Miss Burton sailed in on a note of elation. “Success. You leave on flight 611. But goodness, the arguing I had to do. Some snip of a clerk kept saying that the people leaving on 611 were already checking in at the airport. And I said, listen, this is an emergency. I spelled it right out for him, e-m-e-r-g-e-n-c-y... Oh, I see you took the pills. Good. How are you fixed for money?”
“I’ll need some.”
“O.K., Borowitz can run over to the bank. Now, here’s your schedule. Depart International at 11:50. Lunch on plane. Stopover in L.A. for about an hour. Leave L.A. at 2:30. Dinner on plane. Arrive Mexico City at 10:10, Central Standard Time.”
Miss Burton might go to pieces over smaller crises, but when the larger ones came along she expanded to meet them. She arranged for money, tourist card, toothbrush, clean socks and pajamas, care of the Scottie, Mack, and message to Amy’s brother, Gill Brandon. When she finally got Rupert on the plane and he waved good-bye to her from the window, she was moist-eyed but relieved, like a mother sending her son off to school for the first time.
She drove Rupert’s car back to the city and parked it in the garage of his house on 41st Avenue. Then she let Mack out to run while she washed and dried the dishes Rupert had left in the sink. In all the years she’d worked for him, this was only the second time she’d been inside his house, and it gave her a curious feeling, like watching somebody sleeping.
After she finished the dishes she wandered through each of the rooms, not snooping really but merely taking mental notes like any good secretary interested in her boss: Mahogany and lace in the dining room, that’s too formal for him, must be her doing... I’ll bet he sits in the yellow chair, there are hair oil marks on the back and a good lamp beside it. He loves to read, he’d need a good lamp... A grand piano and an organ, fancy that. She must be musical, he can’t whistle a note... I’ll never get used to those colored johns... The maid’s room, I bet. Every bit as nicely furnished as the others, which goes to show how generous he is. Or maybe it’s her. Borowitz says she comes from a very moneyed family... The hall table looks like genuine rosewood, the kind you polish with your bare hands if you’re crazy that way and have lots of time. A post card. I wonder who from. Well, post cards aren’t private. If you’ve got something private to say, say it in a letter.
Miss Burton picked up the post card. It bore a colored photograph of the Old Faithful geyser on one side and a penciled message on the other.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg:
I am having a real good time on my holiday. I saw Old Faithful already six times. It is a site. It gets cold here at nite, blankets needed. There is a swimming pool that smells bad owing to minrals in the water. The smell don’t come off on you fortunately. No more room on the card. Hello to Mack.
Yours truly,
Yellowstone yet, Miss Burton thought. And I can’t even afford Sequoia. Not that I want to. People are always saying how small you feel under the big trees, which isn’t my idea of fun at five foot one-half inch.
Having finished her unofficial tour of the house and mail, Miss Burton let the Scottie in at the back door and fed him several dog biscuits. Then she walked over to Fulton Street to catch a bus back to town.
She had no premonition of disaster. The day was sunny and her horoscope that morning had been exceptionally favorable. So had Rupert’s, which she always looked up even before her own: This is a wonderful day for you Leos and Librans.
Wonderful day, Miss Burton thought, and skipped along the sidewalk, quite forgetting that Mrs. Kellogg was in a hospital and Mrs. Wyatt was dead.
The plane was on schedule. Rupert called the A.B.C. Hospital from the airport and made arrangements to see his wife in spite of the lateness of the hour.
He arrived at the hospital shortly before midnight and was met at the main desk by a dark young man who identified himself as Dr. Escobar.
“She’s alseep,” Escobar said. “But I think, under the circumstances, it would do her good to see you. She has called for you several times.”
“How is she?”
“That’s difficult to say. She’s been crying a great deal, whenever she wakes up, in fact.”
“Is she in pain?”
“Her head may hurt a bit, but I think the crying is explained more by emotional reasons than physical ones. It is not merely the death of her friend that has disturbed her, though that certainly is bad enough in itself. There were additional circumstances, the fact that the two women were alone in a strange city without friends, that they’d been drinking a good deal...”
“Drinking? Amy has never taken more than a cocktail before dinner.”
Escobar looked a little embarrassed. “There is considerable evidence that both your wife and Mrs. Wyatt had been drinking tequila with an American barfly named O’Donnell. The women had a loud argument.”
“They were very good friends,” Rupert said stiffly. “Ever since childhood.”
“Very good friends sometimes argue together, sometimes drink together. What I am trying to tell you is that Mrs. Kellogg feels extremely guilty, guilty about the drinking, guilty about the argument, guilty, most of all, because she was unable to prevent her friend’s suicide.”
“Did she try?”
“Anyone would try, naturally.”
“Has she told you what...”
“She’s told me very little. She has very little to tell. Tequila is a formidable concoction if one is not used to it.” Escobar turned to the elevators. “Come along, we’ll see her now. We’ve moved her from Emergency to a private room on the third floor.”
She was asleep with the night light on. Her left eye was black and swollen, and there was a bandage over her temple. Crumpled pieces of Kleenex littered the floor beside her bed.
“Amy.” Rupert bent over his sleeping wife and touched her shoulder. “Amy, dear, it’s me.”
She was hardly awake before she began to cry, holding her fists against her eyes.
“Amy, don’t. Stop that, please. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“No — no...”
“Yes, it is. I’m here to take care of you.”
“Wilma’s dead.” Her voice began to rise. “Wilma’s dead!”
Escobar stepped swiftly over to the side of the bed and grasped her hand. “Now, Mrs. Kellogg, no more hysterics. The other patients on the floor are sleeping.”
“Wilma’s dead.”
“I know,” Rupert said. “But you must think of yourself now.”
“Take me home, take me out of this terrible place.”
“I will, dearest. Just as soon as they let me.”
“Come now, Mrs. Kellogg,” Escobar said smoothly. “This isn’t such a terrible place. We’d like to keep you here for a few days of observation.”
“No, I won’t stay!”
“For a day or two...”
“No! Let me go! Rupert, get me out of here. Take me home!”
“I will,” Rupert said.
“All the way home? To my own home and Mack and everything?”
“All the way, I promise.”
It was a promise which, at the moment, he intended to keep.
5.
Gill Brandon came downstairs wearing his composite morning expression: anticipation over what the day would bring and suspicion that something was bound to spoil it.
He was a short, stocky, vigorous man with a forceful manner of speaking that made even his most innocuous remark seem compelling, and his most far-fetched theory sound like a self-evident truth. To heighten this effect he also used his hands when he talked, not in any dramatically loose European style, but severely, geometrically, to indicate an exact angle of thought, a precise degree of emotion. He liked to think of himself as mathematical and meticulous. He was neither.