Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [240]
“We keep that door locked at this time of year,” says the woman.
“Well, it wasn’t locked this afternoon,” says Roz belligerently, “so I just had a look around. It’s such a nice patio for cocktails, out by the fountain, is what I thought. That would be in June. Here’s my card.”
The card has an improving effect. “All right, Ms. Andrews, I’ll have that unlocked for you right away,” says the woman. “As a matter of fact we often use it for cocktails. We could do a buffet lunch out there for you, too; in the summer there’s tables.” She motions to the concierge.
“And could you have the outside lights turned on?” says Roz. “I might have dropped my gloves in the fountain. Or they could’ve blown in.”
Roz’s idea is to have the whole place lit up like a Christmas tree so Charis will be able to see as plain as day that Zenia is nowhere in view. The three of them go out through the glass patio door and stand together, waiting for illumination. “It’s all right, honey, there’s nothing,” Roz whispers to Charis.
But when the lights go on, big floodlights from above and also from under the water, there is Zenia, floating face down among the dead leaves, her hair spread out like seaweed.
“My God,” Tony whispers. Roz stifles a scream. Charis doesn’t make a sound. Time has folded in upon itself, the prophecy has come true. But there are no dogs. Then it comes to her. We are the dogs, licking her blood. In the courtyard, the Jezebel blood. She thinks she is going to be sick.
“Don’t touch her,” says Tony, but Charis needs to. She reaches forward, reaches down and tugs, and Zenia revolves slowly, and looks straight at them with her white mermaid eyes.
55
She isn’t really looking though, because she can’t. Her eyes are rolled back into her head: that’s why they’re blank, like fish eyes. She’s been dead for several hours, or at least that’s what the police say when they arrive.
The hotel people are very worried. A dead woman in their fountain is not the kind of publicity they need, especially with business down the way it is. They seem to think it’s all Roz’s fault for suggesting that the lights be turned on, as if this is what caused Zenia to materialize in the fountain. But as Roz points out to the concierge, daylight would have been worse: hotel guests would be having breakfast in their rooms, going out on the balcony for a little fresh air and a cigarette, looking down, and you can imagine the uproar then.
Because they were the ones who found the body, Tony and Roz and Charis have to wait around. They have to answer questions. Roz grabs hold of the conversation and quickly sticks in her story about the gloves; it would not be at all wise to tell the police that they’d rushed over to the Arnold Garden Hotel because Charis saw a vision while staring into a candle. Roz has read enough detective novels to know that such a story would immediately cast suspicion on Charis. Not only would the police think she’s a nutbar – well, objectively speaking, Roz can see it – but they’d also think she’s a nutbar capable of shoving Zenia off the balcony herself, and then having amnesia, followed by an attack of psychedelic vision-producing guilt.
At the back of Roz’s mind there’s a sliver of suspicion: maybe they’d be right. There was enough time for Charis to come back to the hotel before turning up at the Toxique for dinner. She could have done it. So could Tony, who has been frank about her murderous intentions. So could Roz herself, for that matter. No doubt the fingerprints of the three of them are all over the room.
Maybe it was someone they don’t even know, some stranger, one of those pursuing gun-runners or whatever, in that yarn Zenia fobbed off on Tony. But Roz doesn’t credit that. Instead, there’s a worse possibility, much worse: it might have been Larry. If what Zenia said was true, he would have had a good motive. He was never a violent child, he would walk away from the other kids rather than argue; but Zenia could have threatened him in