And One to Die On(74)

Cavender was incredulous. “Tash is in the television room? The television room?”

“The cat was on the roof,” Gregor said to the ceiling.

Geraldine Dart had finally managed to get her employer away from Carlton Ji’s body and over near the bed, but she hadn’t been able to stop him from staring at it.

“Incredible,” the old man kept saying. “Incredible. And what was he doing with the feather boa?”

“He was wearing it,” Hannah Graham said.

“This is Ms. Graham’s room,” Kelly Pratt said.

Cavender Marsh looked from one to the other of them, frowning. “I think I’m going to go downstairs and see Tash,” he said finally, shaking free of Geraldine’s grasp. “I don’t like what’s going on around here. I don’t think she’ll like it either.”

“But you can’t go down and see Miss Kent.” Geraldine grabbed for him again. “You just can’t. She’s resting.”

“For God’s sake, Geraldine,” Cavender Marsh said with contempt. “Tash wouldn’t rest in the television room. She’d rest in her own bed. That’s why we put in the elevator.”

“I think you should let him go,” Gregor told them all quietly. “I think it’s an excellent idea for Mr. Marsh to go down and see his wife.”

Cavender Marsh took advantage of Geraldine Dart’s stunned paralysis in the next moment to slip through her grasp and head out into the hall. He was humming under his breath as he went, or maybe muttering, it was hard to tell. Geraldine Dart emerged from her deep freeze into an explosion. She advanced on Gregor Demarkian with both fists raised and damn near hit him.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded. “Are you out of your mind? To all intents and purposes, you’ve just murdered that man.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Gregor said mildly. “Why don’t we follow him downstairs and see?”

“Why don’t we follow him downstairs and get ready to administer CPR,” Geraldine spat. “My God, how stupid could you be?”

“I’ll tell you how stupid I’m not,” Gregor said. “I’m not so stupid that I don’t realize that anybody who had taken a quantity of sleeping pills sufficient to keep himself asleep as long as Cavender Marsh has been pretending to be asleep—would now be dead.”

Geraldine Dart hesitated. Her eyes widened, her lips formed another angry retort. Then she turned and ran out of the room, saying nothing at all. No one stopped her. While she and Gregor had been talking, most of the others had started to follow Cavender Marsh downstairs. They were like the residents of Utah and Nevada who had sat on their porches to watch nuclear test explosions in the desert. Only Bennis was left, and she wasn’t going to go until Gregor did.

“Are you saying that Cavender Marsh already knows that Tasheba is dead?” she asked him now. “Or are you saying that he killed her?”

“Let’s just say I’m saying that Cavender Marsh knows that there is a corpse in the television room. No, that’s not right. He knows that there is another corpse in the house that isn’t Carlton Ji.”

“You are saying he killed her,” Bennis said, narrowing her eyes at him.

Gregor shook his head. “It’s more complicated than that. Let’s go downstairs now, Bennis. I want to see what happens next.”

“You make it sound like a soap opera.”

“It’s not a soap opera, Bennis. It’s a silent movie. Everything that goes on in this house is a silent movie. Never forget that for a moment. If you do, it will make you crazy.”

“I’m already crazy. And I haven’t noticed anybody being silent up to now.”

Gregor began to nudge Bennis down the stairs. She moved along without needing much prodding. Below them, they could see the tag end of the little group of guests, crowding around the television room door—but not too closely around. An explosion was coming and they didn’t want to be too near it.

“Come on, hurry up,” Gregor told Bennis.

Then he hurried up on his own, without looking back to see if she was keeping pace. He got to the bottom of the stairs and swung around to the back. Mathilda Frazier was standing farthest away. She had her arms wrapped around her upper body like a substitute for a bulletproof vest. Richard Fenster was the closest, practically hanging through the television room door. He had a nasty, sardonic grin on his face.

That young man knows too much and isn’t careful about it, Gregor thought. He reached the television room door and pulled Richard Fenster away from it, so that he could get inside. Cavender Marsh was already inside, alone in the small room and looking distinctly confused. The body of Tasheba Kent was still lying where they had left it on the couch, covered completely by a white linen sheet. Cavender Marsh kept walking from the window to the couch and back to the window again. He had a baffled, anguished look on his face, like someone who had just gone into shock.