I looked up to find Peter watching me strangely.
"Why," I faltered. "The box said one capsule only. It seems reasonable to suppose that a person bent on suicide would put two in the glass, doubling the dose, then add a third to make certain."
But Peter shook his head. "Three would have made her very ill, but they wouldn't have killed her. She must have taken more."
I couldn't understand it. Peter was very emphatic that three wouldn't have killed her. When he had left, I kept thinking, "But there were only three! The one capsule Coralie had put in the glass herself, and the two that I—"
I shut off my thoughts. I didn't want to remember those two capsules sliding from my hand, dissolving immediately as they struck the water in the goblet.
Nevertheless, Peter's revelation disturbed me. For what had caused Coralie's death, if I had not killed her?
I spring out of bed the next morning humming. Michael would be home late that afternoon, in time for dinner. I opened the blinds, and then I was standing rooted, the song dead on my lips. Slowly I retreated until the edge of the dresser was hurtful, but sharply reassuring, against my back.
My eyes never left the bedside table, never left the brimming cranberry goblet standing upon it.
My heart, that had plunged, began pumping wildly. My horrified gaze wavered with the gently lapping liquid in the goblet's bowl. First one side, then the other. Gently, but with a mesmeric insistence that was hideous to behold.
My thoughts circled wildly, like hunted things seeking escape. Why? Oh, why? And how did it get here again?
But I knew. Again I sensed that invisible presence in the apparently empty room. And again I called out softly.
"Coralie?"
The liquid in the goblet lapped still more insistently against the convex sides. I was sure, then. Certain the goblet contained the same lethal dose it had held the last time Coralie had lifted it to her lips.
"You want me to drink?" I whispered. "Is that it, Coralie? You want me to drink?"
Slowly my trembling legs gave way, and I sank to the carpet. I wouldn't drink. I never, never would. Ah, God, why did she punish me so? I hadn't killed her. Peter said so.
I crouched there sobbing, but presently my courage returned sufficiently so that I could get on my feet and approach the cranberry goblet. I dreaded to touch the thing, but gingerly I took it, and again emptied its contents.
I knew I must get rid of it, quickly, before Michael came back. It was wearing me down. One of these mornings, fear might even force me to tell Michael what I had done.
I shuddered.
I tottered down the hall, and clawed through the closet impatiently until I found an empty carton. Placing the goblet within, I wrapped the package securely with trembling hands and addressed it to a fictitious name and street number in Los Angeles. And I placed no return address on the wrapper.
I hurried with it to the postoffice and my depression didn't lift until I'd pushed it through the slot marked "Parcels."
I was safe. All that afternoon, in my
