So, find the knife.
Six blocks away, a mortuary assistant, having mistaken the deceased’s brother-in-law for her husband and been set right about this, was exhibiting caskets with the briskness of a sporting-goods salesman even though he was a little deflated because the best sales were to the nearest and dearest. “Now, a lot of people like this one. Oak, simple but nice if you know what I mean. Of course, the lining isn’t quite as luxurious as—”
“My brother wants the casket closed,” said Eunice Howe firmly, thereby disposing of the lining, and the assistant gave her an indulgent look. People never realized the wonders that could be performed cosmetically on even the most battered face. Indeed, he often thought that those laid out looked better than they had while walking around, what with tasteful hair arrangements and makeup and so on. He started to say something delicate about this, but Mrs. Howe cut him short by making a brisk choice and then giving him her telephone number although, she said, her brother would be in touch with him about any further arrangements.
“Not that I think he will,” she remarked to her husband as they emerged from organ-sounding dimness onto a gravelled walk. “When I talked to him he sounded in an absolute state of . . .”
She frowned at herself, exploring for the right word. . . shock,” she finished, and instinctively kept to herself the fact that that wasn’t really what she had meant at all.
5
IT was a quarter of seven when the doorknob turned almost soundlessly for the first time.
On returning from the pool, Mary had found Jenny writing postcards as announced—one, she couldn’t help noting, to a Myrna Vetch in New York. But postcards travelled almost at a walking pace; it wouldn’t matter.
She had then taken a speedy shower, made a second and this time successful request for ice, fixed herself a drink, and squeezed lime into papaya juice for Jenny. Although not normally given to much viewing, she found herself longing for a television set, even of the caliber usually found in motels: it would have allowed them to husband their tiny supply of reading matter. As things were, she was trying to follow her own advice to Jenny and dwell on every word twice when something made her glance at the door and its tentatively swivelling knob.
She was out of her chair at once, calling in a clear voice, “Yes? Who is it?” but by that time there was the sound of a key entering the lock. It seemed imperative to reach the door and open it before it could be opened from the outside. Mary managed this, heart beating much faster than at any time during her swim, and confronted a green-uniformed chambermaid. Down the corridor, another door closed quietly.
“Is there something you want?”
The woman, slender and unusually tall for her race, shook her cropped dark head in obvious incomprehension. Under ordinary circumstances Mary would have been able to produce at least an operative word or two of Spanish; now, for the first time in her life, she was powerless to communicate with another human being, and it was almost as dismaying as losing the faculty of speech itself.
She had taken an automatic step backward, as if to make way for the passage of towels or other paraphernalia, and the maid walked past her and into the room. She de toured around Jenny, who was pressed back in her chair like a silent statement of fear, bent a little from the waist, commenced a slow, intent, downward-staring prowl at the foot of the far twin bed and then the space between that and the wall.
“I think we’re looking for something,” said Mary casually, to break the spellbound quiet.
“I think we’re off our rocker,” said Jenny, barely audible, but the alarm had gone out of her; she was now simply amazed and diverted. As though sensing herself to be the object of a wondering discussion, the maid turned, divided a glance between them, tugged at an ear lobe, shrugged. Mary spread her hands and shook her head to indicate that they hadn’t found an earring, and the maid withdrew as mutely as she had entered.
“My God, ” said Jenny in awe when the door had closed. “Do they just walk in like that down here?” Once again, and for no good reason, Mary was defensive. “Someone in this room before us obviously lost an earring, and may be accusing the maid. She’s probably worried about her job.” Might as well go ahead on this tide of crispness. “Is something worrying you, Jenny?”
Jenny gave her a wide and apparently candid blue-gray glance. “Look,” she said practically. “I’m just getting over Indians, and here you introduce me to Mexicans. I’m sure they’re friendly and ’courteous and everything you say, but it’s kind of weird when you don’t understand a word of their language, and that woman would give anybody the creeps.”
Mary, getting dressed to go to dinner, acknowledged to herself that Jenny had indeed exhibited a surprisingly childish fear of Indians, whether selling handmade jewelry from their blankets along the plaza or shopping in supermarkets, some of the men with their hair tied back, the women in voluminous layers of skirts and soft, soundless boots. And it was true that the chambermaid had been briefly unnerving.
But there had also been something sharply personal in Jenny’s reaction, almost like that of someone shown, without warning, the photograph of a dangerous face.
They did not have dinner at the Casa de Flores. At the entrance to a very dark dining room with a number of vacant tables, all with reserved signs although it was early for dinner in Mexico, the headwaiter suggested suavely that perhaps they would care to have a drink in the bar while they waited? Mary, who resented being manipulated in this blatant
