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“She’ll be back up soon,” Dodd said. “Leave the door partly open so she can get in. Is Mrs. Kellogg all right?”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“I’m nervous. I feel so grotesque in this getup, with all this paint on. I don’t know if I can go through with it.”

“You have to, Pat.”

“But I’m not an actress. How can I fool her?”

“Because she’s ready to be fooled. The others have done their part — Escamillo, Emilio. Now it’s your turn. Kellogg will be there shortly. So will I. I’ll be in the other room, so don’t worry.”

“All right,” Miss Burton said. “All right.” She put down the telephone and looked across the room at the woman sitting on the edge of one of the twin beds. “She’s coming up soon. We must be ready.”

“Oh God,” Amy whispered. “I’m not sure. Even now, I’m not sure.”

“Everyone else is. All of us. We’re sure.”

“How can you be, if I’m not?”

“Because we know you and your character. We know you couldn’t possibly...”

“But I tell you, sometimes I remember, I remember quite clearly. I picked up the silver box, I was going to throw it over the balcony as Wilma had challenged me to do. She tried to grab the box from me, and we struggled, and then I hit...”

“You can’t remember what didn’t happen,” Miss Burton said sturdily.

“... and a beautiful silk suit,” Emilio said, “the color of blood. My most favorite color. Your most favorite too, Consuela?”

She didn’t hear the question. She was staring at the silver box as if it contained all the imps of hell. “The woman who left it, you said you’d never seen her before?”

“Wrong. I told you I did not know her name. Of course I have seen her before. She and her friend, one night in the bar they had a long talk with Joe, very gay, very merry, lots of tequila.”

“No. I don’t believe you. It’s not possible.”

“Ask Joe,” Emilio said, “next time you see him.”

“I won’t be — seeing him.”

“Ah, you might be surprised. One of these days you might open a door, expecting nothing, and there he’ll be...”

“No, that is imposs—”

“There he’ll be, the same as ever, as good as new.” Emilio was grinning nervously. “And he’ll say, ‘Here I am, Consuela, I have come back to you and your warm bed and I will never leave you again. Always I will be at your side, you will never get rid of me.’ ”

“Quiet,” she screamed. “Pig. Liar.” She was holding the bottle of beer by the neck as if she intended to use it to silence him. The beer gurgled out on the wooden floor and through the cracks, leaving a trail of bubbles. “He will never come back.”

Emilio’s grin had disappeared and a white line of fear circled his dry mouth. “Very well. He will never come back. I do not argue with a lady with so many muscles and a bad temper.”

“The box — the woman — it’s all a trick.”

“How do you mean this, a trick? I do not play tricks.”

“Señor Kellogg gave you that box. And there is no such woman as you claim.”

Emilio looked genuinely puzzled. “I know no Senor Kellogg. As for the woman, well, I saw what I saw. My eyes are not liars. She and her little brown-haired friend came in about 5:30. I served them myself. I said, ‘Good afternoon, señoras, it is a great pleasure to see you once more. Have you been away?’ And the señora in the blood- colored suit said, ‘Yes, I have been away on a long, long journey. I never thought I would get back, but here I am, here I am again.’ ”

“My beads,” she said, and the beer bottle dropped from her hand and rolled, unbroken, across the wooden floor. “I must find my beads. The closet — perhaps I left them in the closet. I must go and find them. My beads... Hail Mary, full of Grace...”

Rupert and Dodd waited in the bedroom.

“A devil on the one hand,” Rupert said, “and a delusion on the other. And I was trapped between them. I could do nothing but stall for time, keep Amy hidden away until she was able to think clearly again, to distinguish between what had happened and what Consuela claimed had happened. I had to keep her hidden not only from the police but from her family or anyone else she might try to ‘confess’ to. I couldn’t afford the risk of somebody believing her confession. There were times I almost believed it myself, it was so sincere and so plausible. But I knew my wife, I knew her to be incapable of violence against another human being.

“Consuela’s lies started the delusion, but it was aggravated by Amy’s own feeling of worthlessness. All her life she had suffered from a nameless guilt. Now Consuela had given it a name, murder. And Amy accepted it, because it is sometimes easier to accept one specific thing, no matter how bad, than to go on living with a lot of obscure and indefinite fears. But there were other reasons too for her acceptance. She was beginning to feel hostility toward Wilma and to resent Wilma’s domination. These feelings were later translated into guilt. Also, remember that Amy was drunk, and consequently had no clear recollection of the facts to counteract Consuela’s false version of them.”

“You claim it’s false,” Dodd interrupted. “But are you sure?”

“If I weren’t sure, would I have confided in you and put myself at your mercy? Would I have brought you and Amy down here, dragged Miss Burton into this, broken any number of laws? Believe me, Mr. Dodd, I’m sure. It’s Amy who isn’t. That’s why we’re here now. We can’t let her spend the rest of her life thinking that she killed her best friend. She didn’t. I know that, I knew it from the first.”

“Then why didn’t you give Consuela a quick, firm brushoff?”

“I couldn’t. By the time I reached Amy at the hospital, the damage had already been done. Amy was convinced she was guilty and Consuela stuck to her story. If it had been a simple matter of dealing with the girl alone, there would have been no problem. But there was Amy too. And on my side, I had no evidence at all, only my knowledge of my wife’s character. Bear in mind, also, that we were in a foreign country. I was completely ignorant of police procedure, of what the authorities might do to Amy if they believed her confession.”

When Rupert paused for breath, Dodd could hear the two women in the adjoining room talking, Amy softly, nervously, Miss Burton with brisk assurance, as if by putting on Wilma’s clothes and make-up she had assumed some of Wilma’s mannerisms. The stage was set but the leading character had yet to appear. The silver box should do it, he thought. She’s got to come back up to check Emilio’s story about the two Americans.

“I had no choice,” Rupert continued, “but to yield to Consuela’s demands and to stall for time. I talked it over with Amy and she agreed to do what I suggested, stay out of sight for a while. We got off the plane at L.A. and I checked her into a rest home under a different name, without even her own clothes to identify her.”

“That’s why you let the luggage go through to San Francisco?”

“The luggage and Consuela,” he added grimly. “She was sitting across the aisle from us. I was able to get official papers for her by pretending I was hiring her as a nurse-companion for my wife.”

“Didn’t Mrs. Kellogg object to the idea of entering a rest home?”

“No, she was quite docile about it. She trusted me and knew I was trying to help her. I felt reasonably certain that in a rest home, no matter what story she told, no one would believe her. As it turned out, she kept her secret to herself. And she obeyed my orders, gave me her power of attorney before we left Mexico City, wrote the letters I dictated in order to forestall any suspicions on the part of her brother Gill. I arranged with a business associate to have one of the letters postmarked New York but Gill wasn’t taken in. I didn’t realize how strong his suspicions would be or the extent of his dislike for me.