Miss Scott bent her head attentively, and looked as if she quite understood everything.
“You didn’t hear me,” Lucille said.
“Pardon?”
“You didn’t hear me. She was killed. The grapes were for me.”
“Now, now, nobody’s going to take your nice grapes away from you. Don’t you worry your pretty head about the grapes.”
Lucille drew in her breath. If she spoke very very slowly and tried to control her tongue they would understand her. “Cora... Cora... was...”
Miss Scott smiled blankly. “Why, of course, Cora will be all right.”
Lucille turned her anguished eyes to Miss Parsons, pleading. Miss Parsons tried to smile at her, like Miss Scott. Her lips drew back from her teeth but her eyes were stirred with panic. You’re crazy, why, you’re crazy as a bedbug, I’m afraid of you.
Dr. Laverne came in the door. He walked softly on his rubber-soled shoes but he had a big booming voice.
Lucille saw him lock the door behind him. He was carrying his instrument bag in one hand and he didn’t palm the key as the nurses did, but put it in his coat pocket. It was so large that one end of it stuck out at the top of the pocket.
Lucille couldn’t take her eyes off it. The key that would unlock everything. Escape from the hounds, set up a new trail. They have holed you up here, but if you can get the key...
Carefully she looked away. She must be very canny, not let them suspect anything. She knew that Cora had been poisoned but no one would ever believe her. They thought she was insane because she couldn’t say the right words.
They didn’t realize how clever she was. One more look at the key, to make sure it was there. Then she would pretend to be sick, or to faint, that was better. And when the doctor bent over her she would take the key. Through the doors and down the slopes and past the iron gate.
Clever, clever, she thought, and fell back against Miss Scott’s arm, and heard the doctor padding softly toward her.
“Watch your key, doctor,” Miss Scott said pleasantly.
She didn’t actually faint then, but she felt too tired to get up. She sagged against Miss Scott’s knees. They were talking about her, but she was too tired to listen. They were urging her to do something, to move her legs, go through a door, behave yourself, lie down, room of your own. We feel that, we know that, we want you to, we are convinced, we, angels of mercy stepping delicately around the blood, so tenderly bathing the dead unfeeling flesh.
Time for lunch, time for rest, time to take a walk, time for Dr. Nathan, time for Dr. Goodrich, time for dinner.
Music, therapy, color movies, church, a dance, bridge.
So much time and never any of it your own, so many people and such shadows they all were. Only sometimes did a scene or a person seem real to her — the Filsinger twins, pressed close together, dancing dreamily in a Viennese waltz, Mrs. Hammond carefully dealing out a bridge hand and as carefully strewing the cards on the floor, Dr. Goodrich talking.
“The report on the autopsy is perfectly clear, Mrs. Morrow. Miss Green died of heart failure.”
No, no, no.
“Do you understand me, Mrs. Morrow? Miss Green has had a heart condition for some time. Her death was not a surprise to us. The autopsy was performed by a police surgeon and there was not the faintest evidence of poison.”
“The grapes.”
“The grapes were all tested, Mrs. Morrow.”
Liar.
“Miss Green, Cora’s sister, is perfectly satisfied with the report. Cora was apparently eating some of the grapes and a bit of skin got caught in her throat. She became panicky. You must have come into the room just then, and perhaps the sudden entrance, and the blockage in her throat...”
“Filthy sonofabitch lying cur,” Lucille said distinctly. “Filthy stinking whoremaster...”
He waited patiently until she had finished, a little surprised, as always, by the secret vocabulary of women.
“There was no trace of any poison,” he repeated. “I arranged for Cora’s sister to come and see you. She’s in the waiting room now.”
Miss Janet Green had been reluctant to come to Penwood. She had been there so often, always to see Cora, always with a little bit of hope in her heart that this time Cora would be better, would actually want to come home. But three days ago Cora had died, and her death had had the same enigmatic quality as her life. Everything was perfectly clear on the surface but there were strange undercurrents.
Janet Green had attended the inquest, a little puzzled, a little bovine.
Quite incredible that Cora should panic over a bit of grape-skin. Her heart was bad, of course, and there was no evidence of anything else, but still...
After the inquest Dr. Goodrich had come over and spoken to her and told her about a woman called Mrs. Morrow who thought Cora had been poisoned.
“What nonsense!” Janet said, dabbing at her eyes with a damp handkerchief. “Poor Cora, everyone loved her.”
“It is, of course, pure imagination on Mrs. Morrow’s part, but that doesn’t make it any easier for her. I want you to come to Penwood and talk to her.”
“I? There’s nothing I can do.”
“It’s possible that you can convince her you’re perfectly satisfied with the inquest. Cora told her a great deal about you. I think she’ll look upon you as being on her side. That is, you are Cora’s sister and would be most interested in the fact of Cora’s death.”
“As indeed I am,” Janet said dryly. “I’m not quite satisfied. Are you?”
“Perhaps not. The only person who knows the facts is Mrs. Morrow.”
“I see. So I’m to see her for two reasons, to talk, and to listen?”
“I have no right to ask you to do this, of course.”
“That’s all right,” Janet said brusquely. “I’ll do what I can.”
She was a good-hearted woman. She liked to help people, and since Cora was dead and in no need of anything, she would help Mrs. Morrow.
She went at it firmly, telling Lucille in a calm kind voice that she was Cora’s sister, that Cora had died of heart failure, she herself had attended the inquest. She was used to the hospital and not at all nervous, but there was something in Lucille’s expression that made her uncomfortable. Lucille’s mouth was twisted as if she was tasting Janet’s words and finding them bitter.
And those eyes, Janet thought. Really quite hopeless.
She went on, however, and out of pity even invented a lie, though inventions of the sort were foreign to her nature and very difficult for her.
“Cora was always afraid of choking, even when she was a child.”
“She was ten years older than you,” Lucille said. Her tongue felt thick but the words were audible.
Janet flushed. “I can remember hearing her tell about it.”
“You mustn’t treat me as if I’m stupid. Cora wasn’t stupid. She knew right away that she’d been poisoned.”
“I’m certain you’re wrong. No one would want to harm Cora.”
“Not Cora. Me. They were meant for me. She ate some when I was out of the room. When I came back she was sitting on her bed eating them.”
“Slower, please, Mrs. Morrow. I can’t understand you.”
“I ran to her and told her the grapes were poisoned and tried to get them away from her, but it was too late. She was dead, instead of me.”
The picture became suddenly clear to Janet. Cora had been sitting on the bed, eating the grapes, when Mrs. Morrow came in. Cora had looked up, smiling impishly, apologetically, because they weren’t her grapes, after all... The smile fading as Mrs. Morrow lunged across the room to grab the grapes away from her... “They’re poisoned!”
Cora had been frightened to death.