Labels, of course. And even without those, an unmistakable Eastern cut that would destroy her new protective coloring.
“Where is she now?” asked Kincaid, and Margaret realized that she didn’t know. She said, “Hold on a second,” and lowered the phone to call to the silent and fascinated presence just outside the door, “Mrs. . . . ?”
“Snaith,” said the nurse imperturbably, putting her head around the door.
“Do you know what became of Mrs. Foale, the woman who was here when the police came?”
“Oh, they took her with them, for questioning they said. They took her gun with them, too. They said it would be easy to tell if it had been used to shoot Garcia. And they asked her if she had a car. It sounded as if they thought she was the hit-and-run driver who had killed him. She gave Johnny Ortiz a terrible bite,” said Mrs. Snaith, finishing with a certain relish.
Margaret conveyed this information to Kincaid. With Cornelia safe, and Mrs. Foale no longer an unknown darkness but a dyed, dried blonde who had hardly improved her case by biting a police officer, she felt limp and empty with relief, incapable, just now, of containing happiness.
Or so she thought until Kincaid’s voice, changed, warmed, said in her ear, “Hilary gets a medal, sometime tomorrow. Who’s this Mrs. Snaith, a nurse? Is she staying with you?”
“I think so.”
“Somebody,” said Kincaid with severity, “has to take care of you until I come back, as soon as I can make it.”
Margaret did not remark that she had been taking care of herself, in sickness and in health, for a good many years and with a fair amount of efficiency. She said modestly, “I’m all right,” but when she hung up at last she did it as dreamily and foolishly as a girl with her first interested telephone call.
She woke in the night; she had known that she would. Mrs. Snaith was asleep in the other bed, a comforting bulk with curlers on top. Safety could exude itself as strongly as danger, and the house was quiet and dark and secure.
How very icily clear Cornelia’s voice had been for someone drugged.
How incredibly arrogant of Philip to have underestimated Cornelia’s instinct for self-preservation. She had not been diabetic like his first wife, nor been weakened by rheumatic fever like his second wife. He had been foolish to think Cornelia would not question continued illness. The suspicions that made her hide the capsule before she left on the trip would be aroused. Alerted to danger, she must have noticed signs that made her mistrust Philip, at least enough not to take chances until she had proof. Well, she had her proof when she managed somehow to switch the glasses so that Philip drank the lethal cocktail he had made for her.
If he had gone to the trouble of establishing Cornelia as a habitual user of barbiturates—had, in fact, been introducing small amounts into her daily food or drink against the inevitable autopsy (“I’ve been sick all along”)—he must have had a supply on hand. How quickly did drugs show up in the blood? If, for instance, Kincaid had said urgently to Cornelia over the phone, “Take something, quick . . .”
Her stomach, thoroughly emptied of pool water would have been receptive to drugs, indeed. Warned by Kincaid, she would have been able to help herself to barbiturates from Philip’s supply. The blood test, of course, would show that she had been drugged.
A little chilling, much more comforting for Margaret, that she would never know to what lengths Cornelia had gone to save herself before or after Philip’s death.
Hilary was abroad early, a dedicated Florence Nightingale under Mrs. Snaith’s admiring and uninitiated eye. She hovered in Margaret’s bedroom, trying on her gloves, leaving only a faint smear of peanut butter on the back of one. She seemed untouched, Margaret thought wonderingly; the night had come and gone and left her just as she was.
Just then, by way of restoring the norm, Hilary knocked over a yellow-shaded lamp. She said without righting it, “She was a horrible woman, wasn’t she?” The books said no; said gently, “Dear, she was sick.” No book had been written yet for Hilary, or the toppling of Hilary’s idols. Margaret said gravely, “Yes, Hilary, she was dreadful, and quite dangerous. You were awfully good last night, and very brave. Mr. Kincaid’s going to give you a medal.”
Hilary was alerted at once. “Gold?”
“Leather,” said Margaret. “Leather medals are the best, and the rarest.” She closed her eyes, exhausted although she had only been awake an hour, and heard the doorbell ring.
There was a murmur of voices in the living room, and presently Mrs. Reverton was in the bedroom with her arm around Hilary. She was a handsomer, grown-up edition of her daughter, with black-lashed yellow eyes, black hair cut in jagged scissor points around her lean wide-awake face. She wore pink toreador pants and a black and white striped jersey half-buried by a wild profusion of necklaces, and from the soundless way she had entered she was barefoot. She looked weird and happy, and when Mrs. Snaith had departed to collect Hilary’s belongings she was full of thanks and solicitude.
“My husband and I—well, I won’t bore you with that, but tell Philip and your sister, will you, that the operation was a success?”
Hilary shot Margaret an appalled look. Savingly, Mrs. Snaith appeared with a question as to the ownership of a white cardigan, and in an astonishingly short time the Revertons were packed and ready to go. Hilary roused herself from a repressive contemplation of her mother’s bib of necklaces—clearly she would have preferred a single austere strand of real pearls—to say to Margaret from the doorway, “Will you send me my medal?”
“I certainly will.”
“Will you come and see me when you get back to New York?”
Wonders would never cease. “Yes, Hilary, we will.” Hilary
