Mrs. Foale was dead.
Hilary had sensed it; Jerome Kincaid, suspecting it, had emerged from that cobwebby trip to the cellar storage room with an unseeing gaze. Margaret had kept it at bay by a series of subconscious strategems. Only Elizabeth Honeyman, as delicate and malicious as a wasp, was still bent on the destruction of an enemy already destroyed. The taking of the useless letter and the address book, the hope for damaging gossip from Julio Garcia—
The bedspread under Margaret’s hot dry palms was suddenly another bedspread, a huddle of plaid on the cold cement floor of the storage room in the cellar. But even in that icy air it could not be— A revulsion of heat mounted to her throat, and although she had only tea to lose she reached Hilary’s bathroom barely in time. Her stomach was still wrenching vainly and emptily when the telephone rang.
She was so braced for Kincaid’s voice that she did not, for a second, recognize Cornelia’s, somehow detached in spite of its clarity.
“Margaret? I’m in Arizona. How is everything there?”
“Oh, thank God. I’ve been trying ev—” No; check herself, at once; go at it calmly or Cornelia would think she was mad. “You’ve got to come home right away. I’m sorry, but Hilary’s sick and so am I. Perhaps I’d better —is Philip there?”
“I’ll come home as soon as I can,” said Cornelia’s cool dry voice. “Philip’s dead.”
Fifteen
SHE might have been saying, “Philip’s in the shower.” In answer to Margaret’s stunned, “What?” she repeated, “Philip’s dead.”
The wires hummed blankly, airily. Fever or not, thought Margaret wildly, she was quite rational, and Cornelia had just said that Philip was dead. Her tongue finally got itself untied, and said, “How—what happened?”
“The pool. We were going out to dinner, but we had trouble with the car and it was awfully hot and Philip wanted a swim, so we went back to the motel. Philip had made cocktails and we had them beside the pool. Philip drank mine instead of his own. It must have been the cocktail, because when he was at the deep end he got a cramp. I tried,” said Cornelia in that curiously detached way, “but I couldn’t get to him in time.”
Margaret closed her eyes hard on the vision of Cornelia’s strong, effortless, swimming-meet stroke. She said automatically, “Where are you now?”
“At the Alvarado, waiting—there seem to be a lot of technicalities,” said Cornelia. Her voice shook for just an instant. “But everybody’s been very kind and given me time to get rid of all the pool water I swallowed. I’ve been sick all along, as a matter of fact.”
So she had probably not been in a pool for anyone to see and remember what a strong swimmer she was; thank God at least for that. There was someone official with her, Margaret could tell from her voice; probably someone connected with the motel, ready to deny any responsibility for the tragedy. Shouldn’t Cornelia be trying to cry, or putting on some semblance of hysteria?
Numbly, she heard Cornelia say, “I suppose it doesn’t seem quite real yet. Your friend Mr. Kincaid telephoned that he is coming—I told him I’d call you. Oh, and Margaret—”
This was important.
“Take care of things in the house, will you? Philip left some awfully important envelopes in our room, and of course I’ll have to see what to do about everything.” The capsule in the envelope. Margaret did not dare say, “I’ve got it; it’s safe,” or even, “Be careful,” because it was possible that someone was listening at Cornelia’s end—and did she imagine a very faint close breathiness on the line, as though Hilary were at the bedroom extension again? She said as steadily as she could, although the pantry was beginning to lurch a little, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything here,” and uncounted miles away in another state Cornelia said goodbye and the receiver went down.
It seemed incredible that the house should be so quiet and unchanged, the dining room full of silky light and shadow, the living room a deeper tunnel of gold and dark. The beaded peacocks on the mantel, the seagulls glimmering in two arcs of crystal on the desk, did not know or care that Philip was dead.
He had drunk the cocktail—poisoned or drugged—that he had mixed for Cornelia—how had that happened?— and then he had been seized by a cramp in the pool. He must have known at the last that Cornelia was going to let him die. It would have seemed to him monstrously unfair and impossible, in spite of what he had planned for her, that she should simply go through floundering motions instead of calling for help.
He must have intended Cornelia to drown—and what a daring, perhaps a disarmingly bold plan that had been. It would certainly be brought out that she had been a strong swimmer, and what man in his right mind would have chosen that method, particularly when, alone with her in a car for days, he had had countless opportunities? And he must have covered himself in the event of an autopsy on Cornelia. Margaret could not imagine how, except that his job gave him access to all kinds of experimental drugs.
Gaze deliberately focussed on near objects, one at a time as she passed them, Margaret walked the length of the living room, into the hall, opened Hilary’s door with a silent swiftness.
Hilary was shamming sleep, so expertly that the mind reeled at the mountainous task of confronting her with having listened in on the extension. But nobody, thought Margaret, gazing at her in the dim light from her own bathroom across the hall, certainly not Hilary, slept so neatly, breathed so evenly, was so perfectly composed as to brows and lips. Dreadfully, wooden little Mrs. Foale reposed on the pillow beside her head. The painted face could
