Sarah had had her head turned, looking back at the dim planks under their covering of litter; just in time, she avoided colliding with Evelyn.
The other woman was unevenly flushed, face blotched with the red patches that appeared under strong emotion or contact with one of her—was it sixty-four?—allergens. She seldom ventured as far as the barn, because of the presence of the quail. She said briskly enough, “Someone’s on the phone for Bess, and I was just running out, but I see she’s busy. Ill tell them . . .”
She turned and went rapidly back into the passage that led to the kitchen—because the phone wasn’t off the hook at all? She not only hadn’t been running, she hadn’t been moving at all; the precise and unconscious part of the ear that counts clock chimes told Sarah that Evelyn had simply been standing there.
She could have been lost in admiration of the quail on the other side of the barn, three crowded tiers of small speckled egg-factories, or been gazing down the ramp into the stable. Or she could have been watching through the barn window into the corral.
The window gave a view of all the far pens, and even a corner glimpse of the Amherst run. It would have shown Hunter, Sarah with her camera, Milo and his last-minute grimace. It would have caught Bess’s rapid hardy walk as she went about tending her birds, and, Sarah noted, it afforded a glimpse of the Clemences’ back yard through a ragged break in the pines.
Harry Brendan’s car was back. So, presumably, was Kate.
The pheasant pens would have to wait until some still hour of the night. Kate Clemence, who had loved Charles, who had had a lunch date with him on the day he died, did not.
“Yes,” said Kate, making tea in her immaculate kitchen. The door was closed, shutting out Rob and Harry Brendan and any kind of friendliness. “I was supposed to meet Charles that day, but as he couldn’t make it there didn’t seem much point in mentioning it. I didn’t know you as well then, and I was afraid you might—” her mouth smiled pleasantly and candidly at Sarah “—misunderstand.”
Two body blows, thought Sarah, smiling pleasantly and candidly back. The obvious one, and the implication that Sarah, even misunderstanding, wouldn’t have cared.
She said in Kate’s own tone, “How right you were. Brides aren’t noted for their tolerance. Did Charles by any chance say why he didn’t want it mentioned? It’s an academic interest, I suppose.”
Kate gazed at her and then back at the tea. “Lemon,” she inquired, “or cream? No, I remember, you don’t take anything. I’m sure you’d much rather have had a drink.”
“There you’re wrong,” said Sarah. Her smile felt like a dagger between her teeth. “I’d much rather have tea. Did Charles say?”
“He said he was afraid,” said Kate. It ought to have had a wrung and reluctant air, but it came out like everything else Kate said: calm, open, unruffled.
“Of what?”
“Don’t you think,” said Kate, “that you’re putting yourself through this unnecessarily, Sarah?”
How kind and careful she was, and how solicitous of Sarah’s feelings. Did she never blink? Perhaps she even slept like that, great gray eyes wide and serene, unperturbed by dreams. The dreamer cometh. Where had that sinister little phrase sprung from? Sarah said carefully, “Putting myself through what, Kate?”
Kate glanced down into her cup. “Charles had been drinking when he called me, I gather. That was something new as far as I was concerned, so perhaps I didn’t make enough allowance for it. What he said was that his marriage had been a terrible mistake, and he had to tell somebody, but he was frightened of what you’d do if you found out.”
“Such as . . . what?” said Sarah softly and fixedly; she couldn’t help herself. “Leave him? Push him through a window in a fit of pique?” She walked the length of the kitchen and back again, fast. “Granted all this was true, what could you have done, I wonder?”
It was probably fortunate that the kitchen door opened just then, and Harry and Rob came in for drinks. Rob was complaining savagely about foreign policy; Harry, seeming to inhale the atmosphere between the two women, picked up Kate’s tea and tipped it into the sink. “Did you know,” he said seriously, “that an eminent chemist has succeeded in pickling rhinoceros tendons in that stuff? Whereas with Scotch the same tendons remained fresh and pliable.”
He made Kate a drink and shepherded her out of the kitchen. It left Rob in charge of Sarah; he said dryly, after a lightning glance at her, “A little Scotch for your tendons?” and when she shook her head, “What was the girlish chat about?”
The question was light, something about the pause that followed it was not. “Charles, of course. It’s a subject,” said Sarah shortly, “that seems to be full of little surprises.”
“Oh?” The bottle was tipped in the steady freckled hand; fascinated, Sarah watched a thin stream of liquor splash onto the counter top two inches away from the waiting glass. “For whom?”
“For me. That is, so far,” said Sarah, and as Rob seemed unaware of the puddle of Scotch, picked up the sponge.
He took it from her without moving his sharp gray stare. His jaw had gone tight, making the very amiability of his voice dangerous. “So that’s it, that’s why you won’t let Bess off the hook. You want to get out from under, no matter how. You’re determined to dig up
