“About your drinks, sir—”
“Don’t put any cherries in them,” said the Saint.
He sped down a winding path to the deeply shadowed little grove of trees, white with blossoms that were like wax in the moonlight, and Patricia was only a stride behind him.
It took no searching at all to find the body. It lay sprawled under a tree, half in shadow, staring upward with glazed eyes that would never see again. It was — had been — Lida Verity. She held an automatic pistol in one hand, and under the swell of her left breast was a small dark hole and a spreading stain.
The Saint made a brief examination, and knew while he did it that he was only deferring to a conventional routine. There was no doubt now that Lida Verity had had reason to call him, and the line of his mouth was soured by the recollection of his earlier flippancy.
He knew that Patricia was only obeying the same inescapable conventions when she said, “Simon — is she—”
He nodded.
“Now she isn’t scared anymore.”
Lida Verity had lived — gaily, indifferently, passionately, thoughtfully, frantically. Her life had echoed with the tinkle of champagne glasses, Mendelssohn’s solemnity, the purr of sleek motors, the chatter of roulette frets, before the final sound of a gun in the night had changed the tense of the declarative sentence “I am.”
The Saint stood quietly summarizing the available data: the body, the wound, the gun, the time, the place. And as he stood, with Patricia wordless beside him, a whisper of footsteps announced the coming of Esteban.