Cressida, with a slightly disdainful eye on her guests, brought up the activities of Allen on the polo field, Tracy on the tennis court, and David and his sailing - none of whom were known to Quill or Meg. Finally, when Quill heard herself murmuring "wonderful, wonderful, wonderful," like Lawrence Welk after a sex-change operation, she gave up and ate as circumspectly as she could. In the British tradition, which Quill would have found pretentious anywhere else, Cressida led the ladies away for a short time after dinner, and Meg joined Quill in the bathroom. Quill liked the bathroom a lot. Like the rest of the house it was old, unpretentious, and there wasn't a Water Pik in sight. The walls were paneled with white pine, reminding her of the pleasant Nantucket beach cottages she and Meg had spent time in as girls.
"I can't stand it," Meg hissed at her, closing the door. "I want to play the banjo or something."
"Chocolate!" Quill said, in a subdued yell. "Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate!"
"Why'd you yell 'fire' when you fell into the chocolate," Meg sang. "Why'd you yell 'fire' when you fell into the choooc-late?"
"Because who would have come if I'd yelled 'chocolate!' Oh, dear." Quill looked in the tiny mirror, ran her fingers through her hair; sighed, and gave up. The humidity made it curl like bedsprings. "Hands down, this is the most awful dinner party I've ever been to."
"Quill, there's no conversation."
"I know there's no conversation. The thing is, Meg, we don't know anyone this woman knows except Verger Taylor. And other than talking about other people, I don't think Miss Houghton has much to say. About anything. Except her boys. Did you see how she looked at me when Evan grabbed my hand?"
"I sure did. Yikes." Meg stood beside her and they both looked into the mirror. Meg's eyes, clear and candid gray, met Quill's greenish-hazel ones. "What do we do now?"
"Bridge, I guess," said Quill. "And I haven't played for months."
"I haven't played for years," Meg complained. "You're the one that started the tournaments at the inn. You know what? There's five of us. And you can't play bridge with five people. So I'll sit out. I'll go for a walk on the beach."
"Coward," Quill said. "I'm the one Cressida Houghton wants to make into mincemeat. Why the heck did she invite us if she resents us?"
When Meg and Quill rejoined their hostess, she rose and gracefully introduced an elderly gentleman, impeccably groomed, apparently the David of the yachting stories. David was, Cressida said, an old and dear neighbor and would make up a fourth. The boys, she said, with a slight emphasis in her tone, were going out to meet some friends closer to their own age.
Two thoughts struck Quill at once. The first-that Cressida Houghton thought she and Meg were. cradle robbers, that she had encouraged Evan's attention-hit her with the force of the so-far nonexistent hurricane. The second, that she'd forced Cressida Houghton, famed for her politesse, into overtly rude behavior, made her want to crawl under the worn chintz couch and stay there. She, Quill, had managed to offend the second or third most famous woman in America. Was that why she and Meg had been invited here? To let the golddigger twins discover that the Taylor boys weren't up for grabs? Quill started to giggle. It was the kind of giggle that, once suppressed, surfaced harder than ever. She sat down with a pink face and bitten lower lip.
Cressida looked at her with no expression at all. "Shall we sit in the game room? Everything's set up in there. I'm afraid the boys and I have been playing three-handed bridge in there since five." She smiled gently. "But the cards are all warmed up."
To Quill's relief, the game room was brightly lit. It was the dimness in the rest of the house, she decided, that had put her so off-balance. A card table with a battered green felt cover had been drawn up before a cold fireplace. Quill sat in the scorekeeper's position, noting idly that East/West had been badly set by North/South three rubbers in a row in the three-handed game that afternoon. One of the games had been a grand slam: seven no-trump, doubled. Ouch.
"If you wouldn't mind," Cressida said, "David and I will play North/South. I had the worst luck this afternoon."
"I can see that," said Meg irrepressibly.
Meg and Quill were down by a thousand points when the dove-gray maid appeared at the game room door with the portable phone on a tray. Cressida took the call. She said "yes," "no," and "I see." For a long moment, she remained perfectly still. Then, "Please call the police. I'll send Mr. Hawthorne." She set the phone back on the tray for the waiting maid and sat relaxed until she'd gone out of the room. "You might as well know this. It's going to be in the newspapers tomorrow morning." She sighed. "And the television news, too, I expect. The boys took their two friends over to their fathers' home. I think they were planning a visit to Au Bar." A slight grimace flitted across the perfect face. "At any rate, there's a great deal of blood in Verger's study. And Verger himself has disappeared."
-8-
"I knew it. I just knew it." Quill put the Mercedes in reverse and eased down the driveway. "Didn't I tell you that someone was going to get Verger Taylor?"
"There's no body," Meg pointed out. She leaned back in the seat. "What an evening."
"It was awful. Did you pick up the message I did?"
"That we were harpies after the gold-dust twins? Yeah." Meg stared up at the sky. There was a frosty nimbus around the moon. The air was heavy. They drove in silence for some moments. Meg said, "What do you suppose she's doing now?"
"Cressida? Calling a platoon of lawyers, I expect. She couldn't be as unconcerned as she appeared. Evan and Corrigan found the body... "
"There wasn't a body," Meg said.
"Or the blood, rather, and you can be that the media will be on this like a flock of pigeons after bread crumbs in central Park. They always are."
"How much blood do you suppose there was?"
"Meg!" She reached the road, stopped, and put the car in drive.
"I mean, was the place awash with it? Was it human blood? Was it little drops that might come if you'd cut yourself and driven to the emergency room?"
Quill didn't answer for a moment. She pulled onto the road and drove in silence, then said. "There was a security guard, surely."
"Was there?" They looked at each other. Meg raised her eyebrows. "You know, we're coming up on his house in a moment. Let's go find out."
"We can't interfere in a police investigation."
"Quill, we've investigated how many murderers?"
"Four," said Quill glumly. "And a dozen corpses."
"And we've never worried about interfering in a police investigation before."
"Myles was in charge of almost all of those cases, Meg. I hardly think that the police here in Florida are going to welcome the services of two amateur detectives." She slowed. They were approaching Verger Taylor's mansion. The two gold lions shone brightly in the glare of the Mercedes's headlights.
"There's no one there!" Meg said in surprise.
"We were closer to the house than the Palm Beach County police," Quill pointed out. "They haven't had time to get here yet."