Deep Water Patricia Highsmith (elon musk reading list .txt) 📖

Dr. Franklin said, standing up. "We'll take him to the hospital."

       "He's 'dead'!" Melinda screamed at them, and leaned back on her hands on the grass in a curiously relaxed position.

       Then, as they put De Lisle on a stretcher, she jumped to her feet. She wanted to go to the hospital. Vic and Phil had to restrain her physically. One of her fists caught Vic in the ear. Her fight tore her dress in front, and Vic saw one of her breasts quite bare, trembling like a maenad's breast in her fury. Vic had her elbows now, behind her. He released her, suddenly ashamed, and she bolted forward and collided with Phil, gave a shriek of pain, and held her nose. They guided her toward the house.

       When they got to the kitchen, Evelyn was coming toward t hem with a cup of coffee. "There's a couple of phenobarbs in it," 'she' said in a low voice to Vic.

       Melinda accepted the coffee with a kind of insane greediness and drank it off, although from its steaminess it must have been very hot. Her nose was bleeding, and her breast was still bare. Vic took off his toga and put it around her, held part of it against her nose, and she made a sudden wild swing at him and knocked some glasses and cups off the drainboard. Then she collapsed on a straight chair, dragging Vic, who had been trying to hold her, down with her. Vic's knee came down on a piece of glass. Then Melinda was suddenly quiet, her head back and her eyes staring up at the ceiling. The blood slid down her upper lip, and Vic blotted it with the toga until Evelyn came with some paper tissues and an ice cube for the back of her neck. Melinda gave no sign that she felt the ice cube against her hot skin.

        Vic glanced behind him. Horace and Mary stood together near the stove, Phil was in the middle of the kitchen, looking dazed and frightened, and it crossed Vic's mind that Phil would look guiltier than anyone else in the room if anyone suspected that De Lisle had been murdered and that one of them must have done it.

       "You don't suppose he wanted to kill himself, do you?" Phil asked Vic.

       Melinda's head came up. "Of course he didn't want to! Why should he want to with the whole 'world' at his feet and every—every gift and talent a man could ask for!"

       "What was he doing when you left the pool, Vic?" Phil asked. "He was paddling around. Floating on his back, I think."

       "He didn't say anything about the water being cold?" Evelyn asked.

       "No. I think he'd said earlier it was pretty chilly, but—"

       "'You' did it," Melinda said, looking at Vic. "I bet you hit him on the head and held him under."

       "Oh, Melinda!" Evelyn said, coming toward her. "Melinda, you're upset!"

       "'I bet you hit him and drowned him!'" Melinda said in a louder voice, throwing Evelyn's hands from her. "I'm going to call the hospital!" She jumped up.

       Phil caught her arm, but her momentum swung her against the refrigerator. "Melinda, don't do that! Not now!"

       "'Vic killed him. I know he did!'" Melinda shrieked, loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear her, though there were no houses for a quarter of a mile around. "He 'killed' him! Let me go!" She swung at Vic as he approached her, swung short, and then Horace stepped in, trying to catch one flailing wrist. "I'm going to ask them to look at his 'head'!" Then suddenly with one of her arms held by Phil, the other by Horace, Melinda was rigidly still, her wild hennaed head lifted, her wet eyes closed.

       "We'd better try to get her to bed here, Vic," Evelyn said. "What about Trixie? Will she be all right?"

       "She's with the Petersons. She'll be all right," Vic said.

       Horace had released his hold on Melinda's arm. He came toward Evelyn with a tired smile on his lips. "We'll take off, Evelyn—unless there's anything else we can do."

       "I don't guess there is, Horace. I think she could stand two more of these, don't you?" she asked him quietly, the phenobarbitals in her palm poised over another cup of coffee. "They're only quarter grains."

       "Absolutely," Horace said. He turned to Vic. "Good night, Vic. Call us, will you? Don't let—don't let anything get you down." He patted Vic's arm.

       In spite of his low voice, Melinda heard, broke her trancelike rigidity and shouted at Horace. "Get him down? He should be down! He should be at the bottom of that pool!"

       "Melinda!"

       "Melinda, stop it!" Phil said. "Here, drink this!"

       Melinda did not shout again, but it was nearly an hour before they got her to bed in the guest room upstairs.

       Phil called St. Joseph's Hospital in Wesley as soon as Melinda was quiet. They told him that Charles De Lisle was dead.

Chapter 10

Vic drove home with Melinda about noon. She did not say a word to him in the car. She had hardly said a word since she had come downstairs at eleven o'clock. Her eyes were puffy and she seemed still groggy from the sleeping pills. She had not put on any lipstick, and her mouth looked thinner, set in a straight line as she stared through the windshield. Vic left her at the house, put on a pair of slacks and a clean shirt, then drove to the Petersons' to pick up Trixie. He supposed he should tell the Petersons what had happened. They would think it unnatural of him if he didn't.

       Vic said, when he was standing in the driveway with the two of them, out of earshot of the children, "There was an accident last night at the Cowans'. A man drowned in their swimming pool."

       "'What!'" Katherine Peterson said, her eyes stretching.