A Will To Murder by Hilary Thomson Page B

raising a puff of dust, and Colette recoiled.  (Mrs. Marshpool indeed had not been very thorough).  Colette snatched a small bottle of Lily-of-the-Valley potpourri spray from her purse and spritzed the room thoroughly.
    “Hey, cut it out!  Keep your perfume to yourself, Christ.  Now it stinks worse than it did before.  How long does that shit take to fade, anyway?”
    She smiled.  “It’ll linger until after we leave.”
    “Jesus,” Lance moaned.  “Hey,” he said in a different tone.  “Look at all this stuff.”  He picked up an Art Nouveau faience vase.  “How much do you think this is worth?”  He tossed the vase into his bag.
    “Fifty cents,” snorted Colette.  “They wouldn’t be dumb enough to leave the really good antiques in the same room with you.”
    “Some of this has got to be worth money,” Lance objected, stuffing more nicknacks into his bag.
    “Don’t strip the room yet, fool.  Do you want to go to jail before they read the will?”
    “Hey, I intend to get some money out of this.  You don’t think that old guy left us anything, do you?  He never saw us in his life.”
    “The lawyer wouldn’t have invited us unless he had.”  Casually, she tapped ashes into a piece of Dresden China.
    Lance eyed her with open-mouthed pensiveness for a moment, then began to unload his bag.  Colette took a drag on her cigarette and gave a spasmodic, ghastly cough.  When she recovered, she groaned, “Well, I suppose we ought to go down and mix with those people.  Do you remember any of their names?”
     
     
    Downstairs, Armagnac tried to make conversation with Lance, though with misgivings.  “I believe there’s a provision in the will for you about a car,” said Boyle with strained heartiness.
    “Oh yeah?  Like that really old car I saw your chauffeur polishing by the garage?  Did you hear that, Colette?  I could make a souped-up highrider out of it.”  
    “Letitia, I need some aspirin, please,” Boyle keened.  
    “Are you in college now, or planning to go?” Rose asked Colette politely.
    “Forget college,” Armagnac interjected, “both of you should have gone to finishing school.”
    Colette eyed him coolly.  “I am currently enrolled at a boarding school in Switzerland.”
    “I see callowness, shallowness, and shopping are the course offerings at Swiss boarding schools nowadays,” Boyle retorted.  “Are you a giggler?  I despise teenage girls who giggle.  I see them gathered in groups all over the place tittering constantly at the most feeble of juvenile trivia.  Do you know why they’re always giggling?  They’re hooked on their own brain opium.  Laughter is a shock reaction, and the human brain releases small quantities of opiates in response to shock.  By trying to giggle constantly, girls are giving themselves hit after hit.  They’re all drug addicts.”
    At this, Colette finally did meet Armagnac’s eyes, the first time she had gazed directly at anyone since her arrival.  Then she gave a single hoarse chuckle, but the laugh turned into a booming cough as the bronchitis took over.  “I need to lie down,” said Colette in reply to the various offers of aid.  She made, however, no motion to move.
    “Well,” said Katherine, “We can--”
    She petered out as Colette zapped the air a few times with her potpourri spray.  Some of it landed on Katherine.
    “I’m going to have to lie down somewhere else besides my room,” said Colette blandly, “all that dust and mold is aggravating my lungs.  And I can’t possibly walk up and down all those stairs in my condition.”
    “She’s beginning to aggravate me ,” growled Jac softly.
    “I’m afraid you must not have a very good housekeeper,” Colette continued.  Mrs. Marshpool bristled.
    “If someone could provide some cough syrup,” Colette added, looking wan, “it would help.”
    The housekeeper turned her back sharply as if she hadn’t heard of cough syrup in her life.  Flustered,