His sudden anxiety to talk to Kate suggested a new development of some kind. A suspicion of someone who had never crossed his mind before? He would know that he had been observed slipping away from the gamebird show to go back to the house and confront Nina; had he wanted to ask Kate—a neutral witness, not of his own family—who else had been missing from the show shortly afterward? Had he, in fact, needed the knowledge for a scheduled meeting, later, with the killer to whom he had so innocently betrayed himself all along?
Sarah rubbed at her tight and aching temples. What mattered more than anything else at the moment was the question of a diary in a pheasant pen, a pretty little dark-blue volume whose key, dropping from the lock and settling into some crevice in or near the stable, Charles had found and recognized and kept.
The necessity of finding it, of making solid sense out of the noted-down names of pheasants, was not a matter of abstract justice nor even, wholly, a desire to avenge Charles. It was simply the fact that Sarah could not go back to New York and take up her life again—and wonder, until the not-knowing made up her very existence, like a hole in a sculpture.
It struck her, as she went down the narrow little stair, that she was placed almost exactly as Charles had been.
“—still think he had something to do with all those mink,” said Milo.
Hunter’s formidable eyebrows went up, his gaze stayed on the rug. “He had no great reason to love us, if it comes to that.”
Bess turned flashingly. She said, “What on earth do you—?” but Milo was there before her, head tipped to one side, preparing the way for a profundity. “People never love their employers. It’s against nature. Do you find cats loving dogs? Worms getting up early?”
They were talking about Peck, inevitably, because Mrs. Peck had called during the course of the afternoon to say that the police had made a routine check of her husband’s last hours. Although Peck had been inclined to belligerence when drinking, he had had no quarrels in Tod’s Bar and Grill nor, later, in Eddie’s Cafe. In fact, he had bought drinks for the house at Eddie’s and, pressed to repeat this hospitable gesture, announced with decorum that he was late for his date with a rolling pin as it was. After a brief encounter with a glass door which he had presumed to be open air, he had started home alone and unassisted.
Cheerful, thought Sarah, studying her hands, because he thought there was more money where that came from. Never suspecting that he had been enticed into drunkenness, that his small demands, indicative of a larger knowledge or near-knowledge, had become intolerable. Certainly not looking for, and totally unable to cope with, the sudden thrust of hands in the cold quiet night.
“. . . do you?” said Evelyn in Sarah’s ear. “I said, you never have to diet, do you? It’s wonderful the way some people don’t.”
Did she work at being inane, wondered Sarah blankly, or was it a gift? No ordinary intelligence could produce such observations as, “Where would people be without furnaces?” or “I knew a woman once whose husband was in the insurance business.” (Pause, significant flexing of the round blue gaze, mysterious nod.) “There’s a lot of money in it.”
That was one Evelyn. Another sprang out occasionally, a sharp hard awareness that counted up the mockings and stored them carefully away. How had either Evelyn liked having her usefulness in the household wiped out by a young, efficient, radiantly pretty woman? Milo’s habitual barbs would be much harder to take in that presence; watched, smiled over, Evelyn would have fumbled more than ever.
Violence could be born out of a thing like that, probably was, uncounted times per day, behind the innocent death certificates issued all over the world. It mightn’t start out to be murder any more than a chance comment started out to be a blazing argument. But once it was done, there was no going back, and any subsequent killings would not take the name of murder either, but of self-preservation.
“I see you still wear your ring,” said Evelyn in a confidential tone.
They both looked at the narrow band of platinum.
“Shouldn’t I?” asked Sarah, trying hard for amiability. “Or is there a rule under the circumstances?”
“Oh no. It’s just—” began Evelyn, and launched into the saga of a friend who had lost her husband in a fire, and although she was young and most attractive and had a tidy little sum of money in bonds, her men friends were put off by the fact that she continued to wear her wedding band. Whereas the truth was that she had put on weight and couldn’t get the ring off. A woman should never let herself go, should she?
Sarah nodded and shook her head now and then, and thought how empty the room was without Harry Brendan —like food without salt, or a cigarette without a match. He was over at the Clemences’ now, parrying Rob’s incivilities, teasing Kate, sitting close to all that handsome calm. He would forget Sarah. He would find her, if he should remember her, by comparison small and ill-tempered.
How was it possible to ache like a sophomore at the very thought of Harry and Kate? It was Bess who had first bracketed their names together as an accepted thing—and perhaps it was; they had known each other for years, they had Charles in common, Harry himself was the knotty kind of problem that would afford great scope for Kate’s special talents. Old loyalties generally won out over new attractions, however startling and strong.
Sarah became aware that Evelyn’s low confiding voice had stopped. She said mechanically, “How awful,” and Evelyn gave her an
