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privately to check my alibi, dear Cal.” She laughed conscientiously but Cal didn’t seem to think it a joke.
    “That’s the business of the police. I’ll see Peter.”
    “Wait, Cal, we’ve talked it over, Peter and I and Fiora. None of us want the police bothering around, stories in the paper, scandal.
    “But Fiora had a bullet through her arm,” Cal said. “Take off your coat, Jenny.”
    Jenny had been standing like a stone. She roused as Cal came toward her and removed her red coat. Blanche’s eyes flickered up and down Jenny’s dress with what Jenny felt was automatic approval. She said politely, although disapprovingly, “Peter’s in the library. This way—”
    “I know the way.” Cal cupped his hand around Jenny’s elbow. Blanche turned along the hall toward the library and Cal said, low to Jenny, “We’ll get this over with and get back to town.”
    Jenny was thankful for the firm clasp of her arm but she couldn’t keep her heart from pounding like a drill.
    Again, as they entered the library following Blanche’s erect and elegant black figure, Jenny was sensible of change, which vaguely surprised her. The library had been a dingy but comfortable old room; it was now a lively mixture of colors, mustard green, orange, tangerine. All she really saw then, however, was Fiora, blanket-swathed, sitting up against pillows on a sofa and Peter coming quickly to meet them. Jenny went to him as if drawn by a magnet. He took both her hands. He was just the same: a little stocky in build with a habit of standing very solidly on his feet as if, as Cal had said, he had some railroad steel in him. His light brown hair was cut short as a brush; his eyes were a light and rather wary blue set in a tanned face; he had blunt features like his Dutch ancestors and it was difficult to read any expression in his face even though he was smiling at her and for a reckless second Jenny thought he would take her in his arms and wanted him to.
    He didn’t. He didn’t say anything either. Something was wrong with the reunion she had almost unconsciously expected.
    She looked away from Peter and met Cal’s rather sardonic gaze. Blanche’s face and Fiora’s were very still. She drew her hands from Peter’s.
    From the sofa Fiora said, “I didn’t shoot myself, Cal! I don’t care what they say, somebody shot me.”

Chapter 3
    P ETER MOVED A CHAIR toward Jenny, as if inviting her to sit down. Blanche went to a table where she took a cigarette from a silver bowl and lighted it with a crystal lighter shaped like a rabbit. New, Jenny thought with odd detachment; new since I lived here. She looked at Fiora who lay back against the pillows, her pretty doll’s face as sweet and luscious as a cream puff. She was huddled in a peach-colored dressing gown, with one arm bare except for a big white bandage pad, strapped on the delicate flesh with strips of adhesive. A blanket was over her feet and a highball glass stood on the table near her. Blanche, as usual, was accurate.
    Cal folded his arms across the tall back of a chair and looked at Fiora. “Who says you shot yourself?”
    “Peter and Blanche, of course!” Fiora cried. “They say I must have been fooling around with Peter’s gun. But I wasn’t. I didn’t. I’m scared to death of guns. Somebody shot me.”
    “Who?” Cal said.
    “I don’t know who! I was there in the pantry, getting ice out of the refrigerator for Peter’s highball. I didn’t hear a thing. Except this horrible sound right in my ears, and then I fell against the refrigerator and knew it was a shot and saw the blood on my dress and I screamed and I was shot.”
    Blanche delicately touched an ashtray with her cigarette.
    “Didn’t you see anybody?” Cal said.
    “No! Not anybody!”
    “Didn’t you hear anything?”
    “I heard the shot. I didn’t shoot myself. Why should I?”
    Her pretty face was obstinate. Cal sighed. “You’d better sit down, Jenny,” he said without looking at her.
    Jenny