Margaret looked dizzily at shards of the great bowl that had stood on the hall bookcase. Valuable, no doubt, but Mrs. Foale was hardly in a position to complain.
Hilary gazed professionally at Mrs. Foale’s flickering eyelids and reached for a large fragment. “I’d better hit her again,” she said.
The police were courteous with Margaret, much more courteous with Mrs. Foale, widow of a resident and owner of the branched candlesticks, the magnificent clock, the peacocks from Paris. Aching in every bone, losing their faces now and then in a shimmer of fatigue or fever, Margaret could nevertheless understand how the two officers felt. It was difficult to conceive of overparking, in this setting, let alone violence and complicity to attempted murder.
Hilary didn’t help. Her infatuation withered, she sent glances of such black malevolence at Mrs. Foale that the policemen controlled smiles. It was not until Margaret mentioned Julio Garcia that they came to attention at all.
“What do you know about Garcia, Miss Russell?”
Margaret told them, with a tremendous effort. She had never felt sicker. The room came and went in waves, and the two uniformed men seemed far out of reach of her voice, but she tried anyway. Her tiny, whispery voice said, “Julio Garcia said Mrs. Foale gave him money. I thought he meant when she was here with Philip, but he must have seen her here in town and recognized her when she was supposed to be in Europe. That’s why she must have paid him—so he wouldn’t talk about her. It would be too dangerous—especially if he’d said anything to Miss Honeyman or me. Maybe that’s why he came here the first time, hoping he could sell his information to me. But I was too frightened to give him a chance. If Mrs. Foale found out he’d been here, she would have known blackmail wouldn’t keep him silent. So she could have been the one who shot him. Garcia must have gone by the house after Philip brought Cornelia out here and recognized Philip, too, because he seemed to think something was . . .”
“. . . very amusing,” said Margaret, but her voice echoed oddly and she had said it earnestly to the blank ceiling of her room, dim in the lamplight. She was in bed, neatly, flat on her back, with no memory of getting there.
All the pain in her throat had seeped deep inside her chest, and the whistly sound that had waked her was her own breath, going shallowly, effortfully in and out, as though all but a very small space at the top had solidified. When she lifted her head from the pillow air struck coldly at her damp hair and neck, turned the damp pillow icy when she lowered it again. The sheet beneath her was wet. How long had she lain here, talking to herself, with fever pouring out of her?
Cornelia—but Kincaid was with her, or on his way to her, worth an army of lawyers. Hilary . . . Margaret struggled up on her elbow, threw back her covers, and was put firmly back by a big gray-haired woman who seemed to materialize out of the wall.
“Awake, are you? How do you feel?”
Somebody had sent her. The police? Margaret said, “I have to—”
“Have to nothing, you’ve got pneumonia,” said the woman briskly. “I’m a nurse, and you’re my job. If it’s the little girl you’re worried about, she’s fine, dead to the world. And you had a telephone call from a Mr. Kincaid. You’re not to worry; he’s taking care of everything and he’ll be back tomorrow. Now . . .”
A thermometer went into Margaret’s mouth, but she did not remember its being taken out again. She woke to the nurse’s voice saying . . feel better if you do,” and realized that she had been staring at a spoonful of clear soup. She drank it obediently, and went on drinking it until warmth spread through her and seemed to ease her breath.
She slept again until the phone rang. The nightmare waiting came back, until she remembered, and the nurse was saying, “Well, I think she might—” and handing her the receiver.
It was Kincaid, and his voice was so comforting, so like coming home, that Margaret was momentarily weak against the pillows she had braced herself on. She said to his first query, “I’m all right; how’s Cornelia?”
“Still pretty groggy.” He sounded as close, miles away in the night, as though he were standing beside her. “I suppose she told you she was drugged . . . Hello? Margaret?”
Drugged. Not responsible, not accountable.
Kincaid’s voice went on, saying something about a doctor and a blood test for Cornelia and a confusion of cocktail glasses; Margaret could only realize that Cornelia had not placed herself in even greater jeopardy. She was safe from suspicion because she had been physically incapacitated. It could be proved that she had been drugged, that she would not have been able to rescue Philip.
“. . . reputation, all along the way. Cornelia was supposed to be a drinking-and-barbiturate problem. After Philip had packed, he remembered two samples he’d forgotten, and he asked Cornelia to put them in her suitcase. He said he was going to combine business and pleasure—and of course she handled the bottles, tightened the caps to make sure they wouldn’t open, wrapped them inside clothing so they wouldn’t break. Her fingerprints were all over them.”
Foresighted Philip—and he would have done it so well. The frantic but loyal husband, hiding his wife’s addiction, hoping a vacation alone together would straighten her out.
He would have done it beautifully.
“There’ll be some formalities here,” said Kincaid, “but I think that’s all they’ll be. Now—are you really okay? Is Hilary behaving?”
“Oh, beautifully,” said Margaret, and began to laugh and burst into a fit of coughing instead. When she could speak again she told him about Mrs. Foale. And she was right; he had been convinced that Mrs. Foale was dead when he
