The senator nodded. "I knew that. But I know very little of Eileen's financial situation otherwise. Not," he added hastily, "that I would for a moment suspect Eileen Bennett of harming a fly. She's one person I could rule out. It would be just like her to fall down the steps getting off the plane, but as for her planning her own death or anyone else's, that's out of the question. She was much too scatterbrained. I hope that's not speaking ill of the dead."
Kessler frowned. "You'll forgive me, senator, in that regard, if I ask you a question? Miss Bennett didn't drink, did she?"
"Eileen? Heavens, no! Oh, she'd have a drink to be sociable, but it was usually a sherry and half the time she wouldn't finish that. I don't suppose you were envisaging the possibility that she highjacked the plane from four officers and two stewardesses and then wrecked it?" This time he smiled the broad toothy smile that made him a favorite with Washington news photographers.
"Hardly. The thing is, I've gotten so I feel I knew every one of those seventy-three people personally. You know, I've interviewed almost two thousand friends and acquaintances of those people and I'm not quite finished yet, just hoping I'll run across something that makes sense. I could have told you Miss Bennett's habits with a glass of sherry, that's why I was a little surprised."
Senator Brogan shook his head. "Oh, no, I didn't mean to suggest anything like that. It's just that Eileen was ... well, clumsy is an unkind word ... unco-ordinated I guess, though she tried to make a joke of it. She was always bumping into things, spilling her glass of water and things like that, but not because she had been drinking too much."
"As for drinking," Kessler said, "there were quite a few real guzzlers on the plane. I don't mean that actor, who was notorious. He'd just lost a part because of his drinking and he was sober for a change. But it's amazing what you'll turn up about respectable people when you start investigating."
"I'm very interested in that aspect, as you may know," Brogan said. "We periodically get bills which would outlaw drinking aboard planes. What are your ideas on that subject?"
"Well, I don't mind a drink aboard a plane myself. Helps me relax. But I have seen some pretty unpleasant things develop during a flight when you get a nasty drunk riled up."
"Did you find any suggestion of that?"