her, because her tone, and the look in her eyes going over me, made me feel like a potato she was peeling. She asked, 'What did he say?'
'Not much.' I controlled myself. 'Only his expression was suggestive. He spoke of wringing your neck. I gathered that you and his son Clyde had once been friends. I suppose he told the police and sheriff that, or maybe they knew it already, and that's why they asked if Clyde came to see you last night.'
'Well, he didn't. He would have been more apt to come to see Caroline than me.'
That was turning a new page for me, but I covered my surprise and inquired idly, 'You mean Miss Pratt? Why, did they have dealings?'
'They used to have.' She opened the mirror of her compact to study nature with an eye to improvement. 'I guess they were engaged, or about to be. Of course you don't know about the Osgood-Pratt situation. The Osgoods have been rich for generations, they go back to a revolutionary general I think it was-their relatives in New York think the Social Register is vulgar. To me that's all a bore… my mother was a waitress and my father was an immigrant and made his money building sewers.'
'Yet look at you. I heard Pratt say yesterday that he was bom in an old shack on the spot where his new house stands.'
'Yes. His father worked as a stablehand for Osgood's father. Clyde told me about it. A farmer had a beautiful daughter named Marcia and young Pratt got himself engaged to her and Frederick Osgood came back from college and saw her and married her. So she became Clyde Osgood's mother, and Nancy's. Pratt went to New York and soon began to make money; He didn't marry, and as soon as he had time to spare he started to find ways to annoy Osgood. When he bought land up here and started to build, it looked as if the annoyance might become really serious.'
'And Clyde read up on family feuds and found that the best way to cure it would be for him to marry Pratt's niece. A daughter is better in such cases, but a niece will do.'
'No, it wasn't Clyde's idea, it was his sister's. Nancy's.' Lily closed her compact. 'She was staying in New York for the winter, studying rhythm at the best night clubs, and met Jimmy and Caroline, and thought it might be helpful for the four of them to know each other, and when Clyde came down for a visit she arranged it. It made a sort of a situation, and she and Jimmy got really friendly, and so did Clyde and Caro- line. Then Clyde happened to get interested in me, and I guess that reacted on Nancy and Jimmy.''
'Did you and Clyde -get engaged?'
'No.' She looked at me, and the comer of her mouth turned up, and I saw her breasts gently putting the weave of the jersey to more strain as she breathed a deep one. 'No, Escamillo.' She peeled her potato again, 'I don't suppose I'll marry. Because marriage is really nothing but an economic arrangement, and I'm lucky because I don't have to let the economic part enter into it. The man would be lucky too-I mean if a man attracted me and I attracted him.'
'He sure would.' I was wondering which would be more satisfactory, to slap her and then kiss her, or to kiss her and then slap her. 'Did Clyde attract you much?'
'He did for a while.' She shivered delicately. 'You know how tiresome it is when someone you found exciting gets to be nothing but a nuisance? He wanted me to marry him, too. You mustn't think I'm heartless, because I'm not. Caroline would have been a swell wife for him, and I told him so. I rather thought they would make it up, and I hoped they would, and that's why I said he would have been more apt to come to see Caroline than me last night.' 'Maybe he did. Have you asked her?' 'Good lord no. Me ask Caroline anything about Clyde? I wouldn't dare mention his name to her. She hates me.' 'She invited you up for the barbecue, didn't she?' 'Yes, but that was because she was being clever. Her brother Jimmy and I were beginning to be friendly, and she thought if he saw me out here in the country, a lot of me, he would realize how superficial and unhealthy I am.' 'Oh. So you're unhealthy?'
