A faint flush of color crept up into her face as the whisky hit her stomach.
"It was terrible," she said. He didn't answer.
She drank again from the glass. "Rina had a luncheon appointment so we got home from the studio about four o'clock.
We came upstairs to dress about four thirty, and Rina said she thought she heard the water running in Claude's bathroom.
The servants had the day off so she asked me to check.
She must have sensed that something was wrong when I didn't come right back. She came into the bedroom while I was still phoning the police.
I tried to keep her from seeing what had happened but she was already at the bathroom door when I turned around."
She put her glass down and hunted blindly for a cigarette.
David lit one and handed it to her.
She took it and placed it between her lips, the smoke curling up around her face.
"She was standing there, staring down at him, staring down at that horrible mess of blood, and she was saying over and over to herself,
'I killed him, I killed him!
I killed him like I killed everyone who ever loved me.'
Then she began to scream." Ilene put her hands up over her ears.
David looked down at his glass. It was empty.
Silently he got up and refilled it. Sitting down again, he looked into the amber liquid reflectively.
"You know," he said, "what I can't understand is why she ever married him."
"That's just the trouble," she said angrily. "None of you ever tried to understand her.
All she ever meant to any of you was a ticket at the box office, money in the bank. None of you cared what she was really like.
I’ll tell you why she married him.
Because she was sorry for him, because she wanted to make a man of him.
That's why she married him.
And that's why she's lying there in her bedroom, crying even though she's asleep.
She's crying because she failed."
The telephone rang. It rang again.
David looked at her.
"I'll get it," he said.
"Hello." "Who is this?"
"David Woolf," he said automatically.
"Jonas Cord," the voice replied.
"Mr. Cord," David said. "I'm with Norman- "
"I know," Cord interrupted. "I remember you. You're the young man who does all the trouble-shooting for Bernie.
I just heard over the radio about the accident.
How's Rina?"
"She's asleep right now. The doctor knocked her out."
There was a long, empty silence on the line and David thought they might have been cut off.
Then Cord's voice came back on the line.
"Everything under control?"
"I think so," David said.
"Good.
Keep it like that.
If there's anything you need, let me know."
"I will."
"I won't forget what you're doing," Cord said.
There was a click and the line was dead.
Slowly David put down the telephone.
"That was Jonas Cord," he said.
Ilene didn't raise her face from her hands.
He turned and looked back at the telephone. It didn't make sense.
From what he'd heard about Cord, he wasn't the kind of man who spent his time making sympathy calls.