Mary turned her head and glanced at her cousin. It seemed somehow weird that they were discussing her in this detail and she wasn’t hearing.
“Everything still seemed pretty much all right, until she spilled some of the brandy on herself,” went on St. Ives. “It was—like lightning, I’ve never seen anything like it before, and she seemed as astonished as I was. I wish I’d had a clue.”
It was a rueful comment; he was neither accusing nor defensive. Mary said honestly, “I didn’t know either.” For the first time it occurred to her that the evening must have been difficult for him. But she also thought that it wasn’t such a staggering amount of liquor, taken over a period of time and with food, particularly as Jenny hadn’t gotten to drink all of her brandy.
On the other hand, after that promising beginning at lunch, Jenny had consumed only half of her chicken sandwich and that had been a number of hours earlier. “Did she take a capsule, by any chance?”
“I think . . .” Small pause, in which Mary could picture a frown, followed by certainty. “Yes, I know she did, although she was very unobtrusive about it.” Again he was right; even with Mary, Jenny tended to use sleight-of-hand over this ritual. “She didn’t— I’m sorry to keep asking you all these questions, but I’m worried about her—she didn’t seem upset about anything, did she?”
“Not at all, she was enjoying herself right up until the fatal moment, or so she said. When I got her up to your room I tried to persuade her to vomit,” said St. Ives sensibly, “but she wasn’t interested in anything but going to sleep, so I just left you a note explaining what had happened so you wouldn’t worry. I didn’t dare lock her in, so I took a chance that you’d be back soon. I really don’t think you have anything to be concerned about. She had all the classic symptoms—glazed eyes, cold sweat, the staggers —only speeded up, like a fast film. She must be one of those people who can’t drink.”
Mary hoped irrelevantly that Jenny would remember very little of all this; she did not need any more humiliations. She heard St. Ives say after another short pause, “Shall I come over and have a look at her? I’ve probably put more people to bed than you have.”
“Oh, no,” said Mary quickly, remembering the all-important task waiting for her in the bathroom basin. “I’ll be fine, now that I know what happened.”
She said goodnight, realizing after she had hung up that she hadn’t thanked him for taking care of Jenny, realizing too that a part of her worry—the inability to get her cousin on her feet and moving if necessary —remained unsolved. She closed that thought off, because this was a time when she had to be very calm and single-minded.
She flushed the white substance down the toilet, set a match to the newspapers in the sink with their powdery residue, washed the pottery birds although only one had been involved, washed the sink itself. Her hands were more reliable now, and she knew that it had been ridiculous to suspect St. Ives, however fleetingly, of this vicious thing. Even granted some reason for wanting to harm Jenny, and that was hard to grant, he had had all the opportunity in the world tonight. He would only have had to topple her casually into the swimming pool under the willows and go on his way; alcohol would have done the rest.
The answer had been there all along, from that moment of absolute certainty in the parking area at the Casa de Flores. It hadn’t been enough for Brian Beardsley to show Jenny his succulent new girl while staying out of sight himself like a malicious child. By involving her with drugs he could really punish her, and her parents as well.
What would have happened if she hadn’t disturbed the contents of Jenny’s suitcase right down to the bottom? An informing telephone call leading to their apprehension, because with all that spite Brian Beardsley would surely have gotten the automobile license number from Astrid. Her and Jenny’s insistence that they knew nothing about any cocaine; it had been planted there. (This must be a plea familiar to the point of boredom.) By whom had it been planted, did they think, and why?
It was within the bounds of possibility—but barely, thought Mary, remembering detailed and bitter newspaper accounts—that the Mexican police might have tried to inquire locally about a Brian Beardsley, who would have taken the elementary precaution of registering under another name.
How fragile it would all sound anyway, particularly to the Latin temperament: these machinations so long after the fact, and especially when the man in question had a new and much prettier companion.
Astrid. Mary found her as hard to forgive as a poisoned apple. Looked back upon, she had picked them up as expertly as a man spotting a pretty girl in a bar. Badly run though the Casa de Flores was, she could not imagine them turning over the room key of two women to a strange man—but Astrid, visibly chatting with Jenny at the counter and then leaving the lobby with them, would be convincing. Plus the fact that she looked no more harmful than a ray of
