“It doesn’t matter,” she said briefly. “Now, about Hilary . . . ?”
Oh yes. Hilary was to have, he wrote busily, acromycin every four hours, around the clock; he would have that sent. Margaret could continue the aspirin and the alcohol sponges, and fluids were important. He would like a report on Monday morning.
Wimple shouldered into his coat, picked up his bag, and reached for the doorknob. Margaret only realized then that he had not pronounced on Hilary at all; he had said, “Hmm,” and after a look at Hilary’s throat, “Mmm-hmm,” and after counting Hilary’s pulse he had burst into a veritable song of humming, and put all his instruments briskly away.
“What has she got?” asked Margaret baldly, and Wimple looked at her as though she had crept in to rifle his office files. “A bad throat,” he said repressively. “Nodules. Goodnight, Mrs. Reverton.”
“Goodnight,” said Margaret.
The man would not come back, of course he would not, but after she had given Hilary her first acromycin capsule, coaxingly wrapped up in jam, Margaret inspected the doors and windows again and even made herself descend into the cellar. The entrance door there was locked, and there wasn’t a door in the storage room —was there?
If she didn’t look now, she would lie awake and hear all kinds of stealthy sounds. It was just a room, after all, and a very untidy one at that—an addition, and uninsulated because of its bone-chilling cold. Margaret opened the door on dimness, walked between the carton of rum bottles and huddled bedspreads, stepped around some trunks and a few dismantled lamps, and was at the end of the room. No door. Only one window and that —she felt in the shadows for metal—securely fastened.
How did Cornelia stand this house when Philip was away?
Hilary had had her acromycin at seven and would need it next at eleven, so there was no sense in a very early dinner and bed. Margaret made herself a drink, astonished at her pang because she did not have to pour Hilary’s accompanying tomato juice, and went into the library to look for something to read.
There was a whole section of books on birds and bird-life; sets, well-read from their backs, of George Eliot, Trollope, Dickens. Jacketed novels here and there among them were like a naughty wink in a reading-room.
They were as out of place as the incongruously gay slippers; the cache of empty rum bottles. Had these been signs of defiance by Isabel Foale? But whom had she defied? Not her husband; he was dead. Elizabeth Honeyman, with her arrogant finely-netted face, her air of possession over the house? Or the house itself, the eclipsing darkness and subdued beauty and waxed formality?
And here, gilt on dark green, was The Art of Spanish Cooking. Miss Honeyman could not have missed it if she were really looking for it; it stood between a pale-bound set of Jack London and a crimson series of Jane Austen.
Drink in hand, Margaret went to the phone. She informed herself that it was only courtesy to let Miss Honeyman know that the lost was found—who knew, the woman might be starving to death—but she was consciously braced against the sardonic little smile, the haughty eyelids, the weary voice.
“Miss Honeyman? Margaret Russell. I called to say that I’ve found your cookbook.”
“Have you.” Her own imperative visit notwithstanding, Miss Honeyman appeared to have to search her mind as to what Margaret was talking about. “I’ll—let me see, I’ll stop by, shall I?”
“Yes, why don’t you?” said Margaret and then, unpremeditatedly (although nothing like this was ever really unpremeditated), “Oh, someone’s called me, a Mrs. Withers I think, to ask about Mrs. Foale’s relative, the one who came west with her. Apparently, she has been quite anxious to get in touch with someone in the family.”
Did it sound as thin and obviously improvised over the phone as it did to her own ears? Apparently, because there was a considerable pause before Miss Honeyman repeated, “Mrs. Withers?”
“From Philadephia, I believe,” said Margaret firmly. “On her way to the coast.”
Miss Honeyman sifted this in another little silence; Margaret had a clear vision of the eyebrows going up, the triangular eyelids lowering. Then the voice in her ear said, “I’m afraid I wouldn’t have the slightest idea of where she could locate the young man—Isabel’s cousin, that is. I believe he went back East, as I understand he had some blood pressure condition that couldn’t tolerate our altitude. In fact,” a touch of asperity crept in, “he spent most of his visit here in bed. Not a help, under the circumstances.”
How nettled she must have felt for her voice to reflect it still. Because she had counted on being mentor to the second Mrs. Foale, and had been shut out on the account of a man at whom she hadn’t even been allowed to get a full and critical look?
Margaret eased her cramped fingers on the receiver and gazed steadily on the blank pantry wall. “I see. . .well, thank you, I’ll tell this woman if she calls again that he’s gone back. I suppose it was the cousin she’s after—almost a twin to Mrs. Foale, she said?”
“Oh dear, no,” said Elizabeth Honeyman through an invisible, astringent little raspberry smile. “She’s quite mistaken if she thinks that. I only caught a glimpse of him once, but he was as fair as Isabel is brunette, with a little blond mustache. I should say he was several years younger. Amusing, isn’t it, the physical contrast someone sometimes finds in families. . . ?”
At last the malice showed through like scrapped metal, a raw dry sparkle under the studied tones. Miss Honeyman was neither a fool nor a gossip. Deliberately, she was letting Margaret know that she did not believe the man who
