Margaret’s anger slipped its leash. “Possibly, but I don’t know. In the East we rather like old gum wrappers and dead leaves. We think it makes a place look lived-on. And before I forget—” the cold haughty stare drove her on “—you did find a letter of Mrs. Foale’s, didn’t you, in the pantry drawer one day when you were here? I remember seeing it there, and although it wasn’t unopened mail it was correspondence, and I only realized that Mrs. Foale might want it after you had left with the address book.”
The vigas seemed to echo: no one had been so challenging with Elizabeth Honeyman in uncounted years. She could not be sure that she had not been observed from the kitchen, and she said after the barest pause, “Yes, thank you, I did find it,” but her flush heightened. “It was a letter of condolence from someone called Grace, saying that she would have come out for a visit but her daughter was expecting her first child.”
She was plainly telling a truth that had maddened her—and her temper matched Margaret’s; it was evident in her very control. “I’m quite sure Isabel didn’t want the letter, but it was kind of you to worry, and very—thorough.”
How bitterly disappointed she had been in the interesting word “pregnant,” which she had pounced upon and found to be less than ashes. Ironic, really, that with all its innocence the letter had been Hilary’s springboard and, in a sense, Margaret’s.
“Thank you,” said Margaret in the same steady tone, “and now I’m supposed to be in bed, so if you’ll excuse me—”
The front door closed behind Miss Honeyman’s totally silent departure, but there was, moments later, no corroborating slam from the door of her smart little foreign car. Was she possibly prowling around the grounds seeking further indictment in broken twigs and leaf-tangled iris? No, because she hadn’t come here for that in the first place. She had come to find Julio Garcia, because she had not seen the small newspaper mention of his death, or she had come to find out how much Margaret knew about him. The state of the grounds had been a pretext, just as the cookbook had been in the beginning, just as—
But the message from Mrs. Foale had not been a pretext, had it?
Margaret, standing automatically at one of the living room windows, watched an erect tweedy figure pass the end of the adobe wall and disappear from view. Miss Honeyman was walking today, doubtless to preserve her superior constitution.
As long as Lena was in the house, Hilary was happily, even smugly occupied. Margaret’s deep feverish sleep had taken the edge off her exhaustion, and for one of the few times in her adult life her throat refused cigarette smoke. Why didn’t Kincaid call, to say that he had found Cornelia and Philip, or that he hadn’t found them, or that—?
No. She would not think about that, not yet. She didn’t have to, because while she was staring frantically at the silent telephone it rang.
Cornelia and Philip had spent last night at the Golden Drifts Motel in Hawks, Arizona. It was the manager’s impression that they meant to go on to Stagerock; he had recommended the Alvarado there, although it was a long drive for Mrs. Byrne.
“Why?” demanded Margaret instantly. “Why did he think it was a long drive for Cornelia?”
“Long drive for anybody,” said Kincaid, but Margaret’s queer new intimacy with his voice knew he was holding something—perhaps only his own bafflement-back from her. “They aren’t at the Alvarado yet, I checked. I’ll try again in about an hour, but I thought I’d let you know.”
“Cornelia wasn’t sick?”
“He’d have said if she was. I told him I was her brother-in-law.”
But would he? Margaret wondered. Mightn’t the average motel, mindful of adverse publicity or annoying questions later, wash its hands of an ailing stranger?
“. . . told you I might be wrong,” Kincaid’s voice was saying briskly into her ear, and then, “How do you feel?” To almost anyone else Margaret would have said automatically, “Oh, not bad.” To Kincaid she said, “Awful.”
“Is your girl going to stay?”
“Until Hilary’s had her dinner anyway.”
“Get her to stay all night,” said Kincaid sharply, and the wire hummed a little before he added, “Mind your own business, Kincaid.”
“No, I will if I can.” Because she wanted to know, but even more because she hated to relinquish the sound of his voice, Margaret said, “Did you send Elizabeth Honeyman for Mrs. Foale’s address book?”
“Nobody sends Elizabeth Honeyman anywhere,” said Kincaid dryly. “My guess is that she was always a would-be Mrs. Foale, and now, with one thing and another, she hopes she’s onto something.”
And that was it, the busy preoccupation with the gloves, the small habitual gesture just after which the woman had said, “I know that if it hadn’t been for me, Hadley wouldn’t have known where to turn . . .”
What a shock, after all her attentions and solicitude, her expectancy of being mistress of a house she loved, to find that Hadley had been married in the East to a woman so much younger than she, and a woman he hardly knew at that. No wonder that, fresh from finding out that Kincaid was curious about the widowed Isabel, she had come to the house to grasp whatever correspondence might be there, hoping to find something that could be used as a weapon against her successful rival. Miss Honeyman’s capacity for affection could not be guessed at; her vindictive pride and possessiveness could.
Margaret, about to speak, grew suddenly aware of an odd airiness on the line, like a hole in an otherwise solid pipe. She said rapidly, “Call me, will you, Jerome?” and replaced the receiver and went silently back through the house.
Lena was waxing the kitchen floor. Hilary, trapped, was on top of her bed trying to thrust her feet into a wall of sheet. She said hastily as Margaret came in, “I have to go to the bathroom sometimes.”
Margaret lifted
