Edith thought about this. “It could have been something he ate. It could have been food poisoning.”
“The vomiting could have been food poisoning,” Cherie said. “But the convulsions couldn’t have been. Is that all over campus already, that he had convulsions last night? Like a grand mal seizure, but worse, much worse, than anyof those I’ve ever heard about. It was like he was being electrocuted. I thought he was going to die.”
“But he didn’t die,” Edith said.
“No, he didn’t,” Cherie said, “and if you can believe Peter Makepeace, he isn’t even much the worse for wear. No, that isn’t right. That isn’t what Peter said exactly. He was just so relieved.”
“Peter was?” Edith asked.
“Peter was,” Cherie said. She looked cold. Edith did not think it was cold in this room, but she hadn’t taken off her coat. Cherie rubbed her hands together. “Peter asked if I’d seen Mark drinking coffee.”
Edith stood up, unbuttoned her coat, and took it off. Hayes House was not her favorite dorm. The main living room was too small, and the windows were too small throughout. “Mark is always drinking coffee,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without his coffee. He even brings coffee to class, and he isn’t supposed to.”
“I know,” Cherie said. “And of course I did see him drinking coffee last night. I brought him a cup myself right before all that craziness started, and Sheldon was behaving like an idiot. The whole thing is so unbelievable. Maybe somebody did poison him. Maybe somebody put the poison in coffee, and they know that. That would make me a suspect.”
Edith shook her head. “That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Why would Peter sound relieved if Mark DeAvecca had been poisoned?”
“Oh,” Cherie said, looking a little less likely to start crying again.
“Attempted murder would be worse than successful suicide,” Edith said, pursuing the thought. “A successful suicide is the result of a psychological problem on the part of the person who commits suicide. It isn’t usually an indication that there’s a danger to anybody else. Except in the case of suicide pacts, of course, but I don’t think there’s any danger of Mark having made a suicide pact with Michael Feyre. They didn’t like each other all that well. It must be something else. It must be something that gets Peter out of at least some of the trouble he’s going to be in.”
“I don’t see what could get him out of trouble after this,” Melissa said. “It may not have been attempted murder, and Mark may be alive, but his parents are in town. His mother got here last night. Peter said so over the phone—”
“That piece of information was all over the cafeteria this morning,” Edith said.
“—and,” Melissa went on, “his stepfather is going to be arriving today. The publicity is going to be awful no matter what happened to Mark. I’m surprised it hasn’t started yet.”
“Maybe,” Edith said. “Did you ever wonder, though, what Mark DeAvecca knew about Michael Feyre’s relationship with Alice?”
“Everybody knew about Michael’s relationship with Alice,” Cherie said.
“Of course they did,” Edith said, “but Mark was Michael’s roommate. Michael could have talked in his sleep for all we know. I know Michael didn’t seem the type, but you never know. Or they could have confided in each other.”
“Michael could have confided in Mark?” Cherie said. “It’s more likely that they made a suicide pact. Mark stayed away from Michael as much as he could. That’s one of the reasons why I never believed that Mark was on drugs. Drug addicts don’t avoid the best dealers in their vicinity; they cultivate them. But Mark could never stand to be around Michael, not even for a few hours.”
“Still,” Edith said. Then she shook her head. “Maybe the answer is something much simpler. Maybe it’s just that this latest … event … takes the spotlight off Michael Feyre and anything he might have done while he was here. Maybe it just changes the subject, and that’s enough for Peter.”
“I can see it now,” Melissa said. “Peter secretly poisons Mark DeAvecca’s coffee in the hopes that in the wake of this dramatic new death, public scrutiny will be distracted from the serial depredations of his own wife….”
“No,” Cherie said, “there you go again. If the coffee was poisoned, things would be worse for Peter and not better.” “There’s also the obvious,” Edith said. “If you wanted to poison somebody to take the public’s mind off your wife’s love affairs, you’d poison somebody other than your wife’s lover’s roommate.”