Now he stood in front of Cordelia’s door, as reluctant to go in as Anne Marie was to let him in. If Anne Marie had her way, Gregor thought, he’d be packed up and sent back to Philadelphia without another word.
Because she couldn’t do that—sick or not, Cordelia Day got what she wanted from her daughters—Anne Marie made do with standing directly in front of the door, crossing her arms across her chest, and glaring. It didn’t quite come off. Anne Marie was a very shaky young woman at the moment. She twitched.
“My mother,” she said, “is a very sick woman. And she’s very tired.”
Gregor hesitated. It was always hard to know what to say to someone who was overstating the obvious.
“I’m not forcing myself on your mother,” he pointed out. “You said she asked for me.”
“She did ask for you.”
“So?”
Anne Marie wrapped her arms more tightly around herself, making herself look less angry than cold. “She doesn’t like to believe she’s sick. She never has. That’s why we’ve almost never had a professional nurse in the house, why it’s always been me. If it’s me, she can pretend it isn’t real.”
“I don’t think she pretends it isn’t real, Miss Hannaford.”
“She pretends it makes no difference. She’s been knocking herself out on charities for years. Visiting. Chairing meetings. Going to parties. And then coming home to collapse.”
“And then you had to take care of her.”
“I don’t mind taking care of her,” Anne Marie said. “I mind her trying to kill herself. Nobody wants to keep her alive more than me.”
Gregor nodded. He thought that might be literally true. Anne Marie probably wanted to keep Cordelia alive more than Cordelia wanted to stay alive.
“I don’t want you to go in there and upset her,” Anne Marie said. “She was better than she was. Now she’s looking worse. Up and down, up and down. This morning—”
“Yes?”
“Last night she was much better. Then this morning when I came in to bring her her tea, she was worse again. Much worse. I could see it. And now—”
“Now?”
“I should have called the doctor,” Anne Marie said. “That’s what I’m supposed to do. But he’s no help and I’m sick and tired of him, and I know what’s going on. I know it.”
“What is going on?”
“She isn’t going to last past New Year’s.” Anne Marie looked away, up the hall, even though there wasn’t anyone there. “I’d like her to last to New Year’s. I’d like it very much if you didn’t upset her.”
“I’ll try not to.”
Anne Marie stepped away from the door. “She thinks she wants to know all about it,” she said bitterly. “All about the murders and the investigation. She wants to take an interest. It’s going to kill her.”
“Miss Hannaford—”
Anne Marie shook her head. “Never mind. She’ll do what she wants to do. She always does. You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but she was a great beauty once. One of the most beautiful women in Philadelphia. And Myra was always asking me why I didn’t take care of myself.”
She stepped around him and began backing away. “Go on in. Just be careful. One death in the house a day is all I can stand.”
She turned around and went pumping off toward the doors to the balcony, a fat woman who seemed to get fatter as he watched her walk.
Gregor didn’t blame her for not “taking care” of herself. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t have put much energy into it himself.
2
Anne Marie had said her mother was “much worse.” Going into Cordelia’s room, Gregor expected to see a woman in a state of total collapse. That was the only thing he could think of that would be “much worse” than the last time he had seen her. It wasn’t like that. Cordelia was sitting in a wide wing chair, her legs stretched out on a matching ottoman. Her hair was “dressed,” in the old-fashioned meaning of the term: off her neck, and pinned around her head in an intricate pattern, fastened with four tin combs that echoed the decorations in the rest of the house: an angel, a cherub, a ball and a bell. Her nails were done and her makeup was on. Her body was covered from neck to ankles in a bright brocaded house dress. The house dress had Christmas trees and Santa Clauses on it, an expensive version of old George Tekamanian’s reindeer socks.
Gregor walked across the room to her and took the empty chair beside her, watching her watch him. Her eyes moved quickly, but her head didn’t move at all. Suddenly, Gregor realized she was much worse. She looked better, but with her disease what she looked like didn’t mean anything. On the night of her husband’s death, she had been able to move her head and talk clearly in almost-sentences. Now her head seemed fixed, and Gregor knew sentences were too much to hope for.