Judging by the number of overdose victims, sleeping pills couldn’t be hard to come by. Or borrow. No friend would think it odd under the circumstances if a man said, “Could you let me have something . . .” Because this was what St. Ives was clearly aiming at: Brennan’s presence on the scene, Jenny’s startling collapse later.
Oh, this is mad, thought Mary angrily. She said, “All right, suppose he is this David Brand. Jenny and I still met him for the first time last night, and we certainly had no connection with his wife.
St. Ives starred at her with the kind of brilliance which indicates thoughts turned inward. “Unless,” he said slowly, “you happen to resemble her.”
Late, late movie, thought Mary, trying protectively to reduce it to theatrical nonsense. Sudden widower crazed with grief, finding it unendurable that someone who looked like his wife was walking around in perfect health. (That initial attention from across a dining room, fastening on her like an actual touch.) Immobilizing the look-alike’s companion, so that he could destroy her without immediate hue or cry.
Which Daniel Brennan could have done quite easily an hour ago, if he had wanted to, with Jenny in her comatose state.
Leaving his fingerprints more or less all over the room? How quiet the pool, on the other hand. Simply from dinner, with drinks and brandy, her blood would have a certain alcohol content, and who could say with certainty how much it took to render someone helpless in the water? “She saw this silver thing on the bottom of the pool, and before I could stop her—”
But why say anything at all? Until the headlights came snapping on they been an unidentifiable man and woman in near-darkness, just as they had been in the car on the way to the restaurant—and then there had been that fierce rush of light and glancing impact. The woman in the rain hat had seen and talked to Mary . . .
She pressed a hand against her forehead like someone trying to extinguish a fever. She had thought, and rightly, that Jenny was a target here, and nothing would shake her conviction that the cocaine was the doing of Brian Beardsley, the known user of drugs. But what if, out of a nightmarish conjunction of circumstances, she had been a target too, and not only of an abiding malice?
Somehow included in her tumbling brain was the recollection that Spence had been almost chillingly accurate in his assessment of people. Frequently, when Mary met someone likable and diverting at a party, he would ask later in amazement, “You didn’t really believe a word of all that claptrap, did you?” and nine times out of then he would be right.
But this was St. Ives, now saying, “Maybe I’m wrong. People do strange things under stress, and maybe Brand is using another name because he thinks taking off for Juarez right after his wife was killed would look peculiar. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with Jenny that a few hours’ sleep won’t cure. But—” he glanced at the bed “—I’m the responsible party, I’m the one who took her out, and I’d feel a lot better if we got her to a doctor.”
“Daniel Brennan thought she looked—” began Mary involuntarily, and stopped short. He had come to the room to satisfy himself that Jenny would not be awake and aware for some time, and of course he would say there was nothing to worry about. She glanced at her own message for Jenny, still propped in position. It made no mention of Brennan.
Owen St. Ives had turned a shocked face. When Mary explained, very briefly because of her increasing sense of the need to hurry, he seemed less appalled by the planting of the drug than by the fact that the other man had actually been here. He said decisively, “Well, Brand isn’t a doctor, that I do know, and I doubt very much that we’ll get one to come here at this hour . . . Let’s see if we can get her dressed.”
As if her name had been called, Jenny gave a smothered, cut-off snore. Mary had found this comforting earlier, as a normal sound emanating from deep sleep; now she wondered if it could be a subconscious cry for help. She went to the closet and took out the pink dress, its hanger clattering against the next under her shaky fingers. “But the stairs— we’ll never manage . . .”
“There’s a service elevator, I saw it while I was waiting for you,” said St. Ives, giving an indicative nod in the direction of the dark well. He walked to the phone, picked up the receiver, put it down again. “Jenny isn’t going to like having this noised about,” he said, “and the hospital will certainly have an emergency room. Or—what do you think?”
“I think we should just go,” said Mary, already beginning to feel as if she had been running, “but you’re going to have to help me sit her up.”
Jenny would have burned with humiliation if aware that all her ribs were on display and easily countable between her bra and half-slip. As it was, she only lifted her eyelids as St. Ives’ propping arm ‘ went around her shoulders, gave them a glazed and uncomprehending look, muttered something about parakeets.
“It’s all right, Jenny,” said Mary soothingly as she maneuvered an arm into a sleeve. “We’re just going to—” She broke off as St. Ives reminded her with a mute head-shake that Jenny had undoubtedly had her fill of doctors and might set up some kind of instinctive rebellion. She wasn’t helping, at the moment, but neither was she resisting. It was like dressing
